In 2021, the “Ghetto Project” was started in Lome, Togo, for impoverished young people. The objective was to help them get out of poor urban areas, find work and stay away from drugs. Amen Assignon looks at how the project is going. Narrator: Michele Joseph. Camera: Steven Midjola.
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Month: February 2023
VOA Firsthand Look: US Troops Defend NATO’s Edge in Romania
In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US and NATO drastically ramped up defenses across eastern Europe. In Romania, for example, US troop numbers tripled, from approximately 1,000 troops in January of last year to about 3,000 today. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb joined up with some of those soldiers for a first-hand look at how the closest US troops to the war in Ukraine are holding the line with NATO allies.
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Two-Century-Old Mystery of Waterloo’s Skeletal Remains
More than 200 years after Napoleon met defeat at Waterloo, the bones of soldiers killed on that famous battlefield continue to intrigue Belgian researchers and experts, who use them to peer back to that moment in history.
“So many bones — it’s really unique!” exclaimed one such historian, Bernard Wilkin, as he stood in front of a forensic pathologist’s table holding two skulls, three femurs and hip bones.
He was in an autopsy room in the Forensic Medicine Institute in Liege, eastern Belgium, where tests are being carried out on the skeletal remains to determine from which regions the four soldiers they belong to came from.
That in itself is a challenge.
Half a dozen European nationalities were represented in the military ranks at the Battle of Waterloo, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Brussels.
That armed clash of June 18, 1815 ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s ambitions of conquering Europe to build a great empire, and resulted in the deaths of around 20,000 soldiers.
The battle has since been pored over by historians, and — with advances in the genetic, medical and scanning fields — researchers can now piece together pages of the past from the remains buried in the ground.
Some of those remains have been recovered through archeological digs, such as one last year that allowed the reconstitution of a skeleton found not far from a field hospital the British Duke of Wellington had set up.
But the remains examined by Wilkin surfaced through another route.
‘Prussians in my attic’
The historian, who works for the Belgian government’s historical archives, said he gave a conference late last year and “this middle-aged man came to see afterwards and told me, ‘Mr Wilkin, I have some Prussians in my attic'”.
Wilkin, smiling, said the man “showed me photos on his phone and told me someone had given him these bones so he can put them on exhibit… which he refused to do on ethical grounds”.
The remains stayed hidden away until the man met Wilkin, who he believed could analyze them and give them a decent resting place.
A key item of interest in the collection is a right foot with nearly all its toes — that of a “Prussian soldier” according to the middle-aged man.
“To see a foot so well preserved is pretty rare, because usually the small bones on the extremities disappear into the ground,” noted Mathilde Daumas, an anthropologist at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles who is part of the research work.
As for the attributed “Prussian” provenance, the experts are cautious.
The place it was discovered was the village of Plancenoit, where troops on the Prussian and Napoleonic sides bitterly fought, Wilkin said, holding out the possibility the remains might be those of French soldiers.
Scraps of boots and metal buckles found among the remains do point to uniforms worn by soldiers from the Germanic side arrayed against the French.
But “we know that soldiers stripped the dead for their own gear,” the historian said.
Clothes and accessories are not reliable indicators of the nationality of skeletons found on the Waterloo battlefield, he stressed.
DNA testing
More dependable, these days, are DNA tests.
Dr Philippe Boxho, a forensic pathologist working on the remains, said there were still parts of the bones that should yield DNA results, and he believed another two months of analyses should yield answers.
“As long as the subject matter is dry we can do something. Our biggest enemy is humidity, which makes everything disintegrate,” he explained.
The teeth in particular, with traces of strontium, a naturally occurring chemical element that accumulates in human bones, can point to specific regions through their geology, he said.
Wilkin said an “ideal scenario” for the research would be to find that the remains of the “three to five” soldiers examined came from both the French and Germanic sides.
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US May Lift Protections for Yellowstone, Glacier Grizzlies
The Biden administration took a first step Friday toward ending federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which would open the door to future hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said state officials provided “substantial” information that grizzlies have recovered from the threat of extinction in the regions surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.
But federal officials rejected claims by Idaho that protections should be lifted beyond those areas, and they raised concerns about new laws from the Republican-led states that could potentially harm grizzly populations.
“We will fully evaluate these and other potential threats,” said Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Friday’s move kicks off at least a year of further study before final decisions about the Yellowstone and Glacier regions.
State officials have insisted any future hunts would be limited and not endanger the overall population.
However, Republican lawmakers in the region in recent years also adopted more aggressive policies against gray wolves, including loosened trapping rules that could lead to grizzlies being inadvertently killed.
As many as 50,000 grizzlies once roamed the western half of the U.S. They were exterminated in most of the country early last century by overhunting and trapping, and the last hunts in the northern Rockies occurred decades ago. There are now more than 2,000 bears in the Lower 48 states and much larger populations in Alaska, where hunting is allowed.
The species’ expansion in the Glacier and Yellowstone areas has led to conflicts between humans and bears, including periodic attacks on livestock and sometimes fatal maulings of humans.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte welcomed the administration’s announcement and said it could lead to the state reclaiming management of a species that’s been under federal protections since 1975. He said the grizzly’s recovery “represents a conservation success.”
The federal government removed protections for the Yellowstone ecosystem’s grizzlies in 2017. Wyoming and Idaho were set to allow grizzlies to be hunted when a judge restored those protections in 2018, siding with environmental groups that said delisting wasn’t based on sound science. Those groups want protections kept in place so bears can continue moving into new areas.
“We should not be ready to trust those states,” said attorney Andrea Zaccardi, of the Center for Biological Diversity.
U.S. government scientists have said the region’s grizzlies are biologically recovered but in 2021 decided that protections were still needed because of human-caused bear deaths and other pressures. Bears considered problematic are regularly killed by wildlife officials.
A decision on the states’ petitions was long overdue. Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Thursday had filed notice he intended to sue over the delay. Idaho’s petition was broader than the ones filed by Montana and sought to lift protections nationwide.
That would have included small populations of bears in portions of Idaho, Montana and Washington state, where biologists say the animals have not yet recovered to sustainable levels. It also could have prevented the return of bears to other areas such as the North Cascades region.
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British Man Admits Treason Over Crossbow Plot Against Queen
A British man who broke into Windsor Castle Christmas Day 2021 and threatened Queen Elizabeth with a crossbow has pleaded guilty to treason charges Friday in a London court.
