Uber and Lyft drivers in California say they’ve been spontaneously fired by apps, report finds

Without much explanation, rideshare drivers surveyed — primarily people of color — say they’ve been let go, either temporarily or permanantly. Facing a complicated appeals process, they have little recourse to preserve their livelihoods, a new report says.

Two-thirds of California Uber and Lyft drivers have been "deactivated" by apps, according to recently released data. Oakland International Airport in Oakland, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2022. 

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

March 3, 2023, 
By Sakshi Venkatraman

For some Uber and Lyft drivers in California, a new fear has taken hold. One day they worry they’ll get into a car to start a shift, and their app will let them know they’ve been fired.

According to a new report, there's a reason behind that fear.

Data released this week by the Asian Law Caucus and Rideshare Drivers United, a drivers’ union, said that two-thirds of Uber and Lyft drivers in California had experienced deactivation by the app, and among those surveyed, the deactivation disproportionately affected people of color.

Thirty percent of drivers said they were given no explanation as to why they were let go. Forty two percent said the app cited customer complaints.

“This reality is that now app-based drivers can be fired, not even by a human being, but just by an app,” said Asian Law Caucus attorney Winnie Kao, who worked on the report. “That you can wake up one day and try to turn on the app to go to work, and you’re just blocked. Hearing the stories from the drivers about that was really troubling and really disturbing.”

In a statement to NBC News, an Uber spokesperson refuted that, saying its deactivation process was run by human representatives who conduct a thorough evaluation before making a decision.

“We know that drivers rely on Uber to earn, so the decision to deactivate a driver’s account is one that we do not take lightly,” the spokesperson said. “Unless there is a serious emergency or safety threat, we provide multiple warnings to drivers before permanently deactivating their account. And we provide drivers with the option to appeal eligible deactivations, including by submitting additional photo or video evidence.”

A representative for Lyft said the report was inaccurate.

“We strongly condemn discrimination of any kind and are committed to preventing it on our platform,” the representative said. “This report is flawed to its core with a predetermined conclusion not grounded in facts. Lyft takes safety reports from riders and drivers seriously and reviews and investigates them to determine the appropriate course of action. This report does not reflect the actual experiences of the majority of drivers.”

More than 800 drivers across California filled out the survey, most of them immigrants and people of color. Many reported facing discrimination, harassment and assault while they were driving. Half of drivers said they experienced racism, and 43% said they faced sexual harassment while on the job.

A common thread connecting many of these stories, the report’s authors said, was that the drivers themselves feared facing disciplinary action from customer complaints. Fifty percent of surveyed drivers who reported experiencing racism to their rideshare app said the customers who were racist also filed complaints about them.

According to the survey, drivers of color were deactivated significantly more often than white drivers. Nearly 70% of drivers of color experienced either a temporary or permanent deactivation, compared with 57% of white drivers. Some of the drivers who responded to the survey said they feared racist passengers could end their job on a whim with a false complaint.

“Customer input can have such an impact on whether the drivers can continue to use these apps or keep working and have their pay or benefits,” Kao said. “There’s so many discriminatory and biased interactions that are happening and, and that they’re completely unchecked.”

Rideshare apps using these complaints to determine whether drivers can do their jobs can be problematic, Kao said. The stories she heard exemplified how necessary elementary safeguards were in any workplace, including a rideshare car, she said.

“Drivers should have all the basic labor protections that are afforded to workers who are classified as employees,” she said. “Certain basic things, like the right to a safe and healthy workplace, the right to be free from discrimination, the right to a workplace free of retaliation and with safety net measures. I mean, that should apply to all workers, no matter what your status is.”

A vast majority of respondents who were deactivated said it took a huge toll on their lives; 86% said they experienced hardship as a direct result. Eighteen percent lost their cars; 12% lost their homes.

“These are not isolated incidents,” Kao said. “These experiences are widespread. It’s a systemic problem.”

