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Nearly 800 people have been detained in Russia as protests against the country’s partial military mobilization continue in cities across the country.

As of Sunday, at least 796 people had been detained in 33 cities, with almost half of the total reported in the capital, Moscow, according to OVD-Info.

The human rights group, which monitors political arrests and detentions in Russia, said that some of those detained in the crackdown on dissent following this week’s military call-up were minors.

The demonstrations erupted within hours after President Vladimir Putin on September 21 announced the partial military mobilization, which is intended to buttress Russian military forces fighting in Ukraine.

Russian police have been mobilized in cities where protests were called for by the opposition group Vesna and supporters of opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Images on Russian media have shown scenes of police using force against demonstrators, and eyewitnesses have said that the number of protesters have diminished since the first rallies. Many young men detained during the protests have reportedly been summoned to register for military service.

The call-up came as Russian forces suffered significant losses of occupied territories in Ukraine’s east owing to a counteroffensive launched by the Ukrainian military.

Putin followed up on his mobilization order on September 24 by imposing harsher penalties against Russians who willingly surrendered to Ukrainian forces or refused orders to mobilize.

Russian officials have said that up to 300,000 reserve forces will be called up and that only those with relevant combat and service experience will be drafted to fight.

However, Russian media reports have surfaced that men who have never been in the military or who are past draft age are being called up, and foreign media have reported that the real goal is to mobilize more than 1 million soldiers, which the Kremlin denies.

Western officials say that Russia has suffered 70,000 to 80,000 casualties, accounting for both deaths and injuries, since it launched its unprovoked war in Ukraine in February.

The mobilization to replenish those losses has seen men across Russia sent to register, reports of Russian citizens attempting to flee the country, and even rare complaints by pro-Kremlin voices.

Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the state-backed media outlet RT, wrote on her Telegram channel on September 24 that while it had been announced that only people up to the age of 35 would be recruited, “summonses are going to 40-year-olds.”

“They’re infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite,” Simonyan said of the authorities behind the draft.

The same day, the head of the president’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, called on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to put a halt to the manner with which many draft boards in the country were proceeding.

On September 25, two of Russia’s most senior lawmakers weighed in on the growing controversy.

In a Telegram post, Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the Federation Council, said that she was aware of reports that men who should be ineligible for the draft are being called up.

“Such excesses are absolutely unacceptable. And, I consider it absolutely right that they are triggering a sharp reaction in society,” she wrote.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, wrote in a separate post that “complaints are being received.”

“If a mistake is made, it is necessary to correct it,” he said. “Authorities at every level should understand their responsibilities.”
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Pope Francis traveled to southern Italy on Sunday to close out an Italian church congress that coincided with Italy’s national election, and delivered a message that hit on key domestic campaign issues including immigration.

Neither Francis nor his hosts referred to the vote during the open-air Mass, though Italy’s bishops conference had earlier urged Italians to cast ballots in the eagerly watched election that could bring Italy its first far-right government since World War II.

At the end of the outdoor Mass in Matera, Francis spoke off the cuff asking Italians to have more children. “I’d like to ask Italy: More births, more children,” Francis said.

Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and Francis has frequently lamented its “demographic winter.”

Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, who campaigned on a “God, family and homeland” mantra, has also called for Italy to reverse its demographic trends by proposing bigger financial incentives for couples to have children.

Francis also weighed in on a perennial issue in Italy, recalling that Sunday coincided with the Catholic Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees. Francis called for a future in which “God’s plan” is implemented, with migrants and victims of human trafficking living in peace and dignity, and for a more “inclusive and fraternal future.”

He added: “Immigrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated.”

Meloni and her center-right alliance have vowed to resume a strict crackdown on migrants coming to Italy via Libyan-based smugglers. The center-left Democratic Party has among other things called for an easier path to citizenship for children of newcomers.

The Mass was celebrated by a protege of Francis, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who is head of the Italian bishops’ conference and has a long affiliation with the Sant’Egidio Community, a Rome-based charity known for its outreach to migrants and the poor.

The 85-year-old Francis appeared tired during the visit, which was scheduled before Italy’s snap elections were called and came a day after he made a separate day trip to the Umbrian hilltop town of Assisi. Francis has been using a cane and wheelchair this year, due to strained knee ligaments that make walking and standing difficult.

His trip to Matera, the southern Basilicata city known for its cave dwellings, underwent a slight, last-minute change due to storms that belted much of the Italian peninsula overnight: Originally scheduled to fly by helicopter Sunday morning from the Vatican’s helipad, Francis instead flew to Matera by jet from Rome’s Ciampino airport.
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The Italians voted Sunday in an election that could move the country’s politics sharply toward the right during a critical time for Europe, with war in Ukraine fueling skyrocketing energy bills and testing the West’s resolve to stand united against Russian aggression. 

Polls opened at 7 a.m. (0500GMT) and by noon turnout was equal to or slightly less than at the same time during Italy’s last general election in 2018. The counting of paper ballots was expected to begin shortly after they close at 11 p.m. (2100 GMT), with projections based on partial results coming early Monday morning.

Publication of opinion polls is banned in the two weeks leading up to the election, but polls before that showed far-right leader Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, with its neo-fascist roots, the most popular. That suggested Italians were poised to vote their first far-right government into power since World War II. Close behind was former Premier Enrico Letta and his center-left Democratic Party.

“Today you can help write history,” Meloni tweeted Sunday morning.

Letta, for his part, tweeted a photo of himself at the ballot box. “Have a good vote!” he wrote. 

Meloni is part of a right-wing alliance with anti-migrant League leader Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, the three-time premier who heads the Forza Italia party he created three decades ago. Italy’s complex electoral law rewards campaign coalitions, meaning the Democrats are disadvantaged since they failed to secure a similarly broad alliance with left-leaning populists and centrists.

If Meloni becomes premier, she will be the first woman in Italy to hold the office. But assembling a viable, ruling coalition could take weeks.

Nearly 51 million Italians were eligible to vote. Pollsters, though, predicted turnout could be even lower than the record-setting low of 73% in the last general election in 2018. They say despite Europe’s many crises, many voters feel alienated from politics, since Italy has had three coalition governments since the last election — each led by someone who hadn’t run for office.

Early voters in Rome expressed concerns about Italian politics as a whole.

“I hope we’ll see honest people, and this is very difficult nowadays,” said Adriana Gherdo, at a polling station in the city. 

In Milan, voter Alberto Veltroni said he thought the outcome was still anyone’s guess.

“I expect that these will be difficult elections to read, to understand, with unexpected votes as opposed to the polls ahead of elections,” he said.

The election in the eurozone’s third-largest economy is being closely watched in Europe, given Meloni’s criticism of “Brussels bureaucrats” and her ties to other right-wing leaders — she recently defended Hungary’s Viktor Orban after the European Commission recommended suspending billions of euros in funding to Hungary over concerns about democratic backsliding and the possible mismanagement of EU money.

