PRISTINA, KOSOVO — Kosovo’s Interior minister Xhelal Svecla said Saturday that police had arrested eight people after an explosion hit a canal that sends water to its two main power plants, an incident Pristina labeled a “terrorist act” by neighboring Serbia. 

“Somehow we managed to fix the damage, arrest the suspects and confiscate a huge arsenal of weapons,” Svecla said during a live-streamed news conference.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic denied what he said were “baseless accusations” about Belgrade’s involvement in the incident, which occurred Friday around 7 p.m. (1800 GMT).  

Police commander Gazmend Hoxha said those arrested “are suspected of inciting, organizing and even executing these recent terrorist acts and in particular the one in the canal of Iber Lepenc.” 

Hoxha said an initial investigation had shown that between 15 and 20 kilos of explosives were used in the attack. 

Police raided 10 locations, confiscating more than 200 military uniforms, six shoulder-fired rocket launchers, long weapons, pistols and ammunition, he said. 

Police said most of the people arrested belong to the local Serb organization Civilna Zastita (Civil Protection), which the government in Kosovo has declared as a terrorist organization. 

Reuters was unable to contact the group. 

Tensions with Serbia 

The explosion has increased tensions between the two Balkan countries. Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 almost a decade after a guerrilla uprising against its rule, but Serbia has not recognized Kosovo as an independent state. 

Relations remain especially frayed in the north of the country where the blast occurred, and where the Serb minority refuses to recognize Kosovo’s statehood and still sees Belgrade as their capital. 

Kosovo’s Security Council, which held emergency talks early Saturday, said it had activated armed forces to prevent similar attacks.  

Security was already heightened after two recent attacks where hand grenades were hurled at a police station and municipality building in northern Kosovo where ethnic Serbians live.  

“The Security Council has approved additional measures to strengthen security around critical facilities and services such as bridges, transformer stations, antennas, lakes, canals,” the council said in a statement Saturday.  

NATO, which has maintained a peacekeeping force in Kosovo since 1999, condemned the attack in a statement Saturday. Its personnel have provided security to the canal and the surrounding area since the blast, it said.  

A Reuters reporter visited the site Saturday, where silt had poured through a hole in the canal’s concrete wall. Workers had installed a series of large tubes to bypass the leak.  

Power supplies appeared to be largely intact, but the drinking water supply was disrupted in some areas.  

Energy minister Artane Rizvanolli said Kosovo was coordinating with Albania’s power company to provide more electricity. She said water will be trucked to affected areas. 
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TBILISI, GEORGIA — Georgia on Saturday said authorities arrested 107 people during a second day of protests sparked by the government’s decision to delay European Union membership talks.

The Black Sea nation has been rocked by turmoil since the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed victory in an October 26 parliamentary election that the pro-EU opposition said was fraudulent.

The Interior Ministry said 107 people were detained for “disobedience to lawful police orders and petty hooliganism.”

“Throughout the night … protesters threw various objects, including stones, pyrotechnics, glass bottles and metal items, at law enforcement officers,” it said, adding that “10 employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were injured.”

The ministry earlier said 32 police officers were wounded and 43 protestors detained on Thursday.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s statement Thursday that Georgia will not seek to open accession talks with the European Union until 2028 ignited a furious reaction from the opposition and two days of protests.

He later accused the opposition and the EU ambassador to Georgia of distorting his words. He insisted membership in the bloc “by 2030” remains his “top priority.”

‘Resistance movement’

On Friday, AFP reporters saw riot police fire water cannons and tear gas at pro-EU protesters gathered outside the parliament in Tbilisi, who tossed eggs and fireworks.

Clashes broke out later between protesters and police, who moved in to clear the area outside parliament, beating demonstrators, some of whom threw objects.

Independent TV station Pirveli said one of its journalists was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Protests were also held in other cities across Georgia on Friday, independent TV station Mtavari reported.

Pro-Western opposition parties are boycotting the new parliament, while President Salome Zurabishvili has sought to annul the election results through the country’s constitutional court.

In a televised address to the nation on Friday evening, the pro-Western president — who is at loggerheads with the ruling party — said: “The resistance movement has begun. … I stand in solidarity with it. We will remain united until Georgia achieves its goals: to return to its European path, secure new elections.”

