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A rare tornado struck along the Czech Republic’s southern border on Thursday evening, destroying parts of some towns as strong storms swept through the area and injured at least 150 people, emergency services and media reported.A Czech Television meteorologist said the tornado, reported in towns around Hodonin, along the Austrian border and 270 kilometers southeast of Prague, may have reached F3-F4 levels, with winds hitting 267-322 kph in the latter level.That would make it the strongest in the central European country’s modern history and the first tornado since 2018.Photos on social media and news websites showed houses and some churches with destroyed roofs, broken windows, and fallen trees and destroyed cars along streets after the storms hit.BREAKING: Tornado causes major damage in the Czech Republic pic.twitter.com/TdSm87Z4gG— BNO News (@BNONews) June 24, 2021A spokesperson for the South Moravia region’s ambulance service told CTK news agency up to 150 people were injured.Czech TV reported around seven small towns were “massively” damaged, citing an emergency services spokesperson. An official of one municipality, Hrusky, said half of the town was practically leveled to the ground.Interior Minister Jan Hamacek wrote on Twitter the situation in the area was serious and all emergency services units were at work. Search and rescue teams were also headed to the towns. 
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Leaders of Indigenous groups in Canada said Thursday that investigators have found more than 600 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children — a discovery that follows last month’s report of 215 bodies found at another school.The bodies were discovered at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899-1997 where the Cowessess First Nation is now located, about 135 kilometers east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.A search with ground-penetrating radar resulted in 751 “hits,” indicating that at least 600 bodies were buried in the area, said Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess. The radar operators have said their results could have a margin of error of 10%.”We want to make sure when we tell our story that we’re not trying to make numbers sound bigger than they are,” Delorme said. “I like to say over 600, just to be assured.”He said the search continues, the radar hits will be assessed by a technical team and the numbers will be verified in coming weeks.The graves had been marked at one time, Delorme said, but the Roman Catholic Church that had operated the school removed the markers.’My heart breaks’On Twitter, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “terribly saddened” to learn of the latest discovery.”My heart breaks for the Cowessess First Nation following the discovery of Indigenous children buried at the former Marieval Residential School,” he said. ”We will tell the truth about these injustices.”Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said the entire province mourns the discovery of the unmarked graves.Don Bolen, Archbishop of Regina, posted a letter to the Cowessess First Nation on the archdiocese’s website.”The news is overwhelming and I can only imagine the pain and waves of emotion that you and your people are experiencing right now,” Bolen wrote.Bolen said that two years ago, he apologized to the Cowessess people for the “failures and sins of Church leaders in the past.””I know that apologies seem a very small step as the weight of past suffering comes into greater light, but I extend that apology again, and pledge to do what we can to turn that apology into meaningful concrete acts — including assisting in accessing information that will help to provide names and information about those buried in unmarked graves,” he said.’We learned how to not like who we were’Florence Sparvier, 80, said she attended the Marieval Indian Residential School.”The nuns were very mean to us,” she said. “We had to learn how to be Roman Catholic. We couldn’t say our own little blessings.”Nuns at the school were “condemning about our people,” and the pain inflicted continues generations later, Sparvier said.”We learned how to not like who we were,” she said. “That has gone on and it’s still going on.”Last month the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.Following that discovery, Pope Francis expressed his pain over the discovery and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on “this sad affair.” But he didn’t offer the apology sought by First Nations and by the Canadian government.”An apology is one stage in the way of a healing journey,” Delorme said.”This was a crime against humanity, an assault on First Nations,” said Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations in Saskatchewan. He said he expects more graves will be found on residential school grounds across Canada.”We will not stop until we find all the bodies,” he said.From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools, the majority of them run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, in a campaign to assimilate them into Canadian society.The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. 
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A Ukrainian hacker was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a notorious cybercrime group that stole millions of credit and debit card details from across the United States, the Department of Justice said Thursday.Andrii Kolpakov, 33, was also ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking, the department said in a press release.Kolpakov’s lawyer, Vadim Glozman, said his client was disappointed with the sentence but respected the judge’s decision.He said Kolpakov — who has already spent three years in custody after being apprehended by police in Spain in 2018 — planned to return to Ukraine after serving out the remainder of his sentence.Kolpakov was sentenced in the Western District of Washington. Glozman said that his client was currently in custody in Washington state.Kolpakov’s gang — dubbed “FIN7” — is among the most prolific cybercriminal enterprises in existence. A memo drawn up by U.S. prosecutors said that “no hacking group epitomizes the industrialization of cybercrime better,” alleging that the gang had over 70 people organized into discrete departments and teams, including a unit devoted to crafting malicious software and another unit composed of hackers who exploited victims’ machines.For cover, FIN7 masqueraded as a cybersecurity company called “Combi Security,” which claimed to be involved in penetration testing.Prosecutors say Kolpakov worked for FIN7 from at least April 2016 until his arrest in June 2018 and rose to become a midlevel manager directing “a small team of hackers” tasked with breaching victims’ computer systems and training new recruits to use FIN7’s malicious tools.
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One of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders warned this week he was launching a revolution against the country’s business and political elites, signaling a likely further escalation of violence in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Violence has spiked in Haiti’s capital in recent weeks to what the United Nations has called “unprecedented levels” as rival groups battle with one another or the police for control of the streets, displacing thousands and worsening the country’s humanitarian crisis. Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbecue, a former police officer, heads the so-called G9 federation of nine gangs formed last year. Surrounded by gang members wielding machetes and guns, he gave a statement to local media outlets in the slum of La Saline on Wednesday, saying the G9 had become a revolutionary force to deliver Haiti from the opposition, the government and the Haitian bourgeoisie. FILE – A protester holds a sign with a message to stop supporting gangs during a protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dec. 10, 2020.Human rights activists say Cherizier is actually not targeting the government but the opposition. The government has not publicly commented on his statements and was not immediately available for comment. A suspect in several massacres of citizens in recent years, among other crimes for which he was sanctioned late last year by the United States, Cherizier depicts himself as a community leader filling the void left by weak institutions. Cherizier said his gang members sparked the looting at multiple stores in Port-au-Prince last week, and the broader population followed suit because they were hungry. “It is your money which is in banks, stores, supermarkets and dealerships, so go and get what is rightfully yours,” he said in comments that went viral on social media in Haiti. Armed groups have become increasingly powerful in Haiti in recent years due to political unrest, growing poverty and a sense of impunity, say rights organizations such as the nonprofit Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research. FILE – Internally displaced people sit inside a shelter at the Center Sportif of Carrefour in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 8, 2021, in this handout released June 15, 2021, by UNHaiti.The presidential and legislative elections slated for later this year could be a factor in the recent uptick in violence committed by gangs often linked to local politicians, they say. Haiti’s police are not equipped to deal with gang members who have acquired ever-more sophisticated weapons, partly financed by kidnappings for ransom. Many officers have died in confrontations with armed bandits in recent months, including one in a fight with Cherizier last weekend, according to the police. The violence is exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in a country in which nearly half the population is facing “high acute” food insecurity, according to the United Nations, and coronavirus infections are surging. The president of Haiti’s supreme court died from COVID-19 on Wednesday even as the country has yet to start its vaccination campaign. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said earlier this month the displacements were “creating a host of secondary issues, such as the disruption of community-level social functioning … forced school closures, loss of livelihoods and a general fear among the affected populations.” 
 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in France, his latest stop in a multination tour, where he will meet Friday with President Emmanuel Macron, following up on U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with allies in the region to boost transatlantic relations. “During this trip to engage with the United States’ oldest ally, Secretary Blinken will emphasize the importance of maintaining transatlantic cooperation, addressing our joint response to the ongoing health crisis, tackling the climate crisis, and highlighting the strength of our long-standing bilateral partnership,” the State Department said Thursday in a statement. France’s President Emmanuel Macron addresses the media as he arrives on the first day of the EU summit at the European Council Building in Brussels, Belgium, June 24, 2021.France continues to be “a steadfast partner in the fight against terrorism,” the State Department said, adding the two countries “agree on the need to hold Russia accountable for its aggressive and destabilizing activities, including in Ukraine.” The U.S. and France collaborate on issues like “human rights, economic coercion and corruption” to counter the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to “erode the values and institutions that undergird the rules-based international order.” The U.S. “will continue to work with France in implementing climate finance to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy to achieve net-zero emissions by midcentury,” said the State Department. Earlier Thursday while in Berlin, Blinken said the United States and Germany are partnering to counter Holocaust denial and antisemitism, an effort the secretary of state said would “ensure that current and future generations learn about the Holocaust and also learn from it.” Media cover U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas as they talk inside the Holocaust Memorial, in Berlin, Germany, June 24, 2021.Speaking at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Blinken said Holocaust denial and antisemitism go hand in hand with homophobia, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination, and have become “a rallying cry for those who seek to tear down our democracies.” “That’s why we have to find innovative ways to bring the history of the Holocaust to life, not only to understand the past, but also to guide our present and to shape our future,” the top U.S. diplomat said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and German Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas are served beers as they arrive to speak at a youth outreach event at the Clarchens Ballhaus in Berlin, June 24, 2021.He and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas signed a document on the partnership. Blinken said the two governments would work to strengthen education and counter denial and distortion, helping public servants and young people understand the Holocaust and antisemitism in depth and to feel a responsibility to stop atrocities. “This dialogue will help us remember all that can be lost, but also help us to see all that we can save if we choose — if we choose — to stand up rather than stand by,” said Blinken. Libya talks Earlier on Thursday, Blinken and Libyan interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba held talks in Berlin following an international conference focused on supporting Libya’s transition to a permanent, stable government.  Wednesday’s conference, hosted by Germany and the United Nations, included officials from 17 countries and reinforced support for national elections in Libya scheduled for late December.  A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters Wednesday that the elections are important “not just to legitimize a long-term, credible Libyan government,” but also to help achieve the goal of carrying out an existing call for all foreign fighters to leave the country.  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, speaks as he meets with Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba, right, at the Berlin Marriott Hotel in Berlin, Germany, June 24, 2021.An official statement from conference attendees said that “all foreign forces and mercenaries need to be withdrawn from Libya without delay,” but on that point Turkey noted its reservations.  The senior State Department official said Turkey sees its personnel in Libya acting as trainers based on an agreement it had with a previous interim government, the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord.  Libya has experienced political instability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi from power. Rival governments operated in separate parts of the country for years before a cease-fire deal in October that included a demand for all foreign fighters and mercenaries to leave Libya within 90 days.     At a news conference following Wednesday’s conference, Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush said there was progress toward the exit of the foreign fighters and that “hopefully within the coming days mercenaries from both sides are going to be withdrawn.”  Defeating Islamic State will be the focus of an upcoming conference co-hosted by Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in Rome. The top U.S. diplomat will also participate in a ministerial meeting in Italy to discuss Syria and the humanitarian needs in that country.     Blinken is also scheduled to visit the Vatican, where Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, said the agenda includes combating climate change and human trafficking. 
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A fatal attack by a gunman on a provincial office of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party is stoking fears of growing political violence against opposition parties. For VOA, Dorian Jones report from Istanbul.Produced by: Rod James   
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Germany’s Green party was riding high in opinion polls until recently, but signs are now emerging of voters worrying how climate-action policies could impact their livelihoods and lives.  
 
