ZIONIST SETTLER/OCCUPIER

Jewish suspect arrested in connection to fatal stabbing of Palestinian, Israeli media says


Reuters
Publishing date: Jun 22, 2022 

JERUSALEM — Israeli police arrested on Wednesday a Jewish suspect in connection with the deadly stabbing of a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media reported.

Witnesses said the victim, identified as Ali Hassan Harb, was stabbed on Tuesday while Palestinians tried to remove a group of settlers off their land.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Harb, 28, was stabbed in the heart by a settler. An Israeli police spokesperson originally said it was unclear who had killed Harb and that the incident was under investigation

The stabbing took place during a time of increased violence in the West Bank and Israel. Since January, Israeli forces have killed at least 46 Palestinians in the West Bank, and 19 people in Israel have been killed in Arab street attacks.

Hundreds of Palestinians marched in Harb’s funeral in the Palestinian town of Iskaka near Salfit in the northern West Bank on Wednesday.

About 600,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war. Most countries deem Israel’s settlements as illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this.

The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, condemned the attack in a tweet.

“Perpetrators of violence must be held accountable and swiftly brought to justice,” he wrote. 

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem; Editing by Leslie Adler)

US wants to ban Juul vaping products: report

Wed, June 22, 2022

US health authorities are expected to order Juul Labs to stop selling e-cigarettes in the world's biggest economy, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The announcement, which could come as early as Wednesday, follows a two-year review of data presented in connection with Juul's application to sell tobacco- and menthol-flavored products in the United States, said the newspaper, which cited anonymous sources.

Juul did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FDA also did not respond to a query.

Juul has come under fire over its marketing of fruit and candy flavored e-cigarettes that had drawn in young consumers.

In January 2020, the FDA said sale of e-cigarettes in flavors other than tobacco or menthol would be illegal unless specifically authorized by the government.

The agency has approved some e-cigarette products from other makers such as Reynolds American, while taking a hard line on sweet or flavored products.

Juul has argued that vaping products can provide a solution to the harmful health impacts from conventional cigarettes.

Juul's products "exist only to transition adult smokers away from combustible cigarettes," Chief Executive KC Crosthwaite said on the company's website, adding that the company is "working hard" to rebuild its reputation following an "erosion of trust over the past few years."

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's administration announced it would develop a new policy requiring cigarette producers to reduce nicotine to non-addictive levels.

The initiative requires the FDA to develop and then publish a rule, which will likely be contested by industry.

jmb/bgs

Advocates cautiously optimistic over report of Juul ban

BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 06/22/22 

Anti-smoking advocates said they are cautiously optimistic following a report that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to remove Juul’s vaping products from U.S. shelves.

The move from FDA, as reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, would bring an end to the two-year review of the company’s request to sell tobacco and menthol flavored e-cigarettes.

If the report is true, “it’s most welcome and long overdue,” said Erika Sward, American Lung Association’s national assistant vice president of advocacy.

“What I’m hoping is that this will be the beginning of a number of situations where FDA rejects the applications for companies that are clearly not interested in being appropriate for the protection of public health,” Sward said.

A decision has not been publicly announced, and an FDA spokeswoman said the agency had no information to share.

The FDA has faced growing pressure to regulate vaping as e-cigarette use has skyrocketed among youth and teenagers, worrying parents and health experts about their ingestion of the nicotine-based product.

In 2020, the FDA required all e-cigarette and vaping companies to submit applications to continue marketing products. The agency has been reviewing applications from manufacturers ever since.

The agency also banned the sale of all vaping flavors aside from tobacco and nicotine, and has not allowed any companies to legally sell flavors.

Juul’s popularity soared in 2018, but the company’s fruity flavors were widely blamed for hooking teenagers and young kids onto vaping.

Tobacco giant Altria, which sells Marlboro, Virginia Slims and Parliament cigarettes in the United States, invested $12.8 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul in 2018. But the move has not paid off. At the end of last year, Altria said its Juul investment was worth less than $2 billion.

Altria’s shares took a tumble following the Journal’s report, closing down more than 9 percent.