‘Brutal repression’

After the October vote, a group of Georgia’s leading election monitors said they had evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud.

Brussels has demanded an investigation into what it said were “serious irregularities” reported by election monitors.

Georgian Dream MPs voted unanimously Thursday for Kobakhidze to continue as prime minister, even as the opposition boycotted parliament, which faces a serious legitimacy crisis.

“Police actions in Tbilisi mark another punitive attack on the right to peaceful assembly,” said Amnesty International.

France, Britain, Ukraine, Poland, Sweden and Lithuania were among the countries to voice concern.

The Council of Europe condemned what it described as “brutal repression,” urging Georgia to remain “faithful to European values.”

In recent years, critics accused Georgian Dream — in power for more than a decade — of moving the country away from Europe and closer to Russia.
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REYKJAVIK, ICELAND — Icelanders will elect a new parliament Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call early elections.

This is Iceland’s sixth general election since the 2008 financial crisis devastated the economy of the North Atlantic island nation and ushered in a new era of political instability.

Opinion polls suggest the country may be in for another upheaval, with support for the three governing parties plunging. Benediktsson, who was named prime minister in April following the resignation of his predecessor, struggled to hold together the unlikely coalition of his conservative Independence Party with the centrist Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement.

Iceland, a nation of about 400,000 people, is proud of its democratic traditions, describing itself as arguably the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy. The island’s parliament, the Althingi, was founded in 930 by the Norsemen who settled the country.

Here’s what to look for in the contest.

How does the election work?

Voters will choose 63 members of the Althingi in an election that will allocate seats both by regional constituencies and proportional representation. Parties need at least 5% of the vote to win seats in parliament. Eight parties were represented in the outgoing parliament, and 10 parties are contesting this election.

Turnout is traditionally high by international standards, with 80% of registered voters casting ballots in the 2021 parliamentary election.

Why now?

A windswept island near the Arctic Circle, Iceland normally holds elections during the warmer months of the year. But on Oct. 13 Benediktsson decided his coalition couldn’t last any longer, and he asked President Halla Tómasdóttir to dissolve the Althingi.

“The weakness of this society is that we have no very strong party and we have no very strong leader of any party,’” said Vilhjálmur Bjarnson, a former member of parliament. “We have no charming person with a vision … That is very difficult for us.”

Why is Iceland’s politics so fractured?

The splintering of Iceland’s political landscape came after the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted years of economic upheaval after its debt-swollen banks collapsed.

The crisis led to anger and distrust of the parties that had traditionally traded power back and forth, and prompted the creation of new parties ranging from the environment focused Left-Green Alliance to the Pirate Party, which advocates direct democracy and individual freedoms.

“This is one of the consequences of the economic crash,” said Eva H. Önnudóttir, a professor of political science at the University of Iceland. “It’s just the changed landscape. Parties, especially the old parties, have maybe kind of been hoping that we would go back to how things were before, but that’s not going to happen.”

What are the issues?

Like many Western countries, Iceland has been buffeted by the rising cost of living and immigration pressures.

Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 10.2% in February 2023, fueled by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While inflation slowed to 5.1% in October, that is still high compared with neighboring countries. The U.S. inflation rate stood at 2.6% last month, while the European Union’s rate was 2.3%.

Iceland is also struggling to accommodate a rising number of asylum-seekers, creating tensions within the small, traditionally homogenous country. The number of immigrants seeking protection in Iceland jumped to more than 4,000 in each of the past three years, compared with a previous average of less than 1,000.

What about the volcano?

Repeated eruptions of a volcano in the southwestern part of the country have displaced thousands of people and strained public finances. One year after the first eruption forced the evacuation of the town of Grindavik, many residents still don’t have secure housing, leading to complaints that the government has been slow to respond.

But it also added to a shortage of affordable housing exacerbated by Iceland’s tourism boom. Young people are struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder at a time when short-term vacation rentals have reduced the housing stock available for locals, Önnudóttir said.

“The housing issue is becoming a big issue in Iceland,” she said.
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HALIFAX, CANADA — With the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding this month, the United States, Canada and Finland are moving ahead on what military analysts see as a belated but much-needed answer to a mounting Russian and Chinese threat in the Arctic Ocean. 

