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The Northern Irish city of Londonderry began commemorations Sunday of one of the darkest days in modern UK history when, 50 years ago, British troops without provocation killed 13 unarmed civil rights protesters. 

The anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” comes with Northern Ireland’s fragile peace destabilized by Brexit, and with families of the victims despondent over whether the soldiers involved will ever face trial. 

Charlie Nash saw his 19-year-old cousin William Nash killed as members of the British Parachute Regiment fired more than 100 high-velocity rounds on January 30, 1972, at the demonstrators in Londonderry, known as Derry to pro-Irish nationalists. 

“We thought there might be rioting, but nothing, nothing like what happened. We thought at first they were rubber bullets,” Nash, now 73, told AFP. 

“But then we saw Hugh Gilmour [one of six 17-year-old victims] lying dead. We couldn’t take it in. Everyone was running,” he said. 

“It’s important for the rest of the world to see what they done to us that day. But will we ever see justice? Never, especially not from Boris Johnson.” 

Amnesty? 

The UK prime minister this week called Bloody Sunday a “tragic day in our history”.

But his government is pushing legislation that critics say amounts to an amnesty for all killings during Northern Ireland’s three decades of sectarian unrest, including by security forces. 

Thirteen protesters died on Bloody Sunday, when the paratroopers opened fire through narrow streets and across open wasteland. 

Some of the victims were shot in the back, or while on the ground, or while waving white handkerchiefs. 

At the entrance to the city’s Catholic Bogside area stands a wall that normally proclaims in large writing: “You are now entering Free Derry.” 

This weekend the mural says: “There is no British justice.” 

Several hundred people, including relatives of the victims, on Sunday retraced the fateful 1972 march, walking in somber silence under a leaden grey sky ahead of a late morning memorial service. 

Children bearing white roses and portraits of the victims joined the poignant procession.

“I’m here to honor the people who were murdered by the British state who were trying to achieve their civil rights,” said Michael Roach, 67, a Texan with Irish roots. 

“There will be no justice until the paratroopers are held to justice for murder.” 

‘Unjustifiable’ 

After an initial government report largely exonerated the paratroopers and authorities, a landmark 12-year inquiry running to 5,000 pages found in 2010 that the victims were unarmed and posed no threat, and that the soldiers’ commander on the ground violated his orders. 

“We in the inquiry came to the conclusion that the shootings were unjustified and unjustifiable,” its chairman Mark Saville, a former judge and member of the UK House of Lords, told BBC radio on Saturday. 

“And I do understand, people feel that in those circumstances justice has yet to be done,” he said, while expressing concern that with the surviving soldiers now elderly, the government should have launched any prosecution “a very long time ago”. 

Then as now, Londonderry was a largely Catholic city. But housing, jobs and education were segregated in favor of the pro-British Protestant minority. 

Simmering tensions over the inequality made it the cradle of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland starting in the late 1960s, which finally ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

‘Reckless’ 

The UK’s divorce from the European Union has unsettled the fragile post-1998 consensus. 

Protestant unionists want Johnson’s government to scrap a protocol governing post-Brexit trade for Northern Ireland, which treats the province differently from the UK mainland (comprising England, Scotland and Wales). 

The government, which is in protracted talks with the EU on the issue, is sympathetic to their demands. 

Heading into regional elections in May, some nationalists hope that Brexit could help achieve what the Irish Republican Army (IRA) never did — a united Ireland, a century after the UK carved out a Protestant statelet in the north. 

Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the IRA, is running ahead of the once dominant unionists in opinion polls. 

“Northern Ireland finds itself again in the eye of a political storm where we appear to be collateral damage for a prime minister whose future is hanging in the balance,” said professor Deirdre Heenan, a Londonderry resident who teaches social policy at Ulster University. 

“The government’s behavior around the peace process has been reckless in the extreme,” she added. 

Protestant hardliners have issued their own reminders of where they stand: leading up to the anniversary, Parachute Regiment flags have been flying in one unionist stronghold of Londonderry, to the revulsion of nationalists. 

“How can they do that, this weekend of all weekends?” asked George Ryan, 61, a tour guide and local historian. 

 
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NATO has no plans to deploy combat troops to non-NATO member Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday. 

Asked on BBC Television whether he would rule out putting NATO troops in Ukraine if Russia does invade, Stoltenberg said: “We have no plans to deploy NATO combat troops to Ukraine … we are focusing on providing support.” 

“There is a difference between being a NATO member and being a strong and highly valued partner as Ukraine. There’s no doubt about that.” 
…

Britain is considering making a major NATO deployment as part of a plan to strengthen Europe’s borders in response to Russia massing troops on the border with Ukraine, the government said Saturday.

Britain has said that any Russian incursion into Ukraine would be met with swift sanctions and would be devastating for both sides.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to visit the region next week, and also will speak to Vladimir Putin by phone.

Johnson is considering the biggest possible offer to members of the NATO defense pact in the Nordics and Baltics, which would double troop numbers and send defensive weapons to Estonia, his office said.

“This package would send a clear message to the Kremlin “we will not tolerate their destabilizing activity, and we will always stand with our NATO allies in the face of Russian hostility,” Johnson said in a statement.

“I have ordered our Armed Forces to prepare to deploy across Europe next week, ensuring we are able to support our NATO allies.”

Officials will finalize the details of the offer in Brussels next week, with ministers discussing the military options Monday.

Stepping up diplomatic efforts after facing criticism for not doing enough, Johnson will make a second trip to meet NATO counterparts early next month, his office said.

Britain’s foreign and defense ministers will also both go to Moscow for talks with their Russian counterparts in coming days, with the aim of improving relations and de-escalating tensions. 

 
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Portuguese voters went to the polls Sunday in a parliamentary election with no clear winner in sight and uncertainty increased by potentially low turnout amid record coronavirus infections.

Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0800 GMT). At the University of Lisbon, staff outnumbered mostly elderly voters, with signs on the walls asking people to wear a mask, observe social distancing and to use their own pen.

Some even wore gloves for extra protection.

“I have been vaccinated, and I haven’t had COVID yet … But I felt very safe,” said Maria Odete, 73, adding that the election race appeared too close to produce a stable government capable of bringing positive change.

The government has allowed those infected to leave isolation and cast ballots in person, recommending that they do so in the last hour before polling stations close at 7:00 pm (1900 GMT) and promising “absolute safety” during the vote.

Over a tenth of Portugal’s 10 million people are estimated to be isolating because of COVID-19. As in many European countries, infections have spiked lately, stoked by the Omicron variant, although widespread vaccination has kept deaths and hospitalizations lower than in earlier waves.

The election is wide open as the center-left ruling Socialists have lost much of their lead in opinion polls to the main opposition party, the center-right Social Democrats, and neither is likely to win a stable majority.

Low turnout could make projections unreliable, analysts say. Abstention was already record at 51% in the 2019 general election before the pandemic.

The vote, called in November after parliament rejected the minority Socialist government’s budget bill, is likely to worsen political volatility and could produce a short-lived government, unless one of the main parties manages to cobble together a working alliance, which could be a daunting task.

“We want more stability, but I don’t think that’s what is going to happen. I think we’ll have one or two years of instability,” said Mario Henriques, 42, as he walked out of the polling station in a rush, wearing sports clothes.

Instability could complicate Portugal’s access to a 16.6-billion-euro ($18.7 billion) package of EU pandemic recovery aid and the successful use of the funds in projects aimed at boosting economic growth in western Europe’s poorest country.

“We are in a time of crisis…and therefore we need leaders with an open mind, who create wealth, who make the country work,” 81-year-old Maria Natalia Quadros said after voting, adding though that her expectations were low. 

 
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Russia says it will relocate naval exercises off the coast of Ireland after Dublin raised concerns about them amid a tense dispute with the West over expansion of the NATO alliance and fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.

