Russian doctors said Friday that gravely ill Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny could be flown to Germany to receive medical care after the opposition politician’s allies accused the Russian authorities of trying to stop his evacuation.Navalny’s life was not in immediate danger; he was in an induced coma and his brain was in a stable condition, the medical staff at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk said.Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said she expected him to be flown out on Saturday morning.Navalny, a longtime opponent of President Vladimir Putin and a campaigner against corruption, collapsed on a plane Thursday after drinking tea that his allies believe was laced with poison.German doctors flew in to evacuate Navalny, 44, at the request of his wife and allies who said they feared authorities might try to cover up clues as to how he fell ill and that the hospital treating him was badly equipped.Medical staff at the Omsk hospital initially said  Friday that while Navalny’s condition had improved slightly overnight, he was in too unstable a state to be safely transported out of the country.But late on Friday they said they would not object to his being moved after the German doctors were granted access to Navalny and said they thought he was fit to travel.A senior doctor at the hospital, Anatoly Kalinichenko, said the hospital could help transport Navalny to the airport and that he would be moved within several hours.”We have taken the decision that we do not object to him being transferred to a different hospital,” Kalinichenko said.Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, walks near a hospital where Alexei receives medical treatment in Omsk, Russia, Aug. 21, 2020.Wife’s appealNavalny’s wife, Yulia, earlier sent a letter to the Kremlin directly appealing for it to intervene and grant permission for him to be allowed to be flown out.”It’s a shame it took so long for the doctors to make this decision. The plane has been waiting since morning. The documents were also ready then,” Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said Friday evening.Alexander Murakhovsky, the head doctor at the hospital, said earlier that Navalny had been diagnosed with a metabolic disease that may have been caused by low blood sugar.He said traces of industrial chemical substances had been found on Navalny’s clothes and fingers and that doctors did not believe he had been poisoned.Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for more than a decade, exposing what he says is high-level graft and mobilizing crowds of young protesters.He has been repeatedly detained for organizing public meetings and rallies and sued over his investigations into corruption. He was barred from running in a presidential election in 2018.Navalny fell ill while flying back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk where he had met allies ahead of regional elections next month. He was taken on a stretcher, motionless, from the plane and rushed to a hospital after the aircraft made an emergency landing in Omsk.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday the discovery of a vast natural gas field in the Black Sea. With the prospect of long-term energy security, Erdogan is also vowing to step up energy exploration in Aegean and eastern Mediterranean waters that Greece says it controls.”Turkey has made its biggest natural gas discovery,” said Erdogan at a news conference, calling it a “historic day” and adding that the discovery offers Turkey a “new era.”The Turkish president said the new gas field contains 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas and could start producing by 2023, to coincide with the centenary celebrations marking the foundation of the Turkish Republic.Reuters news agency, citing sources, claimed the find could meet Turkish energy needs for the next 20 years.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks with the Turkish drilling ship Fatih, in background, in Istanbul, Aug. 21, 2020.Some analysts warn it could take a decade before Turkey fully reaps the rewards of the discovery. The depth of the Black Sea makes extraction challenging and expensive. Production costs are estimated to be as high as several billion dollars, at a time when natural gas prices are at near-record lows because of a supply glut.”There are a lot of unknowns,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “We don’t know how much it’s going to cost to extract, what the purity of the gas is, all at a time of record low gas prices.”The discovery of indigenous energy reserves is a critical strategic goal of Ankara.”Turkey is a major gas importer. It is one of the fastest-growing energy consumers,” says energy expert Mithat Rende, a former Turkish ambassador to Qatar. (Dorian Jones/VOA)”Turkey is a major gas importer. It is one of the fastest-growing energy consumers,” said energy expert Mithat Rende, a former Turkish ambassador to Qatar. “Turkey is heavily energy-dependent on imported gas and oil. What we need is our own resources.”Turkey spends around $40 billion a year on imported oil and gas. A significant factor behind the Turkish currency’s chronic weakness, which hit a record low this month, is that Turkey spends more on imports than exports, causing a large account deficit.Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, speaking Friday from the drilling ship that discovered the gas field, said the energy discovery was a financial game changer. “It will remove the current account deficit,” said Albayrak. “We will be soon talking about current account surpluses.””Turkey is committed to long-term contracts of buying piped gas from Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. You can’t simply walk out of those contracts,” said Yesilada. “Selling gas on the world market will not be easy either, as there is an oversupply.”The Black Sea gas find is the fruit of the Turkish government’s aggressive search for energy. Since 2017, Ankara purchased five research vessels that have combed Turkey’s surrounding seas for years.Turkey’s energy quest is at the center of an increasingly bitter dispute with Greece. The neighbors are contesting energy rights in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas, where Turkish and Greek navies are currently facing off.This week, Washington deployed a warship to the region to monitor the situation.The Black Sea gas discovery is giving impetus to Turkish efforts in the Mediterranean. “We hope to see similar good news in the Mediterranean as well,” said Erdogan. “We will be accelerating our drilling activities in the Mediterranean.”Ankara is already facing calls from the European Union to step back from its exploration, but such requests were again rejected. “The EU is spoiling Greece,” said Erdogan.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2nd right and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, 2nd left, symbolically open a valve during a ceremony in Istanbul for the inauguration of the TurkStream pipeline, Jan. 8, 2020.Friday’s announced gas discovery is timely for Ankara, offering potentially significant leverage over Moscow. Turkey and Russia are poised to renew a 25-year-old energy deal that expires next year.Mehmet Ogutcu of the London Energy club says under the current deal, Russia is Turkey’s leading gas supplier, charging rates double what other European countries pay the Russian energy company Gazprom. “The revising of the Russian contract is a top priority in Ankara,” said Ogutcu.Turkey’s quarter-century of dependency on Russian energy has underscored bilateral ties. A more energy-dependent Turkey would deny Moscow an instrument of leverage over Ankara. “We need a more balanced energy relationship, but Turkish-Russian relations are not based only on Russian gas,” says Ogutcu. “There are so many issues. It’s a valuable relationship.”
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Every day, like clockwork, to-do lists for those protesting against Belarus’ authoritarian leader appear in the popular Telegram messaging app. They lay out goals, give times and locations of rallies with business-like precision, and offer spirited encouragement. “Today will be one more important day in the fight for our freedom. Tectonic shifts are happening on all fronts, so it’s important not to slow down,” a message in one of Telegram’s so-called channels read Tuesday. “Morning. Expanding the strike … 11:00. Supporting the Kupala (theater) … 19:00. Gathering at the Independence Square.”  The app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unprecedented mass protests that have rocked Belarus since Aug. 9, when election officials announced President Alexander Lukashenko had won a landslide victory to extend his 26-year rule in a vote widely seen as rigged.  Peaceful protesters who poured into the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities were met with stun grenades, rubber bullets and beatings from police. The opposition candidate left for Lithuania — under duress, her campaign said — and authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians with almost no access to independent online news outlets or social media and protesters seemingly without a leader.  Opposition supporters rally to protest against disputed presidential election results on Independence Square in Minsk, Aug. 20, 2020.That’s where Telegram — which often remains available despite internet outages, touts the security of messages shared in the app and has been used in other protest movements — came in. Some of its channels helped scattered rallies to mature into well-coordinated action. The people who run the channels, which used to offer political news, now post updates, videos and photos of the unfolding turmoil sent in from users, locations of heavy police presence, contacts of human rights activists, and outright calls for new demonstrations — something Belarusian opposition leaders have refrained from doing publicly themselves. Tens of thousands of people across the country have responded to those calls.  In a matter of days, the channels — NEXTA, NEXTA Live and Belarus of the Brain are the most popular — have become the main method for facilitating the protests, said Franak Viacorka, a Belarusian analyst and non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.  “The fate of the country has never depended so much on one (piece) of technology,” Viacorka said.  Charges of fomenting mass riots In the days following the vote and the subsequent internet outage, NEXTA Live’s audience shot from several hundred thousand followers to over 2 million. Its sister channel NEXTA has more than 700,000 followers. Belarus of the Brain’s following grew from almost 170,000 users in late June to over 470,000 this week.  Their influence in a nation of 9.5 million is hard to underestimate, and authorities have taken notice and are pursuing those behind the channels.  Last week, officials opened a criminal probe into NEXTA and its founder, 22-year-old blogger Stepan Putilo, on charges of fomenting mass riots — an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Blogger Igor Losik, who founded Belarus of the Brain, was arrested before the election, but the channel continues to operate.  “We have indeed become the bullhorn of the situation that is unfolding in Belarus right now,” Putilo, who is Belarusian but lives in Warsaw, Poland, said in a recent interview with Lithuanian news outlet Delfi. “We have become the voice of this revolution, but by no will of our own. It just happened.” Putilo first created NEXTA — which is pronounced NEKH-ta and means “somebody” in Belarusian — as a YouTube channel in 2015, when he was just 17. His profile rose last year when his 30-minute video about the country’s iron-fisted leader, “Lukashenko. Criminal Records,” was viewed almost 3 million times. A court in Belarus declared the film extremist, but it is still available on YouTube. Putilo turned to Telegram in 2018. His two channels focused mostly on Belarusian politics. His team received thousands of messages from users sending in photos, videos and news items each day and posted the most newsworthy, taking pride in often sharing information from sources inside the government or law enforcement.  After the demonstrations began, thousands of messages turned into hundreds of thousands, and the underground operation now appears inundated. In response to a request from The Associated Press for an interview, NEXTA editor-in-chief Roman Protsevich wrote: “Sure, it’s possible, but the question is when. …” — and then stopped responding.  Putilo hasn’t responded to requests for comment.  Piercing ‘information blackout’When the protests began, the NEXTA channels were often the first places anywhere on the internet to carry grisly pictures of police violently clashing with demonstrators. This week, they were filled with videos of workers protesting at industrial plants.  Journalists in Belarus have praised the channels for breaking news — but note that traditional media also played an important role.  “Telegram channels did help to pierce the information blackout, but I have to say that it wasn’t just them,” said Andrei Bastunets, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. “Telegram channels (run by bloggers) played a mobilizing, an organizing role, while more balanced information could be found on Telegram channels of media outlets.”  Social media platforms have played major roles in previous uprisings, including in the Arab Spring, anti-government protests in Hong Kong and demonstrations against racial injustice in the United States.  But, since 2016, when Russia was accused of using Facebook and other platforms in an effort to influence or interfere in the U.S. election, many have seen social media in a more dystopian light, said Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House.  “What’s happening in Belarus right now is kind of a reminder that actually social media can be used in a positive way from a democratic perspective,” Kundnani said. Protesters in the streets echoed his sentiment.  “Telegram channels and websites that don’t belong to our government are the main source of information today as we cannot at all rely on state media,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk on Wednesday evening. “It’s a Telegram revolution.”  
 
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Autocrats fall when people lose their fear — and that moment can be signaled dramatically by a simple jeer. As it was last week when Europe’s so-called “last dictator,” Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, was booed during a speech at a Minsk factory by workers who chanted for him to step down.“Until you kill me, there will be no other elections,” Lukashenko told the sullen crowd. “Shoot yourself,” one emboldened worker shouted at him as he left the stage — a brazen statement no one would have dared utter to his face before the current turmoil rocking Belarus.The visit was meant to have demonstrated Lukashenko’s strong support from a core group of Belarusians, say analysts. The factory, which makes tractor wheels, is one of the large Soviet-like state-run industrial plants that have in the past been pro-Lukashenko strongholds. For veteran observers and journalists, the debacle at the factory was reminiscent of the fall 32 years ago of another European autocrat — Nicolae Ceaușescu, the longtime Communist leader of Romania.He similarly misjudged the mood of a crowd — as well as the tide of events. In 1984, Ceaușescu had easily sidestepped a planned coup d’état, dispatching nimbly a key military unit to help with the maize harvest. But in December 1989, history caught him up with him as he tried to whip up support against growing anti-government protesters who had been undeterred by a violent state reaction.Eight minutes into a speech before a mass meeting in Bucharest’s Revolution Square, during which he labeled protesters as “fascist agitators who want to destroy socialism,” he was booed, triggering a bewildered frown from the autocrat and an impotent wave of his hand. Power seemed to drain away from the Conducător, or leader.Belarusian opposition supporters rally in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 17, 2020. Workers heckled President Alexander Lukashenko as he visited a factory that day, and strikes grew across Belarus, raising the pressure on the authoritarian leader to step down.“A fatal moment of weakness, shown live on television, sealed his fate,” writes historian Victor Sebestyen in his book Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire. “The panic on his face was the beginning of his end. As the first barracker, a taxi driver called Adrian Donea, said later: ‘We could see he was scared. At that moment we realized our force.’”It is unlikely that Lukashenko will share thefate of Ceaușescu, who was executed along with his wife, Elena, after a kangaroo court passed death sentences on the couple. It would more likely be a quick flight to Moscow, where he would take his place as a semi-tolerated guest alongside Ukraine’s ousted Viktor Yanukovych, suggest Western diplomats.And there seems to be plenty of fight left in Lukashenko, according to Keir Giles, an analyst with Chatham House.