VALENCIA, Spain — A crowd of angry survivors of Spain’s floods tossed mud and shouted insults at Spain’s King Felipe VI and government officials when they made their first visit to one of the hardest hit towns on Sunday. 

Government officials accompanied the monarch who tried to talk to locals while others shouted at him in Paiporta, an outskirt of Valencia city that has been devastated. 

Police had to step in with officers on horseback to keep back the crowd of several dozens. 

“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” rang out among other insults. 

After being forced to seek protection from the mud, the king remained calm and made several efforts to speak to individual residents. One person appeared to have wept on his shoulder. He shook the hand of a man. 

It was an unprecedented incident for a Royal House that takes great care to craft an image of a monarch who is liked by the nation. 

Queen Letizia and regional Valencia President Carlo Mazón were also in the contingent. 

Over 200 people have died from Tuesday’s floods and thousands have had their homes destroyed by the wall of water and mud. At least 60 of the dead were in Paiporta, an epicenter of suffering. 
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Berlin — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold meetings with his top two ministers to try to find common ground after they put forward contradictory plans to fix the nation’s ailing economy, a government source told Reuters on Sunday.  

A document leaked by Christian Lindner’s finance ministry raised eyebrows in Berlin last week, with its push for tax cuts and fiscal discipline widely interpreted as a challenge to the multibillion-euro investment plan put forward by Economy Minister Robert Habeck just days earlier.  

The stand-off is the latest escalation in a row over economic and industrial policy between the FDP, the Greens and Scholz’s Social Democrats that has fueled speculation of the coalition’s potential collapse, less than a year before elections are due.  

But a government source told Reuters that Scholz and the ministers would hold several meetings in the coming days, saying that “now that everyone has submitted their paper, we have to see how they fit with each other.”  

A worsening business outlook in Europe’s largest economy has widened divisions in Scholz’s ideologically disparate coalition over policy measures to drive growth, protect industrial jobs, and reinforce Germany’s position as a global industrial hub.  

While Habeck wants the creation of a fund to stimulate investment and to get around Germany’s strict fiscal spending rules, Lindner advocates tax cuts to spur the economy and an immediate halt on all new regulation.  

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil signaled openness to discussing Lindner’s proposals in a local newspaper interview, but said that some of them were untenable for his party, which released its own economic plan earlier in October.  

“Giving more to the rich, letting employees work longer and sending them into retirement later – it will come as no surprise to anyone that we think this is the wrong approach,” Klingbeil told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. 
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MOSCOW — Kyiv called on Moscow on Sunday to provide a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war ready for a swap after Russia accused Ukraine of sabotaging the exchange process. 

In requesting the list of Ukrainians from his Russian counterpart, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on his Telegram messaging channel: “We are always ready to exchange prisoners of war!”  

Kyiv and Moscow have frequently exchanged prisoners since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022. The last swap took place in mid-October with each side bringing home 95 prisoners.  

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine was essentially sabotaging the process and has refused to take back its own citizens.  

Zakharova said Russia’s defense ministry had offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war, but that Ukraine had taken only 279.  

Lubinets, in turn, said that Ukraine was always ready to accept its citizens and accused Russia of slowing the exchange process.  

Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova said on Saturday that Ukraine has politicized the issue.  

“We consider it necessary to return to a constructive dialog and speed up the exchange of prisoners,” Moskalkova wrote on Telegram.  
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washington — Mariana Katzarova, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, reported Tuesday on the human rights situation in Russia at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, describing torture as Moscow’s main tool of repression. In an interview with VOA, Katzarova detailed how the Russian government has turned brutality into the new norm and how Russians are persecuted for their anti-war views.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: You came to Washington with a new report about torture in Russia. The torture system is not something new. Did it get worse during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Russia Mariana Katzarova: The main message of this report was about the state-sanctioned system of torture being a tool used in a widespread and systematic manner by the authorities for oppression and control of Russian society.

Yes, it did get worse. First of all, because it’s a tool in the war against Ukraine. For example, we don’t even know how many. Still, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been detained in the occupied territories of Ukraine by the Russian forces and then deported to Russia proper in Russian prisons. They’re kept incommunicado. They have been tortured, including with electric shocks, with sexual violence, rape against them. Many of them haven’t even been charged with any criminal offenses; they’re just kept there kidnapped. I’ve seen pictures of some of them who have been tried in Rostov-on-Don in military courts. I mean, they look like [they’re] coming from concentration camps.

Also, after the terrorist attack in March in Moscow, it was kind of, you know, a new page was turned where the authorities almost legitimized torture, normalized it, almost encouraged it to be happening because they allowed it on the national television to show torture of the suspects, Tajik migrants. As it happened, the suspects in the Crocus [City Hall] attack, terrorist attack, [were subjected to beatings and torture] including the electric shock to the genitals of one of the suspects or [the] cutting of the ear. There was another transmission on television. These people were [nearly] dead and were brought in front of a judge, and the judge completely pretended that nothing was happening.

VOA: Are you expecting any reaction from Russian officials regarding that report?

Katzarova: I, of course, as a special rapporteur of the U.N. system, I hope that the Russian Federation will pay attention because governments around the world are in charge of protecting the rights of their citizens. If the Russian authorities are not interested in the protection of the human rights of their own people, this is shocking. I mean, that’s why I’m hoping that they’re not going to turn a blind eye, particularly when we’re talking about torture, which is entirely outlawed by international law under all circumstances.

VOA: You said you would like to have some constructive dialogue with the Russian officials. Is that possible?

Katzarova: All special rapporteurs of the U.N. are independent experts the governments appoint, members of the U.N., to advise and present the truth about the human rights situation in these countries. Of course, in normal circumstances, I should have had a constructive dialogue with the Russian authorities.

So far, it’s been one way. It’s a monologue. I’m presenting my report. They’re reading it, but they’re not answering. All I can say is that I am planning to send them my new letters. I do it every year after my mandate is voted on by the governments of the Human Rights Council.

They’re not allowing me to visit Russia to meet with all the Russian people, victims of human rights violations, lawyers, the government authorities, the ombudsperson for human rights. This is what we should be doing as special rapporteurs.

VOA: What kind of role can the U.N. play in helping the victims?

Katzarova: First of all, this report is shedding light on the continuing almost full, complete impunity for torturing ill-treatment. Various people of various targeted groups, starting with [the ones] I just mentioned, the Ukrainian detained civilians and POWs, but also from the Russian society. These are the LGBT persons who are pronounced as extremist organizations by the Supreme Court of Russia.

These are the mobilized conscientious objectors and the mobilized men who refuse to fight and who are tortured as well, subjected to torture, to … convince them to continue fighting or join the war against Ukraine.

And, of course, now another targeted group where the political prisoners, they’re being subjected to torture as conditions of detention. They’re also a target for the authorities, of course, to begin with. Alexey Navalny spent something like 394 and 96 days in SHIZO, which is a special punishment cell.

Also, anti-war activists have been subjected in administrative detention to something called Carrousel. They’re kept for two weeks, then another two weeks until criminal cases are fabricated against them. And we know of deaths in custody of such activists under torture.

VOA: If some Russian officials, let’s say, Sergey Lavrov, would listen to us right now, what would you say?