Turkey’s opposition fails to agree on election challenger to Erdogan and falls apart

Aksener: Refused to back Kilicdaroglu. / Yıldız Yazıcıoğlu (VOA)

By bne IntelIiNews March 4, 2023

Turkey’s opposition coalition fell to pieces on March 3 as the leaders of its six parties proved unable to agree on a joint candidate to take on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the upcoming mid-May elections.


Kilicdaroglu: Critics complain of a charisma deficit.

Meral Aksener, leader of the nationalist centre-right IYI Party (Good Party), said she could not back Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main Republican People’s Party (CHP), as the challenger and indicated that her grouping would leave the coalition, known as the Table of Six. Throughout the past year, pundits and opinion pollsters have painted the 74-year-old Kilicdaroglu, leader of the CHP since 2010, as a politician who lacks charisma and as a serial loser. Aksener has indicated she agrees with that analysis. Nevertheless, the other coalition parties, she said, went ahead and rubber-stamped his candidacy.

“What happened today is a major blow to [the opposition’s] effort” to unseat Erdogan, Wolfango Piccoli at political consultancy Teneo, was cited as saying by the Financial Times, adding that the fractured opposition had become Erdogan’s “greatest asset”.



Imamoglu: Popular but conviction might stop any intended run (Credit: www.ekremimamoglu.com).

Looking to rescue the situation, Aksener called on Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas, the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, respectively, to stand against the president. “Our people are calling you for duty,” she said.


Yavas (right): A run would mean stabbing his party leader in the back (Credit: Yildiz Yazicioglu, VoA).

Piccoli described the appeal to Imamoglu and Yavas as, in effect, a call for a “rebellion” within the CHP.

Polls have suggested that both Imamoglu and Yavas would stand a good chance of defeating Erdogan in a run-off (in the election, if no candidate secures at least 50% support plus one vote in the first round of voting, the contest will proceed to a head-to-head of the candidates who place first and second). However, Imamoglu could find himself disbarred from running if he cannot on appeal overturn a conviction for insulting Istanbul election officials with the word “fools”. On the other hand, outrage over the conviction and disqualification of Imamoglu could prove a growing problem for the autocratic Erdogan.

Criticising the Table of Six, Aksener also remarked that the alliance had “lost its skill of reflecting people’s will”.

For his part, Kilicdaroglu pledged that the coalition would “continue on our path” even without the support of Aksener’s party.

The fact that the opposition is in disarray may prove a fortunate outcome for Erdogan who, after two decades as Turkey’s leader, has been looking to build momentum for another election victory despite poll ratings that are at an all-time low.

Many Turks are furious at the Erdogan administration’s lack of preparation for, and inadequate response to, the February 6 twin earthquakes that killed tens of thousands. But even before the natural disaster, Erdogan was already in trouble, facing widespread accusations of economic mismanagement that has impoverished many millions of Turks by generating rampant inflation and destroying the value of the Turkish lira.

The loss of the IYI Party will deal the Table of Six, also known as the Nation Alliance, a grievous blow. In the last parliamentary elections (in Turkey the parliamentary contest takes place in parallel with the parliamentary poll) in 2018, IYI won almost 10% of the vote. Though the CHP took 23%, the remaining four members of the coalition are minor entities. They are not expected to win more than around 1% of the vote each in the coming elections, which Erdogan intends to hold on May 14.

The only substantial opposition party that is not part of the Table of Six, the pro-Kurdish minority Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), attracted nearly 11% of the vote in the 2018 parliamentary election, making it the second largest party in parliament.

Looking at whether Ankara mayor Yavas might answer Aksener’s call to run against Erdogan, Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, wrote in an assessment for the Center for European Policy Analysis: “Yavas has hinted that he might want to run, but it is unclear if he would be prepared to stab his party leader, Kilicdaroglu, in the back.”

Weighing up any remaining chance of Kilicdaroglu winning the presidency, Ash observed that “if even his former coalition partners do not think he can win, then what hope has he?”

In further remarks on Yavas, Ash added: “It is possible that Yavas will decide to fight both Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu. But would he really be able to reach the second round for a one-on-one against Erdogan? And even then, little is really known about Yavas in terms of his broader national politics; he has kept his head down running Ankara and focusing on service delivery. His past nationalist track record might mean that Kurdish voters would spurn him in any second-round vote.

