Month: July 2022

The trial of professional women’s basketball player Brittney Griner is set to begin Friday in a Russian courtroom.

The WNBA star has been detained in Russia for more than four months and is facing 10 years in prison on drug smuggling charges.

At the time of her arrest in February, customs officials say the Olympic gold medalist was in possession of vape cartridges that contained hashish oil, an illegal substance in Russia.

Political analysts say Griner’s arrest and trial could not have happened at a worse time. Arrested just a few days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many people believe that Griner has become a political pawn between the United States and Russia.
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Western leaders signaled confirmation of their attendance at the November summit of the Group of 20 in Bali, despite initial boycott threats, and the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin could possibly participate virtually at the gathering.

In a call with reporters Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said they would decide “at the necessary time” on whether Putin would attend in person.

Putin’s potential remote participation at the summit could solve a diplomatic headache for host country Indonesia, which has been under Western pressure to kick Moscow out of the gathering of the world’s 20 largest economies, with U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders previously stating they would not attend unless Putin was excluded.

As this year’s G-20 chair, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been on a diplomatic blitz trying to salvage the summit. He met Putin in Moscow on Thursday following his Wednesday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and with G-7 leaders in Germany earlier this week.

Jakarta announced in April that it had invited Russia, a G-20 member. It has since sought to bridge the gap between the West’s effort to isolate Putin at various global forums as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine, and the interest of middle-power members, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, who want the summit’s agenda to center on post-pandemic recovery.

Zelenskyy to attend

Zelenskyy told Widodo on Wednesday that he would be attending the summit, depending on the status of the Russian invasion and the “composition of participants in the event.”

In April, Widodo invited Zelenskyy, despite Ukraine’s not being a member. Biden had pressed for Zelenskyy to be invited to the G-20 if other members chose not to expel Moscow.

No boycott

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the latest G-7 leader to say his country would take part in the gathering in November.

“It’s too important that we be there to counteract the voice and the lies that Russia will perhaps be putting forward,” he said Thursday.

Trudeau said he expected the other G-7 countries – the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — to take part even if Russia remained a member of the G-20 group.

The White House has not responded to VOA’s request for confirmation on whether Biden will be attending.

Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Western leaders not to boycott. He questioned the wisdom of Western leaders’ vacating their seats at the meeting and leaving “the whole argument to China, to Russia.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and G-7 host German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also indicated that they would attend. Scholz said Tuesday that there had been “great unity” at the G-7 leaders’ meeting and that “we do not want to drive the G-20 apart.”

Italian view

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi indicated that Jakarta had assured Western leaders they would not be seated at the same table as Putin.

“President Widodo rules it out,” Draghi told reporters at the end of the G-7 summit. “He was categorical, he [Putin] will not come.” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov fired back, “Draghi does not decide this.”

Jakarta has not responded to VOA’s request to confirm Widodo’s statement on Putin’s plans.

Lucas Myers, Southeast Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, said Widodo has a chance to enhance his international prestige if he pulls off the balancing act.

“If successful in achieving a productive summit that manages to placate both Russia and the G-7, it will demonstrate Indonesia’s growing role internationally and Jakarta’s ability to balance the complex rivalries of an increasingly multipolar and tense world,” Myers told VOA.

Messenger

In a joint press conference with Putin after their meeting at the Kremlin Thursday, Widodo said via an interpreter that he had conveyed a message from Zelenskyy to Putin and had offered to play peace broker between the two.

Widodo did not provide details, and neither side said what the message entailed.

The Indonesian leader said Russia had agreed to open a sea route for Ukrainian wheat exports amid escalating concerns about global food shortages.

“I really appreciate President Putin, who has said he’ll provide security guarantees for food and fertilizer supplies from both Ukraine and Russia — this is good news,” Widodo said.

Widodo said he supported the U.N. proposal to open a Black Sea route for Ukrainian grain exports as well as Russian food and fertilizer exports. The U.N. has been in talks with both countries and Turkey, which has suggested that ships could be guided around sea mines by establishing safe corridors in the Black Sea.

