State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Moldova, pledging $135 million to enhance energy security and counter Russian disinformation during his visit to Chisinau.

During Wednesday’s visit, Blinken announced that up to $85 million in USAID funding will subsidize equipment to strengthen Moldova’s national power grid and facilitate greater electricity trade with Romania, Ukraine, and the broader European market. He also unveiled additional aid for Moldova, a pro-Western country facing renewed threats from Russia. 

“Today, I’m announcing that we’ll be working with our Congress to provide an additional $50 million to further advance these efforts from reforming the energy and agricultural sectors to pushing back and further against disinformation,” said Blinken during a joint press conference with Moldova President Maia Sandu. 

“That in turn will bolster the ability of Moldova to resist Russian interference, to hold free and fair elections to continue down the path to the European Union and Western integration to create more economic opportunity,” he said. 

Blinken’s trip comes amid concerns over Russia’s military presence in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. Moldova has accused Russia of waging a hybrid war through election interference and disinformation campaigns aimed at toppling the government and hindering its EU aspirations. Russia denies these accusations. 

Sandu welcomed Blinken’s second visit in two years as “a strong sign of support.”  

“Through unity and with the support of our partners, we will stand by our people and move forward,” Sandu said during the press conference. 

She also expressed gratitude for U.S. support to both Moldova and Ukraine. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, the Biden administration has directed billions of dollars in weapons assistance to Ukraine, which Sandu said “also makes Moldova safer and more resilient.” 

Historically, Moldova’s heavy reliance on outside energy resources has made the country vulnerable to external disruptions and price fluctuations, delaying its progress toward sustainable economic development. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has further exacerbated Moldova’s energy challenges by driving up electricity and gas prices and creating sector instability. 

Since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has provided Moldova with $774 million in assistance, including $300 million through USAID, to support energy security. 

NATO, Ukraine 

After Chisinau, Blinken is heading to Prague for NATO foreign ministers’ meetings, where “a substantial show of support for Ukraine” is expected, according to U.S. officials. 

On Wednesday, Blinken said the U.S. is working hard to deliver more air defenses to Ukraine as it defends itself against intensifying Russian attacks. 

But Blinken, along with other officials from the Biden administration, said Washington does not encourage or enable the use of U.S.-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia. 

“Ukraine has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself,” Blinken said. ‘’We’re going to make sure that it has the equipment it needs.” 

This week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged the alliance’s members to lift some of the restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons, potentially enabling their use for strikes directly on Russian soil. 

“The right to self-defense includes hitting legitimate targets outside Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said Monday at a NATO meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. 

The United States will host a NATO summit in Washington from July 9 to July 11. 

Blinken said there will be “very strong deliverables” in terms of Ukraine’s further integration with the Atlantic alliance. 

Thirty-two countries have either completed or will soon complete bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.
…

your ad here

…

your ad here

…

your ad here

…

your ad here

PARIS — Rafael Nadal lost in the first round of the French Open to Alexander Zverev 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-3 on Monday in what might turn out to be the 14-time Roland Garros champion’s last match at his favorite tournament. 

Nadal has indicated 2024 likely would be his last season before retirement, but he said Saturday that he is not 100% sure he won’t play again at the French Open. And he reiterated that after Monday’s defeat, only his fourth in 116 career matches at the place. 

When it ended, in anticlimactic fashion, with 22-time Grand Slam champion Nadal simply unable to play at his usual level after 1 1/2 years of hip and abdominal injuries, he thanked the raucous Court Philippe Chatrier crowd, saying was it “incredible the amount of energy” it provided throughout the 3 hours, 5 minutes of play. 

“It’s difficult for me to talk. I don’t know (if) it’s going to be the last time I am here. I am not 100% sure,” said Nadal, whose 1 1/2-year-old son, Rafael Jr., sat on his mother’s lap in the stands. “If it’s the last time, I enjoyed it.” 

It is the first time in his long and illustrious career that Nadal has been beaten in two consecutive matches on clay courts and the first time he has dropped a match earlier than the fourth round at the French Open. 

The match was played with the retractable roof shut, and the loud chants of “Ra-fa!” from most in the capacity crowd of about 15,000 echoed. 