“If Yavas did reach the second-round run-off, it is likely (based on past form) that Erdogan would offer some carefully targeted inducements. He might offer concessions to Kurds, who likely are nervous anyway about voting for Yavas. He might even look to offer Aksener a deal of a move away from the current presidential system back to a parliamentary system where she might then aspire to be a hands-on prime minister under a more ceremonial (if that is ever imaginable) Erdogan presidency.”

He also concluded: “A deal with Aksener — with whose family he [Erdogan] has a friendly relationship — would also protect the president’s clan from the risk of legal action for wrongdoing while in office, a real risk if they were to lose power.”

 

Climate Child Labor: Who Cares? – OpEd

 March 3, 2023 

By Ronald Stein

The ruling class, powerful elite, and the media lack some energy literacy which may be the reasons they avoid conversations about the ugly side of “green” mandates and subsidies. Before anyone in Washington decides to procure wind turbines, solar panels, or an EV, they should read the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”,  and decide for themselves if they wish to financially support the humanity atrocities and environmental degradation among folks in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skin, so that the wealthy countries can go green.

The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.

Wealth, with no ethical or moral standards for those of lesser means, can be dangerous and fatal to the cheap labor of disposable workforces. We have seen the effects on the disposable workforce when Qatar “needed” to build seven new stadiums in a decade to be ready for the 2022 World Cup. The World Cup in Qatar kicked off on Sunday November 20 at the Al Bayt Stadium, but the “acceptable” toll of more than 6,500 migrant laborers who died between 2011 and 2020, helping to build World Cup infrastructure with cheap disposable workforce will provide viewers and participants with many lingering questions about our ethical and moral beliefs resulting from the grim toll.

The transition to electricity generation from breezes and sunshine has proven to be ultra-expensive for the wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, and the USA representing 6 percent of the world’s population (508 million vs 8 billion). Those wealthy countries now have among the highest cost for their electricity, while the poorer developing countries, currently without the usage of the 20th century products manufactured from crude oil, are experiencing about 11,000,000 child deaths  every year due to the unavailability of the fossil fuel products used in wealthy countries. 

When we look outside the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less  than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take energy for granted. Wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”

Decades ago, it was sweat shops in the textile industry that grabbed everyone’s humanity interests, but today it is the “green” movement that is dominated by poorer developing countries mining for the exotic minerals and metals that support the wealthy countries that are going green at any cost to humanity, remains out of the spotlight. 

Today, the wealthy countries understand developing countries have virtually no environmental laws nor labor laws, which allows those locations unlimited opportunities to exploit folks with yellow, brown, and black skin, and inflict environmental degradation to their local landscapes.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes: “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant”.

• Lithium: Over half of the world’s Lithium reserves are found in three South American countries that border the Andes Mountains: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. These countries are collectively known as the “Lithium Triangle”.
• Cobalt: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces 70 percent of the world’s Cobalt. While there is no shortage of environmental issues with its Cobalt mining, the overriding problem here is human rights: dangerous working conditions and the use of child labor. Cobalt is a toxic metal. Prolonged exposure and inhalation of Cobalt dust can lead to health issues of the eyes, skin, and lungs.
• Nickel: A major component of the EV batteries, is found just below the topsoil in the Rainforests of Indonesia and the Philippines. As a result, the nickel is extracted using horizontal surface mining that results in extensive environmental degradation: deforestation and removal of the top layer of soil. 
• Copper: Chile is the leading producer of the world’s Copper. Most of the Chile’s Copper comes from open pit/strip mines. This type of mining negatively affects vegetation, topsoil, wildlife habitats, and groundwater. The next three largest producers of copper are Peru, China, and the infamous Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Showing no moral or ethical concerns for the disposable workforce, wealthy countries continue to encourage subsidies to procure EV’s and build more wind and solar. Those subsidies are providing financial incentives to the developing countries mining for those “green” materials to continue their exploitations of poor people, and environmental degradation to their local landscapes. Are those subsidies ethical, moral, and socially responsible to those being exploited?

