NATO’s newest rapid-response force is testing its strength in Romania, just kilometers from the Ukrainian border. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze has more on the drills and NATO’s evolving defense strategy. Camera: Daniil Batushchak
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After several incidents involving damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, including the latest one that Sweden began investigating Friday, NATO launched a program to monitor these vital underwater communication and energy pipelines. VOA’s Vladislavs Andrejevs embedded with a NATO minehunter and has this report from the Gulf of Finland, narrated by Anna Rice. 
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MOSCOW — Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky, who was famously defeated at the height of the Cold War, has died at 88, the Russian Chess Federation announced Thursday.

“The tenth world champion Boris Spassky has died at 88,” the Russian Chess Federation said in a statement on its website, calling this a “great loss for the country.”

The statement did not say when exactly he died or from what cause.

Spassky is best remembered for his duel with American Bobby Fischer in 1972, which was emblematic of the confrontation between East and West.

The iconic Cold War duel has been the subject of numerous books, documentaries and films. Most notably it inspired the Walter Tevis novel The Queen’s Gambit, which was adapted into the acclaimed Netflix series in 2020.

Spassky became world champion in 1969 and held the title until he played the match that would define his career, facing the eccentric American prodigy.

With the Soviet Union having dominated the game for years, Spassky faced a must-win situation and initially took the lead.

But the American roared back to win, ending an unbroken streak of Soviet world champions since 1948.

Although the loss was a slap in the face for Moscow, Spassky admitted decades later it was a relief to be rid of a “colossal responsibility.”

Born in 1937 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Spassky showed prodigious talent early, becoming junior world champion and the youngest grandmaster in history at the time at 18. 
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WASHINGTON — There is hope in Washington that the decision by the leader of a Turkey-based, U.S.-designated terror group to ask its factions to lay down their arms could ease tensions with Ankara and facilitate efforts to counter remnants of the Islamic State terror group.

Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), on Thursday issued a statement calling on his followers to end their decadeslong fight for an independent Kurdish state and to instead pursue peace, a decision that could reverberate across the Middle East.

“It’s a significant development,” said White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes in a statement to VOA.

“We believe it will help bring peace to this troubled region,” Hughes said, adding, “We hope that it will help assuage our Turkish allies about U.S. counter-ISIS partners in northeast Syria.”

For years, the alliance between the United States and Turkey has been strained by Washington’s decision to back the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in northeastern Syria in order to fight the Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS.

The U.S. has viewed the SDF as a willing and capable partner. But officials in Ankara have long maintained that the SDF is led by fighters with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian-based offshoot of the PKK.

The SDF on Thursday echoed Washington’s optimism, though its top military commander said his fighters would not give up their arms.

“Just to make it clear, this is only for the PKK. It is nothing related to us here in Syria,” said General Mazloum Abdi, speaking to reporters in Washington from his base in northeastern Syria via video.

“When the peace flowers between Turkey and PKK, that will have its own positive consequences on us,” Abdi added, speaking through a translator. “That means there is not any reason, and there is not any excuse, to keep attacking these regions on the pretext of PKK.”

Turkish attacks against the SDF, whether launched directly by the Turkish military or by Turkish-backed forces in Syria, have repeatedly raised the ire of the U.S.

In one incident in 2022, a Turkish airstrike targeting Syrian Kurdish fighters hit within 300 meters of U.S. forces located north of the Syrian city of Hasakah, prompting the Pentagon to call for an immediate de-escalation.

And as recently as this past December, Kurdish officials in northeastern Syria warned that the actions of Turkey and Turkish-aligned militias threatened security at more than two dozen SDF-run prisons, holding an estimated 10,000 captured IS fighters.

“We [are] doing our best … securing these prisons, which is not [an] easy task at all due to the constant attacks against us in the region,” the SDF’s Abdi said Thursday, in response to a question from VOA.

Some of those attacks have come from Turkish-aligned militias. But others have come from what the SDF says is a reinvigorated IS.

“ISIS has taken advantage of the security gap” created by the collapse of the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this past December, Abdi said. “We see ISIS become more visible. We see them more active recently … showing more lethal capabilities.”

Abdi said the terror group is making good use of weapons caches it seized after they were abandoned by forces loyal to Assad.

IS is also getting bolder, he said, sending terror fighters from their hideouts in Syria’s Badia desert into surrounding cities.

The warnings parallel findings from a recent report by the United Nations’ Sanctions Monitoring Team, which cautioned that IS exploited the military campaign by the Syrian insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led to the Assad regime’s demise.

