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The United States and Kosovo are continuing to engage in an unusual public spat, after the staunch U.S. ally’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, resisted calls to take steps that the West says are necessary to de-escalate ethnic tensions in the country’s north.

Tensions flared last week as ethnic Albanian mayors entered municipal buildings with the backing of police, despite having won with only 3.5 percent of the vote in local elections that ethnic Serbs boycotted.

U.S. Special Envoy for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar and EU Special Envoy Miroslav Lajcak visited Kosovo and Serbia this week, where they asked the leaders of the two countries to de-escalate, hold quick new elections in northern Kosovo and resume their dialogue.

It’s unclear if they will be able to persuade the two sides. Escobar has called Kurti inflexible and uncooperative, and Kurti complained that Washington and Brussels are biased in favor of Serbia.

What’s at stake is a deal between Kosovo and Serbia aimed at normalizing relations, but so far no concrete steps have been taken.

On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill was blunt in an interview with VOA’s Serbian Service, saying Washington has a problem with Kurti. “He’s not willing to comply, and I think we have some very fundamental issues with him on whether we can count on him as a partner,” he said.

Kurti fired back, complaining in an interview with The Associated Press of bias against his country from the United States and the European Union and tolerance of what he calls Serbia’s authoritarian regime. “Behaving well with an autocrat doesn’t make him behave better. On the contrary,” he told AP.

Hill confirmed a view that many who have followed the Western Balkans and U.S. engagement with Kosovo share these days. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a deep division, really … what we have going right now between Pristina and Washington,” he said.

US approach debated

While analysts agree that the situation is dangerous, they have different opinions on the United States’ open criticism of Kurti.

Luke Coffey, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, said the biggest concern for him has been the way the Biden administration has handled the situation, calling Escobar’s approach “almost reckless.”

“I understand this desire to put pressure on both sides by the U.S. government, but it seems like right now the pressure is disproportionately on Kosovo. … And I think this is unhealthy,” he told VOA Albanian in an interview.

But Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the criticism is justified. “He [Kurti] has taken actions of late that I deem to be needlessly provocative, including … using armed guards to seat ethnic Albanian mayors that were elected with less than 4 percent of the vote. These are not helpful maneuvers,” he told VOA Albanian.

Kupchan said the United States and the EU still need to maintain an even-handed approach, considering that “Serbia has been a difficult player on these issues from the very beginning, that Serbia likely advised Serbs in the north not to participate in the recent elections.”

“So, whereas I do think that the criticism of Kurti is justified, the pressure needs to stay on both Pristina and Belgrade if we’re going to see progress toward normalization and implementation of the agreements, including some form of Serb self-management in Kosovo,” he said.

The U.S. and the EU have asked Serbia to withdraw troops that it sent to the border with Kosovo and to urge protesters to be calm.

But observers notice that there has not been a calling out of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, like there has been with Kurti.

Coffey said the West is trying to appease Serbia, and Vucic is trying to have it both ways.

“He wants to pretend like he is going to get closer to the West and be a productive member of the Euro-Atlantic community, but all the while he is very cozy with Moscow, very cozy with the Kremlin. And Serbia, under his leadership, remains Russia’s main foothold in the Balkans,” he said, adding that this undermines U.S. interests in the region.

When visiting Pristina, special envoy Escobar made sure to distinguish in his remarks between sharp disagreements with the Kosovo government and the overall relationship with the country as a whole. Kupchan said the unique relationship between Kosovo and the United States has not changed.

“By making public statements of this sort, I think the United States is, as I said, trying to create a situation in which there is political public pressure on Kurti to take a different line, and in which I think the United States is also sending a message to Serbs, to Serbia, to the Serbian government, that it is an even-handed player,” he said.

Many disputes

The tensions over local elections are just the latest in a long list of disagreements between Kosovo and Serbia over what each country needs to do to make progress toward normalizing ties, a process spearheaded by the EU with strong support from the U.S.

Kupchan said Western leaders’ frustration stems from the fact that they thought normalization was within reach, and the parties don’t seem to be taking advantage of the opportunity.

“This is, in my mind, the best opportunity that we’ve seen really in a very long time, perhaps even since the initial independence of Kosovo in 2008,” he said.

The issue of self-management of Serbs in northern Kosovo is essentially the Achilles’ heel in this process.

Visiting the region, Escobar repeated that Kosovo needs to establish an Association of Serb Municipalities if it wants to move closer to Euro-Atlantic institutions. Kosovo officials have resisted, talking about more autonomy for Serbs but stopping short of committing to a concrete plan.

“That seems to be the key sticking point here. It is also, in my mind, the key that would lead to a breakthrough in which the Serb majority that lives north of the river would feel that they have a voice in the institutions, the governance of Kosovo, and that they may then be more comfortable integrating into the country,” Kupchan said.

He added that the question is not whether Kosovo has a right to be frustrated, considering that “Belgrade has been sustaining parallel structures and has been manipulating the population inside Kosovo.”

In his view, the main question facing Kosovo is, “What is the best course for the government to take to get to a satisfactory, stable, durable peace in which Serbia forms a normal relationship with Kosovo, and ultimately all the countries of the world, including Serbia, recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state?”

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence that it declared in 2008, and that came almost a decade after U.S.-led NATO forces intervened to stop ethnic cleansing by the Serbian regime at the time.

Keida Kostreci reported from Washington. Jovana Djurovic reported from Belgrade. Ivana Konstantinovic contributed. Some information came from The Associated Press.
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U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Friday she is “gravely concerned by the growing military cooperation” between Russia and Iran because it enables “Russia’s prosecution of its brutal war against Ukraine.”

Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement, the recent release of information by the United States documenting how Iran has provided Russia with hundreds of one-way, attack unmanned aerial vehicles and UAV production equipment, has enabled Russia to use the UAVs “in recent weeks to strike Kyiv, destroy Ukranian infrastructure, and kill and terrorize Ukrainians civilians.”

She said Russia and Iran’s actions violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, “which prohibits all countries – including permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – from transferring these types of weapons from Iran.”

Many countries, including Ukraine and the United States, have reported these violations to the Security Council and have also provided supporting material and analysis, according to Thomas-Greenfield.

“There is an urgent need for the secretary-general to respond to calls from the international community to investigate these violations,” she said. “Doing so could save lives.”
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From up close, the catastrophic destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine appears worse than how it’s depicted in news reports and far off satellite imagery, according to U.N. officials who assessed conditions in the area on Friday.