“Juul, more than any other product and any other company, has been responsible for creating and fueling the youth e-cigarette epidemic. If these reports are accurate, this would be the most significant action the FDA has taken to date to end the youth e-cigarette epidemic and stop tobacco companies from using these nicotine-loaded products to addict another generation of kids,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.

Juul took its fruit- and mint-flavored nicotine pods off the market in 2019. The FDA’s reasoning for banning Juul will likely be that it has no benefit to public health, and the threat to young nonsmokers is much larger than any possible benefit to adult smokers.

In September, FDA missed a deadline to decide which e-cigarette products can stay on the market.

In the run-up to the deadline, FDA said it made decisions on more than 90 percent of the new tobacco products that were submitted, rejecting applications of more than 300 companies to sell more than 6 million products, mainly due to their potential appeal to underage teens.

But regulators delayed making decisions on most of the major vaping companies, including Vuse and Juul.

Vaping advocates have railed against the FDA’s efforts to regulate the industry, which they argue helps people transition away from traditional, and more harmful, cigarettes.

Removing Juul from the market would be “the latest sorry example of the agency’s campaign of regulatory arson against the nicotine vaping products that millions of Americans rely on as an alternative to cigarettes,” Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, said in a statement.

“This shameful decision is hard proof that no matter how deeply resourced or how meticulous the research in the market application, FDA is hellbent to arbitrarily crush the most widely used vaping products preferred by adult Americans,” Wheeler said.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the FDA announced plans to severely limit the levels of nicotine that tobacco companies can place in traditional cigarettes in an attempt to make them less addictive.

“Because tobacco-related harms primarily result from addiction to products that repeatedly expose users to toxins, FDA would take this action to reduce addictiveness to certain tobacco products, thus giving addicted users a greater ability to quit,” the FDA said.

HYDROCARBON INC.IS CAPITAL INTENSIVE

Troubled Canada pipeline no longer 

profitable: budget watchdog

Wed, June 22, 2022, 

The controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, now under construction in western Canada after being nationalized, is no longer profitable as costs have spiralled, Parliament's budget watchdog said Wednesday.

In a report, the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer said a review of the project's finances found "that the government's 2018 decision to acquire, expand, operate, and eventually divest of the Trans Mountain assets will result in a net loss for the federal government."

Ottawa purchased the pipeline for Can$4.4 billion (US$3.4 billion) from Kinder Morgan four years ago to salvage the troubled expansion project.

But its current value, the PBO estimated, is only Can$3.9 billion, after construction costs soared to $21.4 billion and its completion was pushed one year to late 2023.

The negative valuation is based on the pipeline's future cash flows over 40 years, minus construction costs.

The project is to replace an aging conduit built in 1953 to deliver 890,000 barrels of oil a day from landlocked Alberta to the Pacific coast for shipping to new markets in Asia and elsewhere.

Prior to the government taking over the project, it had been stalled by legal challenges and protests by Indigenous groups and environmental activists.

amc/st

RIP
French co-discoverer of 'Lucy' dies at 87

Coppens once told AFP, he was particularly proud to have "made an irrefutable link between the emergence of man and climate change"

AFP - 

© LIONEL BONAVENTURE

Coppens called himself one of Lucy's 'daddies'

French palaeontologist Yves Coppens, credited with the co-discovery of the famous fossil find known as "Lucy", died on Wednesday aged 87 after a long illness, his publisher said.

"France has lost one of its great men," publisher Odile Jacob tweeted, adding that beyond his science skills, Coppens had also been "a talented writer, storyteller and non-fiction author".

He was, with Maurice Taieb and Donald Johanson, part of the team that found the most complete remnants of an Australopithecus afarensis ever discovered, in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia.

The team nicknamed the 3.2- million-year-old female hominid "Lucy" after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" which they listened to while labelling the fossils.

Based on the large part of Lucy they found, 40 percent of her skeleton, the scientists were able to determine her height (one metre, 3.5 feet) and show that she was muscular and able to climb trees as well as walk upright.

Coppens, who was born in Britanny and was the son of a nuclear physicist father, co-signed six hominid discoveries over his career.

