nairobi, kenya — Four Ukrainians were on a United Nations helicopter seized by al-Shabab militants in central Somalia this week, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

The U.N.-contracted chopper with nine aboard was conducting a medical evacuation when a technical problem forced it to land near Hindhere village, an area controlled by the Islamist group.

“Our citizens were members of the helicopter crew of the UN Mission in Somalia. … Their identities have been established,” Ukrainian spokesman Oleh Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.

He said that the aircraft belonged to a private Ukrainian company contracted to the United Nations, and that the government was contacting it to coordinate actions.

Security sources earlier told Reuters that nationals from Egypt, Uganda and Somalia were also on board. The sources asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Somalia’s government said on Thursday it was working to rescue the hostages, but military officers said it would be difficult in an area that has been under the al-Qaida-affiliated group’s control for more than a decade.

An internal U.N. memo seen by Reuters said one person on the helicopter had allegedly been killed and six taken hostage. Two people fled and their whereabouts were not known, it said.

All U.N. flights in the area were suspended until further notice, the memo said.

Ugandan army representatives said they had no information. The Egyptian government could not be reached for comment.

Separately, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia said a U.N. guard had been killed in a mortar attack by suspected al-Shabab militants near the capital’s Aden Adde International Airport.

Mortar rounds landed on Thursday night inside the airport area where the U.N. compound is located, UNSOM said.

Al-Shabab could not be reached for comment.

The militants, who control vast areas of the south and center of Somalia, have been fighting the government since 2006 in an attempt to establish their own rule based on their interpretation of Islamic law.
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the pentagon — The United States, Britain and a handful of other allies answered dozens of Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with a series of powerful airstrikes designed to severely degrade the Iranian-backed group’s capabilities.

U.S. Central Command late Thursday said the series of strikes hit more than 60 targets at 16 locations in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including command and control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, and production facilities.

“We hit them pretty hard, pretty good,” a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, told VOA, adding the strikes also targeted Houthi radar installations and air defense systems which did not fire back.

A spokesperson for the Houthi rebel group said the strikes killed at least five fighters and wounded six others, without specifying the targets that were hit.

The U.S. and British strikes, carried out with the help of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Bahrain, were launched from fighter jets, surface vessels and submarines, the defense official said.

The U.S. alone, dropped more than 100 precision guided munitions on the Houthi installations, officials said, with the naval vessels and submarines firing Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles to take out the intended targets.

The official also said the targets were chosen both because of their threat to shipping and the lack of a civilian presence.

In a statement from the White House late Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden called the strikes a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks” on international shipping, saying they were necessary after attempts at diplomacy were ignored.

“These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes,” Biden said. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak likewise condemned the Houthi attacks as destabilizing, confirming the participation of British fighter jets in Thursday’s strikes.

“Their reckless actions are risking lives at sea and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” Sunak said in a statement. “This cannot stand.”

It is the first time Houthi targets inside Yemen have been struck since the militants began attacking ships in the Red Sea following Hamas’ assault on Israel on October 7.

U.S. officials late Thursday were still studying the impact of the strikes against the Houthis, but an initial assessment suggested the damage to Houthi capabilities is “significant.”

“We were going after very specific capability in very specific locations with precision munitions,” said a senior U.S. military official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the operation.

“This was a significant action,” added a senior U.S. administration official. “[We have] every expectation that it will degrade in a significant way, the Houthis, a capability to launch exactly the sorts of attacks that they have conducted over the period of recent weeks.”

There have been 27 attacks launched from Houthi-held areas of Yemen since mid-November, impacting citizens, cargo and vessels from more than 50 countries, according to the U.S.

U.S. officials said in one instance last month, U.S. defensive action prevented a Houthi attack from hitting and likely sinking a commercial ship full of jet fuel.

The most recent Houthi attack, involving the launch of an anti-ship ballistic missile, took place earlier Thursday. The missile landed in the Gulf of Aden near a commercial vessel, causing no injuries or damage.

On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, said the Houthis launched a complex attack using 18 one-way attack drones, two cruise missiles and one ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen toward Red Sea shipping lanes where dozens of merchant vessels were transiting.

U.S. combat jets, along with U.S. and British military vessels, responded by shooting down the drones and missiles, averting any damage to ships or injuries to their crews in the area.

The senior U.S. administration official said it was Tuesday’s massive attack by the Houthis that prompted Biden to order Thursday strikes.

Before the U.S. and British-led strikes late Thursday, multiple U.S. officials warned both the Houthis and Iran against what they described as reckless and illegal behavior.

“There will be consequences,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday in response to a question from VOA.

“The Houthis are funded, trained, equipped by Iran to a large degree. And, so, we know that Iran has a role to play in terms of helping to cease this reckless, dangerous and illegal activity,” he said.

