Category: EU

In Telangana state, India, a man is desperately trying to get his brother back from the front lines in Ukraine after he was duped into working for Russia during its invasion of the country. Experts explain why Russia is using such subterfuge in its war effort. Henry Wilkins reports.
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Washington — While the debates around the U.S. aid to Ukraine focus on military assistance, Kyiv is asking Washington for support in another crucial area — locating POWs and civilian hostages held in Russia and their rehabilitation after they return home. 

Ukraine has also called on the United States to introduce sanctions against those who abuse Ukrainian captives in Russian prisons.

Tеtiana, who asked her surname be kept confidential for her family’s safety, said her father, a civilian pensioner, was taken during the Russian occupation of his small Ukrainian village in April 2022.

She found out about his fate only after Ukrainian forces liberated the village. Later, she learned more from Ukrainian POWs who had shared jail cells with him before being released in prisoner swaps.

“They are given just enough food to keep them alive. … They are not allowed to sit. They constantly stand,” she told VOA. 

Tetiana said other treatment amounts to psychological torture.

“They may be told that they’re being taken for a [prisoner] exchange and then returned on the same day and told, ‘We wanted to exchange you, but Ukraine doesn’t want you back,’” she said.

Tetіana talked to VOA in March during visits to the U.S. Senate and State Department with other relatives of prisoners and representatives of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (KSHPPV).  

Olha Pylypey, a member of the small delegation of relatives, told VOA about her brother, Yuliy Pylypey, a marine who fought in Mariupol. On April 12, 2022, he, along with other Ukrainian marines, was captured by the Russian forces at the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works plant. 

Released prisoners told her that her brother is jailed in Kursk, Russia. They also told Yuliy’s family that the administrators and guards of Russian prisons treat Ukrainian captives much worse than regular Russian inmates. 

“They line up [Ukrainian prisoners] and release aggressive dogs on them and don’t allow them to defend themselves,” Pylypey said. She is afraid Yuliy may have also been raped.

Officials at the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, or HRMMU, interviewed and documented 60 Ukrainian servicemen recently released from captivity and found that most of them had experienced sexual violence.

“Almost every single one of the Ukrainian POWs we interviewed described how Russian servicepersons or officials tortured them during their captivity, using repeated beatings, electric shocks, threats of execution, prolonged stress positions and mock execution. Over half of them were subjected to sexual violence,” said Danielle Bell, who heads HRMMU.   

Russian officials deny accusations of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners. On November 30, 2023, Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova said she visited 119 Ukrainian POWs in Russian prisons and found the prisons adhered to international standards.

Andriy Kryvtsov, head of the Military Medics of Ukraine nongovernmental organization, helped find his sister-in-law, military medic Olena Kryvtsova, who was part of a prisoner swap after six months in Russian captivity.  

“They were tortured, beaten and used as punching bags,” Kryvtsov said. “Russian special forces trained on them. They beat them like meat. She lost a lot of weight. When she came home, she weighed 77 pounds.”

Along with other relatives of prisoners, Kryvtsov asked the U.S. and its partners for sanctions not only against the leadership of Russia but also against prison personnel.

“Putin is not personally torturing these people,” he said. 

Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence and a member of the KSHPPV, told VOA that Ukrainian officials understand that the U.S. can’t force Russia to comply with the Geneva Convention treaties, which establish standards of humane treatment for people affected by armed conflicts, including POWs. 

But he said the U.S. can help by locating the whereabouts of Ukrainians in Russian prisons so they can be included on the prisoner exchange lists.

The Red Cross has confirmed the identities of 5,000 Ukrainians in Russian captivity. But tens of thousands of people, both civilians and prisoners of war, remain missing, Ukrainian officials say. 

Yusov also emphasized the importance of rehabilitating released prisoners and assisting their families. 

“Thousands of family members of our defenders who ended up in captivity, as well as thousands of Ukrainians who’ve returned from Russian captivity, need social, psychological and medical support, and all this is a subject for our cooperation with partners,” he told VOA.   

Russia does not differentiate between civilians and military captives, considering both to have been “detained for counteracting the SVO,” a Russian abbreviation for special military operation – Moscow’s official designation of its invasion of Ukraine – Ukrainian human rights lawyers told the BBC. 

Lawyers at the Center for Civil Liberties, the Ukrainian organization that received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, told the BBC that they believe there are about 2,000 Ukrainian civilian prisoners in Russia and the occupied territories.

According to a report by the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine published in March, at least 32 Ukrainian servicemen were executed in Russian captivity between December 1, 2023, and February 29, 2024.
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London — The wife of Julian Assange said Thursday her husband’s legal case “could be moving in the right direction” after President Joe Biden confirmed the U.S. may drop charges against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder.

It came as supporters in several cities rallied to demand the release of Assange, on the fifth anniversary of his incarceration in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison.

Biden said Wednesday that his administration is “considering” a request from Australia to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Assange for publishing a trove of classified American documents. The proposal would see Assange, an Australian citizen, return home rather than be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges.

Officials have not provided more details, but Stella Assange said the comments are “a good sign.”