Elections are being held six months early after Mario Draghi’s pandemic unity government collapsed in late July. Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, saw no alternative but to have voters elect a new Parliament.

Opinion polls found Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief, hugely popular. But the three populist parties in the coalition boycotted a confidence vote tied to an energy relief measure. Their leaders, Salvini, Berlusconi and 5-Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, a former premier whose party is the largest in the outgoing Parliament, saw Meloni’s popularity growing while theirs slipped.

Meloni kept her Brothers of Italy in the opposition, refusing to join Draghi’s unity government or Conte’s two coalitions that governed after the 2018 vote.

She further distanced herself from Salvini and Berlusconi with unflagging support for Ukraine, including sending weapons so Kyiv could defend itself against Russia. Her nationalist party champions sovereignty.

Before Russia’s invasion, Salvini and Berlusconi had gushed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the final days of the election campaign, Salvini criticized Russian atrocities in Ukraine but Berlusconi raised eyebrows by saying Putin merely wanted to put “decent” people in government in Kyiv after pro-Moscow separatists in Donbas complained they were being harmed by Ukraine.

Many factories in Italy face cutbacks — some already have reduced production — and other business might close as they struggle with gas and electricity bills reaching 10 times higher than a year ago. The major candidates, despite their political leanings, agreed on the urgency for a EU-wide price cap on energy prices, or failing that, a national one.

Draghi, who remains in a caretaker role until a new government is sworn in, had for months already pressed EU authorities in Brussels for the same remedy.
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Haitian Italian designer Stella Jean returned to the Milan runway after a two-year hiatus with a tour de force that highlighted the talents of 10 new designers of color whose design history is tied to Italy.

Jean pledged in 2020 not to return to Milan Fashion Week, which opened Wednesday, until she was not the only Black designer. The We Are Made in Italy movement she founded with Black American designer Edward Buchanan and Afro Fashion Week Milano founder Michelle Ngomno ensured she would not be.

Maximilian Davis, a 27-year-old British fashion designer with Afro-Caribbean roots, is making his debut as the creative director for Salvatore Ferragamo. Filipino American designer Rhuigi Villasenor is bringing Bally back to the runway for the first time in 20 years. Tokyo James, founded by British Nigerian designer Iniye Tokyo James, is presenting a women’s-only collection.

Jean is headlining a runway show with Buchanan and five new We Are Made in Italy designers, including a Vietnamese apparel designer, an Italian Indian accessory designer and an African American bag designer. It is the third WAMI group to present their collections in Milan.

“We are making ourselves felt,” Jean told The Associated Press. “We invited all these young people. We created the space. There have been gains.”

Buchanan opened the show with jersey knitwear with a denim feel from his Sansonvino 6 line, followed by capsule collections by the latest group of Fabulous Five WAMI designers, and Jean’s creations combining Italian tailoring with artisanal references she sources around the globe.

Each of the new WAMI designers share a connection with Italy, either through family or by relocating to study or work here.

Italian Indian designer Eileen Claudia Akbaraly showed her Made for a Woman brand that makes ethically sourced raffia garments and accessories from Madagascar. New York-based designer Akila Stewart founded the FATRA bag brand that works with reused plastic waste. India-born Neha Poorswani designs shoes under the name “Runway Reinvented.” Vietnamese designer Phang Dang Hoang’s apparel line mixes Asian and Western cultures, and Korean designer Kim Gaeun’s Villain brand combines elements of traditional Korean costumes mixed with modern hip-hop culture.

“There are so many Italians who are not Italians, who are immigrants who feel Italian. I think that is so beautiful,” Stewart said.

The show closed on a celebratory note, with the models, designers and activists gathered on the runway, clapping and swaying to Cynthia Erivo’s song Stand Up.

Both Trussardi and Vogue Italia have used WAMI’s database of fashion professionals of color who are based in Italy, although the listings have not been employed as industrywide as the founders hoped. One of the designers from the first WAMI class, Gisele Claudia Ntsama, has worked in the design office at Valentino.

Giorgio Armani, who helped launch Stella Jean in 2013, pitched in with textiles for the new WAMI capsule collections to be displayed here. Conde Nast and European fashion magazine nss are helping to fund their production. The three WAMI founders are covering the rest from their own pockets after the fashion council offered a venue for the show but limited funding compared with previous seasons.

Ngonmo said Italian fashion houses too often confuse diversity — such as showcasing Black models — with true inclusivity, which would involve employing professionals in the creative process.

“I have a feeling they don’t understand at all what diversity means. They tend to confuse diversity with inclusion,” she said.

Buchanan said he holds on to his optimism but acknowledged that the post-pandemic market is difficult as stores are not investing in collections by new designers.

“We knew going into this that this was going to be a slow grow,” Buchanan said. “Working with the designers, we have to be transparent about what is ahead of them. … They are not going to be Gianni Versace tomorrow.”

Jean noted that the new designers for major fashion brands did not come up through the Italian system but from abroad. Despite the progress, she and her collaborators still see some resistance to hiring people of color in creative roles and to the idea that “Made in Italy” can involve homegrown Black talent.

“It is more glamorous to have someone from the outside,” she said.

Jean said she is also waiting for the Italian fashion council to follow through on an invitation to create a multicultural board within its structure. She said she feels the initial industry embrace of the diversity project has cooled.

“None of us believed the totality of the promises. Now we are entering a territory that we know well, when people feel free and comfortable not to maintain promises. It is obvious,” Jean said.

As for her future: “I am at a crossroads,” the designer said. “My traveling companions are outside the door that I was allowed to enter. For a while, being the only one in the room, you feel special. But when you see that many of those who are still outside the door are better than you, you understand that you were not special. You were very lucky.”
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Russia’s foreign minister has dismissed Ukrainian and Western condemnation of what they say are sham referenda in four regions of Ukraine.

“The hysteria which we have seen is very telling,” Sergey Lavrov told a news conference at the United Nations on Saturday, after he addressed the General Assembly’s annual meeting.

Voting began Friday and will run through Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partially Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

In Ukraine, some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

Kyiv and Western nations warn that the referenda are aimed at annexing the occupied areas and denounce them as a violation of international law.

“As was said by President Putin, we will unconditionally respect the results of these democratic processes,” Lavrov said.

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory and has requested that the U.N. Security Council meet Tuesday to discuss the escalation.

The referenda were quickly organized after Ukraine recaptured large swaths of the northeastern part of the country in a counteroffensive earlier this month.

By annexing the four areas into Russia, Western officials fear Moscow could portray Ukrainian military operations to retake them as an attack on Russia itself, potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

Calls for peace

At the United Nations, Russia’s strategic partners urged an end to the conflict, which has exacerbated global food, fuel and financial crises.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing does not want to see the crisis “spilling over” and called for talks.

“The fundamental solution is to address the legitimate security concerns of all parties and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture,” he said.