Katzarova: I would say, “Dear Mr. Lavrov, Your Excellency, please respect your own laws and most importantly, the international law and the rules of the United Nations. All the conventions that you have signed and ratified. And please respect the human rights of the Russian people. They’re your people, and they deserve better than languishing in prisons. They deserve better than being herded, and then sent to fight in the war, which is not their war. So, please respect human rights and show the United Nations that you deserve to be a member of the Security Council and a beacon, a country to show the way for other countries that need to follow in your steps because you’re one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

And please stop the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people and the Russian people suffered enough because of this aggressive war.

What else can we do apart from shed light? Speak up, not be afraid, and wait for our messages and the truth to be heard. As we say in Bulgaria and other countries, the darkest time is before sunrise.
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ATHENS, GREECE — Greek anti-terror investigators have arrested a man in connection with a deadly explosion in Athens, police said Saturday, warning of “a new generation of terrorists” at work.

Thursday’s blast in an apartment in the capital, which killed a man and seriously injured a woman, is suspected to have been caused by the accidental detonation of a homemade bomb.

Police sources told AFP they had identified the dead man from his dismembered remains as a 36-year-old from the port city of Piraeus who had been previously arrested in Germany.

His fingerprints were in the international database of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, the sources said.

Investigators have also opened a case for alleged participation in a terrorist organization and committing terrorist acts against the injured woman, 33, who was hospitalized under police supervision, and a 30-year-old woman who remains at large.

In their statement, police said Saturday that the arrested man was detained after turning himself in Friday.

He is believed to have a connection with one of the two women wanted in the case but has denied having anything to do with the explosion, police said.

Police said that a search of the apartment produced two handguns, wigs and face masks among other materials.

Greek police sources told AFP that investigations were ongoing and that the deceased and those charged were probably members of “a new generation of terrorists.”

The country has a decades-old history of far-left extremism involving small urban groups.

The shadow November 17 group, named after an anti-junta student uprising, was behind the 1975 killing of the CIA’s Athens station Chief Richard Welch and claimed responsibility for assassinating 23 people in scores of attacks on U.S., British, Turkish and Greek targets between the 1970s and 1990s.

In the past decade, scores of arson and bomb attacks in Greece have hit financial, diplomatic and political targets, with police blaming radical anarchists.
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MOSCOW — A court in Russia’s far east said on Friday it had convicted Robert Shonov, a former U.S. consular employee, of illegally and covertly cooperating with the U.S. government to harm Russia’s national security and had jailed him for nearly five years.

Russia’s FSB security service detained Shonov, a Russian national, in Vladivostok in May 2023 and accused him of taking money to covertly supply U.S. diplomats with information that was potentially harmful to Russia.

The United States on Saturday condemned the conviction, calling it “an egregious injustice.”

“The allegations against Mr. Shonov are entirely fictitious and without merit,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

A court in the Primorsky region in Russia’s far east confirmed in a statement on Friday that it had found Shonov guilty and had sentenced him to four years and 10 months in a penal colony.

Video of the verdict being read, released by the court, showed Shonov listening inside a courtroom cage as the judge sentenced him.

The FSB published a video in August 2023 showing a purported confession by Shonov in which he said two senior U.S. diplomats based in Moscow whom Russia later expelled had asked him to collect information about Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, its annexation of “new territories,” its military mobilization and the 2024 Russian presidential election.

In the video, Shonov said he was told to gather “negative” information on these topics, to look for signs of popular protest, and to reflect these in his reports.

It was not clear whether he was speaking under duress.

Shonov was employed by the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok for more than 25 years until Russia in 2021 ordered the dismissal of the U.S. mission’s local staff.
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VALENCIA, SPAIN — Spain will deploy 10,000 more troops and police officers to the eastern Valencia region devastated by floods that have killed 211 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday.

Sanchez said in a televised address that he accepted the regional leader’s request for 5,000 more troops and informed him of a further deployment of 5,000 police officers and civil guards. 

Meanwhile, rescuers resumed a grim search for bodies as the nation scrambled to organize aid to stricken citizens.

Hopes of finding survivors more than three days after torrents of mud-filled water submerged towns and wrecked infrastructure were slim in the European country’s deadliest such disaster in decades.

Almost all deaths have been recorded in the eastern Valencia region, where thousands of soldiers, police officers and civil guards were frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for bodies.

Officials have said that dozens of people remain unaccounted for, but establishing a precise figure is difficult with telephone and transport networks severely damaged.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska on Friday told Cadena Ser radio station that 207 people had died and that it was “reasonable” to believe more fatalities would emerge.

It is also hoped that the estimated number of missing people will fall once telephone and internet services are running again.

Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages — some of which have been cut off from food, water and power for days — is a priority.

Authorities have come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the floods, and some residents have also complained that the response to the disaster is too slow.

Susana Camarero, deputy head of the Valencia region, told journalists on Saturday that essential supplies had been delivered “from day one” to all accessible settlements.

But it was “logical” that affected residents were asking for more, she said.

Authorities in Valencia have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.

 

‘Overwhelmed’ by solidarity

Thousands of people pushing shopping trolleys and carrying cleaning equipment took to the streets on Friday to help with the effort to clean up.

Camarero said some municipalities were “overwhelmed by the amount of solidarity and food” they had received.

The surge of solidarity continued Saturday as around 1,000 people set off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia toward nearby towns laid waste by the floods, an AFP journalist saw.

Authorities have urged them to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez chaired a meeting of a crisis committee made up of top cabinet members on Saturday and is due to address the country later.

The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.

But scientists warn that climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia unleashed an overnight drone attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv that lasted into late morning and wounded at least one person, city officials said on Saturday.

Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko.

Mayor Vitalii Klitschko had earlier reported that two people had been injured.

“Another night. Another air-raid alert. Another drone attack. The armed forces of the Russian Federation attacked Kyiv again according to their old and familiar tactics,” Popko wrote on social media.

He said all the drones aimed at Kyiv had been shot down, but warned that others currently located in airspace outside the city could turn toward the capital.

Reuters correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air-raid alert that lasted more than five hours.

Russia has carried out regular airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities behind the front lines of the war which began when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.

Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.

Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.
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A 22-year-old Russian man considered a political prisoner by activists has died in a penal colony in Belarus, human rights group Viasna said Friday.

The rights group said it confirmed the death of Dmitry Shletgauer, who was recently transferred to a penal colony in Mogilev in eastern Belarus.

Viasna said Shletgauer had been at the penal colony for a short time before his death.

“Provisionally, this happened on October 11,” the rights group said. “He spent less than a month in the penal colony. The exact cause of death is unknown.”

Shletgauer received a 12-year sentence after being convicted of espionage and facilitating extremist activities.

He was arrested in the crackdown in Belarus that occurred after the disputed 2020 presidential election of Alexander Lukashenko that gave the strongman a sixth term.

In September, Shletgauer joined Viasna’s list of recognized political prisoners in Belarus.

Belarus, a close ally of Russia, is reported to have approximately 1,300 political prisoners, according to Viasna.

Radio Free Europe reports Shletgauer was born in Slavgorod, Russia, and acquired residency in Belarus in 2018.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse.
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When the U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on three companies belonging to Denis Postovoy on Wednesday, it was yet another move to break up what U.S. authorities say was an international scheme to violate sanctions.

