WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday held an omnibus press conference at his Florida estate, where he explained his stances on key foreign policy issues as he prepares to take office in two weeks.

He forcefully called for the release of hostages seized in Israel more than a year ago by militant group Hamas, saying, emphatically — six times — that “all hell will break loose” otherwise.

The Palestinian group’s stunning terror attack on civilians in Israel sparked a brutal conflict that has since inflamed the region and killed tens of thousands of civilians.

His Middle East envoy had, moments before, joined Trump at the podium to brief reporters on his recent high-level talks in the region, saying that his team was “on the verge” of a deal and that he would travel back in coming days.

“I don’t want to hurt your negotiation,” Trump said to Steve Witkoff. “But if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone.”

On Ukraine, he expressed interest in meeting with Russia’s leader and repeated his vow to get the conflict in Ukraine ”straightened out.” Trump has not explained how he would do this.

When asked about a key demand in Ukraine’s peace plan — that it be allowed to join NATO — Trump said, “My view is that it was always understood” that Ukraine would not be admitted to the security alliance.

He repeated his tariff threats against Canada and Mexico and his line that Canada should be a U.S. state, and he floated a name change, saying: “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”

Thessalia Merivaki, an associate teaching professor at Georgetown University, said Trump often uses bluster as a strategy.

“So, Trump has a record of just floating controversial ideas and positions to attract attention and generate interest and media coverage,” she said.

Foreign policy

Trump has not said how the United States will acquire control of Greenland, the large North American island that is an autonomous territory of Denmark. On Tuesday, he repeated his stance that “we need them for economic security.”

When asked directly if he would commit to not use military or economic coercion to back his increasingly voluble desire for control of Greenland and, also, the Panama Canal, Trump replied: “I can’t assure you on either of those two.”

Trump has accused Panama of violating the treaty under which the U.S. ceded control of the famous canal more than four decades ago, under then-President Jimmy Carter.

“Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake,” Trump said. “Giving that away was a horrible thing, and I believe that’s why Jimmy Carter lost the election.”

Trump added that he liked Carter “as a man.” He is expected to attend Carter’s national funeral on Thursday in Washington. President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy.

First day and beyond

Trump also said he would be “making major pardons” on his first day in office, when asked about his previous vow to issue clemency to some of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in connection to the riot on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

He also repeated past commitments to loosen what he called the “quagmire” of U.S. environmental regulations and smooth the path for billionaire investors.

He described his reelection victory as a “landslide” for winning the Electoral College and the popular vote, although official results show he did not win the majority of the ballots, as third-party candidates shaved off votes. He promised to have future election results counted earlier on election night.

He repeated his vow to “drill, baby drill” on his first day in office by reversing Biden’s recent orders seeking to protect against offshore drilling.

He accused Biden of botching foreign policy, saying, “Now I’m going into a world that’s burning.”

Trump will assume office Jan. 20.

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Russia’s military said Monday its forces captured an important town in eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials cited tens of thousands of Russian casualties in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its control of the town of Kurakhove after several months of fighting for the logistics hub will allow the Russian military to more quickly advance elsewhere in the Donetsk region.

Ukrainian officials did not confirm the loss of Kurakhove on Monday, with the military’s General Staff saying in a late Monday report that Russian forces had launched attacks on Ukrainian positions in the town.

Russian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday that the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, which began five months ago, had caused 38,000 Russian military casualties.

“The Russians have deployed their strongest units to Kursk, including soldiers from North Korea. Importantly, all this manpower cannot now be redirected to other fronts – neither to the Donetsk region, nor against Sumy, the Kharkiv region or Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier Monday that North Korea and China are the “biggest ongoing drivers” allowing Russia to carry out its war in Ukraine, and that security assurances will need to be a part of potential future negotiations ending the conflict.

Speaking during a visit to South Korea, Blinken said North Korean supplies of artillery, ammunition and troops, along with Chinese support for Russia’s military industrial base are giving the Russian military the backing it needs to continue carrying out the fight it started in February 2022.