India’s foreign minister said his country respects the U.N. Charter and sees dialogue and diplomacy as the “only way out.”

“It is therefore in our collective interest to work constructively, both within the United Nations and outside, in finding an early resolution to this conflict,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said.

Asked about engaging with the U.S. or Europeans, Russia’s Lavrov says his government is not opposed to it.

“We aren’t saying no to contacts,” he said, adding that “it is always better to talk than not to talk.” But he emphasized that in the present situation, Russia would not take the first step.

Mass crimes

The head of a U.N. commission of inquiry said Friday that war crimes including rape, torture and the confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” commission head Erik Mose told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame, but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses.

In New York, the Russian foreign minister has said mass graves at Bucha were staged and claimed Saturday that Kyiv had denied access to foreign reporters to alleged new graves found in the city of Izium.

But VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze is in Izium, where she reported from a mass graveyard that more than 400 bodies were unearthed, many found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones and gunshot wounds.

Mobilization fallout

Meanwhile, an independent Russian human rights group says more than 1,000 people were detained across the country at demonstrations Saturday for protesting President Vladimir Putin’s order calling up 300,000 military reservists to fight in Ukraine. It is Russia’s first military call-up since World War II.

The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 different cities, from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.

Footage from the some of the protests showed Russian officers carrying men and leading women to police vans.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed information to this report.  
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What had been a lightning push by Ukraine to drive Moscow’s forces from the eastern Kharkiv region slowed to a brutal slog Saturday, stalled by heavy rain and Russian resistance.

In the frontline town of Kupiansk against a background of constant shelling noise a column of dark smoke rose across the Oskil River, which separates the Ukrainian-held west bank from the east, still disputed by Russian forces.

“For now, the rain is making it difficult to use heavy weapons everywhere. We can only use paved roads,” Ukrainian army sergeant Roman Malyna told AFP, as tanks and APCs maneuvered under the downpour.   

“For now, because it’s hard to move forward due to the weather, we are targeting their armored vehicles, ammunition depots and groups of soldiers,” he said.  

On Friday, Kupiansk’s military administrator Andriy Kanashevych told AFP that it might take Ukrainian forces 10 days to fully secure the area.

Most of the shellfire on Saturday was outgoing — Ukrainian artillery targeting Russian positions in the woods beyond the east of the town — but with a Russian drone spotted overhead tension prevailed.  

A few refugees were walking toward Ukrainian territory across the damaged bridge, its handrails still painted in the red, white and blue colors of Kupiansk’s former Russian occupiers.

Two Ukrainian soldiers, well-equipped with U.S.-style assault rifles and body armor, and in good spirits despite fatigue and concern over the Russian drone buzzing above the debris-strewn road, also crossed back.

One of them, using the nom de guerre “Mario,” said it was too soon to say when the east bank would come completely under Ukrainian control but was confident the Russians were in retreat.  

“Only their bodies will be left behind,” he said.

“In general, it’s all good, taking into account the scale of the operation, we’ve had almost no losses,” he told AFP.  

Most of Kupiansk, a key rail hub once used by Russia to supply its forces further south on the Donetsk battlefront, fell to Ukraine in this month’s counterattack against the invader.

But a narrow strip of the Kharkiv region on the east side of the Oskil River remains in Russian hands and prevents Ukraine from pushing on into the Lugansk region, which Moscow holds and is seeking to annex.

“Yes, we have enough weapons and men, but it depends on what happens on the other side,” Sergeant Malyna said, referring to the Russian forces.  

“They are trying to find the weak points in our defensive line. So, they try to attack us from time to time using tanks and marines.

“Our morale is good. We are ready to fight, but we need more heavy weapons and more precision weapons,” he said, repeating a common Ukrainian appeal for more advanced arms from Kyiv’s Western allies.

While the fighting continues, many civilians have fled a town that is without electricity and running water, and where shells whistle overhead.   

Some, however, have nowhere to go and are reliant on food aid deliveries.

Civilians still cluster around portable generators in the doorways of five-story concrete apartment blocks as the rain courses down, charging tablets, flashlights and razors.

Most say they are glad that Ukrainian forces returned to free the town from Russian occupation, but the ongoing fighting has taken a toll.

Retired trapeze artist Lyudmila Belukha, 74, once performed for the Soviet-era Moscow Circus.  

“I traveled across the entire Soviet Union and abroad, too,” she said.

A widow — her late husband was a fellow circus performer — she lives alone in a Kupiansk housing estate.

Her sister has moved to Greece, while she has been without news of her nephew, who lives on the eastern bank of the river, for months.

“I’m at home alone, with my cats. Absolutely alone. My kitchen and balcony windows are broken. I need plastic wrap to fix them because it will be getting cold. I’m freezing,” she said.

She was picking up a food parcel from humanitarian volunteers and said she was not starving, but: “We have no water, no gas, and no electricity. Nothing. There’s no way to even boil water for tea.”
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Almost 2,000 innocent people have been killed by Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Ukraine – some just for speaking Ukrainian or having Ukrainian symbols. VOA’s Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze was granted exclusive access to the scene of a mass graveyard in Izium in the Kharkiv region that contains more than 400 bodies.

Most of them apparently died particularly violent deaths, with many victims found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones, and gunshot wounds.

United Nations experts and Ukrainian officials have pointed to new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.

The head of a U.N.-mandated investigation body said Friday war crimes including rape, torture and the confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, who heads the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame, but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses

A U.S. envoy told the council, “Numerous sources indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcible deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens.”

U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor, U.S. permanent representative to the council, added, “We urge the commissioners to continue to examine the growing evidence of Russia’s filtration operations, forced deportations and disappearances.”

Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians.

Russia was called on to respond to the allegations at the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, but its seat was left empty. There was no immediate official reaction from Moscow.

Mobilization fallout

In the meantime, more than 730 people were detained across Russia at protests Saturday against a mobilization order of 300,000 military reservists, a rights group said, three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s first military call-up since World War II for the conflict in Ukraine.

The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 different cities, from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.

Footage from the same protest showed Russian officers carrying men and leading women to police vans.

Russia’s first public mobilization since World War II—to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine—also has triggered a rush for the border by eligible men.

Russian referendums

Western nations and Ukraine have labeled a “sham” the voting on referendums in Russian-held regions of Ukraine asking residents if they want their regions to be part of Russia. Voting began Friday on Russian referendums aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine. Some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

In the balloting, scheduled to run from Friday to Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, voters are being asked if they want their areas to become part of Russia.

Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

The West and Ukraine said the voting is illegal under international law.

“Any elections or referenda on the territory of Ukraine can only be announced and conducted by legitimate authorities in compliance with national legislation and international standards,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a statement. “Therefore, the planned ‘referenda’ will be illegal.”

Ukrainian officials said people were banned from leaving some occupied areas until the vote was over, armed groups were going to homes to force people to cast ballots, and employees were told they could be fired if they did not participate.

Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s Luhansk governor, said in the town of Starobilsk, the population was banned from leaving and people were being forced out of their homes to vote.

“Today, the best thing for the people of Kherson would be not to open their doors,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the displaced first deputy council chairman of Kherson region.

The results of the referendums, expected soon after the voting, are almost certain to support joining Russia.

“We are returning home,” said the Russian-backed leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin. “Donbas is Russia.”

“All of us have been waiting for a referendum on joining Russia for eight long years,” said Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-backed leader of Luhansk. “We have already become part of Russia. There remains only a small matter – to win [the war].”

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory.

The referendums were quickly organized after Ukraine earlier this month recaptured large swaths of the northeast in a counteroffensive.

By incorporating the four areas, Moscow could portray attacks to retake them as an attack on Russia itself – potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

In a televised address this week, Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The United Nations reports the human rights situation in Belarus has seriously deteriorated as the government seeks to maintain control over its people, stripping them of their civil and political rights.

The report, submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, finds the climate of repression continues throughout Belarus two years after Alexander Lukashenko was reelected for a sixth term as president in a vote considered rigged by the country’s opposition. The anger over the election’s outcome that sparked large-scale protests at that time has not subsided.   

Since her office’s last update in March, Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif said there has been a massive crackdown on civil society in Belarus. She said the media, political opponents, trade unions and other perceived dissidents have been prevented from exercising their democratic and human rights.

She said more than 1,300 political prisoners currently are behind bars.  She noted that authorities continue imprisoning and torturing people for exercising their human rights, including their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

“No genuine and impartial investigations into allegations of torture and cases of deaths are being conducted,” Al-Nashif said. “On the contrary, we continue to receive credible reports of authorities harassing and intimidating those seeking justice in relation to such allegations, including relatives of victims, further undermining the rule of law and the judicial system.”  

Al-Nashif expressed particular concern about amendments to Belarus’ Criminal Code.  She said they extend the death penalty to people attempting to carry out so-called acts of terrorism and murders of government officials or public figures. She noted that dozens of political activists already have been charged with such crimes.

“Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee to neighboring countries,” she said. “The crackdown’s human rights impacts, particularly on women, children, and persons with disabilities, are of specific concern. There are also reports of seizures of assets, and unlawful evictions of relatives of those who left the country.”  

In response, Belarus Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Larysa Belskaya, said the report was far removed from reality, and deliberately distorts the situation in her country.

She accused the document’s authors of applying double standards. Instead of vilifying the elections in her country, she said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should investigate the presidential elections that took place in the United States and issue similar reports.
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Ukrainian officials announced on Friday that they had exhumed more than 400 bodies at a mass burial site near Izium, Kharkiv region, from which Russian troops recently retreated after a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Many of those buried there, they said, apparently died a violent death — bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones and gunshot wounds; some men had their genitalia severed. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze visited the site.
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The Church of England said the daughter of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu could not be an officiant at her godfather’s funeral in England because she is married to a woman.

The Rev. Mpho Tutu van Furth told The New York Times that she was “stunned” by the church’s “lack of compassion.”

However, Tutu was able, in the end, to fulfil her godfather’s wish. She was able to officiate his funeral, as the service was moved from a church and was instead held in her godfather’s garden in Shropshire.

Martin Kenyon, Tutu’s 92-year-old godfather, died last week. His funeral was held Thursday.

Kenyon and Desmond Tutu became friends when they were both students at Kings College. The archbishop was Kenyon’s daughter’s godfather.
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Western nations and Ukraine say voting is a sham that began Friday on Russian referendums aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine. Some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

In the balloting, scheduled to run from Friday to Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, voters are being asked if they want their areas to become part of Russia.

Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

The West and Ukraine said the voting is illegal under international law.

“Any elections or referenda on the territory of Ukraine can only be announced and conducted by legitimate authorities in compliance with national legislation and international standards,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe a said in a statement. “Therefore, the planned ‘referenda’ will be illegal.”

Ukrainian officials said people were banned from leaving some occupied areas until the vote was over, armed groups were going to homes to force people to cast ballots, and employees were told they could be fired if they did not participate.

Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s Luhansk governor, said in the town of Starobilsk, the population was banned from leaving and people were being forced out of their homes to vote.

“Today, the best thing for the people of Kherson would be not to open their doors,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the displaced first deputy council chairman of Kherson region.

The results of the referendums, expected soon after the voting, are almost certain to support joining Russia.  

“We are returning home,” said the Russian-backed leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin. “Donbas is Russia.”

“All of us have been waiting for a referendum on joining Russia for eight long years,” said Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-backed leader of Luhansk. “We have already become part of Russia. There remains only a small matter – to win [the war].”

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory.

The referendums were quickly organized after Ukraine earlier this month recaptured large swaths of the northeast in a counteroffensive.

By incorporating the four areas, Moscow could portray attacks to retake them as an attack on Russia itself – potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

In a televised address this week, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

With Putin’s announcement that he intends to call up 300,000 more troops for his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kremlin appears to be trying to regain the upper hand in the grinding conflict.

Russia’s mobilization campaign is not likely to generate effective soldiers and is creating a public backlash, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War.

“Russian authorities are forcibly recruiting Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine on flimsy pretexts, violating the Kremlin’s promise to recruit only those with military experience,” the institute reported. “Russian authorities are also demonstrably mobilizing personnel [such as protesters] who will enter the war in Ukraine with abysmal morale,” it said.

Meanwhile, United Nations experts and Ukrainian officials have pointed to new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine. 

The head of a U.N.-mandated investigation body said Friday war crimes including rape, torture and confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, who heads the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses.

They found evidence of a large number of executions, including bodies with tied hands, slit throats and gunshot wounds to the head, Mose said.

He also noted investigators had identified victims of sexual violence who were between the ages of four and 82. While some Russian soldiers had used sexual violence as a strategy, the commission “has not established any general pattern to that effect,” Mose added.

A U.S. envoy told the council, “Numerous sources indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcible deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens.” 

U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor, U.S. permanent representative to the council added, “We urge the commissioners to continue to examine the growing evidence of Russia’s filtration operations, forced deportations and disappearances.”

Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians.

Russia was called on to respond to the allegations at the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting but its seat was left empty. There was no immediate official reaction from Moscow.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Thousands of Russians are trying to flee the country to escape conscription into the military. President Vladimir Putin announced the move in a televised address Wednesday, as Russian armed forces have been suffering significant losses in the invasion of Ukraine in recent weeks. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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U.N. investigators say there is evidence that Russian forces who invaded Ukraine in February 2022 committed war crimes. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine presented its findings Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council. 

The commission centered its inquiry on events from late February and March in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy. It says it documented many human rights violations, including the illegal use of explosive weapons, indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. 

Commission Chair Erik Mese said Russia’s illegal use of explosive weapons has caused immense suffering among the civilian population, and accounts for most of the deaths recorded by United Nations monitors.  