"At six or seven years old I already wanted to become an archaeologist," Coppens told AFP in 2016. "All my holiday time was spent at digs," he added.

Coppens was admitted to France's prestigious CNRS scientific centre in 1956 when he was still only 22.


He began travelling to Africa from the 1960s, starting with Algeria and Chad.

His first major discovery came in 1967, a 2.6-million-year-old fossil in the Omo valley in Ethiopia.

Then in 1974 came the international expedition in Ethiopia's Afar triangle that was to make Coppens, his friend and fellow Frenchman Taieb and Donald Johanson, an American, world famous for the discovery of Lucy.

Coppens often referred to himself as one of Lucy's "daddies" ("papas" in French).

For a long time after the find, which comprised 52 bone fragments, scientists believed that she was a direct ancestor of humanity.

But this claim is no longer widely believed, and Coppens as well as other palaeontologists came instead to view Lucy as a distant cousin of mankind.

Later Coppens ran digs in Mauritania, the Philippines, Indonesia, Siberia, China and Mongolia.

Back home, he became director of the Musee de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, was given the palaeontology chair in the prestigious College de France, and joined France's Academy of Science.

He also won several prizes, served as an advisor on environmental questions to the French government, and wrote several books and more than a million scientific articles.

Besides the discovery of Lucy, Coppens once told AFP, he was particularly proud to have "made an irrefutable link between the emergence of man and climate change".

As forests gave place to savannas, man stopped climbing trees, began to walk upright and needed to develop brain power to keep carnivores at bay, he said.

burs-jh/har

US lawmakers subpoena Commanders boss in malpractice hearing

Wed, June 22, 2022,


Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder was ordered to appear before a US Congressional panel probing allegations of workplace malpractice at the club on Wednesday as new evidence accused the team boss of attempting to thwart an NFL inquiry.

Carolyn Maloney, the chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a statement that Snyder would be subpoenaed after his "continued and unfounded refusal" to provide voluntary testimony before the panel.

"Mr. Snyder's refusal to testify sends a clear signal that he is more concerned about protecting himself than coming clean to the American public," Maloney said.

"If the NFL is unwilling to hold Mr. Snyder accountable, then I am prepared to do so."

The Congressional panel has been conducting a probe into workplace misconduct and sexual harassment at Washington's NFL franchise.

The team was fined $10 million by the NFL last year after an investigation found evidence of sexual harassment, bullying and intimidation.

In February, a former cheerleader and marketing executive with the team told the panel how she had been sexually harassed by Snyder -- the first time the Commanders boss had been publicly accused of inappropriate behavior.

On Wednesday, lawmakers released a 29-page memo which detailed how the Commanders had tackled allegations made by female employees at the club.
- Hush money -

The memo said Snyder had launched a "shadow investigation" designed to stymie the near year-long NFL inquiry into the claims launched in 2020.

The shadow probe was used to create "a 100-slide dossier with private emails, text messages, telephone records and social media posts from journalists, victims and witnesses who had made credible public accusations of harassment" against the team.

It said that during the NFL's inquiry led by former federal prosecutor Beth Wilkinson, Snyder and his legal team offered "hush money" to former cheerleaders to dissuade them from cooperating with the investigation.

The committee also said it had found evidence which cast doubt on the NFL's claim that its own investigation was independent.

It noted that Snyder was given a "back-channel" to make confidential presentations to the NFL and was able to block the release of information.

It said the NFL became aware of Snyder's efforts to frustrate Wilkinson's investigation "but failed to take meaningful action to prevent them".

The committee has been sharply critical of the NFL's failure to release a full, written report of Wilkinson's investigation.

However NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in testimony before lawmakers on Wednesday that there were "compelling reasons" not to make the full findings of the investigation public.

"We have been open and direct about the fact that the workplace culture at the Commanders was not only unprofessional, but toxic for far too long," Goodell said, citing the importance of preserving witness confidentiality.

Asked why the report could not simply have redacted the names of individuals making allegations, Goodell replied: "With all due respect, redaction doesn't always work in my world, I promise. Okay.

