Month: September 2018

As global leaders digest the fallout from a stormy United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, China has strongly denied accusations from U.S. President Donald Trump that Beijing is trying to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections in November. Meanwhile, the diplomatic tussle has intensified between the United States and other signatories over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the U.S. prepares to hit Tehran with fresh sanctions. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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President Gjorge Ivanov on Thursday urged Macedonians to boycott a referendum on changing the country’s name, saying making such a change would amount to “historical suicide.”

“On September 30, I will not go out and vote, and I know that you, my fellow citizens, will make a similarly wise decision,” Ivanov said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

Macedonians are being asked to change the name of their country to North Macedonia to end a decades-old dispute with neighboring Greece and pave the way for the country’s admission into NATO and the European Union.

Athens has argued that the name belongs exclusively to its northern province of Macedonia and that using the name implies Skopje’s intention to claim the Greek province.

Greece has for years pressured Skopje into renouncing the country’s name, forcing it to use the more formal moniker Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the United Nations.

It has also consistently blocked its smaller neighbor from gaining membership in NATO and the EU as long as it retains its name. 

Ivanov said giving into Athens’ demand would be a “flagrant violation of sovereignty.” He has steadfastly refused to back a deal reached between Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and his Greek counterpart, Alexis Tsipras, that put the name change to a vote.

“This referendum could lead us to become a subordinate state, dependent on another country,” Ivanov said. “We will become a state in name only, not in substance.”
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Slovak police have detained one or more persons suspected of the murder of investigative reporter Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, several Slovak media outlets reported on Thursday, citing police sources.

The police said on its Facebook page it had detained persons suspected of violent crime and was carrying out home searches but did not say in which case.

The police declined to comment further.

Media, including the websites of SME daily and Aktuality.sk, where Kuciak had worked, reported police were carrying out searches in the south of the country.

Kuciak, who had written about political corruption in Slovakia, was found shot dead along with his fiancee Martina Kusnirova at their home outside Bratislava in February. They were both 27.

The murder shocked the nation and stoked public anger over corruption, leading to the biggest street protests in the country since Communist rule ended in 1989.

The pressure forced the departure of long-serving prime minister Robert Fico and his interior minister Robert Kalinak as well as previous police chief Tibor Gaspar.

Kuciak had, among other things, investigated fraud cases involving businessmen with Slovak political ties. He had also looked into suspected mafia links of Italians with businesses in Slovakia.
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A group of British investigative journalists have identified a highly decorated member of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) as one of two men accused of trying to assassinate an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.

British prosecutors have charged two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with the Soviet nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. 

On Wednesday, the investigative website Bellingcat reported that Boshirov was actually Col.  Anatoliy Chepiga, who was awarded Russia’s highest honor — Hero of the Russian Federation — in 2014.

The New York Times reported that the Russian news outlet Insider has confirmed Bellingcat’s findings. 

British authorities say the suspects arrived at London’s Gatwick airport two days before the poisoning took place.  

Their journey from a London hotel to the crime scene in Salisbury was tracked by security cameras. The two men then flew out of Heathrow Airport back to Russia the same evening.

Boshirov and Petrov were charged in absentia with carrying out the attack. In an interview on the Kremlin-funded RT channel, they denied they were GRU agents and claimed to work instead in the nutrient supplements business. The suspects said they visited Salisbury to see its famous cathedral and did not know Skripal or where he lived.

Britain quickly rejected the claims. 

“The government is clear,” Britain said, that the men “used a devastating toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.” 

Skripal and his daughter recovered from the attack, but a British woman who touched a discarded perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent died. 

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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The investigative group Bellingcat says it has identified one of the two suspects in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy as a highly-decorated colonel of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.

 

Bellingcat said Wednesday that the suspect, whose passport name was Ruslan Boshirov, is in fact Col. Anatoliy Chepiga.

 

Britain has charged him and another suspect, Alexander Petrov, with trying to kill Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok in the city of Salisbury on March 4.

 

Russia has fiercely denied any involvement in the poisoning. There was no immediate comment from Moscow on Bellingcat’s latest claim.

 

The two men have appeared on the state-funded RT channel, saying they visited Salisbury as tourists and had nothing to do with the poisoning.

 
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Israel should think carefully before attacking Syria again once it obtains the sophisticated S-300 defense system from Russia, a Damascus official said.

 

The warning followed pledges from Moscow to deliver the missile system after last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli airstrike.

 

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said late Tuesday that the S-300 should have been given to Syria long ago.

 

Israel, “which is accustomed to launching many aggressions under different pretexts, will have to make accurate calculations if it thinks to attack Syria again,” he said.

 

The Russian Il-20 military reconnaissance aircraft was downed by Syrian air defenses that mistook it for an Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people on board.