He said investigators were struck by the large number of executions in 16 towns and settlements they visited. 

“Common elements of such crimes include the prior detention of the victims as well as visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats,” Mese said. 

The commission interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses. Mese said witnesses have provided consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture. Some reported they had been transferred to prisons in the Russian Federation, where they were subjected to beatings, electric shocks, and other violations. 

Mese said investigations into cases of sexual and gender-based violence found the victims of sexual abuse by Russian soldiers ranged in age from four to 82 years. 

“The commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined,” Mese said. “Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons.” 

Anton Korynevych, ambassador-at-large for Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said these crimes perpetrated by Russia must not go unpunished. He is calling for the establishment of a special tribunal with specific jurisdiction over the crime of aggression against Ukraine.  

The Russian Federation did not show up for the hearing, a fact that the president of the council said he deplores. 

Mese said the commission’s “attempts to engage in a constructive dialogue with Russian Federation authorities have, regretfully, so far not been successful, but we will persist in our efforts.” 

Reuters reports Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended Moscow’s war in Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. He accused Kyiv of threatening Russia’s security and “brazenly trampling” the rights of Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, adding that it “simply confirms the decision to conduct the special military operation was inevitable.” 

 
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Russia’s war on Ukraine is taking a brutal toll on its people. VOA recently met two young brothers, ages 8 and 14, at a Lviv hospital. The two lost their parents and were severely injured in a Russian missile strike. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. VOA footage by Yuriy Dankevych.
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Italians will vote on Sunday in what is being billed as a crucial election as Europe reels from repercussions of Russia’s war in Ukraine. For the first time in Italy since the end of World War II, the election could propel a far-right leader into the premiership.  

Soaring energy costs and quickly climbing prices for staples like bread — the consequences of Russia’s invasion of breadbasket Ukraine — have pummeled many Italian families and businesses.  

Against that bleak backdrop, Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party — with neo-fascist roots and an agenda of God, homeland and Christian identity — appear to be the front-runners in Italy’s parliamentary election.  

They could be a test case for whether hard-right sentiment is gaining more traction in the 27-nation European Union. Recently, a right-wing party in Sweden surged in popularity by capitalizing on peoples’ fears about crime.  

Meloni’s main alliance partner is right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, who blames crime on migrants. Salvini has long been a staunch ideological booster of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland.  

“Elections in the middle of a war, in the midst of an energy crisis and the dawn of what is likely to be an economic crisis … almost by definition are crucial elections,″ said Nathalie Tocci, director of Rome-based think tank the International Affairs Institute.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, is gambling that “Europe will break” under the weight of economic and energy problems brought on by the war, Tocci told The Associated Press.  

Salvini, who draws his voter base from business owners in Italy’s north, has donned pro-Putin T-shirts in the past. Salvini has also questioned the wisdom of maintaining Western economic sanctions against Russia, saying they could hurt Italy’s economic interests too much.

The publication of polls was halted 15 days before Sunday’s vote, but before then they indicated Meloni’s party would be the biggest vote-getter, just ahead of the center-left Democratic Party headed by former Premier Enrico Letta.  

A campaign alliance linking Meloni to conservative allies Salvini and former Premier Silvio Berlusconi confers a clear advantage over Letta under Italy’s complex system of divvying up seats in Parliament.

Letta had hoped in vain for a campaign alliance with the left-leaning populist 5-Star Movement, the largest party in the outgoing legislature.

While it is a fraught moment for Europe, Sunday’s election could see modern Italy’s lowest-ever turnout. The last election, in 2018, saw record-low turnout of 73%. Pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco says this time the percentage could drop to as low as 66%.  

Pregliasco, who heads the YouTrend polling company, says Italy’s last three different governing coalitions have left Italians “disaffected, disappointed. They don’t see their vote as something that matters.”

The outgoing government is headed by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi. In early 2021, Italy’s president tapped Draghi to form a unity government after the collapse of the second ruling coalition of 5-Star leader Giuseppe Conte.

In what Pregliasco called an “apparent paradox,” polls indicate that “most Italians like Draghi and think his government did a good job.” Yet Meloni, the sole major party leader to refuse to join Draghi’s coalition, is polling the strongest.  

As Tocci put it, Meloni’s party is so popular “simply because it’s the new kid on the block.″  

Draghi has said he doesn’t want another term.  

To Meloni’s annoyance, voters are still concerned that she hasn’t made an unambiguous break with her party’s roots in a neo-fascist movement founded by nostalgists for dictator Benito Mussolini after his regime’s disastrous role in World War II. During the campaign, she declared that she is “no danger to democracy.”  

Some Italian political analysts say worries about the fascist issue aren’t their main concern.

“I am afraid of incompetence, not the fascist threat,″ said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political science professor at LUISS, a private university in Rome. ”She has not governed anything.”

Meloni served as youth minister in Berlusconi’s last government, which ended a decade ago.

Instead, her main right-wing coalition partner is worth worrying about, D’Alimonte told The AP.  

“Salvini will be the troublemaker, not Meloni,″ he said. “It is not Meloni calling for the end of sanctions against Russia. It is Salvini. It is not Meloni calling for more debt or more deficit. It is Salvini.”

But recent incidents have fed worries about Brothers of Italy.

A Brothers of Italy candidate in Sicily was suspended by his party after he posted phrases on social media showing appreciation for Hitler. Separately, a brother of one of Meloni’s co-founders was spotted giving what appeared to be the fascist salute at a funeral for a relative. The brother denied that.  

For years, the right wing has crusaded against unbridled immigration, after hundreds of thousands of migrants reached Italy’s shores aboard smugglers’ boats or vessels that rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea. Both Meloni and Salvini have thundered against what they see as an invasion of foreigners not sharing what they call Italy’s “Christian” character.

Letta, who wants to facilitate citizenship for children of legal immigrants, has, too, played the fear card. In his party’s campaign, ads on buses, half the image depicts a serious-looking Letta with his one-word motto, “Choose,” with the other half featuring an ominous-looking image of Putin. Salvini and Berlusconi have both expressed admiration for the Russian leader. Meloni backs supplying arms so Ukraine can defend itself.

With energy bills as much as 10 times higher than a year ago, how to save workers’ jobs ranks high among Italian voters’ worries.  

But with the exception of Salvini, who wants to revisit Italy’s closed nuclear power plants, candidates have largely failed to distinguish themselves in proposing solutions to the energy crisis. Nearly all are pushing for a EU cap on gas prices.

The perils of climate change haven’t loomed large in the Italian campaign. Italy’s tiny Greens party, a campaign partner of Letta, is forecast to capture barely a few seats in Parliament.
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Russian-orchestrated voting has begun in occupied regions of Ukraine in referendums that ask voters if they want their regions to become part of Russia.

The voting began Friday in Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

The voting, widely viewed as a way for Russia to justify the annexation of the regions, has been widely condemned by the West.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the referendums are illegal.