A month earlier, on September 16, law enforcement officials arrested the 44-year-old Russian national in Sarasota, Florida.

He was charged with conspiring to violate sanctions on Russia, commit smuggling, commit money laundering and defraud the United States.

According to the indictment, Postovoy used an international network of companies to export dual-use microelectronic components from the United States to Russia –– potentially spare parts for military drones used in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.

Postovoy is not the first Russian charged with violating U.S. export controls. But he is one of the few who allegedly did it from inside the United States.

Using court documents and open-source information, VOA pieced together Postovoy’s history, revealing a story involving international trade, criminal charges in two countries, a U.S. startup and Florida real estate.

Postovoy pleaded not guilty to all the charges. If convicted, he could face decades in prison.

Postovoy is in pretrial detention and could not be reached for comment. His lawyer did not respond to a VOA request for comment. When VOA reached Postovoy’s wife by phone, she hung up. She did not respond to questions sent to her on the WhatsApp messenger app.

According to the latest court filings, Postovoy’s case was transferred to the U.S. District Court in Washington.

American charges

After Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. significantly expanded restrictions on the export of microelectronics to Russia.

The Department of Justice has accused Postovoy and several unnamed co-conspirators of using a network of companies under their control in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Russia to violate those sanctions.

It claims Postovoy misrepresented the buyers and destinations of the goods, routing them through Hong Kong, Switzerland, Turkey and Estonia.

“As alleged, he lied about the final destination for the technology he was shipping and used intermediary destinations to mask this illegal activity,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves stated in a press release. “Fortunately, our skilled law enforcement partners at HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] and our dedicated attorneys unraveled the plot.”

The prosecution states that Postovoy’s clients included the Russian company Streloi Ekommerts and other unnamed firms. According to the indictment, the contract with Streloi was completed before the company was added to the U.S. sanctions list in December 2023.

An investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found that Streloi actively helps Russia circumvent Western export restrictions.

Another recipient of the microelectronics, according to an invoice included in the case materials, was the Russian technology company Radius Avtomatika.

Neither company responded to emailed questions from VOA.

It is unclear whether the microelectronics Postovoy allegedly exported were ultimately used in drones, but one court document states that the people he contacted were members of Russia’s military-industrial complex.

Hong Kong story

Originally from Novosibirsk, Russia, Postovoy had lived in Hong Kong since at least 2010 with his wife — a Ukrainian citizen from Crimea — and their three children.

Shipping records indicate his companies were involved in exporting goods from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, to Russia. Prosecutors allege that after the U.S. expanded its sanctions, some of this activity became illegal.

When the DOJ announced Postovoy’s arrest, it also listed the names of his companies that it said were involved in the alleged scheme. Aside from the Russian-registered firm Vektor Group, all the others were in Hong Kong: Jove HK Limited, JST Group Hong Kong and WowCube HK Limited.

All are now under U.S. sanctions, except for WowCube HK Limited.

Its appearance in the indictment provoked a rapid response from Cubios, another company previously associated with Postovoy. It produces the WOWCube gaming console, wich looks like a Rubik’s cube with multiple screens.

Just a day after Postovoy’s arrest was announced, Cubios publicly denied any connection to WowCube HK Limited.

“Neither Cubios nor any of its officers, directors, managers or employees … have any connection to the HK Entity whatsoever. We do not own, operate or are in any way affiliated with the HK Entity,” the company said in a statement on its website.

The startup also said that Postovoy “falsely listed himself as a VP of the Company” on LinkedIn.

In fact, Postovoy was previously Cubios’ vice president for production, according to archived versions of its website.

Ilya Osipov, CEO of Cubios, told VOA that a mutual friend introduced him to Postovoy.

“I was looking for someone who could help with production in China — they gave me Denis,” he wrote in a message to VOA.

According to Osipov, Postovoy became a business partner and made important contributions to prototypes and test batches of the WOWCube. Later the company decreased cooperation with him.

Although Postovoy did not have an official position, Cubios allowed him to call himself the vice president of production “for business purposes,” Osipov told VOA.

He claimed that Postovoy founded the Hong Kong firm without Cubios’ permission. It was planned to become a distributor of the consoles in Asia, but that never happened, Osipov said.

Coming to America

In 2022, Postovoy and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, where Cubios’ headquarters is.

According to Osipov, Postovoy said the move was motivated by a desire to raise children in a Western country and concerns about increasingly strict Chinese control of Hong Kong.

American prosecutors see a different motivation.

In a response to U.S. federal investigators included in the case materials, Hong Kong police said Postovoy was charged on March 1, 2022, with money laundering — a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison and a fine of up to $643,000.

According to the email, Postovoy was scheduled to appear in court on March 4 but left Hong Kong the day before.

Hong Kong police did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

By June 2022, Postovoy’s wife purchased a house in southeastern Sarasota.

Sarasota County property records indicate the house was valued at around $980,000. A mortgage covered $680,000 of the cost.

In August 2023, Postovoy bought another house, in the new Rivo Lakes gated community in Sarasota. According to purchase documents, it cost $1.13 million. In September, he transferred it to a trust controlled by his wife.

On the same day, his wife transferred the house to another trust and later sold the property.

According to a U.S. magistrate judge, Postovoy’s decision to transfer the second house into a trust was likely an attempt to conceal his ownership.

He “did not list his home — which is valued at nearly a million dollars and held in the name of a trust controlled by his wife — on his financial affidavit submitted to this Court,” the judge wrote in a decision not to grant Postovoy bail.

This may not be the only attempted cover-up in the case: Russian company records indicate that, in December 2023, a man named Dmitry Smirnov replaced Postovoy as owner of his Vektor Group company.

VOA’s Cantonese Service contributed research to this story.
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istanbul — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday sued the main opposition leader and Istanbul’s powerful mayor over allegedly slanderous remarks made at a protest rally a day earlier, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Filed on Friday, the two separate lawsuits targeted Ozgur Ozel, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, also a top party official.

One accused Ozel of “publicly insulting the president” and “clearly committing a crime against the reputation and honor of the office of the presidency.”

The second suit alleged Imamoglu had made “unfounded accusations including slander, that violated Erdogan’s rights” and had “acted with the aim of humiliating the president in front of the public.”

Each lawsuit sought 1 million Turkish lira ($30,000) in damages from the accused.

The legal action centers on remarks the pair allegedly made Thursday at a demonstration in the Istanbul district of Esenyurt a day after police arrested its opposition mayor for alleged links to the banned Kurdish PKK militant group.

It was not immediately clear which remarks prompted the legal action, but Ozel, who took over as CHP leader just a year ago, quickly hit back.

Erdogan “pretends to have been insulted without any insult being made, and tries to make himself the victim … as if it was not he who insulted and victimized Esenyurt” by arresting its mayor, he told reporters. 

Imamoglu, who was elected as Istanbul mayor in 2019, is often portrayed as Erdogan’s biggest political rival and is widely expected to run in the 2028 presidential race. He is seen as one of Turkey’s most popular politicians.

Two years ago, Imamoglu was sued for defamation after describing Istanbul election officials as “idiots” during the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election.