 

Russia laid the blame on Israel, saying Israeli fighter jets were hiding behind the Russian plane, an account denied by the Israeli military.

 

On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the S-300s will be delivered to Damascus within two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300s, which Israel feared Syria could use against it.

 

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said the delivery would be a “significant escalation” in already high tensions in the region and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would raise the matter this week with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at the U.N. General Assembly.

 

Mekdad said the missiles are for defensive purposes, adding that “Syria will defend itself, as it always did” — a reference to missiles Syrian forces fired at Israeli warplanes carrying out airstrikes inside Syria over the past months.

 

Meanwhile, in northwestern Syria, preparations were underway to set up a demilitarized zone around the rebel-held province of Idlib, the last major area controlled by a mix of Turkey-backed opposition fighters and other insurgent groups, including al-Qaida-linked militants.

 

Two jihadi groups have so far rejected the plan to set up a demilitarized zone by Oct. 15. The al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, the largest militant group in Idlib province, has not said yet whether it approves setting up the zone.

 

A Turkish security official said Wednesday that there were “indications” that some insurgents were leaving the demilitarized zone in and around Idlib but that it was unclear whether a “concrete” withdrawal of radical groups has started. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

 

Russia and Turkey agreed last week to set up a demilitarized zone around Idlib to separate government forces from rebels, averting a government offensive on the last major opposition stronghold in Syria.

 

Also Wednesday, Russian Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Ilyin said more than 3,150 Syrians returned to their homes in the past week, including 494 refugees. The rest were internally displaced people.

 

Moscow has called for international assistance for Syrian refugee returns, rejecting Western arguments that the Mideast country remains unsafe.

 

Ilyin, who spoke during a conference call on coordination of efforts to encourage the return of refugees, said the total of more than 1.2 million internally displaced people and more than 244,000 refugees have regained their homes.

 

In seven years of civil war, some 5.5 million Syrians have fled their homeland and millions more were internally displaced.
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Danish submarine inventor Peter Madsen, convicted of torturing and murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard one of his own vessels last year, lost his appeal Wednesday against his life sentence.

The Danish version of a life sentence typically is about 16 years long, but it may be continuously extended if the court rules that circumstances call for it. Madsen had sought a time-limited term. Now the 47-year-old could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.

His defense had argued that Wall’s death was an accident, although Madsen himself admitted to throwing her body parts into the Baltic Sea.

The prosecution had argued that Madsen’s motive was sexual and that the murder was planned.

“I’m terribly sorry to Kim’s relatives for what happened,” Madsen told the court. Wall’s parents were not present.

A Copenhagen court ruled in April that Madsen had lured Kim onto his home-made submarine UC3 Nautilus with the promise of an interview, where she then died. The exact cause of her death has never been established.

 
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The stone steps leading into the medieval church where Serbian Orthodox worshipers enter are worn. In the half-light of the interior, some pilgrims reverentially lean on or drape themselves across the tomb of King Stefan Dečanski, considered by Serbs a “holy monarch.”

Others light candles. One young woman has dozens of tapers in her hand, lighting each one slowly and methodically after a brushing kiss and a silent prayer.

Many of the pilgrims have driven six hours from Belgrade to pray this Sunday in one of the most revered Serbian Orthodox churches, the 14th century Visoki Dečani. For many Serbs, Visoki Dečani is a besieged church, surrounded as it is by Kosovar Albanians and located deep in the territory of Kosovo, the former province that broke away from Serbia in 1999 after a U.S.-led NATO intervention brought a year-long ethnic war to a halt.

“We have had a very hard time since the last Kosovo conflict,” said Father Sava Janjic, Visoki Dečani’s abbot.

“Last” seems an appropriate word, hinting at the possibility of more conflict to come.

And taking the long, historical view, it is not hard to imagine that sometime in the future, monks at Visoki Dečani will again hear the fearsome echo of war raging around them.

The church has been plundered over the centuries by Ottoman troops, Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and during World War II, it was targeted for destruction by Albanian nationalists and Italian fascists. During the Kosovo War, the final one in a series of Balkan wars in the 1990s, the church was attacked five times. In May 1998, two elderly Albanians were killed 400 meters from its walls reportedly by the Kosovo Liberation Army for allegedly collaborating with Serbian forces.

“This is one of the most politically turbulent areas in Europe. The Balkans have always been on the crossroads of civilizations and invasions,” said Fr. Sava.

As he talked with VOA, soldiers from the NATO-led Kosovo Force of peacekeepers patrolled the grounds – as they have done every day since the war’s end.

“Since 1999, we have had three mortar attacks and one RPG (rocket-propelled grenade), bazooka attack. Thank God no particular damage was made and nobody was hurt,” said Fr. Sava. A strong advocate of multi-ethnic peace and tolerance, he likes to think of the church as “a haven for all people of goodwill.” During the war, the church sheltered not only Serbian families but also Kosovar Albanians and Roma.

