Month: December 2023

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Argentina formally announced Friday that it won’t join the BRICS bloc of developing economies, the latest in a dramatic shift in foreign and economic policy by Argentina’s new far-right populist president, Javier Milei. 

In a letter addressed to the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the founding members of the alliance — Milei said the moment was not “opportune” for Argentina to join as a full member. The letter was dated a week ago, December 22, but released by the Argentine government on Friday, the last working day of 2023. 

Argentina was among six countries invited in August to join the group to make an 11-nation bloc. Argentina was set to join January 1. 

The move comes as Argentina has been left reeling by deepening economic crisis. 

Milei’s predecessor, former center-left President Alberto Fernandez, endorsed joining the alliance as an opportunity to reach new markets. The BRICS countries account for about 40% of the world’s population and more than a quarter of the world’s GDP. 

But economic turmoil left many in Argentina eager for change, ushering chainsaw-wielding political outsider Milei into the presidency. 

Milei, who defines himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” — a current within libertarianism that aspires to eliminate the state — has implemented a series of measures to deregulate the economy, which in recent decades has been marked by strong state interventionism. 

In foreign policy, he has proclaimed full alignment with the “free nations of the West,” especially the United States and Israel. 

Throughout the campaign for the presidency, Milei also disparaged countries ruled “by communism” and announced that he would not maintain diplomatic relations with them despite growing Chinese investment in South America. 

However, in the letter addressed to his counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva in neighboring Brazil and the rest of the leaders of BRICS members — Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa — Milei proposed to “intensify bilateral ties” and increase “trade and investment flows.” 

Milei also expressed his readiness to hold meetings with each of the five leaders. 
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London — Ukraine attempted to break through the lines of invading Russian forces in 2023 in the east of the country, as the West stepped up the supply of heavier weapons and advanced missile systems. However, neither side appears able to make a significant breakthrough and there is little sign that Kyiv and Moscow are prepared to negotiate a peace deal.

At an end of year news conference December 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia had failed to achieve any victory in 2023. “Our yellow and blue flag is in Ukraine, and this is our main victory. And the main thing is that we will preserve it — not only in our hearts, but we will actually preserve it all for our future generations,” Zelenskyy said.

The conflict has intensified into a war of attrition, at huge cost to both sides. A declassified U.S. intelligence report published earlier this month estimated that some 315,000 Russian troops had been killed or injured — nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, according to Reuters. Ukraine does not release figures relating to its losses, but an August report in The New York Times citing U.S. officials put the Ukrainian death toll then at close to 70,000.

This year began with a strategic loss for Ukraine as Russian forces seized the salt-mining town of Soledar in January, after months of brutal fighting. Meanwhile, Russian missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian cities, exerting a heavy toll on the civilian population.

With Ukrainian forces struggling to make battlefield gains, Western allies announced they would send heavy weapons to Kyiv, including tanks and longer-range missile systems.

Ahead of the first anniversary of the war in February, U.S. President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Kyiv. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been wrong about Western commitment to Ukraine. “He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now,” Biden told the crowd in Kyiv.

Evidence suggests Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam in May, flooding vast areas of southeast Ukraine to stall any Ukrainian counteroffensive and creating an environmental disaster. Russia, in return, blamed Ukraine for the structure’s collapse.

By June, Ukraine was able to recapture some territory but failed to break through the Russian lines. The Western weapon supplies were too little, too late, says analyst Ian Bond.

“The delays in supplying this equipment meant that the Russians had a long time to build up their minefields and their fixed fortifications, so they’re actually in a much stronger position than they were. And we’ve been asking the Ukrainians to launch their counteroffensive when they have very little air capability,” Bond told VOA, adding that Ukraine had made remarkable progress in countering Russia’s navy.

“They have effectively removed the Russian Black Sea fleet from most of the western Black Sea. The Ukrainians have been able to start exporting grain from their ports on the Black Sea more freely than they could before. And that’s a remarkable achievement for a country that has no functioning navy,” he told VOA.

Mercenaries from Russia’s private Wagner army staged a mutiny in June, demanding the dismissal of Moscow’s defense minister over claims that Wagner fighters had been deprived of support and ammunition by the Russian army. Putin negotiated an end to the rebellion with the aid of his Belarusian counterpart, Aleksander Lukashenko. Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash a few weeks later.