A court found him guilty, sentenced him to nearly three years in jail and barred him from politics for the duration of the sentence, prompting an international outcry.

Imamoglu has appealed while continuing to serve as mayor.

At the time, Erdogan insisted the case had nothing to do with him.

The 70-year-old Turkish leader launched his own political career in the 1990s by being elected as mayor of Istanbul.
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Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Thursday validated the results of last month’s referendum, formally recognizing the country’s decision to join the European Union.

The “yes” result, however, was an incredibly close one, much closer than polls had predicted, and the road toward EU membership for Moldova is not expected to be smooth either.

Supporters of the measure attribute the much closer than expected result to Russian meddling in the run-up to the vote held on October 20, together with the presidential election.

Both campaigns were marred by massive Russian disinformation and an alleged vote-buying scheme said to have cost the Kremlin tens of millions of dollars.  Some have described an atmosphere of bitterness and division with unprecedented mud-slinging and “hate speech,” including ethnic slurs and fascist tropes, leaving the country, some would say, dangerously divided.

The top two presidential candidates, incumbent pro-Europe President Maia Sandu and pro-Kremlin former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, face a run-off vote on Sunday.

“I hope that the pro-European forces, that Maia Sandu will win elections, but I am worried that this victory will be achieved with a small margin,” Ludmila Barba, host of Moldovan program The European Vector, told VOA.  “That was the case with the referendum. And this state of affairs means that this antagonism in society will remain.”

Moldova is a parliamentary republic and those elections will take place next year. Right now, the government is controlled by Sandu’s PAS party, but some predict it could lose control next year.

Analysts expect Moldova will remain a battleground for hearts, minds and political allegiances for some time to come and Moscow is no doubt poised to further exploit divisions. It has been throwing its weight around Moldova since the collapse of the USSR but has been honing its meddling technique since last year’s local elections.

“It was like a bootcamp for them [the Kremlin] for interference and then they scaled it,” Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at London’s Chatham House, told VOA. “They’ve seen what worked and that was vote-buying, trying to put eggs in different baskets … but underneath it all, having influence, having them on the payroll of Russia.”

The most audacious part of the scheme was the participation of fugitive Russia-based oligarch Ilan Shor, who was convicted in 2017 of banking fraud in Moldova. He is accused of buying off a network of up to 300,000 Moldovans, paying them to vote against Europe in last month’s referendum.

“They have been paid for their activity, from the equivalent of 50 euros a month and up.  It’s not big money, but when you take into account the complicated economic and social situation in Moldova, for people with a low income, these 50 euros are important,” Barba said.

President Sandu called out the scheme but was unable to stop it.

Moldovan runoff follows Georgia election

Moldova’s runoff comes on the heels of a hotly disputed victory for Georgia’s pro-Russian Georgian Dream party.

Georgia’s opposition-aligned president, Salome Zourabichvili, declared the results illegitimate, describing a “Russian Special Operation” to undermine the vote and she is fighting back, at this point, with uncertain effect.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE]) has noted voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and bribery in Georgia, but Moscow claims its hands are clean. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the showing by the pro-Russian party is a dramatic turn for a country that had full-blown war with Russia in 2008.

“I would never have imagined Russia or a Russian agenda having such a strong comeback in Georgia. There was for a while so much open hatred toward Russia, that anything suspected to be related to Russia would immediately be rejected,” Lutsevych said.

“This is where Russians are smart in how they play the subversion game. They are not openly saying this is a Russian agenda.”

The recent passage in Georgia of a “Foreign Agent” law, an act clearly inspired by Moscow, got the EU to pause further discussion about bringing Georgia into the bloc.  And the conduct of last week’s elections was to be another “litmus test” for Brussels on Tbilisi’s readiness to join.

While there may be clever, forward-thinking manipulation on the part of Moscow, Barba says one cannot ignore the effect of the immediate raw rage coming from the Kremlin.

“This is the first election since the Russian aggression in Ukraine began. The situation is more complicated because Russia is furious that it didn’t manage to take Ukraine in three days and that makes it more aggressive,” she says.

“Since it was not able to clinch victory in Ukraine, it is going after smaller ones in Georgia and Moldova to prove or assert its status.”

For the people of Moldova, fear has become the main theme of the elections. Barba points out that the pro-Russian side has said that if Moldova stays close to Russia, “the country will be safe. That Ukraine has war because they went toward the EU.”

“That narrative is going around. And thepro-Europeans say if we end up with Russia, we will have war, we will be dragged in.  Both sides are trying to say that the other option could lead to war.”

According to Lutsevych, fear can ultimately drown out Sandu’s main message that Moldova can have a brighter future with Europe. And this is taking its toll on some young members of Sandu’s team.

“They don’t feel it’s a fair game. They don’t feel they can win against that. It’s so powerful. It’s hard to compete when someone like Russia fuels anger, fear, and you have to compete on a positive agenda.”

Still, getting into Europe is a fight in itself and Lutsevych praises Sandu for taking up that fight. And the nature of this election campaign, she concludes, has put Moldova more front and center on Europe’s agenda and perhaps put enhanced focus on what Russia is doing on the sidelines of the Ukraine war.
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The United States is watching growing cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic closely and some of their recent military collaboration in the region sends “concerning signals”, the U.S. Arctic ambassador said.  

Russia and China have stepped up military cooperation in the Arctic while deepening overall ties in recent years that include China supplying Moscow with dual-use goods despite Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. 

Russia and the United States are among eight countries with territory in the resource-rich Arctic. China calls itself a “near-Arctic” state and wants to create a “Polar Silk Road” in the Arctic, a new shipping route as the polar ice sheet recedes with rising temperatures.  

Michael Sfraga, the United States’ first ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, said the “frequency and the complexity” of recent military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing in the region sent “concerning signals”. 

“The fact that they are working together in the Arctic has our attention,” Sfraga, who was sworn in last month, told Reuters in a telephone interview from Alaska. “We are being both vigilant and diligent about this. We’re watching very closely this evolution of their activity.” 

“It raises our radar, literally and figuratively,” he added.

Sfraga cited a joint run by Russian and Chinese bomber planes off the coast of Alaska in July, and Chinese and Russian coast guard ships sailing together through the Bering Strait in October.  

He said these activities had been conducted in international waters, in line with international law, but the fact that the bombers flew off the coast of Alaska had raised concerns for U.S. security. 

“We do need to think about security, heighten our own alliances, our own mutual defences,” Sfraga said. “Alaska, the North American Arctic, is NATO’s western flank and so we need to think about the Arctic that way.” 

The activity was also a concern for U.S. allies as the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea give access to the North Pacific and South Pacific, he said. 

The Pentagon said in a report released in July that the growing alignment between Russia and China in the Arctic was “a concern”.  

China and Russia are trying to develop Arctic shipping routes as Moscow seeks to deliver more oil and gas to China amid Western sanctions. Beijing is seeking an alternative shipping route to reduce its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. 

The Arctic also holds fossil fuels and minerals beneath the land and the seabed that could become more accessible with global warming.  
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TOKYO — Japan and the European Union announced a sweeping new security and defense partnership in Tokyo on Friday. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell hailed it as a historic and “very timely” step.