He said North Korea is already seeing a return on its involvement in the conflict in the form of Russian military equipment and training for North Korea troops.

“We believe it has the intent to share space and satellite technology with the DPRK,” Blinken said.

With only two weeks left in the Biden administration, the United States has been rushing to send remaining authorized aid to Ukraine amid uncertainty about how President-elect Donald Trump may approach the war.

Blinken said Monday the U.S. has been trying to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself, and to have the “strongest possible hand” at a future negotiating table with Russia.

“If there is going to be, at some point, a ceasefire, it’s not going to be, in Putin’s mind, ‘game over’,” Blinken said. “His imperial ambitions remain, and what he will seek to do is to rest, to refit, and eventually to re-attack.”

Blinken said it is necessary to have an “adequate deterrent in place so that he doesn’t do that, so that he thinks twice – three times – before engaging in any re-aggression.”

Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 79 of the 128 drones that Russian forces deployed overnight in attack targeting multiple Ukrainian regions. 

 

The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions, the Ukrainian air force said.

Officials in Cherkasy reported damage to residential buildings and a grain warehouse from falling drone debris.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed 12 Ukrainian aerial drones, all in areas along the Russia-Ukraine border.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, said the attacks injured three people and damaged several residential buildings.

Some information for this report was provided by from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Paris — A trial of France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 co-defendants started Monday over alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by the government of then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Sarkozy, who served as president from 2007 to 2012, did not speak to the press at arrival. He has denied any wrongdoing.

He faces charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of embezzlement of public funds and criminal association, punished by up to 10 years in prison. The trial is scheduled to run until April 10.

The Libyan case, the biggest and possibly most shocking of several scandals involving Sarkozy, is scheduled to run until April 10, with a verdict expected at a later date.

The trial involves 11 other defendants, including three former ministers. Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, accused of having played the role of intermediary, has fled in Lebanon and is not expected to appear at the Paris court.

Sarkozy is looking forward to the hearings “with determination,” his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said in a statement.

“There is no Libyan financing of the campaign,” the statement said. “We want to believe the court will have the courage to examine the facts objectively, without being guided by the nebulous theory that poisoned the investigation.”

Gadhafi’s alleged agreement

The case emerged in March 2011, when a Libyan news agency reported that the Gadhafi government had financed Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. In an interview, Gadhafi himself said “it’s thanks to us that he reached the presidency. We provided him with the funds that allowed him to win,” without providing any amount or other details.

Sarkozy, who had welcomed Gadhafi to Paris with great honors in 2007, became one of the first Western leaders to push for a military intervention in Libya in March 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world. Gadhafi was killed by opposition fighters in October that same year, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

The next year, French online news site Mediapart published a document said to be a note from the Libyan secret services, mentioning Gadhafi’s agreement to provide Sarkozy’s campaign 50 million euros in financing.

Sarkozy strongly rejected the accusations, calling the document a “blatant fake” and filing complaints for forgery, concealment and spreading false news.

However, French investigative magistrates eventually said in 2016 the document has all the characteristics of an authentic one, although there is no definitive evidence that such a transaction took place.

The official cost for Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was 20 million euros.

Accusations of witness tampering

French investigators scrutinized numerous trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy, then the interior minister, between 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff Claude Guéant. They also noted dozens of meetings between Guéant and Takieddine, a key player in major French military contracts abroad.

The investigation gained traction when Takieddine told news site Mediapart in 2016 that he had delivered three suitcases from Libya containing millions in cash to the French Interior Ministry.

However, Takieddinne reversed his statement four years later.

Since then, a separate investigation has been launched into alleged witness tampering as magistrates suspect an attempt to pressure Takieddine in order to clear Sarkozy. Sarkozy and his wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were given preliminary charges as financial prosecutors said the former president is suspected of “benefitting from corruptly influencing” Takieddine.

11 other defendants

The other accused are three former French ministers, including Guéant, and a former adviser close to Sarkozy.

Like Takieddine, Franco-Algerian businessman Alexandre Djouhri is accused of having been an intermediary.