“We have been visiting this morning with the authorities the communities, the small villages along the river that have been completely submerged by the flooding,” said Denise Brown, one of several U.N. officials who addressed journalists via satellite from the town of Bilozerka, on the west bank of Dnipro River.

“The status situation is dramatic,” said Brown, humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine for the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, OCHA.

“This is a town that is five kilometers from the front line,” Brown said. “Daily shelling, including yesterday, and now because of the destruction of the bridge, which is a result of the war, and now this flooding, which came in the middle of the night. It came very fast, very quickly and people were totally taken by surprise.

“We visited a few homes this morning with people who are, as you can imagine, totally distraught by this latest catastrophe to hit them,” she said. “But I must say, as always, they are incredibly resilient and vowing to stay in their homes.”

Ukrainian authorities report at least 80 towns and villages in the Kherson region are fully or partially flooded, as well as thousands of hectares of agricultural land, with some 17,000 people in government-controlled areas affected by the flooding.

Shabia Mantoo, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, said, “Many thousands more in the areas under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation, to [which] humanitarian organizations currently have no access, have also been affected.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that it has repeatedly asked the Russian Federation for access to the territories it occupies.

“The Russian Federation has denied us this access,” said Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the OHCHR. “Not only OHCHR monitors, but humanitarian actors cannot get into the occupied territories.”

He added, “We reiterate the broader U.N. call to the Russian Federation to grant access to the occupied territories, to assist clinicians who have suffered from the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the destruction of the Khakhova dam.”

Humanitarian agencies report that Ukrainian authorities, the International Red Cross, as well as U.N., and non-governmental organizations reacted quickly after the dam broke on June 6 by bringing in relief supplies and aiding victims caught in the disaster.

Mantoo said the UNHCR was participating in an inter-agency convoy of five trucks that will be delivering essential relief supplies Friday and Saturday to the worst affected areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

“With interagency partner agencies, we are also currently carrying out damage assessments to understand the scale of the impact of the flooding,” she said.

After humanitarian agencies get on top of the short-term risks, they will have to concentrate on dealing with the more complex long-term risks threatening the local communities.

OCHA coordinator Brown cited the dangers posed by unexploded landmines in the heavily infested Kherson region as a major long-term problem. She said a U.N. mine expert was working with the U.N. system to produce a map of areas where mines were likely to be located and to communicate the threats posed by those weapons to the population, especially to children, who are most at risk of being killed and maimed.

“Mines may have moved and so when the flood waters recede, there may be mines where there were not mines before, which means there are not any markings. And this is a significant risk,” she said.

Laurence agreed noting that “the whole flood zone is a mine-contaminated area.”

However, he added that circumstances regarding the destruction of the dam remained unclear. Therefore, he said that it was “premature to examine the question whether a war crime may have been committed” by Russia in its attacks on the dam and its ongoing shelling of people trying to recover from the disaster.

“We reiterate our call for an independent, impartial, thorough, and transparent investigation,” he said.
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French President Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, traveled to the French Alps Friday to be with families of the victims stabbed Thursday in a lakeside park in the city of Annecy. 

The couple’s first stop was a hospital in the French city of Grenoble, where three of the four young children are receiving treatment.  

Government officials said all four children have undergone surgery and are “under constant medical surveillance,” with one child in critical condition. 

The fourth child is being treated in Geneva, in Switzerland.  

It is not immediately clear whether the president and his wife will go to Geneva. 

A man stabbed the children and two adults at the park Thursday morning in an attack Macron said shocked the country. 

All four children suffered life-threatening knife wounds, lead prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said. The youngest is 22 months old, two are 2 years old and the oldest is 3, the prosecutor said.

Police quickly detained the suspect — a 31-year-old Syrian national. French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the suspect has refugee status in Sweden.

“The nation is in shock,” Macron tweeted. He described the assault as an “attack of absolute cowardice.”

Video appearing to show the attack circulated on social media. In the video, a man in dark glasses with a blue scarf covering his head wielded a knife as people screamed for help.  

One woman tried to fend off the attacker in the enclosed play park, but she could not stop him from leaning over her stroller and stabbing downward multiple times.  

Two of the young victims were French.  The other two were tourists, one British, the other Dutch. 

Two adults also suffered knife wounds. One of the adults was also injured by a shot fired by police as they were arresting the suspect, Bonnet-Mathis said.  

In Paris, lawmakers paused a debate to hold a moment of silence for the victims.  

The National Assembly president, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said, “There are some very young children who are in critical condition, and I invite you to respect a minute of silence for them, for their families, and so that, we hope, the consequences of this very grave attack do not lead to the nation grieving.”

“Nothing more abominable than to attack children,” Braun-Pivet said on Twitter. 

Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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In early May, The New York Times Magazine published an in-depth story about Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic with details about his alleged connections with a criminal group that is being prosecuted for a range of crimes including drug trafficking and murder.

The story drew broad attention internationally, not just in the Balkans where local investigative outlets have reported many of the same allegations, which Vucic denies.

The State Department declined to comment on the merit of the allegations in the story, however at least one high-ranking State Department official shared the story on social media. And the allegations were raised last month during a congressional hearing about the Western Balkans.

Outside analysts though have been vocal.

“It’s a shocking and horrific story that the highest levels of government are so intertwined with criminal enterprises. I think we have seen this in enough other nations that it is a growing concern, the conflation between authoritarian governments and criminal networks,” Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International USA, told VOA’s Serbian Service.

“It’s terrible. It’s too bad,” said Susan Rose-Ackerman, professor of law and political science at Yale University, who co-authored the book “Corruption and Government.” She told VOA that connections between people in political power and organized crime create an extreme version of political corruption.

The Times story reported that the connections between police and the criminal group, led by a soccer hooligan Veljko Belivuk, nicknamed Trouble, were well documented. The story also claimed “there is little doubt that Belivuk and his gang are in prison because Europol cracked the code” of the phone-messaging app through which they communicated.

Author Robert Worth reported that Belivuk testified in court that “his gang had been organized ‘for the need and by the order of Aleksandar Vucic.'” He added that the group, among others, used to intimidate political rivals and prevent fans at soccer games from chanting against Vucic.

Worth also wrote that he is skeptical that Vucic was unaware of all the groups did since Vucic “now exercises near-total control over almost every aspect of public life” in Serbia.

International context

Vucic has been in politics since the 1990s. He served as information minister to Slobodan Milosevic, where he led a crackdown on the press, and he publicly voiced support for Serbian war criminals.

His Serbian Progressive Party has now been in power for more than 10 years, during which he was also a prime minister.