“Any elections or referenda on the territory of Ukraine can only be announced and conducted by legitimate authorities in compliance with national legislation and international standards,” the OSCE said in a statement.  “Therefore the planned ‘referenda’ will be illegal.”

Friday’s voting follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that he intends to call up 300,000 more troops for his “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Putin said in a televised address this week the mobilization of reserves, which followed Ukrainian gains in a counteroffensive in northeastern Ukraine, is necessary to protect Russia’s homeland and sovereignty.

Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia, and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

Street protests against the mobilization erupted in Moscow and other Russian cities, with police arresting 1,300 demonstrators.

The British Defense Ministry said in its intelligence report Friday: “In the last three days, Ukrainian forces have secured bridgeheads on the east bank of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast. … To the south, in Donetsk Oblast, fighting is ongoing as Ukrainian forces assault the town of Lyman, east of the Siverskyy Donets River, which Russia captured in May. The battlefield situation remains complex, but Ukraine is now putting pressure on territory Russia considers essential to its war aims.”
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U.N. Security Council members on Thursday condemned Russia for escalating the war in Ukraine, criticizing its mobilization of more troops and President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons.

“Every council member should send a clear message that these reckless nuclear threats must stop immediately,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a special session of the council’s foreign ministers held on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s annual gathering.

“This is a war of annexation. A war of conquest,” Britain’s new Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said, “to which President Putin now wants to send even more of Russia’s young men and women, making peace even less likely.”

Putin announced Wednesday that he is calling up 300,000 more troops for his “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“Yesterday, Putin announced mobilization. But what he really announced before the whole world was his defeat,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “You can draft 300,000 or 500,000 people, but he will never win this war. Today, every Ukrainian is a weapon, ready to defend Ukraine and the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter.”

The Russian president has also announced plans to hold referenda in four occupied parts of Ukraine in an apparent attempt to annex them.

“It is an attempt to change internationally recognized borders by use of force — and no sham referendums can change that basic fact,” Ireland’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister Simon Coveney said. “It cannot be allowed to stand.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council that the latest developments are “dangerous and disturbing.”

“The idea of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, has become a subject of debate,” he said. “This in itself is totally unacceptable.”

Allies’ discomfort

Even Russia’s allies expressed their growing unease with the war’s direction.

“The trajectory of the Ukraine conflict is a matter of profound concern for the entire international community,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said. “The future outlook appears even more disturbing. The nuclear issue is a particular anxiety.”

China’s foreign minister urged the parties to resume talks without preconditions.

“Include reasonable concerns into negotiations and put feasible options on the table so that talks can produce results and bring about peace,” Wang Yi said. He also urged the parties to “exercise restraint and avoid escalating tensions.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not listen to the criticism of his counterparts, leaving his deputy and a junior ambassador to fill his seat during most of the three-hour meeting. He showed up only to deliver his remarks.

Lavrov did not address the military mobilization or Putin’s latest nuclear threats. Of the referenda, he said they are the consequence of “Russo-phobic” statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who he said told people who feel they are Russian to go to Russia.

“I think the decisions that have been adopted by a whole range of regions of Ukraine about conducting referendums are the result of his advice,” Lavrov said of the planned votes in the south and east of Ukraine.

“We have no doubt that Ukraine has become a completely totalitarian, Nazi-like state where the norms of international humanitarian law are trampled on,” he added.

Accountability

Thursday’s meeting was originally called to discuss the atrocities that have come to light in Ukrainian cities after Russian troop withdrawals.

Mass graves have been found in several cities, including Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and most recently Izium.

In April, Russian troops were driven out of Bucha, leading to the discovery of mass graves with hundreds of bodies.

Lavrov told council members that Bucha was a “propaganda operation,” and there is “no doubt in anyone’s mind” that it was staged.

The International Criminal Court has been mandated to investigate possible mass crimes in Ukraine. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan has conducted three field visits.

“When I went to Bucha and went behind St. Andrews Church, the bodies I saw were not fake,” he told the council.

In May, the ICC deployed teams of investigators to the country. He said the picture is troubling.

“One has seen a variety of destruction, of suffering and harm that fortifies my determination and my previous finding that there are reasonable grounds to believe the crimes within the jurisdiction of the court have been committed,” he said.

“Morally and politically, Russia has already lost the war,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the council. “And increasingly, it is losing on the battlefield, as well. Ukraine will prevail.”

Speaking at another event about accountability, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said his office is investigating more than 35,000 war-related crimes, including attacks on civilian infrastructure, indiscriminate shelling, murders, torture, sexual violence and forced mobilization.

“These numbers will increase as we de-occupy towns and cities in the east and south of the country and new crimes are revealed,” Andriy Kostin said.

In his video speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Zelenskyy called for a special tribunal to be established to punish Russia and demanded financial compensation for the destruction its invasion has caused.

Peace calls

In March, the International Court of Justice ruled that Russia had wrongfully claimed a genocide in Ukraine to justify its invasion and ordered it to suspend its military operation. Russia has rejected the court’s jurisdiction.

The U.N. General Assembly also overwhelmingly demanded on March 2 that Russia immediately and unconditionally stop its military operations and withdraw its troops from the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine.

At the Security Council, Mexico’s foreign minister offered a proposal from his president to form a committee of nations to support U.N. mediation efforts to end the war. Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon said it would include several leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pope Francis.

“The objective would be very clear: generating new mechanisms for dialogue and creating additional spaces for mediation that foster trust, reduce tensions and open the path to lasting peace,” he said.

After the council meeting, Ukraine’s foreign minister said he would discuss the proposal with Ebrard at a meeting later in the day.
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Italy goes to the polls Sunday after the collapse of the ruling coalition in July. As Henry Ridgwell reports, a right-wing party with past links to fascism looks set to win the most votes, raising concerns in the European Union.
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Italians head to the polls this Sunday to choose a new government, after the collapse of the ruling coalition led by Mario Draghi.

A right-wing party with past links to fascism looks set to win the most votes, raising concerns among allies.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party is leading the polls with around 25% of the vote. The 45-year-old is on course to become Italy’s first female prime minister. She has a simple campaign message.

“My greatest desire is to lift up, to lift our nation up again from decline,” Meloni told Reuters in a recent interview.

Neo-fascism

Brothers of Italy traces its roots to neo-fascism after 1945. In her teenage years, Meloni was a far-right activist who praised fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She says she has changed.

“When the election campaign opens, the fascist alarm goes off. As you can understand, it’s quite ridiculous to retrieve videos of what I thought when I was 15, 16 or 17,” Meloni said.

Meloni has overseen a sixfold increase in support for her party since the last election.

“In part it’s about her policy platform, her socially conservative views, her economic views — which are also quite social in a way in terms of, for example, raising people’s pensions or benefits,” said analyst Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform.