Many of us had a chance to view the 2006 movie “Blood Diamonds” starring  Leonardo DiCaprio that portrays many of the similar atrocities now occurring in pursuit of the “Blood Minerals” i.e., those exotic minerals and metals to support the “green” movement within wealthy countries that continue promoting environmental degradation to landscapes in developing countries, and imposes humanity atrocities to citizens with yellow, brown, and black skinned workers being exploited for the green movement of the few wealthy nations. 

A few years ago in 2021, Ronald Stein co-authored the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy. The book does an excellent job of discussing the lack of transparency to the world of the green movement’s impact upon humanity exploitations in the developing countries that are mining for the exotic minerals and metals required to create the batteries needed to store “green energy”. In these developing countries, these mining operations exploit child labor, and are responsible for the most egregious human rights’ violations of vulnerable minority populations. These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation. 

Every individual should enhance their energy literacy and know where and how the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, etc. are being mined and the worldwide humanity atrocities and environmental degradation that is occurring in the developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skinned people.  Then, with that knowledge in hand about the supply chain of those “blood minerals” required to support the wealthy countries mandates and subsidies toward green electricity, they can make their own decision to financially support, or not support, those exploitation atrocities.

Child labor in the mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UNICEF

Ronald Stein

Ronald Stein, Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure 

of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California.

US Must Put In Legwork To Build Ties With Central Asia – Analysis

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the Ak Orda Presidential Palace in Astana, Kazakhstan, on February 28, 2023.

 [State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy/ Public Domain]

 March 4, 2023

By Arab News

By Luke Coffey*

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan en route to the G20 meeting in India. Secretary Blinken’s visit to Central Asia was the first by a US Cabinet-level secretary since Mike Pompeo visited the region in February 2020. In addition to meeting with his Kazakh and Uzbek counterparts, Blinken also took part in a meeting of the C5+1.

The C5+1 is an annual meeting of the five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and the US that was started by the Obama administration and continues today. Often this meeting takes place outside Central Asia, on the margins of other major international gatherings like the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York. Besides offering a useful format for America’s top diplomat to meet with Central Asian counterparts, few practical outcomes have resulted from the C5+1 format in recent years.

Since the emergence of the five new republics after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the US has had a standoffish approach to its engagement with Central Asia. Too often, US relations with the Central Asian republics were built around a single issue that was most relevant at the time. For example, in the early 1990s, the focus of US engagement in Central Asia was built around democracy promotion. In the late 1990s, the focus shifted to energy. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, US attention in the region was almost exclusively on counterterrorism cooperation. When America did not need access to the region for military basing and overflight rights as the mission in Afghanistan was winding down, there was very little attention at all given to Central Asia by policymakers.

However, since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and Russia’s campaign against Ukraine, there is renewed interest by American policymakers in the region. This makes sense. In the era of great power competition, many of the geopolitical challenges the US deals with converge on Central Asia: an imperial Russia, an emboldened China, Iranian meddling, and the rise of extremism.

There is also an important energy component. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and, to a lesser extent, Uzbekistan could play an important role in helping Europe achieve energy independence away from Russian and Iranian oil and gas. If infrastructure investments are made, and political will is found, new pipeline systems could be built connecting Central Asia to Europe.

The situation in Afghanistan is also an important factor for the US in the region. Now that Washington has no military or diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly reliant on engagement with neighboring countries such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Meanwhile, transnational terrorist groups are now freely operating in Afghanistan in a way not seen since the 1990s.

The lack of US engagement in recent years has left policymakers with few options in Central Asia. However, there are some things that can be done immediately to build on Blinken’s trip to help get the US relationship with the Central Asian republics back on track.

Firstly, it is time for an American president to visit the region. Considering the geopolitical importance of the region, it is unbelievable that no sitting American president has visited any Central Asian republic. Meanwhile, the leaders of Russia, China and Iran routinely visit the region and meet with their counterparts.