The case also involves Gadhafi’s former chief of staff and treasurer Bashir Saleh, who sought refuge in France during the Libyan civil war then moved to South Africa, where he survived a shooting in 2018, before settling in the United Arab Emirates.

Other defendants include two Saudi billionaires, a former Airbus executive and a former banker accused of having played a role in the alleged money transfers.

Shukri Ghanem, Gadhafi’s former oil minister who was also suspected, was found dead in the Danube River in Vienna in 2012 in unclear circumstances. French investigators were able to find Ghanem’s notebook, which is believed to document payments made by Libya.

Gadhafi’s spy chief and brother-in-law Abdullah al-Senoussi told investigative judges millions have indeed been provided to support Sarkozy’s campaign. Accused of war crimes, he is now imprisoned in Libya.

Sarkozy convicted in 2 other cases

Sarkozy has been convicted in two other scandals.

France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, last month upheld a conviction against Sarkozy of corruption and influence peddling while he was the head of state. He was sentenced to one year in house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The case was revealed as investigative judges were listening to wiretapped phone conversations during the Libya inquiry.

In February last year, an appeals court in Paris found Sarkozy guilty of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 reelection bid.
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London — Heavy snow and freezing rain brought widespread disruptions across Europe on Sunday, particularly in the U.K. and Germany, with several major airports forced to suspend flights.

With the weather set to stay inclement on Sunday in the U.K., there are concerns that many rural communities, particularly in the north of England, could be cut off, with up to 40 centimeters (15 inches) of snow on the ground above 300 meters (985 feet).

The National Grid, which oversees the country’s electricity network, said it had been working to restore power after outages across the country. Power cuts were reported in the English cities of Birmingham and Bristol, and Cardiff, Wales.

Many sporting events have already been postponed, though the heavyweight Premier League fixture between rivals Liverpool and Manchester United is on, following an inspection at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium and of local conditions.

Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport and Manchester Airport had to close runways overnight, but operations were returning back to normal Sunday. Leeds Bradford Airport took longer to get flights back in the air.

The road network was heavily impacted too on what would have been a very busy day with many families returning home from the Christmas and New Year’s break, and students heading back to universities.

Many roads had been preemptively closed by local authorities, but stranded vehicles and collisions have caused disruption elsewhere.

Several U.K. train services were canceled, with National Rail warning of disruptions continuing into the workweek.

Britain’s main weather forecaster, the Met Office, says sleet and snow will continue to push north Sunday and will be heaviest in northern England and into southern Scotland. After experiencing freezing rain, which occurs when super-cold rain freezes on impact, the south will turn milder. The Environment Agency has also issued eight flood warnings across southern England on the Taw and Avon rivers.

Snow and ice were also causing havoc in Germany, where a bout of wintry weather is spreading from the southwest. Authorities have issued black ice warnings for drivers and pedestrians, advising people to stay home where possible.

Frankfurt airport canceled 120 of its 1,090 planned takeoffs and landings Sunday, according to the Fraport press office. At Munich airport, only one runway was open while the other one was being cleared.

In Baden-Wuerttemberg, eight people were injured when a bus skidded off the road near the town of Hemmingen. Long-distance train connections also experienced irregularities in the Frankfurt area.
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Russia said Sunday that Ukraine has launched a new counterattack in the western Kursk region aimed at repelling Russian and North Korean troops trying to retake territory that Kyiv’s forces captured last August. 

The Russian defense ministry said Kyiv deployed “an assault group consisting of two tanks, a mine clearing vehicle, and twelve armored combat vehicles with paratroops towards Berdin village.” 

Moscow said its “artillery and aviation of the North group of (Russian) forces defeated the assault group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” although news accounts said the outcome of the fighting was uncertain.  

“Russia is getting what it deserves,” Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said commenting on the recent reports. 

The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said on Telegram that “defense forces are working” in the area. 

“In the Kursk region, the Russians are very worried because they were attacked from several directions, and it was a surprise for them,” he said. 