The Feb. 3-8 exercises were to be held 240 kilometers off southwestern Ireland — in international waters but within Ireland’s exclusive economic zone. Ireland is a member of the 27-nation European Union but not a member of NATO.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney this week objected to the war games, saying “This isn’t a time to increase military activity and tension in the context of what’s happening with and in Ukraine. The fact that they are choosing to do it on the western borders, if you like, of the EU, off the Irish coast, is something that in our view is simply not welcome.”

Russia’s embassy in Ireland on Saturday posted a letter on Facebook from Ambassador Yuriy Filatov saying the exercises would be relocated outside of the Irish economic zone ”with the aim not to hinder fishing activities.”

The decision was a rare concession amid the escalating tensions surrounding Russia’s massing of an estimated 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine and its demands that NATO promise never to allow Ukraine to join the alliance, stop the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe.

The U.S. and NATO formally rejected those demands this week, although Washington outlined areas where discussions are possible, offering hope that there could be a way to avoid war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no public remarks about the Western response. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it leaves little chance for reaching agreement, though he also says Russia does not want war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday that Putin could use any portion of his force to seize Ukrainian cities and “significant territories” or to carry out “coercive acts or provocative political acts” like the recognition of breakaway territories inside Ukraine.

Two territories in eastern Ukraine have been under the control of Russia-backed rebels since 2014, after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

A Russian lawmaker is encouraging residents of those areas of Ukraine to join the Russian army, a sign that Moscow is continuing to try to integrate those territories as much as possible. Viktor Vodolatsky said Saturday that residents in rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine fear assaults by Ukrainian forces and that those who hold Russian passports would be welcomed in the Russian military.

“If Russian citizens residing in the (territories) want to join the Russian Armed Forces, the Rostov regional military commissariat will register and draft them,” Vodolatsky, deputy chairman of parliament committee on relations with neighbors, told the state news agency Tass.

Russia has granted passports to more than 500,000 people in the rebel-held territories. Vodolatsky said the recruits would serve in Russia — but that leaves open the option that they could join any future invasion force.

A senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration said the U.S. welcomed Lavrov’s comments that Russia does not want war, “but this needs to be backed up with action. We need to see Russia pulling some of the troops that they have deployed away from the Ukrainian border and taking other de-escalatory steps.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly.

Lavrov has said the U.S. suggested the two sides could talk about limits on the deployment of intermediate-range missiles, restrictions on military drills and rules to prevent accidents between warships and aircraft. He said the Russians proposed discussing those issues years ago, but Washington and its allies never took them up on it.

He also said those issues are secondary to Russia’s main concerns about NATO. He said international agreements say the security of one nation must not come at the expense of others, and said he would send letters to his Western counterparts asking them to explain their failure to respect that pledge.

Washington has warned Moscow of devastating sanctions if it invades Ukraine, including penalties targeting top Russian officials and key economic sectors. Lavrov said Moscow had warned Washington that sanctions would amount to a complete severing of ties.

NATO, meanwhile, said it was bolstering its deterrence in the Baltic Sea region.

Russia has launched military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, and dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic. Russian troops are also in Belarus for joint drills, raising Western fears that Moscow could stage an attack on Ukraine from the north from Belarus. The Ukrainian capital is only 75 kilometers from the border with Belarus.
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Italian President Sergio Mattarella was re-elected for a second term on Saturday, with party chiefs asking him to carry on after a week of fruitless voting in parliament to choose a successor.

At the eighth round of balloting among more than 1,000 lawmakers and regional delegates in the Chamber of Deputies, loud applause broke out when Mattarella passed the 505 votes needed for election.

Mattarella, 80, had ruled out remaining in office, but with the country’s political stability at risk he changed his mind in the face of appeals from parliamentary leaders who met him at his palace earlier in the day.

In Italy’s political system, the president is a powerful figure who gets to appoint prime ministers and is often called on to resolve political crises in the euro zone’s third-largest economy, where governments survive around a year on average.
…

Ukraine’s leader and his defense and security aides are assessing Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s intentions differently from many of their Western counterparts. Are they just more stoical after eight years of persistent Russian provocations and a long-running war in eastern Ukraine—or are they misreading their Russian adversary?

Washington and London have both warned the chances are high that Putin will order an invasion of Ukraine. U.S. President Joe Biden has been warning for weeks of the “distinct possibility” Russia might invade Ukraine next month, and he reiterated the point Thursday in a phone discussion with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to the White House.

Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, says he is “not optimistic” a Russian incursion into Ukraine can be stopped. He told the BBC while visiting Berlin there was still “a chance” an invasion could be halted, but added, “I’m not optimistic.”

Russia denies it is preparing to launch a major assault on Ukraine, accusing Western powers of alarmism. The Kremlin insists the more than 100,000 troops it has deployed along Ukraine’s borders are just taking part in exercises.

But Zelenskiy appears to suspect Moscow will do something short of launching a full-scale invasion and more likely will continue to wage the highly sophisticated form of psychological and hybrid warfare it has been using against Ukraine and Europe with growing intensity for the past decade and more.

The Ukrainian president has been calling for calm ahead of Wednesday’s meeting among officials of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France — known as the “Normandy format” — to discuss once again the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, nearly half of which has been occupied since 2014 by Russian soldiers and armed local proxies.

Asked at a news conference Friday for foreign media about the different assessments and of a possible rift with Biden, Zelenskiy cited his concerns over Ukraine’s economy, saying that talk of an imminent invasion is adversely affecting the economy. “For me, the question of the possible escalation is not less acute as for the United States and other partners,” he said.

But he complained the media was giving the impression we have an army in the streets and “that’s not the case.” And he said Ukraine doesn’t “need this panic” because it is damaging the economy. “We may lose the current economy,” he added.

The Ukrainian leader pointedly took issue last week when the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia announced evacuations of personnel from their embassies. Zelenskiy and his aides expressed frustration, saying the withdrawal of some diplomatic staff was premature.

One official told VOA the evacuations undermined efforts to calm the fears of ordinary Ukrainians. The United States and Britain also have told their nationals to leave Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian officials, Zelenskiy has broached the issue of evacuations with U.S. officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying the withdrawal of staff is an “overreaction” and something Russia can exploit to sow fear and to destabilize.

Aside from worries about the economy and Ukrainian morale, though, Kyiv appears to be at odds with Washington and London over Putin’s strategy, as well as over how near he is to completing a military buildup that would allow him to launch a full throttle invasion.

According to Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, Russia doesn’t have enough troops in place to mount a full-scale invasion. He told reporters this week, “The number of Russian troops massed along the border of Ukraine and occupied territories of Ukraine is large, it poses a threat to Ukraine, a direct threat to Ukraine, however, at the moment, as we speak, this number is insufficient for a full-scale offensive against Ukraine along the entire Ukrainian border.”

Some independent Ukrainian analysts agree with Kyiv’s assessment that a full-scale invasion isn’t likely. “I don’t believe there will be a full-scale military invasion,” said Taras Kuzio, an analyst at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based research group, and a professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

“In that sense, I agree with Ukrainian military officials,” he said in a recent British television debate. “There aren’t enough troops there. Ukraine is a huge territory. It has the third largest army in Europe. And if you’re working on the basis of a three-to-one ratio of invading versus defending armies, which is the number you need to be successful, then Russia would need 500,000 to 600,000 troops to overcome Ukraine. It doesn’t have that, and it’s not projected to have that.”

Kuzio believes it is more likely Russia may mount an incursion around the Black Sea coast and expand on territory it holds in the Donbass region.

Ukrainian officials admit privately they are caught somewhat in a quandary. They need Western military assistance and materiel—from anti-tank rockets to surface-to-air missiles—and they need the West to be strong, to stand up to Putin and to deter Russia from any kind of attack, limited or otherwise. But they don’t want to talk up the threat, wreck their economy and panic their people. It is a fine line they’re walking, several officials told VOA.