And the old political tactic by traditional parties of labeling the Greens as a nagging, didactic “prohibition party” is beginning to resonate once again.  
 
Christian Democrat leader Armin Laschet has been quick to seize on the Greens’ call for a hike in gas prices, accusing them of wanting to punish poor motorists and of being too ready to ignore the needs of less-well-off Germans living in the countryside and small towns.
 
The Greens are falling back in the opinion polls just weeks after overtaking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives to become momentarily the most popular party in Germany. In May, the Greens surged past the Social Democrats to capture second place in European parliamentary elections, fueling their hopes of pulling off an era-defining performance in Germany’s September elections and even of securing the chancellorship in a coalition government.
 
But their popularity is dipping, prompting some commentators to question whether Germans are ready to be as green as the Greens, despite a recent poll.
 
And the party is not being helped by new questions over the professional ethics of their co-leader, Annalena Baerbock, also the party’s candidate for chancellor in September, say commentators.  
 
“It’s an embarrassing series of mistakes,” according to columnist Silke Mertins, writing for German daily Die Tageszeitung, a paper sympathetic to the Greens.  
 
“It is highly unprofessional that the Greens did not put their candidate through their paces in order to find precisely such errors and to know their weak points. What did the campaign team think that the competition was throwing cotton balls?” he said. He added: “The Greens were widely praised for their professional approach.  Now it turns out, however, that this praise was premature.”  
 
The Greens’ opponents have been quick to try to capitalize on the missteps. CDU federal vice-president Thomas Strobl has reproached Baerbock for undermining her own moral standards. He said it is surprising that Baerbock forgot to report the additional party income.  “That is very difficult to reconcile,” he said.FILE – Germany’s Green party co-chair, Annalena Baerbock, a candidate for chancellor, gives an interview before her party’s federal delegates’ conference, in Berlin, Germany, June 10, 2021.Baerbock was forced also to acknowledge breaking parliamentary rules by failing to declare thousands of euros she received from her party in addition to her salary as a federal lawmaker. The lapses have allowed critics to cast doubt on whether the 40-year-old is ready for the highest office.
 
The impact has been immediate — Baerbock’s popularity has plummeted by 12% and she is now trailing the CDU’s Laschet, who only weeks ago was seen as a weak and lackluster candidate for the chancellorship. The latest monthly opinion survey by polling institute INSA puts the Greens’ voter support at 20%, well behind the CDU’s 28%.
 
The Greens fared poorly in a recent regional election in the impoverished eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the Greens secured just under 6% of the vote — much less than forecast. The CDU did much better than predicted.  
 
Nonetheless earlier this month at a digital Green party conference, where members formally endorsed her as their chancellor candidate, Baerbock declared: “For the first time in decades, real change is in the air.” And she says she remains optimistic that the country is ready for a shake-up after Angela Merkel.  
 
Merkel announced in October 2018 that she would be stepping down as chancellor in 2021. She has served as chancellor since 2005 and her decision followed a series of election reversals for the CDU. “After the pandemic, the focus must be on revitalizing this country together,” Baerbock said.
 
At the conference she and co-leader Robert Habeck managed to see off quietly rebellious members who wanted even more ambitious climate-action goals and much higher carbon dioxide emission pricing and taxes. FILE – North Rhine-Westphalia’s State Premier Armin Laschet, a candidate for chancellor of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, speaks at the regional CDU assembly in Duesseldorf, Germany, June 5, 2021.Habeck and Baerbock, who took over as party leaders in 2018, have been credited for maturing green policies, making them more business friendly, and for transforming the party from being an insignificant, impractical fringe player into a front-rank sophisticated political force. They have been helped by voters placing climate action high on the list of political priorities, according to polling data. The Greens are in coalition governments in 12 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments, seven of them alongside the Christian Democrats.
 
And party members are keen to win greater political power. “I have never seen the Greens this hungry to shape Germany’s future. After nearly sixteen years of sitting on the opposition benches, they are determined to take the chancellor’s office,” Roderick Kefferpütz, a German Green strategist, wrote in a commentary for the Atlantic Council, a New York-based think tank.  
 
To counter accusations of being a party that wants to spoil lifestyles and upset livelihoods, the co-leaders frequently stress that the party is one of “Freiheit nicht Vorschrift” — freedom not regulation. But that has not stopped their political opponents from labeling them sticklers for tighter regulations.  
 
As with other European Green parties, Germany’s Greens face an electoral dilemma. By proposing higher green taxes and measures that will make transportation, energy, and home heating more expensive, helping to shift the economy away from dependency on fossil fuels, they risk prompting a backlash, largely from middle-class and lower-income workers, as well as pensioners who can ill afford to bear the expense. But tempering green policies risks alienating climate-action activists and young urban supporters.
 
Whoever forms the next government in Germany will have no choice but to press on with climate-action measures. In April, Germany’s highest court ruled that a 2019 federal law mandating that the country reduces carbon emissions to nearly zero by 2050 does not go far enough. “The provisions irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens on to periods after 2030” and on those who are now young, the court decided.  
 
The law has to be revised by the end of next year, front loading cuts in emissions. Laschet has pledged to do so. Unveiling this week, the election manifesto of the CDU and its sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union, he said: “We combine consistent climate protection with economic strength and social security.”
 
The group set out brand goals to invest in technologies, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to hydrogen and solar power, while promoting growth. But the bloc leaders also said climate policies to reduce levels of carbon dioxide “must be economical” and they ruled out higher fuel taxes, bans on diesel cars and flights and speed restrictions on highways, saying climate-neutral policies can be achieved through technological innovation.  
 
“You can do green politics without the Greens,” Markus Söder, Bavarian state premier and CSU leader said.
 