"We need to take extra steps to make sure these people who did come through and courageously come forward."

rcw/bsp

Brazil's ex-education minister arrested on corruption charges

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's former top education official was arrested on corruption charges, the president said on Wednesday, noting his former aide will answer for his actions ahead of elections later this year in which graft scandals loom large for voters.

"If he is innocent, no problem. If he is guilty, he will pay," President Jair Bolsonaro told local broadcaster Radio Itatiaia, referring to former Education Minister Milton Ribeiro.

"The government is collaborating with the investigation. We don't condone any of this."

In a statement, Ribeiro's lawyer Daniel Bialski said his client's arrest was "unfair, unmotivated, unnecessary" and that he was filing a legal motion to free him.

According to a police source, Ribeiro's arrest is part of the so-called "Access Paid" operation aimed at investigating corruption and influence peddling related to the spending of public funds from an education development fund.

In a statement on Wednesday, police stressed that their investigations have uncovered "possible evidence" of crimes involving the use of public money.

Ribeiro resigned in March after allegations surfaced that he gave preferential treatment to two pastors for educational funding in return for bribes.

He was the third education minister to quit under Bolsonaro, who ran on a pledge to curb corruption.

When accusations against Ribeiro first emerged earlier this year, Bolsonaro called them "cowardice," adding that he fully trusted him.

The education ministry has confirmed that a police team visited its offices, adding that it was cooperating with investigations.

The probes focus on crimes such as influence peddling, abuse of power, and other corruption-related charges.

Local media said an evangelical pastor linked to Bolsonaro was also arrested in the operation.

(Reporting by Ricardo Brito and Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Steven Grattan and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Richard Chang)

Bolsonaro ex-minister arrested for 'influence peddling'

Author: AFP

Update: 22.06.2022 


Milton Ribeiro (R) was President Jair Bolsonaro's third education minister / © AFP/File

A Brazilian former education minister accused of influence peddling, allegedly at the request of President Jair Bolsonaro, was arrested Wednesday, police and a defense lawyer said.

Milton Ribeiro resigned in March over allegations that he channeled public funds to allies of two influential Evangelical pastors at Bolsonaro's "special request."

Newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo revealed an audio recording of Ribeiro saying he gave priority in deciding school-funding requests to municipalities governed by "friends" of the pastors.


One mayor reportedly said he had been asked for a kilo of gold in exchange for having his school-funding request cleared.

The claims triggered calls from opposition lawmakers for Ribeiro and Bolsonaro to be investigated.

Bolsonaro, a conservative Catholic, won the presidency in 2018 with solid backing from Brazil's powerful Evangelical Christian movement.

He is keen to keep the Evangelical vote as he seeks reelection in October, trailing in the polls to leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro and Ribeiro, himself a Presbyterian pastor, have denied wrongdoing.

"Based on documents, testimony and the final report of the preliminary investigation... possible indications of criminal practice in the granting of public budgets were identified," Brazilian police said in a statement.

Ribeiro's arrest, it said, was the result of an operation across four Brazilian states Wednesday morning to dismantle a criminal network, with officers armed with five arrest warrants and 13 search warrants.

He risks a sentence of between two and five years for influence peddling and two to 12 years for corruption, the police said.

Ribeiro's lawyer Daniel Bialski in a statement described his client's arrest as "unjust" and "indisputably unnecessary."

The Ministry of Education confirmed its premises were searched on Wednesday and said it intended to cooperate with investigators.

In March, Bolsonaro defended Ribeiro and called the claims "cowardly."

On Wednesday, the president appeared to distance himself from his former minister.

"Let him answer for his actions, I pray to God that he has no problem. But if he does, it shows that I have no influence on the police," the far-right president told the Itaitiaia radio station.

"I have 23 ministers, about a hundred secretaries of state... If someone does something wrong, will they blame me?" he added.

Ribeiro, 64, took office in July 2020 -- the third education minister in the cabinet of Bolsonaro, whose government was shaken by an avalanche of resignations and dismissals.

Ecuador Refuses to End State of Emergency; 18 Police Missing After Attack

June 22, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

Demonstrators clash with riot police in the El Arbolito park area in Quito, June 22, 2022, on the 10th consecutive day of Indigenous-led protests against the Ecuadorean government.