By November, Ukraine’s military chief General Valery Zaluzhny said the war had reached a stalemate, though Ukraine’s president disagreed with his assessment.

Zelenskyy did achieve a diplomatic breakthrough as the European Union in December agreed to start formal accession talks. “The negotiation process will not be easy, but the main thing is that historically we have made a determination: Ukraine will always be part of our common European home,” Zelenskyy said in video published on social media after the EU decision.

But that European future remains in the balance, says analyst Olga Tokariuk of Britain’s Chatham House. “If Ukraine is defeated, if Ukraine fails militarily, all the EU membership negotiations process is worthless. But it will not just be a defeat of Ukraine. It will be a defeat of the European Union and the wider West, that committed to supporting Ukraine as long as it takes.”

Ukrainian forces face a long bitter winter on the front lines. The military in December asked Zelenskyy for an additional 450,000 to 500,000 people to be mobilized into the army.

There is hope that the coming year will see Western deliveries of F-16 fighter jets to Kyiv. But with vital military aid packages held up in the both the United States and the European Union, analysts say Ukraine’s greatest concern for the coming year is Western fatigue.

Zelenskyy insisted he was confident the military aid would be forthcoming. “I am sure that the United States of America will not betray us and that what we have achieved with the United States will be fulfilled,” Zelenskyy said at his end of the year news conference.

The U.S. presidential election looms at the end of 2024, and there is nervousness in Ukraine and Europe, said Fabrice Pothier, a former head of policy planning at NATO and now CEO of the consultancy group Rasmussen Global.

“Losing the U.S. in the sense of having a U.S. president who might be actually counter to Ukraine’s interests and to Europe’s interests would be a major blow,” he told VOA.

Russia is also due to hold presidential elections next year. With the vote neither free nor fair, according to analyst Ian Bond, Putin is all but certain to win – but the election could affect his war strategy. “He will be looking for something that he can portray as [a] military success in the run-up to the election,” Bond said.
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Ukraine attempted to break through the lines of invading Russian forces in 2023, as the West stepped up the supply of heavier weapons and advanced missile systems. But as Henry Ridgwell reports, neither side appears able to make a significant breakthrough — and there is little sign that Kyiv and Moscow are prepared to negotiate a peace deal.
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PARIS — With a name that doesn’t ring old-school French like Jean, Pierre or Jacques, and a home address in a tough suburb of Paris where riots flared, Salah Benkadmir is discovering how hard it can be to make prospective employers in France see beyond their prejudices.

Despite having a high school diploma in sales and work experience as a vendor on his resume, the 19-year-old job seeker says that when he sends it to stores making hires, often no one calls him back.

“I feel like I’ve got a label stuck to me. It is very unpleasant,” he says.

But with the Olympic Games soon to hit Paris, Benkadmir thinks his fortunes may be about to improve. Organizers urgently need thousands of security guards to help keep athletes and spectators safe and reduce the likelihood of another deadly extremist attack in the French capital.

Demand for people at checkpoints, to scan tickets and help manage crowds is so great that France’s state employment agency is offering free and expedited security guard training courses, with no specialist qualifications required.

The “We need you!” approach and promises of plentiful paid work from July to September during the Summer Games and Paralympics are a welcome change for job seekers who feel ostracized from the labor market.

Benkadmir hopes that by training for and then working in the huge Olympic security operation, his skills afterward will be more important to employers in the retail industry than his mix of French-North African roots and his post code: 92000 Nanterre.

Nanterre was the epicenter of rioting that spread across France over the summer after a police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old in the town just west of Paris. The death of Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop hit Benkadmir close to home: Some of his brothers were friends with the youngster, he says.

Like other suburbs of Paris with large immigrant populations, Nanterre is blighted by inequality, disadvantaged housing projects and young people who feel the odds are stacked against them, in part because they’re Black and brown. Benkadmir hopes to bust through those obstacles with an Olympics security job that will “show we are versatile, that we invest ourselves in different projects, that we don’t just stay in one place, that we really want to succeed.”

He and about 30 other young men from Nanterre invested a morning of their time earlier in December to attend an Olympic jobs presentation in Paris.