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Authorities in Spain say that a judge has ordered an autopsy on the remains of John McAfee, the gun-loving antivirus pioneer, cryptocurrency promoter and occasional politician who died in a cell pending extradition to the United States for allegedly evading millions in unpaid taxes.
A court spokeswoman for the Catalonia region said Thursday that a forensic team would need to perform toxicology tests on McAfee’s body to determine the cause of death and that results could take “days or weeks.”
Authorities have said that everything at the scene indicated that the 75-year-old tycoon killed himself.  
The judicial investigation is being handled by a court in Martorell, a town northwest of Barcelona with jurisdiction over the prison where McAfee died. The spokeswoman wasn’t authorized to be identified by name in media reports.
McAfee’s Spanish lawyer, Javier Villalba, said the entrepreneur’s death had come as a surprise to his wife and other relatives, adding he would seek to get “to the bottom” of his client’s death.
“This has been like pouring cold water on the family and on his defense team,” Villalba told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Nobody expected it, he had not said goodbye.”
Although Villalba said that he had no evidence of any foul play, he blamed the death on “the cruelty of the system” for keeping a 75-year-old behind bars for economic and not blood-related crimes after judges refused to release him on bail.
“We had managed to nullify seven of the 10 counts he was accused of and even so he was still that dangerous person who could be fleeing Spain if he was released?” the lawyer said. “He was a world eminence, where could he hide?”
Spain’s National Court on Monday ruled that McAfee should be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for evading more than $4 million in the fiscal years 2016 to 2018. The judge dropped seven of the 10 counts in the initial indictment.
Villalba said that McAfee had learned about the ruling shortly after on Monday and that his death on Wednesday didn’t come in the heat of the moment. He also said that the legal team had been preparing with him an appeal to avoid being extradited.
A penitentiary source told AP that McAfee was sharing a cell in the Brians 2 jail where he had been put in preventive detention since he was arrested in October last year on a U.S. warrant, but that at the moment of his death he had been alone.
Prosecutors in Tennessee accused McAfee of failing to report income from promoting cryptocurrencies while he did consulting work, earnings made in speaking engagements and for selling the rights to his life story for a documentary. The criminal charges carried a prison sentence of up to 30 years.
The British-born entrepreneur led an eccentric life after selling his stake in the antivirus software company named after him in the early 1990s. He twice made long-shot runs for the U.S. presidency.
McAfee often professed his love for drugs and guns in public remarks. And some of his actions landed him in legal trouble beyond Tennessee, from Central America to the Caribbean. In 2012, he was sought for questioning in connection with the murder of his neighbor in Belize, but was never charged with a crime.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday there is a likely association between two COVID-19 vaccines and a rare heart condition in boys and young men. The federal health agency said more than 1,200 people who had received either the PfizerBioNTech or Moderna vaccines developed myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. The condition was more prominent in men than women, and was detected more after the second dose than the first.   The CDC said the side effects, which include fatigue and chest pain, have been mild and that the vast majority of those diagnosed with myocarditis have fully recovered.  The agency concluded that despite the “likely association” between the two vaccines and myocarditis, the benefits of receiving the vaccine far outweigh the risks.   FILE – Health care workers prepare doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine before administering them to staffers of Japan’s supermarket group Aeon at the company’s shopping mall in Chiba, Japan, June 21, 2021.Both the Pfizer and Moderna two-shot vaccines were developed using messenger RNA, which is a single-stranded RNA molecule that is complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene, according to the FILE – Health workers treat a COVID-19 patient at the emergency unit of a field hospital set up to treat COVID patients in Ribeirao Pires, greater Sao Paulo area, Brazil, April 13, 2021.A White House official said “scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities” from both nations collaborated to secure the arrangement. Brazil has posted 507,109 COVID-19 deaths, second only behind the United States, which has 602,837, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.    
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The United States and Germany are partnering to counter Holocaust denial and antisemitism, an effort U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said will “ensure that current and future generations learn about the Holocaust and also learn from it.”Speaking Thursday at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Blinken said Holocaust denial and antisemitism go hand in hand with homophobia, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination, and have become “a rallying cry for those who seek to tear down our democracies.”“That’s why we have to find innovative ways to bring the history of the Holocaust to life, not only to understand the past, but also to guide our present and to shape our future,” Blinken said.He and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas signed a document on the partnership. Blinken said the two governments would work to strengthen education and counter denial and distortion, helping public servants and young people understand the Holocaust and antisemitism in depth and to feel a responsibility to stop atrocities.“This dialogue will help us remember all that can be lost, but also help us to see all that we can save if we choose — if we choose — to stand up rather than stand by,” Blinken said.Libya conferenceEarlier Thursday, Blinken and Libyan interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba held talks in Berlin on the heels of an international conference focused on supporting Libya’s transition to a permanent, stable government. “I’m so pleased to have this opportunity to see you, to see the foreign minister, to see your delegation, especially after the very good, good day we had yesterday, which I think demonstrated again the very strong support on the part of the international community, the United Nations for Libya, for a strong, positive future as a unified, independent, stable country without any foreign interference,” Blinken said at the start of Thursday’s meeting. Wednesday’s conference, hosted by Germany and the United Nations, included officials from 17 countries and reinforced support for national elections in Libya scheduled for late December.   A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters Wednesday that the elections are important “not just to legitimize a long-term, credible Libyan government,” but also to help achieve the goal of carrying out an existing call for all foreign fighters to leave the country. “A fully empowered, legitimate Libyan government will be in a much stronger position to turn to some of these foreign actors and say, ‘Thank you very much, it’s our country now and we’d like to be the ones to define the security cooperation relationships that we’re going to have and not have them imposed on us,’” the official said.  An official statement from conference attendees said, “all foreign forces and mercenaries need to be withdrawn from Libya without delay,” but on that point Turkey noted its reservations. The senior State Department official said Turkey sees its personnel in Libya acting as trainers based on an agreement it had with a previous interim government, the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord. Libya has experienced political instability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi from power.  Rival governments operated in separate parts of the country for years before a cease-fire deal in October that included a demand for all foreign fighters and mercenaries to leave Libya within 90 days.     ‘Real world’ solution
At a news conference following Wednesday’s conference, Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush said there was progress toward the exit of the foreign fighters and that “hopefully within the coming days mercenaries from both sides are going to be withdrawn.”  A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters that achieving that goal is an important step that now “has to be made operational.” “There’s a process here, and saying, ‘All means all and they all leave tonight – why haven’t they left tonight?  Will they leave tomorrow night?’ is not, frankly, a realistic approach in a real-world situation such as Libya,” the official said.   Next stop France, then Italy
Blinken is on a multi-nation tour that next brings him to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron, following up on U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with allies in the region to boost transatlantic relations.“This is really an opportunity for Secretary Blinken to reiterate the president’s message and speak with our oldest ally about areas of cooperation, including global security, again, recovery from the pandemic, and repairing and modernizing our alliances,” Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, told reporters Monday.     Defeating Islamic State will be the focus of a conference co-hosted by Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in Rome. The top U.S. diplomat will also participate in a ministerial meeting in Italy to discuss Syria and the humanitarian needs in that country.            Blinken is also scheduled to visit the Vatican, where Reeker said the agenda includes combating climate change and human trafficking.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to visit the U.S.-Mexico border Friday as part of her effort to curb the surge in migrants attempting to enter the United States, while examining the root causes of migration from Central America.Her office said Wednesday that Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas would accompany her to El Paso, Texas, one of the main migrant entry points.Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month, pointedly telling migrants “do not come” to the U.S.But thousands of migrants from those two countries, along with those from Honduras and El Salvador, have been making the trek to the border, many on foot, trying to escaping poverty and crime in their homelands, they say.U.S. border agents are facing the biggest number of undocumented migrants in two decades. They apprehended more than 180,000 at the border in May, mostly single adults. The figure was up slightly from the 170,000-plus numbers in both March and April.Most of the migrants are coming from Latin America, but many also are from Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and some African nations.The surge has grown since President Joe Biden and Harris took office in January, with Biden saying he was adopting what he called a more humane stance on migration than that of the Trump administration. Biden picked Harris to oversee efforts to curb the migration by addressing the root causes in Latin America for people to leave their homelands.Wall construction stopsBiden has ended construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, and unlike his predecessor, who expelled the migrants to their home countries, he is allowing unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. But like Trump, Biden is refusing to allow families and single adults to enter.U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the average daily number of children in its custody has now dropped to 640. U.S. health authorities are holding another 16,200 migrant children, though, while the government attempts to place them with relatives already living in the U.S. or with vetted caregivers.Republicans have blamed Biden for the border surge. Before meeting with Harris in early June, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei also told CBS News that when Biden took office, “the very next day, the coyotes were here organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.”Harris faced frequent questions on her foreign trip, her first as the U.S. second-in-command, about why she had not visited the border. Frustrated at the questions, she told NBC News she also had not visited Europe since taking office.Opposition Republicans have criticized her lack of a visit to crowded migrant holding facilities at the border, at one point posting a mock-up of a milk carton with her picture that was captioned “Missing at the border.” 
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday slammed an anti-LGBT measure passed by Hungary’s Parliament as “a shame” that goes against the fundamental values of the European Union. FILE – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks in Ankara, Turkey, April 6, 2021.The bill, approved last week by Hungary’s right-wing ruling coalition in Parliament, would ban any educational programs, advertisements, books, movies or television programs depicting homosexuality or other gender minorities in a positive light. All except one right-wing opposition party boycotted the vote. The ruling party defends the legislation, saying it is designed to prevent pedophilia. But human rights groups say it will be used to harass and stigmatize Hungarian citizens based on sexual orientation and gender identities. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, von der Leyen said the Hungarian bill clearly discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. She has asked commissioners of the EU’s executive branch to write a letter to Hungarian officials expressing the commission’s concerns before the bill enters into force. Von der Leyen said this is a matter of fundamental human rights, and she “will use all the powers of the commission to ensure that the rights of all EU citizens are guaranteed, whoever you are and wherever you live.” 
 