QUITO, ECUADOR —

Ecuador on Wednesday refused to end its state of emergency and said 18 police officers were missing following an attack by Indigenous protesters on a police station in the eastern Amazon region.

Two people have died in the 10-day protest in which the government has declared an emergency in six of Ecuador's 24 departments following violent clashes between protesters and security forces.

Around 90 civilians and 100 members of the security forces have been injured in clashes, while the interior minister said 18 officers were missing following the attack in the Amazonian city of Puyo.

Another six officers were seriously injured and three more were detained by the protesters, said Patricio Carrillo.

A protester also died in the attack in Puyo, a five-hour drive south of Quito, the government said Tuesday night.

"The mob began setting fires with police still inside patrol cars, began looting, burning public-private facilities such as the Guayaquil Bank, Red Cross, until they ended up torching the police facilities in the center of the city," said Carrillo.

Conditions for dialogue

President Guillermo Lasso has proposed dialogue with the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which called the protests, in a bid to end the escalating violence.

But CONAIE leader Leonidas Iza said talks were conditioned on the state of emergency being repealed and the "demilitarization" of a public park in Quito that is a traditional rallying point for Indigenous people but is currently under the control of security forces.

"We cannot lift the state of exception because that would leave the capital defenseless, and we already know what happened in October 2019, and we will not allow that," Minister of Government Francisco Jimenez told the Teleamazonas channel.

Police confront demonstrators during clashes in the El Arbolito park area in Quito, June 22, 2022, on the 10th consecutive day of Indigenous-led protests against the Ecuadorean government.

CONAIE led two weeks of nationwide protests in 2019 in which 11 people died and more than 1,000 were injured, also generating losses of $800 million.

In the capital, Quito, Indigenous protesters occupied congress, torched the comptroller's office, and damaged public and private property.

'Sit down and talk'

The capital is again the epicenter of the protests.

CONAIE, which has mobilized at least 10,000 people in Quito, hundreds of whom have clashed with security forces in recent days, want the government to lower fuel prices.

"It is not the time to put more conditions, to make more demands. It is the moment to sit down and talk," said Jimenez.

"Unfortunately, there has been accidental loss of life, according to the information we have, and we cannot keep waiting."

An Indigenous protester died after he was "hit in the face, apparently with a tear gas bomb," on Tuesday following the "confrontation" with security forces in Puyo, a lawyer for the Alliance of Human Rights Organizations told AFP.

The police said "it was presumed that the person died as a result of handling an explosive device."

Murder probe

Another protester died on Monday after falling into a ravine outside Quito, with police claiming that, too, was an accident.

However, the public prosecutor's office has opened a murder investigation.

The alliance said 90 people had been injured and 87 arrested since protests began on June 13.

Police said 101 officers and military personnel had been injured, with another 27 temporarily detained by protesters.

It said 80 civilians had been arrested.

Quito was relatively calm on Wednesday morning.

 

Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of Ecuadorans taking part in a ninth day of Indigenous-led fuel price protests the military described as a "grave threat."

Thousands march in Ecuador protests
Wed, 22 June 2022

Thousands of indigenous protesters have marched peacefully through Ecuador's capital Quito to demand President Guillermo Lasso address price rises which have ignited 10 days of demonstrations across the country.

Disquiet over costs for fuel, food and other basics has exploded into sometimes-violent protests in several cities, led largely by major indigenous groups who travelled to the capital to make their views heard.

The demonstrations - longer-lasting and larger than marches over fuel prices in October last year - are testing Lasso's ability to restart the country's economy and kick-start employment.




Lasso has an adversarial relationship with the national assembly, where lawmakers have blocked his proposals, and he has struggled to contain rising violence he blames on drug gangs.

Indigenous groups are demanding a fuel price cut, a halt to expanding oil and mining and more time for farmer loan repayments.

"Everything is expensive, we can't take it anymore," said Jose Guaraca, who joined the protest after travelling from the indigenous city of Guamote in a truck to Quito to demand lower fuel prices and better income for farmers.