Western officials say they have to be ready for all eventualities and they don’t want to be caught wrong-footed, as they were in 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia then encouraged and assisted armed proxies to seize part of the Donbass in the wake of a popular uprising that toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally.  

That means, they say, reinforcing NATO’s military presence in eastern Europe, in neighboring NATO countries, and making sure everyone understands the stakes are high. “Putin is unpredictable and any gaps he sees he will jump through; any weakness, he will exploit,” a senior NATO official told VOA.
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By filing a formal complaint against China at the World Trade Organization this week, the European Union is throwing its weight into support for member state Lithuania in what is being cast as a test of the EU’s willingness to defend the interests of even its smallest members in the face of Chinese power and aggression.

The complaint, which seeks a ruling from the WTO, alleges that China has violated the trade body’s rules by carrying out against Lithuania coercive actions that also interfered with the EU’s all-member-inclusive single market and supply chain.

China’s actions are widely seen as intending to punish the Baltic country of 2.8 million people for leaving the 17+1, a regional group Beijing established, and agreeing to host in its capital a Taiwanese representative office bearing the name “Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania” rather than “Taipei Representative Office,” as such offices are titled elsewhere.

“Over the past weeks, the European Commission has built up evidence of … a refusal to clear Lithuanian goods through customs, rejection of import applications from Lithuania, and pressuring EU companies operating out of other EU Member States to remove Lithuanian inputs from their supply chains when exporting to China,” the EU said in a statement Thursday, adding that China’s actions “appear to be discriminatory and illegal under WTO rules.”

Before the announcement, a European Commission spokesperson in Brussels told VOA, “As we have consistently stressed, the EU will stand up against all types of political pressure and coercive measures applied against any Member State. We stand by Lithuania. Lithuanian exports are EU exports.”

Jonathan Hackenbroich, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA that while some within the EU initially questioned the extent to which Lithuania had consulted other member states prior to announcing its decisions concerning China and Taiwan, those concerns paled compared with the seriousness of the threat China’s actions posed to the political and economic integrity of the 27-member bloc.

If China’s action is left unchallenged, EU member states and businesses will end up losing more of their freedom, Hackenbroich warned in a recent essay, Coercion With Chinese Characteristics: How Europe Should Respond to Interference in Its Internal Trade.

The essay states that while China’s aggressive thinking and deeds “should be a source of great worry for European businesses and governments,” the EU must urgently do more to promptly identify and effectively counter China’s coercive methods against nations that defy its wishes.

“Look, everyone can understand this is a test,” said Benjamin Haddad, senior director of the Europe Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “This is a test of whether Europeans will break off their solidarity with one of their smaller members in exchange of economic interests.”

Haddad told VOA that he wouldn’t be surprised if the EU came up with strong measures in support of Lithuania. “Because I think there’s just this feeling that Lithuania should not be left on its own.”

Besides, doing so is consistent with the vision for Europe spelled out by French President Emmanuel Macron. France took over the six-month EU presidency Jan. 1. “If you talk about sovereignty, or if you talk about strategic autonomy, that means defending all of the EU members against external challenges and threats. Clearly we have China being aggressive against one of the smaller (EU) members.”

French and EU policymakers are no doubt mindful of “a broader shift in European mindsets about China,” Haddad said.

“Three years ago, the EU released a paper saying China is a trade partner, an economic competitor but also a systemic rival; I think now you see more and more of the systemic rival piece take precedence.”

The battle between Beijing and Vilnius has been closely watched around the world. Analysts in Poland recently wrote that China’s new, more aggressive tactics are also meant to intimidate other EU countries, mainly those in central Europe, “where the economic cooperation model with China is similar to Lithuania’s.”

That model involves only minor direct sales to China but significant indirect export through the supply chains of Western European companies. China is applying its punitive measures to products containing any Lithuanian-made content, in effect issuing what analysts describe as secondary sanctions that also harm businesses and industries from third countries, including other nations in the EU.

Lithuania’s direct exports to China constitute only 1% of its total exports, but its industry and manufacturing are closely linked with German and other multinational corporations that Beijing is pressuring to stop sourcing from Lithuania.

Given Germany’s status as an economic powerhouse in the EU, the reaction of the German businesses and government to China’s pressure is considered crucial.

Observers noticed that the Federation of German Industries, or BDI, supported the EU’s WTO filing, saying the union needs to take decisive measures.

New message from Berlin

Addressing an audience gathered at the Mercator Institute to discuss its China 2022 forecast, Tobias Lindner, a German deputy foreign minister, described the disagreements with China as touching “the core of European values and interests — not addressing this now will cost us dearly in the long run.”

“We will continue to seek cooperation between China and the EU and Germany,” Lindner said. “However, the partnership that we seek will be looked at strategically: Does it conform with our values? Is it in our interest?”

Lithuania’s top economic official said her government hasn’t ruled out a diplomatic solution, while also underscoring the EU’s role going forward. “If the EU talks in one voice, then there is always a solution,” Ausrine Armonaite told Politico.

“When it comes to a situation that Lithuania is in, today it’s Lithuania; day after tomorrow it may be any other European countries,” she said.

There are signs that mutual support and solidarity are taking root among EU nations as the bloc and member states individually face challenges from multiple directions.

“The fact that we’re a member of the European Union, it means we have to defend other member states of the EU should they feel they’re being coerced by third parties,” Anze Logar, Slovenian foreign minister, told VOA in an interview last month.

In September, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa wrote a letter to fellow EU member states urging them to support Lithuania as the latter started to receive punitive blows from Beijing.

Asked whether Slovenia came under fire from Beijing because of the letter, Logar said it wouldn’t have mattered.

“It’s a matter of principle,” he said. “If you’re a member of a club, you have to defend your partners in this club, because we expect we’ll be defended when somebody from outside attacks us, that other member states will come to our own defense.”

Slovenia may need help from the EU club quite soon. Slovenian businesses reported their contracts were being canceled by China after Jansa described the tactics China deployed against Lithuania as “terrifying” and said his government is in talks with Taiwan to establish representative offices.

On Thursday, following the EU’s WTO filing announcement, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office announced that “the United States will request to join these @WTO consultations in solidarity with Lithuania and the European Union.”

The State Department announced Friday that Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez will travel to Vilnius on Sunday, followed by a stop in Brussels.

Washington’s “continuing strong support for Lithuania in the face of political pressure and economic coercion from the People’s Republic of China” is on the agenda of discussions between Fernandez and his Lithuanian counterparts, the State Department said. Fernandez will also be discussing measures to counter economic coercion with EU officials in Brussels. 

 
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Relations have rarely been good between Albania and Serbia. But for Serbian footballers playing in the land of their erstwhile foes, the sport transcends the long-standing differences between the rivals.

“Football is a fabulous tool for learning to live together,” said Luka Milanovic, 29, who is one of 15 Serbian footballers playing professionally in Albania.

Ties between Albania and Serbia have long been beset by differences, especially their conflicting views over the status of Kosovo.

Following a bloody war in the late 1990s, Belgrade continues to view the territory as a renegade province and has never recognized its independence declaration made in 2008.

The mistrust between Kosovo — with its Albanian and Muslim majority — and Serbia — a largely Orthodox nation — is far from Milanovic’s thoughts on the pitch.

He has been given a “warm welcome” since arriving four months ago to play professionally in Albania for Kukes, a first division team hailing from a mountainous region bordering Kosovo.

The area once hosted more than 500,000 ethnic Albanians fleeing attacks by Serb forces during the war in Kosovo.

Now, the region is peaceful and home to Kosovar Albanians, Montenegrins and Croatians who also play football professionally for Kukes.

“I’m here for the love of football,” Luka told AFP.