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A journalist was found stabbed to death Tuesday in the northern Mexico city of Ciudad Acuna, across the border from Del Rio, Texas.  Saul Tijerina Rentería was the fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year.  Tijerina Rentería reported for various web-based news outlets, including La Voz de Coahuila.  La Voz reported that Tijerina Rentería went missing after leaving his job at a maquiladora assembly plant in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday. His body was later found stabbed to death in the trunk of a car.  Journalists in provincial Mexico make so little money that many work other jobs.  The Article 19 press freedom group called on authorities to investigate whether he was killed because of his reporting. 
La Voz quoted state police as saying two suspects had been found with a knife and had been detained in connection with the killing. Last week, reporter Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera was shot to death in the southern state of Oaxaca, and another journalist was killed just west of Mexico City. In May, online journalist Benjamín Morales Hernández was abducted and killed in the northern state of Sonora. Two other reporters have disappeared in Sonora this year.  Press groups say nine journalists were killed in Mexico in 2020, making it the most dangerous country for reporters outside of war zones. 
 
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Russian forces said they fired warning shots Wednesday at a British Royal Navy destroyer taking part in a U.S.-led naval exercise in the Black Sea near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.Russia’s Defense Ministry said the action was taken because the HMS Defender entered 3 kilometers into Russia’s territorial waters. Britain says no shots were fired toward the vessel.According to a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson, a Russian patrol boat fired the shots at the destroyer and a Su-24M warplane dropped four high-explosive fragmentation bombs near the ship. The action came just hours after Russian officials condemned the war games, code-named Sea Breeze, involving vessels from 32 countries, including the United States, other NATO members and Ukraine.Britain’s Ministry of Defense dismissed Moscow’s characterization of the incident and denied any warning shot had been fired at the HMS Defender.  British defense officials told reporters in London that as far as they are concerned the Russians were engaging in a gunnery exercise and that the Royal Navy warship was “conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law.”In a statement posted before the incident on the Twitter account of the Russian embassy in Washington, officials said, “The scale and aggressive nature of the ‘Sea Breeze’ exercises in no way helps with the real challenges of ensuring security in the Black Sea region.” The tweet also warned the exercise would “increase the risk of unintentional incidents.”Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian army’s general staff, also had warned Britain and the United States against the “provocative” presence of NATO warships near Russia’s borders. During a conference on international security in Moscow Wednesday, he said British warship HMS Dragon, a guided missile destroyer, had flouted international maritime rules by sailing in what Russia claims as territorial waters near Crimea in October.Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, left, speaks with Russia’s ambassador to the United States before a news conference after the U.S.-Russia summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021.British officials said it was “categorically untrue” that the HMS Dragon broke any maritime laws and denied Russian claims that it had been chased away by Russian forces. Gerasimov also accused the USS John S. McCain, an American destroyer, of trespassing in Russian waters in the Sea of Japan off Vladivostok in November.At the same conference, Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister, warned of growing tensions between Moscow and Western countries. “The world is rapidly plunging into a new standoff,” he said at the conference being attended by officials from Armenia, Belarus, Serbia and some African states.In a statement about Wednesday’s incident, Russian defense officials claimed the HMS Defender, a guided missile destroyer, was instructed to turn back but that it failed to respond. Moscow said it had summoned the British defense attaché at the Britain embassy in the Russian capital over the incident.“The destroyer was warned in advance that weapons would be fired in case of a violation of the Russian state borders. It disregarded the warning,” the ministry said in the statement. “As a result of joint actions of the Black Sea Fleet and the Border Service of the Russian Federal Security Service, HMS Defender left the territorial sea of the Russian Federation at 12.23 p.m.” The incident occurred near Cape Fiolent off the Crimean coast.Warships from the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in Naples, Italy, have been leading the annual Sea Breeze exercise in the Black Sea. This year’s drill, the 21st, is the biggest to date. More than 30 ships have been deployed, along with 40 aircraft and 5,000 troops. It concludes July 10.“The United States is proud to partner with Ukraine in co-hosting the multinational maritime exercise Sea Breeze, which will help enhance interoperability and capabilities among participating nations,” Kristina Kvien, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, said Monday. “We are committed to maintaining the safety and security of the Black Sea,” she added.On Monday, Britain’s Defense Ministry announced it is transferring two minesweepers to the Ukrainian Naval Forces, as part of a $1.7 billion agreement with Kyiv to upgrade Ukraine’s navy. The memorandum for the deal was signed on board the HMS Defender. Under the deal, Britain is to help Ukraine build two naval bases, one in the Azov Sea and one in the Black Sea. 
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U.N. Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet warns increasingly repressive measures by the Nicaraguan government against its political opponents are undermining prospects for free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections in November. Bachelet’s warning came as she submitted her report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Nicaragua has been mired in a human rights crisis for years. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet says the situation is getting worse, making it unlikely that Nicaraguans will be able to fully exercise their political rights in the elections.  Bachelet says the government of President Daniel Ortega is using newly adopted criminal laws to get rid of its political opponents.  She noted security forces have arrested 15 people this month who declared their intention to run for president in November under ambiguous criminal offenses and without sufficient evidence.  “There are ongoing investigations against peoples’ rights and against the presumption of innocence. This is preventing persons from participating in general elections, not only undermining [the] political rights of persons to vote for the person of their choice,”  she said.The high commissioner’s report documents cases of arbitrary arrests, attacks, and harassment by the National Police against human rights defenders, journalists, and perceived opponents of the Ortega government. As of mid-June, civil society sources report nine women and 115 men, who had been detained during protests, remain in prison.  Bachelet says Nicaraguan authorities are squashing peoples’ rights of freedoms of expression and assembly, and political participation. “Authorities have been stigmatizing the opposition, threatening them on social media… This leads to a climate of fear. There is no right of enjoyment of freedom of association. There is no guarantee of a credible electoral process,” she said.In response, Nicaragua’s minister of foreign affairs, Samuel Santos Lopez, accused North American countries and Europe of seeking to maintain their colonial dominance over his country. Santos Lopez urged the council not to fall prey to their disinformation strategy, calling it an immoral attempt to coerce Nicaragua that should be denounced.  
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Berlin for talks Wednesday with German leaders and to take part in a conference on Libya’s political future. Germany and the United Nations are hosting the Berlin conference, seeking to build on earlier efforts to bring about a lasting halt in fighting in Libya and support a stable government.  ”We have an opportunity that we have not had in recent years to really help Libya move forward as a safe, secure, sovereign country,” Blinken said after a morning meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.Speaking to reporters alongside Maas, Blinken said there was consensus on what steps to take to best help Libya, mainly ensuring the implementation of a cease-fire and the departure of foreign forces from the country.U.S. Special Envoy for Libya Richard Norland told reporters Monday that the conference would provide momentum for steps that need to be taken soon for elections to be held in December, including establishing a constitutional and legal basis for the vote.  WATCH: State Dept. correspondent Cindy Saine’s report Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 16 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 42 MBOriginal | 729 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioPolitical instability