Last week, the United States and 12 allies issued a statement warning the Houthis of unspecified consequences if their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea continued.

“Let our message now be clear: We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” the statement said.

Signatories on the statement included Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and Japan.

The statement followed the launch in mid-December of Operation Prosperity Guardian by the United States, Britain and nearly 20 other countries to protect ships from Houthi attacks.

Since the launch of Prosperity Guardian, at least 1,500 vessels have passed safely through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

The commander of U.S. Navy operations in the Middle East last week called it “the largest surface and air presence in the southern Red Sea in years.”

The U.N. Security Council issued its own resolution Wednesday, calling on the Houthis to stop the attacks immediately.

There are questions, however, as to whether the statements, backed now by the U.S. and British strikes against the Houthis, will do anything to deter Tehran.

“Iran has the luxury of really fighting a, what I would call, a hidden-hand operation with very few Iranians on the ground,” the former commander of U.S. Central Command, retired General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, told a webinar on Wednesday.

“They’re choking world shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb [Strait] at a very low, very low price for Iran,” he said.

But McKenzie argued that even if Iran continues to encourage the Houthis, the risk of a wider regional escalation is slim.

“I do not believe the escalation ladder leads out of Yemen. I believe it stays in Yemen,” he said. “And I believe Iran will leave their partners down there, their proxies down there, to their fate.”

U.S. officials said while they were bracing for the Houthis to try to mount some sort of response to the strikes, a slew of initial claims of attacks late Thursday appeared to be nothing more than disinformation.

This is not the first time the U.S. military has targeted Houthi launch sites in Yemen in response to militant attacks against vessels in nearby waters. In October 2016, the American destroyer USS Nitze launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at three radar sites along Yemen’s Red Sea coast in order to degrade the Houthi’s ability to track and target ships.

Ostap Yarysh with VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
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ISTANBUL — Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania on Thursday signed an agreement to jointly tackle drifting sea mines that have threatened Black Sea shipping since the start of the Ukraine war.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said the agreement establishes a Mine Countermeasures Task Group among the three NATO allies to deal with the mines.

“We jointly decided to sign a protocol between three countries in order to fight more effectively against the mine danger in the Black Sea by improving our existing close cooperation and coordination,” Guler said at a news conference in Istanbul with Romanian Defense Minister Angel Tilvar and Bulgarian Deputy Defense Minister Atanas Zapryanov.

Zapryanov said mines pose a “danger to ports, communication networks and key water infrastructure. It is in our interest and NATO’s interest to develop countermeasures against this danger.”

Tilvar added that Russia’s “disdain for the norms of international law and its aggression in the Black Sea is not only a regional problem but also a problem with global consequences.”

The deal comes after Ankara last week refused entry to the Black Sea for two minesweeping vessels donated to Ukraine by Britain.

At the start of the war in February 2022, Turkey enacted the 1936 Montreux Convention to block the passage of Russian or Ukrainian ships through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. It also told non-Black Sea states not to send warships.

Guler said implementation of the Montreux Convention was important for regional security. He suggested that other countries could participate in mine-clearing at the end of the war.

Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for stray mines that have washed up near the Black Sea coast.

The initiative aims to make shipping safer, including for vessels transporting grain from Ukraine.

Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal in July 2022 to ensure the free passage of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea but Russia abandoned the deal a year later. Since then, Ukraine has shipped grain along a corridor through the western Black Sea.
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Istanbul / Washington — When it comes to gender equality in Turkish media, men are still dominating managerial roles, research by a journalist union has found.

The Journalists’ Union of Turkey, known as the TGS, released its latest findings on gender disparities in Turkish media to mark the country’s Working Journalists’ Day on Wednesday.

“Once again, we see that those who produce, go after and edit news stories are women, and those who manage media institutions are men in Turkish media,” Banu Tuna, the TGS secretary-general, told VOA.

The union analyzed 10 newspapers, 10 TV channels, four news agencies and six news websites.

Nearly half of the journalists in Turkey are women, but the survey showed that only four women hold senior positions such as editor in chief or managing editor among Turkey’s leading newspapers.

The research also showed that only a few women hold senior positions in the TV channels’ organizational structures, and those who do tend to work in advertising or public relations departments.

The gender imbalance in managerial positions was lower in Turkey’s digital media, where the report found websites doing “relatively better” than TV and print.

“While the presence of female journalists among the editor and reporter staff is undeniable, we saw once again that there is literally ‘no name of a woman’ in the mastheads and in the senior management staff,” the TGS wrote.

The union said that when female journalists cannot progress in their careers, they “move away from the profession due to the glass ceiling.”

