Francis ‘moved’ by Angela Merkel’s words on western intervention – in fact said by Russian president
Pope Francis has criticised the west’s recent involvement in Afghanistan – inadvertently quoting Vladimir Putin in doing so.
In a wide-ranging interview with Spanish radio station COPE, the pope was asked for his thoughts on the redrawn political map of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the US and its allies from the country after 20 years of war.
Continue reading...Ruling United Russia party silences critics, cracks down on poll monitors and offers cash to voters as its support slumps
The Russian government has silenced opposition voices, approved cash payouts to potential voters, and made it nearly impossible to monitor the polls as it prepares for parliamentary elections next month that the opposition has warned will be marred by fraud.
United Russia, the ruling party that has supported Vladimir Putin through nearly his entire presidency, is expected to maintain a majority of the seats in the next Duma, despite state polling that shows that just 26% of Russians are ready to vote for the party – its lowest rating since 2008.
Continue reading...FCDO says the individuals, said to be FSB members, will be subject to travel bans and asset freezes
Sanctions have been imposed on seven Russian nationals accused of involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of the key Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, the UK government has said.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that the individuals, said to be members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), would be subject to travel bans and asset freezes.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Russian opposition leader likely to infuriate Kremlin with letter dictated from behind bars
The jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has written from behind bars to urge western politicians to take meaningful action against global corruption and to impose personal sanctions against oligarchs “in the entourage of Vladimir Putin”.
Writing in the Guardian before the first anniversary of his poisoning on 20 August last year, Navalny lambasts western leaders for not doing more to tackle what he admits is a “tricky issue”. He says his own survival after being exposed to novichok was only down to incompetence and corruption inside Russia’s FSB spy agency.
Continue reading...Political liberty has been overturned – with majority support. That will delight authoritarians everywhere
Implicit in US and western support for pro-democracy movements and transitions around the world is an assumption that, given a free choice, a system of elected, representative government is what people will always naturally prefer. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if a majority believes democracy doesn’t work for them?
Emerging testimony from Tunisia, the latest country to face a crisis over how it is run, suggests many citizens welcomed the forceful suspension of a democratically elected parliament that had failed to address people’s problems and was widely reviled as a self-serving oligarchy.
Mohammed Ali, 33, from Ben Guerdane, seems to typify this view. “I think what happened is good. I think that’s what all the people want,” he told the Guardian after last week’s surprise move by Kais Saied, Tunisia’s president, to seize power and impose a state of emergency. Local politicians and western critics called it a coup.
Action comes as Kremlin increases pressure on opponents and critics ahead of parliamentary elections
Russian authorities have restricted access to Alexei Navalny’s website and those of dozens of his close allies, the imprisoned opposition leader’s team has said.
The action came as the government increased pressure on opposition supporters, independent journalists and human rights activists ahead of the country’s parliamentary election. The September vote is widely seen as an important part of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cement his rule before a 2024 presidential election.
Continue reading...Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in society
Khalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.
Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere in US democracy
Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.
Continue reading...Joe Biden’s hour-long phone call with the Russian leader suggests growing impatience over attacks disrupting US sectors
Joe Biden has increased pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against ransomware groups operating from Russia, warning the United States is prepared to respond if cyberhacks are not stopped.
The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors.
Continue reading...President endorses domestic vaccine campaign but distances himself from tough measure
Vladimir Putin has for the first time said that he was inoculated with Russia’s own Sputnik V vaccine as he gave a careful endorsement of the country’s floundering campaign while distancing himself from tough new measures designed to pressure more Russians into taking the jabs.
Putin has cut a mercurial figure during the pandemic, intrepidly donning a medical suit to visit a coronavirus hospital last March and then shunning public events for months, prompting ridicule that he was sheltering in a “bunker”.
Continue reading...Beijing lodges diplomatic protest with Japan after defence minister calls island a ‘democratic country’
China and Japan are once again embroiled in a diplomatic row over Taiwan, in the latest example of Beijing’s extreme sensitivity over the status of the self-ruled island and Tokyo’s changing attitude towards Beijing.
Speaking to the US conservative thinktank Hudson Institute on Monday, Japan’s state minister of defence, Yasuhide Nakayama, spoke of a growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration, and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country”.