Libya has experienced political instability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi from power. Rival governments operated in separate parts of the country for years before a cease-fire deal in October that included a demand for all foreign fighters and mercenaries to leave Libya within 90 days, or about 3 months.      “On the foreign forces, you’re quite right that forces have not departed yet, and our basic position is we should not wait until after the elections to try to make some progress on this goal,” Norland said. “One of the reasons elections are so important is so that a fully empowered, credible, legitimate Libyan government can turn to foreign actors and say, ‘It’s time to take your troops out.’”      Norland said those attending the Berlin conference would also discuss “destabilizing actions by armed groups and terrorism,” citing recent attacks in Libya claims by Islamic State militants.  Holocaust awareness
Blinken and Maas are due to reconvene Wednesday to focus on the need to counter those who are denying or distorting the Holocaust.Blinken said Tuesday they would discuss “how we can ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten.”U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Cherrie Daniels told reporters Monday that promoting greater education about the Holocaust, its consequences and its origins will help government officials and the public “recognize modern manifestations of anti-Semitism and even other forms of hatred” and push back against them.     “As knowledge of the Holocaust wanes, nefarious individuals, organizations, and occasionally governments engage in Holocaust denial and distortion for all manner of ends,” Daniels said.    Islamic State
Defeating Islamic State will be the focus of another conference co-hosted by Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio as Blinken visits Rome on a later stop during his European trip. Blinken is also due to take part in a ministerial meeting in Italy concerning Syria and the humanitarian needs in that country.   
The European trip also takes Blinken to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron, following up on U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with allies in the region to boost trans-Atlantic relations.   “This is really an opportunity for Secretary Blinken to reiterate the president’s message and speak with our oldest ally about areas of cooperation, including global security, again, the pandemic’s — recovery from the pandemic, and repairing and modernizing our alliances,” Acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Reeker told reporters Monday.     Blinken is also scheduled to visit the Vatican, where Reeker said the agenda for meetings includes combatting climate change and human trafficking.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Berlin for talks Tuesday with German leaders and to take part in a conference on Libya’s political future. Germany and the United Nations are hosting Wednesday’s Berlin conference, seeking to build on earlier efforts to bring about a lasting halt in fighting in Libya and support a stable government.  Wheels up for my visit as Secretary to Germany, France, and Italy. First stop, Berlin, where I’ll be engaging with our partners to further peace and stability through the Berlin II dialogue. Looking forward to a productive trip! U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport in Schonefeld, Germany, June 23, 2021, to travel to Berlin. Blinken begins a week long trip to Europe traveling to Germany, France and Italy.  
Norland said those attending the Berlin conference would also discuss “destabilizing actions by armed groups and terrorism,” citing recent attacks in Libya claims by Islamic State militants.    U.S. State Department officials also highlighted the need to counter those who are denying or distorting the Holocaust, which will be the subject of talks between Blinken and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas this week.    “As knowledge of the Holocaust wanes, nefarious individuals, organizations, and occasionally governments engage in Holocaust denial and distortion for all manner of ends,” U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Cherrie Daniels told reporters.  Daniels said promoting greater education about the Holocaust, its consequences and its origins will help government officials and the public “recognize modern manifestations of anti-Semitism and even other forms of hatred” and push back against them.  Defeating Islamic State will be the focus of another conference co-hosted by Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio as Blinken visits Rome on a later stop during his European trip. Blinken is also due to take part in a ministerial meeting in Italy concerning Syria and the humanitarian needs in that country.  The European trip also takes Blinken to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron, following up on U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with allies in the region to boost trans-Atlantic relations.  “This is really an opportunity for Secretary Blinken to reiterate the President’s message and speak with our oldest ally about areas of cooperation, including global security, again, the pandemic’s — recovery from the pandemic, and repairing and modernizing our alliances,” Acting Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Reeker told reporters Monday.    Blinken is also scheduled to visit the Vatican, where Reeker said the agenda for meetings includes combatting climate change and human trafficking. 
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Thousands of asylum-seekers whose claims were dismissed or denied under a Trump administration policy that forced them to wait in Mexico for their court hearings will be allowed to return for another chance at humanitarian protection, the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday.Registration begins Wednesday, June  23, 2021, for asylum-seekers who were subject to the “Remain in Mexico” policy and either had their cases dismissed or denied for failing to appear in court, The Associated Press has learned.Under that criteria, it is unclear how many people will be eligible to be released into the United States pending a decision on their cases, according to a senior Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made public.FILE – A group of migrants mainly from Honduras and Nicaragua wait along a road after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in La Joya, Texas, May 17, 2021.But Michele Klein Solomon, the International Organization for Migration’s director for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, told the AP that she expected at least 10,000. Her organization is working closely with the administration to bring people to the border and ensure they test negative for COVID-19 before being allowed in the country.The estimate could be low. There are nearly 7,000 asylum-seekers whose cases were dismissed — the vast majority in San Diego — and more than 32,000 whose cases were denied, mostly in Texas, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. It is unknown how many cases were denied for failure to appear in court.Many are believed to have left the Mexican border region, thinking their cases were finished, raising the possibility that they will make the dangerous trek to return. The official said the administration is aware of those dangers and considering bringing people to the United States, as it is doing to reunite families that remain separated years after Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal crossings.The move is another significant effort at redress for Trump policies that Biden administration officials and their allies say were cruel and inhumane and defenders say were extremely effective at discouraging asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S.Biden halted the policy his first day in office and soon allowed an estimated 26,000 asylum-seekers with active cases to return to the United States while their cases play out, a process that can take years in a court system backlogged with more than 1.3 million cases. More than 12,300 people with active cases have been admitted to the U.S. since February, while others who have registered but not yet entered the country bring the count to about 17,000.That still leaves out tens of thousands of asylum-seekers whose claims were denied or dismissed under the policy, known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols.” Advocates have been pressing for months for them to get another chance, but the administration has been silent, leaving them in legal limbo. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading back to Europe, this time to Germany, France and Italy, to discuss a range of bilateral issues and attend meetings on Libya and combating the Islamic State terrorist group. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington. Produced by: Marcus Harton 
 