“It looks like things could be moving in the right direction,” she told the BBC, saying the indictment was “a Trump legacy and really Joe Biden should have dropped it from day one.”

Assange has been indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago. American prosecutors allege that Assange, 52, encouraged and helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published, putting lives at risk.

Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

Assange’s supporters say he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been in prison since 2019 as he fought extradition, having spent seven years before that holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The relationship between Assange and his hosts eventually soured, and he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019. British police immediately arrested and imprisoned him in Belmarsh for breaching bail in 2012.

The U.K. government signed an extradition order in 2022, but a British court ruled last month that Assange can’t be sent to the United States unless U.S. authorities guarantee he won’t get the death penalty.

A further court hearing in the case is scheduled for May 20.

Assange was too ill to attend his most recent hearings. Stella Assange has said her husband’s health continues to deteriorate in prison and she fears he’ll die behind bars.
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ISTANBUL — Turkish police have seized the third largest haul of cocaine in the country’s history, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Thursday, as groups monitoring organized crime warned that the country was becoming an entry point for drugs reaching Europe.

Some 608 kilograms of cocaine, most of it in liquid form, were confiscated in an operation across three provinces, Yerlikaya posted on the social media platform X. Nearly 830 kilograms of precursor chemicals used to process the drug were also seized.

Yerlikaya said the police operation targeted an international gang allegedly led by a Lebanese-Venezuelan national, who was among four foreign members of the “organized crime group” detained, along with nine Turks.

“The amount of cocaine seized in the … operation was the third-largest amount of cocaine seized at one time in Turkey,” the minister added.

Groups monitoring organized crime say Turkey is growing as a transit hub for cocaine coming from South America to Europe as security at ports such as Rotterdam in the Netherlands becomes tighter.

In a report dated October last year, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said a 44% rise in cocaine seizures in Turkey between 2021 and 2022 was not reflected in data on domestic consumption, “suggesting that the country is likely to serve as a drug corridor.”

Officials made Turkey’s largest seizure — 1.1 tons of cocaine hidden in a consignment of bananas from Ecuador — at the Mediterranean port of Mersin in 2021.

Since coming to office in June last year, Yerlikaya has overseen a clampdown on organized crime in Turkey to counter claims the country has become a haven for foreign gangsters.

He regularly posts details of the latest police operation to target drug traffickers, fraudsters and other criminals.

Thursday’s social media post included a video, overlaid with dramatic music, showing apparent surveillance footage, large plastic containers and a pressing machine.

The operation was led by anti-narcotics officers based in Kocaeli, which lies southeast of Istanbul, but also included investigations in Tekirdag to Istanbul’s northwest and in the Mediterranean province of Antalya.

The gang used vineyards in Tekirdag and Antalya to store chemicals and process the cocaine, which had been disguised in fertilizer, according to Yerlikaya. A shotgun was also recovered by police, he added.

“We will not tolerate poison traffickers, organized crime groups and gangs, whether national or international,” the minister wrote. 
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Rome — Nine people, including a baby, have died after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean in stormy weather, and another 15 people are feared missing, Italy’s coast guard said on Thursday.

The Italian coast guard said it received a cooperation request from the Maltese search and rescue (SAR) authority after the boat capsized approximately 50 kilometers southeast of the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday.

The coast guard said it dispatched its own patrol boat to the scene, which “rescued 22 survivors and recovered 9 deceased individuals, including a baby.”

The rescue operations “were particularly challenging due to adverse weather and sea conditions in the area with waves up to 2.50 meters,” the coast guard said.

The nationality of the boat’s passengers was not known but Lampedusa, which sits in the Mediterranean between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily, is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the European Union.

“New terrible shipwreck near Lampedusa during a rescue operation,” UNHCR Communication Officer Filippo Ungaro posted on X late on Wednesday. The survivors, taken to Lampedusa, were “in a state of hypothermia and shock,” he added.

An aircraft from the Italian coast guard was conducting aerial searches for the missing in the area of the shipwreck.

In a separate operation, the Italian coast guard said it rescued 37 migrants “who were at the mercy of the waves aboard a small wooden boat about 7 meters long” off the coast of Lampedusa on Wednesday. 
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ORENBURG, Russia — The Russian city of Orenburg battled rising water levels on Thursday after major rivers across Russia and Kazakhstan burst their banks in the worst flooding seen in the areas in nearly a century.

The deluge of meltwater has forced over 110,000 people from their homes in Russia’s Ural Mountains, Siberia and Kazakhstan as major rivers such as the Ural, which flows through Kazakhstan into the Caspian, overwhelmed embankments.

Residents in the city of Orenburg said the waters of the Ural rose very swiftly and to far beyond breaking point, forcing them to flee with just their children, pets and a few belongings.

“It came very quickly at night,” Taisiya, 71, told Reuters in Orenburg, a city of 550,000 about 1,200 km (750 miles) east of Moscow. “By the time I got ready, I couldn’t get out.”

Whole areas of the city were underwater, and the Ural rose another 32 cm (13 inches) to 10.54 meters (34.6 feet), 124 cm (49 inches) above the level considered by local authorities as safe. Officials warned the river would rise further.