The report, based on intelligence from U.N. member states, said IS controls about 1,500 to 3,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq, and that the group’s leadership remains intent on retaking and holding territory in Syria.

For those reasons and others, the SDF’s Abdi said it was critical for the U.S. to maintain its military presence in Syria, estimated to include 2,000 troops, despite media reports that Washington is considering a withdrawal.

“In the case of having a withdrawal, that will lead to chaos,” Abdi said.

“There is already security vacuum” he added, calling a continued U.S. military presence “essential for the sake of preserving stability and security.”
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Anticipation is growing in Russia for a summit – yet to be scheduled – between U.S. President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. On the streets of Moscow, many Russians welcome what they see as a thaw in relations with Washington, and what some hope is the beginning of the end of their country’s isolation from the West. Jonathan Spier narrates this report.
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U.S. and Russian diplomats met Thursday in Istanbul for talks about the operations of their respective embassies in Moscow and Washington.

The meeting is the latest in a series of engagements between the two sides, including a phone call earlier this month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Working to restore U.S.-Russia relations was on the agenda last week for talks between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The U.S. State Department said after those talks in Riyadh that the two sides had agreed to create “a consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship with the objective of taking steps necessary to normalize the operation of our respective diplomatic missions.”

Diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States declined during the past decade, with both sides expelling diplomats.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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US President Donald Trump says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be at the White House on Friday to sign an agreement granting the US access to Ukraine’s lucrative rare earth minerals. But Ukraine’s leader says a few outstanding issues remain. White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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Three years after Russian troops drove everyone in the village into a school basement for a month, the people of Yahidne, Ukraine, continue to repair and rebuild their homes. Lesia Bakalets visited this community about 90 kilometers north of Kyiv. Camera: Vladyslav Smilianets.
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The United States said Wednesday it is nearing a deal on Ukraine’s lucrative rare earth minerals needed for technology products to compensate Washington for the more than $100 billion worth of munitions it has sent to Kyiv to defend itself against Russia’s three-year war of aggression.

“We’re very close to the finish line,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a news conference that the framework of an economic deal is complete, but that U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine that the Kyiv government views as vital have yet to be settled.

Zelenskyy is expected to visit Washington on Friday for talks with President Donald Trump, who has long expressed skepticism about continued U.S. military support for Ukraine. In recent weeks, he has refused to say he wants Ukraine to win the war and has initiated talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin without Kyiv’s involvement to settle the conflict that started with Russia’s invasion three years ago this week.

Trump said Tuesday of Zelenskyy, “Certainly, it’s okay with me if he’d like to” visit the White House. “He would like to sign [the economic deal] together with me. I understand that. It’s a big deal.”

Trump has called Zelenskyy a dictator, without blaming Putin for the invasion.

The U.S. leader has said he is particularly peeved that his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, agreed to the Ukraine military assistance without any provision that Ukraine would pay back the cost. Biden led the coalition of Western allies in providing the military aid to fight Russian aggression without sending their own troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces. Zelenskyy says the U.S. military aid was a grant and not a loan that needed to be repaid.

Zelenskyy said he expects to have wide-ranging substantive discussions with Trump.

“I want to coordinate with the U.S.,” Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian leader said he wants to know whether the U.S. plans to halt military aid and, if so, whether Ukraine would be able to purchase weapons directly from the U.S. He also wants to know whether Ukraine can use frozen Russian assets for weapons investments and whether Washington plans to lift its economic sanctions on Russian entities and high-level associates and friends of Putin.

Elements of the deal

Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the country’s public television channel that Ukraine and the United States had reached preliminary agreement on the broad rare earth minerals deal and that it would be signed.

The preliminary agreement sets out the terms and conditions of an investment fund for the rebuilding of Ukraine, Shmyhal said.

Under terms of the deal, the plan would include investing 50% of proceeds from Ukraine’s minerals, oil and gas to create a “stable and economically prosperous Ukraine” if the war is ended, and half to a U.S.-controlled fund.

The New York Times reported the economic agreement includes a line that says the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace” but does not spell out details on what that might entail.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meeting with Trump on Wednesday in Washington to spell out a European initiative for a 30,000-person peacekeeping force to enforce a Russian ceasefire with Ukraine if such a truce can be reached, although no peace talks have been scheduled.

European leaders have said a peacekeeping force would require an American “backstop” of military assistance, such as American satellite surveillance, air defense or air force support. Trump has not committed the U.S. to such a plan.

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