Under the arrangement whimsically labeled the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, the three nations have agreed to share research, knowledge and capabilities in building a still unspecified number of icebreakers capable of enforcing each nation’s sovereignty in an ocean that has become increasingly navigable because of climate change. 

While the retreat of the polar icecap is steadily opening the region for commercial traffic and mineral exploration, the ICE Pact is largely driven by concerns over the Arctic capabilities of an increasingly hostile Russia and the rapidly growing presence of China. 

“Up until this past summer, you would expect one Chinese research vessel in the Arctic. This past summer, there were five,” said U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan at a security forum in the Canadian city of Halifax this month. 

“This summer they were operating in tandem surface action groups with both China and Russia, 60 to 70 miles off the coast of Alaska,” Fagan added. “If we were to see that same pattern of behavior off the East or the West Coast of the [contiguous] United States, it would have the attention of the United States.” 

Speaking at the same forum, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair said his country has been watching “the activities of two particular adversaries, China and Russia, in the area, which are deeply concerning to us and, frankly, their aggression and assertions in the region are somewhat different.” 

Blair said that in passages through the Arctic, the Russians “have not demonstrated respect to the international rules-based order and respect for other countries sovereignty and economic interests.” 

China, he said, approaches the Arctic in two ways, the first being significant investment in critical and other infrastructure. 

“And the second one is through what they term scientific research. And we’ve seen a huge increase in their presence in the Arctic. And it’s not just scientific research. They’re mapping the sea floor. They’re gathering intelligence,” he said. 

Experts say Russia is far ahead of the United States and its NATO allies in icebreaker capability, largely because it has for years been developing a commercial shipping route across its Arctic coast known as the Northern Sea Route. The route is of particular interest to China as a shortcut for its lucrative trade with Europe. 

But Russian icebreaking is no longer limited to economic development, according to Heather Exner-Pirot, a global fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Polar Institute. 

“Its first armed combat icebreaker, the Ivan Papanin, is in sea trials and scheduled to join Russia’s Northern Fleet by the end of 2024,” she wrote on the Wilson Center website in July. 

“And China is quickly gaining capacity, having commissioned its fourth polar-capable vessel, the Jidi, last week,” added Exner-Pirot, who is also the director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute. 

If the Western alliance hopes to match Russian and Chinese capabilities in the Arctic, it has a lot of catching up to do. 

While precise counts vary according to how one defines a polar-capable icebreaker, the CIA World Factbook says Russia has 18 such vessels of varying classes, part of a world-leading fleet of 46 icebreakers including the world’s only two nuclear-powered icebreakers. It has 11 more planned or under construction, according to a chart prepared by the U.S. Coast Guard Office of Waterways and Ocean Policy. 

Icebreakers – The World Factbook 

Canada ranks second in the world with 18 total icebreakers, according to the CIA World Factbook, but only one is suitable for polar missions. The others are mostly deployed to maintain commercial shipping channels through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes in winter. Canada has two more polar icebreakers under construction and another five planned. 

Finland has at least eight polar-capable icebreakers, according to most assessments, and uses them mainly to clear ice around its Baltic Sea ports. It is also regarded as the world leader in the design and construction of icebreakers but has been unable to sell them to its main customer, Russia, since that country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its expertise will be critical to the ICE Pact program. 

The United States has only two operational polar-capable vessels, both of which are nearing the end of their lifespan, a senior administration official told Reuters earlier this year. A third vessel is being cannibalized for parts. The U.S. currently has three more polar-capable icebreakers planned and hopes to secure funding for an additional three, according to a RAND Corporation report. 

The U.S. Coast Guard Is Building an Icebreaker Fleet: What Comes Next? Issues and Challenges  

“While Russia has steadily expanded its world-leading fleet, and China is making significant inroads, Canada and the U.S. have let their icebreakers age and their shipbuilding capacity atrophy,” Exner-Pirot wrote in her Wilson Center article. 

“Even with the recent resolve to reverse trend and commit billions in new dollars to icebreakers, previous neglect has led to shipbuilding programs that are frequently over time and over budget,” she wrote. “The ICE Pact aims to turn the ship around.” 

Deep-water ports where the West’s new icebreakers can take on provisions and fuel may be an even tougher problem to solve. 

“Russia also has 17 deep-water ports on that [Arctic] Ocean, Canada has none, and so we need to do better,” Blair said at the Halifax International Security Forum. “They also have significant additional capabilities in icebreakers and military presence in the region.” 