The flooding has struck Russia’s Urals and the northern Kazakhstan worst, though waters are also rising southern parts of Western Siberia, the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world, and in some places near the Volga, Europe’s biggest river.

Water levels were also rising in Siberia’s Tomsk, which sits on the Tom River, a tributary of the Ob, and in Kurgan, which straddles the Tobol River.

After the Ural burst through dam embankments in Orsk, upstream from Orenburg, on Friday, some residents expressed anger over how local officials had handled the situation, demanding greater compensation and begging for help from President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin said Putin was being updated regularly on the situation but had no current plans to visit the area while emergency services tried to deal with rising waters.

In Orenburg, some residents expressed disappointment that local officials had not done enough to prepare for the annual snow melt.

“There is a lot of excitement, indignation and strong emotions that I understand and share,” Orenburg Mayor Sergei Salmin said. “The issue of receiving compensation and the procedure for processing payments is one of the main ones.”

Snow melt

Spring flooding is a usual part of life across Russia — which has an area equal to the United States and Australia combined — as the heavy winter snows melt, swelling some of the mighty rivers of Russia and Central Asia.

This year, though, a combination of factors triggered unusually severe flooding, according to emergency workers.

They said soil was waterlogged before winter and then frozen under deep snow falls, which melted very fast in rising spring temperatures and heavy rains.

Climate researchers have long warned that rising temperatures could increase the incidence of extreme weather events, and that heavily forested Russia is of major importance in the global climate equation.

In Kurgan, a region which straddles the Tobol river, water levels rose in Zverinogolovkoye beyond the critical 10 metre (33 foot) mark, said Governor Vadim Shumkov who was shown visiting evacuated families.

Kazakhstan has been badly hit.

The emergencies ministry said on Thursday morning that the number of evacuees stood at over 97,000, unchanged from Wednesday, and a state of emergency remained in effect in eight regions of the country.

Emergency workers have removed 8.8 million cubic metres (310 million cubic feet) of water from flooded areas, the ministry said. The Kazakh government also said movement was restricted on hundreds of kilometers of roads in the Aktobe, Akmola, Atyrau, Kostanai, Mangistau and North Kazakhstan regions.
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BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers approved Wednesday a major revamp of the bloc’s migration laws aimed at ending years of division over how to manage the entry of thousands of people without authorization and depriving the far right of a vote-winning campaign issue ahead of June elections.

The members of the European Parliament voted on the so-called Pact on Migration and Asylum, regulations and policies meant to help address the thorny issue of who should take responsibility for migrants when they arrive and whether other EU countries should be obliged to help.

The proceedings were briefly interrupted by a small but noisy group of demonstrators in the public gallery who wore shirts marked “this pact kills” and shouted “vote no!”

The 27 EU member countries must now endorse the reform package, possibly in a vote in late April, before it can enter force.

The plan was drawn up after 1.3 million people, mostly those fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, sought refuge in Europe in 2015. The EU’s asylum system collapsed, reception centers were overwhelmed in Greece and Italy, and countries further north built barriers to stop people entering.

But few have admitted to being happy with the new policy response to one of Europe’s biggest political crises, and even the lawmakers who drafted parts of the new regulations are unwilling to support the entire reform package.

“I’m not going to open a bottle of champagne after this,” Dutch lawmaker Sophie i’nt Veld, who drew up the assembly’s position on migrant reception conditions, told reporters on the eve of the plenary session in Brussels. She said she planned to abstain from some of the votes.

In’t Veld described the pact as “the bare minimum” in terms of a policy response, but she does not want to torpedo it by voting against. “We will not have another opportunity to come to an agreement,” she said.

Swedish parliamentarian Malin Bjork, who worked on refugee resettlement, said that the pact does not respond to “any of the questions it was set to solve.”

She said the reform package “undermines the individual right to seek asylum” in Europe because it would build on plans that some EU countries already have to process migrants abroad. Italy has concluded one such deal with Albania.

“We cannot have a situation where people systematically, in their thousands, die on their way seeking protection and refuge in Europe,” Bjork told reporters.

The new rules include controversial measures: facial images and fingerprints could be taken from children from the age of 6, and people may be detained during screening. Fast-track deportation could be used on those not permitted to stay.

“The pact will lead to more detention and de facto detention at the EU’s external borders, including for families with children, which is in clear violation of international law,” said Marta Gionco from Picum, a network of migrant rights defense organizations.

Mainstream political parties want to secure agreement on the pact ahead of Europe-wide elections on June 6-9. Migration is likely to be a campaign issue, and they believe the new reforms address concerns about an issue that has been a consistent vote-winner for far-right parties.
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British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington to help push for a new aid package for Ukraine. He also met with former President Donald Trump in Florida, as VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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ORSK, Russia — Russia and Kazakhstan ordered more than 100,000 people to evacuate after swiftly melting snow swelled rivers beyond bursting point in the worst flooding in the area for at least 70 years. 

