NATO foreign ministers meet Friday in Brussels, where tensions with Russia are set to top the agenda. 

The summit comes weeks after Western countries accused Moscow of poisoning a former spy in Britain. Tensions were further increased following Russia ally Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack, and the retaliatory airstrikes by the United States, France and Britain. While that military action was not organized through NATO, the bloc offered its approval at the time.

Friday’s summit will be the last big meeting in NATO’s old Brussels building before its international staff and 29 embassies move to a new $1.5 billion headquarters in June. The same challenges remain, however. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that the primary focus would be what he called Moscow’s “dangerous behavior.”

“This includes the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, the destabilization of eastern Ukraine, meddling in democratic processes, cyberattacks and disinformation,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

Foreign ministers will also discuss security in the Middle East and north Africa, especially Iraq.

“We are currently planning for a training mission of several hundred [people]. They will train Iraqi instructors and help build Iraqi military schools,” added Stoltenberg.

WATCH: Russia Tensions to Dominate NATO Meeting, as Ukraine Pushes to Join

New U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed to Brussels for the NATO talks ahead of a trip to the Middle East. Pompeo, who was sworn in on Thursday, succeeds Rex Tillerson, whom President Donald Trump fired last month. Trump is expected at the leaders’ summit in July. Analysts say NATO allies will be hoping for further reassurances of U.S. commitment.

Enlargement also is on the summit agenda, with Ukraine restating its ambitions to join the organization. At a Kyiv security conference last week, NATO’s deputy secretary-general, Rose Gottemoeller, offered measured encouragement to her hosts.

“I think those are very important and realistic goals but I’m not going to hide from you that you have a lot of heavy lifting to do before you are ready for NATO membership. Important reforms have to be carried out. They are the reforms of defense institutions, the security institutions,” said Gottemoeller.

The conflict with Russia has driven a big change in Ukrainians’ attitudes toward NATO, according to Orysia Lutsevych of Chatham House, a London-based policy institute.

“If you compare the public support before the war with Russia and now, it almost doubled. So, there’s also a public support for that policy. Now again, as with many things in Ukraine, the devil is in the implementation. And if Ukraine manages to pool all the necessary human, financial resources and proper coordination, then I think it has a success story to tell to its NATO partners,” said Lutsevych.

Ukraine’s admission would open up a new NATO border with Russia in a highly volatile region, and the process is expected to take years or decades. NATO’s secretary-general emphasized Thursday that dialogue with Moscow was crucial, adding that the organization was working toward a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. That forum was suspended in 2014 following Russia’s forceful annexation of Crimea.
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In Paris, authorities are probing allegations that the holding company of tycoon Vincent Bollore used favors to win lucrative port contracts in West Africa. Bollore presides over a massive media, logistics and transportation empire on the continent, even as France’s clout in Africa is waning.

French investigators are probing allegations that Vincent Bollore’s holding company was given lucrative port concessions in Togo and Guinea in exchange for undercharging the current leaders of both countries for advertising work during their election campaigns.

The Bollore Group has denied all wrongdoing, and said the inquiry will give 66-year-old Bollore a chance to answer what it describes as “unfounded accusations.”

France continues to be a major economic and political player in West Africa, especially in its former colonies. But its influence has declined in the face of more recent competitors like China and Turkey.

Even so, the Bollore Group remains a formidable player. Its interests include logistical operations, railways, ports, and media interests that turn over billions of dollars a year.

Interviewed on French TV, journalist Nicolas Vescovacci, who wrote a book about Bollore, describes the Bollore Group’s Africa interests as an “empire” that spans 46 countries and employs 25,000 people. Vescovacci says the businessman controls what enters into the African ports his group controls, and at least part of local economies in countries like Guinea, Togo and Ivory Coast.

Bollore also has forged ties with powerful figures in both France and in Africa. He is friends with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is now being probed over alleged Libyan campaign funding for his 2007 election.

Journalist Vescovacci says Bollore has a network of relationships that range from former spies and policemen to politicians — from the left, as well as from the right.

Now Bollore’s relationship with two of them, Guinean President Alpha Conde and Togolese leader Faure Gnassingbe, is under scrutiny. French investigators are probing accusations Bollore’s advertising company Havas, now run by one of his sons, provided discounted services to both men during their election runs in exchange for port contracts.

In France, Bollore is a controversial figure. Over the years, he has launched a number of defamation suits against media investigating his group’s various business activities.

 
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Poland’s government is criticizing the claim of a U.S. congressman that a new Polish law glorifies Nazi collaborators and denies the Holocaust.

The charge was made by Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, one of two congressmen leading a bipartisan effort urging the State Department to pressure Poland and Ukraine to combat state-sponsored anti-Semitism.

“Our government should be concerned with the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Ukraine and Poland. Both countries recently passed laws glorifying Nazi collaborators and denying the Holocaust,” Khanna wrote Wednesday.

In the Polish case, Khanna referred to a new law that makes it a crime to blame Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany. The law has sparked criticism in the U.S. and particularly in Israel, where some fear its aim is to quash discussions about Polish anti-Semitic violence during the German occupation in World War II.

Amid Israeli criticism, some Polish officials and commentators have made comments considered anti-Semitic.

Andrzej Pawluszek, an adviser to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, told The Associated Press on Thursday that Khanna’s words were “irresponsible and shocking.”

Poland’s deputy foreign minister Bartosz Cichocki, retorted Wednesday on Twitter: “Sir, I would appreciate if you indicated a single law passed in my homeland Poland (recently or not), which glorifies Nazi collaborators and/or denies Holocaust.”

