GEORGE METESKY MEMORIAL SOCIETY 

U$ retailers targeted with bomb threats, seeking Bitcoin and gift cards

By Karen Graham
Published June 25, 2023

Kroger #555, located at 5007-2 Victory Blvd in Tabb, VA. 

Some of America’s biggest retailers have been hit by a string of bomb threats and ransom demands in recent months,

Business Insider points out that bomb threats at schools, airports, and even political organizations is not that unusual, but the latest spate of bomb threats against retailers comes with a new twist:

It seems the perpetrators of the bomb threat calls are demanding money, as in hard cash, Bitcoin, or gift cards. And if their demands are not met, they threaten to set off a bomb hidden somewhere within the business.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Retail companies including Kroger, Walmart, and Amazon’sbWhole Foods Market, among others, have received bomb threats at their stores in recent months.

The threats have been spread across various areas from New Mexico to Wisconsin. At a Kroger-owned store in New Mexico, an employee received a call from a suspect who asked her to wire money and said a bomb would go off if she called the police, according to Reuters.

A similar incident was reported in a suburb north of Chicago, where a caller told a Whole Foods Market employee a pipe bomb had been placed in the store and demanded $5,000 in bitcoin, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, in May, two Meijer locations in Wisconsin reportedly received similar threats, hours apart. The second threat, made to a location in Grafton, Wisconsin, also demanded $5,000 of Apple gift cards, per the report.

Rodney McMullen, the CEO of Kroger, told reporters it took threats seriously and was working with police and the FBI. Walmart said it cooperated with law enforcement, and Whole Foods said it was guided by law enforcement officials.

Bomb threats are taken seriously by law enforcement. And the first thing that always happens is the store or retail establishment is always evacuated. Then, a special bomb squad is brought in and the facility is searched.

So far, in all these incidents, no suspicious packages or explosive devices were found. And that we should be thankful for. However, the criminals perpetrating these fake bomb threats are doing economic damage to retailers.

And we won’t even try to address the stress and trauma laid on workers and customers. These are nothing more than shoddy scams to try and get money, or bitcoin. And I can’t imagine what anyone would do with $5,000 worth of Apple gift cards.

NAFTA TOO

Mexico emerges as a leading nearshoring destination, outpacing Asian countries and the United States

By Richard Mann
June 25, 2023

Mexico has surpassed low-cost Asian countries and the United States in nearshoring, as highlighted by a recent analysis conducted by U.S. consulting firm Kearney.

The analysis, which compares Asian and Mexican manufacturing imports to U.S. domestic manufacturing output, reveals Mexico’s rising performance.

From 2013 to 2022, Mexico’s score reached 1.76 points, surpassing Asian countries (1.62 points) and the United States (1.22 points).

Nearshoring refers to a specific form of offshoring where companies relocate their operations to neighboring countries to reduce costs

.

Mexico City. (Photo Internet reproduction)

In the case of North America, Mexico, and Brazil are popular nearshoring destinations.

Wage differentials play a lesser role compared to farshoring (relocating to distant low-wage countries), with a focus on cost reduction.

The study considers various Asian economies, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Cambodia.

Mexico has gained a significant share of imports into the United States and has even outpaced recent U.S. domestic manufacturing growth, accounting for inflation in 2021 and 2022.

Kearney identifies four types of companies driving the surge in U.S. imports. Firstly, U.S. companies that previously sourced from China are increasing their production.

Secondly, many products manufactured in Mexico for the U.S. market originate from U.S. or European companies seeking to expand their capacity in Mexico.

Companies like Tupperware, Hasbro, Tesla, and Mattel have announced plans to boost production in Mexico.

Chinese companies also leverage Mexico’s manufacturing capabilities to supply their U.S. customers and reduce reliance on U.S.-China relations.

Finally, secondary and tertiary Chinese suppliers follow suit, establishing themselves in Mexico to serve original equipment manufacturers.

Despite official figures indicating modest Chinese investment in Mexico, the landscape tells a different story, with noticeable industrial park expansions such as Hofusan near Monterrey.

Industries experiencing growth in U.S. imports from Mexico include transportation equipment, computer and electronic products, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, furniture, and building materials.

A Kearney survey of corporate CEOs reveals a growing interest in relocating production facilities to the U.S., with 96% of respondents in 2022 indicating they have already relocated or are considering relocating in the past three years, compared to 78% in 2021.

Russia Mutiny Is More Proof the World Needs to Get Rid of Nuclear Weapons

DEFCON ONE

A nuclear superpower didn’t descend into chaos. What happens the next time?


Joseph Cirincione
Contributing Writer

THE DAILY BEAST
Published Jun. 25, 2023

OPINION

We dodged a nuclear bullet. The Prigozhin rebellion is over for now. Russia’s nuclear forces are under control. But it gave us another chilling reminder of how weapons we believe provide our ultimate security can quickly become our ultimate danger.

Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with some 5,900 weapons, most capable of destroying a city. The use of one or two would be a catastrophe. Ten would be a level of destruction never before seen in human history. A hundred or more would bring the end of civilization.

There were four major nuclear risks during this 24-hour coup. Two unlikely; two very real.

Ukraine’s Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb
PUTIN’S MELTDOWN
Joseph Cirincione


The first was that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin would seize some of Russia’s nuclear weapons. This was highly unlikely.

As Carnegie Endowment nuclear expert James Acton points out, all Russian nuclear weapons are equipped with use controls, requiring codes to unlock. Even if he gained access to them, how would he use them? Whomever used Russian weapons on Russian people would immediately become a national pariah.

The second was that Vladimir Putin would use them against the rebels. He has command of the codes and weapons (though some believe he may need the concurrence of the defense minister or military chief to launch them). But he, too, would face the same problem as Prigozhin. Despite his repeated nuclear threats, even Putin understands that the weapons don’t have much military purpose and their use would discredit the user.

More serious was the risk of the collapse of the state, and with it, the system of nuclear command and control. Only once before in history has the world faced the prospect of a nuclear-armed nation descending into chaos. That was in the August 1991 attempted coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It, too, failed.

But when the Soviet Union collapsed a few months later, there was immediate concern: Who gets the weapons? Who gets the material used to build the weapons? What happens to the scientists who know how to build the weapons?

Don’t Panic About Putin’s Nuclear Saber-Rattling
STEP AWAY FROM THE BUTTON
Joseph Cirincione


At that time, the U.S. and Russia were on good terms. A concerted, well-funded U.S. effort led to the greatest cooperative nuclear reductions in history, including the removal and destruction of thousands of weapons from Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

With Putin now gravely weakened, the Russian state again appears unstable. But there is no guarantee that such an effort could be repeated. A nuclear black market could spread weapons, material and scientists to the far corners of the globe.

The final terror was that an insane Putin might explode the weapons in revenge. If the coup succeeded and he was going down, would he take the nation down with him? Or worse? A nuclear version of Hitler in the bunker asking “Is Paris burning?”

As in all nine nuclear-armed states, the decision to launch nuclear weapons is left to one or two leaders. There is no democracy in nuclear use. No vote required. No debate. No court decision can block it. The military is drilled daily to follow a launch order immediately, without question. Only a far greater mutiny than we saw June 24 could prevent it.

Although there have been dozens of computer and machine failures that brought us perilously close to mistaken nuclear launches over the decades, the weakest link in the nuclear command and control chain remains the humans who manage them. Many of these leaders have been considered mentally unbalanced, including in our country. It takes a committed optimist to believe that we can leave thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and something terrible won’t happen.

Something terrible will happen. It just didn’t happen this time.