The deluge of melt water overwhelmed scores of settlements in the Ural Mountains, Siberia and areas of Kazakhstan close to rivers such as the Ural and Tobol, which local officials said had risen by meters in a matter of hours to the highest levels ever recorded. 

Late on Tuesday, levels of the Ural River in Orenburg, a city of around 550,000, reached 9.31 meters (30.54 feet) exceeding the critical level of 9.30 meters (30.51 feet), the regional governor said. He urged residents in areas at risk to evacuate. 

“I am calling for caution and for those in flooded districts to evacuate promptly,” Denis Pasler said on Telegram. 

City residents paddled along roads as though they were rivers. Dams and embankments were being strengthened.  

Upstream on the Ural, floodwaters burst through an embankment dam in the city of Orsk last Friday. 

Regional officials said water levels in Orsk had subsided by 21 centimeters (.68 feet) and now stood at 9.07 meters 29.75 feet), still well over the official danger level of about 7 meters (22.96 feet). Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said water levels had declined in a number of areas but described the situation as “still difficult.” 

The Ural is Europe’s third-longest river, which flows through Russia and Kazakhstan into the Caspian. 

Evacuation order 

Sirens in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol River, a tributary of the Irtysh, warned people to evacuate immediately. Regional officials said floodwaters would continue to rise for three days and predicted a “difficult situation” until the end of April. 

A state of emergency was also declared in Tyumen, a major oil-producing region of Western Siberia, the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world. Russian news agencies said Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov had arrived in the city as part of a regional tour assessing flood danger. 

“The difficult days are still ahead for the Kurgan and Tyumen regions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “There is a lot of water coming.” 

Tyumen is about 200 kilometers (124.27 miles) north of Kurgan. 

President Vladimir Putin spoke to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, where more than 86,000 people have been evacuated because of the flooding. Tokayev said the flooding was probably the worst in 80 years. 

The most severely hit areas are Atyrau, Aktobe, Akmola, Kostanai, Eastern Kazakhstan, Northern Kazakhstan and Pavlodar regions, most of which border Russia and are crossed by rivers originating in Russia such as the Ural and the Tobol. 

Russians beg for help

In Russia, anger boiled over in Orsk when at least 100 Russians begged the Kremlin chief for help and chanted “shame on you” at local officials who they said had done too little. 

The Kremlin said Putin was being updated on the situation but had no immediate plans to visit the flood zone as local and emergency officials were doing their best to tackle the deluge.  

In Kurgan, a region with 800,000 residents, drone footage showed traditional Russian wooden houses and the golden kupolas of Orthodox Churches stranded alongside an expanse of water.  

Russian officials have said some people ignored calls to evacuate. Kurgan Governor Vadim Shumkov urged residents to take the warnings seriously. 

“We understand you very well: It is hard to leave your possessions and move somewhere at the call of the local authorities,” Shumkov said. “It’s better that we laugh at the hydrologists together later and praise God for the miracle of our common salvation. But let’s do it alive.” 

In Kurgan, water levels were rising in the Tobol. Russia said 19,000 people were at risk in the region.  

Rising waters were also forecast in Siberia’s Ishim River, also a tributary of the Irtysh, which along with its parent, the Ob, forms the world’s seventh-longest river system. 

It was not immediately clear why this year’s floods were so severe as the snow melt is an annual event in Russia. Scientists say climate change has made flooding more frequent worldwide. 
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LONDON — Nobel prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed the existence of the so-called “God particle” that helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang, has died at age 94, the University of Edinburgh said Tuesday.

The university, where Higgs was emeritus professor, said he died Monday following a short illness.

Higgs predicted the existence of a new particle, which came to be known as the Higgs boson, in 1964. He theorized there must be a subatomic particle of certain dimension that would explain how other particles — and therefore all the stars and planets in the universe — acquired mass. Without something like this particle, the set of equations physicists use to describe the world, known as the standard model, would not hold together.

Higgs’ work helps scientists understand one of the most fundamental riddles of the universe: how the Big Bang created something out of nothing 13.8 billion years ago. Without mass from the Higgs, particles could not clump together into the matter we interact with every day.

But it would be almost 50 years before the particle’s existence could be confirmed. In 2012, in one of the biggest breakthroughs in physics in decades, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced that they had finally found a Higgs boson using the Large Hardron Collider, the $10 billion atom smasher in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel under the Swiss-French border.

The collider was designed in large part to find Higgs’ particle. It produces collisions with extraordinarily high energies in order to mimic some of the conditions that were present in the trillionths of seconds after the Big Bang.

Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, alongside Francois Englert of Belgium, who independently came up with the same theory.

Edinburgh University Vice Chancellor Peter Mathieson said Higgs, who was born in Newcastle, was “a remarkable individual – a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us.”

“His pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”

Born in Newcastle, northeast England, on May 29, 1929, Higgs studied at King’s College, University of London, and was awarded a doctorate in 1954. He spent much of his career at Edinburgh, becoming the Personal Chair of Theoretical Physics at the Scottish university in 1980. He retired in 1996.