Tens of millions of people across the world, including in Indonesia and other developing nations, are at risk of hunger as the conflict disrupted shipments of grain from Ukraine and fertilizer from Russia, both key producers.
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Former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday lobbed insults at Russian President Vladimir Putin and slammed his invasion of Ukraine as “incompetent” and “foolish.”

At a speech in Seoul, Mattis compared Putin to the kind of paranoid characters created by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.

“Putin is a creature straight out of Dostoevsky. He goes to bed at night angry, he goes to bed at night fearful, he goes to bed at night thinking Russia is surrounded by nightmares,” Mattis said.

Mattis has made relatively few public comments since resigning as Pentagon chief in 2018 over a foreign policy disagreement with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

In his speech, Mattis did not address those disagreements in a direct way, saying only Trump had overseen a nontraditional foreign policy that had challenged U.S. relations with its allies.

Mattis’ most pointed comments focused on Putin, whom he portrayed as unhinged and unable to make smart decisions due to the lack of people giving him sound advice.

Asked about the biggest lesson that could be drawn from Russia’s war in Ukraine, Mattis replied, “Don’t have incompetent generals in charge of your operations.”

He also said the Russian invasion was “tactically incompetent” and “strategically foolish.”

“War is enough of a tragedy without adding stupidity on top,” he said.

Mattis also criticized China’s growing relations with Russia and its unwillingness to oppose the war in Ukraine.

A country “cannot be great if they support Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine,” he said.

Addressing his tenure under Trump, Mattis spoke of “raucous times” and called Trump an “unusual leader” but did not directly criticize the former president.

“Democracies will at times go popularist and will at times break with tradition,” he said. “It’s the nature of democracies at times to be testing ideas and all.”

Americans, Mattis said, should respond by “keep[ing] faith in the institutions” and “in those that disagree with you.”

Mattis’ speech was in South Korea, a U.S. ally that dramatically felt the effects of Trump’s nontraditional foreign policy.

Asked how he felt about Trump’s summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Mattis said he was never optimistic about the talks, but that the diplomatic effort was the “right thing to do.”

“As far as what came out of it, nothing. I saw nothing that came out of it,” he said.

Mattis also praised South Korea’s new president, former chief prosecutor Yoon Suk Yeol, for wanting South Korea to play a bigger role in the world.

Yoon, a conservative who has explicitly embraced the United States, has said he wants South Korea to become a “global pivotal state.” This week, Yoon attended the NATO summit in Madrid,  the first time a South Korean leader had attended such a meeting.

Mattis praised Yoon’s presence at the NATO summit, saying “a globally pivotal state in South Korea is in all our best interests.”

He warned, however, against voices in Seoul who have recently called for South Korea to acquire its own nuclear weapons.

“You don’t need nuclear weapons on the peninsula to ensure an extended deterrence so long as there is trust between the ROK and the United States,” he said, referring to an abbreviation of South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.

Opinion polls consistently show that most South Koreans support their country acquiring their own nuclear weapons, especially as North Korea continues developing its own arsenal.

As a candidate, Yoon said he would ask the United States to agree to a nuclear weapons sharing arrangement, or to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons that Washington withdrew from South Korea in the early 1990s — notions quickly rejected by the U.S. State Department.

To avoid such an outcome, the United States and South Korea should continue to build trust, including by demonstrating “extended deterrence” against North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Mattis said.

“I think anything you can do to avoid having these weapons yourselves, you should do. They are horrible weapons,” he said.
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Lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year are signaling they could send referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution of illegal tampering with witnesses who have testified to the panel.

Representative Liz Cheney, vice chairperson of the House of Representatives investigative panel, displayed Tuesday two messages from notes sent to hearing witnesses saying that former President Donald Trump was keeping a close eye on the hearings and was counting on continued loyalty. The senders of the notes weren’t identified.

The panel is probing how the insurrection unfolded and Trump’s role in trying to upend his 2020 reelection defeat.

Cheney’s disclosure of the notes came after two hours of explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s last White House chief of staff.

