The only surviving member of the Islamic State attack team that terrorized Paris in 2015 asked Friday for forgiveness and expressed condolences for the victims, wiping away tears during court testimony as he pleaded with survivors to “detest me with moderation.”

For years, Salah Abdeslam was silent about what happened November 13, 2015, in the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and the national stadium, and the 130 people who were killed. After his trial opened last year, he had a few outbursts of extremist bravado, but for months he refused to answer most questions.

Then this week, his words started flowing, in lengthy testimony that at times contradicted earlier statements. His words at times prompted angry outbursts from the public.

Survivors and victims’ families, who hope the extensive trial helps them find justice and clarity, had mixed reactions.

Abdeslam said the mastermind of the attacks persuaded him two days beforehand to join the team of suicide bombers. The next day, Abdeslam said, his brother Brahim showed him the cafe in northern Paris where Salah was meant to detonate himself in a crowd.

‘I wasn’t ready’

“For me, it was a shock. I didn’t know how to react. I showed that I wasn’t ready for that,” Abdeslam told the court. “He ended up convincing me.”

He recounted donning an explosive belt that night, as his brother and other Islamic State extremists who had fought in Syria were fanned out around Paris mounting parallel attacks.

“I enter the cafe, I order a drink,” Abdeslam said. “I was thinking. I looked at people laughing, dancing. And that’s when I knew that I couldn’t do it.”

“I told myself, ‘I’m not going to do it,’ ” he said, citing a sense of humanity.

A police explosives expert has told the court that the suicide belt was faulty, but Abdeslam testified that he disabled it.

Last month, he expressed regret that he hadn’t followed through on the attack.

But this week, he started showing signs of remorse.

“There are no words for this,” he said.

Tearful plea for forgiveness

Questioned Friday by his lawyer about his mother, and her loss over her older son’s death, Abdeslam started to cry for the first time since the trial began in September, according to French media reports.

“I ask you today to detest me with moderation,” he told the victims. “I offer my condolences, and I ask forgiveness for all the victims.”

He has also repeatedly asked forgiveness of three fellow defendants being tried for helping him escape.

Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola was killed in the Bataclan, was quoted by France-Info radio as saying: “Abdeslam is trying to settle a mountain of contradictions in his head. He’s trying to resolve them, but his path will be long.”

After leaving the cafe, Abdeslam described desperately attempting to reach friends to ask for help and taking a taxi across Paris to the suburb of Montrouge, where he said he removed the detonator from his explosive vest and tossed the vest in a garbage bin. He hid out at first near Paris, then fled with friends to Brussels, where he was arrested four months later.

He faces life in prison if convicted on murder charges.

The more than 2,400 civil parties to the case present their final arguments next month, and the verdict is expected on June 24. It’s among the biggest trials in modern French history.
…

It is more than 10,000 kilometers from Medyka, the Polish border city that is a first stop for many Ukrainian refugees, to Tijuana, Mexico, where more than 1,700 Ukrainians are waiting for a chance to cross into the United States.

“They’re arriving as tourists,” says Enrique Lucero Vásquez, the municipal director of migrant care in Tijuana, with whom I spoke in a sports complex that has been repurposed to receive the Ukrainian families.

About 400 people are already housed at the center, where they spend one to two nights before being escorted to the border crossing and admitted by the U.S. Border Patrol.

In 2018 I was in this same place, in an even more congested courtyard, but instead of Ukrainians it was packed with Central American migrants who had journeyed north in a series of caravans. The process this time is as different as the circumstances that led the people to flee their homelands.

As in Medyka — where I reported before coming to Tijuana — many of the refugees are separated from husbands, parents or children. I remember the pain in the face of Yulia Usik, a mother of children aged 4 and 5, when we spoke at the Przemysl train station in Poland.

Through tears, she repeated the words of her husband who had stayed in Ukraine to fight: “He promised that he would come back for us.”

Now history is repeating itself. This time it is at the San Ysidro checkpoint, where Ukrainian volunteers have set up chairs for people waiting to cross, that a mother of a 4-year-old girl and a 5-month-old girl talks to me with the help of a translation phone app.

Without revealing her name, the woman explains that on the first day of the war, after the first bombing, she decided to leave Ukraine. She arrived with her daughters in Poland where she has a sister and after three weeks decided to try to reach the United States, where another sister is living in Springfield, Missouri.

She traveled to Cancun with her daughters, her two sisters and her 56-year-old mother, who sits nearby with a scarf covering her head and a Ukrainian passport in her hand. In the midst of the people and the noise of construction at the border, the woman stares at the horizon, lost in thought.

According to the older daughter, the family has left four men behind in Ukraine to fight the Russian invaders.

Ukrainian Camp

Apart from the sports complex, a tent city has sprung up where about 800 refugees spend the night before traveling by municipal bus to the border crossing. Ukrainian volunteers provide security, food and amusement for the children who run around chasing soap bubbles.

Day and night, the cars line up to cross into San Ysidro, California, beckoned by the American hills visible behind the border wall. Voices rise in Russian and Ukrainian, though the laughter and tears of the children recognize no language barriers.

Lucero, the municipal director of migrant care in Tijuana, tells me the sports complex was opened for the refugees because the tent camp near the Tijuana-San Ysidro crossing had become too crowded.

He acknowledges that the city has responded more quickly to this crisis than to the usual flow of migrants from Central America, Haiti and more remote parts of Mexico. For those, the city maintains another 25 shelters where some have waited for almost two years for a change in American policy that will permit them to seek asylum in the U.S.

He also says some of these Ukrainian refugees have more resources than the Central Americans; some have even been staying in local hotels in the city.

Upon arrival in Tijuana, the refugees are registered by volunteers and placed on a waiting list, explains white-coated Gilberto, who prefers not to provide his surname. We speak in an improvised medical care center in the Ukrainian camp.

“I arrived two weeks ago, before I helped with transportation from the airport, to here or to the other side, but then I came here to help with the medical side,” he says. “Here they are on a priority list, those who came before are here, those who came after stay in the gymnasium, they are gradually moving to the line, but in an orderly manner.”

The coordination of all activities — arrival, transportation, registration, lodging and delivery to the Border Patrol — is managed by a mixed group of volunteers that includes representatives of The Light of the World Church in Sacramento, California, and Calvary Church in San Diego.

The volunteers are deeply committed to ensuring that the families are not only cared for but are quickly admitted into the United States.

To do this, they created a phone app that allows them not only to be registered on a list that will be presented to the Border Patrol, but also to maintain an orderly flow of people through the pedestrian checkpoint.

Anastasiya Polovin, a Ukrainian native now living in Orange County in the Los Angeles area, has left the music academy that she runs to assist her compatriots. Speaking to me in the sports complex, she stresses the importance of providing the refugees with hot food, showers and other basic comforts.

But she says, even more urgent is to speed up the process of admitting them into the United States under a humanitarian exception to normal admission procedures that is not available to most other migrants arriving at the border.

Polovin insists that the humanitarian exception should be available not only here in Tijuana after long journeys and considerable expense. Advocates for the refugees want the government to allow them to fly directly into the United States from Europe.