Appearing before London’s Old Bailey Court via video link, 21-year-old Jaswant Singh Chail of South Hampton pleaded guilty to an offense under the British Treason Act of 1842, and to threatening to kill the queen. Charges under the act are rare, the last person to plead guilty under the act was in 1981.
Prosecutors say Chail was arrested shortly after 8 a.m. Christmas Day 2021 by a royal protection officer on the private grounds of Windsor Castle. Queen Elizabeth, who died in September 2022 at age 96, then-Prince Charles and other family members were staying at the castle during the holidays. Chail was never near the royal family.
At the time of his arrest Chail was dressed in black clothing and wearing a hood, a metal mask, gloves and carrying a powerful crossbow. He reportedly told the protection officer, “I am here to kill the queen.”
Prosecutors said Chail had recorded a video and posted it to the social media platform Snapchat before he entered the grounds of the castle. In it, he said he was sorry for what he was about to do. He said it was revenge “for those who died in the 1919 massacre.”
He was apparently referring to an incident when British colonial troops opened fire on unarmed civilians protesting a colonial law in their holy city of Amritsar in northwestern India. Nearly 400 Sikh Indians were killed in what has become known as the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. India has long demanded an apology for the incident.
In court Friday, Judge Jeremy Baker scheduled sentencing for Chail on March 31, and the court ordered medical reports regarding Chail’s mental state to be provided.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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Kenya to Reopen First Somali Border Post After 10-Year Shutdown
Kenya has announced plans to re-open its Mandera border crossing with Somalia as part of efforts to improve border security and crack down on smuggled goods.
Kenya says plans to re-open the Mandera border post with Somalia are nearing conclusion, after high-level consultations between the two countries.
Speaking after a visit to the town of Mandera, Kenya’s Internal Security Minister Kithure Kindiki said reopening the crossing point will improve border security and stem the tide of smuggled goods used to fund terrorist activities.
“I have directed the county security teams to sit down with the agencies of government that are represented here, including customs, immigrations, and asses the requirements and provide information within one week to enable us to renovate the border post and re-start our border,” said Kindiki.
Kenya closed all of its official border crossings with Somalia in 2012 in a bid to stop incursions by al-Shabab insurgents operating from the Somali side. The border points closed included the Mandera crossing, as well as those in Lamu, Wajir and Garissa.
The shutdowns have not stopped people from crossing the border illegally or smuggling goods.
Kindiki tasked the county security team with identifying armed militants operating in the border region.
“I therefore direct the county security team to sit down with the political leaders and the elders in a plan that will be guided by the community leaders and elders, so as to flush-out armed militants from Mandera and Northeastern,” said Kindiki.
Kindiki addressed elected leaders and community elders Friday during a security tour in Mandera and Wajir counties, and he reiterated the need for elders to partake in security operations.
In the last five years, Kenya’s northeast has experienced a long series of attacks by al-Shabab fighters.
In the deadliest attack, the Islamist militant group killed nearly 150 people at Garissa University College in 2015.
Somalia-based al-Shabab has been active in Kenya since 2011, when Kenya first contributed troops to the African Union-led peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
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Cameroon Makes Arrests After Journalist’s Death
Police have arrested several people “strongly suspected” of involvement in the kidnap, torture and killing of a popular radio journalist, Cameroon’s presidency announced.
Martinez Zogo, 50, who spoke out against embezzlement and cronyism in the central African nation, was abducted on January 17 outside a police station in the suburbs of the capital, Yaounde.
His heavily mutilated corpse was found five days later.
President Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for more than 40 years, called for a combined police and gendarme probe into the murder.
“The investigations… have enabled the arrest of several people whose involvement in this odious crime is strongly suspected,” minister of state and presidency general secretary Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh said on Thursday.
A search was still underway for other suspects, his statement said.
About 20 prominent Cameroonian personalities wrote in French newspaper Le Monde Thursday of their “great concern in the face of the violent turn in public debate” in the country.
The signatories, who included the writer Calixthe Beyala and intellectual Achille Mbembe, noted a “long tradition of trivializing impunity and accepting atrocities.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has described the killing as “a serious blow for democracy and freedom of the press.”
RSF’s Press Freedom Index ranks Cameroon 118 out of 180 countries, where 1 signals the best environment for media.
The government has insisted Cameroon is “a state of law, where liberty is guaranteed, including the freedom of the press.”
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US Adds 517,000 Jobs Despite Interest Rate Hikes
America’s employers added a robust 517,000 jobs in January, a surprisingly strong gain in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to slow growth and tame inflation with higher interest rates.
The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, a new half-century low.
Friday’s government report added to the picture of a resilient labor market, with low unemployment, relatively few layoffs and many job openings even as most economists foresee a recession nearing. Though good for workers, employers’ steady demand for labor has also helped accelerate wage growth and contributed to high inflation.
January’s job growth, which far exceeded December’s 269,000 gain, could raise doubts about whether inflation pressures will ease further in the months ahead. The Fed has raised its key rate eight times since March to try to contain inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year but has slowed since then.
Companies are still seeking more workers and are hanging tightly onto the ones they have. Putting aside some high-profile layoffs at big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others, most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security even at a time when many economists foresee a recession approaching.
For all of 2022, the economy had added a sizzling average of 375,000 jobs a month. That was a pace vigorous enough to have contributed to the painful inflation Americans have endured, the worst such bout in 40 years. A tight job market tends to put upward pressure on wages, which, in turn, feed into inflation.
The Fed, hoping to cool the job market and the economy — and, as a consequence, inflation — has steadily raised borrowing rates, most recently on Wednesday. Year-over-year measures of consumer inflation have steadily eased since peaking at 9.1% in June. But at 6.5% in December, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2% target, which is why the central bank’s policymakers have reiterated their intent to keep raising borrowing rates for at least a few more months.
The Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” — a pullback in the economy that is just enough to tame high inflation without triggering a recession. The policymakers hope that employers can slow wage increases and inflationary pressures by reducing job openings but not necessarily by laying off many employees.
But the job market’s resilience isn’t making that hoped-for outcome any easier. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 11 million job openings in December, an unexpected jump from 10.4 million in November and the largest number since July. There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.
The Labor Department’s monthly count of layoffs has amounted to fewer than 1.5 million for 21 straight months. Until 2021, that figure had never dropped so low in records dating back two decades.