Benkadmir and his friends got a ride there from one of their fathers. Others traveled by public transportation. Gathering in a semicircle, they listened intently as an introductory speaker explained: “The Olympic Games are coming, and there’s a huge lack of personnel.”

In the Paris region alone, state employment agency Pole Emploi is looking for at least 6,000 people in the next four months to take a free three-week training course that will qualify them to work as security stewards at the Olympics and other public events such as concerts. That’s on top of the 14,000 security workers who have already been newly trained.

“It’s rare to have so much work all at one time,” said Najat Semdani, in charge of the recruitment drive. She said it will “benefit people who have been left by the wayside a bit” and those who have experienced “the accidents of life” — including people who left school with no qualifications, youngsters from underprivileged neighborhoods and those who have long been unemployed.

After more than 20 years of living on the streets and in assisted housing, Starsky-Aldo Fandio thinks an Olympics security job might be his ticket to longer-term work afterward. A Pole Emploi adviser wearing a “We are here for you!” badge on his lapel walked the 45-year-old Fandio through how to apply for the training.

“Then you’ll get job offers and be asked if you’re interested in working for the Olympic Games,” the adviser, Stephane Lange, explained.

The Olympic security operation will be unprecedented in scale for France, with tens of thousands of police officers and thousands of soldiers to be bolstered by an additional 17,000 private security guards, rising to 22,000 on the Games’ busiest days.

Bruno Le Ray, the organizing committee’s security director, said he can’t yet gauge whether they’ll fall short and, if so, by how many. In an interview, he described the security operation as “colossal.” If private stewards can’t be recruited in sufficient numbers, the military could be called upon to provide additional resources.

Mourad Kassir, who runs one of the private security firms that has contracted with the Paris Games’ organizers, is confident that he will find the 1,000 stewards he needs for a half-dozen of the Olympic venues. He already has more than that number of candidates signed up to WhatsApp groups that he’s set up in preparation.

The training for new recruits includes how to pat people down and how to react if they’re armed, how to interact with crowds, some first aid and the legal do’s and don’ts of security work, Kassir said. He expects the layers of security will be so dense that Olympic sites will be practically impregnable.

“For someone with a knife, a gun, a grenade, to get to a venue, well, bravo,” he said.
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BERLIN — Russia has suffered huge human and material losses in Ukraine and its army will emerge weakened from the conflict, a senior German military figure said in an interview published Friday.

The interview came as Kyiv is fighting to maintain western support for its war against Russian forces, which invaded in February 2022.

“You know that according to Western intelligence figures, 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or so seriously wounded that they can no longer be mobilized for the war,” Christian Freuding, who oversees the German army’s support for Kyiv, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Leaked U.S. intelligence earlier this month indicated that 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since the war began.

“The Russian losses of men and material are enormous,” said Freuding, who is also a key adviser to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

Russia is also believed to have lost thousands of battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, he added.

“The Russian armed forces will emerge from this war weakened, both materially and in terms of personnel,” he said.

However, Russia is succeeding in continuing to recruit troops “including the use of prisoners,” Freuding said.

“And, of course, we are seeing massive investments in the arms industry.”

President Vladimir Putin recently said that Moscow had voluntarily recruited 486,000 men for the army in 2023 and that efforts to build up the military next year would accelerate.

And he promised to bolster Russia’s defense capabilities, with the economy turned towards the war effort and the Kremlin shrugging off the impact of sweeping Western sanctions.

The German general acknowledged that Russia was demonstrating a greater “resilience” than Western allies had expected at the start of the war.

“We perhaps did not see, or did not want to see, that they are in a position to continue to be supplied by allies,” he said.
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New wars and growing hunger and poverty on a warming planet — and little the United Nations can do to fix it. VOA correspondent Margaret Besheer looks at the U.N.’s future in a world where its impact is shrinking.
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PARIS — France closes 2023 with a diminished presence in Africa’s restive Sahel region, after withdrawing troops from three once-staunch allied countries collectively fighting an Islamist insurgency, and seeing its influence increasingly replaced by other powers, including Russia.

The last French soldiers left Niger earlier this month, with Paris taking the unusual step of closing its embassy in Niamey as well. The troop withdrawal follows a pullout from Burkina Faso earlier this year and from Mali in 2022 — following coups in all three countries condemned by France, the former colonial power — and amid rising anti-French sentiment.

