Russia’s Federal Security Service has issued an arrest warrant for investigative journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, editor of the Insider news website. He’s being accused of illegally crossing the border into Ukraine in August and could face up to two years in prison. Anna Rice has the story.
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NATO said Wednesday it expelled eight members of Russia’s mission to the military alliance for allegedly working in secret as intelligence officers.
“We can confirm that we have withdrawn the accreditation of eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, who were undeclared Russian intelligence officers,” an unnamed NATO official said.
NATO also said it would cut the number of positions that Russia could accredit to NATO from 20 to 10 at the end of October. The alliance did not immediately explain why the decision was made.
The official said, “NATO’s policy towards Russia remains consistent. We have strengthened our deterrence and defense in response to Russia’s aggressive actions, while at the same time we remain open for a meaningful dialogue.”
Senior Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s international affairs committee, said Moscow would retaliate but did not provide specifics, according to Interfax.
NATO-Russian relations have steadily deteriorated since Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. NATO and Russia also disagree over issues such as Russia’s nuclear missile development and aerial intrusions into NATO airspace.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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A September 29th meeting between the presidents of Russia and Turkey resulted in both sides committing to deepen relations. But as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, that rapprochement could come at a high cost to Turkey’s ties with NATO ally, the United States. Dorian Jones reports.
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Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), winners of last month’s nationwide parliamentary elections, said Wednesday they are holding talks with the nation’s Green Party and Free Democratic Party (FDP) — the respective third- and fourth-place finishers in the election, to try to form a ruling coalition.
While any deal is far from being made, the announcement puts SPD leader and outgoing Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz closer to leading Germany’s next government.
The SPD narrowly defeated Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) 25.7% to 24.1% in the September 26 elections, handing Merkel’s ruling coalition its worst-ever defeat.
But that narrow victory — and the fact that no party won a clear majority in parliament — left some room for the CDU to form a ruling coalition with one or both of the smaller parties. Immediately following the election, the Greens and the FDP agreed to meet with both parties and each other to see what could be negotiated.
On Wednesday, following preliminary talks last week with both the top two parties, Green Party leaders said serious negotiations with Scholz’s SPD “makes the most sense.” Green co-leader Robert Habeck told reporters that while there is still a lot to be discussed, “last week’s talks showed this is where the greatest overlaps are conceivable, especially in the broad area of social policy.”
FDP leader Christian Lindner confirmed the three-way talks could begin as early as Thursday.
CDU leader Armin Laschet told reporters they are still open to more talks but that decision lies with the two smaller parties.
Merkel was asked about her party’s chances Wednesday while speaking to reporters at a European Union Summit in Slovenia.
“The CDU did not get the best of voting results,” she said.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
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A group of French senators arrived in Taiwan for a five-day visit Wednesday following a large Chinese show of force with fighter jets amid the highest tensions in decades between China and Taiwan.
The group, led by senator Alain Richard, will meet with President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwanese economic and health officials and the Mainland Affairs Council. Richard, a former French defense minister, previously visited Taiwan in 2015 and 2018, according to Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency, and heads the Taiwan Friendship group in the French senate.
China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye sent a warning letter in February calling on Richard to cancel the Taiwan visit, according to local media reports.
The visit will likely provoke a rebuke from China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory and therefore opposes any international engagement with the island such as visits by foreign government officials. It also has aggressively poached Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies.
In its most recent display of sustained military harassment, China flew fighter jets 149 times toward Taiwan over four days from Friday to Monday. The White House called the flights risky and destabilizing, while China responded that the U.S. selling weapons to Taiwan and its ships navigating the Taiwan Strait were provocative.
Taiwan’s defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators Wednesday that the situation “is the most severe in the 40 years since I’ve enlisted.” Chiu was answering questions as the legislature decides whether to approve a special budget for air and naval defense purchases.
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949. Today they have extensive trade and investment ties but no official relations, and China has increasingly mobilized military, diplomatic and economic pressure to undermine Tsai’s independence-leaning administration.
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After a push to patch U.S.-French relations, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken closes a Paris visit Wednesday with the final day of ministerial talks at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Blinken highlighted several challenges as he spoke at the opening of the meeting Tuesday, including the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis, inequity and setting rules for a technologically advancing world.
“The principles at the heart of this organization and our democracies are being challenged by authoritarian governments that argue their model is better at meeting people’s basic needs. Some of these same governments are actively seeking to undermine the rules-based order that has been fundamental to security and prosperity of our countries for generations,” Blinken said, without naming specific nations.
Blinken said member nations must “prove that our approach can make a better life for people … in all countries and in a way that’s more equitable than in the past” while holding “ourselves accountable.”
In addition to the final work at the OECD meetings Wednesday, Blinken is holding separate talks with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Colombian Vice President and Foreign Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez.
Tensions over AUKUS deal
The first part of his Paris trip was focused on repairing strained ties with ally France following a dispute about a security partnership among the United States, Britain and Australia.
That included a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron during which a U.S. official said Blinken and Macron discussed joint projects the two sides could announce during a meeting later this month between Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden.
“We could and we should have communicated better,” Blinken told France 2 television in an interview after his meeting with Macron. “We sometimes tend to take for granted a relationship as important and deep as the one that links France and the United States.”
The Biden administration announced September 15 a new security pact with Australia and Britain. Under the deal, Australia will get at least eight nuclear-powered submarines to be built domestically using American technology. The agreement came as Australia pulled out of an earlier deal with France for diesel-electric submarines, which angered Paris.
France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia within two days following the announcement. Le Drian declared a “crisis of trust” in the United States.
Blinken heads to Mexico
Blinken’s weeklong trip also includes a stop at Stanford University, and meetings in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday for the U.S.-Mexico High Level Security Dialogue.