Hutchinson described in detail how Trump became angry and volatile in the last weeks of his presidency as the reality of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden sank in and his own associates dismissed his repeated claims that he had been cheated out of reelection.

CNN quoted unidentified sources Thursday saying Hutchinson was one of the witnesses who had been contacted by someone attempting to influence her testimony.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show Thursday, Cheney said the attempted influencing of witnesses is “very serious. It really goes to the heart of our legal system. And it’s something the committee will certainly be reviewing.”

She added, “It gives us a real insight into how people around the former president are operating, into the extent to which they believe that they can affect the testimony of witnesses before the committee. And it’s something we take very seriously, and it’s something that people should be aware of. It’s a very serious issue, and I would imagine the Department of Justice would be very interested in, and would take that very seriously, as well.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Cheney did not say which of the committee’s witnesses had been contacted but displayed two text messages on a large television screen.

One said, “What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World.”

“And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee,” that witness continued.

In another example, a second witness said, “[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, another member of the investigative panel, told CNN, “It’s a concern, and anyone who is trying to dissuade or tamper with witnesses should be on notice that that’s a crime, and we are perfectly prepared to provide any evidence we have to the proper authorities.”

A third committee member, Representative Jamie Raskin, said after the hearing, “It’s a crime to tamper with witnesses. It’s a form of obstructing justice. The committee won’t tolerate it. And we haven’t had a chance to fully investigate or fully discuss it, but it’s something we want to look into.”
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The U.S. Justice Department has distributed about $92 million in additional compensation from money forfeited by convicted officials and associated companies resulting from the government’s prosecution of corruption in soccer.

The money is for compensation for losses sustained by FIFA, the Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Football, the South American governing body CONMEBOL and various national soccer federations.

The Justice Department last August recognized losses of more than $201 million in the cases, which began with indictments in May 2015, and it announced then an initial $32.2 million payment to a “World Football Remission Fund” overseen by the FIFA Foundation charity.

FIFA’s charity supports school projects, helps the sport recover after natural disasters, develops women’s and girls’ soccer and a FIFA Legends program that uses former players as ambassadors. The money was obtained in forfeitures to federal court in Brooklyn.

More than 50 people and corporate entities have been charged, mostly for giving and receiving bribes and kickbacks and laundering payments in arrangements between sports marketing companies and soccer officials for media and marketing rights to soccer events.

Twenty-seven individuals and four corporate entities have pleaded guilty, Former CONMEBOL President Juan Angel Napout and former Brazilian Football Confederation President Jose Maria Marin, who was the head of Brazil’s organizing committee for the 2014 World Cup, were convicted in December 2017 and banks have acknowledged roles in criminal conduct through deferred prosecution and nonprosecution agreements.

“Over much of the past decade, this investigation and prosecution has concentrated on bringing wrongdoers to justice and recovering ill-gotten gains,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement Thursday.

“Our office, working in collaboration with our law enforcement partners and colleagues in the Department of Justice, will continue our work to compensate victims of crime.”
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NATO leaders concluded their three-day meeting in Madrid Thursday with the Western security alliance strengthening its defense against Russian aggression, warning of global challenges posed by China and inviting neutral countries Finland and Sweden into the group.

U.S. President Joe Biden described the summit as “historic.”

“The last time NATO drafted a new mission statement was 12 years ago,” Biden said, referring to a document also known as the alliance’s Strategic Concept.

“At that time, it characterized Russia as a partner, and it didn’t mention China. The world has changed, changed a great deal since then, and NATO is changing as well. At this summit, we rallied our alliances to meet both the direct threats that Russia poses to Europe and the systemic challenges that China poses to a rules-based world order. And we’ve invited two new members to join NATO,” Biden said.

Biden reiterated that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has only strengthened NATO.

“He tried to weaken us, expected our resolve to fracture but he’s getting exactly what he did not want,” Biden said. “He wanted the ‘Finland-ization’ of NATO. He got the ‘NATO-ization’ of Finland.”

On Wednesday Putin dismissed the imminent expansion of the Western alliance.