In a separate post, he added: “Equally, I would love to learn what exactly your government did to combat [the] Holocaust after being requested to do so by the Polish government-in-exile.”

During Germany’s occupation of Poland during the war, the Polish government-in-exile struggled to warn the world of the mass killing of the Jews — a message that was largely ignored.

There was no answer at Khanna’s Washington, D.C., office to a call made before office hours hours Thursday.

 
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U.S President Donald Trump Tuesday praised the strength of America’s partnership with France — and the personal friendship he has developed with his French counterpart. President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington will be closely followed by the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel later this week. And, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the two European leaders are lobbying hard for Trump to shift his position on trade tariffs and the Iran nuclear deal.
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Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov is today one of the most renowned figures of the Russian opposition and was the organizer of the recently concluded Free Russia Forum in Vilnius. In an exclusive interview with Voice of America’s Russian service about the latest dramatic events in Yerevan, he said that the will of the people in Armenia for change was a key factor in the development of the situation in that country.

“History is not over, but there is one very important lesson we can learn from there: When people are lied to, they get tired of it; when they are ready to defend their freedom and their right to choose who will lead them, power retreats,” said Kasparov, who is half-Armenian. “The main lesson is that it’s a demonstration of the unity of the nation. When we see students, workers, priests, some in the military [participating in the protest], it makes it impossible for the authorities to suppress it by force.”

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned unexpectedly Monday after days of protests against him by opposition supporters who claimed he was clinging to power after serving the maximum 10 years as president.

Armenia’s turmoil deepened Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets after the opposition accused the ruling Republican Party of refusing to cede power following Sargsyan’s departure. Later in the day, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Republican Party governing partner, announced that it had quit Armenia’s ruling coalition, calling for the election of a prime minister with “the people’s confidence.”

​Domestic focus, honest elections

In a region dominated by “strongman” politics, the grass-roots demonstrations, which protest leaders have been careful not to paint as pro-Western or anti-Russian, are focused on a domestic agenda led by honest elections.

Armenia, which seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, has, like neighboring Caucasus nations, struggled to overcome the legacy of central planning and remains dependent on Russia for aid and investment.

But Kasparov believes that prevailing conditions in Armenia are nonetheless specific to that country.

“It is a special situation there: a practically monoethnic state, three decades of war — one day sluggish, another day turning into a more acute phase,” he said. “There is the Karabakh clan [Karabakh military], and there is the Yerevan party — that is, there are many specific factors that do not apply to Russia.”

The opposition figure also noted that Russia’s powerful influence on the situation in Armenia continued. Russia, which maintains a military base in the country, has said that it is “very attentively observing what is happening in Armenia,” but ultimately considers the unrest a domestic issue.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on political forces in Armenia to engage in dialogue and act within the law to resolve the situation. They also dismissed any parallels to events that inspired Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution.

The United States responded to developments by thanking Sargsyan for his many years of service and called for a transparent democratic process to determine his successor.

Russian influence

“Armenia is effectively under the all-powerful influence of [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia, and it is clear that the majority of enterprises are one way or another controlled by Russian oligarchs. These ties were formed over a very long time, including military ties,” Kasparov said. “Armenia, unlike Ukraine, has no borders with the West. It is trapped between Azerbaijan, Turkey; Iran, Georgia are also there; you can’t go too far [without reaching] either Turkey or Russia, if we talk about the border.”

Nevertheless, according to Kasparov, Sargsyan’s resignation is a bellwether for Russia.

“Today, the whole world is in motion. Revolutionary changes are taking place everywhere,” he said. “Many of them are negative and destructive, but it is clear that we have entered a period of change. Armenia, I think, is a bellwether, showing that attempts to preserve the situation in Russia, attempts to return to the past … all the same end with a revolutionary explosion. Armenia is simply this bellwether indicating that change is inevitable. And the question is how peaceful and nonviolent these changes will be.

“Armenia has avoided, largely due to its national peculiarity, bloodshed and violent confrontation/ The extent to which this is possible in Russia is difficult for me to say. I fear that we missed the possibility for such a peaceful, nonviolent transition in 2011-2012, and that the changes in Russia will, of course, be more volatile.”

Thus, he said, it is necessary to prepare for such changes.

“It is necessary now, it seems to me, to think about what will happen in Russia when the day comes that patience completely runs out,” Kasparov said. “Why will that happen? There are landfills that make it impossible to breathe, corruption is monstrous, a sharp deterioration in living standards, banking collapses. There are many examples in history when such a combination of factors produced this explosive combination. And what needs to be done, I think, is what we talked about at the last Free Russia Forum in Vilnius: We need to prepare for this moment in order to propose a plan of action.”

​Darker outlook for Russia

While former Soviet republics such as Armenia may see long-term political changes emerge from this week’s protests, Kasparov believes that the situation in which changes could arrive in Russia is less favorable than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We cannot again, as in 1991, be caught by surprise. That will be unforgivable,” he said. “Because if at that time it was unexpected — and any change then seemed good — then today Russia has no such window of opportunity. There is no such upside. There was still economic and industrial potential then, but today the situation is different. It is much worse. Russia is mired in corruption, industrial devastation and wars. And its international reputation is actually much worse than it was 27 years ago. And society does not have the potential for change, the desire to make the country better, the desire to become part of the civilized world.”

“The most important task now is to talk seriously about constitutional reform, about what Russia should look like, what will be the path of this transition,” Kasparov said. “We have our own economic, political, social and foreign policy factors, and we need to take them all into account in order to have a sufficiently well-articulated program of action that can be proposed. The person that offers a program of action — even if it is, as articulated, radical in the opinion of many — is usually the one that inspires the people to follow.”

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
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