Presidential efforts under John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama sought to end this danger by eliminating nuclear weapons. They all reasoned that risks like those we just experienced are too serious to endure. “The weapons of war must be abolished,” Kennedy said, “before they abolish us.”

Their efforts were blocked by men insisting we need nuclear weapons for protection, despite national arsenals brimming with conventional arms.

If we get another leader like these previous presidents, if we get another chance, we would be well to recall how close to the nuclear brink Prigozhin’s unexpected march on Moscow brought us.

EUROFASCISM

German Far-Right Party Wins Its First County Leadership Post as It Rises in Polls

June 25, 2023 
Associated Press

Robert Sesselmann of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, speaks in Sonneberg, Germany, June 25, 2023. Sesselmann won a closely-watched run-off vote for district administrator in Sonneberg. (Photo by FERDINAND MERZBACH/NEWS5/AFP)

BERLIN — 

The far-right Alternative for Germany party saw its first head of a county administration elected Sunday in a rural eastern region, a win that comes as national polls show its support at record levels.

A runoff election in Sonneberg county pitted Alternative for Germany's candidate, Robert Sesselmann, against center-right rival Jürgen Köpper. Official figures showed Sesselmann, who had been well ahead in the first round two weeks ago, winning by 52.8% to 47.2%.

Sonneberg has a relatively small population of 56,800, but the win is a symbolic milestone for Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The 10-year-old party has been polling between 18% and 20% in national surveys lately.

It has been riding high as center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats faces strong headwind over high immigration, a plan to replace millions of home heating systems and a reputation for infighting, while inflation remains high.

Köpper's center-right opposition Union bloc leads national polls, with lackluster support ratings of just under 30%.

AfD first entered the national parliament in 2017 after campaigning strongly against migration following an influx of refugees to Europe during the preceding years. Lately it has come out against German support for Ukraine.

Despite being largely shunned by mainstream parties, it has established itself as a durable force, particularly in the formerly communist and less prosperous east. An AfD candidate made it into last week's runoff mayoral election in Schwerin, the capital of the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania but was easily defeated.

Sonneberg is located in Thuringia, one of three eastern regions that holds state elections next year.

AfD has drifted to the right over the years and faces increasing scrutiny from Germany's domestic intelligence agency.

Its regional branch in Thuringia is headed by a prominent figure on the party's hard right, Björn Höcke, who recently was charged by prosecutors over his alleged use in a 2021 speech of a slogan used by the Nazis' SA stormtroopers.

German Jews express shock as far-right AfD party wins breakthrough vote

The party opposes economic sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war and dispute that human activity is a cause of climate change.

By REUTERS
Updated: JUNE 26, 2023 

Right wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) top candidate for the upcoming general election, Alice Weidel, speaks during a campaign in Berlin, Germany, September 24, 2021.
(photo credit: REUTERS/ANNEGRET HILSE)

A far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate won a vote on Sunday to become a district leader in Europe's biggest economy for the first time, a breakthrough for the party which has hit record highs in national polls.

The 10-year old AfD, with which Germany's mainstream parties officially refuse to cooperate due to its radical views, won a run-off vote in the Sonneberg district in the eastern state of Thuringia with its candidate garnering 52.8% of the vote.

It is the latest success for the party which is riding a wave of popular discontent with Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz's awkward coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) which is dogged by infighting over policy and the budget.

Polling at 19%-20%, behind the opposition conservatives, the AfD is tapping into voter fears about recession, migration and the green transition, say analysts. It even plans to nominate a chancellor candidate in the 2025 federal election.

Germany's Nazi past

While far-right parties have gained ground around Europe, the strength of the AfD is particularly sensitive in Germany due to the country's Nazi past.

Tino Chrupalla arrives on the podium after he was elected as leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during a party congress of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Riesa, Germany, June 18, 2022 (credit: Matthias Rietschel/Reuters)

The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, expressed deep shock.

"This is a watershed that this country's democratic political forces cannot simply accept," he told RND media.

Particularly strong in the former Communist East, polls suggest the party may win three eastern state votes next year.

A clear victory for the AfD's Robert Sesselmann in the district, which has a population of only around 56,000 people, sends a signal to Berlin, say analysts, especially as all other parties in Sonneberg joined forces in a front against him.

Sesselmann was forced into a run-off against a conservative candidate after a vote two weeks ago. The conservative candidate won 47.2% on Sunday.

The party opposes economic sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war and dispute that human activity is a cause of climate change.

The domestic intelligence agency said this month that far-right extremism posed the biggest threat to democracy in Germany and warned voters about backing the AfD.

Formed a decade ago as an anti-euro party, its popularity surged after the 2015 migrant crisis and it entered parliament in 2017, becoming the official opposition.

East German anger boils over in far-right win
Agence France-Presse
June 26, 2023, 

Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, on Sunday captured 52.8 percent of the vote in a closely watched run-off election (FERDINAND MERZBACH)

Angry voters where Germany's far-right AfD party won its first district election over the weekend say they were out to punish the political establishment in Europe's top economy

Speaking to AFP in the ex-communist town of Sonneberg, residents said government officials had long failed to take their mounting concerns over inflation and immigration seriously.

Ingo Schreurs, 58, said he hoped the AfD's new district administrator Robert Sesselmann would "give voice to the worries and fears and outrage of a lot of citizens".

Blaming Berlin for "destructive economic policies", Schreurs said a highly controversial energy policy reform, for example, had left locals "afraid that we won't be able to heat our homes this winter".


On a sunny summer's day in Sonneberg, the neat storefronts, blossoming parks and pleasant cafe terraces offer little hint of the political earthquake that has just struck.

- 'Watershed moment' -

Holger Mueller, 49, said he "no longer saw any Germans" when he drove at night through Sonneberg, nestled on a hillside and famous for more than a century throughout Germany for its toy industry. He hopes the AfD will "stop the flow of foreigners".

Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, on Sunday captured 52.8 percent of the vote in a closely watched run-off election.

He beat his conservative rival Juergen Koepper, who had won the endorsement of all the mainstream parties in a bid to block an AfD victory.

The news the AfD would be running its first district council, albeit in a small constituency of just 57,000, struck like a bombshell.


Public broadcaster ARD called it a "watershed moment" while the top-selling newspaper Bild called it a "vote in anger" and the leftist daily Tageszeitung expressed "shock" at the outcome.

The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, compared the victory to a "dam break" that "democratic political forces in this country must not simply accept".

Far from just a one-off coup in a remote, thinly populated district, the AfD's triumph came after weeks of surging poll numbers at the national level.

An INSA institute survey Monday by Bild showed the extreme right party with more than 20.5 percent, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling Social Democrats with 19.5 percent, its coalition partners the Greens (13.5 percent) and the pro-business FDP (6.5 percent).

Only the centre-right Christian Democrats had a better showing, at 26.5 percent.

The AfD is polling even better in the former communist East German states of Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony, which will see regional elections next year where the party is hoping to score even bigger breakthroughs.


In Sonneberg, Birgit Hillmer, 61, said she was "deeply ashamed" that her hometown had given the party a boost, blaming the community's past under communist rulers.

"I find it really terrible and embarrassing -- we're doing very well in this district," she said.

"People here grew up in a dictatorship and were marked by the dictatorship. Democracy means freedom and freedom means responsibility but people have shirked their responsibility here."


- 'Just the beginning' -

The AfD was founded in 2013 as an anti-euro outfit before morphing into an anti-Islam, anti-immigration party, harnessing a backlash against then chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming stance toward refugees.

It stunned the political establishment when it took around 13 percent of votes in the 2017 general elections, catapulting nearly 100 lawmakers into the German parliament.