Vucic’s spokespeople declined Worth’s requests for comments, but in an interview for pro-government Happy TV in Serbia, Vucic said that the “preposterous New York Times story was ordered” and that he understands it as a message during the dialogue about normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Serbia has never recognized.

“I know how they do it,” said Vucic for Happy TV. “You know, CIA sets you up, CIA watches you, if you don’t behave well and don’t listen, this is only the beginning.”

It has become common practice in past years that Serbian authorities denote any criticism as treason, conspiracy against the country or a plot to overthrow the government.

Both Worth and The New York Times denied such allegations.

VOA interviewees noted that the most significant aspect of the story was the fact that it was published in English, in a reputable outlet with a great number of readers.

“It is an exposé of Aleksandar Vucic and his government. And it put it in an international context, given that it’s The New York Times,” Tanya Domi, professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, told VOA. “Everybody is reading this.”

Is Serbia a reliable partner for the United States?

“Is this reporting credible?” Senator Bob Menendez asked the State Department’s counselor Derek Chollet during a May hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy toward the Western Balkans, referencing the Times story.

“We believe it is. I can’t speak to the specifics of the article, but there is absolutely a lot of corruption,” replied Chollet, with Gabriel Escobar, State Department deputy assistant secretary, sitting next to him.

“So what are the real prospects for a reliable partner in Serbia with that background?” Menendez asked.

“We’re doing this with eyes open, but we are holding Vucic to account and his colleagues to account for their corruption, for their behavior and activity,” said Chollet, noting that corruption is a major issue in the whole region.

But in an interview for VOA’s Bosnian Service, Kurt Bassuener, senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council, pointed out that the U.S. has not sanctioned any Vucic administration official for corruption as it has done in some neighboring countries.

“They essentially dodged it,” Bassuener said of State Department officials. “They didn’t deal with any of the substance. And I think that’s emblematic of the overarching policy, which is pacification toward the region.”

Domi believes the United States and the West are pursuing the idea that Serbia is “a stabilizing force in the region.” But if the goal of such foreign policy toward the Western Balkans is to draw Serbia closer to the West and further from Russia, Domi says there is no proof such a strategy works.

Serbia is one of the rare European countries that has not introduced sanctions against Russia, and there is a strong pro-Russian sentiment in the country.

Transparency International’s Kalman said Washington’s strategy with Serbia could shift in the future.

“I think there is a possibility that the U.S., given sort of Serbia’s role and where it sits in the world, that they might put some pressure on to try and improve things in Serbia,” he said.

“How far they push and whether or not they are concerned that the Serbian government will start an alliance with countries and interests that the U.S. counter to their national security, and so then they back up. I don’t know the answer to that question,” Kalman said.
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President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday announced an economic partnership focusing on energy transition and key technologies, and also vowed continued support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Thursday the Atlantic Declaration, a narrow economic partnership focusing on energy transition and emerging technologies considered critical to national security.

The deal will help the U.S. and U.K. “remain at the cutting edge of a rapidly changing world,” Biden said.

However, the two sidestepped questions about progress toward a broader U.S.-U.K. free-trade agreement that the British Conservative Party promised in 2019 to negotiate within three years of governing.

Thursday’s announcement, covering technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence, followed talks at the White House addressing economic ties and support for Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion.

Pillars of the Atlantic Declaration include ensuring U.S.-U.K. leadership in critical and emerging technologies, economic security, digital transformation and clean energy transition.

According to the White House, the agreement will deepen trade and investment ties, diversify supply chains and reduce strategic dependencies on adversarial powers.

China and Russia are “willing to manipulate and exploit our openness, steal our intellectual property, use technology for authoritarian ends or withdraw crucial resources like energy,” Sunak said during a joint press conference following his talks with Biden.

Free-trade pact

A comprehensive free-trade agreement was once promised in the U.K. as a post-Brexit goal. However, with little appetite for new free-trade agreements in the U.S. Congress, there’s “real pragmatism” from the British side, said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and the Americas program at Chatham House, a London think tank.

She told VOA that Britain is going for selected wins that don’t have to go through Capitol Hill to get traction and can move forward on leading-edge technology issues, especially AI.

AI, which Biden said presents a staggering potential for technological changes, is a key area of concern as both capitals work toward formulating regulations that address key risks without constricting innovation.

“They’re looking at each other’s models to see how they can do that better,” said Joshua Meltzer, a senior fellow on global economy and development at the Brookings Institution.

Biden and Sunak are aware that rival China, also a top AI player, has an advantage in that it can ignore privacy issues such as using AI for surveillance and facial recognition, and it “really wants to put its foot on the innovation accelerator,” Meltzer told VOA.

Regulations that balance values and innovation will ensure that the U.S. and the UK. remain leaders in AI, he said, and determine “where China is going to end up as well.”

As part of the deal, the two countries will begin talks on U.K.-produced critical minerals used in electric vehicles and batteries that would be eligible for U.S. tax credits. Similar negotiations are ongoing with the European Union, modeled after a deal signed with Japan allowing certain critical raw materials for electric vehicles to be treated as if they were sourced in the U.S.

Ukraine and NATO 

Biden underscored transatlantic unity, saying: “There’s no issue of global importance, none, that our nations are not leading together.”

He downplayed growing Republican skepticism about increasing defense spending for Kyiv.

“I believe we’ll have the funding to support Ukraine as long as it takes,” the president said.

He declined to say whether Kyiv has initiated its long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces in southeast Ukraine, as some media outlets have reported.

Thursday’s meeting brought together the leaders of the top two military donors to Ukraine, sending a signal ahead of a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month that the allies are committed and unified behind Kyiv.

U.S -U.K. alignment on Ukraine has become even more synergized under the new prime minister, said Andrew Hyde, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center.

“The U.K. feels under Sunak it could go further, in terms of supplying weapons and support for Ukraine in ways that the U.S. as the leader of the alliance really can’t,” he told VOA, noting Britain’s push to supply Kyiv with tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets.

“They’ve cleared the ground a little bit for Western assistance, giving the U.S. a degree of distance, plausible deniability,” he said, “eventually opening up the field for more allies to supply at that level of quality of weapons.”

Stoltenberg successor

Biden declined to respond to a question on whether he would support Ben Wallace, the British defense minister, whom Sunak is pushing to be the next NATO secretary-general.

“That remains to be seen,” he said. “We’re going to have to get a consensus within NATO.”

Biden is meeting with outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.

Biden and Sunak’s meeting happened on the heels of an attack on the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. Neither Washington nor London has officially accused Russia of blowing up the hydroelectric dam. But Sunak said, “If it does prove to be intentional, it will represent a new low … an appalling barbarism on Russia’s part.”