Protesters marched down Quito's major roads on Wednesday afternoon carrying Ecuadorean flags and chanting anti-government slogans. Some indigenous marchers carried spears.

A protester throws a tear gas canister fired by security personnel after Ecuador's armed forces warned they would not allow ongoing protests against President Guillermo Lasso's economic policies to damage the country's democracy, in Quito, Ecuador June 21, 2022. REUTERS/Santiago

Security forces were deployed around the government palace.

Demonstrations, led primarily by indigenous organization CONAIE, began last week with peaceful road blocks but levels of violence have escalated in some areas, prompting conservative ex-banker Lasso to decree a state of exception in six provinces.

Violent clashes between soldiers and demonstrators armed with guns, spears and explosives took place on Tuesday night in Puyo, an Amazonian city, but the government has restored order, it said on Tuesday afternoon.

Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo earlier said public safety could not be guaranteed after attacks on police in Puyo.

"We've always had our door open to dialogue, we've only said that talks can't make a mockery of the Ecuadorean people," CONAIE president Leonidas Iza told protesters, in a video the organisation published on Twitter.

Protesters march to demand President Guillermo Lasso address price increases for fuel, food and other basics which have ignited 10 days of demonstrations across the country, in Quito, Ecuador June 22, 2022. REUTERS/Santiago Arcos

Lasso reiterated a call for dialogue early on Wednesday.

One protester died amid the incidents in Puyo and six police officers were seriously injured, while 18 are missing, the government said.

The protester was killed after being struck in the head by a police tear gas canister, according to human rights groups.

Another protester was killed last week after falling into a ravine and the health ministry has said two people died in ambulances delayed by road blockades.

Beachgoers brave rockets in East Ukraine

AFP - 

© Anatolii Stepanov

Sloviansk is a key city in eastern Ukraine that Russia has targeted

With its white sand, changing cubicles and clear water, the beach at Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine looks tempting. There's just one problem: the nearby bangs of rockets and missiles.


© Anatolii Stepanov

Sloviansk briefly fell to pro-Russian separatist forces in 2014 before being retaken by Ukraine

The lakeside resort is close to one of the most active fronts in the war with Russia, to the north of Sloviansk, where Ukrainian troops firing from woods and villages are seeking to halt Moscow's advance.


© Anatolii Stepanov

Ukraine says Russia has consistently targeted civilian infrastucture since its invasion launched on Febuary 24

But that doesn't dissuade some beachgoers.

"We just came here to walk around and take some snaps," says Kostyantyn, 40, strolling around wearing wraparound sunglasses and shorts.

"We wanted (to swim) but it's too cold," he adds as the sunbaked region has a rare cloudy day.

"A beach is a beach," he says, taking pictures of his friend Denys at an outdoor gym.

The nearby arms fire sounds like American howitzers, supplied to Ukrainian troops.

The Russian frontline is only about 10 kilometres (six miles) away and the Ukrainian armed forces said Wednesday that Moscow's troops were carrying out systematic firing in order to resume an offensive on Sloviansk.

The Sloviansk lake resort was once famous for its salty waters, believed to help relieve joint problems.

A sanatorium built on the spot is no longer open, however.

"It's pretty, people come to swim. We also come to see the swans," says Daniil, 39, who cycled along the beach with a group of friends on the way to buy food in Sloviansk.

- 'Be happy' -

Daniil says he is a metal worker at the Sloviansk power station in the nearby town of Mykolaivka, which has halted work due to the war.

Orange plastic letters on a beach hut read: "Be happy this summer", but the beach loungers have been locked inside. Ice cream stalls and a massage cabin are also closed.

"We used to come a lot before the war", Kostyantyn explained. "This is just the second time this year."

He says he has been helping out locally: feeding dogs abandoned by their owners, who have left for safer western Ukraine.

"I'm not scared because I'm a volunteer and have been under shelling," he says, as loud booms can be heard in the background.

Kostyantyn recalls how he was caught up in a Russian shelling attack on an evacuation bus in Kharkiv region in February.

"With what's happening now, you realise that life is not so threatening. People's fear is more of a threat, since what they fear comes true."