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Belarus perceives planned Western sanctions against the eastern European country as a near declaration of economic war, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.
 
The ministry issued the statement one day after the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada said they would place sanctions on several top Belarusian officials in response to Belarus’s forced landing of a passenger plane last month to arrest a dissident journalist.
 
The EU also said it was planning to impose economic sanctions targeting key Belarusian export commodities, such as potash and petroleum products.
 
“[The EU] continues purposeful destructive actions against the population in order, allegedly, to “dry up the regime financially. In fact, this borders on a declaration of economic war,” the ministry said.
 
Belarusian flight controllers on May 23 ordered a Ryanair jet en route to Lithuania from Greece to land in Minsk, where journalist Raman Pratasevich, a passenger, was arrested.
 
Pratasevich co-founded a channel on a messaging app that helped organize protests against the government of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.  
 
Since his arrest, the 26-year-old journalist has been seen on state television tearfully atoning for his actions and praising Lukashenko, prompting Lukashenko’s critics to say Pratasevich was forced to make the remarks.
  
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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is calling for reconciliation after winning a snap election held in a bid to unite a nation deeply polarized in the wake of its defeat in a recent conflict with Azerbaijan.  Jonathan Spier narrates this report from Pablo Gonzalez in Yerevan and Ricardo Marquina in Moscow.Camera: Pablo Gonzalez 
Produced by: Ricardo Marquina  
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The European Union announced Tuesday it is once again investigating Google for what could be anti-competitive activities in digital advertising.The investigation will try to determine if Google is harming competitors by restricting third party access to user data that could better target advertising.”We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.Google said it would cooperate in the investigation.”Thousands of European businesses use our advertising products to reach new customers and fund their websites every single day. They choose them because they’re competitive and effective,” a Google spokesperson said.The EU has fined Google more than $9.5 billion over the past decade for restricting third parties from online shopping, Android phones and online advertising.In the past year, online ads generated $147 billion in revenue for the U.S.-based company.Google’s ad business also is facing scrutiny in the U.S., where several states and the U.S. Justice Department are suing the company for alleged anti-competitive behavior.  
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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government on Tuesday would pardon nine jailed leaders of the Catalonia region’s 2017 move for independence.
 
Sanchez told a group of civil society leaders in Barcelona that his Cabinet would approve the pardons.
 
Opposition parties have said they would challenge the pardons in court. Opinion polls showed a slim majority of the public opposed the pardons.
 
Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan leaders to jail in 2019 for sedition and other offenses, with the sentences ranging from nine to 13 years.
 
The government in Madrid had banned Catalonia from holding its independence referendum, but the leaders went ahead with the vote anyway. The pro-independence side scored an overwhelming victory. The poll was boycotted by most unionists.
 
Sanchez said in his address Monday that for the two sides to move forward, “someone must make the first step.”
 
The current regional leader in Catalonia, Pere Aragones, welcomed the pardons as an initial move, but said he would push for amnesty and a new, authorized independence referendum.
 