Polovin shares that she is originally from the besieged southern city of Mikolaiv, where Ukrainian forces halted the Russian advance toward Odesa. “I have lost many people I know,” she says.

Even so, she says, six of her relatives have recently made it into the United States and will join her mother who is already in California. Ironically, one of them was turned down for refugee status in the U.S. two years ago.

“It was not until the war began that he was guaranteed access,” she says.
…

A criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website had published content critical of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, Russian media reported on Thursday.

Mikhail Afanasyev, chief editor of Novy Fokus in the Russian region of Khakassia, was arrested by security forces Wednesday over the website’s reporting on 11 riot police who allegedly refused deployment to Ukraine as part of Russia’s military action there.

Afanasyev was accused Thursday of disseminating “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offense which carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence under a law passed last month.

Afanasyev has published numerous investigations into sensitive issues in Khakassia, such as organized crime and alleged abuses of power by local officials.

He was accused of libel in 2009 over reporting that criticized the Russian government’s response to an explosion at the country’s largest hydroelectric plant that year. And in 2016, he reportedly faced death threats from a criminal gang active in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, after he detailed the group’s illegal activities and suspected ties to local police.

Another Siberia-based journalist was also arrested Wednesday on suspicion of breaching Russia’s new laws on media coverage of the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Mikhailov, founder of the LIStok weekly newspaper based in the Republic of Altay, was reportedly placed in pre-trial detention over the outlet’s alleged “calls for sanctions against Russia.”

LIStok’s website has been blocked since March for “promoting” activities opposing Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
…

Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

Impacts of Ukraine war reverberate globally

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the developing world is facing a “perfect storm” threatening to devastate many of its economies. He said 1.7 billion people could be affected by disruptions in food, energy and finance systems.

UN Chief: Ukraine War Fallout Threatens Economic Crisis in Developing World

Sexual violence, trafficking growing in Ukrainian conflict

The United Nations said Monday that Ukrainian women and children are at heightened risk of sexual violence, rape and trafficking as reports grow of such violations. U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous told the Security Council that young women and unaccompanied teenagers are at particular risk.

UN: Sexual Violence, Trafficking Increasing in Ukraine War

ICC prosecutor: Ukraine a ‘crime scene’

International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan visited the Ukrainian town of Bucha on Tuesday, as workers dug up bodies wrapped in black plastic bags from mass graves. He said the country has become a “crime scene.” His office has opened an investigation into alleged crimes falling under the court’s jurisdiction.

As Calls Grow for Justice on Ukraine, ICC Steps Forward

Millions of South Sudanese face growing hunger, famine

The U.N. said this week that more than 7 million South Sudanese will be facing a food crisis by July because of floods, drought and armed clashes. About 87,000 people in the Pibor administrative area and parts of Jonglei, Lakes and Unity states are also likely to be at catastrophic levels of famine by July. About 2.9 million people will be just one step lower, at emergency levels.

South Sudan Facing Food Crisis

Move in General Assembly to hold Security Council veto holders accountable

Nearly 40 countries plan to bring a draft resolution to the U.N. General Assembly that seeks to hold the five veto-wielding countries in the Security Council accountable when they exercise that right. If adopted, the resolution would require the General Assembly to meet when one of the five permanent Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia or the United States — uses its veto to block adoption of a council resolution.

UN Security Council Veto Holders Could Face Accountability

African states abstain on Russia resolutions, may signal revival of NAM

Some African nations’ repeated abstentions on U.S.-led resolutions condemning Russia at the United Nations could be a subtle signal for the revival of the Non-Aligned Movement, analysts say.

African States May Be Pushing to Revive Non-Aligned Movement, Analysts Say

In brief

Secretary-General Guterres said Wednesday that despite U.N. efforts, he does not think a nationwide humanitarian cease-fire will happen right now in Ukraine. He is hopeful, however, that several proposals the U.N. made for local cease-fires, humanitarian corridors, humanitarian assistance and civilian evacuations might still be possible, and he is awaiting a response from Russia.

The United Nations warned Thursday that as many as 6 million Somalis could face the risk of famine if the rainy season fails as expected and global food prices continue to rise. Three poor consecutive rainy seasons have deepened the country’s drought, plunging millions of people to crisis levels of food insecurity. Somalia imports 85% of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and the war there has also complicated the country’s food crisis. A humanitarian response plan requesting $1.5 billion is only 4.4% funded.

The U.N. says it continues to be concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Myanmar. More than 900,000 people are displaced, including more than 560,000 who have been uprooted because of violence since the military coup in February 2021. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 35,700 people from Myanmar have crossed into neighboring countries. A humanitarian appeal for $826 million to assist 6.2 million people is only 4% funded.

Quote of note

“When the perpetrators walk free, the survivors walk in fear, carrying the burden of ostracism and shame.”

— Pramila Patten, special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, to the U.N. Security Council on the need for accountability.

What we are watching next week

On April 19, the U.N. Security Council will be briefed on the situation in Ukraine by the director general of the International Organization for Migration as well as by the U.N. Refugee Agency. More than 4.7 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24
…

On a day that saw Moscow suffer a stinging symbolic defeat with the loss of its Black Sea fleet flagship, Ukraine’s president hailed his people for their resolve since Russia invaded in February and for making “the most important decision of their life – to fight.” 

In his nightly address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians late Thursday that they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the invaders “gave us a maximum of five.” 

Back then even friendly world leaders urged him to leave, unsure whether Ukraine could survive, he said: “But they didn’t know how brave Ukrainians are, how much we value freedom and the possibility to live the way we want.” 

Listing the ways Ukraine has defended against the onslaught, Zelenskyy noted “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea. 

It was his only reference to the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, named for the Russian capital, which became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war. It sank Thursday while being towed to port after suffering heavy damage under circumstances that remained under dispute. 

Ukrainian officials said their forces struck the vessel with missiles, while Moscow acknowledged a fire on board but not any attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze. In any case, the loss was a symbolic defeat for Russia as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv. 

The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder. Now entering its eighth week, the invasion has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.

During the first days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called on Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender in a standoff. In a widely circulated recording, a soldier responded: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”

The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.

The news about the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war _ at a horrific cost to civilians.

Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP in an interview Thursday that people are being “starved to death” in the besieged city.

Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000, after weeks of attacks and privation carpeted the streets with corpses.

Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.

The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it is likely to add more ground combat units soon. But it’s still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.

Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence  of the rebel regions in the Donbas.

The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.

Maksym Marchenko, governor of the Odesa region, said Ukrainian forces struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the blaze. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged and that the crew, usually numbering about 500, abandoned the vessel. It wasn’t clear if there were any casualties. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.

The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where it was when the fire began.

Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons. 

On Thursday, other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea moved farther south after the Moskva incident, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.

While the U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine’s claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a big blow to Russia.”

“They’ve had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.

Russia invaded Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.

It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.

Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters some 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo, in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia’s Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.

Russia’s state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.