“With Sweden and Finland, we don’t have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead,” Putin told Russian state television.

“But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created,” he warned.

As it sets to expand, NATO leaders agreed on a massive increase in troop deployments across Europe. A total of 300,000 soldiers will be placed at high readiness across the continent starting next year to defend against potential military attacks by Moscow on any member of the alliance – what Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg characterized as “the most serious security crisis” since the Second World War.      

To bolster NATO’s defense, the United States is also set to establish a permanent headquarters for the U.S. 5th Army Corps in Poland, add a rotational brigade of 3,000 troops and 2,000 other personnel to be headquartered in Romania, and send two additional squadrons of F-35 fighter jets to Britain.   

Reaffirming commitments made by other Western leaders, Biden said the U.S. will stand firm against Russia’s aggression. He offered little indication the conflict would conclude anytime soon, suggesting that Americans would have to bear high gas prices longer.

“As long as it takes, so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine,” he said.

China challenge

Biden said the summit has brought together “democratic allies and partners from the Atlantic and the Pacific” to defend the rules-based global order against challenges from China, including its “abusive and coercive trade practices.” 

NATO leaders have also called out the “deepening strategic partnership” between Beijing and Moscow as one of the alliance’s concerns.

Beijing is not providing military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping has stated support for Moscow over “sovereignty and security” issues. The country continues to purchase massive amounts of Russian oil, gas and coal. 

Biden noted that for the first time in the transatlantic alliance’s history, Asia Pacific leaders from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea participated at the summit.

With the reemergence of great power conflict, a strategic competitor sitting in each region, and an evolving Russia-China relationship, there are many common challenges that European and Asia-Pacific partners must discuss together, said Mirna Galic, senior policy analyst on China and East Asia at the United States Institute of Peace.

Galic told VOA these include issues already being worked on, such as cyber defense, maritime security and space, as well as those that will require some new thinking, such as intermediate-range nuclear forces, missile defense, inter-theater deterrence and defense, and how to push back on great power use of force in contravention of international norms.

“The last is certainly relevant to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but also has parallels with China and Taiwan, which is why Ukraine is seen as more than a European security issue,” Galic said.

In his remarks at the end of the NATO summit, Biden also touted the West’s latest counter to China’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

“We also launched what started off to be the Build Back Better notion, but it’s morphed into a Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment,” he said referring to the “Build Back Better World” initiative announced at the 2021 meeting of the Group of Seven leaders in Cornwall, UK and relaunched earlier this week as the PGII at the G-7 summit of leading industrialized nations in Krün, Germany.

Officials say PGII will offer developing nations $600 billion in infrastructure funding by 2027 and be a better alternative to China’s BRI that critics have characterized as “debt trap diplomacy.”
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Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in Thursday as the newest U.S. Supreme Court justice — becoming the first Black woman ever to serve on the high court.

The 51-year-old Jackson took the constitutional oath from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and the judicial oath from retiring 83-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she replaces. Jackson served as a clerk for Breyer early in her legal career.

Jackson’s husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, held two bibles as the oaths were administered.

After she completed her oaths, Roberts told Jackson, “On behalf of all of the members of the court, I am pleased to welcome Justice Jackson to the court and to our common calling.” The ceremony was streamed live on the court’s website.

Breyer informed President Joe Biden on Wednesday that his retirement would take effect Thursday after the court issued its last two opinions before taking a summer recess. The court’s next term begins Oct. 3.

Jackson is the 116th justice, sixth woman and third Black person to serve on the Supreme Court since its 1789 founding.

Biden appointed Jackson last year to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after she spent eight years as a federal district judge. Following a series of committee hearings, the U.S. Senate confirmed Jackson’s nomination in April, by a 53-47 mostly party-line vote that included support from three Republicans.

Jackson’s addition to the bench will not change the ideological alignment of the court, which remains 6-3 in favor of conservatives appointed by Republican presidents.

She becomes a justice as public opinion polls indicate a record low in public confidence in the Supreme Court after a number of unpopular decisions, including last week’s reversal of the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which had made abortion legal across the United States.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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