The AfD slid to around 10 percent in the 2021 federal election.

In Germany, where coalition governments are the norm, mainstream parties have always ruled out forming an alliance with the AfD.

But news magazine Der Spiegel called the party's win in Sonneberg "the result of a collective failure" of the political class, pointing to persistent squabbling in Scholz's coalition and the conservative opposition "pouring oil on the fire with populist rhetoric".


After the Sonneberg success, the AfD's co-chairman Tino Chrupalla saw the wind at the party's back.

"This is just the beginning," he tweeted.

Germany: Far-right AfD victory prompts political earthquake

Hans Pfeifer

DW

June 26,2023

After the AfD's weekend success in regional elections, critics warn the political floodgates have been opened. The party, parts of which have been labeled extremist by authorities, has its sights on ever larger goals.

Sunday's election result in a small district in east Germany's Thuringia region has triggered a political earthquake and a deluge of media and social media comments.

The Sonneberg election marked the first time a candidate from the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected to head a government — albeit that of a small district of only 57,000 inhabitants: 50-year-old Robert Sesselmann won the election after a campaign that focused on national issues, including limiting immigration and ending military support for Ukraine.

A district administrator has no clout on such decisions, but jubilant AfD leaders are hoping Sunday's victory will herald far greater political success. According to the latest opinion polls, the AfD has realistic chances of becoming the strongest political force in three eastern German states in regional elections set for 2024.

Electorate unfazed by AfD scandals

All this is despite the various scandals that AfD politicians find themselves embroiled in: The mishandling of party donations, evidence of connections with militant right-wing extremists, and slanderous racist hate speech. And, voters in Thuringia seem undeterred by the fact that several party figureheads make positive references to fascism and the National Socialist regime under Adolf Hitler — in many cases violating the German constitution.

The AfD seems to be scoring points among voters on two political stances in particular: Opposing immigration and climate protection. For years, stirring up xenophobic and anti-Muslim sentiment has been at the center of the AfD's political campaign.

"The AfD's basic narrative has always been that there is a threat to German culture. For a long time, this came from the outside, through migrants," political analyst Johannes Hillje told the taz newspaper. "Now the narrative is that this threat is also coming from within, through the transformation of society to climate neutrality — a central project of the center-left coalition in Berlin and the Green Party."

AfD is the only true opposition

The center-left national government, a coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) has been fraught with in-fighting over its energy

policies, nuclear power, taxes, and budget. To get laws passed at times of international crisis, they have gained some support from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its regional sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), as well as the socialist Left Party.

Only the AfD, the outsiders on the far-right of Germany's political spectrum have not accepted any of the government's policies, and have therefore been able to present themselves as the only true opposition. Nor have they ever had to prove that they can actually take responsibility and run any government — partly because all their political rivals have so far ruled out any alliances with them.

The German population, meanwhile, has been increasingly unsettled by the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and inflation. Hillje says the federal government has not managed to allay the fears but allowed the AfD to instrumentalize them. The drawn-out squabbling over a program to phase out fossil fuel heating systems turned into what Hillje called a "stimulus program for right-wing populists."

But many also blame the conservative CDU/CSU bloc for the AfD's success. Some analysts say CDU chairman Friedrich Merz has been echoing far-right rhetoric by taking a populist line on refugees, LGBTQ rights, and climate protection. To many, this is a blatant bid to win back voters from the AfD, but they also warn that this will backfire, as voters generally prefer to vote for the original rather than the imitation.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Leading members of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.

Alexander Gauland

Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch — but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat

Christian Lüth

Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance

Alice Weidel

Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II." Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

Frauke Petry

German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.Image: Getty Images/T. Lohnes


Björn Höcke



The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year — leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz


Beatrix von Storch

Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat


Marcus Pretzell

Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote, "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.Image: picture alliance/dpa/M. Murat


Andre Wendt

The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.Image: picture alliance/ZB/H. Schmidt


Andre Poggenburg

Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf


Alexander Gauland, again ...

During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

... and again

Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Prautzsch

Following Donald Trump's playbook

Germany is currently experiencing a development that reminds observers of the United States: There, despite many lies and scandals, former President Donald Trump remains a defining political force. Like Trump in the US, the AfD in Germany portrays itself as the sole alternative to the political establishment and as the voice of the people suppressed by the government in Berlin and the mainstream media.

The domestic intelligence service, as well as the Central Council of Jews and Muslim associations Muslims, see the AfD as a threat to democracy and warn against the AfD's links to anti-constitutional organizations and its increasingly influential extremist nationalist wing.

Following its election success in Thuringia, the AfD has also received open support from the neo-Nazi camp. Prominent far-right activist Michael Brück congratulated the party on his Telegram channel, before making a dark warning to the newly elected AfD district leader to: "There can be no false leniency in the necessary cleanup of the administration."

This article was originally written in German.

EUROFASCISM

Landslide win for Conservatives in Greek elections - exitpolls

Greece's conservative New Democracy party won a landslide victory in the country's second election in five weeks Sunday, official projections based on early returns showed, gaining enough parliamentary seats to form a government for a second four-year term.

Issued on: 25/06/2023 

Kyriakos Mitsotakis' party is projected to win 40.5 percent of the vote, with his main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, suffering a crushing defeat with just under 18 percent projected support, even worse than its 20 percent in the last elections in May.

Sunday's vote came just over a week after a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece, leaving hundreds of people dead and missing and calling into question the actions of Greek authorities and the country's strict migration policy. But the disaster, one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years, did not affect the election, with domestic economic issues at the forefront of voters' minds.Greek coastguard under scrutiny over handling of migrant ship disaster

The projections indicate Mitsotakis’ party will win enough of Parliament’s 300 seats to form a stable government thanks to a change in the electoral law that grants the winning party bonus seats. The previous election in May, conducted under a proportional representation system, left him five seats short of a majority despite winning 41 percent of the vote.

In all, eight parties are projected to surpass the 3 percent threshold to enter Parliament, including a far right party and ultra-religious party. The number of parties that make it into Parliament will affect how many seats the winner will hold.

Mitsotakis, 55, campaigned on a platform of securing economic growth and political stability as Greece gradually recovers from a brutal nearly decade-long financial crisis.

His main rival, 48-year-old Alexis Tsipras, served as prime minister from 2015 to 2019 — some of the most turbulent years of Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis. If the exit poll projections are confirmed, his performance Sunday leaves him fighting for his political survival. After his poor showing in May elections, he had struggled to rally his voter base, a task complicated by splinter parties formed by some of his former associates.

Speaking after voting in a western Athens neighborhood, Tsipras seemed to accept his party would be in opposition for the next four years even while the voting was still ongoing.

“This crucial election is not only determining who will govern the country, it is determining our lives for the next four years, it is determining the quality of our democracy,” Tsipras said. “It is determining whether we will have an unchecked government or a strong opposition. This role can only be played by Syriza.”

Mitsotakis, a Harvard graduate, comes from one of Greece’s most prominent political families. His late father, Constantine Mitsotakis, served as prime minister in the 1990s, his sister served as foreign minister and his nephew is the current mayor of Athens. The younger Mitsotakis has vowed to rebrand Greece as a pro-business and fiscally responsible euro zone member.

Sunday's vote is being held under an electoral system that grants a bonus of between 25 and 50 seats to the winning party, depending on its performance, which makes it easier for a party to win more than the required 151 seats in the 300-member parliament to form a government.

(With newsagencies)

Conservative New Democracy party led by Mitsotakis wins landslide victory in Greek elections

Country embraces right-wing parliament comprising far-right, populist, neo-Nazi parties along with conservative party

Ahmet Gencturk |25.06.2023 -TRT


ATHENS

In Greece’s general elections on Sunday, the conservative New Democracy party led by former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis won a landslide victory with 98% of the votes counted so far.