Yet another sign that workers are benefiting from unusual job security is the weekly number of people who apply for unemployment benefits. That figure is a proxy for layoffs, one that economists monitor for clues about where the job market might be headed. The government said Thursday that the number of jobless claims fell last week to its lowest level since April.
The pace of applications for unemployment aid has remained rock-bottom despite a steady stream of headline-making layoff announcements. Facebook parent Meta is cutting 11,000 jobs, Amazon 18,000, Microsoft 10,000, Google 12,000. Some economists suspect that many laid-off workers might not be showing up at the unemployment line because they can still find new jobs easily.
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US Experiencing Artic Blast
The northeastern region of the U.S. is experiencing an Artic blast and the frigid temperatures are expected to last into Saturday.
The National Weather Service said numerous low temperature records could be set in the New England area.
Weather forecasters predict the temperature Saturday in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, could get as low as 23 degrees below zero Celsius, which would set a new low record for the date.
Meteorologists are predicting 21 degrees below zero Celsius for Boston, which would also set a low record for the date.
The NWS said wind chill warnings and advisories are already in effect for all of the New England region.
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NATO Urges Russia to Comply With Last US Nuclear Treaty
NATO on Friday expressed concern that Russia was failing to comply with its last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.
As tensions soar over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading NATO power the United States has accused Moscow of not meeting its commitments under the decade-old New START pact.
On Tuesday, Washington slammed Russia for suspending inspections under the treaty and cancelling talks but did not accuse its Cold War rival of expanding its nuclear warhead arsenal beyond agreed limits.
“NATO allies agree the New START treaty contributes to international stability by constraining Russian and US strategic nuclear forces,” the 30-strong alliance said in a statement.
“Therefore, we note with concern that Russia has failed to comply with legally binding obligations under the New START treaty.”
NATO member states said they “call on Russia to fulfil its obligations” by allowing inspections and returning to talks.
Russia has hit back at Washington by accusing it of destroying weapons control agreements between the two countries.
Diplomacy between the two powers has ground to a bare minimum over the past year as the United States leads a drive to sanction Russia and arm Ukraine with billions of dollars in weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons, reviving Cold War era fears.
Moscow announced in early August that it was suspending U.S. inspections of its military sites under New START. It said it was responding to American obstruction of inspections by Russia, a charge denied by Washington.
The Kremlin then indefinitely postponed talks under New START that had been due to start on November 29 in Cairo, accusing the United States of “toxicity and animosity.”
New START, signed by then President Barack Obama in 2010 when relations were warmer, restricted Russia and the United States to a maximum of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each — a reduction of nearly 30 percent from the previous limit set in 2002.
It also limits the number of launchers and heavy bombers to 800, still easily enough to destroy human life on Earth.
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Italian Mafia Killer Arrested in France at Pizza Parlor
The downfall of a convicted mafia killer, on the run since 2006, came about in a French pizza parlor.
Edgardo Greco was so confident in his alias as Paolo Dimitrio that he felt free to do an interview with a local Saint-Etienne newspaper in 2021 and even allowed the paper to take and publish a photograph of him.
Greco’s interview about the wonderful Italian cooking at his restaurant in the French newspaper was the beginning of the end for him. The 63-year-old mobster, alleged to be a member of the infamous ‘Ndrangheta organized crime mob, was convicted in an Italian court of the 1991 murders of two brothers whose bodies were never found and the attempted murder of another man.
Italian and French authorities worked together with Interpol, and Greco was identified and arrested.
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Meets with European Leaders
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting with European leaders in Kyiv on Friday. He is hoping to extract a fast-track promise for his country’s entry into the European Union and gain the imposition of more sanctions on Russia at the summit.
Analysts, however, say that his hopes of an expedited path into the EU will likely be dashed, despite his country’s dire need for the alliance’s support during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the EU has been supportive of Ukraine, it has not shown any indication that it is willing to speed up the membership process.
Ahead of Friday’s summit, Zelenskyy met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In his daily address Thursday, Zelenskyy thanked von der Leyen, “her colleagues and our friends in the EU for their tangible support on the path of integration and in protecting our country and people.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday that the Wagner Group’s recruitment of convicts has dropped “significantly.” The ministry said the Russian Federal Penal Service experienced a decrease of just 6,000 inmates since November. In comparison, the penal service had reported a drop of 23,000 inmates from September to November 2022. “Wagner recruitment was likely a major contributing factor to this drop,” the British ministry said.
Russia launched new airstrikes on residential areas in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Thursday, even as top European Union officials gathered in Kyiv in a new show of support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s nearly yearlong invasion.
An attack on Kramatorsk late Wednesday killed at least three people and injured another 21, authorities said, with a search under way for at least one more victim thought to be under the debris caused by a missile strike.
“Kramatorsk again shattered by explosions — the Russians made two more rocket strikes,” regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post.
He said at least five civilians were wounded in the latest strikes that hit residential buildings as well as a children’s clinic and a school in the heart of the city, a major hub for the Ukrainian military in the east. Russia has frequently struck apartment buildings in the war that it launched Feb. 24, while denying it is targeting residential structures.
The Ukrainian presidential office said overall in the last day, Russian shelling in Ukraine had killed at least eight civilians and wounded 29 others.
US sanctions
The United States on Wednesday blacklisted more business officials linked to Russia’s war on Ukraine, targeting an arms dealer, his son and a group of proxy companies across Asia, Europe and the Middle East for trying to help Moscow obtain more weapons for its nearly yearlong fight.
The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled sanctions against Russian arms dealer Igor Zimenkov, his son Jonatan and companies connected to “the Zimenkov network” in Singapore, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Israel, among other countries.
“Russia’s desperate attempts to utilize proxies to circumvent U.S. sanctions demonstrate that sanctions have made it much harder and costlier for Russia’s military-industrial complex to resupply [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war machine,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.
Treasury named 22 people and organizations it said were linked to the sanctions-evasion network supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex. Over the last year, the department said it had sanctioned more than 100 people and entities engaging in activities to circumvent international sanctions and export controls imposed on Russia.
The blacklisting blocks any U.S. accounts they may own and prohibits them from doing business in the United States and with Americans.