Nadal turns 38 on June 3 and he has been dealing with hip and abdominal injuries since January 2023, limiting him to 15 matches and an 8-7 record since the start of last year. His infrequent play dropped his ranking to No. 275 and he was unseeded for the French Open for the first time. 

That is why he ended up facing the No. 4-seeded Zverev, the runner-up at the 2020 U.S. Open, a gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympics and the only man to reach the semifinals in Paris each of the past three years. 

Nadal’s other losses at Roland Garros came against Robin Soderling in 2010 and against Novak Djokovic in 2015 and 2021. 

“To be honest, I don’t know what to say. First of all: Thank you, Rafa, from all of the tennis world,” Zverev said. “It’s such a great honor. I’ve watched Rafa play all my childhood, and I was lucky enough to play Rafa when I became a professional. … Today is not my moment. It’s Rafa’s moment.” 

 
…

your ad here

In the city of Kupyansk in eastern Ukraine, a small coffee shop sits just 8 kilometers from the front lines. It opened last summer — the latest in a chain of coffee shops in the region. Despite the ongoing war, its owner says more are on the way. Anna Kosstutschenko met with him. VOA footage and video editing by Pavel Suhodolskiy.
…

your ad here

…

your ad here

Vilnius, Lithuania — Lithuania’s Gitanas Nauseda announced his reelection in a presidential ballot on Sunday, following a campaign dominated by security concerns in the European Union and NATO member next door to Russia.

The Baltic nation of 2.8 million people has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Like other countries in the region, it worries it could be Moscow’s next target.

Ballots from nearly 90% of polling stations showed Nauseda, 60, winning roughly three quarters of the vote, followed by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, 49, from the ruling center-right Homeland Union party.

If confirmed by final results, Nauseda’s backing in his bid for a second term will be highest in the country since it split from the Soviet Union in 1991.

A former senior economist with Swedish banking group SEB who is not affiliated with any party, Nauseda won the first round of the election on May 12 with 44% of the votes, short of the 50% he needed for an outright victory.

Just over half of Lithuanians believe a Russian attack is possible or even very likely, according to a ELTA/Baltijos Tyrimai poll conducted between February and March. Russia has regularly dismissed concerns that it might attack a NATO member.

Nauseda told jubilant supporters in the capital Vilnius that he will continue working on the country’s defense capabilities.

“Lithuanian independence and freedom is like a fragile vessel which we need to cherish and keep from cracking,” he said.

Both Nauseda and Simonyte support increasing defense spending to at least 3% of Lithuania’s gross domestic product, from the 2.75% planned for this year.

But Nauseda, who is a social conservative, has clashed with Simonyte on other issues, including whether to give a legal recognition to same-sex civil partnerships, which Nauseda opposes.

He has said it would make such unions too similar to marriage, which Lithuania’s constitution only allows between a man and a woman.

Simonyte, a former finance minister and a fiscal hawk, said on Thursday that if she won, “the direction for the country – pro-European, pro-Western – would not change.”

“But I would like quicker progress, more openness and understanding, larger tolerance to people who are different from us,” she said.

Lithuania’s president has a semi-executive role, which includes heading the armed forces, chairing the supreme defense and national security policy body and representing the country at EU and NATO summits.

The president sets foreign and security policy in tandem with the government, can veto laws and has a say in the appointment of key officials such as judges, the chief prosecutor, the chief of defense and the head of the central bank.
…

your ad here

Yerevan — Thousands of Armenians staged an anti-government protest on Sunday, demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over territorial concessions to arch foe neighbor Azerbaijan.

Protests erupted in the Caucasus nation last month after the government agreed to hand over to Baku territory it had controlled since the 1990s.

The ceded area is strategically important for landlocked Armenia because it controls sections of a vital highway to Georgia.

Armenian residents of nearby settlements say the move cuts them off from the rest of the country and accuse Pashinyan of giving away territory without getting anything in return.

On Friday, in a key step toward normalizing ties between the rivals — who fought two wars over then-disputed Nagorno Karabakh region — Yerevan returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it seized decades ago.

An AFP reporter said several thousand people flooded Yerevan’s central Republic Square in a fresh protest spearheaded by charismatic archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a church leader from the Tavush region, where villages were handed over to Azerbaijan.