According to the results announced by the Interior Ministry, the New Democracy party won 40.56% of the votes, with SYRIZA gaining 17.83%, down from 20.07 % from previous elections held on May 21.

The New Democracy won an outright majority in the parliament to form a single-party government with the 158 seats it secured in the 300-seat parliament.

The social democratic PASOK party received 11.86%, while the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) became the fourth largest with 7.67% of the votes.

Meanwhile, the far-right Spartans party, which was openly backed by imprisoned lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris of the banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, won over 4.68% of the votes and entered the parliament for the first time.

Also, the far-right, populist Greek Solution party and the far-right, religious Niki (Victory) party were others that passed the 3% electoral threshold and entered the parliament, with 4.45% and 3.70%, respectively.

The polls also show that the Sailing for Freedom party founded by former Parliament Speaker Zoe Constantopoulou secured seats in the parliament with 3.17%, while the MeRA25 led by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras’ former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stayed out of the parliament with 2.46%.

The turnout rate in Sunday's elections was only 52.75%, down from 61.1% in the May 21 elections.

Reactions by party leaders

Addressing his supporters in front of the party building, Mitsotakis said they will rule the country without arrogance and will accelerate the reforms.

Accepting the defeat, which he called "heavy," SYRIZA leader Tsipras stressed that three far-right parties will be in the new parliament.

He added that the party will undergo a serious change in the face of the election defeat.

PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis, in his brief speech, underlined the rise of neo-Nazis and extremists in the country's political scene.

Similarly, KKE's leader Dimitris Koutsoubas noted the strong presence of the far-right parties, saying the days will be tough but that they will be at the forefront of the struggle against capitalist-class and imperialism.

Vassilis Stigas, the head of the Spartans party, thanked Kasidiaris for his support, which, he said, played a significant role in the party's unexpected victory.

Dimitris Natsios, the leader of the another extreme-right party Niki, said in a statement that they will fight for Hellenism and common people.

With Record Heat and Drought-Stricken Woods, Spain’s Catalonia Faces Perfect Wildfire Conditions

June 25, 2023 
Associated Press

Firefighters extinguish a forest fire in Fuente la Reina, Castellon de la Plana, Spain, March 29, 2023.

SOLSONA —

Surveying the hills covered with near bone-dry pines stretching to the Pyrenees in the distance, Asier Larrañaga has reason to be on guard.

This part of northeast Spain is, like large swaths of the Mediterranean country, braced for wildfires due to the lethal combination of a prolonged drought, record-high temperatures and increasingly dense woods unable to adapt to a fast-changing climate.

Larrañaga is one of the top fire analysts for the firefighters of Catalonia charged with safeguarding the region's homes and landscapes. While grateful that some desperately needed rain has finally fallen in recent weeks, he is ready for the worst — unless July and August buck Spain’s historic trend of being the hottest and driest months of the year.

“If we have a normal summer … and conditions of low humidity combined with high temperatures, then we will see fires that quickly expand beyond our extinction capacity. And for areas where it has not rained in May and this month, we could see these types of fires as early as next week,” Larrañaga told The Associated Press in the rural town of Solsona, some two hours north of Barcelona.

Spain suffered the biggest losses from wildfires of any European Union country last year amid a record-hot 2022. Four people, including one firefighter, died in blazes that consumed 306,000 hectares. And with Spain sweltering under a record-hot spring, it is again leading the continent in 2023 with 66,000 hectares turned to ashes. Now firefighters like Larrañaga across Spain are preparing for a potential scorcher of a summer.

The fires coincide with Catalonia and a large part of Spain’s south bearing the brunt of a drought that started last year and has only recently been somewhat alleviated by rain. The central reservoirs for Catalonia, which provide water for some six million people including Barcelona, are still only at 29% of capacity and water restrictions remain in place.

SEE ALSO:
'Hitting Rock Bottom' - Drought, Heat Drain Spanish Reservoirs

Climate change is playing a direct role in propagating these fires, experts agree. The increasing temperatures have made the plants that are used to more mild weather vulnerable to both plagues and fire. Spain, like the rest of the Mediterranean, is forecast to heat up faster than the global average. Spain saw fires that showed the virulence of a summer outbreak break out as early as March. Northern Europe is also battling blazes spurred by drought.

The 52-year-old Larrañaga is a member of Catalonia’s GRAF, its elite wildfire fighting unit. Members of the Catalan firefighters are currently helping in Canada as part of a Spanish contingent sent to combat the massive fires that have sent smoke over the United States and as far as Europe.

Larrañaga was in Solsona to oversee a training session by the local fire brigade. Practice included simulating a last-resort protection maneuver used in cases when firefighters are trapped by the flames. They clear an area of vegetation and take refuge in their truck, which is equipped with sprinklers. The firefighters said that they hope it is a maneuver they will never have to use.

The Solsonès county, home to Solsona and its 9,000 residents, does not normally have large fires thanks to storms generated by the Pyrenees. But the downside is that its forests build up vegetation, or “fuel” for potential fires, that become vulnerable to a lightning strike, a spark from farm machinery, or arson. In 1998 a fire consumed 27,000 hectares in the country. Now Larrañaga is concerned that the landscape is primed to ignite again.

“The fires in these conditions can be very intense like the enormous ones we are seeing in Canada," he said. Larrañaga added that his worst-case scenario is "a situation where you have people, in a panic, trying to flee, who put themselves in danger because the access roads cross wooded areas,” stirring up memories of a tragedy in neighboring Portugal when over 60 people perished in a fire disaster in 2017.

Catalonia’s firefighters were tested last year by fires that erupted just when the official fire season started in mid-July.

SEE ALSO:
Spain Must Better Prepare for Wildfires Driven by Climate Change, Experts Say

That close call, fire chief David Borrell said, motivated their decision to increase the fire campaign to four months from three and start it a month earlier. That means more manpower and more aircraft for a longer period of time.

Borrell said that this new generation of more powerful fires has led to two changes in how they are fought. First, it is no longer possible to just “attack” a fire, firefighters have to wait for it, and, if need be, sacrifice unfavorable terrain – whether due to its position related to the wind, access or vegetation – if it means keeping the firefighters from wearing themselves out or even risking their lives.

“The second change is how to deal with simultaneous fires without getting overwhelmed,” Borrell told the AP at the Catalan firefighters' high-tech headquarters near Barcelona. “If you go all out against a fire, then you won’t be able to handle a second one, and with a third fire you collapse. So to avoid that, we consider everything in one process. That is a potent strategy change we began last year. And for me it is a game changer.”

The challenge, however, is still daunting with summer now here.

A pedal boat is tied to a dock in a dried part of the Sau reservoir, about 100 km (62 miles) north of Barcelona, Spain, April 18, 2023.

In addition to turning the terrain into a tinderbox, drought is complicating the firefighters' ability to work: some of Catalonia’s reservoirs have been ruled unusable for water-dumping aircraft due to their lack of their low levels of water.

“If we hadn’t had the rain we saw in May, we would now already be in a campaign of large fires,” Jordi Pagès, a wildfire expert for the Pau Costa Foundation, a Barcelona-based nonprofit organization for fire awareness.

"But we still had a spring with below average rainfall, so we can expect an intense summer.”