One highlight of Higgs’ career came in the 2013 presentation at CERN in Geneva where scientists presented in complex terms — based on statistical analysis unfathomable to most laypeople — that the boson had been confirmed. He broke into tears, wiping down his glasses in the stands of a CERN lecture hall.

“There was an emotion — a kind of vibration — going around in the auditorium,” Fabiola Gianotti, the CERN director-general told The Associated Press. “That was just a unique moment, a unique experience in a professional life.”

“Peter was a very touching person. He was so sweet, so warm at the same time. And so always interested in what other people had to say,” she said. “Able to listen to other people … open, and interesting, and interested.”

Joel Goldstein, of the School of Physics at the University of Bristol, said: “Peter Higgs was a quiet and modest man, who never seemed comfortable with the fame he achieved even though this work underpins the entire modern theoretical framework of particle physics.”

Gianotti recalled how Higgs often bristled at the term “God particle” for his discovery: “I don’t think he liked this kind of definition,” she said. “It was not in his style.”
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WASHINGTON — The United States is welcoming South Korean sanctions imposed on Russian vessels suspected of transporting weapons from North Korea, despite Russian protests. 

“We applaud the recent actions taken by the ROK to disrupt and expose arms transfers between the DPRK and Russia – including the sanctions … on two Russian vessels involved in arms transfers to Russia,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“It is important for the international community to send a strong, unified message that the DPRK must halt its irresponsible behavior, abide by its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions, and engage in serious and sustained diplomacy,” the spokesperson said Friday via email to the VOA Korean Service.

South Korea on April 2 unilaterally sanctioned two Russian vessels involved in delivering military supplies from North Korea to Russia.  

The next day at a press briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called Seoul’s move “an unfriendly step” that “leads only to escalation of tensions” and “will affect South Korea-Russia relations in a negative way.” 

She said Moscow would respond to the sanctions but did not specify how. 

On Friday, Russia said it had summoned South Korea’s ambassador.  

The South Korean sanctions followed Russia’s veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the annual extension of the U.N. experts panel that monitors sanctions on North Korea. The panel’s mandate ends at the end of April.

The ties between Pyongyang and Moscow have been growing since a summit in September. Since then, North Korea has been providing munitions that Russia needs to fight its war in Ukraine.

“The ROK government getting involved in applying sanctions, seizures, and other active counterproliferation authorities and capabilities against the North is a huge step forward in joint cooperation to counter, protect and contain the DPRK regime’s weapons exports,” said David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.   

Asher worked on disrupting North Korea’s illicit financial, trading and weapons of mass destruction networks under the George W. Bush administration.

In an email to VOA on Monday, Asher added, “I fully expect ROK-U.S.-Japan cooperation to expand in counterproliferation, including the identification and targeting of weapons supply networks using intelligence operations, law enforcement, and sanctions.”

A day after announcing the sanctions, Seoul said it had seized a vessel that was suspected of violating U.N. sanctions on North Korea. South Korea said it was investigating the DEYI, a cargo ship that was en route to Russia from North Korea via China, after seizing it in waters off the South Korean port city of Yeosu.

“This reinforces that countries can implement U.N. sanctions, on their own, as they have responsibility to do so,” especially after Russia blocked the U.N. experts panel’s mandate, said Anthony Ruggiero, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ruggiero has over 19 years working on financial sanctions and proliferation issues, including ones involving North Korea.

There is a broad international and domestic set of legal authorities that countries like South Korea could rely on to go after illicit exports and maritime activities by North Korea, but it is a matter of “whether countries are willing to stop” vessels making illegal actions, Ruggiero said during a telephone interview on Monday. 

A U.N. Security Council resolution passed in 2017 authorizes member states to seize, inspect, freeze and impound vessels in their territorial waters found to be conducting illicit activities with Pyongyang and carrying banned goods from North Korea.  

A State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday that the U.S. is “coordinating closely with the ROK in its investigation of this ship in connection with U.N. sanctions violations.”

“Despite Russia’s veto of the 1718 Committee Panel of Experts mandate in order to bury reporting on its violation of U.S. Security Council resolutions, U.N. sanctions on the DPRK remain in place, and all U.N. member states are still required to implement them,” the spokesperson said.

Nate Evans, the spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the U.N., said Monday that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield will travel to South Korea and Japan next week to discuss ways to monitor international sanctions on North Korea.

South Korea estimated in March that North Korea has shipped about 7,000 containers full of munitions to Russia since last year. The U.S. assessed the same month the number of containers to be 10,000.

Joshua Stanton, an attorney based in Washington who helped draft the Sanctions and Policy Enforcement Act in 2016, told VOA on Monday via email that Seoul could seize ships carrying weapons from North Korea to Russia if certain criteria are met. 

Seoul could do so “if South Korea has reasonable cause to believe that the vessel is engaged in sanctions evasion, and if one of the following conditions is also met: the [vessel’s] flag state consents, the vessel is stateless, or the ship enters a South Korean port.”
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It has been two years since the town of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region has enjoyed electricity, gas and sewage service. Once a bustling community of over 12,000 people, only about 800 remain today. Anna Kosstutschenko visited Siversk and talked to residents. Video editor: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Beijing — Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Tuesday in a sign of mutual support and shared opposition to Western democracies amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We would like to express our highest appreciation and admiration for the successes that you have achieved over the years and, above all, over the last decade under your leadership,” Lavrov told Xi, according to Russian media. 