“Our people want to change the bitter reality which was imposed on us,” Galstanyan told the crowd, adding that fixing the volatile border with Azerbaijan “must only be carried out after a peace treaty is signed” with Baku.

One of the demonstrators, 67-year-old Artur Sargsyan, said: “We demand an immediate resignation of Nikol [Pashinyan].”

“I had fought in two wars with Azerbaijan and will not let him give away our lands.”

Pashinyan defended the territorial concessions as aimed at securing peace with Baku. But they sparked weeks of protests and demonstrators blocked major roads in an attempt to force him to change course.

In a televised statement on Friday evening, he said resolving border disputes with Azerbaijan “is a sole guarantee for the very existence of the Armenian republic within its internationally recognized and legitimate frontier.”

Galstanyan is seeking to launch an impeachment process against Pashinyan, a former journalist who was propelled to power in the wake of peaceful street protests he led in 2018.

The archbishop said on Sunday that he would renounce his clerical office to run for prime ministerial post, and called for snap parliamentary elections.

“My spiritual service is above all possible posts, but I am ready to sacrifice it for the sake of change in this country,” he told the cheering crowd.

He then called on protesters to march toward Pashinyan’s residence.

Opposition parties would require the support of at least one independent or ruling party MP to launch the impeachment process and success would then hinge on at least 18 lawmakers from Pashinyan’s own party voting to unseat the leader.

Last year, Azerbaijan recaptured Karabakh in a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists who had held sway over the mountainous enclave for three decades.

The region’s entire Armenian population — more than 100,000 people — fled to Armenia in the aftermath.
…

your ad here

KHARKIV, Ukraine — A Russian strike on a crowded DIY hardware store in Kharkiv killed 12 people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian prosecutors said on Sunday morning, the death toll rising as the country’s second-largest city reeled from two attacks a day earlier.

Two guided bombs hit the Epicentr DIY hypermarket in a residential area of the city on Saturday afternoon, Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on national television.

The strikes caused a massive fire which sent a column of thick, black smoke billowing hundreds of meters into the air.

Forty-three people were injured, the local prosecutors’ office said, adding that 10 of the 12 dead had still not been identified.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said about 120 people had been in the hardware store when the bombs struck.

“The attack targeted the shopping center, where there were many people – this is clearly terrorism,” Terekhov said.

In a post on the Telegram app, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Ihor Klymenko, said 16 people were still missing after the strike.

The past week has seen an uptick in strikes on the city after Russian troops stormed across the border, opening a new front north of the city.

Russia has bombarded Kharkiv, which lies less than 30 kilometers from its border, throughout the war, having reached its outskirts in a failed bid to capture it in 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a plea to Ukraine’s Western allies to help boost air defenses to keep the country’s cities safe. French President Emmanuel Macron, writing on social media platform X, denounced the attack on the store as “unacceptable.”

A separate early evening missile strike hit a residential building in the center of the city of 1.3 million. The number of people wounded by that strike had climbed to 25 by Sunday morning.

The missile left a crater several meters deep in the pavement at the foot of the building, which also housed a post office, a beauty salon and a cafe.

Emergency workers ushered away residents of nearby apartment buildings. Some of the injured had blood on their faces.

Just over the border, in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional governor said four residents died in Ukrainian attacks on Saturday.

Firefighters battle blaze

Andriy Kudinov, director of the suburban shopping center, told local media the hardware store was full of shoppers buying items for their summer cottages.

It took 16 hours to fully extinguish the fire at the center, which had raged over an area of 13,000 square meters, Interior Minister Klymenko said.

Rescuers, medics and journalists occasionally had to rush away from the scene of both strikes on the city and take cover on the ground, fearing another strike, as has occurred during several recent Russian attacks.

Dmytro Syrotenko, a 26-year-old employee of the DIY center, described panicked  scenes.

“I was at my workplace. I heard the first hit and … with my colleague, we fell to the ground. There was the second hit and we were covered with debris. Then we started to crawl to the higher ground,” said Syrotenko, who had a large gash on his face.

Syrotenko told Reuters he was taken to safety by a rescue worker who helped him, several colleagues, and shoppers.

Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, denounced the strike as “yet another example of Russian madness. There is no other way to describe it.”