As the war draws on, those who opted not to evacuate from the area have become "very pushy and hardened," he says.

"I think it's more like a form of nerve stress."

"There are those who are waiting for Russians to come," interjects his friend Denys.

"People think it will be better, that they'll get a Russian pension."

There are also some who already receive benefits from the Moscow-backed separatist regions, adds Kostyantyn.

In 2014, Sloviansk was taken over by Russia-backed separatists and Ukraine only won it back after a lengthy siege.

Now the sleepy green town has no water or gas and an unstable electricity supply due to war damage and difficulties of repairs, its mayor told AFP this week.

Stacks of concrete beams on the road from the beach resort into the city creates a lengthy obstacle course for vehicles and trenches have been built along it.

am/oc/pvh

With an eye on re-election, Turkey’s Erdogan risks the ire of Western partners

Marc DAOU 

Between stalling Sweden and Finland’s bids for NATO membership and threatening a fresh military offensive against Kurds in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be capitalising on the world’s focus on Ukraine to strengthen Ankara’s geopolitical standing – even at the expense of NATO and Western partners. Such moves may be targeting a domestic audience ahead of June 2023 presidential elections, with Erdogan trying to galvanise nationalist sentiment as a worsening economic crisis threatens his popularity at home

In recent weeks, Erdogan has once again complicated Turkey’s relationship with its NATO allies – stalling Swedish and Finnish plans to join the bloc; threatening another military incursion into northern Syria; refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia; and reviving tensions with perennial rival Greece over the Aegean islands.

The Turkish president seems keen to take advantage of the West’s focus on the Ukraine war, using bellicose rhetoric in defence of Turkey’s interests and imposing his own conditions on top of European and US priorities.

Talks in Brussels on Monday on the latest NATO accession bids led to “clear progress” on some issues, a Finnish presidential aide said. But Turkey threw a spanner into the works – demanding Sweden and Finland take action against the "terrorists" of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) before approving their accession – ahead of next week’s NATO summit in Madrid.

Erdogan is all too aware that Swedish and Finnish accession would be a landmark expansion for the transatlantic alliance, with both nations jettisoning their longstanding Cold War neutrality amid a re-emergent Russian threat.
‘Imposing his agenda’

Ankara sees both countries – and Sweden, especially – as too close to the PKK, which has been waging a guerrilla war in Turkey since 1984 punctuated by periodic ceasefires. A militant insurgency that dreams of an independent Kurdish state uniting southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq and a small slice of northeastern Iran, the PKK has been designated a terrorist group by both the EU and the United States.

Erdogan says he wants “concrete” and “serious” steps from Sweden and Finland before he allows them into NATO. In effect, he wants them to bargain with him directly to get the green light.

The Turkish president also wants Western countries to lift the restrictions on arms and technology exports imposed in late 2019 after a Turkish attack on Kurdish forces in northern Syria. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) were instrumental in defeating the Islamic State group in Syria and a key ally of the US-led international coalition battling the jihadists.

“By raising the prospect of a new offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria and threatening to block Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO applications, Erdogan is trying to show that he won’t compromise on Turkish nationalist causes – and that he can impose his agenda and priorities in the international arena,” said David Rigoulet-Roze, a Middle East specialist at the IRIS (French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs) think-tank in Paris.

Moreover, Erdogan is “trying to compensate for his disastrous management of the Turkish economy, to shore up his electoral base and mobilise voters ahead of the forthcoming elections, which look rather complicated for him”, Rigoulet-Roze continued.

‘Like a poker player’

With both presidential and parliamentary elections coming up in a year’s time, Erdogan’s geopolitical chess game with the West could well offer him an electoral boon.

A German Marshall Fund poll published in April showed that 58.3 percent of Turks see the US as the “biggest threat” to Turkey’s “national interests” while 62.4 percent believe European countries want to “divide and disintegrate Turkey as they had the Ottoman Empire in the past”. An even bigger number, 69.8 percent, believe European countries have helped strengthen separatist organisations like the PKK.