“We are sincerely pleased with these successes, since these are the successes of friends, although not everyone in the world shares this attitude and are trying in every possible way to restrain the development of China — in fact just like the development of Russia,” Lavrov said. 

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War. In past decades, the two have closely aligned their foreign policies, held joint military exercises and sought to rally non-aligned states in groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 

Lavrov held a news conference earlier Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at which they reaffirmed solidarity in international affairs. 

Lavrov said Russia and China oppose any international events that do not take Russia’s position into account. 

He said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “so-called peace formula” was “completely detached from any realities.” 

Zelensky has called for the withdrawal of Russian forces and the return of all occupied Ukrainian territory, but is heavily reliant on support from the U.S., where the Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives has been holding up a new military aid package. 

China and Russia are each others most important diplomatic partners, both holding permanent seats on the United Nations security council and working together to block initiatives by the U.S. and its allies to spread democratic values and human rights from Venezuela to Syria. 

While China has not provided direct military support for Russia, it has backed it diplomatically in blaming the West for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the war and refrained from calling it an invasion in deference to the Kremlin. China has also said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow, alongside India and other countries. amid sanctions from Washington and its allies. 

At their joint news conference Wang repeated China’s calls for a ceasefire and “an end to the war soon.” 

“China supports the convening at an appropriate time of an international meeting that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, in which all parties can participate equally and discuss all peace solutions fairly,” Wang said. 

China’s peace proposal has found little traction, in part due to the country’s continuing support for Russia and lack of vision for what a future resolution would look like, particularly the fate of occupied Ukrainian territories and their residents. 

Wang also said Xi and Putin would continue to maintain close exchanges this year amid expectations of visits to each other’s capitals. 

“China and Russia have gone through ups and downs, and both sides have drawn lessons from historical experience and found a correct path to promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations,” Wang said. “Today’s good relations between China and Russia are hard-won and deserve to be cherished and carefully maintained by both sides.” 

Lavrov arrived in China on Monday, while Wang and other leading Chinese figures have recently visited Russia and maintained China’s line of largely backing Russia’s views on the cause of the conflict. 

China has at times taken an equally combative tone against the U.S. and its allies. China and Russia have held joint military drills, and are seen as seeking to supplant democracies with dictatorships in areas where they wield influence. China is involved in its own territorial disputes, particularly over the self-governing island of Taiwan and in the South China and East China Seas. 

Just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin visited Beijing for the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics and the sides signed a pact pledging a “no limits” relationship that has China supporting Russia’s line, even while formally urging peace talks. 

In a phone call last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, U.S. President Joseph Biden pressed China over its defense relationship with Russia, which is seeking to rebuild its industrial base as it continues its invasion of Ukraine. And he called on Beijing to wield its influence over North Korea to rein in the isolated and erratic nuclear power.
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ORSK — Flood sirens blared out in two Russian cities on Tuesday, warning thousands more people to evacuate immediately as two major rivers swelled to bursting point in some of the worst flooding in at least 70 years.

Swiftly melting snow across swathes of the Ural Mountains and Siberia has swelled some of the biggest rivers which surge across the wilds of Russia, with at least 10,500 homes recorded as flooded so far and many thousands more at risk.

The Ural River, Europe’s third largest which flows into the Caspian, burst through an embankment dam on Friday flooding the city of Orsk just south of the Ural Mountains. Downstream, water levels in Orenburg, a city of around 550,000, were rising.

Sirens in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol river, a tributary of the Irtysh, warned people to evacuate immediately and Governor Vadim Shumkov urged residents to take the warnings seriously.

“We understand you very well: It is hard to leave your possessions and move somewhere at the call of the local authorities,” Shumkov said, adding that those demanding to stay in their houses were foolish.

“It’s better that we laugh at the hydrologists together later and praise God for the miracle of our common salvation. But let’s do it alive.”

The peak is expected in Orenburg on Wednesday.

President Vladimir Putin has been monitoring the floods from Moscow but anger boiled over in Orsk when at least 100 Russians begged the Kremlin chief to help and chanted “shame on you” at local officials who they said had done too little.

With so much water flowing into rivers, emergencies were declared in Orenburg, Kurgan and Tyumen, a major oil producing region of Western Siberia – the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world.

In Kurgan, a region with around 800,000 residents, drone footage showed traditional Russian wooden houses and the golden kupolas of Russian Orthodox Churches stranded among a vast expanse of water.

In Zverinogolovskoye, a town in Kurgan region, the water levels of the Tobol rose 74 centimeters in just two hours. More than 19,000 people are risk in Kurgan, the TASS news agency reported.

The head of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, Alexander Kurenkov, flew to Orenburg region on Tuesday to monitor the situation after being tasked to do so by Putin, the ministry said.

Kurenkov will also visit the Kurgan and Tyumen regions in the Urals, the ministry added.