Borrell and his Japanese counterpart, Takeshi Iwaya, unveiled the pact to develop cooperation on joint military drills, the exchange of information related to the defense industry and space security, among other matters.

“I am extremely pleased to be here with Minister Iwaya to announce the conclusion of this security and defense partnership between the European Union and Japan,” Borrell said.

He called it the “the first agreement of this nature” the EU has made with an Asia-Pacific country, describing it as “historical and very timely.”

“We live in a very dangerous world” and “given the situation in both of our regions, this political framework deepens our ability to tackle emerging threats together,” Borrell told reporters.

He did not mention China, but Japan has previously called its neighbor its greatest security challenge as Beijing builds up military capacity in the region.

After the Tokyo talks, Borrell heads to South Korea, where concerns about North Korea will top the agenda.

The United States has said thousands of North Korean troops are in Russia readying to fight in Ukraine.

Pyongyang also test-fired one of its newest and most powerful missiles on Thursday, demonstrating its threat to the US mainland days ahead of elections.

Defense industries

The text of the EU-Japan Security and Defense Partnership, seen by Agence France-Presse, said they would promote “concrete naval cooperation,” including through activities such as joint exercises and port calls, which could also include “mutually designated third countries.”

It also said the EU and Japan would discuss “the development of respective defense initiatives including exchange of information on defense industry-related matters.”

Japan, which for decades has relied on the United States for military hardware, is also developing a new fighter jet with EU member Italy and Britain that is set to be airborne by 2035.

The agreement on industrial cooperation could “turbo-charge collaboration, such that joint defense projects between Japanese and European firms funded through EU mechanisms may be on the cards,” analyst Yee Kuang Heng of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy told AFP.

Japan is ramping up defense spending to the NATO standard of 2% of GDP by 2027, partly to counter China, which is increasing military pressure on Taiwan.

Beijing claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who could head a minority government after a disastrous general election last week, has said that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia.”

Ishiba has also called for the creation of a NATO-like regional alliance with its tenet of collective security, although he has conceded this will “not happen overnight.”

The same warning was issued by Ishiba’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida, who was hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden for a state visit in April at which the allies announced plans to boost their defense partnership.

On Friday, Borrell and Iwaya also “exchanged an instrument of ratification for Japan EU Strategic Partnership Agreement, or SPA,” Iwaya said, referring to a separate, previously agreed-upon pact.

“This SPA will formally enter into force on January 1 next year. It will be a legal foundation to strengthen the Japan-EU strategic partnership into the future,” Iwaya said.
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Washington — As North Korean troops prepare to join Russian forces in the war on Ukraine, Kyiv is stepping up a psychological warfare campaign to target the North Korean soldiers, a high-ranking Ukraine official said.

The effort is liable to get a boost from a team of South Korean military observers that Seoul’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said this week will be going to Ukraine to watch and analyze the North Korean troops on the battlefield.

Last week, the Ukrainian military intelligence service-run project “I Want to Live” released a Korean-language video message on YouTube and X. The project also posted a Korean-language text message on Telegram.

The messages urged North Korean soldiers to surrender, arguing that they do not have to “meaninglessly die on the land of another country.” It also offered to provide food, shelters and medical services.

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told VOA Ukrainian on Wednesday that “in the future, additional videos featuring North Koreans will be published.”

“The North Koreans will undergo training in modern warfare and then be used in actual combat,” Kovalenko said. “We (the Center for Combating Disinformation) are actively involved in identifying the individuals who have arrived and the units they are joining, as well as gathering evidence of their presence in Russia, their likely participation in combat against the Ukrainian army, and their presence in temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine.”

Influence campaign

Ukraine has been running similar psychological operations toward the Russian soldiers since the beginning of the Russian invasion, U.S. experts said.

“Ukraine has been doing that with the Russians early on in the war,” Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told VOA Korean on the phone Thursday. “They got a lot of Russians to defect, and I suspect they will try to do the same things with the North Koreans.”

Bennett added that drones can also be used for sending messages in leaflets and in audio form to North Korean soldiers in the war zone.

David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel who served on the Combined Forces Command of the U.S and South Korea, said this could be “a great opportunity” to learn how to employ psychological tactics on North Korean forces in the time of war.

“Bombing and gunfire doesn’t happen 24/7,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Wednesday. “Military operations are also characterized by large amounts of boredom and inactivity, where soldiers are waiting for something to happen, and this is the time when loudspeakers and leaflets can really have an effect, because those messages give them something to think about.”

Earlier this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed in a phone call “to intensify the intelligence and expertise exchange” and “to develop an action strategy and a list of countermeasures,” according to a statement released by the Ukrainian presidential office.

Some experts in South Korea said the team of South Korean military observers headed to Ukraine will likely include psychological warfare strategists who can offer advice to the Ukrainian officials.

Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said psychological warfare could be a real threat to the North Korean army.

“In the case of North Korean soldiers, they now have been mobilized for a war without any justification,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Tuesday. “It is hardly likely that they have a strong will or high morale.”

South Korea’s role

Cho said the South Korean government can help Ukraine develop psychological tactics against North Korean soldiers, since the country “has the know-how of a long-term psychological war with North Korea.”

Ban Kil-joo is a senior research professor at Korea University’s Ilmin International Relations Institute. He told VOA Korean in a phone interview Tuesday that psychological warfare could help weaken the military cohesiveness between Russia and North Korea.

“The Ukrainians don’t know much about North Korea, don’t understand the North Korean culture, as we do,” Ban said. “We can provide indirect support in a more social sense, rather than military or operational support.”

Ban added that it is important for the South Korean team to be “well-integrated with the Ukrainian forces through its supporting role,” to achieve the desired political and operational effect of a psychological campaign.

Other experts, however, are not convinced that psychological warfare will be effective to persuade North Korean soldiers to surrender.

Mykola Polishchuk, a Ukrainian author who wrote the book Northern Korea in Simple Words, said Ukraine’s counterpropaganda will not work with North Korean soldiers.

“As for North Koreans, they are not particularly politicized,” Polishchuk told VOA Ukrainian. “These individuals have little interest in politics.”

Robert Rapson, a former charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, told VOA Korean that South Korea should carefully make a decision about whether to be engaged in Ukraine’s psychological warfare.

“If the ROK [Republic of Korea] does decide to deploy technical personnel to Ukraine to solely monitor and help advise the Ukraine military on matters related to North Korean troops deployed to the region, they would need to ensure they do not acquire, inadvertently or otherwise, status as combatants,” he said. “There are, of course, clear risks to ROK personnel whether they’re combatants or not.”

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has deepened military ties with North Korea. North Korea has exported dozens of ballistic missiles and more than 18,000 containers of munitions and munitions-related material to Russia since the invasion, according to the U.S. State Department.

In June, the two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement mandating immediate military assistance if either of them is attacked by a third country.

VOA Korean’s Kim Hyungjin contributed to this report.  
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A shadowy Russian political operator with close ties to the notorious Wagner Group and its late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is detained in Chad on unexplained charges, adding a fresh chapter to his long career of mystery and intrigue.  

Russian officials and state-controlled media maintain that Maxim Shugaley, who was detained on September 19 along with two other Russians, is an innocent sociologist who was in Chad to deliver humanitarian aid and participate in a pro-Russian event in the capital, N’Djamena.    