“Erdogan is a real political animal; he acts like a poker player on the world stage,” said Rigoulet-Roze. “But there’s often a domestic agenda lurking behind his games with the West – and his various postures in the global arena are nothing more than a response to domestic problems and a reflection of his desire to keep his grip on power.”

>> Turkey challenges allies and enemies alike in quest for ‘larger role on world stage’

The Turkish president is more than happy to pursue policies with an eye on the domestic agenda even if it means irritating the West – as witnessed in recent years by the decision to drill in disputed parts of the Mediterranean and the controversial purchase of an S-400 missile system from Russia.

Erdogan makes such moves on an “ad-hoc” basis, Rigoulet-Roze said, instead of working from an overarching strategy.

“For the most part, they’re provocative acts – Erdogan knows he can’t burn bridges with the West or remake the world on his terms.”

Indeed, Erdogan is all too aware that the EU is still Turkey’s largest trading partner (it is part of the customs union) and that the US became Turkey’s third-largest export market in 2020.

‘Extremely vulnerable’

More recently, Erdogan has refused to join Western sanctions on Russia. Ankara does not want to “antagonise Russia” because the beleaguered Turkish economy is “extremely vulnerable” to a loss of Russian wheat and energy supplies, according to Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey specialist at St. Lawrence University in New York and the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, speaking in a March interview.

Erdogan also riled Western leaders over the past few weeks by hosting Venezuela’s autocratic far-left President Nicolas Maduro for talks on June 8; neither the EU nor the United States recognises Maduro’s regime as legitimate.

A further provocation to the West came in early June, when the Turkish president announced he would end regular bilateral meetings with the Greek government aimed at building co-operation after decades of antagonism between these historic enemies. Ankara claims that Athens is stationing troops on Aegean islands near the Turkish shore in violation of peace treaties and has threatened to reopen a debate on ownership of the islands.

“On the surface it sometimes looks like Erdogan is the master of this game against the West – but in reality he’s testing them each time, seeing how far he can go, seeing if he can make some sort of geopolitical win on the regional chessboard or an economic win to try and relieve the financial pressure Turkey is under,” Rigoulet-Roze said. “Erdogan’s position isn’t as comfortable as it looks, because he risks really antagonising all the other NATO members and making Turkey the black sheep of the alliance.”

Erdogan is trying to make Turkey a great power again – on the global as well as regional stage.

“Erdogan is very nostalgic for Ottoman imperial grandeur, which has a profound resonance in the contemporary Turkish psyche – this idea that Turkey must once again be recognised as a great power, even if it can’t have an empire,” Rigoulet-Roze said. “Unfortunately for Erdogan, reality constrains these ambitions, because Turkey’s considerable economic difficulties mean it can’t afford to be isolated.”

Over the previous two decades, Erdogan’s moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won and kept power because it “assured Turks of sustained improvements in living standards”, Rigoulet-Roze said.

But that reputation for economic competence is gone, putting Erdogan at odds with millions of transactional voters he has relied on for support. Hence his diplomatic overtures to the wealthy Gulf petro-monarchies he previously scorned.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began his first official visit to Turkey on Wednesday, with several agreements expected between the two Middle Eastern powers. Erdogan went to Saudi Arabia at the end of April after three and a half years of vexed relations between Ankara and Riyadh following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

For all his troubles, Erdogan knows that Turkey’s geographic location – at the crossroads of Europe, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East – makes it essential to the West from a strategic perspective. The Cold War is long gone, but the factors that motivated NATO to make Turkey the only Middle Eastern member of the Alliance in 1952 have not gone away. As much as Erdogan’s threats to the Swedish and Finnish accession bids rile NATO members, they know they need to engage with him.



But while much remains the same, the nature of Turkish politics has changed a great deal since the Cold War, Rigoulet-Roze observed. Back then, Turkey was “secular, anti-communist, pro-Western and pro-European; things have become very different since Erdogan and the AKP took power, making Turkey into a nation dominated by an Islamo-nationalist party that is, at the very least, non-aligned”.

“Now is certainly not the time to question Turkey’s role and status in NATO; that’s not in anyone’s interests,” he continued. “But that said, the way other NATO members perceive Turkey is clearly not what it used to be.”

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