In blistering critique, Ukraine accuses Israel of pro-Russian stance

Foreign Ministry to summon Kyiv’s envoy for reprimand after embassy says Israeli officials have ‘a blatant disregard for moral boundaries’

By LAZAR BERMAN 

The Times of Israel

25 June 2023

File: Ukraine's ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, gives a statement to the media in Tel Aviv, on March 11, 2022. (Avshalom Sassoni‎‏/Flash90)

After an ostensible warming of ties under the Netanyahu government, Kyiv on Sunday infuriated Israel by blasting Jerusalem’s recent policies toward Moscow, saying it has chosen the “path of close cooperation” with Russia.

In a post to its Facebook page, Ukraine’s Embassy in Israel wrote that “the so called ‘neutrality’ of Israel[‘s] government is considered as a clear pro-Russian position.”

The embassy pointed at “a series of rather controversial events that took place in the first half of 2023” which it viewed as negatives.

The embassy called Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s February trip to Kyiv “fruitless” and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of making “entirely fictional and speculative assumptions” in a recent interview.

In an interview last week with The Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu said that “we also have concerns that any systems that we give to Ukraine would be used against us because they could fall into Iranian hands… and by the way, that’s not a theoretical possibility. It actually happened with the Western anti-tank weapons that we now find at our borders. So we have to be very careful here.”

Ukraine’s Ambassador Yevgen Korniychuk told The Times of Israel that Netanyahu’s claims were baseless.

In response to the embassy post, the Foreign Ministry plans to summon Korniychuk for a reprimand in the coming days.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, left, and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba speak during a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 16, 2023. (Shlomi Amsalem/GPO)

In a briefing to reporters on Sunday, Cohen said that “despite the complexities vis-à-vis Russia, Israel has stood by Ukraine’s side since the outbreak of the war until today and has even voted in in international fora in favor of condemning Russia.” Cohen added that Israel has sent Ukraine “unprecedented humanitarian aid (NIS 80 million [approximately $22 million] with a higher sum earmarked for this year.”

During his trip to Ukraine, Cohen was well-received by his counterpart Dmytro Kuleba after pledging $200 million in loan guarantees for healthcare and civilian infrastructure and assistance in developing a smart early warning system.

But Kyiv has grown frustrated as the timeline for deployment of the system has been pushed back to September and it has found the loans difficult to access.

“These guys are taking their time,” said Korniychuk. “They’re not in a war.”

The embassy statement on Sunday further lambasted Israel for conducting “two rounds of high-level political negotiations with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony in Moscow on June 12, 2023. (Gavriil Grigorov / Sputnik / AFP)

It also decried the deal reached by Israel and Moscow earlier this month in which Moscow agreed to open an embassy branch office in Jerusalem while simultaneously settling a land dispute.

Kyiv charged senior Israeli officials who attended the Russia Day reception in Jerusalem earlier this month with “a blatant disregard for moral boundaries.”

“Furthermore,” said the statement, “the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been dead silent regarding the regular antisemitic statements made by Putin and his minions.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed recently that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, is viewed as a “disgrace” to his faith by other members of the religion. Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that even if Zelensky is Jewish, it is meaningless because even Hitler had “Jewish blood.”

Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky of “glorifying Nazism” for his remarks about World War II Ukrainian resistance fighters who were allied with the Nazis.

“No party should lecture the State of Israel, Israel’s Foreign Ministry, or its diplomats about the importance of preserving the memory of the Holocaust or about the war on historical distortion,” responded the Foreign Ministry.

Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, center, meets with President Isaac Herzog, right, and with Herzog’s wife Michal in Tel Aviv, June 19, 2023. (Igal Slavin)

Korniychuk also told The Times of Israel that Netanyahu refused to meet Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska during her visit to Israel last week, sending his wife Sara to meet her instead. The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.

“While the people of Ukraine, including its substantial Jewish community, are bleeding under the onslaught of Russian missiles and Iranian drones, the Israeli leadership, hiding behind verbal demagoguery about their neutrality (albeit no longer concealing it) actively forges relations with the Russian federation,” read the embassy statement.

“We urge Israel government to change its position and to support Ukraine with defensive means, to support freedom and democratic world order,” it concluded. “We expect Israel to be on a right side of a history!”

People take cover at metro station during a Russian rocket attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Israel has not sent requested defensive weapons to Ukraine, but has condemned the Russian invasion. It has also sent significant humanitarian aid, including a field hospital that operated for six weeks on Ukrainian territory near Lviv.

Russia maintains a military presence in Syria, Israel’s northern and bellicose neighbor. The need to balance security interests at home and policy abroad have produced a relatively restrained response from successive Israeli governments, which have tried to maintain relations with both Moscow and Kyiv.

Last month, several Israeli ministries came together to hold a two-day conference in Lviv on psychological and physical rehabilitation. The confab, along with Zelenska’s visit, seemed to indicate that Kyiv was fairly pleased with Israel’s recent actions.

Also last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov. The readouts of the call indicated a positive conversation, alongside the other ostensible signs of improving relations

South Africa Energy Minister Accused of Hindering Green Transition

June 25, 2023 
Agence France-Presse

Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy of South Africa Gwede Mantashe arrives ahead of the 2023 state-of-the-nation address (SONA) at the Cape Town City Hall in Cape Town, Feb. 9, 2023.

JOHANNESBURG —

South Africa's energy minister was accused of failing to back the country's energy transition on Sunday after he "snubbed" a billion-dollar green hydrogen deal launched in partnership with the Netherlands and Denmark.

The country's biggest opposition party said energy minister Gwede Mantashe had not signed an agreement on the fund, which was approved and launched anyway on Tuesday.

South Africa is facing a power crisis with scheduled outages that last up to 12 hours a day, and the move has sparked a renewed debate on the transition to cleaner energy.

The transition has been mired with infighting among the government, which has a long history of support from labour unions representing mine workers.

According to South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper, Mantashe said he "refused" to sign a memorandum of understanding on the deal.

The opposition Democratic Alliance said it was "unacceptable" and called for the minister's removal from office.

"Mantashe's recent decision to snub the top-level meeting... with European leaders to launch a European-funded green-energy initiative is deeply concerning", the party said.

"We cannot afford a recalcitrant and ideologically compromised minister at the helm of the energy portfolio," it added, accusing Mantashe of "hindering the much-needed rapid and just energy transition."

Despite being invited, Mantashe did not attend the deal's launch at business forum in Pretoria, opting to attend a separate energy summit hosted by a leading trade union federation.

Energy ministry spokesman Nathi Shabangu told AFP the minister's absence did not signal his disagreement with the deal, insisting that he simply did not sign "because he had not seen the MOU he could not sign on what he had not seen."

The blended finance fund will "accelerate the development of a green hydrogen sector and circular economy," the president's office said earlier this week.

Mantashe has in the past been vocal in his support for the coal lobby, saying last year that ditching coal too quickly was not in the country's best interests, citing economic damage and job losses.

Since 2021, South Africa, which is one of the world's top 12 carbon emitters, has secured billions of dollars in international loans and grants to support a green transition.

The coal-rich but energy-starved country generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal, relying on 15 ageing coal-fired power plants.

U$A

Neo-Nazis terrorize Jewish community by brandishing swastika flags outside Georgia synagogue

‘This was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,’ said one member of the synagogue

Andrea Blanco
June 25,2023

A neo-Nazi group gathered outside a synagogue in Georgia and brandished swastikas during its Shabbat service on Saturday.

Shocking pictures and videos showed around a dozen people waving the hate symbols outside the Chabad of Cobb synagogue in East Cobb, the non-profit Stop Antisemitism reported.

Jon Minadeo II, leader of the so-called Goyim Defense League, was arrested for disorderly conduct and public disturbance the day before at a synagogue in Macon, Georgia, local station WMAZ reported.