“Targeting proxies is one of many steps that Treasury and our coalition of partners have taken, and continue to take, to tighten sanctions enforcement against Russia’s defense sector, its benefactors and its supporters,” Adeyemo said.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Pope Wraps Up Congo Visit, Heads to Volatile South Sudan
Pope Francis wrapped up an emotional visit to Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday and headed to neighboring South Sudan, another nation struggling to overcome conflict and grinding poverty.
On the eve of his arrival in South Sudan, 27 people were killed in Central Equatoria state in tit-for-tat violence between cattle herders and a local militia.
In a first, the pope will be accompanied during his time in the South Sudanese capital Juba by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator. The three Christian leaders hope to jolt a peace process aimed at ending a decade of conflict, fought mostly along ethnic fault lines.
The 86-year-old pontiff, on his third visit to sub-Saharan Africa since his papacy began in 2013, was given a rapturous welcome by huge crowds in the Congolese capital Kinshasa but also confronted the reality of war, poverty and hunger.
On Wednesday, he heard harrowing stories from victims of conflict in eastern Congo who had witnessed the killings of close relatives and been subjected to sexual slavery, amputation and forced cannibalism.
The pope condemned the atrocities as war crimes and appealed to all parties, internal and external, who orchestrate war in Congo to plunder the country’s vast mineral resources to stop getting rich with “money stained with blood”.
Eastern Congo has been plagued for decades by conflict driven in part by the struggle for control of deposits of diamonds, gold and other precious metals between the government, rebels and foreign invaders. The spillover and long fallout from neighboring Rwanda’s 1994 genocide have also fueled violence.
Francis returned again and again to the theme of conflict fueled by “the poison of greed”, saying the Congolese people and the wider world should realize that people were more precious than the minerals in the earth beneath them.
‘Pilgrimage of peace’
After a meeting with Congolese bishops in Kinshasa on Friday morning and a farewell ceremony at the airport, his plane took off for Juba, where it is expected to land around 1300 GMT.
The pope, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Church of Scotland Moderator Iain Greenshields have described their first joint foreign trip as a “pilgrimage of peace”.
Welby said he was horrified by the latest killings on the day before the pilgrimage.
“It is a story too often heard across South Sudan. I again appeal for a different way: for South Sudan to come together for a just peace,” he said on Twitter.
South Sudan broke away from Sudan to become independent in 2011 after decades of north-south conflict, but civil war erupted in 2013. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the two main antagonists, violence and hunger still plague the country.
Francis has wanted to visit the predominantly Christian country for years but each time planning for a trip began it had to be postponed because of instability on the ground.
In one of the most remarkable gestures of his papacy, Francis knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan’s previously warring leaders during a meeting at the Vatican in April 2019, urging them not to return to civil war.
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VOA’s Firsthand Look at US Troops Closest to Ukraine Fight
On a freezing, windy day in eastern Romania, U.S. Army Sergeant Chase Williams is urging a team of soldiers to jump out of a hovering Blackhawk and rappel 25 meters to the snow-covered ground below.
“You know you just got to get over that fear. You just got to get over that ledge the first time,” Williams says of the 101st Airborne Division’s Air Assault course, a grueling program that some soldiers refer to as “the 10 toughest days in the Army.”
Williams and his fellow trainers have taught the 10-day program several times since last summer when 4,700 troops with the 101st Airborne Division deployed across eastern Europe, but the iteration completed this week was unique. For the first time ever, soldiers in the division offered their punishing air assault course to partners on European soil.
Graduates from the course at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base included U.S., Romanian, Dutch, French and Slovak soldiers.
It’s the latest example of how the division, deployed to Europe for the first time since World War II, is bolstering NATO’s eastern flank in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In Romania, U.S. troop numbers have tripled from approximately 1,000 troops in January 2022 to about 3,000 today. A high-end missile launched from Russian-controlled Crimea could reach the soldiers based along the Black Sea in about seven minutes, according to U.S. Army Colonel Ed Matthaidess, commander of the 101st’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.
“We are the closest U.S. Army formation to the fight in Ukraine right now,” Matthaidess told VOA.
Since their arrival, the 101st has spread out to fortify its positions across the country, and in other nations on NATO’s eastern flank.
“We’ve prepared our force for whatever eventuality, so we’ve reinforced protection around Mihail Kogalniceanu. We’ve dispersed our forces so we’re not a single target,” Matthaidess said.
During a helicopter ride along Romania’s coastline to the border with Ukraine, Matthaidess showed VOA how U.S. forces are holding the line with NATO allies.
“We’re taking it as close as we can to combat, right? So, we’re preparing for large-scale operations,” he said. “We’re exercising on the ground with which we might fight if we have to defend NATO.”
At a forward operating post just a few kilometers away from Ukrainian territory, several Humvees — some capable of carrying TOW antitank missiles, others equipped with a heavy machine gun or heavy grenade launcher — were gathering at a range for target practice.
Further south at an outpost filled with old farm buildings, U.S. soldiers trained Romanians on how to maneuver in urban terrain, going door-to-door clearing the area.
Matthaidess said the U.S. team has been watching Russian tactics in neighboring Ukraine “closely” and has adapted their training with partners to better suit what they see on the battlefield.
“We just got done with a big series of live fires, where we were attacking some trench lines that look very similar to what you might see across the border,” he told VOA.
The team also started incorporating small drones in some exercises, shooting down systems “very similar to what’s flooding the battlefield right now” in Ukraine, he added.
The 2nd Brigade Combat Team will leave Romania in a couple of months, but the Pentagon recently confirmed that the U.S. military’s increased presence in the country will continue at least through this year. The 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is set to replace Matthaidess’ team in what is expected to be a nine-month deployment.
That’s reassuring to Major General Ciprian Marin, chief of the Romanian military’s Operations Directorate, who says he wants more U.S. troops and more partnered training.
During the 101st Airborne Division’s deployment, Romanian forces have been honing their existing defense skills with the Americans, while in the case of the air assault course, acquiring a new capability that Romanian ground forces didn’t have before this week.
“With war, it’s about life and death, and [working together] makes the difference between failure and success. So, if you want to be successful, we are to be together, to stick together, and build this interoperability,” Marin said.
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Taiwan Legislator Criticizes China Response to Possible Taipei Visit by US Official
The president of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan is calling China’s response to the possibility of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s visiting Taiwan “excessive,” saying that exchanges between Taiwan’s unicameral legislature and the legislatures of the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries are the norm in democracies.