Before meeting with Biden, Sunak held talks with congressional leaders and took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. He appeared Wednesday evening at the Washington Nationals baseball game, where the team was honoring U.S.-U.K. Friendship Day.

It’s the British prime minister’s first visit to the United States since taking office in October, but he and Biden have already met three times this year. During the two-day trip, Sunak stayed at Blair House, the president’s official guesthouse, near the White House.

Anita Powell and Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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The Kremlin on Thursday said a blast that damaged a pipeline once used to export Russian ammonia via Ukraine could have a “negative impact” on the fate of a Black Sea grain deal.

The Togliatti-Odesa pipeline, which once pumped up to 2.5 million tons of ammonia annually for global export to Ukraine’s Pivdennyi port on the Black Sea from Togliatti in western Russia, has been idle since the start of the war in February last year. 

Russia has accused Ukrainian forces of blowing up a part of the pipeline, the world’s longest to carry ammonia, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Monday. The regional Ukrainian governor said Russia had shelled the pipeline on Tuesday. Neither side provided evidence to back its allegations. 

Asked by reporters about how the damage to the pipeline could affect the fate of the Black Sea grain deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It can only have a negative impact.”  

He described it as “yet another complication in terms of extending the deal,” adding that Russia did not know “what kind of destruction” there had been to the ammonia pipeline.  

Russia has threatened to walk away from the Black Sea grain deal on July 17 if demands to improve its own food and fertilizer exports are not met. The deal, struck in July last year, facilitates the “safe navigation” of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers — including ammonia — for export to global markets. 

U.N. officials are continuing discussions with all the parties to the deal, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday.  

“We’re continuing our efforts through as many avenues as we can, given the importance of all of this to the fight against global hunger and ensuring that the prices of food do not spike on the global market,” Dujarric told reporters.  

The United Nations and Turkey brokered the Ukraine grain Black Sea export deal to help alleviate a global food crisis worsened by conflict disrupting exports from two of the world’s leading grain suppliers. 

To help persuade Russia to allow Ukraine to resume its Black Sea grain exports last year, a separate three-year agreement was also struck in July in which the United Nations agreed to help Russia with its food and fertilizer exports. 

Dujarric said top U.N. trade official Rebeca Grynspan was due to meet with Russian officials in Geneva on Friday “as part of our routine contacts on our efforts to facilitate the trade in Russian fertilizer and Russian grain.”

Russian Industry and Trade minister Denis Manturov said earlier Thursday that Moscow had no access to the damaged part of the pipeline and did not expect to be granted it, the Interfax news agency reported. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that it would take one to three months to repair the damaged section of the pipeline.
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The timing of new U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which had been expected to start Monday, is now uncertain despite the U.S. administration’s conviction that direct dialogue between the two nations is key to any stable peace agreement.

“At the request of the Azerbaijani side, the next round of discussions planned to take place next week in Washington D.C. is postponed,” Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan said in a statement Thursday on social media. “The public will be duly informed on the new timeframes of the meeting.” 

Badalyan had previously stated that foreign ministerial talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan scheduled for June 12 would be aimed at stabilizing relations between the neighboring rivals and reaching a peace treaty.

The countries have had a decades-long conflict involving the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inside Azerbaijan but populated predominantly by ethnic Armenians.

When asked Thursday whether the talks have been postponed, a State Department spokesman told VOA, “Regarding the date of the next round of talks, we don’t have any specific dates to announce at this time.”

Experts predict difficult talks whenever they begin, saying there are many obstacles to a durable peace deal between the two countries.

“Even though the [Nagorno-Karabakh] region is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan, the Armenia government will likely not sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan unless the Azerbaijan government provides assurances about the security and safety of the Karabakh Armenians,” said Heather Ashby, acting director for U.S. Institute of Peace’s Center for Russia and Europe program.

“Azerbaijan’s plan for incorporating Karabakh Armenians into Azerbaijan will play an important role in the peace talks,” Ashby told VOA on Thursday.

Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 6 tweeted that Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and the State Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Dereck Hogan, had “discussed key issues of normalization process” of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations ahead of the talks.

They discussed “border delimitation and security” as well as the “rights and security” of people living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the ministry tweeted.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov had acknowledged the coming meetings and the need to prepare an agreement to normalize relations with Armenia, while expressing uncertainty about the duration of the peace process, according to VOA’s Azerbaijani service.

At the State Department, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during a briefing this week that the United States looks “forward to hosting another round of talks in Washington as the parties continue to pursue a peaceful future in the South Caucasus region.” 

“We continue to believe that direct dialogue is key towards reaching a durable and dignified peace,” said Patel, while declining to confirm the date that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would host the peace talks. 

If the meetings take place next week, they will follow peace talks hosted by the State Department in early May, when Blinken said “tangible progress” had been made toward an agreement. 

The top U.S. diplomat said he believed a peace deal was “within sight, within reach” at that time.  

Meanwhile, tensions remain high between the two former Soviet republics over Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which is the only land route giving Armenia direct access to Nagorno-Karabakh.

“As a starting point for improving security, we call on Azerbaijan to take steps to ensure constant gas and electricity supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as to ensure the free flow and movement of goods and people, including through the Lachin Corridor,” said Ambassador Michael Carpenter, the U.S. envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on June 6. 

He urged all sides to “refrain from provocative, threatening, or hostile actions or rhetoric,” while pledging Washington’s support for “a durable and sustainable peace agreement.”  

The Lachin Corridor allows supplies from Armenia to reach the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the mountainous enclave. The corridor has been policed by Russian peacekeepers since December 2020.

The blockade has left those ethnic Armenian residents in Nagorno-Karabakh without access to essential goods and services, including life-saving medication and health care, according to Amnesty International. 

The rights group said Azerbaijan’s government has failed its human rights obligations by taking no action to lift the blockade. 

Azerbaijan maintains the land route is open for humanitarian deliveries, emergency services and peacekeepers. 

In November 2022, Blinken hosted foreign ministers from Armenia and Azerbaijan for peace negotiations at Blair House in Washington. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held face-to-face meetings hosted by Blinken on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February.

“For any sustainable peace, the populations of Armenia and Azerbaijan also need to see the value of peace,” USIP’s Heather Ashby told VOA.

“For 30 years, they have lived through violence and conflict between the two countries. A peace agreement will have a significant impact on the populations of both countries and it is important not to lose sight on how they may respond and accept a treaty.”  