Members of Chabad of Cobb told WMAZ that the neo-Nazis were out there for a few hours. Videos posted online showed the group holding swastika flags and signs that read: “Every Single Aspect of Abortion is Jewish” as local residents could be heard shouting at them to “go home”.

Officers from the Cobb Police Department responded to the scene but did not dispel the rally. Freedom of speech, even hate speech, is generally protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution — although true threats and harassment are not. Officers stood between the two groups.

Law enforcement has not issued any public statements addressing the incident on Saturday but Chabad of Cobb’s leaders said that the police department is working with them to ensure the safety of everyone at the synagogue.

“This was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Stewart Levy, who attends Chabad of Cobb, told WMAZ.

“I am shocked, absolutely shocked to see this here. When I see the amount of ignorance out there and some of the truths that they are promoting, it is just frightening the level of inaccurate knowledge that there is.”

Jennifer Caron Derrick, who does not attend the synagogue but lives in East Cobb, said she didn’t believe any of the neo-Nazis were local residents.

“It’s sad to see, although I’m fairly certain [their] people aren’t from our local community,” Ms Caron Derrick told The Independent.

“I just don’t understand the hate and never will.”

Ms Caron Derrick said East Cobb residents have planned a peaceful gathering for Monday at 5pm EDT in support of the Jewish community. Individuals who wish to attend the protest at Chabad of Cobb are encouraged to bring signs featuring messages of love and respect, Ms Caron Derrick said.

Chabad of Cobb issued a statement decrying the neo-Nazi rally and thanked members of the community for stepping up against hate.

The synagogue noted that East Cobb had been a “wonderful home to a flourishing Jewish community for many years” and the antisemitic protest did not represent the community’s sentiment.

Shocking pictures and videos showed neo-Nazis with swastikas outside the Chabad of Cobb synagogue on Friday
(WMAZ)

“We have been in communication with Cobb County officials, who have identified these individuals as part of a small group that travel around the country in order to spread their hateful message,” the statement read.

“Ultimately, we must remember that the most potent response to darkness is to increase in light. Let’s use this unfortunate incident to increase in acts of goodness and kindness, Jewish pride, and greater Jewish engagement.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the Goyim Defense League as “a small network of virulently antisemitic provocateurs led by Jon Minadeo II,” with the “overarching goal is to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories”.

Minadeo was released on bond following his Friday arrest. It is unclear whether any arrests were made on Saturday. The Independent has reached out to the East Cobb Police Department for comment.

Georgia ranked fourth in US states experiencing the highest number of antisemitic incidents with 44 recorded in 2022, according to ADL.

Prigozhin Rising Classic Example of Mafia Wars, Nevzlin Says

‘All bets are off’: An uncertain future after Wagner mutiny

Speculation abounds on social media, but experts warn against drawing conclusions on the fate of the Wagner Group.

Wagner chief abandons mutiny, agrees to exile in Belarus

Al Jazeera
Published On 25 Jun 2023

Following Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government find themselves in unchartered territory. The crisis appears to have been averted, for now, but what happens next for Russia and the Wagner Group remains uncertain.

“All bets are off,” Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

“We simply don’t have any fixed data points that we can rely on to figure out what’s going to happen next.”

The events, which began on Saturday, appeared to take everyone but the battle-hardened mercenary group by surprise. Wagner forces rapidly took control of Rostov, one of Russia’s largest cities, where they were met with minimal resistance from local security forces and occupied the regional military headquarters.

They continued to march on Moscow before Prigozhin ordered his mercenaries to turn back 200km (124 miles) from the capital. He agreed to go into exile in Belarus after brokering a deal with the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko.

The mutiny appears to be over, but the fate of the mercenary group that has proven so influential in Ukraine, as well as Syria and many African countries, remains to be seen.

The Kremlin has publicly announced aspects of the deal, including the agreement that Prigozhin will be allowed to go to Belarus without facing criminal charges.

Lukashenko’s office said the settlement contains security guarantees for Wagner troops, but details are scant and, according to Giles, confusing.

“There are too many unanswered questions around this supposed deal that they’ve arrived at, but even the questions that do seem to be being answered make no sense,” Giles said.

Joana de Deus Pereira, a senior research fellow at RUSI Europe, told Al Jazeera that it is “crucial to exercise caution and critically analyse the information” coming out of Russia in the past 24 hours.

“Nothing is what it seems, and what it seems is not frequently what it is,” she said in an email.

Prigozhin’s uncertain future

Public challenges of the Russian president rarely end well, with many leading critics, such as opposition figure Alexey Navalny, often ending up poisoned or dying under suspicious circumstances.

“People that cross Vladimir Putin tend to have a bad track record of falling out of windows in Russia. We’ve seen them eliminated with little fanfare and in multiple, very brutal ways,” Colin Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, told Al Jazeera.

This is how Russian TV covered Wagner's advance

On Saturday, in a televised speech, Putin accused Prigozhin of “betrayal” and “treason” and described his actions as “a stab in the back of our troops and the people of Russia”.

“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment,” Putin said, adding, “The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”

Clarke said that Prigozhin’s deal with Belarus does not necessarily guarantee his safety.

“I don’t think Putin will shy away from exacting revenge and punishing Prigozhin if he thinks that that’s necessary, and I think he probably will,” he said.

Who is Prigozhin, the Wagner chief taking on Russia’s military?

Putin has also proven to not be very accepting of criticism of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine, and has called for a “self-purification” to rid his country of anyone who questions the invasion.

Prigozhin publicly questioned the rationale behind Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24, 2022.

“The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block,”, he said in a post on his Telegram channel.

Since the Lukashenko deal was struck, Putin and top Russian officials have remained tight-lipped on Prigozhin’s future.

Other leaders allied to Putin, however, have come out with criticism of the Wagner chief, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Deus Pereira believes that Prigozhin will “remain quiet for the next days” having left Rostov with much fanfare.

“This is one of his biggest objectives – he was recognised by the population,” she explained.

Prigozhin’s rhetoric following the deal may also have been a public relations exercise, according to Deus Pereira.

After the deal was struck, she said, Prigozhin claimed it was to avoid “Russian blood” being shed – and he projected an image of “dignity” that stood in contrast to the “manifestations of warlordism portrayed by Kadyrov”.

Wagner troops will not face charges, according to deal

The Russian government has said it will not prosecute Wagner fighters who took part in the mutiny, while those who did not join were to be offered contracts by the Defence Ministry.

Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they had been fighting alongside regular Russian soldiers.

On Saturday, Russian media reported Wagner troops downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. Russia’s Defence Ministry has not commented on these events.

“While Prigozhin may be the face of the group, Wagner is a product and creation of Putin’s regime to be able to operate in several scenarios with plausible deniability. This will continue, possibly under a new name,” Deus Pereira said.

Repercussions in Africa

The events of Saturday could have major repercussions in Africa, where the mercenary group has played an increasingly central role in long-running internal conflicts.

The United States has accused the group of exploiting natural resources in Mali, the Central African Republic and elsewhere to fund fighting in Ukraine.

The group has also been accused of playing an active role in Sudan – where there is an ongoing civil war.

A suspension of Wagner operations in Africa could impact the group’s finances.

However, Clarke believes that the Wagner Group’s influence abroad could help protect it from being completely isolated by the Russian government.

“It’s not possible for the Kremlin to marginalise Wagner,” he said. “Russia and Vladimir Putin depend on and, in fact, need the Wagner Group to carry out Russian foreign policy, not just in Ukraine, but around the world, in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

 

Prigozhin may be assassinated in Belarus as Putin ‘doesn’t forgive traitors’: Expert

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2023. 