Washington’s Punchbowl News, which specializes in political news, reported on Jan. 23, citing officials familiar with the matter, that the Pentagon was making preliminary preparations for McCarthy’s travels this year, including a visit to Taiwan this spring. Because former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August triggered China’s large-scale military drill focused on Taiwan, planning for McCarthy’s visit would need to consider China’s possible response as well as more routine security and logistical arrangements.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday, “China opposes any form of official interaction between its Taiwan region and countries having diplomatic ties with China. We hope U.S. lawmakers will abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués and refrain from doing things detrimental to China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” China sees self-governing Taiwan as a rebellious province.
You Si-kun, who was in Washington to deliver a speech on Taiwan’s democratic journey at the 2023 International Religious Freedom Summit (IRFS) on Wednesday and the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday said after the first event that Beijing’s reactions “are very excessive. Sometimes they [China] say they are a democratic country, but in a democratic country, congressional exchanges are very normal. Their reaction, on the contrary, proves that they are not a democratic country.”
He continued, “Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan maintains very close communication with the U.S. Congress and American executive officials. Not only that, but Taiwan also maintains close communication with the European Congress and Japan. Any communication or visits by U.S. congressional members or the speaker to Taiwan is very normal in democratic politics.”
He also stressed Taiwan’s strategic importance at the center of key global sea lanes and as an important producer of semiconductors.
“So it’s very important to safeguard Taiwan, especially its democracy,” he said.
“If Taiwan falls into the sphere of influence of CCP, then the beacon of democracy will be destroyed. And China may invade the first island chain, and will cause a threat to the entire world,” You said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party and its ambitions in the Pacific region.
You said China will react to whatever Taiwan does. He said during a recent visit to Europe, the Chinese embassies protested his presence at each stop because if they hadn’t, they would “be unable to survive or get promoted.”
You told VOA Mandarin that he will continue, as he has since 2018, to advocate in favor of the U.S. recognizing Taiwan and establishing diplomatic relations with Taiwan. He said this idea is gaining ground among members of Congress.
There is growing bipartisan support for the United States to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan, and in September, President Joe Biden approved $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, a move that China condemned.
At the religious freedom summit, You said Taiwan’s political development has made the island a “beacon of democracy for Chinese-speaking peoples.” He contrasted that with sentiment attributed to former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, holding that “human rights and democracy are imported from the West and not suitable for Asian countries.”
“Taiwan has shown that democracy, born of the West, can indeed flourish in Chinese-speaking regions,” You said.
During his speech, You criticized the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and said the international community should pay attention to China’s lack of religious freedom, because it’s the cornerstone of human rights and the core of democratic values.
Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. who accompanied You, said exchanges between Taiwan’s Yuan and other countries’ legislatures have been going on for decades, and are in line with international standards.
Hsiao also said it is important to keep peace in the Taiwan Strait.
“The people of Taiwan — and I believe the people of the U.S. as well — feel strongly that our freedom and democracy must be guaranteed. We need an environment of peace, an environment that does not allow the use of force to change the status quo. I think that is a very important part in our common interest.”
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France Seeks Strategy as Nuclear Waste Site Risks Saturation Point
At a nuclear waste site in Normandy, robotic arms guided by technicians behind a protective shield maneuver a pipe that will turn radioactive chemicals into glass as France seeks to make safe the byproducts of its growing reliance on atomic power.
The fuel-cooling pools in La Hague, on the country’s northwestern tip, could be full by the end of the decade and state-owned Orano, which runs them, says the government needs to outline a long-term strategy to modernize its aging facilities no later than 2025.
While more nuclear energy can help France and other countries to reduce planet-warming emissions, environmental campaigners say it replaces one problem with another.
To seek solutions, President Emmanuel Macron, who has announced plans to build at least six new reactors by 2050, on Friday chairs the first of a series of meetings on nuclear policy that will discuss investments and waste recycling.
“We can’t have a responsible nuclear policy without taking into account the handling of used fuel and waste. It’s a subject we can’t sweep under the rug,” a government adviser told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We have real skills and a real technological advantage, especially over the United States. Russia is the only other country that is able to do what France does in terms of treatment and recycling.”
La Hague is the country’s sole site able to process and partially recycle used nuclear fuel.
France historically has relied on nuclear power for around 70% of its energy, although the share is likely to have fallen last year as the nuclear fleet suffered repeated outages.
Since the launch of the site at La Hague in 1976, it has treated nearly 40,000 tons of radioactive material and recycled some into nuclear fuel that can be reused. The waste that cannot be recycled is mixed with hardening slices of glass and buried for short-term storage underground.
But its four existing cooling pools for spent fuel rods and recycled fuel that has been reused risk saturation by 2030, according to French power giant EDF, which runs France’s 56-strong fleet of reactors, the world’s second biggest after the United States.
Should saturation happen, France’s reactors would have nowhere to place their spent fuel and would have to shut down — a worst-case scenario that led France’s Court of Audit to designate La Hague as “an important vulnerability point” in 2019.
Cool pools and deep clay
EDF is hurrying to build an extra refrigerated pool at La Hague, at a cost of $1.37 billion, to store spent nuclear fuel — a first step before the waste can be treated — but that will not be ready until 2034 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, France’s national agency for managing nuclear waste last month requested approval for a project to store permanently high-level radioactive waste.
The plan, called Cigéo, would involve placing the waste 500 meters below ground in a clay formation in eastern France.
Construction is expected in 2027 if it gets approval. Among those opposed to it are residents of the nearby village of Bure and anti-nuclear campaigners.
Jean-Christophe Varin, deputy director of the La Hague site, told Reuters Orano could be flexible to ensure more recycling is done at the facility and there were “several possible scenarios.”
However, he said they could not be worked on in detail in the absence of a strategic vision. Orano, for which EDF accounts for 95% of its recycling business, says it needs clear direction from the government no later than 2025, to give it time to plan the necessary investments.
The costs are likely to be high. Just keeping up with current operations at La Hague costs nearly $330 million a year.
Options EDF and Orano are considering include finding a way to recycle the used fuel more than once, but critics say the recycling itself creates more radioactive waste and is not a long-term solution. For now, the backup plan is to fit more fuel containers into the existing pools.
After being cooled in a pool for about seven years, used nuclear fuel is separated into non-recyclable leftovers that are turned into glass (4% of the material), plutonium (1%) to create a new nuclear fuel called MOX, on which around 40% of France’s reactors can run, and reprocessed uranium (95%).