The reports could not be independently verified.
…

The capital of France may be thousands of miles from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, but what happens in French voting stations this month could have repercussions there. 

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has close ties to Russia and wants to weaken the European Union and NATO, which could undercut Western efforts to stop Russia’s war on Ukraine. Le Pen is trying to unseat centrist President Emmanuel Macron, who has a slim lead in polls ahead of France’s April 24 presidential runoff election. 

Here are some of the ways the French election could impact the war in Ukraine: 

Arming Ukraine 

Macron’s government has sent 100 million euros worth of weaponry to Ukraine in recent weeks and said Wednesday it will send more as part of a Western military aid effort. France has been a major source of military support for Ukraine since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. 

Le Pen expressed reservations Wednesday about supplying Ukraine with additional arms. She said, if she were elected president, she would continue defense and intelligence aid but would be “prudent” about sending weapons because she thinks the shipments could suck other countries into the war with Russia. 

Softening sanctions 

Le Pen’s campaign has successfully tapped into French voter frustration over rising inflation, which has worsened as a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions against Russia, a major gas supplier and trade partner for France and Europe. 

The European Union has been unusually unified in agreeing on five rounds of ever-tougher sanctions against Russia. If she became France’s president, Le Pen could try to thwart or limit additional EU sanctions since further action requires unanimous backing from the bloc’s 27 member nations. 

France is the EU’s No. 2 economy after Germany and key to EU decision-making. France also now holds the rotating EU presidency, giving France’s next leader significant influence. 

Le Pen is notably opposed to sanctions on Russian gas and oil. She also said in the past that she would work to lift sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, and even recognize Crimea as part of Russia. 

Courting Putin 

Earlier in his first term, Macron tried reaching out to Putin, inviting him to Versailles and a presidential resort on the Mediterranean, in hopes of bringing Russia’s policies back into greater alignment with the West. 

The French president also sought to revive peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv over the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine between the government and Russia-backed separatists. Macron visited Putin at the Kremlin weeks before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine and has continued talking to the Russian leader during the war. At the same time, Macron has supported multiple rounds of EU sanctions. 

Le Pen’s party has deep ties to Russia. She met with Putin as a French presidential candidate in 2017 and has praised him in the past. She is warmly welcomed at Russian Embassy events in Paris, and her far-right party also got a 9 million euro loan from a Russian-Czech bank because she said French banks refused to lend the party money. 

Le Pen says the war in Ukraine has partly changed her mind about Putin, but she said Wednesday that the West should try to restore relations with Russia once the conflict ends. She suggested a “strategic rapprochement” between NATO and Russia to keep Moscow from allying too closely with China. 

Weakening NATO and the EU 

While Macron is a staunch defender of the EU and recently reinforced France’s participation in NATO operations in Eastern Europe, Le Pen says France should keep its distance from international alliances and strike its own path. 

She favors pulling France out of NATO’s military command, which would take French military staff out of the body that plans operations and lead to the country losing influence within the Western military alliance. 

France withdrew from NATO’s command structure in 1966, when French President Charles de Gaulle wanted to distance his country from the U.S.-dominated organization and reintegrated under conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009. 

If it were up to her, Le Pen would reduce French spending on the EU and try to diminish the EU’s influence by chipping away at the bloc from within while no longer recognizing that European law has primacy over national law. 
…

In early April, snow drifts still line the twisting tracks leading up to Ağcaşar village, high in the mountains of Erzurum province in eastern Turkey. Daily life has seemingly changed little over the centuries. Dried animal dung is used for heating and cooking. Many homes don’t have running water.

The village is strangely quiet. Local shepherd Burhan Özdemir is one of the few middle-aged men left in the village.

“All our friends are gone. Some sold their cows. Some sold their animals. They sold their land and most of them are gone,” Özdemir told VOA. “It’s only me left here with two or three of my friends, and we can’t leave because we don’t have money. Those who had money went to America.”

Amid an inflation crisis and soaring prices in Turkey, people in the poorest eastern regions of the country are struggling to make ends meet. Increasing numbers of men are paying smugglers to take them to the United States, where they hope to find well-paying jobs and a better life. Many are ethnic Kurds, who have long accused Ankara of discrimination.

Ağcaşar has seen an exodus of young and middle-aged men, driven by the lack of jobs, drawn by opportunities in America and facilitated by smuggling gangs that have recently moved into the village.

University student Ömer — who did not want to give his family name for security reasons — is preparing to travel to the U.S.

“I want to go to America because even if I finish my studies and have a profession, I will not have a good salary,” he told VOA. “Here the salary is $300 a month, but over there it is $3,000. My brother went there [to America] recently. He says that he is free there and everything is nice. He will work and send me money, and I will go, too.”

The smugglers have moved into the mountain villages from the province of Agri on the Iranian border, which is among the poorest regions of Turkey.

There are no official numbers, but it’s estimated that tens of thousands have left Agri in recent years for the U.S. and Canada.

Annual inflation in Turkey reached 61% in April, a 20-year high, driven by global price increases and a series of interest rate cuts by the Turkish government. The price of food in Turkey has jumped 70%, and transportation costs have risen by some 99%.

“The butchers have raised the price of meat. Bakeries have raised the price of bread. The poor cannot make a living,” Agri resident Haci Halis said.

Smugglers typically charge around $15,000, residents told VOA. This buys migrants a bus ticket to Ankara or Istanbul and a flight to Mexico.

They cross the border into the U.S., where most are detained as they await asylum claims. The Kurdish migrants frequently cite persecution in Turkey. The smugglers also offer to arrange migration lawyers in the U.S., at a cost of $300, residents said.

Grocery store owner Ali Çapkar told VOA his brother had left for the U.S. six months ago.

“For a better life and more money. Almost all of the young people are gone. From Agri, around 100 or 150 people go every day. People are hungry,” Çapkar said.

VOA’s Memet Aksakal contributed to this report.
…

Britain will send migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the English Channel thousands of miles away to Rwanda under a controversial deal announced Thursday as the government tries to clamp down on record numbers of people making the perilous journey.

“From today … anyone entering the United Kingdom illegally, as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1, may now be relocated to Rwanda,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a speech near Dover in southeastern England.

“Rwanda will have the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead,” Johnson said.

He called the East African nation with a sketchy human rights record “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognized for its record of welcoming and integrating migrants.”

Johnson was elected partly on promises to curb illegal immigration but has instead seen record numbers making the risky channel crossing.

He also announced that Britain’s border agency would hand responsibility for patrolling the channel for migrant boats to the navy.

More than 28,000 people arrived in Britain having crossed the channel from France in small boats in 2021.

Around 90% of those were male, and three-quarters were men between 18 and 39 years old.

‘Inhumane’

The Rwanda plan swiftly drew the ire of opposition politicians who accused Johnson of trying to distract from his fine for breaking coronavirus lockdown rules, while rights groups slammed the project as “inhumane.”

The United Nations’ refugee agency voiced its strong opposition, with Gillian Triggs, the UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection saying, “People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing.”