He added, “I’m still trying to believe that the majority of Kosovar Albanians don’t harbor negative feelings toward us. But very often we are seen just as Serbs. This church is seen as something alien here, as a kind of threat to the new Kosovo identity.”

Now he worries about whether Serbia and Albania can put conflict behind them.

Serbs and Kosovar Albanians remain at odds over Kosovo, and the jigsaw puzzle of the Balkans map isn’t helping them.

The presidents of Serbia and Kosovo are considering border changes in a bid to reach a historic peace settlement which, if sealed, could advance their countries’ applications to join the European Union and, for Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, secure U.N. membership. More than 100 countries recognize Kosovo as an independent state, but not Serbia. The EU has said it will not consider advancing accession talks until Belgrade and Pristina have made up.

Most EU leaders have long opposed any Balkan border changes, fearing any tweaks large or small might spark a return of ethnic violence.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton recently indicated that Washington could entertain the idea of border changes.

The U.S. ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared more cautious about a land-swap deal, but kept the door open. In an interview with VOA, Pyatt said, “There are no blank checks.” “What we have been very clear on is that this process needs to be locally-owned and locally-driven and we are supporting European Union efforts to see progress.”

Under the land-swap deal, the Serbian border would be extended south to include Serbs in Kosovo’s north and some majority ethnic Albanian areas in Serbia would be traded in return by Belgrade. That would not help the majority of Serbs in Kosovo, who are spread across the south and west of the country.

Fr. Sava worries a land-swap deal, if pulled off, would amount to ‘peaceful’ ethnic cleansing. “Land swaps, where the majority of Kosovo Serbs would not just be left in majority-Albanian territory but also probably be forced to leave, would be very unjust,” he said.

Ultranationalists on both sides reject land swaps.

Serbia’s main opposition leader, Vojislav Šešelj, dismissed land transfers. “What are we talking about? Kosovo is just part of Serbia,” He told VOA. Kosovo is being illegally occupied, he said, due to assistance from the West, and especially the U.S.

“We are not exchanging the land,” Šešelj said. “They can only have the highest level of autonomy. We will not recognize their independence.”

Šešelj, a onetime deputy to Serbia’s wartime leader Slobodan Milošević, was found guilty by the U.N. court of crimes against humanity for instigating the deportation of Croats from the village of Hrtkovci in May 1992. He argues Serbs and Albanians cannot possibly live together and that they should be in separate communities. “Albanian ones in Kosovo could be allowed some self-administration rights,” he added.

Earlier in September, Kosovo Albanian nationalists led by veterans of the 1998-1999 war disrupted a planned two-day visit by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, to Kosovo by blocking roads and burning tires. Their action showed how inflammatory the whole issue can easily become. Banje, the village west of the capital, Pristina, that Vučić planned to visit was the scene of the first crackdown by Serbian troops against ethnic Albanian separatists in 1998, which triggered the outbreak of open hostilities.

“All the wars in the former Yugoslavia were focused on territory and division, and to continue with the idea of territory is dangerous and will inflame nationalistic passions,” warned Nataša Kandić, a Serbian human rights campaigner and Nobel Peace prize nominee.

Fr. Sava harbors the same fear. “We still see people who are drawing up maps, and these maps in the 1990s became actually the killing fields. Do we still need it now?” he asked. “I am just trying to be hopeful that politicians see the risk of going into this story again.”
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Pope Francis on Tuesday acknowledged that the cover-up of sexual abuse is driving people away from the Catholic Church — just hours before the release of a devastating report that detailed decades of sexual abuse by priests in Germany.

The report by the German Bishops’ Conference looks at abuse by Roman Catholic priests over seven decades until 2014. The stories of 3,677 victims are documented, and close to 1,700 clergy are identified who carried out the sexual abuse.

Many records were destroyed. The report said the true number of victims and perpetrators is likely to be much higher. 

“For too long, we in the Catholic Church have looked away, covered up, denied, did not want it to be true,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, said at a news conference. “For all failure and for all pain, I must apologize.”

Speaking to several hundred young people in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Pope Francis acknowledged that the historical revelations were driving people away from the church.

“They are upset by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation,” he said during the final leg of his three-day trip to the Baltic states. “This is very bad when a church, a community, behaves in such a way that young people believe that it cannot give anything to their lives.”

Such is the scale of the problem now facing the church. In Chile, all of the country’s 34 bishops have offered their resignations over allegations of a cover-up. There have been similar revelations in the United States, Australia and the Netherlands.

Jack Valero of Britain-based Catholic Voices said it is a traumatic time for worshippers, but he welcomed the release of the report.

“We want it to end. We don’t want any abuse to happen ever again. We want victims recompensed. We want perpetrators and their enablers to be punished. We want all that to happen. So, these reports are good for us, that everything should come out so we can move on,” Valero told VOA.