For him, competing in Albania is a natural continuation of a career that has seen him play for Red Star and OFK Belgrade in Serbia along with stints in Belgium, Malaysia, Greece and Hungary.

‘The language of football’

“For the players and supporters, Luka is one of us,” said Erjon Allaraj, the club’s spokesman.

“We speak different languages, but we all know the language of football,” added Kukes’ captain Gjelberim Taip — an Albanian from the southern Serbian town of Bujanovac.

For the birth of Milanovic’s first child in December, the whole team joined him in celebrating.

His experience is far from the exception.

On the other side of the country not far from the shores of the Adriatic, Aleksandar Ignjatovic, 33, remembers the shock and concern from his friends when he told them he was moving to Albania to play with KF Lac.

“Now, when they look on Instagram at my life in Albania, many tell me they want to come visit me,” Ignjatovic tells AFP.

With an eye towards retirement, Ignjatovic says he hopes to draw on his experiences in Albania to develop a post-football career.

“I am thinking of opening a tourism agency that will allow me to work in Albania and Serbia. I now know all the beautiful places in Albania,” he says, with the hopes of cashing in on Serbia’s growing tourism industry.

Ignjatovic also prides himself in having many Albanian friends and scoffs at the ethnic prejudices that have long divided many communities in the region.

‘How it should be’

“Football allows us to strengthen our ties. Football and politics are two completely different worlds,” says Ignjatovic, who has been living in Tirana for three years with his wife Mila, his son Ignjat and his three-month-old daughter Iskra.

But for Vladimir Novakovic, a football analyst with the Serbian sports channel Sportklub, the willingness of Serbs to play in Albania may ultimately boil down to finding a job that pays.

And while sports has the ability to unite, it has also served as a powerful venue for nationalist sentiment over the years, especially in the Balkans where football ultras have embraced virulent xenophobia during matches.

In 2014, violence broke out during a qualifying match for the European Championships between Serbia and Albania after a drone flew over the pitch with a flag used by Albanian nationalists.

And during the World Cup in 2018, the Swiss pair Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka — both of whom have Kosovo lineage — were fined by FIFA for celebrating their goals against Serbia by making a pro-Kosovan “double eagle” — a gesture which represents the Albanian flag.

The incident was widely panned in Serbia, where to date no Albanians are playing in the country’s professional football leagues.

For 82-year-old Borisav Stojacic, the absence of Albanians in Serbia is a more recent aberration, as he reminisced about the simpler times during “the Yugoslav era, when the presence of Albanian players… was nothing extraordinary”.

“That’s how it should be,” he tells AFP. “Emphasizing someone’s nationality is a problem that appeared only a few decades ago.” 
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Portuguese voters go to the polls Sunday, two years earlier than scheduled, after a political crisis over a blocked spending bill brought down the minority Socialist government and triggered a snap election.

The Socialist Party has been in power since 2015, with Portugal one of only a half-dozen European countries having a left-of-center government. It faces a strong challenge from the center-right Social Democratic Party, its traditional rival.

Some 10.8 million voters are eligible to choose 230 lawmakers in the Republican Assembly, Portugal’s parliament, where political parties then decide who forms a government.

Here’s a look at what’s happening:

Why have an early election? Parliament last November rejected the Socialist government’s spending plan for 2022.

In previous years, the Socialists had relied on the support of their left-of-center sympathizers in parliament — the Left Bloc and the Portuguese Communist Party — to ensure the state budget had enough votes to pass.

But this time their differences, especially over health spending and workers’ rights, were too hard to bridge, and Socialist Prime Minister António Costa was left short of votes to pass his party’s plan.

Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said the 2022 budget is “crucial,” because it needs to relaunch the economy after the pandemic. He called a snap election so the Portuguese can decide what path the country should take.

What’s at stake? Portugal is poised to begin deploying some $50 billion of aid from the European Union to help fire up the economy post-pandemic.

Two-thirds of that sum is meant for public projects, such as major infrastructure, giving the next government a huge windfall to spend. The rest is to help selected private sector projects.

The 2022 state budget forecast GDP growth of 5.5% this year, one of the highest among countries that use the euro currency, with a jobless rate of around 6.5% — roughly the same as now.

The new government will be sworn in for a four-year term.

What are the choices? The Socialist Party is promising to increase the minimum monthly salary, earned by more than 800,000 people, to $1,021 by 2026. It is currently $800. Low wages are a common grievance among voters.

The Socialists also want to “start a national conversation” about cutting the working week to four days, from five.

The Social Democratic Party is promising income tax cuts and more help for private companies. Party leader Rui Rio wants to cut corporate tax from the current 21% to 17% by 2024.

Those two parties traditionally collect around 70% of the vote.

The Portuguese Communist Party and the Left Bloc are potential allies for the Socialists. The conservative Popular Party has in the past allied with the Social Democratic Party.

Several other smaller parties are presenting candidates nationwide and could become kingmakers by supporting a minority government.

They range from the populist Chega! (Enough!), which opposes large-scale immigration and demands more support for the police, to the People-Animals-Nature party which wants tougher animal welfare protection and tighter environmental controls.

Who’s favored to win? Opinion polls suggest a close race between the Socialists and Social Democrats. That likely means the ballot will produce another vulnerable minority government and a rocky period of horse-trading for parliamentary votes before a budget can be passed.

The Socialists, smarting from the collapse of their outgoing government, say they no longer trust their allies on the left.

The Social Democrats, meanwhile, may have to address a surge in support for the Chega! populists, whose policies they find distasteful.

Has the pandemic affected the ballot? More than a million eligible voters could be in home confinement on election day, authorities say, and officials have struggled to reconcile the constitutional right to vote with their duty to protect public health.

The highly contagious omicron variant has brought record daily infections of over 50,000 recently, compared with fewer than 1,000 in November. Portugal’s high vaccination rate of 89% of the population has largely safeguarded the health system, officials say.

The main parties shunned their traditional flag-waving campaign rallies to avoid large gatherings. Party leaders attended 36 live television debates in the first half of January — many more than usual.

Thousands of poll workers got a booster shot ahead of the ballot.

Early voting possibilities were extended, and infected people are exceptionally allowed to leave isolation to vote, with the government recommending they cast their ballot in the slower evening period.
…

Many in Taiwan do not see parallels between Russia’s threats against Ukraine and their situation with China. Instead, much of the concern in Taiwan has focused on whether their closest ally, the United States, would become distracted by Europe or act in bad faith toward Ukraine — hinting at how Taiwan might be treated one day.

“I think people in Taiwan, or people that I am closest to, they haven’t expressed any concerns regarding the issues of a Russian possible invasion in Ukraine. They have mentioned briefly saying that the crisis in Europe is worsening, but they’ve kept it quite vague,” said Daniel Ha, who helps manage a co-working space in Taipei.

“I think people are always concerned about [whether] China could use this opportunity to flex its muscles again or move forward with their plans of unifying Taiwan,” he said. “I personally am concerned that it would be a big distraction if the West began a full-blown invasion trying to protect Ukraine. Taiwan could easily be sidelined.”

Syrena Lin, who works at a headhunting firm in Taipei, told VOA that while she was following the conflict in Ukraine, she had also not found much discussion of it in her daily life.

“I don’t think Taiwanese people are really treating this as a big deal, especially as I have a lot of friends in politics and I don’t really see any discussion among them,” Lin said.

“I am interested in this issue, and I care about how it’s going because the U.S. and China are both involved in it,” she added. “I think China is watching how the U.S. is reacting to military offensives and maybe China will take it as an example to how the U.S. would react when China really [attacks] Taiwan one day.”

Taiwan’s government has expressed similar sympathetic but measured views about Ukraine. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou said in a statement that Taiwan was “concerned about the current situation of Russia-Ukraine relations” and called for dialogue as soon as possible.

