Tallinn, Estonia — A Russian court on Thursday sentenced a woman to 27 years in prison for a cafe blast that killed a prominent pro-war blogger after he was given a bust of himself that later exploded.

In a separate proceeding, a Moscow court convicted a former leader of separatist rebels in Ukraine who called President Vladimir Putin a coward of extremism and sentenced him to four years.

Darya Trepova, 26, was convicted by a court in St. Petersburg of carrying out a terrorist attack, illegal trafficking of explosive devices and forging documents in the April 2 blast at the cafe in which Vladlen Tatarsky was killed and 52 others were injured.

Tatarsky, 40, was an ardent supporter of the Kremlin’s military action in Ukraine and filed regular reports on the fighting from the front lines.

Trepova was seen on video presenting Tatarsky with the bust moments before the blast at the riverside cafe in the historic heart of Russia’s second-largest city where he was leading a discussion.

She insisted that she didn’t know the bust contained a bomb. Russian authorities have blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies for orchestrating the bombing. Authorities in Kyiv have not directly responded to the accusation.

The court also convicted Trepova’s acquaintance Dmitry Kasintsev of concealing a grave crime for sheltering her after the blast and sentenced him to 21 months in prison.

The Moscow court imposed a four-year sentence on Igor Girkin, who used the surname alias of Strelkov (shooter), was the most prominent leader of Russian-backed separatist fighters in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in 2014, when rebellion arose after the ouster of Ukraine’s Russia-allied president.

He briefly became the self-declared separatist government’s defense minister, but left the post in August 2014 after rebel forces shot down a Malaysian passenger airliner over Donetsk, killing all 298 people aboard. He was convicted in absentia of murder in the Netherlands, where the flight had originated, for his role.

He returned to Russia and became a nationalist commentator and activist. He supported launching Russia’s war in Ukraine, but sharply criticized authorities for being inept and indecisive in carrying out the fight.

Girkin called Putin a “nonentity” and a person of “cowardly mediocrity.” He was arrested in July on extremism charges and remained in custody since then.

His conviction reflects the high sensitivity of Russian authorities to criticism and opposition. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that sensitivity intensified sharply, with the passage of laws criminalizing statements and news reports that allegedly discredit the Russian military.

Two protesters calling for Girkin to be freed were detained by police outside the court building, Russian news agencies said.

Girkin’s sentence was considerable less harsh than those handed to some figures who have denounced the war, notably the 25-year sentence imposed on opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Treopva’s sentence is the longest imposed on a woman in modern Russia, according to the Mediazona website that reports on human rights and justice issues.

Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

Born in eastern Ukraine, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion arose in 2014, then joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

Tatarsky was known for his blustery pronouncements and ardent pro-war rhetoric.
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BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — Hungary’s parliamentary speaker said on Thursday there was no urgency in approving Sweden’s NATO membership bid after ratification by Turkey left only Budapest holding up the lengthy accession process.

Turkey’s general assembly, where President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling alliance holds a majority, voted 287-55 to approve the application that Sweden first made in 2022 to bolster its security in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden’s accession requires the formal approval of all 31 member states including Hungary, but approval by Turkey was widely considered the biggest remaining hurdle to overcome.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine, said on Wednesday he would urge lawmakers to approve Sweden’s accession at the first possible opportunity.

Parliament is not in session. The opposition Socialist party said this week it would call for an extraordinary session to approve Sweden’s NATO entry bid, stranded in the Hungarian legislature since mid-2022 despite repeated pledges by Orban to support it.

“I have no doubt that one of the opposition parties — who have consistently gone against Hungarian interests — will call for the (extraordinary) meeting, but this will likely fail,” Laszlo Kover, a founding member of Orban’s ruling Fidesz, told news website index.hu.

“I do not feel any particular urgency,” he said. “Moreover, I do not think there is an extraordinary situation.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged Orban on Wednesday to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession.

Despite Orban holding an iron grip on Fidesz, government ministers have repeatedly blamed the delays on grievances about Sweden’s bid among ruling party lawmakers, hardly any of whom have ever rebelled against Orban.
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washington — Depending on what kinds of weapons technology Moscow transfers to Pyongyang, the United States and South Korea may need to update their measures for dealing with North Korean threats, said analysts.  

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman, said the U.S. is watching “very closely” as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pursues advanced military capabilities from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kirby said at a press briefing on Tuesday that Kim’s ability to benefit from this relationship is concerning, but the U.S. and South Korean defensive posture on the Korean Peninsula “is appropriate to the risk.”

Since July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea, Pyongyang has been deepening its military ties with Moscow while escalating threats on the peninsula and calling for preparations to occupy South Korea if war breaks out.