(Reuters)

Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English
Published: 25 June ,2023

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is not yet out of danger by going to Belarus, as Russian President Vladimir Putin will never forgive a traitor, argued expert on Russia and global fellow at the Wilson Center, Jill Dougherty.

“Putin doesn’t forgive traitors. Even if Putin says, ‘Prigozhin, you go to Belarus,’ he is still a traitor and I think Putin will never forgive that,” Dougherty told CNN.

She added that it’s possible to see Prigozhin “get killed in Belarus” but it would be a tough dilemma for Moscow because as long as he “has some type of support, he is a threat, regardless of where he is.”

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Dougherty said: “If I were Putin, I would be worried about those people on the streets of Rostov cheering the Wagner people as they leave.”

“Why are average Russians on the street cheering people who just tried to carry out a coup? That means that maybe they support them or they like them. Whatever it is, it’s really bad news for Putin.”

In a surprising turn of events, Prigozhin’s heavily armed mercenaries withdrew from the southern city of Rostov, ceasing their swift approach towards Moscow. This shift followed a deal that guaranteed the mercenaries' safety, prompting them to return to their bases, leaving questions regarding Putin's control over the country.

Under this deal, mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin was to relocate to Belarus. Prigozhin had led Wagner on a “march for freedom” to Moscow, targeting corrupt and inept Russian commanders he held responsible for bungling the war.

After seizing Rostov, a crucial logistical hub for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they advanced northward, breaking through barricades. A late-night agreement reached on Saturday facilitated their withdrawal, reportedly marked by cheers, celebratory gunfire, and “Wagner” chants from the local populace.

As part of the deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed that the charges against Prigozhin for armed mutiny would be dropped, he would move to Belarus, and the Wagner fighters wouldn't face any repercussions for their actions.

This agreement was reached due to Lukashenko's offer to mediate, approved by Putin, given his long-standing personal relationship with Prigozhin. Putin, during his Saturday address, had denounced the rebellion as a threat to Russia's existence, promising severe consequences for the instigators.

With Russia revolt over, mercenaries’ future and direction of Ukraine war remain uncertain

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - 06/26/23

The rebellious mercenary soldiers who briefly took over a Russian military headquarters on an ominous march toward Moscow were gone Sunday, but the short-lived revolt has weakened President Vladimir Putin just as his forces are facing a fierce counteroffensive in Ukraine.

Under terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his Wagner troops in the failed uprising, will go into exile in Belarus but will not face prosecution.


But it was unclear what would ultimately happen to him and his forces. Few details of the deal were released either by the Kremlin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered it. Neither Prigozhin nor Putin has been heard from, and top Russian military leaders have also remained silent.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the weekend’s events as “extraordinary,” recalling that 16 months ago Putin appeared poised to seize the capital of Ukraine and now he has had to defend Moscow from forces led by his onetime protege.

“I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade,” Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there, but certainly we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.”

It was not yet clear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine. But it resulted in some of the best forces fighting for Russia being pulled from the battlefield: the Wagner troops, who had shown their effectiveness in scoring the Kremlin’s only land victory in months, in Bakhmut, and Chechen soldiers sent to stop them on the approach to Moscow.

The Wagner forces’ largely unopposed, rapid advance also exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s security and military forces. The mercenary soldiers were reported to have downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. The Defense Ministry has not commented.


“I honestly think that Wagner probably did more damage to Russian aerospace forces in the past day than the Ukrainian offensive has done in the past three weeks,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA research group, said in a podcast.

Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting could create opportunities for their army, which is in the early stages of a counteroffensive to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

“Putin is much diminished and the Russian military, and this is significant as far as Ukraine is concerned,” said Lord Richard Dannatt, former chief of the general staff of the British armed forces. “… Prigozhin has left the stage to go to Belarus, but is that the end of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group?”

Under terms of the agreement that stopped Prigozhin’s advance, Wagner troops who didn’t back the revolt will be offered contracts directly with the Russian military, putting them under the control of the military brass that Prigozhin was trying to oust. A possible motivation for Prigozhin’s rebellion was the Defense Ministry’s demand, which Putin backed, that private companies sign contracts with it by July 1. Prigozhin had refused to do it.

“What we don’t know, but will discover in the next hours and days is, how many of his fighters have gone with him, because if he has gone to Belarus and kept an effective fighting force around him, then he … presents a threat again” to Ukraine, Dannatt said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he told U.S. President Joe Biden in a phone call on Sunday that the aborted rebellion in Russia had “exposed the weakness of Putin’s regime.”

In their lightning advance, Prigozhin’s forces on Saturday took control of two military hubs in southern Russia and got within 200 kilometers (120 miles) of Moscow before retreating.

People in Rostov-on-Don cheered Wagner troops as they departed late Saturday, a scene that played into Putin’s fear of a popular uprising. Some ran to shake hands with Prigozhin as he drove away in an SUV.

Yet the rebellion fizzled quickly, in part because Prigozhin did not have the backing he apparently expected from Russian security services. The Federal Security Services immediately called for his arrest.

“Clearly, Prigozhin lost his nerve,” retired U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“This rebellion, although it had some applause along the way, didn’t appear to be generating the kind of support that he had hoped it would.”

Rostov appeared calm Sunday morning, with only tank tracks on the roads as a reminder of the Wagner fighters.

“It all ended perfectly well, thank God. With minimal casualties, I think. Good job,” said a resident, who agreed only to provide his first name, Sergei. He said the Wagner soldiers used to be heroes to him, but not now.

In the Lipetsk region, which sits on the road to Moscow, residents appeared unfazed by the turmoil.

“They did not disrupt anything. They stood calmly on the pavement and did not approach or talk to anyone,” Milena Gorbunova told the AP.

As Wagner forces moved north toward Moscow, Russian troops armed with machine guns set up checkpoints on the outskirts. By Sunday afternoon, the troops had withdrawn and traffic had returned to normal, although Red Square remained closed to visitors. On highways leading to Moscow, crews repaired roads ripped up just hours earlier in panic.

Anchors on state-controlled television stations cast the deal ending the crisis as a show of Putin’s wisdom and aired footage of Wagner troops retreating from Rostov to the relief of local residents who feared a bloody battle for control of the city. People there who were interviewed by Channel 1 praised Putin’s handling of the crisis.

But the revolt and the deal that ended it severely dented Putin’s reputation as a leader willing to ruthlessly punish anyone who challenges his authority.

Prigozhin had demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigozhin has long criticized in withering terms for how he has conducted the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. had intelligence that Prigozhin had been building up his forces near the border with Russia for some time. That conflicts with Prigozhin’s claim that his rebellion was a response to an attack on his field camps in Ukraine on Friday by the Russian military that he said killed a large number of his men. The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said Prigozhin’s march on Moscow appeared to have been planned in advance.

“Now, being a military guy, he understands the logistics and really the assistance that he’s going to need to do that,” including from some Russians on the border with Ukraine who supported him, Turner said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“This is something that would have had to have been planned for a significant amount of time to be executed in the manner in which it was,” he said.

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This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Zelenskyy’s first name, to fix AP style on Belarusian and correct the name of the CNA research group.

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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-war

Prigozhin Rising Classic Example of Mafia Wars, Nevzlin Says

            Staunton, June 25 – When situations are murky and perhaps especially when they involve someone analysts have gotten used to thinking is more in control of the situation than in fact is the case, there is a great danger of overthinking the situation and constructing epicycles where none is needed instead of drawing conclusions based solely on the evidence.