European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari did not directly comment on the British decision but stressed that it “raises fundamental questions about the access to asylum procedures and protection in line with the demands of international law.”

Ghana and Rwanda had previously been mentioned as possible locations for the U.K. to outsource the processing of migrants, but Ghana in January denied involvement.

Instead, Kigali on Thursday announced that it had signed a multimillion-dollar deal to do the job, during a visit by British Home Secretary Priti Patel.

“Rwanda welcomes this partnership with the United Kingdom to host asylum-seekers and migrants and offer them legal pathways to residence” in the East African nation, Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta said in a statement.

The deal with Rwanda will be funded by the U.K. to the tune of up to $157 million, with migrants “integrated into communities across the country,” it said.

In Dover, where many migrants arrive after crossing the channel, some residents welcomed the announcement.

“They should be sent back, because it is not our responsibility,” said retiree Andy, 68.

“Our responsibility is to look after our own people, which we aren’t doing,” the heavily tattooed army veteran told AFP.

“I understand people escaping from repression, I do. But if they’re coming over here for one thing and that is money, to me, that is wrong.”

Backlash

Refugee Action’s Tim Naor Hilton accused the government of “offshoring its responsibilities onto Europe’s former colonies instead of doing our fair share to help some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

“This grubby cash-for-people plan would be a cowardly, barbaric and inhumane way to treat people fleeing persecution and war,” he said.

Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the plan would “complicate” the process for Syrians seeking refuge in the U.K.

“Syrian refugees are desperate to reach a place of safety,” Hardman told AFP.

“The U.K.’s agreement with Rwanda will only complicate this pursuit.

“They will arrive and expect to be treated according to the fundamental values the U.K. says it upholds, but will instead be transferred somewhere, miles away.”

Australia has a policy of sending asylum-seekers arriving by boat to detention camps on the Pacific island nation of Nauru, with Canberra vowing no asylum-seeker arriving by boat would ever be allowed to permanently settle in Australia.

Since 2015, the U.K. has “offered a place to over 185,000 men, women and children seeking refuge — more than any other similar resettlement schemes in Europe,” Johnson said.

According to the U.N. refugee agency, Germany received the highest number of asylum applicants (127,730) in Europe in 2021, followed by France (96,510), while the U.K. received the fourth largest number of applicants (44,190).
…

A jury convicted a British national Thursday for his role in an Islamic State group hostage-taking scheme that took roughly two dozen Westerners captive a decade ago, resulting in the deaths of four Americans, three of whom were beheaded. 

The jury deliberated for four hours before finding El Shafee Elsheikh guilty on all counts. Elsheikh stood motionless and gave no visible reaction as the verdict was read. He now faces up to a life sentence in prison. 

In convicting Elsheikh, the jury concluded that he was one of the notorious “Beatles,” Islamic State captors nicknamed for their British accents and known for their cruelty — torturing and beating prisoners, forcing them to fight each other until they collapsed and even making them sing cruel song parodies.  

Surviving hostages testified that the Beatles delighted themselves rewriting “Hotel California” as “Hotel Osama” and making them sing the refrain “You will never leave.” 

The guilty finding came even though none of the surviving hostages could identify Elsheikh as one of their captors. Although the Beatles had distinctive accents, they always took great care to hide their faces behind masks and ordered hostages to avoid eye contact or risk a beating. 

Prosecutors suggested in opening statements that Elsheikh was the Beatle nicknamed “Ringo” but only had to prove that Elshiekh was one of the Beatles because testimony showed that all three were major players in the scheme. 

Elsheikh, who was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian defense Forces in 2018, eventually confessed his role in the scheme to interrogators as well as media interviewers, acknowledging that he helped collect email addresses and provided proof of life to the hostages’ families as part of ransom negotiations. 

But testimony showed that he and the other Beatles were far more than paper pushers. The surviving hostages, all of whom were European — the American and British hostages were all killed — testified that they dreaded the Beatles’ appearance at the various prisons to which they constantly shuttled and relocated. 

Surviving witness Federico Motka recounted a time in the summer of 2013 when he and cellmate David Haines were put in a room with American hostage James Foley and British hostage John Cantlie for what they called a “Royal Rumble.” The losers were told they’d be waterboarded. Weak from hunger, two of the four passed out during the hourlong battle. 

The convictions on all eight counts in U.S. District Court in Alexandria revolved around the deaths of four American hostages: Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.  

All but Mueller were executed in videotaped beheadings circulated online. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped multiple times by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before she was killed. 

They were among 26 hostages taken captive between 2012 and 2015, when the Islamic State group controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria. 

Defense lawyers acknowledged that Elsheikh joined the Islamic State group but said prosecutors failed to prove he was a Beatle. They cited a lack of clarity about which Beatle was which, and during the trial’s opening statement, they cited the confusion about whether there were three or four Beatles. 

Prosecutors said there were three — Elsheikh and his friends Alexenda Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi, who all knew each other in England before joining the Islamic State. 

Emwazi, who as known as “Jihadi John” and carried out the executions, was later killed in a drone strike. Kotey and Elsheikh were captured together in 2018 and brought to Virginia in 2020 to face trial after the U.S. promised not to seek the death penalty.  

Kotey pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain that calls for a life sentence but leaves open the possibility that he could serve out his sentence in Britain after 15 years in the U.S. 
…

Calls are mounting for Russia to face a legal reckoning for atrocities its forces are allegedly committing in Ukraine. Many activists are looking toward the Hague-based International Criminal Court, which last month opened a Ukraine war crimes investigation. But experts warn delivering justice will be slow, difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan visited the Ukrainian town of Bucha Wednesday, as workers dug up bodies in black plastic bags from the earth. Russian soldiers are blamed for horrific rights violations there, including raping and executing Bucha residents.

Khan called Ukraine a “crime scene.”

“Every individual, particularly civilians, they have certain rights,” he said. “We must speak for them and we must insist that we get to the truth of what’s taken place, and judges will decide if there is responsibility.”

International outrage is growing over Russia’s actions in Ukraine. On Wednesday, the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe accused Moscow of committing war crimes in some places — like deliberately attacking a maternity hospital and theater in the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

It also found Ukraine committed lesser violations. The OSCE’s investigation ended in early March, so does not cover more recent cases like Bucha.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called Russian leader Vladimir Putin a war criminal, and Russian actions in Ukraine a “genocide” — although others dispute that description.

The U.S. is not part of the ICC, and the Trump administration sanctioned some court members for probing alleged war crimes by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Now, Washington is reportedly looking at how it can help the court on Ukraine.

So far, dozens of countries have referred the Ukraine war to the ICC. France sent experts to help Kyiv investigate possible war crimes. The European Union is increasing funding and other support to the Hague-based court for probing Ukraine atrocities.

Experts say prosecuting suspects and delivering justice won’t be easy. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are members of the ICC. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia could hamper the U.N. court’s ability to hold it to account.

Still, Ukraine recognizes the ICC’s jurisdiction for crimes committed on its territory since 2014.