Canada does hope to open a deep-water naval facility soon at Nanisivik, at the north end of Baffin Island, which would allow it to command the entrance to the Northwest Passage across Canada’s Arctic. But the facility is 10 years behind schedule as a result of logistical and environmental delays. 

Due to escalating costs, plans for the facility were scaled back to make it operational for only four months a year rather than 12. The station is primarily intended for use as a refueling station for vessels patrolling Arctic Sea routes. 

It remains unclear how many new vessels will be built under the ICE Pact or how soon they will be completed, though it is expected that each of the three participants will send the work to shipyards in its own country. 

Finnish shipyards are said to be capable of building an icebreaker within two years, but progress in the United States and Canada has often stretched out much longer. 

At the Halifax forum, U.S. Admiral Fagan brushed off a mischievous suggestion that, given the rate at which the Arctic ice pack is retreating, by the time the new icebreakers are completed they may no longer be needed. 

“The ability to create year-round presence [in the Arctic] from a sovereignty and defense standpoint requires heavy icebreakers,” she said. “It requires it now and into the foreseeable future. And so, this is not a waste there, but we need to accelerate. We need to continue the partnership.” 
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PRISTINA, KOSOVO — An explosion Friday evening damaged a canal in northern Kosovo supplying water to two coal-fired power plants that generate nearly all of the country’s electricity, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said, blaming what he called “a terrorist act” by neighboring Serbia.

There were no immediate reports of injuries and the cause of the blast, which also impacted drinking water supplies, was not clear. Serbian officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Reuters found no immediate evidence of Belgrade’s involvement.

“This is a criminal and terrorist attack with the aim to destroy our critical infrastructure,” Kurti said in a televised address. He said that some of the country could be without power if the problem is not fixed by morning.

In a sign of ethnic tensions between the two Balkan countries, Kurti echoed Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani by blaming Serbian criminal gangs without providing proof.

Earlier on Friday, Kosovo police announced increased security measures after two recent attacks where hand grenades were hurled at a police station and municipality building in northern Kosovo where ethnic Serbians live. It was not clear if the incidents were linked.

Local media showed pictures of part of the canal destroyed and leaking water and a heavy police presence at the site.

Faruk Mujka, the head of water company Ibar-Lepenci, told local news portal Kallxo that an explosive device was thrown into the canal and damaged the wall of a bridge.

He said the water supply, which also feeds drinking water to the capital, Pristina, must be halted to fix the problem as soon as possible since it was the main channel for supplying Kosovo Energy Corporation, the country’s main power provider.

Independence for ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo came in 2008, almost a decade after a guerrilla uprising against Serbian rule. However, tensions persist, mainly in the north where the Serb minority refuses to recognize Kosovo’s statehood and still sees Belgrade as their capital.

The EU’s Kosovo ambassador, Aivo Orav, condemned the attack that he said was already “depriving considerable parts of Kosovo from water supply.”  
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washington — The U.S. ratings agency Moody’s downgraded its outlook for Hungary’s government debt Friday citing “institutional and governance weaknesses” and concerns its antagonistic relationship with the EU could have financial consequences.

Hungary is a recipient of substantial amounts of funding from the European Union, which are conditional on meeting certain criteria, including adherence to the rule of law.

The country’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has clashed with Brussels on a range of issues in recent years, some of which could see it lose out on those EU funds, Moody’s indicated in a note explaining its decision.

“Our decision to change the outlook to negative (from stable) reflects downside risks related to the quality of Hungary’s institutions and governance,” Moody’s analysts wrote in a note explaining their decision.

What that means, they said, is that Hungary could ultimately lose out on a “substantial” amount of EU money “because it does not meet the conditions for the release of these funds.”

“In turn, this could lower trend GDP growth and weaken fiscal and debt metrics,” they added.

In the same note, Moody’s affirmed Hungary’s investment grade foreign- and local-currency credit rating of Baa2.

Moody’s said that the total EU funds allocated to Hungary were equivalent to around 3.4% of economic output per year.

Given the ongoing “difficult negotiations” between Hungary and the EU, Moody’s noted there were “elevated risks that Hungary will miss out on a substantial amount” of some of that funding.
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