Ukrainian and Western accounts say that Russia has deployed about 11,000 North Korean troops in the Kursk region, although Moscow has neither confirmed nor denied their presence. 

Ukraine took the land August 6 and has held on since then even as Russia has gained territory in Ukraine’s eastern region and currently holds about a fifth of the country as the war nears the three-year mark next month. If Ukraine can hold on to the Kursk territory, it could give Kyiv a bargaining chip in any eventual peace talks with Russia. 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said he would resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict before he is inaugurated on January 20, but he has not said how and there is no indication of any settlement in the coming days. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses in the Kursk fighting. 

“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroops,” Zelenskyy said. “This is significant.” 

Zelenskyy provided no specific details. A battalion can vary in size but is generally made up of several hundred troops. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in response to a question at his marathon annual phone-in last month, said that Russia would force Ukrainian forces out of Kursk but declined to set a date for when this would happen. 

On the battlefront Sunday, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 61 out of 103 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack, the other 42 were reported lost — likely due to electronic jamming. Russia said it had destroyed five Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.  

Some material in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni flew to Florida to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, as the key European leader sought to buttress ties with Trump before his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort welcomed Meloni with applause after an introduction by the president-elect, according to videos shared on social media by reporters and others.

Her trip comes days before she is to meet U.S. President Joe Biden during a visit to Rome from Thursday to Jan. 12. Trump defeated Biden in the November election and is preparing his return to the White House.

While no details of their meeting have been disclosed, Meloni had planned to talk with Trump about Russia’s war in Ukraine, trade issues, the Middle East and the plight of an Italian journalist detained in Tehran, according to Italian media reports.

Meloni’s office declined to comment on the reports.

She is seen as a potentially strong partner for Trump given her conservative credentials and the stability of the right-wing coalition she heads in Italy. She has also forged a close relationship with billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, a close Trump ally who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to help him win the election.

“This is very exciting. I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the Mar-a-Lago crowd, according to a media pool report. “She’s really taken Europe by storm.”

Trump and Meloni then sat down for a screening of a documentary questioning the criminal investigations and legal scrutiny faced by John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who was central to Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

One of the biggest challenges facing Meloni is the arrest of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala in Iran on Dec. 19.

Sala was detained three days after Mohammad Abedini, an Iranian businessman, was arrested at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone parts that Washington says were used in a 2023 attack that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. Iran has denied involvement in the attack.

On Friday, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Italy’s ambassador over Abedini’s detention, Iranian state media reported.

Meloni became the latest in the handful of foreign leaders who have visited Trump in Florida since the Nov. 5 election. He has met with Argentinian President Javier Milei, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 
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Russia-appointed officials in Moscow-occupied Crimea announced a regional emergency Saturday, as oil was detected on the shores of Sevastopol, the peninsula’s largest city.

Fuel oil spilled out of two storm-stricken tankers nearly three weeks ago in the Kerch Strait, close to eastern Crimea — about 250 kilometers from Sevastopol, which lies on the southwest of the peninsula.

“Today a regional emergency regime has been declared in Sevastopol,” regional Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote on Telegram.

Oil was found on four beaches in the region and was “promptly eliminated” by local authorities working together with volunteers, Razvozhaev said.

“Let me emphasize: there is no mass pollution of the coastline in Sevastopol,” he wrote.

Razvozhaev’s announcement came after authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region announced a region-wide emergency last week, as the fuel oil continued washing up on the coastline 10 days after one tanker ran aground and the other was left damaged and adrift on December 15.

Krasnodar regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said that almost 7,000 people were still working Saturday to clean up the spill.

More than 96,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil have been removed along the region’s shoreline since the original spill, he wrote on Telegram.

On December 23, the ministry estimated that up to 200,000 tons in total may have been contaminated with mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the oil spill an “ecological disaster.”

The Kerch Strait, which separates the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula from the Krasnodar region, is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the inland Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.