“Having failed to swiftly translate popular support into tangible political achievements, there are signs the protests against the fraudulent presidential election in Belarus may be losing momentum in the face of the state’s resilience and still-confident security and enforcement apparatus,” he warns.“Attempts to blame the unrest on the West have focused on groups Lukashenko and Russia can both call enemies. And now Lukashenko is not only inventing anti-Russian policies supposedly held by the opposition, such as suppressing the Russian language and closing the border with Russia, but also a supposed military threat from NATO,” Giles adds.“If this is believed in Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already described events in Belarus as part of a ‘struggle for the post-Soviet space,’ this makes a Russian intervention more likely,” he says.Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, center, speaks to an employee of the Minsk Tractor Wheel Plant in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 17, 2020.A 2007 research study by American political scientists Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski on “Dictatorial Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats” found authoritarian leaders survive by pursuing one or other of two options — either intensifying repression if they can, or broadening out their support base via nominal reforms. Judging by this week’s reaction at the Minsk factory, reform would appear now not to be a viable option for Lukashenko.According to former British Foreign Secretary Malcom Rifkind, there is no reason for him to stop his brutal crackdown as that would be a sign of weakness which would diminish his hold on power.“We have the precedents of Tiananmen Square in China, the Iranian ayatollahs suppressing a popular uprising some years ago, and (Nicolas) Maduro in Venezuela clinging to power despite the desperate opposition of his own people. Lukashenko knows that it will be a dacha in Russia at best and a prison cell in Minsk at worst, if he appeared to submit to international pressure at such a time,” Rifkind adds in a commentary for the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security research group based in London.But that may not be enough — as the ill-fated Ceaușescu discovered, let down by his own involuntary acknowledgement of surprise. Lukashenko’s only option may be to secure some form of Kremlin intervention. Chatham House’s Keir Giles, believes the West should carefully calibrate its responses and avoid offering a pretext for Russian intervention.But being kept in power by Putin, though, would leave Lukashenko diminished, the leader in name but in effect a temporary placeman for the Kremlin, no longer the king of his castle. 
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Family and associates of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny accuse Moscow of blocking his medical evacuation to Germany to cover up what they say is an attempt to poison him.Speaking to reporters outside the hospital in Omsk on Friday, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and Ivan Zhdanov, a Navalny associate, said the decision put his life in mortal danger.”They refuse to hand over Alexei for his further transporting,” Navalnaya said. “We certainly believe that it was made to make sure that a chemical substance which is in Alexei’s body will dissolve. That’s is why he is not handed over to make sure that particles of this substance will dissolve. He is not in a good shape. And we certainly cannot trust this hospital and we demand to hand him over to us so that we will be able to treat him in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust.”Navalnaya spoke out against the Kremlin after the head doctor said moving him would put his life at risk because he was still in an induced coma and his condition was unstable.Navalny’s team quoted a police officer as saying a highly dangerous substance had been identified in his body.”We approached that transit police representative who had come up with a phone (in her hands),” said Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation. “(We asked:) ‘What substance?’ She said: ‘It is confidentiality of an investigation, we cannot tell you, but this substance poses a deadly threat. This substance poses a threat to Alexei’s life as well as to wider public. Everyone around has to wear protective coveralls.’”The frictions arose as a German air ambulance landed in Omsk with the intention of flying Navalny to Germany for possible treatment.The Kremlin said on Thursday that medical authorities would consider any request to move him to a European hospital and the government would launch a criminal investigation if a toxicology report indeed found the poisoning allegations true.When asked about Navalny at the daily briefing Thursday, United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said, “We are following with the concern the reports that Mr. Navalny has a sudden illness. We obviously wish him a speedy recovery. Any allegations of suspected poisoning, if confirmed, should be fully investigated.”U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Senate member on the U.S. Helsinki Commission, told VOA’s Russian service Thursday the news about Navalny “is extremely concerning.” “The pattern of assaults, poisonings, and other attacks on Russian opposition figures, journalists, and pro-democracy advocates highlights the intensifying threats to civil society, human rights, and media freedom in Russia. I encourage the Russian authorities to investigate this incident and hold accountable those found responsible,” Cardin said. 
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