“Preventive measures are already being taken there, rescue teams have been strengthened, and the forces and means of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations have been put on high alert,” the ministry said. 

Rising water was also forecast in Siberia’s Ishim river, a tributary of the Irtysh river, which along with its parent, the Ob, forms the world’s seventh longest river system.

It was not immediately clear why this year’s floods were so bad as the snow melt is an annual event in Russia. Scientists say climate change has made flooding more frequent worldwide. 
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STRASBOURG, France — Europe’s highest human rights court ruled Tuesday that its member nations have an obligation to protect their citizens from the ill effects of climate change, but still threw out a high-profile case brought by six Portuguese youngsters aimed at forcing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Court of Human Rights sided with more than 2,000 Swiss members of Senior Women for Climate Protection, who also sought such measures in a mixed session of judgements in which a French mayor similarly seeking stronger government efforts to combat climate change was also defeated.

Lawyers for all three had hoped the Strasbourg court would find that national governments have a legal duty to make sure global warming is held to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

“I really hoped that we would win against all the countries, so obviously I’m disappointed that this didn’t happen,” said 19-year-od Sofia Oliveira, one of the Portuguese plaintiffs. “But the most important thing is that the Court has said in the Swiss women’s case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights. So, their win is a win for us, too, and a win for everyone!”

In a reference to its fundamental Convention of Human Rights, “the court found that Art. 8 of the Convention encompasses a right for individuals to effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life.”

Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights set a legal precedent against which future lawsuits would be judged in the Council of Europe’s 46 member states.

Although activists have had successes with lawsuits in domestic proceedings, this was the first time an international court ruled on climate change.

“This is a turning point,” said Corina Heri, an expert in climate change litigation at the University of Zurich. She said Tuesday’s decision confirms for the first time that countries have an obligation to protect people from the effects of climate change and will open the door to more legal challenges.

Ahead of the ruling, a large crowd gathered in front of the court building to cheer and wave flags, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was coming off of multiple arrests during a demonstration in The Hague over the weekend.

The decisions have “the potential to be a watershed moment in the global fight for a livable future. A victory for any of the three cases would be one of the most significant developments on climate change since the signing of the Paris Agreement” said Gerry Liston, a lawyer with the Global Legal Action Network, which is supporting the Portuguese students.

The European Union, which doesn’t include Switzerland, currently has a target to be climate-neutral by 2050. Many governments have said that meeting a 2030 goal would be economically unattainable.

The groups were confident that the 17 judges would rule in their favor, but the mixed decision could undermine a previous ruling in the Netherlands. In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ordered the government to cut emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels.

The Urgenda decision, referring to the climate group that brought the case, relied on the European Convention of Human Rights. It could be overturned if Tuesday’s decision concludes there is no legal obligation for countries to combat climate change.

“A court ruling is binding on all countries,” said Dennis van Berkel, who represented Urgenda in the Netherlands.

Together with five more young people, 16-year-old André dos Santos Oliveira took Portugal and 32 other nations to court, arguing the failure to stop emissions violated their fundamental rights. Their case was thrown out.

“The extreme heat waves, the rainfalls, followed by heat waves, it is just choking us with greenhouse effects. And what worries me is the frequency in which they started happening more and more. That’s what really scared me. And, I thought to myself, well, what can I do?” she said.

But judges ruled in favor of a group of Swiss retirees also demanding their government do more. Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, say older women’s rights are especially infringed on because they are most affected by the extreme heat that will become more frequent due to global warming.

Earth shattered global annual heat records in 2023, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold, and showed more signs of a feverish planet, Copernicus, a European climate agency, said in January.

In all three cases, lawyers argued that the political and civil protections guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights are meaningless if the planet is uninhabitable.

Switzerland is not alone in being affected by global warming, said Alain Chablais, representative of the country at last year’s hearings. “This problem cannot be solved by Switzerland alone.”

Acknowledging the urgency of the climate crisis, the court fast-tracked all three cases, including a rare move allowing the Portuguese case to bypass domestic legal proceedings.
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Copenhagen, Denmark — Sweden has expelled a Chinese journalist, saying the reporter was a threat to national security, Swedish media reported on Monday.

The journalist, an unnamed, 57-year-old woman, was arrested by the Swedish security service in October and expelled by the government in Stockholm last week, Swedish broadcaster SVT reported. She is banned from returning.

The woman arrived in the Scandinavian country some 20 years ago. She held a residence permit and was married to a Swedish man, with whom she has children, according to the broadcaster.

The woman has had contacts with the Chinese Embassy and with people in Sweden who are connected to the Chinese government, SVT said.

Her lawyer, Leutrim Kadriu, told SVT the woman doesn’t believe she poses a threat to Sweden.

“It is difficult for me to go into exact details given that much is shrouded in secrecy, as this is a national security matter,” Kadriu told the broadcaster.

In neighboring Norway, broadcaster NRK said the journalist had also reported from there, and from other Nordic countries including Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Relations between Stockholm and Beijing have been tense for years.