One reason for the relative distance may be that many Taiwanese — including young professionals like Ha — see more distance between themselves and China than between Russia and Ukraine, who were united for much of modern history by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union.

“Communist China has never ruled Taiwan officially or ever,” Ha told VOA, adding that the last time Beijing direct controlled Taiwan was in the 19th century.

“It was Qing dynasty that predated the Japanese colonial period so if you’re talking about historical facts, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have a right to claim Taiwan,” he said.

Ha said some Taiwanese may disagree with his view, particularly those who are descended from Chinese emigres to Taiwan in the 1950s after the end of the Chinese revolution, but their numbers are also waning with demographic shifts and the rise in Taiwanese nationalism among young people.

His feeling were shared by other Taiwanese, such as Kuan-ting Chen, CEO of the think tank Taiwan NextGen Foundation, who also found Ukraine and Taiwan to be a “false comparison” because of vastly different historic and logistical factors.

Chen said there are few geographic obstacles for Russia to invade Ukraine, but Taiwan has notoriously difficult geographical defenses like the 130-kilometer Taiwan Strait that would be a “nightmare” for China — at least for the next few years until the People’s Liberation Army completes a major modernization program.

China and Taiwan have had three close calls in the past that could have led to military conflict, although the last time China came close to landing on Taiwanese soil was in the 1950s. The most recent conflict was in 1996 when China fired missiles in the direction of Taiwan, but since then it has focused primarily on “grey zone” tactics such as flying military planes in the direction of Taiwan to erode morale.

For those who are closely watching the conflict in Ukraine, most of their focus has instead been on how the U.S. will respond, said Kwei-Bo Huang, an associate professor in diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in September raised uncomfortable questions in Taiwan about whether Washington might abandon another long-time ally, and the Ukraine conflict could resurrect many of these concerns.

“I can sense that in Taiwan, those having some knowledge of the Ukraine-Russia case are waiting to see whether the U.S. will fulfil its commitment to Ukraine and make more direct and strong responses to Russia’s threat of use of force. If the U.S. doesn’t do so, then the U.S. commitment to Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act will be doubted (again) by many in Taiwan,” he said by email, citing a major piece of U.S. legislation.

In the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act the U.S. has pledged to help Taiwan to defend itself against an attack but that does not guarantee that it will provide military assistance.

Many Taiwanese are also aware that while the U.S. and Taiwan have recently grown closer under the presidencies of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden, U.S. interest in the East Asian democracy has fluctuated over the decades. 

 
…

European allies agreed on Friday to draw up plans within two weeks for how to continue their fight against Islamist militants in Mali, Denmark’s defense minister said, after France said the situation with the Malian junta had become untenable.

Tensions have escalated between Mali and its international partners since the junta failed to organize an election following two military coups.

It has also deployed Russian private military contractors, which some European countries have said is incompatible with their mission.

“There was a clear perception that this is not about Denmark. It’s about a Malian military junta which wants to stay in power. They have no interest in a democratic election, which is what we have demanded,” Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen told Reuters.

Speaking after a virtual meeting of the 15 countries involved in the European special forces Takuba task mission, she said the parties had agreed to come up with a plan within 14 days to decide on what the “future counterterrorism mission should look like in the Sahel region.”

The ministers held talks after the junta had insisted on the immediate withdrawal of Danish forces despite the 15 nations’ rejecting its claims that Copenhagen’s presence was illegal.

“European, French and international forces are seeing measures that are restricting them. Given the situation, given the rupture in the political and military frameworks, we cannot continue like this,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told RTL radio earlier in the day, adding that the junta was out of control.

He said the Europeans needed to think about how to adapt their operations.

‘Full of contempt’

Speaking to France 24 TV, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said that Le Drian’s comments were “full of contempt” and Paris needed to act less aggressively and respect Mali.

“France’s attitude needs to change. … We are reviewing several defense accords and treaties to ensure they don’t violate Mali’s sovereignty. If that’s not the case, we will not hesitate to ask for adjustments.” 

He said that Paris welcomed military coups “when they served its interests,” referring to a coup in neighboring Chad that has drawn little resistance from France.

The junta’s handling of Denmark is likely to affect future deployments, with Norway, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and Lithuania due to send troops this year. It raises questions about the broader future of French operations in Mali, where there are 4,000 troops. Paris had staked a great deal on bringing European states to the region.

Colonel Arnaud Mettey, commander of France’s forces in Ivory Coast, which backs up Sahel operations, told Reuters that the junta had no right to refuse Denmark’s presence given agreed treaties.

“Either they are rejecting this treaty and so put into question our presence, or they apply it,” he said. “France and the European Union will not disengage from the Sahel. Takuba will carry on.”

Diop said the departure of French troops was not on the table for now.

However, Denis Tull, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said Paris may ultimately not be left with a choice.

“If this confrontation continues, there probably will simply be no political context in which the French transformation agenda for [France’s counterterrorism force] Barkhane can be applied and implemented as planned,” he said.
…

The most senior U.S. military officer warns Russia will end up blazing a path of death and devastation, for all sides, should it decide to resolve its differences with Ukraine by using military force. 

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley issued the blunt admonishment Friday during a rare news conference at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where both men insisted tragedy could be avoided if Moscow was willing to pull back from the brink. 

“Given the type of forces that are arrayed, the ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together, if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant,” Milley told reporters. 

“It would result in a significant amount of casualties. And you can imagine what that might look like in dense urban areas,” he said. “It would be horrific. It would be terrible. And it’s not necessary.” 

The U.S. warning Friday comes as the standoff between Russia and Ukraine appears to have reached a tipping point. 

Putin’s call with Macron 

Senior U.S. defense officials cautioned that Russia had amassed sufficient firepower to launch a full-scale invasion at any time, while Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron that the West had failed to adequately address Moscow’s security concerns. 

Putin, according to the Kremlin, told Macron that the most recent Western diplomatic responses did not consider Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion such as stopping the deployment of alliance weapons near Russia’s border and rolling back its forces from Eastern Europe.  

Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian radio stations Friday that Russia did not want war with Ukraine but that it would protect its interests against the West if necessary.   

“If it depends on Russia, then there will be no war. We don’t want wars,” Lavrov said. “But we also won’t allow our interests to be rudely trampled, to be ignored.”   

Escalating tensions and rhetoric 

But the U.S. defense secretary pushed back, telling Pentagon reporters Friday that no one has done anything to lead Russia to encircle Ukraine with more than 100,000 troops. 

“There was no provocation that caused them to move those forces,” Austin said Friday at the Pentagon, calling out Moscow for a new wave of disinformation campaigns.

“Indeed, we’re seeing Russian state media spouting off now about alleged activities in eastern Ukraine,” he said. “This is straight out of the Russian playbook. And they’re not fooling us.” 

Austin also painted Moscow’s saber-rattling as counterproductive. 

“A move on Ukraine will accomplish the very thing Russia says it does not want — a NATO alliance strengthened and resolved on its western flank,” he said. 

But with no sign of give from any side — U.S. and NATO officials have repeatedly rejected Russia’s demands — there are growing concerns that fear or hysteria could spread, making an already fragile situation more perilous. 

“We don’t need this panic,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv on Friday, accusing U.S. leaders of talking up the possibility of conflict.

“Are tanks driving here on our streets? No. But it feels like this (reading the media),” he said. “In my opinion, this is a mistake. Because those are signals of how the world reacts.”

Despite the disagreement over rhetoric, U.S. and European officials said they continue to hold out hope that diplomacy can prevail. 

One senior U.S. administration official, talking to reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss developments, said remarks like those Friday by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov are a positive sign. 

“We welcome the message,” the official said. “We need to see it backed up by swift action.” 

The official added that Monday’s United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine will be “an opportunity for Russia to explain what it is doing, and we’ve come prepared to listen.” 