But years of reporting on his exploits in countries as far-flung as Afghanistan and Libya present a picture of a master propagandist who has worked behind the scenes to advance the Kremlin’s interests with some of the world’s least reputable regimes. 

Shugaley, president of the St. Petersburg-based Foundation for National Values Protection, or FNZC, was arrested at N’Djamena’s airport “without explanation,” according to an account this week in the Russian news agency RIA Novosty. 

The report quoted the press attache at Russia’s mission in Chad saying the three Russians are being well-treated and that she looks forward to their early release. But it offered no explanation of why they were detained and little on why they were there. 

However the Russian daily Kommersant and a Paris-based weekly Jeune Afrique reported in late September and early October that Chadian military intelligence was behind Shugaley’s arrest, and said he was accused of espionage and influence activities on behalf of the Wagner Group.   

Kommersant said Shugaley maintains his innocence and “had no knowledge of Wagner activities in N’Djamena” — this despite his reputed role in directing communications and hybrid warfare activities by the Kremlin-financed mercenary, which according to the U.S. State Department plotted to overthrow the government of Chad last year. 

The Russian newspaper cited people close to Shugaley as saying that the “sociologist’s mission” in Chad was “strictly humanitarian.” It added that a suitcase in his possession at the time of his arrest “was full of souvenirs and cookies to be handed over at the pro-Russian rally in N’Djamena.”

Citing a source familiar with the case, Central African Republic-based Corbeau news Centrafrique reported that Shugaley and his companions were arrested for trying to “infiltrate the Chadian security services.”  

Whatever the truth of those reports, they are not out of character with previous accounts of Shugaley’s career and his own postings on Telegram — the Wagner Group’s favored messaging app — where he runs his own channel with almost 18,000 subscribers. 

In 2019, the FNZC organization that Shugaley heads was sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for serving in a covert operation to manipulate African politics in favor of the Kremlin by “sponsoring phony election monitoring missions,” and promoting “disinformation operations.”   

The Wall Street Journal profiled Shugaley in 2021 as a “spy” and a “shadowy figure” pursuing the Kremlin’s strategic goals across Africa.   

His latest post on Telegram, dated August 23, laments the death of Prigozhin, killed in a suspicious helicopter crash a year earlier. Shugaley calls the Wagner founder a “Russian hero” who is “very much needed now in the Kursk Oblast.” The post coincided with Ukraine’s military intrusion into Russia’s Kursk region. 

In earlier posts dating back to May of this year, Shugaley reported he was in Chad to observe the presidential elections, which he describes as successful, “despite the U.S. destabilizing efforts.” 

In June, Shugaley said in a Telegram post that he was in Chad “for the second time in less than two months” to prepare the introduction of a Russian House in N’Djamena, which he said was a “natural development” given the Chadians “anti-French sentiments and mistrust of the U.S. actions in the region.” 

In April 2023, The Washington Post reported that leaked U.S. intelligence documents showed the Wagner Group was trying to recruit “Chadian rebels and establish a training site for 300 fighters in the neighboring Central African Republic as part of an evolving plot to topple the Chadian government.”  

The European Union sanctioned Shugaley in February 2023 for operating “as the public relations arm” of the Wagner Group. 

Shugaley’s role “includes directing propaganda and disinformation campaigns in favor of the Wagner Group, particularly to improve the reputation of Wagner and support its deployment, as well as interfering in a covert manner on behalf of the Wagner group in the various countries where the group is active,” the EU said.  

In May 2019, Shugaley and his interpreter Samer Sueifan were jailed for 18 months in Libya on charges of espionage and election interference.  

Libyan officials said the mission of the two was to “recruit Libyans to gather information and to train them on how to influence any future Libyan elections.”      

Shugaley credited Prigozhin for his freedom in interviews with Russian media and in social media posts, saying that under his order, Wagner troops stormed the prison in Tripoli in December 2020 to free him. Prigozhin later commissioned an action movie lauding Shugaley and Wagner. His company, Concord, paid a $250,000 bonus to Shugaley and Sueifan.    

Shugaley is a common figure in Central Africa Republic, a territory where Wagner mercenaries have been deeply embedded in the security system since 2018.  

In February, the U.S. State Department issued a report titled, “The Wagner Group Atrocities in Africa: Lies and Truth,” which documented violations committed by the group in CAR, Libya, Sudan, and Mali.      

The State Department said, “In CAR, Wagner forces used indiscriminate killing, abductions, and rape to gain control of a key mining area near the city of Bambari, with survivors describing the attacks in detail.”    

A BBC documentary in 2019 reported that “at least six candidates were offered money by Russians in the lead-up to the 2018 presidential elections in Madagascar.”   

The BBC reported that Shugaley was among those “offering money” to various actors to sway the votes in favor of a Kremlin-backed candidate.    

According to the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, after the death of Prigozhin, Shugaley partnered with the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was released from a U.S. jail in 2022 in a prisoner swap for the American basketball star Brittney Griner.  

The group said Shugaley assisted Bout in winning a seat in the regional assembly of the city of Ulyanovsk in September 2023 as part of an ultra-nationalist party.    

”In updates posted on the Telegram channel, Shugaley has reported on discussing plans with Bout to export military utility vehicles and aircraft to Africa,” the report said.  
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Germany will close three Iranian consulates in response to Iran’s announcement of the execution of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German Iranian national and a U.S. resident, earlier this week.

“We have repeatedly and unequivocally made it clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Thursday in announcing the closure of the consulates in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg.

Germany will allow Iran’s embassy in Berlin to remain open. And Germany will “continue to maintain our diplomatic channels and our embassy in Tehran,” Baerbock said.

“The fact that this assassination took place in the light of the latest developments in the Middle East shows that [Iran’s] dictatorial, unjust regime … does not act according to normal diplomatic logic,” she said. “It is not without reason that our diplomatic relations are already at an all-time low.”

Sharmahd, 69, was accused of a role in the deadly bombing of a mosque in Shiraz in 2008. He was convicted of the capital offense of “corruption on Earth,” a term Iranian authorities use to refer to a broad range of offenses, including those related to Islamic morals.

His family has denied the charges against him.

In an exclusive interview with VOA’s Persian Service, Sharmahd’s daughter Ghazaleh Sharmahd warned that her father’s execution on Monday would not silence the movement for justice.

“They made a huge mistake, thinking that by killing my father and the people of Iran, these movements would end. But they were wrong — killing only makes these movements stronger, more intense and more energized. … The Islamic Republic made a huge mistake,” she said.

Ghazaleh Sharmahd also said she is seeking the truth of her father’s death. She told VOA that the Islamic Republic informed the U.S. and Germany about her father’s death.

“They accept the words of terrorists and send me their condolences?” she said. “They have a duty to investigate what really happened.”

VOA’s Persian Service contributed to this report. Some information came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Turkey is seeing a boom in winemaking, with hundreds of new producers emerging over the last few years. The trend runs counter the Islamist, conservative policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have included restrictions and taxes on alcohol. Dorian Jones reports from Manisa, Turkey.
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Vienna — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico begins a six-day visit to China Thursday that includes a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and stops in the central city of Hefei and Shanghai to attend the opening ceremony for this year’s China International Import Expo. 