In 2020, a court in eastern China sentenced Chinese-born Swedish national Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison for selling books that were critical of the ruling Communist Party. He was charged with “illegally providing intelligence overseas.”

China has rebuked Sweden’s demands for Gui’s release.

He first disappeared in 2015, when he was believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents from his seaside home in Thailand.

The case led to an investigation of Sweden’s ambassador to China over a meeting she arranged between Gui’s daughter and two Chinese businessmen whom the daughter said threatened her father. The ambassador, Anna Lindstedt, was eventually cleared.

In 2018, a Swedish court found a man guilty of spying for China by gathering information on Tibetans who had fled to Sweden. Dorjee Gyantsan, a Tibetan who worked for a pro-Tibetan radio station, was found guilty of “gross illegal intelligence activity” and sentenced to 22 months in jail.
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Vatican City — The Vatican on Monday reaffirmed its opposition to sex changes, gender theory and surrogate parenthood, as well as abortion and euthanasia, four months after supporting blessings for same-sex couples. 

The Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF) released the “Dignitas infinita” (Infinite dignity) declaration following fierce conservative pushback, especially in Africa, against its document on LGBT issues. 

There is no suggestion that the new text, which describes what the Church perceives as threats to human dignity, was prepared in direct response to the rows over same-sex blessings, as it has been five years in the making. But it has undergone extensive revisions over the period. 

Pope Francis approved it after requesting that it also mention “poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war, and other themes,” the head of the DDF, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, said in a statement.  

The declaration said surrogate parenting violated the dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child, and recalled that Francis in January called it “despicable” and urged a global ban.  

On gender theory, the declaration said that “desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.” 

Gender theory, often called gender ideology by its detractors, suggests that gender is more complex and fluid than the binary categories of male and female, and depends on more than visible sexual characteristics. 

On changes of gender, the declaration said that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” 

It acknowledged that some people may undergo surgery to resolve “genital abnormalities”, but stressed that “such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.” 

At the same time, the text also denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that “in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” 

Elsewhere, the declaration doubled down on the Vatican’s standing condemnation of abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, quoting from Francis, his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II and past Vatican documents.  

It also mentioned sexual abuse as a threat to human dignity — calling it “widespread in society”, including within the Catholic Church — as well as violence against women, cyberbullying and other forms of online abuse.
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Preliminary hearings are opening Monday at the United Nations’ top court in a case that seeks an end to German military and other aid to Israel, based on claims that Berlin is enabling acts of genocide and breaches of international humanitarian law in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Nicaragua argues that by giving Israel political, financial and military support and by defunding the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, “Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide and, in any case has failed in its obligation to do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide.”

While the case brought by Nicaragua centers on Germany, it indirectly takes aim at Israel’s military campaign in Gaza following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Its toll doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it has said women and children make up the majority of the dead.

Israel strongly denies that its assault amounts to genocidal acts, saying it is acting in self defense. Israeli legal adviser Tal Becker told judges at the court earlier this year that the country is fighting a “war it did not start and did not want.”

Germany rejects the case brought by Nicaragua.

“Germany has breached neither the Genocide Convention nor international humanitarian law, and we will set this out in detail before the International Court of Justice,” German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sebastian Fischer told reporters in Berlin on Friday.

Nicaragua has asked the court to hand down preliminary orders known as provisional measures, including that Germany “immediately suspend its aid to Israel, in particular its military assistance including military equipment in so far as this aid may be used in the violation of the Genocide Convention” and international law.

The court will likely take weeks to deliver its preliminary decision, and Nicaragua’s case will probably drag on for years.

Monday’s hearing at the world court comes amid growing calls for allies to stop supplying arms to Israel as its six-month campaign continues to lay waste to Gaza.

The offensive has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population. Food is scarce, the U.N. says famine is approaching and few Palestinians have been able to leave the besieged territory.

The case “will likely further galvanize opposition to any support for Israel,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law and international peace studies at the University of Notre Dame.

On Friday, the U.N.’s top human rights body called on countries to stop selling or shipping weapons to Israel. The United States and Germany opposed the resolution.

Also, hundreds of British jurists, including three retired Supreme Court judges, have called on their government to suspend arms sales to Israel after three U.K. citizens were among seven aid workers from the charity World Central Kitchen killed in Israeli strikes. Israel said the attack on the aid workers was a mistake caused by “misidentification.”

Germany has for decades been a staunch supporter of Israel. Days after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained why: “Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust, makes it a perpetual task for us to stand up for the security of the state of Israel,” he told lawmakers.

Berlin, however, has gradually shifted its tone as civilian casualties in Gaza have soared, becoming increasingly critical of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and speaking out against a ground offensive in Rafah.

Nicaragua’s government, which has historical links with Palestinian organizations dating back to their support for the 1979 Sandinista revolution, was itself accused earlier this year by U.N.-backed human rights experts of systematic human rights abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity.” The government of President Daniel Ortega fiercely rejected the allegations.

In January, the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures ordering Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and acts of genocide in Gaza. The orders came in a case filed by South Africa accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention.

The court last week ordered Israel to take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including opening more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into the war-ravaged enclave.

 
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