A five-country alliance, the G-5 Sahel, that partnered with France to fight terrorism across a swathe of desolate territory south of the Sahara, has all but collapsed. The remaining members, Chad and Mauritania, suggest its dissolution is near.

And on Sunday, Nigerien authorities announced they were suspending all cooperation with the Paris-based International Organization of Francophone Nations, aimed to promote the French language.

Now, as other countries and entities soften stances toward coup leaders they once condemned, Paris appears increasingly isolated in bucking the trend — a stance some observers believe must change.

“It’s time that France shows certain pragmatism,” the influential Le Monde newspaper wrote in a September editorial, as Paris remained locked in a standoff with coup leaders in Niger. “Although the reality of our institutional ties with the African continent is multiform, it’s not healthy that French influence appears almost completely within a military dimension.”

Bakery Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute-African Center for Peace, offered a similar take.

“France’s retreat from Niger signals a new era,” he said. “It underscores a broader trend of needing to rethink security cooperation — and of cooperation overall.”

Filling the void

France’s reduced influence in the Sahel contrasts sharply with a decade ago, when Paris launched its Barkhane counterinsurgency operation, aimed at working alongside the five most affected countries in pushing back jihadist threats. At its height, some 5,500 French troops were stationed in the region.

The cascade of coups, first in Mali, then in Burkina Faso last year and finally in Niger in July — all three countries at the heart of the Sahel insurgency — has sharply shrunk those numbers. Just 1,000 French troops now remain in Chad, where France currently bases its anti-jihadist operation in the region.

When coup generals toppled Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum in July, France remained staunchly behind the democratically elected leader. It initially refused the generals’ request to repatriate French Ambassador Sylvain Itte or to withdraw French forces.

While other nations and institutions adopted a similar tough approach, their positions have since softened. The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, which once threatened a military intervention, has shelved its insistence that Bazoum be reinstated. It now calls for a short power transition and other conditions in return for lifting sanctions.

The United States, which dispatched a new ambassador to Niger in August, said this month it was willing to resume cooperation with Niger, if Niamey promised to swiftly restore civilian rule. In sharp contrast to its position on France, Niger’s new government has not called for the departure of the roughly 1,000 U.S. troops stationed on its territory.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who visited Niger earlier in the month, said Berlin was interested in resuming projects with the ruling military. Germany has a small military contingency in Niger.

“Germany is trying to fill a void left by France in the Sahel,” said analyst Sambe, summing up a broader European concern. “There needs to be a champion in the region.”

A new generation of Africans also views the U.S. favorably, Sambe said; it does not have the baggage carried by France as a former colonial power, and, it has adopted a low-key presence in the region.

“Africans want to diversify their partnerships with other countries,” he said. “There’s a new generation without the complexes of previous ones that demands respect.”

A broader Sahel vision

A succession of French leaders has promised to reboot French ties to Africa. That includes President Emmanuel Macron, who earlier this year also promised a sharply reduced and revamped military presence on the continent, even as he seeks new ties beyond France’s former colonial empire.

But a November report by France’s National Assembly calls for bigger changes: from creating more Africa specialists within the foreign ministry and appointing ambassadors with roots in the African diaspora, to rehauling French development aid and adopting a more transparent and pragmatic Africa policy.

“The deterioration of our ties to Africa is such that our relationship with the continent must be prioritized in order to renew it,” the report’s co-author, Bernard Fuchs, told Le Monde.

Meanwhile, the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso have moved away from France and the West to strengthen ties with Russia and its Wagner paramilitary group. Early in December, Niger annulled two security deals with the European Union and held talks with Russian officials to strengthen security cooperation.

Despite Russia’s growing influence, insecurity in the Sahel has grown, analysts and officials say. Russia has also been accused of rights violations.

For his part, the Timbuktu Institute’s Sambe said he does not believe the Sahel’s new generation is necessarily moving toward Russia but rather away from France.

To offer an attractive alternative, he believes Paris and other Western governments need to consider policies that emphasize development along with security and consider coastal West African nations that are increasingly at risk of jihadist attacks.