“I think there’s absolutely the possibility that war crimes will be prosecuted by the ICC. The … question will be who will be prosecuted by who,” said Carsten Stahn, a professor of international criminal law and global justice at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Like some other experts, Stahn believes the ICC doesn’t have to shoulder the whole legal burden. Some alleged Ukraine war crimes cases could be handled by courts in countries like Germany, which have universal jurisdiction.

Another option, analysts say, is creating a special tribunal for Ukraine, like the ones created to judge the Rwandan genocide and the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

But while Russia’s lower ranking military officers may one day be held accountable for their alleged actions, experts say that’s unlikely to happen for top leadership — like President Vladimir Putin, barring a change in government.

“We’ve seen from the practice of the tribunals, the Yugoslavia tribunal, that as a regime is in power, it is very difficult to proceed with crimes, ongoing investigations,” Stahn said. “Because you will simply not be able to get hold of the perpetrators.”

Still, analysts say the ICC can help broader efforts to deliver justice and will create one more headache for the Kremlin.
…

Russia is facing economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine from dozens of countries. Here is a look at the efficacy of similar punitive measures applied to various countries in the past.
…

After Russia invaded Ukraine, a Ukrainian NGO organized a shelter for displaced mothers in the western city of Lviv where a local businessman offered for his office space to be used for that purpose. Women with children stay there for a few days before continuing their journey to Spain. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. VOA footage by Yuriy Dankevych. Video editor – Mary Cieslak.
…

The European Union has closed a loophole that allowed EU governments to export weapons worth tens of millions of euros to Russia last year alone despite an embargo which took effect in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.

EU countries last year sold to Russia weapons and ammunition worth 39 million euros ($42.3 million), according to the latest data made available by the EU Commission — up more than 50% from 2020, when sales were worth 25 million euros, a volume in line with previous years.

The EU had banned the export of arms to Moscow in July 2014 in reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but a clause in the sanctions permitted sales under contracts signed before August 2014.

Countries with large defense industries, such as France and Germany, were among the largest exporters.

The loophole has come under fire from some EU governments since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which the Kremlin calls “a special military operation.”

In a bid to weaken the Kremlin’s war efforts in Ukraine, the EU has imposed five rounds of sweeping sanctions banning exports to Russia of a large variety of technology that could be used by the defense industry.

But EU governments failed to immediately agree to scrap the exemption on arms sales until last week, when the loophole was closed as part of the fifth package of EU sanctions, EU diplomats and officials told Reuters.

A legal text published on April 8 in the EU official journal deletes that exemption.

The EU Commission did not mention the closure of the loophole in its public communication about the fifth package of sanctions.

A spokesperson for the Lithuanian diplomatic mission to the EU said the exemption had been eliminated, but EU countries will be able to continue moving Russia-made weapons to Russia for repairs before they are returned to the EU.

The EU Commission, which is responsible for preparing sanctions, did not propose the amendment on closing the loophole as it was not clear whether it had the unanimous political backing of the 27 EU states, diplomats said.

But at a meeting last week, envoys agreed to amend the text after fresh criticism from some governments, including Poland and Lithuania, diplomats who attended the meeting said.
…

Russia said Thursday the flagship of its Black Sea fleet had been seriously damaged and that all the crew evacuated following what Russia said was an explosion and what Ukrainian officials said was a missile strike.

The Russian defense ministry blamed a fire that detonated ammunition on board the guide-missile Moskva. It said the fire had been contained and the ship remained afloat.  The ministry added that the ship’s main weapons were not damaged and that efforts were being made to take the ship back to port.   

The governor of Odesa said two cruise missiles struck the ship.

The White House on Wednesday reinforced U.S. President Joe Biden’s surprise statement Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be committing genocide in Ukraine.

Biden also announced that Washington is sending another $800 million in weapons, ammunition and other assistance to Ukraine.

“The president was speaking to what we all see, what he feels is clear as day in terms of the atrocities happening on the ground,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of the genocide remark.

“As he also noted yesterday, of course there will be a legal process that plays out in the courtroom, but he was speaking to what he sees, has seen on the ground, what we’ve all seen in terms of the atrocities on the ground.”

She added, “Regardless of what you call it, what our objective now is — as evidenced by the enormous package of military assistance we put out today — is to continue to help and assist the Ukrainians in this war, one where we see atrocities happening every single day.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected Biden’s description, saying, “We consider this kind of effort to distort the situation unacceptable. This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times.”

Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the new shipment in an hourlong phone conversation on Wednesday. He later said in a statement, “The Ukrainian military has used the weapons we are providing to devastating effect. The United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to defend itself.”

New weapons, renewed Russian push

The Pentagon said the new tranche of weaponry includes 500 Javelin missiles, 300 Switchblade drones, 300 armored vehicles, 11 helicopters, chemical, biological and nuclear protective gear and 30,000 sets of body armor and helmets.

The U.S. is also providing an unknown quantity of anti-personnel mines, which are configured to be only manually detonated.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said U.S. defense officials want to deliver this equipment while Russia is regrouping its forces, including helicopters and artillery systems, in Belarus.

“They’re not fully up to readiness for this renewed push for they want to put in the Donbas,” he said. “We recognize that, and we’re taking advantage of every day, every hour to get this stuff there as fast as we can. … We have a good sense of Russian efforts to resupply and reinforce.”

Biden’s agreement to send more weapons to Ukraine, along with additional helicopters, came after a video appeal from Zelenskyy.

“Freedom must be armed better than tyranny,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Without additional weapons, this will turn into an endless bloodbath that will spread misery, suffering and destruction.”

Biden said the Western supply of arms to Ukraine “has been critical in sustaining its fight against the Russian invasion. It has helped ensure that Putin failed in his initial war aims to conquer and control Ukraine. We cannot rest now.”

Also Wednesday, the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — all NATO countries bordering Russia — visited Kyiv to show support for Ukraine a day after Putin vowed to continue Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine until its “full completion.”

The leaders of the four countries, all worried that Russia could attack them if Ukraine were to fall, traveled by train to the Ukrainian capital to meet with Zelenskyy.

While failing to capture Kyiv and much of Ukraine, Russian forces have bombarded numerous cities, killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed housing and hospitals.

United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths recently went to Moscow and Kyiv to seek a cease-fire. But U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Wednesday it does not look like that is possible right now.

However, Guterres said there are “a number of proposals that were made, and we are waiting for an answer from the Russian Federation in relation to those proposals — including different mechanisms for local cease-fires, for corridors, for humanitarian assistance, evacuations and different other aspects that can minimize the dramatic impact on civilians that we are witnessing.”

Guterres said the U.N. also proposed the creation of a mechanism involving Russia, Ukraine, the U.N. and potentially other humanitarian entities, to help guarantee the evacuation of civilians from areas where fighting is going on and to guarantee humanitarian access.

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

The Biden administration appears set to include discussions of international economic repercussions of the Russian invasion and potentially Ukraine’s reconstruction as part of the November G-20 summit agenda, an idea that is likely to create further rift in the economic forum.