VOA Armenian and Azerbaijan services contributed to this report.
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Despite Western attempts to stifle Russia’s economy through sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine last year, Russian trade volumes with dozens of countries have actually increased since the war began — with NATO member Turkey providing a “critical” economic lifeline for Moscow, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

The countries that have increased trade since the February 2022 invasion include several European Union and NATO members, according to the analysis.

“Such surges in trade, however, are not necessarily an indicator of support” for the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the report says. “Instead, it is more likely they are predominantly the result of companies — and countries — pursuing legal opportunities for cheaper exports and new gaps in the Russian market.”

China

It notes that China’s trade with Russia had already been increasing at an average annual rate of 23% over the past five years, excluding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It said China’s trade with Russia has jumped by another 27% since the Ukraine invasion.

Other countries have seen a far greater increase in trade with Russia since February 2022.

“We see increases of trade across a range of different countries, with places like India and Greece, for example, importing cheap Russian oil at below market prices. And this is what’s causing the surge of trade there,” said Niels Graham, a co-author of the Atlantic Council report, in an interview this week with VOA.

“But we also see other countries like Turkey, for example, exporting a lot of electronics as well as chemical industrial goods to Russia to take advantage of the holes in the Russian market that have been caused by the sort of G7 statecraft response,” he said.

He said that Beijing is actually showing signs of “restraint” since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“China is certainly engaging with Russia, certainly increasing its trade overall, but doing so very much in line overwhelmingly with the red lines the West has drawn — for fear of Western retaliation against China, cutting it off from a much more important Western market,” Graham told VOA.

Russian Oil

India’s trade with Russia has soared by 250% since 2021, the biggest increase by far among Russia’s trading partners.

China and India imported record volumes of Russian oil in May, according to Reuters, totaling about 110 million barrels for the month. Analysts say the world’s two biggest buyers of Russian oil are capitalizing on discounted prices after the G7 group of rich nations imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel in December.

Washington has warned that Moscow is seeking to circumvent the price cap by using the Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline along with ports in eastern Russia, where there may be less Western oversight of trading activities.

The West never intended to completely block Russia oil sales, said Graham.

“Doing so against an oil producer as large as Russia would have skyrocketed global oil prices, would have likely tipped the global economy into recession, and would have made a lot of countries angry against Western actions,” he said.

Turkish lifeline

The Atlantic Council report says NATO member Turkey also provides a vital lifeline for Russia’s economy, with trade volumes increasing by some 93% since the invasion.

It said Turkey has sold Russia sensitive material like integrated circuits and semiconductors which could be used in weapons systems.

“Although Turkish exports of electronic machinery, including critical integrated circuits, fell in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, they have since recovered and grown well beyond the pre-invasion average. From March 2022 to March 2023, Turkish electronic exports to Russia jumped by about 85%,” the Atlantic Council report said.

“To Ankara’s credit, following pressure from the Group of Seven [G7], Turkey has agreed to halt its transit of sanctioned goods to Russia,” the report added. “However, its trade with Russia remains a vital economic lifeline for its businesses as the country recovers and reconstructs from a devastating earthquake earlier this year.”

Turkey assured the European Union in March that it would no longer ship or transit goods to Russia that are subject to sanctions or export controls, according to an EU official quoted by Reuters.

Ankara has denied exporting goods to Russia that could have military applications.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits the Kherson region where thousands of people are dealing with the effects from flooding following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam. The hydroelectric dam in Russian-held territory was destroyed on June 6, flooding dozens of villages and parts of a nearby city, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for the destruction.
…

A Syrian national wounded four children and an adult in a knife attack in a park in the southeastern French town of Annecy on Thursday, police said, leaving some of the victims critically ill in hospital.

The attacker was a Syrian national with legal refugee status in France, a police official told Reuters. He was not known to security agencies and his motives were unclear, an investigative source said.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter that the attacker had been arrested.

Two children and one adult were in life-threatening condition, while two children were slightly hurt, police said.

“Children and one adult are between life and death. The nation is in shock,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Twitter, calling the attack “an act of absolute cowardice.”

Witnesses said at least one of the children wounded in the attack was in a stroller. The incident took place at around 0745 GMT in the playground of a lakeside park in Annecy, a town in the French Alps.

“He jumped (in the playground), started shouting and then went towards the strollers, repeatedly hitting the little ones with a knife,” a witness who gave his name as Ferdinand told BFM TV.

“Mothers were crying, everybody was running,” said George, another witness and owner of a nearby restaurant.

The TV channel showed footage of several policemen overpowering an individual in a park. 

“Nothing more abominable than to attack children,” National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet said on Twitter. Parliament observed a minute of silence to mark the incident.
…

Latest developments:

U.S. President Joe Biden to host NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg for talks Monday with support for Ukraine at the top of the agenda ahead of next month’s NATO summit.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said Thursday he spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the upcoming visits to Russia and Ukraine by a delegation of African leaders who are seeking to help resolve the conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday he visited the Kherson region where thousands of people are dealing with the effects from flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

Zelenskyy shared a video on Telegram of him meeting with officials and said they discussed evacuations, restoring the region’s ecosystem and the military situation in the area.

That followed his nightly address Wednesday in which he called for a “clear and quick response from the world.”

He said “large-scale efforts are needed” including the help of groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The ICRC said earlier Wednesday it was closely coordinating with the Ukrainian Red Cross to support the humanitarian response to the dam’s destruction.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg “promised NATO mechanisms will be used to provide humanitarian assistance.”  Kuleba and Stoltenberg announced they would lead a meeting Thursday with NATO allies to discuss the situation.

The governor of the Kherson region said Thursday about 600 square kilometers were under water.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said about two-thirds of the flooded land was on the side of the Dnipro River occupied by Russia, while one-third was on the side still under Ukrainian control.

Prokudin said efforts to evacuate people from flooded areas were ongoing.

The hydroelectric dam collapsed Tuesday, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for the destruction.

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

U.S. President Joe Biden will host British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for talks at the White House Thursday that are expected to cover economic ties and supporting Ukraine in its defense against a Russian invasion.

The visit by Sunak is his first to the United States since becoming prime minister in October, but he and Biden have already met three times this year.

“The two leaders will review a range of global issues, including our economic partnership, our shared support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s brutal war of aggression, as well as further action to accelerate the clean energy transition,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “The president and the prime minister will also discuss the joint U.S.-U.K. leadership on critical and emerging technologies as well as our work to strengthen our economic security. They will also review developments in Northern Ireland as part of their shared commitment to preserving the gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.”