Francis has summoned top bishops from around the world for a February summit at the Vatican on tackling abuse. Some campaigners are calling for an end to the principle that Catholic priests must remain celibate — an issue that Valero calls divisive.

“Celibacy is not a dogma, you know. It is a discipline of the Catholic Church for priests in the West. But I think it’s a great gift for the church. I think that it’s looking in the wrong place to try to change that,” he said.

But Catholics say the church must change if it is to regain trust, and they hope the pope’s acknowledgment of the challenge ahead is the first step on that long road.
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Russian railway worker Andrey Bugera had a singular goal: get to pension age so he can leave the polluted, frigid coal mining town above the Arctic Circle where he works and move south to live out even a brief bit of retirement in comfort.

But now that President Vladimir Putin has said he plans to raise the retirement age by five years, Bugera fears this will never happen.

In his city of Vorkuta, a place so isolated it cannot be reached by road, temperatures dip below minus 40 degrees Celsius in the winter and clouds of coal dust can turn the white snow black.

Thin, polluted air, scarce sunlight and winters lasting up to 10 months weigh heavily on the average life expectancy in the city, labeled the eighth most polluted in Russia by the government last year.

In June, in the space of two weeks, three of Bugera’s friends died before reaching the age of 50.

“One of my colleagues came home from his night shift and just didn’t wake up. Left his family, three kids. He was 47 years old. It was his heart, a blood clot. … So how can they even think about us retiring at 60?” Bugera said.

Though one long-time concession in the far north has been early retirement, to help attract workers to its harsh environment, the government’s planned reforms will raise the pension age by five years to 60 for men and 55 for women.

Yet males born in 2005 in Komi Republic, where Vorkuta is located, on average are expected to live to 56, government data shows, or four years short of the proposed new retirement age.

In the rest of Russia, the retirement age is set to rise to 65 for men and 60 for women making matters little better as the nationwide life expectancy for men was 66 years old in 2015, government data shows.

​Trapped

Two years ago, Bugera and his wife used their savings to buy an apartment in Sokol, a small, riverside town in the Vologda region, in central Russia.

They have spent their holidays there since, gradually renovating the apartment in the hope of one day leaving the Arctic.

Now, Bugera said he has given up thinking about ever leaving Vorkuta.

“With this pension reform, with everything pushed back, I feel like I’ll never get out,” Bugera said.

The government’s decision to raise the retirement age is part of efforts to balance Russia’s creaking finances after four years of weak growth made worse by sanctions but it is proving its most unpopular move in more than a decade.

Putin’s vice-like grip on power is not directly threatened because he has no real challengers, but his popularity rating has slipped, and once-loyal Putin voters are starting to express scorn for their rulers.

​Dying in a dying town

Around 200,000 people lived in Vorkuta in the 1980s, most coming from across the Soviet Union in search of the high wages miners in the desolate city used to earn.

Now, just four of its 13 coal mines remain, and the population has fallen closer to 70,000.

Districts of empty, blackened apartment blocks with collapsed roofs and yards littered with rubble surround central Vorkuta.

With no roads leading out of the city, it is too expensive for most residents to take their belongings with them when they leave. In abandoned apartments, furniture rots and clothes and books lie strewn across the floor.

“When I leave, I’ll take my guns and my guitar, that’s it. People drop everything and go,” said Sergei, a coal miner, traveling to Vorkuta by train.

A doctor at a district hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she did not want to stay in a town where everything was being shut.

She was due to retire next year, and like Bugera planned to move to a home she had prepared for her family in the south.

“With this reform, probably none of that is going to happen. I don’t know. But I have no more strength, will, anything, to live in a town like this. Where everything is in ruins,” she said. “You walk around like a zombie.”

​Protests

Bugera attended protests in Vorkuta against the pension reforms. The events were relatively small, attracting around 1,000 people in July, and are expected to dwindle as the snows set in next month.

“If we don’t manage to change anything with our protests … at least I’ll leave some sort of base for my children,” Bugera said.

A muted anger was registered in regional elections on Sept. 9, however. Vorkuta saw a turnout of just 7 percent, election commission data showed.

The presidential election, which took place in March, before the proposed pension reform was announced, saw a turnout of 50 percent.

“This pension reform has become the final straw. People have summed everything up and understood that this is the final straw for them,” said former miner and security guard Alexander Golyanchuk, 37, referring to the low election turnout.

“We live in tough conditions and we don’t live for very long. Now they’re taking away our pensions as well?” he added.

Walking through Vorkuta, Olga Lebedeva, 47, said she previously had four years to go until her pension.

“Now they’ve added five. So now it’s nine. I’ll grin and bear it,” she said, before pausing. “No … I’ll drink.”
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