It has also been a key point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014. In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of trying to seize control of the area illegally. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, described the oil spill last month as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.
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Kyiv, ukraine — Moldova faces a security crisis, Prime Minister Dorin Recean said Friday, after its separatist pro-Moscow Transdniestria region, cut off from supplies of Russian gas, closed factories, restricted central heating and imposed rolling power blackouts. 

Flows of Russian gas via Ukraine to central and eastern Europe were halted on New Year’s Day after a transit agreement between the warring countries expired and Kyiv rejected doing further business with Moscow. 

Recean said government-controlled Moldova would cover its own energy needs with domestic production and imports but noted the separatist Transdniestria region had suffered a painful hit despite its ties with Moscow. 

“By jeopardizing the future of the protectorate it has backed for three decades in an effort to destabilize Moldova, Russia is revealing the inevitable outcome for all its allies – betrayal and isolation,” Recean said in a statement. 

“We treat this as a security crisis aimed at enabling the return of pro-Russian forces to power in Moldova and weaponizing our territory against Ukraine, with whom we share a 1,200 km border.” 

The official Telegram news channel of separatist Transdniestria said rolling power cuts had gone into effect on Friday evening. It listed districts where power would be cut for an hour or more between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. 

“As the Ministry of Economic Development notes, this is in connection with the fact that residents at this time are consuming more power than the system can generate,” the channel said. 

The news channel said a sanatorium, fully heated and with hot water, was sheltering orphans and residents of nursing homes. It accused Moldova’s central government of failing to understand or tackle the difficulties facing the region. 

“Moldovan authorities are completely out of touch with reality and continue to talk about ‘the price of freedom from Russian gas,’ ” the channel said. 

Transdniestria’s residents had already lost hot water and central heating, and all factories except food producers have been forced to stop production. 

The enclave’s self-styled president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, had earlier said power cuts were inevitable. He said the region had gas reserves to cover 10 days of limited usage in the north and twice as long in the south. 

Russia denies using gas as a weapon to coerce Moldova and blames Kyiv for refusing to renew the gas transit deal. 

Dispute over arrears 

Russian gas giant Gazprom had separately said on December 28 that it would suspend exports to Moldova on January 1 because of what Russia says are unpaid Moldovan debts of $709 million. Moldova disputes that and has put the figure at $8.6 million. 

The southeast European nation of about 2.5 million people has been in the spotlight since Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine at a time of mounting tensions between Moscow and the West. 

Its pro-European president, Maia Sandu, won a second term in an election last year and has pledged to accelerate reform and consolidate democratization.  

Moldova plans to hold a parliamentary election this summer. 

Mainly Russian-speaking Transdniestria, which split from Moldova in the 1990s, received Russian gas via Ukraine. 

In turn, Moldova used to receive the bulk of its electricity from Transdniestria. But, with Kyiv making clear it would stop gas transit from Russia, the Chisinau government prepared alternative arrangements, with a mixture of domestic production and electricity imports from Romania, Recean said. 

He said the Moldovan government remained committed to helping the enclave. 

“Alternative energy solutions, such as biomass systems, generators, humanitarian aid and essential medical supplies, are ready for delivery should the breakaway leadership accept the support,” the government said in a statement. 

The head of Moldova’s national gas company Moldovagaz, Vadim Ceban, said Transdniestrian authorities had turned down an offer to help purchase gas from European countries because the enclave believes Russian gas supplies could still be resumed. 

Such purchases would be more costly. Gazprom has long supplied gas to the region without demanding payment.
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KYIV, UKRAINE — A Russian drone attack towards the Ukrainian capital on Friday killed one person and wounded four in the Kyiv suburbs, local officials said.

Moscow’s forces have escalated their aerial strikes across Ukraine through the first weeks of winter, including a New Year’s Day drone attack targeting central Kyiv that killed two.

“One person killed and four wounded in enemy air attack on Kyiv region,” said Mykola Kalashnyk, the head of the Kyiv region, which surrounds the capital, said on social media on Friday.

He said a truck driver had been killed after he was hit by falling debris from a Russian drone that had been shot down.