Ramping up military preparations 

While Russia and the U.S. and its allies have spent much of the past week trading demands, both sides have also ramped up military preparations.

Russia has launched military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian fighter jets and paratroopers in Belarus.   

Ukraine’s military held artillery and anti-aircraft drills in the country’s southern Kherson region Friday near the border with Russian-annexed Crimea.

And the U.S., which has been providing Kyiv with anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, artillery and ammunition, said another shipment arrived Friday to help bolster Ukrainian defenses. 

Also Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance has already bolstered its troop presence in Eastern Europe and continues to watch Russia’s military movements, including the positioning of aircraft and S-400 anti-aircraft systems in Belarus, closely. 

“The aim now is to try to reduce tensions,” Stoltenberg said, speaking online from Brussels at a Washington think-tank event. 

“We urge Russia, we call on Russia to engage in talks,” he said, adding that opting for the use of force will not work out well for Moscow.

“When it comes to Ukraine, I am absolutely certain that Russia understands they will have to pay a high price (for invading),” Stoltenberg said. “I am certain President Putin and Russia takes NATO very serious when it comes to our ability to protect and defend all allies.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  
…

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

UN chief: We cannot abandon the Afghan people 

The U.N. secretary-general warned on Wednesday that Afghanistan is “hanging by a thread,” as the organization appealed for a total of $8 billion to scale up humanitarian assistance to more than 22 million Afghans this year. 

UN Chief: Afghanistan ‘Hanging by a Thread’ 

Norway hosts talks between Taliban and Afghan civil society

Norway hosted three days of talks in Oslo between a Taliban delegation and members of Afghan civil society. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said at the U.N. this week that the meeting did not confer recognition or legitimacy on the Taliban but was “a first step” in dealing with the de facto Afghan authorities to prevent a humanitarian disaster in that country. 

Norway Defends Hosting Talks with Afghan Taliban 

Military coup in Burkina Faso

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern about the January 23 military coup in the West African nation of Burkina Faso that deposed President Roch Marc Christian Kabore and his government. Guterres said the role of militaries must be to defend their countries and people, not attack their governments and fight for power. 

The secretary-general’s special representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, will travel to Burkina Faso this weekend on a good offices mission. 

West African Nations See String of Coups 

In brief

A U.N. team of experts arrived in Lima, Peru, on January 24 to assess the social and environmental impacts of an oil spill linked to the underwater volcanic eruption that triggered a tsunami in the Pacific island nation of Tonga. The team is specialized in contamination assessment and will advise authorities on how to manage and coordinate their response. 

Some good news

World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting of the agency’s executive board on January 24 that if countries change the conditions driving the spread of coronavirus infections, it is possible to end the acute phase of the global pandemic this year. That includes vaccinating 70% of their populations, monitoring the emergence of new variants and boosting testing. 

A small but important glimmer of hope in Libya: the U.N. political chief told the Security Council on January 24 that the overall humanitarian situation improved in 2021. Rosemary DiCarlo said the U.N. recorded a 36% decrease in the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance, from 1.3 million at the start of 2021 to 803,000 by the end of the year. Additionally, about 100,000 of the more than quarter million displaced Libyans returned home last year. 

Quote of note

“Were we to observe a minute of silence for each victim, that silence would last more than eleven years.” 

— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, addressing a virtual U.N. memorial ceremony marking the International Day for Holocaust remembrance on January 27. 

What we are watching next week

On January 31, the U.N. Security Council will hold an open meeting to discuss tensions between Russia and Ukraine. The meeting was requested by the United States, and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters, “This is just one more step in our diplomatic approach to bring the Russians to de-escalate and look for an opportunity to move forward.” The meeting will take place one day before Russia assumes the rotating presidency of the 15-nation council for the month of February. 

Did you know? 

The ancient Greek tradition of an Olympic truce goes into effect on January 28. It starts seven days before this year’s Winter Olympics open in Beijing and continues for a week after the close of the Paralympic Games. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed the truce during a meeting on January 20. The U.N. secretary-general is headed to Beijing for the opening ceremony on February 4. 

 
…

Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine has expanded to include supplies of blood along with other medical materials that would allow it to treat casualties, in yet another key indicator of Moscow’s military readiness, three U.S. officials tell Reuters.

Current and former U.S. officials say concrete indicators — like blood supplies — are critical in determining whether Moscow would be prepared to carry out an invasion, if Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to do so.

The disclosure of the blood supplies by U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, adds another piece of context to growing U.S. warnings that Russia could be preparing for a new invasion of Ukraine as it masses more than 100,000 troops near its borders.

These warnings have included President Joe Biden’s prediction that a Russian assault was likely and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks that Russia could launch a new attack on Ukraine at “very short notice.”

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the deployment of “medical support” as part of Russia’s buildup. But the disclosure of blood supplies adds a level of detail that experts say is critical to determining Russian military readiness.

“It doesn’t guarantee that there’s going to be another attack, but you would not execute another attack unless you have that in hand,” said Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. lieutenant general now with the Center for European Policy Analysis research institute.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment on any Russian movement of blood supplies but noted repeated public U.S. warnings about Russian military readiness.

The Pentagon declined to discuss intelligence assessments. The three U.S. officials who spoke about the blood supplies declined to say specifically when the United States detected their movement to formations near Ukraine. However, two of them said it was within recent weeks.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied planning to invade. But Moscow says it feels menaced by Kyiv’s growing ties with the West.

Eight years ago, Russia seized Crimea and backed separatist forces who took control of large parts of eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s security demands, presented in December, include an end to further NATO enlargement, barring Ukraine from ever joining and pulling back the alliance’s forces and weaponry from eastern European countries that joined after the Cold War.

Putin said Friday the United States and NATO had not addressed Russia’s main security demands in their standoff over Ukraine, but that Moscow was ready to keep talking.

Biden has said he will not send U.S. or allied troops to fight Russia in Ukraine but told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call Thursday that Washington and its allies stand ready to respond decisively if Russia invades the former Soviet state, the White House said.

The United States and its allies have said Russia will face tough economic sanctions if it attacks Ukraine.

Western countries already have imposed repeated rounds of economic sanctions since Russian troops seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

But such moves have had scant impact on Russian policy, with Moscow, Europe’s main energy supplier, calculating that the West would stop short of steps serious enough to interfere with gas exports.
…

Germany’s health minister said Friday the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is “well under control” in the nation, even though he said he expects the number of daily cases to double to nearly 400,000 cases before it begins to drop. 

Speaking at a news conference Friday in Berlin, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach explained that while the wave of infections itself cannot be controlled, the consequences can be minimized by taking the proper steps.

He said he expects daily cases to double to nearly 400,000 cases by mid-February, but he then expects them to drop, probably by the end of next month.

Cases are currently rising, with the country’s Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, or RKI, reporting 190,148 new cases as of Friday. Speaking at the same news briefing, RKI President Lothar Wieler said about 890,000 new cases were reported – nearly “1 percent of the entire population in just one week.” 

The RKI reports the infection rate per 100,000 people, as of Friday, was 1,073. 

Lauterbach says the government’s goal is to get through the wave with as few elderly people falling ill and as few deaths as possible, and he says so far, they are succeeding.

The health minister sought to dissuade people of the notion that just because the omicron variant is believed to be less severe, that vaccinations were not needed, saying that is wrong and not helpful. He encouraged everyone to get vaccinated and all those eligible to get booster shots. 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.

 
…

Pope Francis denounced fake news about COVID-19 and vaccines Friday, blasting the “distortion of reality based on fear” but also urging that people who believe such lies are helped to understand true scientific facts.

Francis met with Catholic journalists who have formed a fact-checking network to try to combat misinformation about the pandemic. Francis has frequently called for responsible journalism that searches for the truth and respects individuals, and his meeting with the “Catholic fact-checking” media consortium furthered that message.