Ahead of Thursday’s talks, Sunak said he would push for closer economic relations in the same spirit as the countries’ defense and security cooperation.

“Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries, greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead,” Sunak said.

British officials said Sunak also wanted to discuss ways to protect global supply chains, particularly against individual countries that may corner and manipulate markets for certain sectors.

Another topic on the agenda for Sunak is the regulation of the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

Before meeting with Biden, Sunak held talks with congressional leaders and took part in a wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery. He also appeared at the Washington Nationals baseball game where the team was honoring U.S.-U.K. Friendship Day.

White House correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters
…

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday that talks about resolving the conflict with Russia could not start with a mere cessation of hostilities.

“If anyone thinks they should freeze the conflict and then see how to solve it, they don’t understand it,” he said in an online briefing aimed at African journalists, following a tour of African countries.

More than 100 rounds of consultation and attempts at a cease-fire since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 only led to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said.

A delegation of African heads of state is expected to visit Ukraine and Russia in the next few days, hoping to persuade them to cease hostilities, a spokesperson for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Reuters last month.

He said on Wednesday that no date had been set for the mission.

Such a proposal means that Russian troops would remain on Ukrainian soil even as peace talks start. Ukraine previously said Russian forces should withdraw before such negotiations could start, while Moscow wants Kyiv to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea as a precondition for negotiations.

President Macky Sall of Senegal, last year’s African Union chairman, whose country was not present at the latest U.N. vote condemning Russia in February, leads the initiative. The current African Union chairman, Comoros Islands President Othman Ghazali, was recently added to the delegation.

It also includes Presidents Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia — which both voted for the resolution — and Congo Republic’s Denis Sassou Nguesso and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, which both abstained, as did South Africa.

Kuleba has been on a charm offensive in Africa to win support on a continent where 30 of the 54 African U.N. member states voted in favor of the U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s invasion.

“What we see in our relations with the continent right now is fair to call a Ukrainian-African renaissance,” Kuleba said.

He had no details on what the African peace mission entailed, but he welcomed it.

“We are looking forward to hosting these presidents in Kyiv,” he said.
…

Lionel Messi on Wednesday announced that he intends to join Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami as a free agent after parting ways with French champions Paris Saint-Germain and snubbing a lucrative contract offer in Saudi Arabia.

Messi, who played his final game for PSG over the weekend, was also linked with a return to Barcelona, but the Spanish club have had their hands tied due to LaLiga’s financial fair play rules.

“I made the decision that I’m going to go to Miami,” Messi said in an interview with Mundo Deportivo and Sport newspapers.

“I still haven’t closed it 100%. I’m still missing a few things, but we decided to go ahead. If Barcelona didn’t work out, I wanted to leave Europe, get out of the spotlight and think more about my family.”

Messi, who led Argentina to World Cup glory in Qatar in December and has earned a record seven Ballon d’Or awards, won the Ligue 1 title in his two seasons with PSG, as well as the French Super Cup in 2022.

“After winning the World Cup and not being able to go to Barca, it was time to go to the U.S. league to experience football in a different way and enjoy the day-to-day,” Messi said.

“Obviously with the same responsibility and desire to want to win and to always do things well. But with more peace of mind.”

Ownership stake

The MLS said it was pleased that Messi intends to join Inter Miami this summer.

Messi had wanted to go to a club where he could eventually have an ownership stake, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told Reuters this week. He also wanted to maximize his existing deal with Adidas and MLS’s relationship with Apple.

MLS earns a flat fee of around $250 million per year from Apple until it reaches a certain threshold of subscriptions, after which point it will earn a share of the revenue from those subscriptions.

Messi’s move to MLS is expected to drive viewers to the Apple TV streaming platform, as the world’s most recognizable soccer player.

The forward was also linked with a move to Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad after he received a formal offer.

The Gulf country has been looking to bring the game’s biggest players to its league and was successful in persuading Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo to join Al Nassr soon after the World Cup. French striker Karim Benzema joined Al Ittihad this week.

Inter Miami is co-owned by former England captain David Beckham, who was one of the first major European stars to move to the United States to play in the MLS, winning the MLS Cup twice with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Messi will have his work cut out in Miami, however, with the club rock bottom of the Eastern Conference standings — six points from ninth place, the final spot which would give them a chance of qualifying for the playoffs.

The team sacked coach Phil Neville last week after a dismal run of 10 defeats and five wins this season, a stark contrast to last season when they finished sixth and qualified for the MLS Cup playoffs.
…

The United States and the European Union told Kosovo on Wednesday to back down in a tense standoff with Serbs in the north of the country or face “consequences” from its longtime Western allies. 

The warnings came as U.S. and EU envoys concluded visits to Kosovo and Serbia to calm tensions that flared into violence last week, wounding dozens of NATO peace-keeping soldiers and Serb protesters in northern Kosovo. 

The violence erupted after Kosovo authorities installed ethnic Albanian mayors in municipal offices. The mayors were elected on a turnout of just 3.5% after Serbs, who form a majority in the region, boycotted local polls. 

U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar said that Kosovo must give greater autonomy to the Serb-majority municipalities if it wants to move closer to joining NATO and the EU. 

“The actions taken or not taken could have some consequences that will affect parts of the relationship (between Kosovo and the United States). I don’t want to get there,” Escobar told Kosovo media on Tuesday before going to Belgrade. 

He and the EU’s Miroslav Lajcak did not elaborate on what other consequences Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s ethnic Albanian-dominated government might face if it did not accede to their demands. 

“I don’t think that these things are resolved with pressure and by mentioning consequences and even sanctions,” Kurti told reporters on Wednesday. 

“We have challenges with EU and U.S. envoys, but our bilateral relations with the EU and U.S. are excellent.” 

Lajcak said on Monday that the envoys presented proposals to Kurti to de-escalate the situation in northern Kosovo, adding they had a “long, honest, difficult discussion.” 

Fresh municipal elections  

The United States and the EU have called on Kurti to withdraw the mayors from their offices and to pull out the special police units that helped install them form the northern municipalities. 

They have also called for fresh local elections to be held in the north, with Serb participation, and for Kosovo to implement a 2013 agreement to set up an association of Serb municipalities to give that community more autonomy. 

Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani told Reuters that the country could hold fresh elections in those municipalities if 20% of voters sign a petition asking for them.  

A senior official in Kosovo told Reuters that Western nations — which have been staunch backers of the country’s independence since it formally broke with Serbia in 2008 — had warned Kurti that Kosovo could face multiple punitive measures. 