The uranium in the past was sent to Russia for reenrichment and return for use in some EDF reactors, but EDF stopped doing that in 2013 as it was too costly.
In spite of the war in Ukraine, which has made many in the West avoid doing business with Russia, EDF is expected to resume sending uranium to Russia this year as the only country able to process it. It declined to confirm to Reuters it would do so.
The facility at La Hague, with its 1980s-era buildings and Star Wars-style control rooms, has its limitations.
“If we had to process MOX fuel in large quantities, the facility today isn’t adapted for it,” Varin said. “For multicycle recycling, the technology is not the same, so the modernization or replacement of installations” would require “significant” investments, he said.
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US Reunites Nearly 700 Kids Taken from Parents Under Trump
A Biden administration task force designed to reunite children separated from their families during the Trump administration has reconnected nearly 700 children with their families, officials said Thursday.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families that were split up under Trump’s widely condemned practice of forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration. Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the task force.
According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before the task force was created and 689 afterward.
But that still leaves nearly 1,000 children. Of those, 148 are in the reunification process. The department pledged to continue the work until all separated families that can be found have the opportunity to reunite with their children.
The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors, who could not be held in criminal custody with their parents, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. They were then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a connection to the family.
Hundreds of families have sued the federal government.
Families can register for reunification services through a website and can get help with steps such as applying for humanitarian parole that would allow them to come to the U.S., as well as for behavioral health services to help them.
During a meeting Thursday with reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed efforts to address “the wounds” the separations had caused.
He described meeting the mother of a teenager who had been separated from her mom when she was 13 and then reunited with her when she was 16. But Mayorkas said, the woman relayed how her teenage daughter “still could not understand how her mother would let her be separated. She didn’t understand the force behind the separation.”
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Don’t Underestimate Xi’s Ambitions Toward Taiwan, CIA Says
CIA Director William Burns said Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions toward Taiwan should not be underestimated, despite him likely being sobered by the performance of Russia’s military in Ukraine.
Burns said that the United States knew “as a matter of intelligence” that Xi had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of self-governed Taiwan by 2027.
“Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition,” Burns told an event at Georgetown University in Washington.
“Our assessment at CIA is that I wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s ambitions with regard to Taiwan,” he said, adding that the Chinese leader was likely “surprised and unsettled” and trying to draw lessons by the “very poor performance” of the Russian military and its weapons systems in Ukraine.
Russia and China signed a “no limits” partnership last February shortly before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and their economic links have boomed as Russia’s connections with the West have shriveled.
The Russian invasion had fueled concerns in the West of China possibly making a similar move on Taiwan, a democratic island Beijing claims as its territory.
China has refrained from condemning Russia’s operation against Ukraine, but it has been careful not to provide the sort of direct material support that could provoke Western sanctions like those imposed on Moscow.
“I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the mutual commitment to that partnership, but it’s not a friendship totally without limits,” Burns said.
As Burns spoke, news came from U.S. officials that a suspected Chinese spy balloon had been flying over the United States for a few days, and that senior U.S. officials had advised President Joe Biden against shooting it down for fear the debris could pose a safety threat.
Burns made no mention of the episode but called China the “biggest geopolitical challenge” currently faced by the United States.
“Competition with China is unique in its scale, and that it really, you know, unfolds over just about every domain, not just military, and ideological, but economic, technological, everything from cyberspace, to space itself as well. It’s a global competition in ways that could be even more intense than competition with the Soviets was,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from China’s Washington embassy about the remarks from Burns or the balloon flight.
On other topics, Burns said the next six months will be critical for Ukraine, where Moscow has been making incremental gains in recent weeks.
He also said Iran’s government was increasingly unsettled by affairs within the country, citing the courage of what he described as “fed up” Iranian women.
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Russian Imports Rebound as Economy Looks Set for Growth
After struggling through much of 2022 under heavy international sanctions, the Russian economy has rebounded in recent months, as importers found new avenues of trade to bring consumer goods and other products into the country.
An International Monetary Fund report issued this week said the Russian economy would likely grow by 0.3% in 2023, rather than shrinking by 2.3% as it had previously projected.
The United States and its allies reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with a harsh regime of sanctions and export controls that many expected to collapse the Russian economy. In addition, many international businesses sharply reduced their sales to Russia, while others ceased doing business in the country entirely.
New research suggests that alternate supply routes and the ability to substitute goods made in Russia-friendly countries, like China, for Western-made alternatives have brought Russian imports back to prewar levels.
Experts noted that the need to “transship” Western products through friendly third countries has driven up the prices Russians pay for many goods. Additionally, in many cases, Russians are being forced to settle for some lower-quality substitutes, especially in the consumer electronics space.
However, the possibility that widespread shortages within Russia will force the Kremlin to give up on its invasion of Ukraine in the near term looks increasingly remote.
Main goal of sanctions
Western sanctions on Russia were aimed primarily at the Russian military and were meant to make it difficult for the Kremlin to access the supplies and equipment, particularly advanced technology like microprocessors, necessary for the war effort in Ukraine.
“The Russian sanctions are not comprehensive,” Jeffrey J. Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told VOA. “They are designed to impair Russia’s military capability and make it difficult for the Russian regime to continue its military effort, both because of lack of resources over time, and because of growing civilian discontent.”
Russia has been allowed to continue selling many of its main export goods into the global market, including oil, gas, coal, fertilizers, uranium and food, providing cash to fund imports.
In addition to export controls on specific products, the U.S. and its allies levied significant sanctions on the Russian financial sector. This had the effect of complicating many trade-related transactions for products that were not, themselves, subject to sanctions.
Experts said that much of the rebound in trade volume has been the result of merchants finding viable workarounds that allow them to finance the flow of non-sanctioned goods.
Rebounding imports
A recent report from the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington nonprofit, found that while Russian imports plummeted in the months immediately after the invasion, the dollar value of imports had rebounded to near pre-war levels by September.
In the 12 months beginning in October 2021, exports to Russia from the European Union fell by $4.6 billion, or 52%. The U.S. and the United Kingdom, which had far less trade with Russia to begin with, nevertheless cut their exports to the country by 85% and 89%, respectively.
According to Silverado, the difference was made up by a number of countries that dramatically increased their exports to Russia, including China, Belarus, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Uzbekistan.