He will join U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to discuss security issues, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said this week.
The high-level meeting comes amid a recent migration crisis as tens of thousands of Haitian migrants gathered at the U.S.-Mexico border last month.
The Biden administration confirmed on September 24 that a makeshift camp where 15,000 Haitian migrants braved desperate conditions along the U.S.-Mexico border was now vacant.
In late September, Mexico also began flying Haitian migrants back to their homeland.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
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NATO’s top official is signaling that it would be a mistake to see the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan or simmering tensions between France and the United States as a weakening of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Instead, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned would-be adversaries that NATO will remain unified and resolute against a growing number of threats from old adversaries and new ones.
“Questions are being asked about the strength of the bond between Europe and North America,” Stoltenberg told an audience at Georgetown University in Washington following a series of meetings with top U.S. officials.
“They do not change the big picture,” he said. “We do not know what the next crisis will be, but we do know that whatever happens, we are safer when we stand together.”
Specifically, Stoltenberg pushed back against charges that U.S. President Joe Biden cast aside NATO allies when he decided to make good on the previous U.S. administration deal to pull American troops from Afghanistan.
“The idea that the United States did not consult is wrong,” Stoltenberg said. “That’s factually wrong.”
The NATO leader also said that while France was “disappointed” by a new security pact between the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia — the so-called AUKUS deal in which the U.S. and the U.K. will share technology with Australia to help it build nuclear-powered submarines — “NATO allies agree on the big picture that we need to stand together also working with our Asia-Pacific partners.”
“China has the second-largest defense budget in the world. They’re investing heavily in new military capabilities, including nuclear long-range weapons systems,” Stoltenberg said. “I expect that the upcoming new strategic concept for NATO will actually reflect a much more comprehensive and unified position on how to relate to China.”
But the NATO secretary-general saved his toughest talk for Russia, warning that relations between NATO and Moscow are “at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War.”
“They have deployed new, advanced weapon systems. They have violated one of the cornerstones of arms control, the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) that banned all intermediate-range weapon systems,” he said. “And we have seen a more aggressive Russia abroad, in many places, and then a more repressive Russia at home.”
And Stoltenberg went even further, appearing to chastise Moscow for its stance on NATO enlargement, specifically its opposition to membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
“It is the right for any sovereign nation to decide its own path. The whole idea that it’s a provocation to Russia that small neighbors join NATO is absolutely wrong,” he said. “That’s the provocation, that anyone is saying that.”
Stoltenberg declined to say when Georgia or Ukraine might gain NATO membership, calling it a matter for the two countries and the alliance, and “no one else.”
Stoltenberg also said that during his time in Washington, specifically during his meeting Monday with Biden, he pushed for NATO members to do more to help aspiring members.
“We need to step up and do more for those aspirant countries, because as long as they are not members, we should provide more support, more training, more capacity building, help them implement reforms, fight corruption and build the security and defense institutions,” Stoltenberg said.
“We need to establish that there is a lot in between nothing and full membership,” he added.
A White House readout of Monday’s meeting said the two leaders, “discussed the international security environment and NATO’s ongoing efforts to safeguard Transatlantic defense.”
It also said Biden “reaffirmed his strong support for NATO and the importance of bolstering deterrence and defense against strategic competitors and transnational threats.”
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Add U.S. military officials to the crescendo of voices warning Mali’s interim government against brokering any deal to use mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group to help with security and counterterrorism.
For weeks, U.S. and French officials have publicly tried to dissuade Malian leaders from moving forward with a reported deal that would pay Wagner $10.8 million a month for 1,000 mercenaries to train Mali’s military and provide security for senior officials.
Now, the Pentagon says such a deal could cost Mali in multiple ways.
“Given the Wagner Group’s record, if these reports are true, any role for Russian mercenaries in Mali will likely exacerbate an already fragile and unstable situation,” U.S. Defense Department spokesperson Cindi King told VOA.
King also warned a deal between Mali and the Wagner Group “would complicate the international response in support of the transition government.”
The U.S. had been providing training and other support to Mali as it tries to confront the threat from various terrorist groups, including the Islamic State affiliate IS-Greater Sahara and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, also known as JNIM.
But that support was suspended following the August 2020 coup that saw elements of the Malian military depose the country’s elected leaders.
More recently, France announced this past June that it would bring home some 2,000 counterterrorism forces it had stationed in Mali and neighboring countries.
Mali’s interim government has so far denied a deal with Russia’s Wagner Group is in the offing, but the country’s prime minister told VOA last week that the actions of the U.S., France and others have left the interim government with few choices.
“The security situation keeps deteriorating by the day,” Choguel Maiga told VOA in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
“We have to find new partners who can help,” he said. “We can seek partnership either with Russia or with any other country.”
Some Western officials with knowledge of the potential deal between Mali and the Wagner Group have called the potential deployment of the Russian mercenaries “a real concern.”
The officials point to what they describe as a destabilizing impact of about 2,000 Wagner mercenaries in the Central African Republic, where allegations of human rights abuses and exploitation have been rampant.
Russia has denied any abuses by contractors there and has welcomed talk of the potential deal between Mali’s interim government and Wagner.
“They are combating terrorism,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a news conference at the U.N. last week. “And they have turned to a private military company from Russia in connection with the fact that, as I understand, France wants to significantly draw down its military component.”
“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Lavrov said, adding, “at the government level, we are also contributing to providing for military and defense capacities of Mali.”
Many Western governments, though, insist that there is little practical difference between the Kremlin and the exploits of the Wagner Group, run by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s cook” because of his catering company’s work for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is thought to have extensive ties to Russia’s political and military establishments, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The U.S. State Department sanctioned Prigozhin and Wagner back in July 2020, as well as several front companies for the group’s operations in Sudan.
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