Last week, Washington canceled the country’s participation in a U.S.-led military exercise, Defender Europe. 

EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said Lajcak would report back to foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who would then consult with EU member countries. 

He said that “only then they will discuss potential next steps or measures depending on whether the parties undertake sincere and immediate steps to de-escalate or not.” 

NATO has around 4,000 troops in Kosovo and ordered in an extra 700 as a response to the flare-up in violence. 
…

Prince Harry finished giving evidence at London’s High Court on Wednesday after nearly eight hours of cross-examination in his phone-hacking case against a British tabloid newspaper group, and described the experience as: “It’s a lot.”

Harry, the first senior British royal to appear in a witness box for more than 130 years, had been questioned for a second day over his allegations that tabloid newspapers had used unlawful means to target him since he was a child.

The prince was more combative in sometimes testy exchanges on Wednesday with Andrew Green, the lawyer for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, which he and 100 others are suing over allegations of unlawful acts between 1991 and 2011.

Harry, the fifth-in-line to the throne, appeared emotional at the end of his evidence when he was asked by his lawyer David Sherborne how it felt to answer questions about his allegations in court when “the world’s media are watching.”

Harry exhaled deeply and replied: “It’s a lot.”

Lawyers representing Harry and other claimants are arguing senior editors and executives at MGN knew about and approved of phone-hacking and instructing private investigators to obtain information by deception.

However, Green said there was no mobile phone data to indicate that Harry had been the victim of phone-hacking and contrasted it with a 2005 police investigation that led to the conviction of the former royal editor at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World paper.

“If the court were to find that you were never hacked by any MGN journalist, would you be relieved or would you be disappointed?” Green asked the prince.

Harry replied: “That would be speculating … I believe phone-hacking was on an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time and that is beyond doubt.

“To have a decision against me and any other people that come behind me with their claims, given that Mirror Group have accepted hacking, … yes, I would feel some injustice,” he said.

In response to Green’s suggestion that Harry wanted to have been a victim, the prince replied: “Nobody wants to be phone hacked.”

The last time a British royal was questioned in court was in 1891, when the future Edward VII, Harry’s great-great-great grandfather, was a witness in a slander trial over a card game.

MGN, now owned by Reach RCH.L, has previously admitted its titles were involved in phone-hacking — the illegal interception of mobile voicemails — settling more than 600 claims, but Green has said there was no evidence Harry had ever been a victim.

He argued that some of the personal information had come from, or was given with the consent of, senior Buckingham Palace aides.

In reference to one article about him not being allowed to return to combat in Afghanistan, Harry said: “It is suspicious that so much is attributed to a royal source.”

In his 50-page written witness statement and in questioning, Harry has said the press had blood on its hands, destroyed his adolescence, ruined relationships with friends and girlfriends, and sowed paranoia and mistrust since 1996 when he was a schoolboy.

He also broke royal protocol to say he believed the British government as well as the media had hit “rock bottom,” while his anger at suggestions that his mother, Princess Diana, was a victim of phone-hacking before her death in 1997 was also clear.

Green, who has described some of the prince’s allegations as “total speculation,” quizzed him in detail over 33 newspaper articles whose details Harry says were obtained unlawfully and many of which related to his relationship with former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.

Harry said intimate details reported about their break-up and arguments about him visiting a strip club had been obtained by phone-hacking, while Green suggested these had been widely reported previously elsewhere.

“This process is as distressing for me as it is for her,” Harry said.

As he wrapped up almost seven-and-a-half hours of questioning, Green asked him whether it was the prince’s case that his phone had been consistently hacked on a daily basis over a 15-year period.

“It could’ve been happening on a daily basis, I simply don’t know,” he said. Asked if there was any evidence he had been hacked, Harry replied: “That’s part of the reason why I’m here.”
…

A controversial research project in Norway on whales’ hearing was suspended after a whale drowned, researchers said on Wednesday, as activists slammed the “cruel and pointless” experiments.

Under the project, run by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) each summer since 2021 minke whales are captured in the Lofoten archipelago and submitted to hearing tests before they are released into the wild again.

They are run in cooperation with the US National Marine Mammal Foundation.

The experiments, aimed at gathering knowledge in order to set limits on how much noise humans should be allowed to make in the ocean, have been criticized by animal rights defenders and scientists who consider the project dangerous.

In the night between June 2 and 3, bad weather damaged the project testing site, causing a barrier line to break free. A whale became entangled in it and died, the FFI said.

The incident occurred before the official start of this year’s experiments.

The project has been put on hold indefinitely while the incident is reviewed and the site repaired.

“Our aim is to protect Minke whales and other baleens, and to protect them from harmful human-made noise,” Petter Kvadsheim, chief researcher at FFI, said.

“We will continue our work on this. The health of the animals is our main priority in this experiment.”

The project had been due to continue until the summer of 2024.

In an interview with AFP, Kvadsheim blamed the incident on bad weather rather than the experiment, and said he hoped the project could resume “in the next few days”.

“It’s never been done before and unexpected things can happen,” he said, adding that it was unfolding “step by step” and “on schedule”.

He said only “a handful” of whales were needed to complete the project.

One whale entered the testing site the first year, in 2021, but it quickly escaped.

In 2022, another minke was captured but it was released immediately because it showed signs of stress.

“We have warned that these cruel and pointless experiments would lead to whales being killed and it is sadly ironic that this poor minke has died even before the experiments have got underway,” said a spokesman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Danny Groves.

“No whales should have to face being bundled into a cage and have electrodes implanted under his or her skin. These experiments should be halted permanently,” he added.

In 2021, 50 international scientists had written to the Norwegian government to protest against the experiments.
…

Pope Francis, 86, will have surgery on his abdomen on Wednesday afternoon at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, the Vatican said in a statement. 

It added that his medical team had decided in recent days that surgery was required and that he was expected to stay in hospital for “several days” to recover. 

He will have the operation on his abdominal wall under a general anesthetic, the Vatican said. 

Francis was due to be taken to hospital following his weekly audience at the Vatican on Wednesday morning, where he made no mention of the planned operation. He had spent 40 minutes having a check-up at Gemelli hospital on Tuesday. 

The pope, who marked the 10th anniversary of his pontificate in March, often uses a wheelchair or a cane to walk because of persistent knee pain. 

In July 2021 he had part of his colon removed in an operation aimed at addressing a painful bowel condition called diverticulitis. He said earlier this year that the condition had returned. 