Secondly, the US needs to develop a new Central Asia strategy. The last one was published in February 2020 but is already outdated. Even though this policy document was, at the time, billed as a Central Asia strategy, it was predominantly focused on Afghanistan. Obviously, the region has changed drastically since 2020. The US was defeated in Afghanistan, Russia is weaker because of its invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic altered the global economy, Turkey’s influence in the region is on the rise and China’s influence is also growing. The US needs a new guiding policy document for the region.

Finally, US policymakers need to take a longer-term approach to building relations with the Central Asian republics. US engagement in the region has been transactional. For example, access to a military base might mean tens of millions of dollars in American foreign aid. Washington missed an opportunity after 9/11 to jettison the transactional framework of US engagement in the region. This needs to be replaced with a more enduring approach that allows America’s relations with the Central Asian republics to weather the ups and downs of geopolitics.

In the aftermath of America’s handling of Afghanistan, many in Central Asia do not trust the US and Washington has not put in the required legwork over the years to keep close relations. Secretary Blinken’s visit to Central Asia was positive but long overdue. Unless there is newfound momentum to build on the visit, it will likely prove to be too little, too late.

• Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Twitter: @LukeDCoffey

Arab News

Arab News is Saudi Arabia's first English-language newspaper. It was founded in 1975 by Hisham and Mohammed Ali Hafiz. Today, it is one of 29 publications produced by Saudi Research & Publishing Company (SRPC), a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group (SRMG).

 

Is Moldova The Kremlin’s Next Target, Or Just Another Distraction? – Analysis

 

March 4, 2023 

By RFE RL

By Tony Wesolowsky

A few people huddled together rip up readily available posters of Moldovan President Maia Sandu, scatter the shreds to the ground, and stomp on them, all to the delight of onlookers in the Moldovan capital on February 28.

The latest anti-government protest in Chisinau was organized by a group calling itself the Movement for the People and backed by members of Moldova’s Kremlin-friendly Shor Party, whose founder and leader, Ilan Shor, was convicted of fraud in 2017 for the theft of $1 billion from three Moldovan banks in 2014.

Waving Moldovan flags, the crowd — many of them reportedly bused in — called for the country’s new pro-Western government to pay the public’s winter energy bills and “not to involve the country in war.” 

After one government recently fell amid growing public anger over higher prices, President Sandu and others have accused Moscow of lurking in the shadows, pulling the strings of these protests and seeking to further destabilize Moldova. 

Sandu recently revealed chilling details of an alleged coup plot that comes amid fears Russian President Vladimir Putin could widen his war in Ukraine to Moldova by exploiting his troops on the ground in the breakaway pro-Russian Transdniester region. The Kremlin might not go that far, experts say, but nevertheless Moscow is eager to not only exploit Chisinau’s current vulnerability but to try to distract Kyiv and its Western backers as well. 

“Russia wants to make use of the destabilized situation in Moldova to increase fears around Transdniester and to try to provoke Ukraine to take military actions — to be painted by Russian propaganda as the aggressor and to create another crisis situation,” said Dionis Cenusa, a visiting fellow at the Vilnius-based Eastern Europe Studies Center, in comments to RFE/RL.

Amid the growing Kremlin pressure, the West has backed Sandu, whose country is sandwiched between EU and NATO member Romania and Ukraine, with which it shares a 1,222-kilometer border. In Moldova, the president represents the country internationally and carries huge sway over foreign policy.

On February 21, U.S. President Joe Biden met with Sandu in Poland and “reaffirmed strong U.S. support for Moldova’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

In July 2022, Moldova was granted, along with Ukraine, EU candidate status, much to the ire of Moscow. 

Coup Plot

Sandu on February 13 announced Russia was planning a coup in Moldova, noting Ukrainian intelligence had shared details of the alleged plot days earlier. Individuals with a military background, not only from Russia, but Belarus, Serbia, and Montenegro, were to be recruited to carry it out, according to the allegations. 