Wreckage also fell on a house, wounding three — including a 16-year-old boy and his father.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 93 drones overnight. It said 60 attack drones and 26 decoy-style drones were downed or “lost” — either shot down or disabled by electronic interceptors.

Downed drones also fell on two districts of Kyiv, but there were no injuries, the city mayor said. 
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The Human Rights Association in Turkey announced that three female prisoners had been tortured in Patnos Prison in Agri, and despite some complaints, no investigation has been initiated. The prison administration neither denied nor confirmed the torture to VOA.  

Click here for the full story in Kurdish.

 

 
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New York — Among those in New York City for the 79th United Nations General Assembly is exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

On Monday, Tsikhanouskaya and Evgenia Kara-Murza, the Russian human rights activist and wife of former political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, received the annual human rights prize awarded by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, founded by the late Tom Lantos, who was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the U.S. Congress.

Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that same day via video link, Tsikhanouskaya said she was speaking on behalf of the more than 1,400 Belarusians imprisoned for political reasons by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government.

“Many of them are held in complete isolation, incommunicado … no letters, no phone calls, no contact with the outside world,” she said. “My husband, Syarhei, has been cut off for over a year. I do not know if he is alive.”

Tsikhanouskaya was interviewed in New York by Victoria Kupchinetsky of Voice of America’s Russian Service.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: What is the purpose of you coming here to New York to the General Assembly?

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: The U.N. is a good platform where you can meet not only your allies, but also the countries who might be useful to your cause. We are, as Belarusians … fighting for the restoration of democracy in Belarus, for the release of our political prisoners. And we are looking for world leaders who can somehow assist us with these questions. People in Belarusian prisons are dying. This is the most painful topic for us in the democratic movement. And I think that countries who still have some relationship with this [Lukashenko] regime, they can assist us in solving the humanitarian crisis.

VOA: Why do you think Lukashenko released those dozens of political prisoners? Do you know if there are any negotiations about an exchange similar to the recent prisoner exchange with Russia?

Tsikhanouskaya: Lukashenko wants to sell the release of about 100 people as an act of humanity. But it has nothing in common with this. I think this release is connected with the pressure that is imposed on Lukashenko’s regime. They want to have the sanctions lifted, they want to be relevant in the political world, but they are not.

Our task is to make sure that the policy of our democratic allies will not change toward Belarus. And, of course, putting pressure on the regime, strengthening Belarusian civil society, agents of democratic forces. We are looking for venues how we can release political prisoners [for] humanitarian reasons. … People are dying. We are looking for countries, for organizations, that can be mediators on this issue.

VOA: Are you collecting materials, evidence, against Lukashenko to present in The Hague, at the international tribunal?

Tsikhanouskaya: I’m totally sure that in the world, justice has to be restored, and Lukashenko has a long list of crimes — crimes against humanity, crimes of the deportation of Belarusians, crimes of the abduction of Ukrainian children, the immigration crisis, the hijacking of airplanes, bringing our country into the war [against Ukraine], and so on and so forth. And, of course, for years we have been collecting evidence of these crimes, and we want to use international mechanisms — the ICC [International Criminal Court], ICJ [International Court of Justice, aka World Court] — [words indistinct] to bring Lukashenko and his cronies to account, though these instruments are rather slow, honestly speaking. But we are consistent in our approach, and hopefully very soon will start a special investigation against the crimes.

VOA: What is the ultimate goal of your struggle — to actually remove Lukashenko from power or something else?

Tsikhanouskaya: Our goal is to restore justice in Belarus, hold free and fair elections in my homeland, but I understand that we can’t do this while Lukashenko is there. So, our ultimate goal is to release political prisoners, hold free and fair elections, but before this, of course, we have to weaken the regime as much as possible and strengthen national identity, civil society, democratic forces, to have a smooth and fast transition period. And of course, we want Belarus to return to the family of European countries.
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The number of Ukrainian citizens seeking to adopt children has increased dramatically since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Lesia Bakalets reports from Kyiv, Ukraine. Camera: Vladyslav Smilianets.
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