International

U.K. accuses Russia of scheming to install a pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine

Published

3 years ago

January 23, 2022

The British government on Saturday accused Russia of organizing a plot to install a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine, as the Kremlin masses troops and materiel near the Ukrainian border in what Western officials fear is an impending military assault on the neighboring nation.

The U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office gave relatively little information about the intelligence unveiled Saturday other than to say that the Russian government was considering trying to make a Russia-leaning former member of Ukraine’s parliament, Yevhen Murayev, the country’s new leader.

“The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin thinking,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement, calling on Russia to de-escalate and pursue a path of diplomacy.

“As the U.K. and our partners have said repeatedly, any Russian military incursion into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake with severe costs,” Truss said.

British authorities also said they had information showing how Russia’s intelligence services maintain links with numerous former Ukrainian politicians. Some of those former Ukrainian politicians are in contact with Russian intelligence officers planning the attack on Ukraine, the British government said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry denied the allegations in a Twitter statement, saying the British announcement was evidence that NATO countries, “led by the Anglo-Saxons,” are escalating tensions around Ukraine.

“We call on the British Foreign Office to stop its provocative activities and focus on studying the history of the Tatar-Mongol yoke,” the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

In comments to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, Murayev, the owner of a pro-Russian television channel in Ukraine, said he was amused by the allegations.

“I have a hard time digesting stupidity and nonsense: Maybe someone wants to shut down yet another independent TV channel,” he said in a series of text messages, according to the Telegraph.

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“As someone who has been under Russian sanctions for four years, barred from Russia as a national security threat and whose father got his assets frozen in Russia, I find it hard to comment on the Foreign Office’s statement,” he added.

Britain also named four former associates of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as examples of former politicians in contact with Russian intelligence but did not say whether those four were involved directly in the plot to install Murayev.

Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 as a pro-Western uprising on Kyiv’s central square, known as the Maidan, ushered in a Europe-friendly government. Russia reacted by annexing Crimea from Ukraine and fueling a separatist war in the country’s east.

The four former associates that the British government named as contacts of Russian intelligence are former Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov, former first deputy prime minister Serhiy Arbuzov, former Yanukovych chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev and former deputy head of the Ukrainian National Security Council Vladimir Sivkovich.

The four men couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The British government made the accusations in a statement released at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, after it was already the middle of the night farther east.

Rather than attempting an overt overthrow of the pro-Western government in Kyiv, analysts suspect that if Putin attempted a coup, he would instead seek to encourage the collapse of the current government and covertly promote a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who would have more local credibility. The British government’s announcement was an attempt to thwart that activity.

“The Russians have a plan and we clearly think it’s worth people knowing about it,” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. “Calling it out takes away the element of surprise and also reduces the chances of Russia succeeding if they actually attempt it.”

“When the Russians attempt this and say ‘this is an independent Ukrainian political movement,’ we can say ‘no, that’s not true, this is the work of your intelligence apparatus which we’ve been warning about,’ ” the official said.

U.S. officials said they have no reason to doubt the British intelligence.

“This kind of plotting is deeply concerning,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement. “The Ukrainian people have the sovereign right to determine their own future, and we stand with our democratically-elected partners in Ukraine.”

The British government’s announcement came two days after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a group of current and former Ukrainian officials, accusing some of them of helping Russia lay the groundwork to install a Moscow-friendly government in Ukraine.

“Russia has directed its intelligence services to recruit current and former Ukrainian government officials to prepare to take over the government of Ukraine and to control Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with an occupying Russian force,” the Treasury Department said.

Among the people Treasury sanctioned on Thursday was Sivkovich, one of the former Ukrainian officials the British government accused of having contacts with Russian intelligence.

In its sanctions announcement, Treasury accused Sivkovich of working with “Russian intelligence actors” to build support for Ukraine to officially cede Crimea to Russia in exchange for a drawdown in Donbas, where Russia has fueled a separatist war against Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian officials were surprised by the idea that a Russian plot would seek to install Murayev, a relatively marginal figure in Ukrainian politics who was sanctioned by Russia in 2018, as the country’s new leader.

On his Facebook page, Murayev posted an image of himself edited into a James Bond “Skyfall” logo, appearing to poke fun at the idea that he was the subject of an international espionage gambit.

Murayev is from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, a Russian-speaking part of the country north of Donbas. He is a former member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and other Russia-leaning political factions that emerged after the party’s implosion in 2014.

Murayev ran for Ukraine’s president in 2019 but dropped out of the race.

msn.com

Related Topics:government pro-Kremlin Russia U.K Ukraine

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International

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

Published

10 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Displaced Palestinian children gather to receive food at a government school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 19, 2024, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

UNITED NATIONS: The UN independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies.

In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel’s military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”

“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference Wednesday.

Following intense international pressure — especially from close ally the United States — Netanyahu’s government gradually has opened several border crossings for tightly controlled deliveries. Fakhri said limited aid initially went mostly to southern and central Gaza, not to the north where Israel had ordered Palestinians to go.

A professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Fakhri was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as the investigator, or special rapporteur, on the right to food and assumed the role in 2020.

“By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 percent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri said. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”

Fakhri, who teaches law courses on human rights, food law and development, made the allegations in a report to the UN General Assembly circulated Thursday.

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He claims it goes back 76 years to Israeli’s independence and its continuous dislocation of Palestinians. Since then, he accused Israel of deploying “the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation against the Palestinians, perfecting the degree of control, suffering and death that it can cause through food systems.”

Since the war in Gaza began, Fakhri said he has received direct reports of the destruction of the territory’s food system, including farmland and fishing, which also has been documented and recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.

“Israel then used humanitarian aid as a political and military weapon to harm and kill the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he claimed.

Israel insists it no longer places restrictions on the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, including food.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Netanyahu cited figures from COGAT, Israel’s military body overseeing aid entry into Gaza, that 700,000 tons of food items had been allowed into Gaza since the war began 11 months ago.

Nearly half of that food aid in recent months has been brought in by the private sector for sale in Gaza’s markets, according to COGAT figures. However, many Palestinians in Gaza say they struggle to afford enough food for their families.

Israel allows trucks of aid through two small crossings in the north and one main crossing in the south, Kerem Shalom. However, since Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May, the UN and other aid agencies say they struggle to reach the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom to retrieve the aid for free distribution because Israel’s military operations make it too dangerous.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35 percent drop in people getting daily cooked meals.

The UN humanitarian office attributed the sharp reduction in cooked meals partly to multiple evacuation orders from Israeli security forces that forced at least 70 of 130 kitchens to either suspend or relocate their operations, he said Thursday. The UN’s humanitarian partners also lacked sufficient food supplies to meet requirements for the second straight month in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric added.

He said critical shortages of supplies in Gaza are stem from hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, and Israeli obstacles and access limitations.

UN investigator accuses Israel of starvation campaign in Gaza

ARAB NEWS

International

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

Published

10 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

Protests are taking place across France over the nomination of right-wing Michel Barnier as the new prime minister, after an inconclusive election in which the left won the largest number of seats.

More than 100 protests are expected to take place on Saturday, with people already on the streets in cities including Bordeaux, Nice and Le Mans.

The demonstrations were called by trade unions and left-wing political parties, whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, said he is open to forming a government with politicians across the political spectrum, including the left.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran firebrand from the radical France Unbowed party, called for the “most powerful mobilisation possible” in national marches.

Around 130 protests are being held, with the biggest setting out from central Paris this afternoon. Other cities staging protests include Marseille and Lyon.

The demonstrators are using slogans such as “denial of democracy” and “stolen election”.

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Parties on the left are angry that their own candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, was rejected by Mr Macron, who said she had no chance of surviving a vote of confidence in the National Assembly.

Mr Barnier may be able to survive a confidence vote because the far right, which also won a large number of seats, has said it won’t automatically vote against him.

However, that has led to criticism that his government will be dependent on the far right.

Ms Castets said she – like millions of French voters – felt betrayed and that the president had in effect ended up governing with the far right.

“We have a prime minister completely dependent on National Rally,” she added.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the protests, Mr Barnier is focussed on forming a new government.

After talks with the leaders of the right-wing Republicans and the president’s centrist Ensemble group, he said discussions were going very well and were “full of energy”.

Some on the left have blamed themselves for ending up with Mr Barnier as prime minister.

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pointed out that the president had considered former Socialist prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, for the job but that he had been turned down by his own party.

Another Socialist Mayor, Karim Bouamrane, blamed intransigence from other parts of the left alliance: “The path they chose was 100% or nothing – and here we are with nothing.”

Protesters rally in France against new PM appointment

BBC

International

Man who attacked judge in court pleads ‘guilty but mentally ill’

Published

15 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Trends Admin

Deobra Redden

Man who attacked judge in court pleads ‘guilty but mentally ill’

Deobra Redden, the man caught on video attacking a judge during an attempted battery conviction, has pled guilty with a significant caveat—he has been declared “guilty but mentally ill.”

In a statement released on Friday, September 6, by Redden’s lawyers at CEGA Law Group, they emphasized that their client acknowledges the severity of his actions and is seeking mental health treatment as part of his sentencing. The legal team is pushing for mental health reform and hopes Redden’s case will help spotlight the need for improvements in the system.

The attorneys expressed sympathy for Judge Mary Kay Holthus, the judge who was attacked, and thanked the Clark County District Attorney’s Office for working towards a resolution.

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The shocking courtroom incident, which was caught on video, shows Redden leaping over the judge’s bench as Judge Holthus was delivering his sentence for an earlier conviction. Holthus had made a comment about Redden “getting a taste of something else” before he ran towards her. Despite the chaos, the judge only sustained minor injuries after hitting her head.

Redden was quickly restrained and appeared in court days later, wearing a facemask and hand covers, where he was sentenced to 19-48 months behind bars for the attempted battery conviction.

Redden’s sentencing for the judge attack is set for November 7. His legal team is advocating for mental health treatment to be central to his punishment.