“But it’s also in large part due to her own personal appeal. And I would single out here, for example, her way of talking, which is very down to earth. It’s very effective in connecting with ordinary voters,” Scazzieri added. “Finally, she also benefits from not having been anywhere near government for the past 10 years, and so she can credibly say that she represents something new.”

That’s not true of her likely coalition partners.

Salvini, Berlusconi

Among the coalition partners is Matteo Salvini, the outspoken populist former interior minister and leader of the League Party. While in government, he oversaw a crackdown on migrants arriving on Italy’s southern shores from North Africa.

He is currently on trial on kidnapping charges stemming from an incident in 2019 in which he is accused of preventing more than 100 migrants who were rescued by a charity vessel from landing in Italian ports, which he denies. Salvini has pledged further tougher border controls if his party enters government again.

Political veteran Silvio Berlusconi, who turns 86 four days after the election, will also likely be part of the right-wing coalition as leader of the Forza Italia party. He was thrown out of office 10 years ago after a sex scandal and was stripped of his Senate seat in 2013 over a tax fraud case. He has survived major heart surgery and prostate cancer. In 2021, he nearly died from COVID-19.

On the campaign trail, all three members of the likely right-wing coalition have launched attacks on the European Union and pledged to stand up for Italy’s national interests in Brussels.

The European Union fears Italy could become a political headache, Scazzieri said. The fears are partly due to “the state of Italy’s economy — the fact that its public debt is over 150% of GDP,” he said. “There’s also concerns because of Meloni’s past in the post-fascist Italian social movement, of whether she might have a very authoritarian streak — for example, whether Italy might become more like Hungary and Poland.”

However, Scazzieri said, the EU fears may be unfounded.

“If you read the coalition program, it’s quite clear that they tried to present a very moderate face. They make very clear that this is a government that will stick to its obligations in the EU, in the euro and in NATO,” he told VOA. “The reality is that Italy can ill afford confrontation with the EU because of the relative weak state of its economy.”

Russia-Ukraine

In the past, the Italian far right has had close links to Moscow. However, Meloni has repeatedly stated her support for Ukraine.

“Our standing in the Western field is crystal clear, as we have demonstrated once again by condemning — without ifs and buts — Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine and by helping, from the opposition, to strengthen Italy’s position in European and international forums,” Meloni said in a campaign video on August 10.

For many Italians, the economy, jobs and the rising cost of living are the biggest concerns. Food banks report a sharp rise in the number of people needing help just to survive.

In Italy’s south, economic prospects have long lagged behind the richer north. Antonio Mela, a retired barman from the city of Salerno in Campania, started visiting the local soup kitchen run by the Catholic charity Caritas after the price of food increased sharply in recent months.

“I have a very small pension. I pay the rent, the electricity bill, and then I’ve got nothing left over for food. That’s the situation,” Mela told Agence France-Presse.

The centrist coalition led by former Prime Minister Enrico Letta is trailing in the polls by around 15%. The bloc insists it can still win.

The government that emerges from Sunday’s vote will be Italy’s 70th administration since 1945. Many observers say the coalition led by Meloni is already showing signs of political instability — and Italy could soon face another election.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
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Two private banks in Turkey suspended their use of Russian payment system Mir earlier this week following warning signals from the United States. 

The system, a rival to the Belgium-based SWIFT network, is not directly targeted by sanctions. But U.S. officials say there is a worry that Russia is expanding its use of Mir to try to evade sanctions. Experts say banks that allow the expanded use of Mir could trigger secondary sanctions. 

Reuters news agency reports the issue is expected to be discussed Friday at a meeting of top officials including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Turkey’s largest private lender, Is Bankasi, said on Monday that it halted the use of the Russian payment system while it assessed the new guidance from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

Denizbank, another private lender in Turkey, said on the same day that it was no longer able to provide service for the Russian payment system Mir. Denizbank, currently owned by Emirates NBD, was controlled by Russian Sberbank until 2019.  

‘Heightened risk’ 

The decision by two banks announced within hours of each other follows additional sanctions and further guidance by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC. 

Responsible for enforcing economic sanctions designated by the U.S., OFAC said in a statement earlier this month that Russia is trying to find new ways to process payments in response to crippling western financial sanctions. 

“Directly and indirectly, Russia’s financial technocrats have supported the Kremlin’s unprovoked war. Today’s designations target those efforts,” the statement said. 

Although the two Russian financial systems themselves are not currently blocked entities under the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations, Treasury has warned banks that expanded agreements with them risk supporting Russia’s efforts to evade U.S. sanctions. 

Sanctions evasion concern 

The Mir payment system was developed by Russia in 2014 as an alternative to the rival SWIFT payments messaging service that supports payments in more than 200 countries. Mir further expanded after two credit card giants, Mastercard and Visa, blocked services to Russian financial institutions in compliance with Western sanctions. 

When asked about their reaction to the Turkish bank’s suspension, a senior administration official said in a statement to VOA that the steps these Turkish banks took “make a lot of sense.” 

“Cutting off Mir is one of the best ways to protect a bank from the sanctions risk that comes from doing business with Russia,” the senior official said Tuesday. 

U.S. officials say they expect more banks to cut off Mir, “because they don’t want to risk being on the wrong side of the coalition’s sanctions.” 

Experts speaking to VOA say the OFAC guidance aims to prevent the systems from being used to evade U.S. sanctions. 

They say the recent move by Turkey’s two banks to suspend Mir reflects their effort to avoid any possible sanctions risk as the West ramps up economic measures against Russia. 

State Department’s former coordinator for sanctions policy, Daniel Fried, who crafted U.S. sanctions against Russia following its aggression in Ukraine in 2014, told VOA that the two Turkish banks were “acting rationally in an abundance of caution.” 

Fried, who is also the former U.S. Ambassador to Poland and currently a senior fellow with the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said the OFAC guidance indicates “there is a degree of risk” for dealing with Mir. 

Timothy Ash, an emerging market analyst with London-based Bluebay Asset Management, thinks that the two banks have realized that the business might not be worth the risk of getting caught in possible secondary sanctions. 

Three other lenders in Turkey — Halkbank, Vakıf Bank and Ziraat Bank, which are all state owned — are also using Mir. 

Halkbank is already tied up in a case where U.S. prosecutors accuse the bank of evading sanctions against Iran. The case has been one of the issues straining U.S.-Turkish relations. 

“The state-owned banks will take the lead from the government,” Ash said in the comments he sent to VOA on Wednesday. “Maybe the Turkish government will just limit Mir transactions through that institution to limit broader risks and damage to the Turkish banking system.” 

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, who served on former President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, said it’s hard to predict whether the three Turkish state banks will also drop the system. 

He told VOA that cutting off Mir completely might indirectly impede Russian visitors at a time when Turkey needs the revenue. 

System popular with Russian visitors 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to call-up 300,000 reservists on Wednesday has sparked an exodus of thousands from the country. 