Analysts say China is hoping to use the visit to strengthen ties with Slovak’s prime minister who is an ally of Viktor Orban and, like Hungary’s leader, has been critical of Russian sanctions and the EU’s support of Ukraine. 

Since coming to power, Fico has been interested in a more pro-China foreign policy. His trip to China, which was scheduled for June, was aborted due to an assassination attempt in May and has not been possible until now.

Fico is the longest-serving prime minister since the founding of the Republic of Slovakia in 1993.

Since first taking office in 2006, Fico has stepped down twice between 2010 and 2012 and between 2018 and 2023. In 2018, he resigned and gave way to his political ally, Peter Pellegrini, because of a political crisis sparked by the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak.

After Pellegrini’s defeat in the 2020 parliamentary elections, the Ordinary People and the Independent Personalities Party formed a new coalition government. During this period, Slovakia pushed for a more pro-Taiwan and values-oriented diplomatic line, which drew resentment in Beijing.

In the 2023 parliamentary elections, Fico won again and returned to power.

The Fico government advocates an “all-azimuth” foreign policy, including strengthening cooperation with Russia and China. In addition to this year’s trip to China, Fico plans to visit Russia next year to attend the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Matej Šimalčík, executive director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, told VOA the so-called “all-azimuth” foreign policy is a euphemism that means “to engage in economic relations with any country, without taking any considerations for political values, human rights, or security considerations.” 

Šimalčík said, “Fico’s government has also markedly toned down the scope of interactions with Taiwan, with some of his close political allies being outright proponents of PRC’s [China’s] interpretation of the ‘One-China Principle,” which holds that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.

Filip Šebok, head of the Prague office at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, said, “Fico has many times declared he does not want ‘Brussels’ to dictate Slovakia on these issues, and for him, it is a way to boost his credentials in leading a ‘sovereign’ Slovak foreign policy, despite criticism.

“Actually, domestically, it is good for Fico to claim he is doing something that is opposite to what is the Western mainstream, as he can maintain the support of his electorate. It is also a way to differentiate from the previous government, which was hawkish on Russia, and on China to some extent as well.”

Analysts say that Fico’s visit to China also serves an economic purpose.

Pavel Havlíček, a research fellow at the Association for International Affairs, said Fico is seeking partnerships and investments from countries outside of Europe.

“Among them, Russia and China are playing a special place, as was repeatedly mentioned when — for example — referring to the plan of the Slovak government to restore economic relations with Russia after the war.

“In the case of the PRC, the Slovak government is seeing investments and enhanced relations, too, to compensate for the lack of economic growth.”

Šebok said the Slovak government has pledged to focus more on supporting economic engagement, such as boosting Slovak exporters or attracting investments in Slovakia.

“The government has, for example, increased the number of economic diplomats around the world and also opened new embassies in Asia or Africa explaining them mostly as a way to boost economic diplomacy,” Šebok said.

“In this perspective, China is presented as a major economic partner, and Fico will be leading a relatively large business delegation to China. Fico specifically wants to engage China in PPP [public private partnership] projects for the reconstruction/construction of transport infrastructure around the country.”

Fico plans to work with China to promote large-scale infrastructure projects in Slovakia, including the reconstruction of roads and bridges, the expansion of the railway between the capital Bratislava and the city of Komárno, the completion of the Bratislava highway bypass and the construction of a hydroelectric power plant.

In the recent vote on European tariffs on electric vehicles from China, the Fico government voted against it.

“Slovakia, through the Volkswagen plant, has exported a large number of cars to China,” Šebok said. “It is particularly exposed to Chinese retaliation to EU tariffs on Chinese EV imports, as China directly hinted that it might target large engine vehicles from the EU, which are exported from Germany and Slovakia.

“What is paradoxical is that tariffs on Chinese EVs can actually be also indirectly good for Slovakia, as they can push more Chinese EV producers to set up manufacturing in Europe as a way to avoid tariffs,” he added.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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The governor of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region said Thursday one person was dead and 29 others injured after a Russian missile strike on a residential building.

Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram the person killed in the late Wednesday attack was 11 years old.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attack hit a nine-story building, and he reiterated his calls for more help in defending Ukraine.

“Partners see what happens every day,” Zelenskyy said. “In these circumstances, every delayed decision on their part means dozens or even hundreds more Russian bombs used against Ukraine. Their decisions are the lives of our people. That is why we must stop Russia together — and do so with all possible force.”

Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said Thursday that Ukrainian air defenses downed a wave of drones targeting the Ukrainian capital overnight.

Popko reported on Telegram that falling debris from downed drones damaged two residential buildings and an administrative building.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it shot down 21 Ukrainian drones.

The intercepts took place over the Rostov, Kursk, Volgograd, Bryansk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions, and over the Black Sea, the ministry said.

North Korean troops

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Yong-hyun, urged North Korea on Wednesday to withdraw from Russia an estimated 10,000 troops, which both countries believe are headed to fight alongside Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“They’re doing this because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has lost a lot of troops, a lot of troops. And, you know, he has a choice of either getting other people to help him, or he can mobilize. And he doesn’t want to mobilize, because then the people in Russia will begin to understand the extent of his losses, of their losses,” Austin said during a joint news conference at the Pentagon.

More than a half-million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale illegal invasion on February 24, 2022, U.S. officials say. Russia, they say, is now turning to pariah state North Korea to bolster its forces.

“Kim Jong Un didn’t hesitate to sell out his young people and troops as cannon fodder mercenaries,” Kim Yong-hyun said. “I believe such activities are a war crime that is not only anti-humanitarian but also anti-peaceful.”

Western nations have expressed concerns about what Kim Jong Un’s regime will get in return from Moscow for its troops. North Korea is under international sanctions for its illicit nuclear ballistic missile programs.

The South Korean defense minister said it was likely that North Korea would seek nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology in exchange for the troops, escalating security threats on the peninsula and across the globe.

UN Security Council meeting

At the United Nations, Ukraine — with the support of the United States, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Slovenia and Malta — requested the Security Council meet to discuss the development.

Russia’s envoy dismissed the meeting, saying it was convened to tarnish Moscow with more lies and disinformation, adding it was “bare-faced lies” that North Korean soldiers are in Russia.

Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia’s comments appeared to contradict Putin, who last week did not deny that North Korean troops were currently in Russia, saying it was up to Moscow to decide how to deploy them as part of a mutual defense security pact that he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Nebenzia went on to assert that the Western nations were making accusations about North Korean troops assisting Moscow to lure South Korea into providing Ukraine with arms.

“We can see the Western spectacle in the Security Council today pursuing another goal. The Zelenskyy regime and collaborators for two years have been trying to compel the Republic of Korea [South Korea] to more actively cooperate with the Kyiv regime, and to have them provide and supply the much-needed lethal weapons. And here, the anti-Pyongyang frenzied rhetoric is very convenient for Washington, London and Brussels, because their own supply is something that the Kyiv regime has drained,” Nebenzia said. “We do hope that our South Korean colleagues will be wise enough not to fall for this trick.”