“We can hardly fail to see that these days, in addition to the pandemic, an ‘infodemic’ is spreading: a distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news,” Francis said.

He said access to accurate information, based on scientific data, is a human right that must be especially guaranteed for those who are less equipped to separate out the morass of misinformation and commentary masquerading as fact that is available online.

At the same time, Francis asked for a merciful, missionary approach to those who fall prey to such distortions so they are helped to understand the truth.

“Fake news has to be refuted, but individual persons must always be respected, for they believe it often without full awareness or responsibility,” he said. “Reality is always more complex than we think and we must respect the doubts, the concerns and the questions that people raise, seeking to accompany them without ever dismissing them.”

Some Catholics, including some conservative U.S. bishops and cardinals, have claimed that vaccines based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses were immoral, and have refused to get the jabs.

The Vatican’s doctrine office, however, has said it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines, including those based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses. Francis and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI have both been fully vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

Francis has been one of the most vocal religious leaders speaking out in favor of vaccines and respect for measures to fight the pandemic. He has implied that people have a “moral obligation” to ensure the health care of themselves and others, and the Vatican recently required all staff to either be vaccinated or show proof of having had COVID-19 to access their workplaces.
…

Some supporters of Burkina Faso’s military coup this week were seen celebrating with Russian flags and calling for their country to switch alliances from France to Moscow. While the extent of pro-Russia sentiment in Burkina Faso is unclear, there is no doubt many are fed up with French efforts to help fight gangs and Islamist militant groups.

Riding through the streets of Ouagadougou on Tuesday, two demonstrators flew a Russian flag, celebrating a military coup in the country a day earlier.

They also turned out in Ouagadougou’s Place de la Nation to celebrate the military takeover.

“No, we don’t want no more France,” one demonstrator told VOA. “We are here because we want the defense of Russia. France hasn’t done anything that gives us success.”

France has been giving military assistance to Burkina Faso during its six-year conflict with armed groups linked to Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Earlier this month, the leader of neighboring Mali, Colonel Assimi Goita, welcomed mercenaries into the country from the Russian private security company Wagner, which has close links to the Kremlin.

The mercenaries took over a military base in Timbuktu that was vacated by French troops in December.

Demonstrators in Burkina Faso carried pictures of Goita at this week’s demonstration and on Jan. 22, held a march in solidarity with Mali. Police broke up the gathering using flash bombs and tear gas.

Analysts say in recent months, there has been growing anti-French sentiment and a pivot toward Russia.

Analysts say Mali is using Russian involvement as a bargaining chip after the West African bloc ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) sanctioned the country for refusing to hold democratic elections within the next five years.

“The Malian military junta is trying to mobilize national feeling, if you like,” said Paul Melly, an analyst with London-based think tank Chatham House. “It seems to have brought the Russians in or sought to bring the Russians in as a sort of tool of leverage. It’s not entirely clear how much practical military impact it could actually bring.”

The Russian Embassy in Burkina Faso and the military junta both declined to give VOA an interview.

Bernard Bermouga, a Burkinabe political commentator, is pragmatic about the situation.

“Whether Burkina Faso aligns with France, Russia or another country,” Bermouga said, “it’s not out of generosity. It’s not free. They’ll want something in return. What is needed is someone who can help Burkina Faso get out of the situation in which it finds itself.”

Activist Francois Beogo from Burkina Faso, who attended the demonstration, said the French must let them work things out on their own. The demonstrators are not against France, he said, but France must manage their affairs and allow Burkinabe to manage theirs. Without France, he said, soldiers will have peace of mind and be able to reflect on how to organize and free the people.

Meanwhile, the Russian organization that trains troops in the Central African Republic has offered military support to Burkina Faso. It remains to be seen if Burkina Faso’s new de facto leader, Paul-Henri Damiba, will take up the offer.

 
…

Some supporters of Burkina Faso’s military coup this week were seen celebrating with Russian flags and calling for their country to switch alliances from France to Moscow. While the extent of pro-Russian sentiment in Burkina Faso is unclear, there is no doubt many are fed up with French efforts to help fight gangs and Islamist militant groups. Henry Wilkins reports from Ouagadougou.
Camera: Henry Wilkins
…

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Thursday warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy there is a “distinct possibility” that Russia could invade Ukraine next month, according to a White House statement.

“President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February,” Emily Horne, the White House National Security Council spokesperson said. “He has said this publicly, and we have been warning about this for months.”

Russia said Thursday there was “little ground for optimism” that tensions would ease in Eastern Europe after the United States rejected its demand that Ukraine be banned from NATO membership and that the West pull back its troop deployment and weaponry from countries bordering Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. reply to its demands “contains no positive response,” but that some elements of it could lead to “the start of a serious talk on secondary issues.” The U.S. and its European allies have rejected the key Moscow demands as nonstarters.

The top Kremlin diplomat said officials will submit proposals to President Vladimir Putin. His spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian reaction would come soon, adding that “there always are prospects for continuing a dialogue. It’s in the interests of both us and the Americans.”

Biden talked Thursday with President Zelenskiy to reassure him of U.S. and allied support during the mounting tension. Afterward, the Ukrainian leader tweeted that he and Biden had also talked about additional financial support for Ukraine.

Officials from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany held talks Wednesday in Paris and agreed to another round of talks in Berlin in the second week of February. The sides agreed to maintain an official cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, according to Dmitry Kozak, the Kremlin’s envoy.

“We need a supplementary pause. We hope that this process will have results in two weeks,” he said.

The February talks will take place at the same diplomatic level as the Paris talks. Not on the agenda is a summit with heads of state.

“Nothing has changed, this is the bad news,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “The good news is that advisers agreed to meet in Berlin in two weeks, which means that Russia for the next two weeks is likely to remain on the diplomatic track.”

The U.S. has called for a meeting Monday of the United Nations Security Council on Ukraine.

“More than 100,000 Russian troops are deployed on the Ukrainian border and Russia is engaging in other destabilizing acts aimed at Ukraine, posing a clear threat to international peace and security and the U.N. Charter,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Thursday in a statement. “This is not a moment to wait and see. The Council’s full attention is needed now, and we look forward to direct and purposeful discussion on Monday.”

Russia is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council and therefore has veto power over any resolution.

The meeting, Thomas-Greenfield said, will be about exposing Russia for its actions and isolating the Kremlin for its aggressive posture regarding Ukraine, according to Agence France-Presse.

The U.S. and its European allies, fearing an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, continue to protest Russia’s massing of more than 100,000 troops along its border with the onetime Soviet republic, although Moscow says it has no intention of attacking.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the document the U.S. handed Russia “includes concerns of the United States and our allies and partners about Russia’s actions that undermine security — a principled and pragmatic evaluation of the concerns that Russia has raised, and our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground.”

Biden, while ruling out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, repeatedly has warned Russia that the West will impose crippling economic sanctions against it if it crosses the border and attacks Ukraine.

While Russia and the U.S. and its allies trade demands, both sides have ramped up military preparations. Russia has launched military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian fighter jets and paratroopers in Belarus.

NATO said it was boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea region, and the U.S. has put 8,500 troops on heightened alert for deployment to Europe as part of a NATO operation.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said American forces currently in Europe, some already on heightened alert, could likewise be mobilized “to also bolster our NATO allies if they need that.

Kuleba said Ukraine is not planning any offensive actions, and he expects diplomatic efforts to address the crisis along the Russia-Ukraine border to continue.

“We are committed to [a] diplomatic track, and we are ready to engage with Russia at different levels in order to find [a] diplomatic solution to the conflict,” Kuleba said at a news conference. “However, if Russia decides to fight, we will fight back. This is our country, and we will defend it.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, Agence France-Presse, and France 24.  