According to Russia’s popular flight booking platform, Aviasales, direct flights from Moscow to Turkey’s Istanbul and Armenian capital Yerevan were sold out on Wednesday.

Russian payment system Mir is frequently used by Russian tourists in Turkey. 

The Moscow Times reported earlier this week that the Russian association of tour operators, ATOR, recommended Russians travel to Turkey with cash in hand due to “shrinking card payment options.” 

Pressure expected to grow 

According to a Financial Times report last week, Brussels is also preparing to express its concerns about Russian-sanctions evasion risks for Turkish officials. 

EU’s financial services commissioner, Mairead McGuinnes, is expected to visit Turkey next month. 

Former U.S. sanctions coordinator Fried predicts the United States is going to devote a lot of sources to “drying up the channels of Russians.” 

“I think the pressure from the U.S. to go after sanctions evaders will grow. The countries in Central Asia and South Caucuses will start to pay more attention to what their banks are doing to avoid falling afoul of sanctions,” he told VOA. 

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service. 
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A group of Iranians living in Istanbul and Turkish citizens gathered Wednesday in front of the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul to protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran.

Istanbul police, who on Tuesday repeatedly dispersed groups that gathered in Taksim Square, watched the action from afar.

During the demonstration, at least three women cut their hair to protest the treatment of Amini, who was detained by Iran’s morality police because she didn’t wear her headscarf correctly and therefore her hair was showing.  She later died while in custody.

Protesters shouted slogans in Persian, Turkish and Kurdish. The Turkish chants included, “We do not keep silent, we do not fear, we do not obey,” and “My body, my decision.”

The Persian and Kurdish slogans included, “Women live freely” and “We do not want a mullah regime.”

Banners carried by the group of about 300 people included harsh criticism against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iranian regime.

Mahdi Sağlar, one of the Iranians who participated in the protest, has been living and working in Turkey for 20 years.

“They beat a girl to death because her hair was showing,” Sağlar told VOA Turkish. “Their own children dress as they want in Europe and America, they behave as they want, but in Iran, they arrested her because her hair is out, and they killed her by causing a brain hemorrhage with a blow to the brain at the police station. We are here to protest this. Our citizens in Iran are protesting here on the street as well.”

Gelare Abdi, another Iranian protester, said that although she loves her homeland very much, she can’t live in her country due to heavy pressure.

“I need freedom,” she said. “But I have no freedom in Iran. I have been here in Turkey for two years out of necessity. … They killed Mahsa because her hair was showing a small forelock. She was just 22 years old. I am also a woman and I want freedom.”

This story originated with VOA’s Turkish Service.
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Chrystia Sonevytsky of Arlington, Virginia, says she has always felt a connection with Ukraine, where her roots are. She successfully advocated for a sister city agreement between Arlington and Ivano-Frankivsk in southwestern Ukraine, and the two forged a partnership in 2011. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Arlington was quick to offer help. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. VOA footage by David Gogokhia.
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European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said EU foreign ministers have agreed to continue and increase their military support for Ukraine and to study a new package of sanctions targeting Russian individuals and certain sectors of the Russian economy.

Borrell told reporters late Wednesday after convening a special ministerial meeting in New York that the details of the sanctions package still need to be determined by EU representatives, but that he is sure there will be unanimous support.

He said it was important for the ministers to meet and send a “powerful message” on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of his country’s military reserves, and that Putin is “trying to destroy Ukraine.”

Borrell said that in addition to “the immense suffering brought by the Russian aggression upon the Ukrainian people, Russia has chosen to further extend the cost of war also for their own Russian population.”

He said Putin’s apparent reference to Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weapons if necessary to protect itself represented “an irresponsible and cynical attempt to undermine our steadfast support to Ukraine.”

“These threats jeopardize in an unprecedented scale international peace and security,” Borrell said.  “But they will not shake our determination.  They will not shake our resolve, our unity to stand by Ukraine and our comprehensive support to Ukraine’s ability to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty as long as it takes.”

Putin said in a televised address Wednesday the mobilization of reserves, which followed Ukrainian gains in a counteroffensive in northeastern Ukraine, is necessary to protect Russia’s homeland and sovereignty.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military would be calling up 300,000 reservists.

Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia, and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

“In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line,” he said. “This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”

Putin also reiterated Russia’s goal in its now seven-month-old invasion of Ukraine is to “liberate” Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, saying the people there do not want to be part of Ukraine.

The separatist leaders of the Moscow-controlled Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the Donbas said Tuesday they are planning to hold votes starting Friday for the territories to declare themselves as part of Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed what he called “Russia’s attempts to stage new sham referenda.”

“The situation on the front line clearly indicates that the initiative belongs to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday. “Our positions do not change because of the noise or any announcements somewhere. And we enjoy the full support of our partners in this.”

Since early September, Kyiv’s forces have swiftly recaptured large swaths of land in the Kharkiv region of northeast Ukraine that Russian troops took over in the early weeks of the war. The Russian-occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine and the partly occupied Zaporizhzhia region are also voting on becoming part of Russia.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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North Korea on Thursday denied sending weapons to Russia, accusing the United States of spreading rumors about such a sale to tarnish Pyongyang’s image.

U.S. officials earlier this month said Russia was in the process of “purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.”

In a statement posted in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a North Korean defense ministry official rejected the U.S. accusation.

“We have never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia before and we will not plan to export them,” said the vice director general of the North Korean defense ministry’s General Bureau of Equipment, according to KCNA.

“We warn the U.S. to stop making reckless remarks pulling up the DPRK and to keep its mouth shut,” he added, using an abbreviation for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Earlier this month, a senior Russian diplomat also rejected the allegation as fake.

U.S. officials did not provide any evidence of the arms sale and did not confirm whether the transaction was ever completed. However, many Western analysts said such a transaction would make sense.

Not only does Russia likely need to replenish its reserve weapons stockpiles following six months of fighting, Moscow is also searching for more international support for its invasion of Ukraine.

According to U.S. officials, Russia’s alleged weapons purchase indicates Moscow suffers from severe supply shortages because of international sanctions put in place following Russia’s invasion.

Russia is also struggling to hold territory, after Western-backed Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive earlier this month.

Over the past several months, Russia has touted closer ties with North Korea.

Earlier this month, Russian state media reported that Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine are in negotiations to bring North Korean builders to the “Donetsk People’s Republic.”

Such a deal would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions related to hiring North Korean workers overseas. U.N. sanctions also prohibit the export of North Korean weapons. The sanctions were passed in response to North Korea’s development of a nuclear weapons program.

If Russia were to move ahead with either the weapons or labor deal, it would likely reflect a major shift in Moscow’s approach to North Korea sanctions, signaling an effective end to the U.N. sanctions regime against Pyongyang, analysts have warned.

In its statement Thursday, North Korea’s defense ministry reiterated that Pyongyang does not acknowledge the U.N. resolutions. Every country, it said, has the right to develop and export its own weapons.   
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