Since the war started, Seoul has joined U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow and sent both humanitarian and financial support to Kyiv but has not sent weapons, in line with its policy of not arming countries actively engaged in conflicts. On Tuesday, Seoul said it could consider sending weapons to Ukraine in response to the North dispatching troops to Russia.

Troop estimates

Ukraine’s ambassador said as many as 12,000 North Korean troops are being trained at five training grounds in Russia’s eastern military district.

“This contingent includes at least 500 officers of the DPRK army, with at least three generals from the general staff,” Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s full name. “Subsequently, it is planned to form at least five units or formations from DPRK military personnel, consisting of 2,000 to 3,000 servicemen each.”

The troops’ identities are expected to be concealed, Kyslytsya said, and they will be provided with Russian military uniforms and weapons and identity papers. They are likely to be integrated into units with ethnic minorities from the Asian part of Russia, he said.

“According to available information, between October 23 and 28, at least seven aircraft carrying military personnel of up to 2,100 soldiers flew from the Eastern Military District to Russia’s border with Ukraine,” Kyslytsya said, adding that they are expected to begin directly participating in combat operations against Ukrainian troops in November.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that a “small number” of North Korean troops have deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where they are likely to be used in combat against Ukrainian troops. Kyslytsya told the Security Council that they number about 400.

Pyongyang and Moscow are in close contact and are entitled to develop bilateral relations in many fields, said North Korea’s envoy, citing their strategic partnership treaty.

“If Russia’s sovereignty and security interests are exposed to and threatened by continued dangerous attempts of the United States and the West, and if it is judged that we should respond to them with something, we will make a necessary decision,” Ambassador Kim Song told the council.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Pentagon and United Nations — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Yong-hyun, urged North Korea on Wednesday to withdraw from Russia an estimated 10,000 troops, which both countries believe are headed to fight alongside Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“They’re doing this because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has lost a lot of troops, a lot of troops. And, you know, he has a choice of either getting other people to help him, or he can mobilize. And he doesn’t want to mobilize, because then the people in Russia will begin to understand the extent of his losses, of their losses,” Austin said during a joint news conference at the Pentagon.

More than a half-million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale illegal invasion on February 24, 2022, U.S. officials say. Russia, they say, is now turning to pariah state North Korea to bolster its forces.

“Kim Jong Un didn’t hesitate to sell out his young people and troops as cannon fodder mercenaries,” Kim said. “I believe such activities are a war crime that is not only anti-humanitarian but also anti-peaceful.”

Western nations have expressed concerns about what Kim Jong Un’s regime will get in return from Moscow for its troops. North Korea is under international sanctions for its illicit nuclear ballistic missile programs.

The South Korean defense minister said it was likely that North Korea would seek nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology in exchange for the troops, escalating security threats on the peninsula and across the globe.

UN Security Council meeting

At the United Nations, Ukraine — with the support of the United States, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Slovenia and Malta — requested the Security Council meet to discuss the development.

Russia’s envoy dismissed the meeting, saying it was convened to tarnish Moscow with more lies and disinformation, adding it was “bare-faced lies” that North Korean soldiers are in Russia.

Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia’s comments appeared to contradict Putin, who last week did not deny that North Korean troops were currently in Russia, saying it was up to Moscow to decide how to deploy them as part of a mutual defense security pact that he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Nebenzia went on to claim that the Western nations were making accusations about North Korean troops assisting Moscow to lure South Korea into providing Ukraine with arms.

“We can see the Western spectacle in the Security Council today pursuing another goal. The Zelenskyy regime and collaborators for two years have been trying to compel the Republic of Korea [South Korea] to more actively cooperate with the Kyiv regime, and to have them provide and supply the much-needed lethal weapons. And here, the anti-Pyongyang frenzied rhetoric is very convenient for Washington, London and Brussels, because their own supply is something that the Kyiv regime has drained,” Nebenzia said. “We do hope that our South Korean colleagues will be wise enough not to fall for this trick.”

Since the war started, Seoul has joined U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow and sent both humanitarian and financial support to Kyiv but has not sent weapons, in line with its policy of not arming countries actively engaged in conflicts. On Tuesday, Seoul said it could consider sending weapons to Ukraine in response to the North dispatching troops to Russia.

Troop estimates

Ukraine’s ambassador said as many as 12,000 North Korean troops are being trained at five training grounds in Russia’s eastern military district.

“This contingent includes at least 500 officers of the DPRK army, with at least three generals from the general staff,” Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s full name. “Subsequently, it is planned to form at least five units or formations from DPRK military personnel, consisting of 2,000 to 3,000 servicemen each.”

The troops’ identities are expected to be concealed, Kyslytsya said, and they will be provided with Russian military uniforms and weapons and identity papers. They are likely to be integrated into units with ethnic minorities from the Asian part of Russia, he said.

“According to available information, between October 23 and 28, at least seven aircraft carrying military personnel of up to 2,100 soldiers flew from the Eastern Military District to Russia’s border with Ukraine,” Kyslytsya said, adding that they are expected to begin directly participating in combat operations against Ukrainian troops in November.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that a “small number” of North Korean troops have deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where they are likely to be used in combat against Ukrainian troops. Kyslytsya told the Security Council that they number about 400.

Pyongyang and Moscow are in close contact and are entitled to develop bilateral relations in many fields, said North Korea’s envoy, citing their strategic partnership treaty.

“If Russia’s sovereignty and security interests are exposed to and threatened by continued dangerous attempts of the United States and the West, and if it is judged that we should respond to them with something, we will make a necessary decision,” Ambassador Kim Song told the council.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.
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State prosecutors in the country of Georgia said Wednesday that they had initiated an investigation into Saturday’s parliamentary election amid claims that the vote was rigged.  

The Georgian Dream ruling party won the election with 54% of the vote, according to the electoral commission, a figure that would give the party a clear majority in Parliament.

The opposition alleged the election was rigged. Western countries and international observers also raised concerns, citing instances of voter intimidation, vote buying, double voting and violence.

The opposition took its protest to the streets of Tbilisi early this week in a rally condemning the results.

Prosecutors have summoned President Salome Zourabichvili, who is aligned with the pro-Western opposition, to testify, but she questioned why she should provide testimony about election rigging.

“It’s not up to the president to provide proof of election fraud,” she told reporters Wednesday. “Observers and everyday citizens have shown proofs of how massive the rigging of elections was.”

The investigative body, she said, “should have found the evidence itself.”

Zourabichvili charged in an interview with Reuters on Monday that Georgian Dream used a Russian methodology to falsify some election results.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, a member of Georgian Dream, has called on  Zourabichvili to turn over any evidence of rigging to authorities. He said he believed she did not have such evidence.

Zourabichvili said the opposition was calling for an investigation “conducted by an international mission with the adequate mandate and qualification” to look into how the election was conducted. Until that can be done, she said, “this election cannot and will not have legitimacy or trust.” 

Some election observers have been cautious about labeling Georgia’s vote as rigged.  Some observers, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, admitted there were reports of voter irregularities, but the organization stopped short of labeling the election as rigged.

Russia has denied any interference in Georgia’s election.   

Georgia’s election came at a crucial moment for the former Soviet republic as it seeks to join the European Union. However, Georgian Dream is seen by many as more aligned with Russia than with the EU.
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