“It is not uncommon for events that are impacting the global community as Ukraine is, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to play a central role at international forums,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA during a briefing Wednesday. “And their economic recovery and rebuilding and reconstruction is going to be something that the global community is going to be involved in and address.”

In March, President Joe Biden said he wanted Russia removed from the Group of 20 largest economies or to have Ukraine be invited as an observer in the upcoming G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

“The inclusion of Ukraine does not mean it’s only about the battle on the ground. We’re going to need to rebuild Ukraine,” Psaki added, noting that Ukraine has applied for membership in the European Union, which is part of G-20.

Responding to criticism that Western demands to exclude Moscow disrupt the summit’s agenda and create division in the group, Psaki said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a “pariah in the world” and has “no place at international forums.”

Following its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Moscow was kicked out from the Group of Eight (G-8), now known as the Group of Seven (G-7). However, the G-20 is a much wider grouping with many more competing interests.

G-20 boycott

Biden has not said he would boycott the G-20 summit should Putin attend but insists the forum cannot be “business as usual.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have also raised concerns about Putin’s participation.

This puts Indonesian President Joko Widodo, as this year’s G-20 chair, in a tough position. He must prepare to host leaders of the 20 largest economies at a time when the world is technically still under a pandemic and attempt consensus on the world’s most pressing economic problems while navigating new geopolitical rivalries triggered by Putin’s war.

Middle-power members, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and others, have their own agenda centered around post-pandemic recovery that do not align with the West’s focus of isolating Putin and helping Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“That’s all going to have to be renegotiated,” William Pomeranz, acting director of the Wilson Center Kennan Institute, told VOA. “Most of their members do not feel obliged to rebuild Ukraine.”

Gregory Poling, who researches U.S. foreign policy in the Asia Pacific at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA’s Indonesian Service that while it is understandable that non-Western G-20 members are reluctant to have condemnation of Russia override the agenda, there is simply no possibility for Biden and other Western leaders to sit across Putin at the summit’s table.

Ultimately for Jakarta, it may boil down to whether they are willing to trade Putin’s attendance for several Western leaders’ absence, Poling said. And while Indonesian diplomats would have preferred quiet negotiations rather than public announcements from Western leaders, the tension was going to surface at some point.

“Indonesia was never going to disinvite Vladimir Putin without significant pressure and that pressure would have had to have been delivered publicly, sooner or later,” Poling said.

Jakarta’s dilemma

As a middle power struggling to recover from the pandemic, Indonesia is focused on using its G-20 presidency to create a conducive environment for emerging economies to excel and safeguard the forum from geopolitical rivalries that could further market uncertainties, Dinna Prapto Raharja, founder of the Jakarta-based think tank Synergy Policies, told VOA.

“His [Widodo’s] desire is mainly to make sure that (the) G-20 will be the forum that can sustain its mandate, which is the economic mandate,” Prapto Raharja said. “The scarcity of goods, the consequences of untenable rise of energy prices, the inability of emerging economies to get out from the COVID-19 crisis – this needs to be the agenda.”

Including Ukraine as an observer, as Biden has suggested, will complicate matters as Kyiv’s main interest is to secure assistance against Russian aggression and has nothing to do with G-20 goals, she said. However, Jakarta must prepare a contingent mechanism to allow views on Ukraine to be aired without disrupting the summit’s focus.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian public views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine partly through the lens of anti-West attitudes and skepticism of U.S. foreign policies. These sentiments have been magnified by pro-Putin propaganda pushed on social media.

“Our research shows 95% of TikTok users and 73% of Instagram users in Indonesia supports Russia after Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs assistance from NATO and the West,” Dudy Rudianto, founder of Jakarta-based data analysis firm Evello, told VOA’s Indonesian Service. This suggests Widodo may pay a political price should his government be seen as caving into Western demands to kick Putin out of the summit.

So far, Jakarta has neither revoked Putin’s invitation nor agreed to include Ukraine in the G-20 agenda. Earlier this month, a spokesman said the government is still considering different members’ points of views and will continue to focus on the three pillars of its G-20 presidency: global health architecture, sustainable energy transition and digital transformation.

As an informal grouping established in 1999 following a global economic crisis, the G-20 has no mechanism to expel a member, said Matthew Goodman, who holds the Simon Chair in Political Economy at CSIS.

“It doesn’t have a formal set of rules or even a really clear rationale for who’s in the group and who isn’t,” Goodman told VOA. “In practice, it would require all the other 19 countries to say, we don’t want that 20th country in the group.”

This is unlikely considering China’s position that Moscow is an important member of the forum, as well as other members’ reluctance to condemn Russia, including India, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

A National Security Council spokesperson told VOA that the U.S. will continue discussions with G-20 partners, including Indonesia.

“We will continue to explore participation as Putin’s war continues and we get closer to the G-20 Leaders’ Summit that is still over seven months away,” the spokesperson said.

Fractured support

While there has been solid backing from Europe and the G-7 for Biden’s efforts to hold Russia accountable, support beyond that has been more fractured.

Most notable is G-20 and Quad member, India. New Delhi, reliant on Moscow for military hardware, has abstained from various U.N. votes relating to the conflict.

India’s ambivalence on the Ukraine war is emblematic of Russia’s considerable influence around the world. Washington needs to be mindful of these geopolitical realities, analysts said.

“It’s not going to be as simple as showing the videos of the terrible actions in Ukraine and then the rest of the world will say – yes, Russia is committing war crimes and so forth and that we need to isolate it,” Pomeranz, of the Wilson Center, said.

The Biden administration must also take into account how the war in Ukraine could trigger nonaligned instincts.

“There is a danger if you have a zero-sum competition between these two blocs,” Stewart Patrick, director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA. He noted that many countries loathe their Cold War experience of being treated as pawns in global rivalries.

Perceptions about selectivity of U.S. foreign policy is also a factor, Patrick said. It is problematic for Washington to rally global support against Moscow in light of its own invasion on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Trump administration’s recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

“I don’t have any updates on that front,” Psaki told VOA last month when asked if the Biden administration has plans to revoke the recognition.
…

As Ukraine braces for a massive Russian assault on its eastern Donbas region, Dutch officials are preparing for a much friendlier invasion by thousands of visitors to its once-a-decade floriculture exhibition known as Floriade.

Held this year in Almere, about 30 kilometers from Amsterdam, the 62-year-old event seeks to show horticulturalists from around the world not only the best way to grow tomatoes, but state-of-the-art solar roof tiles and vertical façade gardens, Andre Haspels, Netherlands’ ambassador to the United States, told VOA.

The theme of the expo this year is literally what goes into the construction of sustainable cities, Haspels said, adding that Floriade will provide the chance to study the special construction material known as cementless concrete the Dutch have developed and now use for roads and bridges.

MH17 memories

And while the tulip also blooms in times of war, the conflict unfolding in Ukraine rings a special bell for the Dutch men and women who experienced the sudden and tragic loss of loved ones in 2014 when Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by what investigators say was a Russian-made missile as the jet flew over eastern Ukraine, which was controlled by pro-Russian forces.

The flight was on its way from Amsterdam to Malaysia. All 298 people onboard were killed.