The pope last year said he didn’t want to have an operation on his knee because the general anesthesia for his colon surgery had brought disagreeable side-effects. 
…

Ukrainian officials are on alert following the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station and say the flooding from the damaged reservoir is threatening Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant, occupied by Russian troops for some time, uses water from the Kakhovka reservoir to cool its reactors. VOA’s Eastern Europe chief Myroslava Gongadze has this story.
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British Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said on Tuesday China had closed reported “police service stations” at sites across the United Kingdom and that an investigation had not revealed any illegal activity by the Chinese state at these sites.

Britain has previously said reports of undeclared police stations in the country were “extremely concerning” and that any intimidation on British soil of foreign nationals by China or other states was unacceptable.

China has denied operating any such stations and issued a statement contesting Tugendhat’s remarks via its embassy in London, saying the accusations of running police posts in the U.K. were a “complete political lie.”

British police have investigated claims made by the nongovernmental human rights organization Safeguard Defenders that such police stations were operating at three British sites, Tugendhat said in a written statement to parliament.

“I can confirm that they have not, to date, identified any evidence of illegal activity on behalf of the Chinese state across these sites,” he said.

“We assess that police and public scrutiny have had a suppressive impact on any administrative functions these sites may have had.”

The Chinese government has previously said there are centers outside China run by local volunteers, not Chinese police officers, that aim to help Chinese citizens renew documents and offer other services.

U.S. federal agents arrested two New York residents in April for allegedly operating a Chinese “secret police station” in the Chinatown district of Manhattan. China had said it firmly opposed what it called “the U.S.’s slanders and smears.”

The British government has said it was aware of about 100 such stations around the world.

“The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office have told the Chinese Embassy that any functions related to such ‘police service stations’ in the U.K. are unacceptable and that they must not operate in any form,” Tugendhat said.

“The Chinese Embassy have subsequently responded that all such stations have closed permanently. Any further allegations will be swiftly investigated in line with U.K. law.”

Asked about Tugendhat’s statement, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London said in a statement translated from Mandarin by Reuters:

“There is simply no existence of so-called ‘overseas police posts.’ The facts have proven that the so-called ‘overseas police posts’ [are] a complete political lie, and politicians who speculate on this topic are purely in political manipulations.

“The Chinese government urges the U.K. government to stop spreading false information, to stop generating hype and slandering China.”
…

The U.N. General Assembly approved five new members for two-year terms on the organization’s powerful 15-nation Security Council on Tuesday, rejecting a bid from Belarus.

Algeria, Guyana, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and South Korea will start their terms on January 1, 2024.

The annual exercise held little excitement this year, as all but one seat was previously agreed on within regional blocs, setting up uncontested races. The only competition was between Belarus and Slovenia for a seat in the Eastern Europe Group. Slovenia defeated Belarus with 153 votes to 38.

“The race between Belarus and Slovenia is something of a litmus test for how U.N. members see East-West divisions now,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group and a long-time U.N. watcher, ahead of the vote.

Slovenia is a member of the European Union and NATO. Belarus is a close ally of Russia and has supported Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine, even agreeing to house Russian tactical nuclear weapons on its territory.

Slovenia, a small country in central Europe that was part of the former Yugoslavia, was a late entry, declaring its candidacy at the end of 2021 and campaigning intensively for about one year. Belarus, by contrast, announced its candidacy in 2007.

Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon told reporters ahead of the vote that, if elected, Slovenia would act as a unifying force on the Security Council.

“And with tensions and divisions that we all face today between the major players in the international community, many countries especially the smaller ones which make up the majority of the U.N. membership, want to connect with trusted partners,” she said.

Even though nearly all the seats were uncontested, candidates still needed to win a two-thirds majority of votes cast to succeed.

South Korea was confirmed for its seat with 180 votes. It will be the first time it sits on the council at the same time as Japan and comes as the two countries are repairing their historically strained relations.

“Tokyo and Seoul probably share the view that the council is not doing its job holding the DPRK to account over its proliferation activity,” Gowan told VOA. “I think we will probably see Japan and South Korea adopt a fairly common approach to urging China and Russia to put more pressure on DPRK to stop launching missiles.”

North Korea has launched dozens of ballistic missiles this year and last week attempted to put a spy satellite in orbit – all in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions. China and Russia have blocked council action.

Guyana (191 votes) will take over the seat for Latin America and the Caribbean Group. Algeria, which received 184 votes, and Sierra Leone (188 votes) will represent the African Group on the council.

Sierra Leone’s foreign minister, David Francis, told reporters after their election that his country has made the successful transition from war to peace and would bring its unique experiences to the council.

“We bring hope to all the war-torn countries in the world – from Ukraine to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Sudan, to Yemen, to Arab-Israeli, that it can be done,” he said.

There were no available seats this year in the regional bloc dedicated to countries in the Western Europe “and others” group.

In exercising their responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, the 15 nations on the Security Council have the power to authorize the use of force, deploy peacekeeping missions and impose sanctions.

On January 1, the five winners will replace exiting members Albania, Brazil, Ghana, Gabon and the United Arab Emirates. They will join non-permanent members Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland, which will remain on the council through 2024, along with permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
…

As thousands walked the beaches of Normandy, France, to honor those who fought to liberate Europe in World War II, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin drew parallels between D-Day and the fight to free Ukraine from its Russian invaders.

Austin called on nations to defend the principles for which the Allied forces fought “with undimmed vigor,” in a world “where sovereignty and territorial integrity are respected.”

“If the troops of the world’s democracies could risk their lives for freedom, then surely the citizens of the world’s democracies can risk our comfort for freedom now,” he said Tuesday.

Speaking directly to some of the veterans who stormed Omaha beach, Utah beach and three other French beaches on June 6, 1944, Austin praised them for their courage that “won out over terror” and tyranny.

“We salute you. You saved the world,” he said.

The 79th anniversary was marked as Ukraine was preparing to launch a counteroffensive to push back Russian ground forces trying to maintain control of parts of Ukraine they have occupied.

Many of the same allied nations that fought against the Nazi forces in Europe during World War II have now provided billions of dollars in weapons and training to Ukrainian soldiers defending their territory and citizens.

“Peace and freedom are never guaranteed. They must be guarded and cherished and sometimes fought for and paid in blood,” said U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who also attended Tuesday’s ceremony.

D-Day refers to the amphibious Allied invasion of occupied France in 1944. Officially called “Operation Overlord,” it was the largest amphibious invasion in military history, which successfully won a foothold from which the Allies eventually took control of Europe from Nazi Germany. 

The operation involved more than 150,000 troops and more than 5,000 ships and landing craft. At least 12 countries joined forces during the Normandy invasion, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
…