Additionally, the report found, “Exports from many other countries rebounded from their spring 2022 lows, and some post-Soviet states increased their trans-shipments of goods produced by multinational firms that no longer export the goods directly to Russia.”
For example, the report documents that after Apple and Samsung, two of the world’s largest makers of smartphones, stopped delivering their products to Russia, orders for their products eventually surged in Armenia and Kazakhstan, with the phones being shipped on to Russia.
‘Leakage’ expected
Experts said that while Russian imports of consumer goods may be approaching prewar levels, the blockade on military goods and advanced technology is still working reasonably well, if not perfectly.
Schott, of the Peterson Institute, said that sanctions are not “waterproof” and that all sanctions regimes experience some “leakage.”
“The longer sanctions are in place, the more time there is to try to figure out and negotiate workarounds — that happens everywhere,” he said. “If there’s enough economic incentive, people will take risks to profit from sanctions evasion.”
However, when it comes to military and high-tech gear, Schott said, “I’m not sure the leakage is comparable to what has happened in previous cases that have existed over time. I haven’t seen evidence of extensive violation of the sanctions.”
Measuring effectiveness
Bryan Early, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Albany, told VOA that even if some sanctioned products are making it through to Russia, the sanctions appear to have been broadly effective in that they have made it more difficult and expensive for Russia to acquire what it needs to continue to prosecute the war.
“Sanctions are never going to be perfect,” he said. “Your baseline is not, ‘Do they disrupt everything?’ It’s, ‘If the sanctions weren’t in place, how easily would these transactions be taking place? And how much more cheaply would they be taking place? And how much more reliable would those trade networks actually be?’”
Early referred to U.S. intelligence reports from last year that said Russia had been scavenging microchips from household appliances for use in military equipment.
“If one of the ways that the Russian government is getting around the multilateral sanctions on semiconductors is by importing additional washing machines through third parties, like Georgia, to use in their military products, yes, that’s a sign that sanctions are being evaded,” he said.
“But it’s also a sign that the sanctions are working very, very well, if the world’s second-largest largest military is importing semiconductors from washing machines through small regional neighbors,” he said.
New sanctions
On Wednesday, in a sign of some sanctions “leakage,” the U.S. Treasury Department barred trade with 22 individuals and companies that it accused of helping Russia’s military evade sanctions. The move was part of an ongoing effort “to methodically and intensively target sanctions evasion efforts around the globe, close down key backfilling channels, expose facilitators and enablers, and limit Russia’s access to revenue needed to wage its brutal war in Ukraine,” the department said in a press release.
Among others, the sanctions targeted Russian arms dealer Igor Zimenkov and his son, Jonatan Zimenkov, as well as several entities the department characterized as “front companies” that do business with the Zimenkovs.
“Russia’s desperate attempts to utilize proxies to circumvent U.S. sanctions demonstrate that sanctions have made it much harder and costlier for Russia’s military-industrial complex to resupply Putin’s war machine,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “It has become increasingly difficult for Russia’s military-industrial complex to resupply the Kremlin’s war machine, forcing it to rely on nefarious suppliers, such as Iran and the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]. By trying to use proxies to circumvent U.S. sanctions, Russia demonstrates that our sanctions are having impact. Our work will continue.”
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Chinese Lending at 13-Year Low; US Pledges Africa Investment
Recent visits to Africa by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen came as a new study found China’s overseas investments in the COVID-19 era are at a 13-year low. China has invested heavily in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative and the U.S. has also recently pledged investments, with analysts saying Washington is trying to compete with China for influence on the continent.
The report by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center found loan commitments from China’s two policy banks (China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China) totaled $3.7 billion in 2021. In contrast, from 2008 to 2021 that amount was $498 billion, an average of $35.6 billion a year.
China has struggled to recoup its money from several African countries and now has to participate in complicated debt restructuring negotiations. Currently, debt talks are happening in Zambia.
Asked if Beijing had been chastened by these experiences, causing the drop in loan commitments, senior academic researcher Rebecca Ray, who co-authored the paper, said that while China has stopped offering new loans to some countries that have been unable to pay existing debt, like Venezuela, it has also been finalizing negotiations on large future loans to another indebted nation, Pakistan.
“While China may be hesitating to ‘send good money after bad,’ in some cases of borrowers who are simply unable to repay, high existing debt levels don’t seem to be a complete deterrence for them,” she noted.
US critiques and pledges
In Africa, Thomas-Greenfield blamed China for indebting African countries. She also noted that while Qin Gang, China’s new foreign minister, was also on the continent recently, “what I heard from … people and leaders when I was there very clearly was that America is in their hearts, and they are extraordinarily appreciative of the African Leaders Summit that we just hosted and the efforts that we are making to engage more proactively on the continent of Africa.”
Washington pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa at the U.S.-Africa Summit in December.
Yellen also noted in her January 17-28 visit to Africa that Washington has many programs “that are oriented to help efforts to build infrastructure, and when we do that, we want to make sure that we don’t create the same problems that Chinese investment has sometimes created here.” She said Beijing was “a barrier” to global efforts to restructure Zambia’s massive debt.
Yellen’s comments drew a swift and cutting rebuke from China’s embassy in Zambia, which pointed to America’s own debt problems, and an opinion article in state media Xinhua that read, “The airports where the U.S. officials landed and the roads and bridges their convoys passed during their Africa visits were likely built in cooperation with Chinese companies.” The article ended by saying, “Africa should not become an arena for a great power rivalry.”
The conclusion stated by the Xinhua article echoed comments by China’s foreign minister who, during his January visit to Ethiopia, said: “The China-United States relationship should not be about a competitive one or a zero-sum game that enlarges one’s own gain at the expense of the other.
“Otherwise, it will only hurt both sides and even the world,” Qin said.
Transforming money spent
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s landmark Belt and Road initiative to bring infrastructure to developing countries is not gone altogether, the authors of the Boston University study said; it’s just transforming the way money is spent.
“This trend is emblematic of the ‘small is beautiful’ approach to Chinese economic engagement in recent years, which prioritizes smaller and more targeted projects,” the study said.
And that’s not necessarily bad news, said Ray, pointing out that “China’s recent ‘small is beautiful’ approach to overseas development finance emphasizes projects with smaller geographic footprints and lower risks to sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous communities.”
China has moved away from concentrating its lending on the extractions and pipelines sector, said the study, which found that since 2018 more money has gone to the transportation sector.