“The death of 298 civilians, including 196 Dutch, cannot and should not remain without consequences,” Deputy Prime Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in a recent statement. “The current events in Ukraine underscore the vital importance of this.”

Russia has categorically denied any involvement in the incident known as MH17.

‘Go, no-go’

Outside the Dutch ambassador’s residence in Washington, the Ukrainian flag is posted in the front near the Dutch national flag. Inside, Haspels recently hosted “Tulip Days,” an annual spring event that was used this year to promote Dutch-American friendship, Floriade and to express support for Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is not the only concern that has given pause to organizers of the flower show, which opens Thursday and runs for six months. They have had to deal with the two-plus-year-old COVID-19 pandemic, which is only now easing its grip in Europe.

“They had moments when they had to decide, ‘Go or no-go,’ Haspels told VOA during the Tulip Days event, which had been on hold since 2019 because of the pandemic. “In the end, they decided to carry on with the festival, partly because the event would mostly be outdoors.”

The Netherlands, like the United States and most European countries, has lifted many of the stringent COVID-19 measures, including mandatory masks, “except on public transportation and airports,” said Haspels, who has tested positive twice, despite having been vaccinated and boosted.

Impact, lessons of war

As the COVID-19 threat weakens, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced Western European nations to face new challenges to their security and economies.

“First of all, we have taken sanctions against Russia. That means that our oil prices and our gas prices go up. Our food prices go up. So, there’s inflation,” he said.

“Secondly, there’s a large number of refugees coming from Ukraine to Europe. First to the neighboring countries, mainly Poland, but also to other countries, including my country. I think we have about 12,000 refugees from Ukraine now in the Netherlands.”

While Ukraine’s bids for membership in the European Union and NATO are being pondered, what is known as an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU is proving to be critical when it comes to helping fleeing Ukrainians to resettle, Haspels said.

Among the privileges granted under the agreement, Ukrainian people can enter the EU to live, work and find housing.

“The children can go to school in the Netherlands or any other European country” without applying for asylum. “That’s what we’re focusing on at the moment,” Haspels explained.

“This is going to be a decisive moment for Europe for a long, long time for a number of reasons,” the Dutch ambassador told VOA. “You’ve seen as a consequence that many European countries increased their defense expenditure — the Netherlands did, under the new government. But also our neighbor, Germany, has increased their defense expenditure to 100 billion euros, which is huge if you look at German’s history, as well. So, they will become a stronger player within NATO and in European defense.”

The war is also forcing European countries, including the Netherlands, to rethink their reliance on Russian energy sources, seeking out alternate fossil fuel sources and speeding up the shift to renewables.

“Norway is a producer of oil and gas. Even in my own country, in the Netherlands, we still have gas availability, but we decided not to use it because of environmental risks. But now, we understand that in this emergency situation, we might need to explore this gas reserve in the Netherlands, as well,” he said. “So, our energy relationship will change. I think we will have a much faster transition to a green economy. So, also solar, wind, hydrogen will get a huge incentive.”

Haspels noted that the war in Ukraine has taught allies and their adversaries another valuable lesson.

“What we have learned is that alliances are very important. The alliance within Europe and the unanimity that we have, which I think is a great achievement, but also the alliance between Europe and the U.S.,” he said.

Asked how the Washington diplomatic scene has changed because of the war and reduced fears about COVID-19, Haspels said most of the EU missions in the U.S. capital have started to organize bigger in-person events.

“Diplomacy is a contact sport,” he joked.

But the Dutch ambassador has not been in contact with his Russian counterpart.

“At this stage, I do not see what added value that would have,” he said, explaining that relations between his country and Russia were already tense due to MH17.

Although Ukraine is not an EU member, Kyiv’s top diplomatic representative was invited in February to attend a formal EU meeting of ambassadors, where “she briefed us on the situation in Ukraine” and expressed appreciation for the measures the EU had taken, Haspels said.
…

The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva missile cruiser, was badly damaged when ammunition on board blew up, Interfax news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying Thursday. 

Interfax said the crew had been evacuated. It blamed the blast on a fire and said the cause was being investigated. 

A Ukrainian official earlier said the Moskva had been hit by two missiles but did not give any evidence. 

The 12,500 metric ton ship has a crew of around 500. Russian news agencies said the Moskva was armed with 16 anti-ship “Vulkan” cruise missiles, which have a range of at least 700 km. 

“As the result of a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser, ammunition detonated. The ship was seriously damaged,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “The crew was completely evacuated.” 

Interfax did not give more details. 

Maksym Marchenko, governor of the region around the Black Sea port of Odesa, earlier said in an online post that two anti-ship missiles had hit the cruiser, but he did not provide evidence. 

Last month, Ukraine said it had destroyed a large Russian landing support ship, the Orsk, on the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast of the Black Sea. Moscow has not commented on what happened to the ship. 
…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday called on China to use its influence with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, warning that a failure to act by Beijing would affect its economic relations with countries that have opposed the Russian invasion. 

“The world’s attitudes towards China and its willingness to embrace further economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action on Russia,” Yellen said in remarks delivered at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council.

“China cannot expect the global community to respect its appeals to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future if it does not respect these principles now, when it counts,” Yellen said. “China has recently affirmed a special relationship with Russia. I fervently hope that China will make something positive of this relationship and help to end this war.” 

Chinese reaction

The Chinese government’s reaction to Yellen’s speech was not immediately available, but Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, in a regular press briefing prior to Yellen’s remarks, commented on the situation in Ukraine.  

Calling the United States “the culprit of the Ukraine crisis,” Zhao criticized the sanctions levied against Russia, saying that “instead of solving any problems, sanctions have only put a dent in the languishing world economy.” 

“Countries all over the world already have enough on their plate, as they need to respond to COVID-19 and try to recover the economy,” Zhao said. “Against such a backdrop, sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions will not only create new irreversible loss but may also bring shocks to the current world economic system, wiping out the outcome of international economic cooperation for decades and ultimately forcing the world’s people to pay a hefty price.” 

Zhao said that China continues to support “dialogue and negotiation” aimed at a “political settlement” to the conflict.

‘Shortsighted’ countries

While China was the only country that Yellen addressed by name, she noted that many countries have refused to take a position on the Ukraine conflict. 

“Let me now say a few words to those countries who are currently sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left by others,” Yellen said. “Such motivations are shortsighted. The future of our international order, both for peaceful security and economic prosperity, is at stake. And this is an order that benefits us all.” 

She said that the broad coalition of countries participating in the sanctions against Russia “will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we have put in place.” 

Food summit planned

Yellen acknowledged that the war in Ukraine had greatly exacerbated existing shortages of food and other essentials in some parts of the world. 

“With over 275 million people facing acute food insecurity, I am deeply concerned about the impact of Russia’s war on food prices and supply, particularly on poor populations who spend a larger share of their income on food,” she said.  

Yellen said that next week she would convene a summit of leaders in the field — on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — in Washington.  

In a question-and-answer session after her speech, she said, “This will be an urgent concern for us next week to try to think about how we can stave off starvation around the world. It’s really of grave concern.” 