Continue reading...With infections at highest since January, country is introducing curbs for non-vaccinated
Russia has finally admitted it has a vaccination problem – but with an “explosion” of new cases driving the country’s daily toll to its highest since January, the question is whether that public realisation has come too late.
Just 11% of Russia’s 146 million population is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine skepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested.
Continue reading...Bloc to explore sanctions instead, as gathering also holds ‘emotional’ debate over Hungary’s LGBT laws
A Franco-German plan to restart talks with Vladimir Putin has been rejected at a fractious EU summit that resulted in a decision to explore economic sanctions against Russia instead.
The two-day gathering in Brussels also included an “emotional” debate over LGBT rights in Hungary, as EU leaders confronted Viktor Orbán over a law that will ban gay people from being shown in educational and entertainment content for minors.
Continue reading...Biden and Putin must persuade other nuclear states that such a conflict ‘should never be fought’
Meeting last week, the US and Russian presidents issued a joint statement declaring: “a nuclear war should never be fought and could never be won”. This consciously echoes what Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev said in a landmark summit in 1985, when the US and USSR started to step up nuclear arms control, and gradually reduced the world’s fear of nuclear catastrophe.
Many reports of the Biden-Putin summit have not even mentioned this joint statement, because it sounds like simple common sense. Who wants a nuclear war?
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia
Continue reading...Joe Biden has responded to Vladimir Putin comparing his jailing of political opponents such as Alexei Navalny with the charges filed against those who carried out the Capitol Hill riots. 'I think that’s a ridiculous comparison,' Biden told reporters after meeting with the Russian president in Geneva. During his own press conference after the summit, Putin used that comparison to deflect a question about why so many of his critics are either imprisoned or dead
Continue reading...Speaking to reporters by Air Force One in Geneva, Joe Biden has expressed regret for some sharp words to a journalist who questioned him about the success of his summit with Vladimir Putin. Frustrated by a question from CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins at the end of his press conference, he told her she was 'in the wrong business'. Biden later apologised for being 'short', adding: 'To be a good reporter, you’ve got to be negative. You’ve got to have a negative view of life ... you never ask a positive question'
Continue reading...US president hails ‘good and positive’ talks but added ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’
The US will retaliate if Russia continues to carry out malicious cyber-attacks against American targets, Joe Biden said on Wednesday, after holding “good and positive” talks in Geneva with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Speaking after their first face-to-face summit, Biden said he had made clear the Kremlin had to “abide by the rules of the road” or face unspecified consequences. Putin was aware the US possessed “unrivalled” cyber capacities, Biden stressed.
Continue reading...Meeting goes as well as could be expected as Biden and Putin speak language of diplomacy – but hardly one of affection
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin hadn’t even sat down before tensions boiled over at the 18th-century Villa La Grange, a fine Swiss manor house besieged on Wednesday by a 21st-century press pool. The two men looked cordial enough as they shook hands for the first time as leaders. But the sun-struck journalists behind them pushed and shouted, some knocked to the floor, as they fought to get in to the leaders’ only joint appearance of the day.
“The media scuffle was the most chaotic your pooler has seen at a presidential event in nine years,” wrote a US reporter from inside the melee, which erupted as the press pack tried to follow the two leaders into the villa. “Russian security yelled at journalists to get out and began pushing journalists. Journalists and White House officials screamed back that the Russian security should stop touching us.”
Continue reading...Cool normality helped exorcise ghost of 2018’s disastrous Helsinki summit but what else was achieved?
1) The weird and unpredictable Trump era is over. In 2018 Donald Trump held a disastrous summit with Putin in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The then US president said he believed Putin’s assurances that Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 US election with a joint press conference that was so humiliating for America that Trump’s senior adviser Fiona Hill considered bringing it to a close by whacking a fire alarm or faking a medical emergency.
In Geneva, by contrast, cool normality was on display. Biden was well prepared for the US-Russia summit. He cut a relaxed figure, telling Putin he wanted a “predictable” relationship after a period defined by rogue Kremlin behaviour. The summit flowed along conventional diplomatic lines: a handshake, several hours of intensive talks and separate press conferences afterwards. The ghost of Helsinki was exorcised. There will be an agreed record of what was discussed, unlike in 2018 when Trump met Putin alone, without aides or even Trump’s own interpreter. We don’t know what was said.
Continue reading...