Dressed as civilians, this group would then be tasked with gaining control of government buildings in Chisinau, taking hostages along the way. They would have the backing of so-called internal criminal groups, which according to Sandu would include the Shor Party and a group linked to former politician and oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, who fled the country after being accused of widespread corruption and abuse of power. 

According to Sandu, Russia had tried to destabilize the country in late 2022 but local security services thwarted those plans. 

In response to the coup allegations, the U.S. State Department said that, while reports about the plot had not been independently confirmed, it is “certainly not outside the bounds of Russian behavior, and we absolutely stand with the Moldovan government and the Moldovan people.”

A day later on February 14, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed Sandu’s claims as “absolutely unfounded and unsubstantiated.” A week later, Putin piled on, announcing that Russia had revoked a decree that recognized Moldova’s sovereignty in resolving the dispute over Transdniester.

The decree, enacted in 2012 when Russia’s relations with the West were less fraught, was annulled to “ensure the national interests of Russia” following “profound changes taking place in international relations,” according to the Kremlin’s website. Putin’s move was payback for the Kremlin’s failed “attempt to organize a coup,” argued Vlad Lupan, a former Moldovan ambassador to the UN, on Twitter.

Government Collapse 

While Moldova may have parried the Kremlin coup plot, the country remains volatile, vulnerable, and increasingly on edge. On February 10, Natalia Gavrilita, the country’s pro-Western prime minister, stepped down, saying Moldova was struggling with “multiple crises.” Gavrilita said that when her government was elected in 2021, no one expected it would have to manage “so many crises caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

An energy crisis was sparked last year when Russia suddenly reduced its gas supplies to Moldova, which was completely dependent on Russia for natural gas. It caused inflation to skyrocket, sparking public unrest.

“Moldova is one of the countries most affected by the war in Ukraine, not only because of its physical proximity but also because of its inherent vulnerabilities as a small, landlocked economy with close linkages to both Ukraine and Russia,” the World Bank wrote in its latest country overview.

Moldova has also struggled to cope with refugees from Ukraine, with more than 100,000 registered there as of late January, according to data from the UN refugee agency.

On February 16, the parliament in Moldova approved a new government headed by Prime Minister Dorin Recean, a former security adviser to Sandu and Moldova’s interior minister between 2012 and 2015. In the bitterly divided country, the vote was strictly along party lines. The pro-Western Party of Action and Solidarity cast 62 votes in favor of the government, while opposition pro-Russian parties, the Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists, and the Shor Party, all boycotted the vote. 

Given his security background and the perceived threat from Moscow, Recean’s appointment illustrates that “boosting the country’s security” has taken on even greater importance for Chisinau, writes Kamil Calus, an analyst at the Warsaw-based Center for Eastern Studies.

The threats to Moldova’s security are real. On February 10, a Russian sea-launched cruise missile crossed through Moldovan airspace before it landed in Ukraine as part of a mass missile attack. Following the incident, Moldova summoned the Russian ambassador.

Even before his confirmation as prime minister, Recean had angered Moscow, calling for the demilitarization of Transdniester and the withdrawal of the remaining 1,100 Russian troops from the region, triggering a response from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“We would recommend our Moldovan interlocutors to be very cautious about such statements,” Peskov told a press briefing in Moscow on February 20, adding that relations between the two countries were “very tense.”

Mostly Russian-speaking Transdniester declared independence from Moldova in 1990 over fears Chisinau could seek reunification with neighboring Romania, with which it shares a common history and language.

The two sides fought a short but bloody war in the spring of 1992 that ended when Russian troops stationed in Transdniester intervened on the separatists’ side. They have claimed to be acting as peacekeepers ever since. 

When Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago, U.S. officials and others warned the Kremlin also had its eye on Transdniester, hoping to build a land bridge across Ukraine’s Black Sea shoreline.

Moldova’s national intelligence agency warned of that very scenario in December 2022, saying the Kremlin was considering opening a second front. 

Amid rising tensions with Moscow, Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatii confirmed in January that Moldova has asked its Western partners for air-defense systems, in a move that signals a departure from the country’s policy of not seeking to purchase lethal weapons from the West.