A fine line on trade

Like other Biden administration officials in recent weeks, Yellen in her remarks walked a fine line, calling for the U.S. to pivot away from its reliance on China for key imports but not calling for a systematic “decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies. 

“We cannot allow countries to use their market position in key raw materials, technologies or products to have the power to disrupt our economy or exercise unwanted geopolitical leverage,” Yellen said. “Let’s build on and deepen economic integration and the efficiencies it brings on terms that work better for American workers. And let’s do it with the countries we know we can count on.” 

Yellen said that the U.S. ought to encourage the development of key industries in U.S.-friendly countries, using the term “friend-shoring” to describe the transition. She also encouraged the development of new trade agreements between groups of willing World Trade Organization members — she described such agreements as “plurilateral.”

Avoiding a ‘bipolar’ system

During the question-and-answer session, Yellen was asked if the U.S. stance on sanctions and other issues might result in a “new kind of bipolarity in the world” in which “the U.S. and its allies are in one camp, and maybe China and others are in another camp.” 

“I really hope that we don’t end up with a bipolar system,” Yellen said. “And I think we need to work very hard and to work with China to try to avert such an outcome.” 

Yellen also addressed the apparent desire among some countries, including China, to reduce the importance of the U.S. dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency because it allows the U.S. and its allies to significantly disrupt other nations’ economies. 

Regarding the sanctions on Russia, she said, “You see the power of partnership between the United States and our allies, and the importance of the dollar and the euro, as currencies in which transactions take place.” 

However, Yellen said, she doesn’t believe it is likely that the dollar’s status will be challenged in the foreseeable future. 

“I think it will be a long time, if ever, before the dollar is replaced as a key reserve currency in the global economy,” she said.
…

The man who stabbed and killed a British member of parliament last fall has been sentenced to life in prison.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, who was inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group, attacked Conservative Party member David Amess, 69, at a church event last October, killing him. Ali said the attack was revenge for Amess’ support of airstrikes in Syria.

During the trial, prosecutors called Ali a “committed, fanatical, radicalized Islamist terrorist.” Ali reportedly told detectives he’d been planning to kill a parliamentarian for years.

The jury took just 18 minutes to reach the conviction.

“It’s clear that the man who begins a life sentence today is a cold, calculated and dangerous individual,” Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes said in a statement outside court following the sentencing.

Amess’ family gave a brief statement after the sentencing.

“Our amazing husband and father has been taken from us in an appalling and violent manner. Nothing will ever compensate for that,” they said. “We will struggle through each day for the rest of our lives. Our last thought before sleep will be of David. We will forever shed tears for the man we have lost. We shall never get over this tragedy.”

Some information in this report comes from Reuters.
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Moldova’s population is strongly divided over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The tiny former Soviet republic, which has a majority Russian-speaking population in some regions, is highly receptive to Russian influence, from Kremlin television propaganda to church altars. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.
Camera: Ricardo Marquina Produced by: Marcus Harton
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Volunteers are working alongside humanitarian organizations to help refugees inside and outside of Ukraine. VOA’s Celia Mendoza has more from Przemysl, Poland.
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Swiss prosecutors will not file any charges after concluding a decade-long investigation into alleged money laundering and organized crime linked to late former President Hosni Mubarak’s circles in Egypt, and will release some 400 million Swiss francs ($430 million) frozen in Swiss banks.

The office of the Swiss attorney general said Wednesday that information received as part of cooperation with Egyptian authorities wasn’t sufficient to back up the claims that emerged in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 that felled Mubarak’s three-decade rule.

A Swiss investigation into claims that banks in Switzerland were used to squirrel away ill-gotten funds had originally targeted 14 people, including Mubarak’s two sons, as well as dozens of other individuals and entities that had assets totaling some 600 million francs frozen.

More than 210 million francs were already released in an earlier phase of the case, which also could not substantiate the allegations, and Wednesday’s announcement means about 400 million more will be “released and returned to their beneficial owners,” the attorney-general’s office said.

The final part of the Swiss investigation centered on five people, it said, without identifying them.

Mubarak’s sons, Alaa and Gamal, hailed the decision as a full exoneration.

According to a statement sent to The Associated Press by the family’s representatives at Portland, a London-based communications firm, Gamal Mubarak said the decision “validates the position we have held all along” following more than a decade of “intrusive investigations, sanctions and mutual legal assistance proceedings.”

“The decision marks an important step in our efforts to assert our rights and prove our innocence from the flagrantly false allegations leveled against us over the past 11 years,” he said.

Swiss prosecutors say they didn’t receive a response to a request for information from “commissions” created in Egypt to analyze financial transfers connected to people under investigation in Egypt — notably the Mubarak family, the office said. Mubarak died in 2020, aged 91.

“As a result, in the absence of evidence relating to potential offenses committed in particular in Egypt, it is not possible to show that the funds located in Switzerland could be of illegal origin,” it said. “The suspicion of money laundering cannot therefore be substantiated based on the information available.”

Swiss banks, reputed for their discretion, have been a favored repository over the years for many wealthy foreigners — including Western industrial tycoons, Russian oligarchs, and autocrats and other leaders and their families and cronies in places as diverse as Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Swiss authorities have touted a recent crackdown against money laundering through Swiss banks, but advocacy groups and watchdogs say the effort has not succeeded in completely ending such activities.
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BEIJING — China’s overall trade with Russia rose over 12% in March from a year earlier, slowing from February but still outpacing the growth in China’s total imports and exports, as Beijing slammed Western sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. 

Shipments to and from Russia increased 12.76% in March to $11.67 billion, Chinese customs data showed on Wednesday, slowing from 25.7% growth in February, when Russia launched its invasion.

Still, the growth in March was faster than the 7.75% increase in China’s trade with all countries and regions to $504.79 billion that month.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in a move that Moscow described as a “special military operation” designed to demilitarize and “denazify” its southern neighbor.

Beijing has refused to call Russia’s action an invasion and has repeatedly criticized what it says are illegal Western sanctions to punish Moscow.

Several weeks before the attack on Ukraine, China and Russia declared a “no-limits” strategic partnership. Last year, total trade between China and Russia jumped 35.8% to a record $146.9 billion. 

As sanctions against Russia mount, China could offset some of its neighbor’s pain by buying more. But analysts say they have yet to see any major indication China is violating Western sanctions on Russia.

China’s economic and trade cooperation with other countries including Russia and Ukraine remains normal, customs spokesman Li Kuiwen said at a news conference. 

In the first quarter, China’s trade with Russia jumped 30.45% from a year earlier, within the range of gains seen in previous quarterly increases. 

Russia is a major source of oil, gas, coal and agricultural commodities for China. 

Russia’s economy is on course to contract by more than 10% in 2022, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Tuesday, hit by soaring inflation and capital flight.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday revised down its forecast for global trade growth this year because of the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war.

($1 = 6.3646 Chinese yuan) 
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Space is being increasingly militarized, says the ‘Challenges in Security in Space Report – 2022’
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