 
…

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the U.S. has failed to address Moscow’s main security concerns over Ukraine in the written document delivered Wednesday, but he left the door open for more talks to ease simmering tensions. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports. 

Produced by:  Bakhtiyar Zamano
…

Reports that Russia is connected to this week’s coup in Burkina Faso have made their way to the Pentagon, though U.S. defense officials decline to say whether the allegations have merit. 

Burkinabe soldiers went on national television late Monday, announcing they had deposed President Roch Kabore due to “the continuous deterioration of the security situation which threatens the very foundations of our nation.” 

A day later, Alexander Ivanov, the official representative of Russian military trainers in the Central African Republic, issued a statement offering training to the Burkinabe military. The CAR has been employing mercenaries with Russia’s Wagner Group to help with security since 2017. 

“The Department of Defense is aware of the allegations that the Russian-backed Wagner Group may have been a force behind the military takeover in Burkina Faso,” Cindi King, a Defense Department spokesperson, told VOA Thursday. 

But the Pentagon stopped short of saying whether the allegations are true. 

“We cannot speak to these reports or any potential factors that led to this event,” King said of Monday’s coup.

“We support the State Department’s call for the Burkinabe armed forces to respect Burkina Faso’s constitution and civilian leadership,” she said. “We encourage the restoration of safety and security for the Burkinabe people and for legitimate, constitutional rule in Burkina Faso.” 

Questions emailed to the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Burkinabe Embassy in Washington seeking comment have not been answered. 

The Daily Beast first reported the allegations that Wagner was tied to the coup in Burkina Faso earlier this week, citing sources close to the deposed president as saying his final acts in office were to oppose requests by the Burkinabe military to hire Wagner. 

“The president quickly rejected the idea,” one official told The Daily Beast. “Kabore didn’t want to run into any problems with the West for aligning with Russia.” 

U.S. military and intelligence officials have been increasingly wary of the presence of mercenaries with Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa, which was initially limited to the CAR and Libya. 

The head of U.S. Africa Command confirmed to VOA last week allegations by France and other European nations that Wagner personnel are now in Mali, brought in by that country’s military junta despite multiple pleas and warnings from the U.S. and others.

“Wagner [Group] is in Mali. They are there, we think, numbering several hundred now,” said General Stephen Townsend, the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). “Russian air force airplanes are delivering them.”

Whether Wagner mercenaries are destined for Burkina Faso, U.S. officials are wary. 

“We’ve been watching this for years,” said Major General Andrew Rohling, the commander of the U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa, during an online seminar late Wednesday.

“It is a way that Russia of course is able to influence [a] military without actually putting a Russian flag on it,” he said, calling the situation in Burkina Faso “a little bit of an unknown right now.” 

As in Mali, though, where demonstrators have repeatedly voiced support for Russian assistance, there seems to be at least some support among Burkinabes for turning to Moscow. 

Speakers at a rally of about 1,000 people earlier this week in Ouagadougou, the capital, repeatedly called for Russian military intervention. 

U.S. forces have been supporting Burkinabe forces through several initiatives over the past several years as the country has battled extremists aligned both with al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group. 

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was reviewing the situation in Burkina Faso and the impact on relations with the U.S. military going forward. 

Separately, U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso Sandra Clark told VOA that should the Burkinabe military install its own leader, Washington could cut support to the country. 

VOA’s Henry Wilkins contributed to this report.
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Cuban sailors working on luxury cruises are reduced to “ ‘slaves’ who only get paid 20% of their wages while the rest of their salaries go to the Cuban government,” according to a report by human rights groups. 

MSC Cruises, one of the world’s biggest cruise line companies, was named in the report released Wednesday by Prisoners Defenders and accused of keeping the passports of Cuban sailors.

Both the cruise line and the Cuban government deny any wrongdoing.

Sailors, along with doctors, engineers, architects and musicians, are among about 100,000 Cuban professionals who work abroad as part of an international outreach program launched by Cuba in the 1960s. The program’s aim is to expand the communist government’s influence in the world, and in recent years it has become an important source of revenue for the Cuban regime. 

Prisoners Defenders, a Spain-based human rights group linked to the Cuban opposition, Human Rights Watch and lawmakers from the European Parliament accuse the Cuban government of exploiting its own citizens by taking an 80% cut from their wages.

Doctors contend they have been sexually abused, posted to dangerous places and face an eight-year ban from Cuba if they decide to leave the government service.

These international missions are a lucrative source of income for the Cuban government, bringing Havana $8.5 billion every year, according to the Prisoners Defenders report, compared with tourism, which brings in $2.9 billion in annual income.

About 41% of Cubans working abroad say they have suffered sexual assault during their posts, the report said.

In a complaint to the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, human rights groups allege that Cuba breaches the basic rights of the professionals who form part of Cuba’s international missions.

The Cuban government has defended its record on its foreign health workers.

The Cuban Embassy in Madrid did not reply to requests by VOA for comment on the report. 

‘Slave plantation’

A spokesperson for MSC Cruises said in a statement that any shipping company employing Cuban staff had to deal with the Selecmar state agency in Havana and added that storing crew members’ passports centrally on board was standard practice.

However, Jordi Canas, a European lawmaker from the Spanish centrist Citizens party and part of the Euro Latin American Parliamentary Assembly, which is linked to the European Parliament, said at a press conference Wednesday: “Cuba is more like a slave plantation than a free country. Free Cuba treats its people like slaves to generate money.” 

Dayami Gonzalez, a Cuban doctor who has worked in Ecuador for eight years, said she received threats after she said she wanted to leave the Cuban government mission. 

An estimated 30,000 Cuban doctors work in 60 countries around the world, mainly in Latin America and Africa, and the Cuban authorities draw up strict rules to stop them from defecting once they are abroad.

Medics and other Cubans working abroad who refuse to continue to work for the international mission can be barred from seeing their families back home for years, according to Cuban government laws. 

Prisoners Defenders has taken testimony from 1,111 Cuban professionals who have been working abroad and says it has evidence of systematic human rights violations.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called for a federal task force to deal with human trafficking in Cuba, North Korea and other countries.

“Our commitment to combat #HumanTrafficking is backed by action and engagement from across the federal government,” he tweeted.

‘Dece

Cuban officials reacted angrily.

“The deceitful allegations by US Secretary of State linking Cuba to trafficking in persons seek to tarnish the fraternal effort of Cuba’s medical cooperation that saves lives, whose unquestionable merits have received international recognition,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez tweeted.

In 2019, Prisoners Defenders issued a report saying Cuban doctors suffered abuses when they were sent abroad. Its latest report has broadened the scope of this complaint to include Cuban sailors and other professionals.

The latest allegations came as Cuba rejected accusations by rights groups and diplomats that its courts system had unfairly jailed protesters following widespread protests in July on the island. 

In the largest protests in decades, thousands took to the streets to voice their anger over shortages of food, medicine and electricity when COVID-19 cases soared.

The Cuban state prosecutor said it had charged 710 people with crimes including vandalism, assault and “grave public disorder.”

Human rights groups, the U.S. government and the European Union have condemned the trials of the protesters, saying they lacked transparency.

However, the Cuban state prosecutor’s office said these accusations were “manipulations of public opinion” and it had “verified compliance with the rights and constitutional guarantees of due process” under Cuban law. 

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Ukraine’s leaders have been working to calm anxiety among the population as the threat of a Russian invasion continues to loom. On social media platforms, Ukrainians have been trading tips on how to prepare for war. On the streets of the capital, Kyiv, life continues as normal and many people are reluctant to speak openly about the tensions. In this report narrated by Jon Spier, for VOA, Ricardo Marquina is in Kyiv and has their story. 
Camera: Ricardo Marquina    
Produced by: Ricardo Marquina, MHarton
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