According to the Kremlin it is its enemies that are plotting to sow unrest in Moldova and then conveniently blame Moscow.

On March 1, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova spoke of a supposed “provocation” where Kyiv was allegedly planning to use “radioactive materials” in an attack “near” Transdniester and then accuse Russian forces of responsibility — echoing a familiar communications tactic employed by the Kremlin during the invasion: Blame Ukraine or the West for something the Kremlin has done or may be planning.

More ominously, the de facto leaders in Transdniester announced the same day that the “peacekeeping contingent” there would begin three months of military drills amid “military provocations.”

Adding to the regional tensions are recent revelations by Romania of a fake news campaign — with suspicions falling on the Kremlin of either orchestrating or encouraging it — claiming that Romania was massing troops at its border with Moldova.

This, and the signaling from the Kremlin, have led many to suspect Russia is laying the pretext for military action, although military experts doubt Russia has much extra military muscle to flex. 

“Russia is very unlikely to attempt to conduct a military coup in Moldova or attack Ukraine from Transdniester; the Russian military simply does not have military means or combat power to do so,” explained George Barros, a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that monitors major events in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Russian troops in Transdniester would also offer Moscow little in terms of fighting strength, Barros said. “The Russian ‘peacekeeping’ group in Transdniester consists of two motorized rifle battalions — which is a very small force. These two battalions in particular are among the least capable and combat-ready units within the Russian Western Military District. They have no reliable supply routes to mainland Russia,” Barros told RFE/RL in e-mailed remarks. 

“The Russian Airborne Forces (VDV), which could in theory support these forces, are heavily degraded and already committed to fighting in Ukraine. Furthermore, Ukraine air defense controls the airspace near Transdniester, making a Russian airborne operation impossible,” Barros wrote. 

“We assess the Kremlin is likely conducting information operations in order to distract Ukrainian forces, so to fix Ukrainian forces near Odesa and preventing Ukraine from deploying them where they could be more useful, such as on the eastern or southern front lines,” Barros concluded.

That Putin is trying to divert attention rather than open a new military front was a view also shared by John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army major who has been following events in Ukraine.

“It’s more of Putin trying to divert attention from the front line,” Spencer told RFE/RL. “Like before, he’s trying to get Ukraine and the world to shift resources there. It’s no real threat.”

• Tony Wesolowsky is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL in Prague, covering Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Central Europe, as well as energy issues. His work has also appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists.

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by
the government or not fully established.

Location of Moldova's breakaway region Transdniester (Transnistria). Credit: RFE/RL Graphics

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S  GAZA 

Jammu And Kashmir: Eviction Drive Sparks Anger And Protests From A Cross-Section Of Society

The LoC Disputed Territory: Shown in green is Kashmiri region under Pakistani control. The orange-brown region represents Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir while the Aksai Chin is under Chinese control. Credit: CIA World Factbook.

 March 4, 2023  Eurasia Review 

By Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service

The administration of Jammu and Kashmir, which is directly under the Indian government, launched an eviction drive in January, many of whose victims were socioeconomically vulnerable people in the region such as farmers and workers. Political parties and people’s movements have slammed the evictions.

Between January and February 2023, residents of India’s Jammu and Kashmir—formerly a state, now a union territory—have been protesting what they see as overreach and intimidation, as the government has stepped up attempts to “take back” what it says is land that has been “illegally occupied.”

On February 24, members of farmers’ movement Jammu Kashmir Kisan Tehreek protested alongside activists from around the country in New Delhi against the targeting of farmers and workers by the eviction drive. Protesters alleged that the government wanted to take land away from the farmers and hand it over to industrialists.

The evictions have been denounced as an attack on the homes, livelihoods, and rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The drive began after the union territory’s government called for the removal of all encroachments on state-owned land on January 9. It was eventually halted on February 11 following protests and public pressure. However, uncertainty remains over the future of the people who have lived and worked on this land for decades.

Source: This article was provided by the Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service