Still, the fact that “conditions in China and in host countries are less conducive to large amounts of development finance than they were a decade ago … is concerning, as the need for development finance is at an all-time high due to the polycrisis of financial instability, climate change and pandemic,” noted co-author Kevin P. Gallagher.
However, Harry Verhoeven, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University, who also has written on Chinese loans and debt, said, “I think it’s too early to tell whether China is really ready to switch full-scale to a ‘small is beautiful’ approach. … Especially in the African context this would require some major changes in the patterns of engagement that Beijing has prioritized since the late 1990s.”
He noted that “there is no question that the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s domestic financial woes and disillusionment with growing difficulties of African sovereigns to service their debts to Chinese lenders has led to a downscaling of new Chinese loans. … But questions can be raised regarding the administrative capacity and willingness of Chinese policy banks and other government institutions to manage a much broader (and more detailed) portfolio of smaller loans.”
Signs of Chinese economic rebound
There are signs that large-scale development lending could rebound. Since China reversed its zero-COVID-19 policy and reopened this year, its manufacturing, services and construction sectors expanded for the first time in four months.
While economists had expected slow growth in China this year, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have since upgraded their forecasts. The International Monetary Fund also raised its economic growth outlook for China this week, saying it expects the economy to grow by 5.2% in 2023.
But Ray told VOA she didn’t foresee that making much difference.
“We have already seen the availability of capital for China rebounding, so I doubt that the increased economic growth will change much. The Chinese government still has significant incentives to be supporting the liquidity of its domestic financial system,” she said.
China’s economy is trying to recover after the lengthy lockdowns during the zero-COVID-19 policy and wave of infections following the policy’s reversal.
As for influence overseas and in Africa, Ray said, “It is noteworthy that Yellen did not sign any major new agreements or announce any major new projects while in Africa. If the U.S. does step into the infrastructure finance gap left by China’s declining development finance, it may be more likely to emerge through multilateral fora.”
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Russia Developing Weapons to Target Critical Subsea Cables, Pipelines
Western naval forces are having to adapt to a new threat as Russia and other military powers develop new capabilities to target critical undersea infrastructure such as pipelines and cables.
The vulnerability of such infrastructure has long been recognized. Those concerns turned to reality in September last year, as the Nord Stream pipelines that carried gas from Russia to Germany ruptured spectacularly on the Baltic seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm, sending huge volumes of gas bubbling to the surface.
Swedish investigators found traces of explosives at the site. The West suspects Russia of sabotage. The Kremlin denies this and accuses Western nations of staging the attack.
“There has been a growing awareness of the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure, but the event in the Baltic Sea certainly brought the issue into sharp relief,” said analyst Sidharth Kaushal of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, author of a recent report titled Navies and Economic Warfare.
Subsea defense
Days after the incident, Britain announced plans to enhance its undersea defense capabilities.
“Our internet and energy are highly reliant on pipelines and cables,” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said October 2. “Russia makes no secret of its ability to target such infrastructure. So for that reason, I can announce we’ve recently committed to two specialist ships with the capability to keep our cables and pipelines safe.”
The first of those vessels is being fitted out by the British navy at a shipyard outside Liverpool and is due to enter service this year. It is designed to act as a “mother ship,” operating remote and autonomous systems for underwater surveillance and seabed warfare.
Millions of kilometers of undersea cables and pipelines carry the energy and data that power the global economy, Kaushal said. “A number of challengers to the West, Russia most notably, are developing bespoke capabilities to target precisely these vulnerabilities, things like special purpose submarines,” he told VOA.
Russia denies sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines. But observers say the Kremlin increasingly sees Western subsea infrastructure as a vulnerability. In December, President Vladimir Putin oversaw the launch of four new naval vessels, including two nuclear-powered submarines. “They have highly accurate weapons and robotic complexes,” Putin announced.
NATO
Faced with that threat, NATO and the European Union last month launched a joint task force on protecting critical infrastructure. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg outlined the alliance’s posture at a meeting of defense ministers in October.
“Any deliberate attack against allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response. … Hybrid and cyberattacks can trigger Article 5 [on collective self-defense], can constitute an armed attack against a NATO ally,” Stoltenberg said October 11.
The West must clarify its rules of engagement, analyst Kaushal said.
“What does one actually do when one observes, for example, a submarine tampering with critical national infrastructure, but not in a way that necessarily leads to an immediate loss of life?” Kaushal said.
“So actually, it’s more a question of how you change organizational practices to deal with this sort of activity.”
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Russia Developing Weapons to Target Critical Subsea Cables, Pipelines
Western naval forces are having to adapt to a new threat as adversaries develop new capabilities to target critical undersea infrastructure such as gas pipelines and cables. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Chinese Spy Balloon Spotted Over Western US, Pentagon Says
The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down because of the risk it could harm people on the ground, officials said Thursday.
A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon flying over sensitive sites to collect information. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, provided a brief statement on the issue, saying the government continues to track the balloon. He said it is “currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”
He said similar balloon activity has been seen in the past several years. He added that the U.S. took steps to ensure it did not collect sensitive information.
The defense official said the U.S. has “engaged” Chinese officials through multiple channels and communicated the seriousness of the matter.
The Pentagon announcement comes days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China. It’s not clear if this will affect his travel plans, which the State Department has not formally announced.
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Domestic Violence Order No Bar to Owning Guns, US Court Rules
A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest victory for gun rights advocates since a Supreme Court decision last June granting a broad right for people to carry firearms outside the home.
That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, announced a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.
In Thursday’s decision, U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson said banning people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society.”
But the judge, appointed by Donald Trump, said Bruen made such a consideration irrelevant, and that from a historical perspective the ban was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”
Prison sentence thrown out
The court threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Kennedale, Texas, home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021.
Rahimi had been under a restraining order since February 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.
The office of U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton in Dallas, which prosecuted Rahimi, had no immediate comment.
A federal public defender representing Rahimi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ruling affects three states
The 5th Circuit is based in New Orleans, and its decision applies in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
It had upheld the federal law last June 8, just over two weeks before the Bruen decision, but withdrew its opinion and ordered additional briefing.
In a concurrence, U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, also a Trump appointee, said the nation’s founders “firmly believed” in the government’s role in protecting people from violence and the right of individuals to bear arms, and that these principles “are not inconsistent but entirely compatible with one another.”
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