The pardons do not affect the status of former regional leader Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium shortly after the 2017 referendum and was not among those convicted.
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“On Saturday, the day before the war, we met with friends in the park,” Red Army engineer Col. Il’ya Grigoryevich Starinov noted years later. “Orchestras and brass bands played, people danced, and we were happy. It was lovely and pleasant,” he wrote in his memoir Over the Abyss. It was 21 June 1941 and Starinov was in the town of Brest — a strategic town earmarked to be captured on the first day of Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Within hours, Brest would be rocked by infantry gunfire and artillery bombardments. Eighty years ago Tuesday more than three million German soldiers advanced on an 1,800-mile front from Estonia to Ukraine and invaded communist Russia, taking autocrat Joseph Stalin by surprise, despite warnings from Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill and from some Soviet military commanders and spies. Stalin reckoned Adolf Hitler wouldn’t invade for another year and he had only started a few weeks earlier to redeploy Red Army divisions to the western front. Operation Barbarossa was the biggest military operation in history and Hitler and his generals started the meticulous planning for it nine months earlier. As far as Hitler was concerned, it was to be a “war of annihilation” — against Jews and Slavs, both considered subhuman by the German Führer.  Eight decades on, Germany has been marking the 80th anniversary of an invasion some military historians say lost Hitler the Second World War. Buoyed by the ease of their Blitzkrieg victories over France and Poland, Hitler and his senior generals underestimated the caliber of the Red Army, the superiority of Russian tanks and the resolve of ordinary Russians, says British broadcaster and author Jonathan Dimbleby in a new book on the invasion, Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War. But Hitler’s strategic miscalculation was far from the mind of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier Friday when opening a Barbarossa exhibition in Berlin. He said the anniversary offered an opportunity to rethink events in 1941 when German soldiers unleashed “hatred and violence” and the war moved “towards the madness of total annihilation.”German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addresses the media at his residence Bellevue Palace in Berlin, Germany, Friday, May 28, 2021. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announces he will seeks for a second term.“From the very first day, the German campaign was driven by hatred: by antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism, by racial mania against the Slavic and Asian peoples of the Soviet Union. As difficult as it may be for us, we must remember this,” he said. An estimated 27 million people, including 14 million civilians, were “murdered, beaten to death, allowed to starve to death or worked to death” by the Wehrmacht and SS Death Squads, or Einsatzgruppen, Steinmeier said. Germany, he added, had for too long suppressed the “unprecedented brutality and gruesomeness” of its soldiers during the war with the Soviet Union. “It weighs on us that our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers were involved in these crimes,” he said.  Muted remembrance While Germany has had high-profile events to mark the anniversary, Russian commemorations Tuesday will be more low-key and muted — in contrast to the pomp and circumstance afforded other notable wartime events, especially of Red Army triumphs.  In 2018, the 75th anniversary of the Russian victory at Stalingrad was marked with somber memorials and patriotic military parades with President Vladimir Putin highly visible throughout the ceremonies as well as during the lead up to them. On Friday, a Kremlin spokesman said the media would be informed of any special events in due course, but supplied no details of any major commemoration plans for Putin.  Even so, as in other years, the anniversary of Barbarossa, known as the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, will be marked with candlelit parades and the laying of wreaths in most Russian towns and cities. Some commentators suggest Operation Barbarossa doesn’t fit so well with the Kremlin’s efforts the past few years to rehabilitate Stalin. Nine days before the invasion, the Kremlin ordered Moscow radio to assure listeners there was no prospect of a German invasion. An official TASS report dismissed “rumors” of a coming German attack as “clumsy propaganda” spread by countries hostile to Soviet Russia. Even as the offensive unfolded, Stalin still thought it was a provocation by German generals. “I’m sure Hitler isn’t aware of this,” Stalin told military aides. In the months preceding the invasion, which was originally codenamed ‘Otto,’ Hitler and his generals massed seven armies, consisting of 120 divisions, along a line stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. The invasion force included 600,000 vehicles, 750,000 artillery pieces and nearly two thousand aircraft. More than a hundred landing strips were prepared in Nazi-occupied Poland for an invasion that would trigger three and half years of bloodshed and barbarity.  German officers and men were told little of where eventually they would be heading, but many guessed. Secrecy was the order of the day. To try to disguise what was happening from the Soviets, German troops in some populated areas were ordered to wear civilian clothes; tanks and troop movements were made under the cover of darkness. “We ourselves became aware around 20 June that war against the Russians was a possibility,” infantrymen Gerhard Gortz noted in a journal quoted by historian Robert Kershaw in his book War Without Garlands. That was just two days before the invasion got underway. “There was a feeling in the air. No fires were allowed, and one could not walk about with torches or cause any noise,” he added.  As he scribbled in his diary, Russian trains were still transporting raw materials and agricultural produce to Germany, exports agreed in the nonaggression pact Hitler and Stalin struck in 1939. German infantryman, Theo Scharf, observed on the eve of battle: “Oil tank trains rolled continuously westward, past us, from the oil fields on the Soviet side.” Russian military commanders bordering the frontier were aware of the German military buildup, according to Kershaw, but no orders were issued by Moscow for them to raise their state of readiness and “where measures were taken on the initiative of individual staffs, they were ordered to be reversed,” he says.  Russian historian Dimitrij Wolkognov, who was a Red Army officer during the war, later wrote: “Stalin was like God on earth. He alone said, ‘the war will not happen now.’ It was his isolated belief, and he wanted to believe it.”  As bombs rained down on Soviet positions and Wehrmacht infantrymen and German tanks launched their assault, Russian units on the front were ordered to observe and not to act as the attack was still viewed in Moscow as a provocation. Nazi forces advanced quickly into Russia rapidly. But within six months the hubristic offensive sputtered after the Wehrmacht suffered at least 800,000 casualties and the Soviets six times that number. The winter took its toll of German soldiers who had not been supplied with cold-weather clothing.  As the invasion got underway, a German platoon commander noted in his journal that almost 129 years before, Emperor Napoleon had launched his Russian campaign. “We all know what happened. Will we do better?”  They didn’t and Hitler’s gamble failed, sealing Germany’s fate in the Second World War. 
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