            To a certain extent, that is what has happened in response to the clash between Putin and Prigozhin over the last 24 hours. But by applying Occam’s razor, Israeli-based Russian businessman and commentator Leonid Nevzlin cuts through the plethora of analytic perspectives being offered (gordonua.com/blogs/leonid-nevzlin/v-rossii-klassika-mafioznyh-voyn-kak-tolko-boss-oslab-vsegda-vyhodit-vperyod-tot-kto-molozhe-agressivnee-zlee-i-hochet-vyrvat-vlast-1670220.html).

            He argues that what has just happened need not be explained by any reference to grand politics but rather by the imperatives of mafia wars, given that the Putin regime itself is less a state in the usual sense than a criminal enterprise. Indeed, Nevzlin argues, what has just happened is “a classic example” of what mafia wars are like.

            “As soon as the boss is weakened” – and Putin has been by age, time in office and mistaken decisions – someone “younger, more aggressive, angrier and desirous of power invariably comes forward” and the situation moves toward a showdown, one that may last for some time but reflects the mafia nature of the Russian state.

            From this perspective, Nevzlin says, “Prigorzhin’s rebellion isn’t so much sudden and out of nowhere but rather something that is entirely natural. Putin has shown weakness in Ukraine; now he has demonstrated the same shortcoming in his own country.” His desire to escape from this situation with his life may make even a cell at the Hague look like a good choice.

NATO needs to strengthen eastern flank if Prigozhin is in Belarus: Lithuania


Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda gives a press conference following his meeting with France’s president at the Elysee Palace in Paris on May 24, 2023. (AFP)

AFP
Published: 25 June ,2023: 

Lithuania’s president warned Sunday that if Belarus is to host Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin then NATO will need to strengthen its eastern flank.

The head of state, whose Baltic country neighbors both Belarus and Russia and will host next month’s NATO summit, spoke after a state security council meeting to discuss Wagner’s aborted revolt against the Kremlin.

After Prigozhin called off his troops’ advance on Saturday, Moscow said the Wagner chief would leave Russia for Belarus and would not face charges.

“If Prigozhin or part of the Wagner group ends up in Belarus with unclear plans and unclear intentions, it will only mean that we need to further strengthen the security of our eastern borders,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters.

“I am not only talking about Lithuania here, but without a doubt the whole of NATO,” he said.

Nauseda added that Lithuania will devote more intelligence capabilities to assessing the “political and security aspects of Belarus.”

Lithuania will host next month’s NATO summit, and Nauseda said the general security plan for the meeting does not require changes following the Russian developments.

He said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin could face even greater challenges in the future, adding: “The king is naked.”

The Wagner rebellion marked the biggest challenge yet to Putin’s long rule and Russia’s most serious security crisis since he came to power in 1999.

TOLD YA SO

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s strange march to Moscow and back

BY MARK TOTH AND JONATHAN SWEET, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 06/24/23 

In May, we predicted in these pages that Bakhmut would ultimately prove to be divisive, not decisive terrain for Russia. By vainly obsessing over the small mining town, Russian President Vladimir Putin was risking a massive rift between his regular military and mercenary ground forces.

Yesterday and overnight, in a series of stunning events, our prediction came true, albeit on an even larger scale than we had anticipated.

Its beginning was innocuous enough. Prigozhin, well known for his bluster and ongoing war of words against Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, furiously accused the Russian military of deliberately shelling and killing his Wagner Group paramilitary forces while they were stationed at the rear, being held in reserve for the war in Ukraine. Seemingly, that was just one more potshot at Shoigu.

But this time, Shoigu fired back. TASS, Russia’s official state-controlled news agency, quoted an unnamed Ministry of Defense spokesperson declaring, “The information spread on social networks about the attack by the Russian Armed Forces on the “rear camps of PMC “Wagner” is false.”

Yet that was not the end of it, as most observers foresaw.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, TASS sternly announced that the FSB had “initiated a criminal case,” accusing Prigozhin’s “statements” as being tantamount to “invocation of armed rebellion.” This clearly was no longer business as usual between Prigozhin and Shoigu.

Even so, by late Friday afternoon, the dispute was still largely confined to a personal feud between Prigozhin and Shoigu. Putin himself had yet to weigh in. The Kremlin’s only reaction at that point to the FSB issuing an arrest warrant for Prigozhin came from Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov who confirmed that “Putin is aware of the situation.”

Prigozhin seemed to be operating under the assumption that he was in open rebellion only against Shoigu and Russia’s theater commander in Ukraine, General Valery Gerasimov. His forces marched on Rostov-on-Don and occupied the city’s military command headquarters, seizing effective control of the key Russian military supply city for the war effort in Ukraine.

The man formerly known as “Putin’s chef” seemingly avoided targeting Putin by name and only directed his ire at Shoigu and Gerasimov, while demanding their surrender either in Rostov-on-Don or in Moscow, if necessary. Thus far, at least in terms of plausible deniability, Prigozhin was involved in mutiny but not rebellion.

Putin’s taped speech, however, changed all that, turning mutiny into civil war. The Russian president accused Prigozhin of “betrayal” and characterized his actions as “a stab in the back of our country and our people.” Putin then piled on, calling it “treason” and vowed that those who “have betrayed Russia” would “be held accountable.”

Prigozhin, via his AP Wagner Telegram channel, quickly fired back. This time, in addition to Shoigu and Gerasimov, Putin was squarely in his crosshairs as well. Prigozhin defiantly said that the Russian president “had made the wrong choice. That’s worse for him. Soon we will have a new president.”

Elements of Prigozhin’s paramilitary forces were soon on the move northward from Rostov-on-Don. Their “march of justice” along the 675-mile road to Moscow rapidly reached Voronezh, a town only 325 miles south of the red crenelated walls of the Kremlin.

Moscow found itself in a panic. Improvised roadblocks were thrown up around the capital city and the Rosgvardiya — Russia’s home guard, entirely controlled by Putin — was quickly deployed. Various unconfirmed reports speculated on Telegram that Moscow had enacted its seldom used “Krepost Plan,” which allows law enforcement to secure key government sites, including FSB headquarters.

Putin reportedly fled Moscow. Forces in the largely immune wartime capital of Russia found themselves preparing to fight a very hot civil war battle against Prigozhin’s forces. And Prigozhin’s road trip to Moscow had met little organized resistance other than purported Russian air strikes. The few obstacles that were erected — buses and garbage trucks — were easily tossed aside by Prigozhin’s armored units proceeding up the M4 highway toward the capital.

The road to Moscow at this point appeared wide open. Or so it seemed until Prigozhin, in a moment of Kabuki theater organized by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, suddenly reversed course and ordered his marching troops back to Rostov-on-Don.

In an announcement that first reported by Belta, a Belarusian state-controlled news agency, Prigozhin claimed he had come within 124 miles of Moscow, only to turn back. Even as we write this, there are now reports that Prigozhin’s forces are preparing to leave Rostov-on-Don. Where they are going is not yet clear.

Prigozhin either had no real plan to seize and control Moscow — and arguably, 25,000 troops stretched from Rostov-on-Don to the capital city would not be enough — or he exacted the concessions he wanted from Putin.

But at what price? Putin is unlikely to forgive Prigozhin. If a deal was made, it likely will only be a matter of time until the Wagner Group founder finds himself falling out of a window or drinking the wrong cup of tea. Or perhaps, if Prigozhin survives, he will be forced to decamp to one of his Wagner Group bases in Africa, where the bulk of his cash flow is derived from such activities as the theft of gold from Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Only one thing is certain now. We have not yet seen the last of Prigozhin, even though Putin likely still wants him dead or behind bars.

Mark Toth is an economist, entrepreneur, and former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis. Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army Colonel and 30-year military intelligence officer, led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.