North Korea fired cruise missiles into the waters off its western coast on Wednesday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It also began taking down a monument in Pyongyang symbolizing reunification with South Korea.

Putin and North Korean Ambassador Choe Son Hui discussed bilateral relations in Moscow on January 16, according to Tass, the Russian state-owned news agency. It quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov the next day saying Moscow and Pyongyang “intend to boost relations in all areas, including sensitive ones.”

The most worrisome technology North Korea could seek from Russia would enable Pyongyang to miniaturize nuclear warheads to fit into a ballistic missile cone, survive reentry and hit targets in South Korea, Japan and North America, said Robert Peters, a fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation.

“This technology is the last and the most critical step in North Korea fielding a credible nuclear strike capability and is well within Russia’s ability to share,” Peters told VOA via email.

He continued, “South Korea and the United States should prepare to face a North Korea that is technically more capable than it has been before.”

At an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on January 18, Pranay Vaddi, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, warned that the North Korean threat “could drastically change over the coming decade” as a result of military cooperation with Moscow.

“What we are seeing between Russia and North Korea is an unprecedented level of cooperation in the military sphere,” Vaddi said.

Last year, Putin turned to North Korea to replenish Russia’s weapons stockpile, which has been drawn down severely since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He met with Kim in Russia in September to discuss possible arms dealings.

In October, Washington released satellite photos showing North Korea shipping more than 1,000 containers of weapons to Russia in violation of sanctions.

Artillery and missiles North Korea provided to Russia have been turning up in Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Monday.

John Erath, senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said Russian technology transfers “would not so much change the threat as add to the atmosphere of tension on the peninsula.”

But he told VOA via email, “It will be important to keep defense and deterrence arrangements updated.”

In November, the U.S. and South Korea held an annual Security Consultative Meeting in Seoul, where they announced the revision of the 2013 Tailored Deterrence Strategy “in recognition of the changing security environment.

Their meeting followed a summit that U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held in April in Washington, where they announced the Washington Declaration aimed at strengthening nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.

Gary Samore, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said in a telephone interview that weapons technology Pyongyang could obtain from Moscow could embolden it to raise threats but would not be a game changer requiring the revision of “fundamental deterrence” on the Korean Peninsula.

Samore, a professor at Brandeis University, thinks Pyongyang could seek enhanced technology to include surface-to-air missiles, spy satellite collection capabilities and advanced military fighter aircraft.

He told VOA that although Moscow would be “happy whenever there is trouble for the U.S.,” it would not encourage Pyongyang to cause conflict on the Korean Peninsula that would “jeopardize the flow of weapons to Russia” for its war in Ukraine.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union on Wednesday unveiled plans to strengthen the bloc’s economic security, including measures to protect sensitive technology from falling into the hands of geopolitical rivals such as China. 

Brussels has bolstered its armory of trade restrictions to tackle what it deems to be risks to European economic security, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and global trade tensions. 

The fallout from the war in Ukraine hit Europe particularly hard, forcing the bloc to find alternative energy sources. Now, it wants to avoid a similar over-reliance on China, which dominates in green technology production and critical raw materials. 

On Wednesday, EU officials outlined an economic security package containing five initiatives, including toughening rules on the screening of foreign direct investment and launching discussions on coordination around export controls. 

The EU has already proposed new rules that it says are necessary to keep the bloc competitive during the global transition to clean technology and to bring more production to Europe. 

“In this competition, Europe cannot just be the playground for bigger players, we need to be able to play ourselves,” said the EU’s most senior competition official, Margrethe Vestager. 

“By doing what we are proposing to do, we can de-risk our economic interdependencies,” she told reporters in Brussels. 

Wednesday’s package is part of the EU’s focus on de-risking but not decoupling from China, pushed strongly by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

“The change in EU-China relations has been the driving force of this embrace of economic security, which is something extremely new for the EU,” said Mathieu Duchatel, director of international studies at the Institut Montaigne think tank. 

“Focus on riskier transactions” 

EU officials also pushed back on claims that the package had been watered down and that some of the initiatives would kick in too late. 

One of the initiatives is to revise the EU’s regulation on screening foreign direct investment, but others recommend further discussions, raising concerns that action could come too late. 

For example, the commission said it wanted to promote further discussions on how to better support research and development of technologies that can be used for civil and defense purposes. 

The EU also wants all member states to establish screening mechanisms, which could later lead to investments being blocked if they are believed to pose a risk. 

“I would not agree that the package is watered down,” the EU’s trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, said. 

He later said the EU wanted “to focus on riskier transactions and spend less time and resources on low-risk ones.” 

The negotiations are likely to prove a delicate balancing act for the commission. Investment and export control decisions are up to national governments; therefore, it must avoid overstepping its mark. 
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