“There has to be a vision of a broader Sahel,” he said, “that addresses the region’s weaknesses and especially fights against disinformation.”
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BERLIN — Parts of northern and central Europe continued to grapple with flooding on Thursday after heavy rain. A barrier near the German city of Magdeburg was opened for the first time in a decade to ease pressure from the Elbe River, and some animals were removed from their enclosures at a safari park in northern Germany. 

This week’s floods have prompted evacuations of dozens or hundreds of people in parts of northern and central Germany, but largely dry weather was forecast on Thursday. Still, water levels on some rivers caused concern, and they have continued to rise in parts of Lower Saxony state in the northwest. 

The Elbe was nearly 4 meters (13 feet) above its normal level in Dresden, German news agency dpa reported. Downstream, the Pretziener Wehr, a flood barrier built in the 1870s on a branch of the river and renovated in 2010, was opened for the first time since large-scale floods in 2013. 

The aim was to divert about a third of the river’s water into a 21-kilometer (13-mile) channel that bypasses the town of Schoenebeck and Saxony-Anhalt’s state capital, Magdeburg. 

In Lower Saxony, the Serengeti-Park on the swollen Meisse River in the town of Hodenhagen faced flooding that began to affect some animal enclosures. Lemurs, prairie dogs and meerkats were moved to other parts of the grounds. Temporary dikes were put up to protect other enclosures. 

To the south in Germany’s Thuringia region, several hundred inhabitants of the village of Windehausen who evacuated earlier this week were cleared to return home after power was restored. 

In the neighboring Netherlands, the Rhine peaked far above normal levels early Thursday at Lobith village on the German border but was expected to drop significantly over the next week, authorities said. Other branches of the Rhine around the low-lying country were expected to peak Thursday as the high waters move toward the sea. 

Emergency workers in the Dutch town of Deventer, forecast to be the hardest hit, heaped sandbags along the Ijssel River and closed roads to prepare for flooding. Several flood plains were underwater in the eastern Netherlands as rivers surged in recent days. 

In Hungary, the Danube spilled over its banks in Budapest and was expected to peak in the capital on Thursday. Heavy rain has compounded the effects of melting snow. 

While some smaller rivers in western Hungary have started to recede, water levels on the Danube are predicted to fall slowly, with the peak downstream in southern Hungary coming only on New Year’s Eve on Sunday. 
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TALLINN, ESTONIA — Belarus’ authoritarian president on Thursday attended a government-organized meeting with children brought from Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine, openly defying international outrage over his country’s involvement in Moscow’s deportation of Ukrainian children. 

Speaking at the event marking the arrival of a new group of Ukrainian children ahead of the New Year holiday, President Alexander Lukashenko vowed to “embrace these children, bring them to our home, keep them warm and make their childhood happier.” 

Belarusian officials did not say how many Ukrainian children were brought into the country. 

A recent study by Yale University has found that more than 2,400 Ukrainian children ages 6 to 17 were taken to Belarus from four Ukrainian regions that have been partially occupied by Russian forces. The Belarusian opposition has urged the International Criminal Court to hold Lukashenko and his officials accountable for their involvement in the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children. 

Pavel Latushka, a former Belarusian culture minister turned opposition activist who has presented the ICC with evidence of Lukashenko’s alleged involvement in the unlawful deportation of the children, said the arrival of a new group from Russia-occupied territories “underlines the need for the ICC to investigate those crimes.” 

“Lukashenko, his family members and associates together with the Kremlin have organized a system of transfer of Ukrainian children, including orphans, from the occupied territories to Belarus, and this channel is still working,” Latushka told The Associated Press. 

In March, the ICC issued arrest warrants for both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of the war crimes of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. Moscow has rejected the allegations. 

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said in televised remarks Thursday that the transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Belarus helped Moscow cover up the information about the unlawful deportation of children. 

Earlier this month, the International Red Cross suspended the organization’s Belarusian chapter after its chief, Dzmitry Shautsou, stirred international outrage for boasting that it was actively ferrying Ukrainian children from Russian-controlled areas to Belarus. 

Shautsou called the move “absolutely politicized,” claiming that Ukrainian children who visited Belarus for “health improvement” returned home safely. 

Belarus has been Moscow’s closest ally since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, when Lukashenko allowed the Kremlin to use his country’s territory to invade Ukraine. Russia has also deployed some of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
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