“When we tell world leaders that Ukraine needs sufficient air defenses, when we say we need real decisive measures to enable us to protect our people, so that Russian terrorists cannot even approach our border, we are talking about not allowing strikes like this to happen,” he said.

Writing later on Telegram, Zelenskyy noted air raid alerts had been in effect in Kharkiv for more than 12 hours and 200 emergency workers and 400 policemen remained at the scene dealing with the aftermath of the attacks.

Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, but thousands have been killed and injured during its 27-month invasion of Ukraine.
…

your ad here

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Lithuania holds presidential elections Sunday, with incumbent Gitanas Nauseda expected to win after a campaign dominated by security concerns in the post-Soviet state.

The Baltic nation of 2.8 million people has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Like other countries in the region, the NATO and EU member worries it could be Moscow’s next target.

Nauseda, 60, a former senior economist with Swedish banking group SEB who is not affiliated with any party, won the first round of the election on May 12 with 44% of the votes, short of the 50% he needed for an outright victory.

He is running against Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, 49, from the ruling center-right Homeland Union party that has been trailing in opinion polls. She was the only woman out of eight candidates in the first round and came second with 20%.

Just over half of Lithuanians believe a Russian attack is possible or even very likely, according to a ELTA/Baltijos Tyrimai poll conducted between February and March. Russia has regularly dismissed the idea that it might attack a NATO member.

Nauseda told a debate on Tuesday he sees Russia as an enemy. “Our enemies — who even call themselves our enemies, who are enemies of us and all the democratic world — are attempting to destablilize our politics, and we must do all to resist.”

Both Nauseda and Simonyte support increasing defense spending to at least 3% of Lithuania’s gross domestic product, from the 2.75% planned for this year.

But Nauseda, who is a social conservative, has clashed with Simonyte on other issues, including whether to give a legal recognition to same-sex civil partnerships, which Nauseda opposes.

He has said it would make such unions too similar to marriage, which Lithuania’s constitution only allows for a man and a woman.

Simonyte, a former finance minister and a fiscal hawk, said on Thursday that if she won, “the direction for the country — pro-European, pro-Western — would not change.”

“But I would like quicker progress, more openness and understanding, larger tolerance to people who are different from us,” she added.

Lithuania’s president has a semi-executive role, which includes heading the armed forces, chairing the supreme defense and national security policy body and representing the country at European Union and NATO summits.

The president sets foreign and security policy in tandem with the government, can veto laws and has a say in the appointment of key officials such as judges, the chief prosecutor, the chief of defense and the head of the central bank.

It will be the second time the two have competed in a presidential run-off. In 2019, Nauseda beat Simonyte with 66% of vote.
…

your ad here

The Hague, Netherlands — U.S. rapper Nicki Minaj was detained at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on suspicion of possessing soft drugs before being released with a fine, Dutch media reported Saturday.

The singer was to perform a show in Britain later Saturday and posted images on social media of her being questioned by officials.

Police confirmed to AFP that they had detained a 41-year-old American woman but declined to confirm that it was Minaj, as per their usual policy.

“We never confirm the identity of a person in custody, but I can confirm we have arrested a 41-year-old woman suspected of trying to export soft drugs to another country,” Robert Kapel, a military police spokesman, told AFP.

Kapel later told AFP the suspect had been released after the payment of a “reasonable” fine.

“There’s no reason for us to keep her in custody any longer. We have all the information for our file. Case closed,” he told AFP.

The rapper posted on X that authorities told her they had found cannabis in her luggage, which she said belonged to her security personnel.

A common misconception outside the Netherlands is that marijuana is legal in the country, home to world-famous coffee shops (which actually sell pot) that are a huge draw for cannabis smokers.

The consumption of small quantities of cannabis is technically illegal but police choose not to enforce the law as part of a tolerance policy in place since the 1970s.

Transporting the drugs to another country is illegal.

Minaj was due to perform in Manchester on her Pink Friday 2 World Tour, and the hashtag #FREENICKI was trending on X.

The Manchester concert originally scheduled for Saturday night has now been postponed.

Promoter Live Nation said the performance will be rescheduled and tickets will be honored.

“Despite Nicki’s best efforts to explore every possible avenue to make tonight’s show happen, the events of today have made it impossible,” the promoter said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed by the inconvenience this has caused.”
…

your ad here