A call for more inclusive media

The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report ranks Turkey 129th among 146 countries for gender equality — where 1 shows the best environment — and 133rd out of 146 in economic participation and opportunity.

The gender imbalance adds to challenges for Turkish journalists, who watchdogs already say contend with censorship and political and legal pressure.

“We are in an increasingly authoritarian environment. There are very challenging conditions for both journalism and women’s struggle,” said Evin Baris Altintas. “There is a need to fight for a more inclusive media for both women and different groups, but the lack of awareness on this issue is obvious.”

A co-chair of the Istanbul-based Media and Law Studies Association, Altintas has worked in journalism since 2005.

Another issue is the cost of living, with most media outlets based in Istanbul, the largest and most expensive Turkish city.

Work/family life challenges women

Ceren Sozeri, an associate professor of communication at Galatasaray University in Istanbul, said that women often have to balance their journalism career with domestic roles.

“In Turkey, women are responsible for the care, domestic labor and raising children,” Sozeri told VOA. “Women journalists are forced to make choices in the dilemma of marriage and raising their children.”

He For She Turkey, a United Nations-initiated project, states that women do three times as much unpaid house and care work as men worldwide, while this discrepancy reaches almost five times more unpaid house and care work for women in Turkey.

Tuna, who has worked in journalism for 25 years, said that the media sector is male-dominated.

“I have heard many male executives say that the editorial desk is not for women. They again blamed women for the lack of women in managerial positions,” she told VOA.

“According to them, working in the editorial office is a very arduous job that requires long hours, and women do not want it,” Tuna added.

Cultural norms can also make it harder for women to progress.

“While a man can go to dinner or a tavern with his boss or manager after work, women have less room here, as a woman’s going out to dinner with her manager can also be interpreted as an affair,” Sozeri said.

“Therefore, when favoritism comes before merit, men again have room for career advancement,” Sozeri noted.

To close the gender gap in Turkish media management, Sozeri thinks that “working conditions, overtime working and domestic labor roles must change.”

Tuna of TGS said having more women in leadership in media would be a positive move.

“If there were more women in executive positions, if the few rising women were not expected to become masculinized, I’m sure a lot would change in the Turkish media,” Tuna told VOA.

“The biggest problems today are not getting equal pay for equal work, not being able to work in managerial positions, and all kinds of gendered violence. If the media were not a boys’ club, all these problems would be improved.”

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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London — More than 60 world leaders will join hundreds of business executives and campaigners at the Swiss ski resort of Davos Monday for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where they will discuss some of the biggest global challenges.  

Critics say the summit is a meeting of the super-rich and that it fails to tackle growing global inequality. 

The issues on the Davos agenda appear daunting: in the immediate term, worsening conflicts in many parts of the world along with Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea; and wider threats including potentially catastrophic climate change, a weak global economy and fears over the adverse impacts of artificial intelligence. 

In its Global Risks Report 2024, published Wednesday, summit organizers highlighted misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short-term risk.

“The potential impact on elections worldwide over the next two years is significant, and that could lead to elected governments’ legitimacy being put in question. And this, in turn, could, of course, threaten democratic processes that lead to further social polarization, riots, strikes, or even intra-state violence,” report co-author Carolina Klint of the risk consultancy Marsh McLennan, told a London press conference Wednesday. 

The report labeled extreme weather events and climate change as the top long-term risks over a 10-year time frame.  

“Yes, it’s a very gloomy outlook, but by no means is it a hard, fast, set prediction of the future,” Saadia Zahidi, the economic forum’s managing director said. “The future is very much in our hands. Yes, there are structural shifts under way but most of these things are very much in the hands of decision-makers across different stakeholders and that’s where the effort really needs to be,” she told reporters. 

The Davos summit takes place against the backdrop of two major wars, in Ukraine and Gaza. 

Among those due at the Alpine ski resort are Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will attend, along with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Alongside the political leaders will be hundreds of the world’s most powerful chief executives, including the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s chief executive officer, Satya Nadella.   

Critics say the wealth of the world’s super-rich has increased, while billions around the world have become poorer over the past decade – and Davos will do little to reverse that trend. 

“Across the world people are feeling extraordinary hardship. And at the same time there’s a few sprinting off at the very top into the distance. And some of them will be in Davos,” said Nabil Ahmed of aid agency Oxfam International. 

“It is, yes, a space for dialogue, for important discussions, even for holding political and business leaders to account. It’s why organizations like Oxfam take part. But it’s also not an international, democratic space in which transparent, accountable decisions are being made,” Ahmed told VOA. 

The summit organizers say it’s vital to bring together political and business leaders to find solutions to the world’s myriad challenges.
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TALLINN, Estonia — Belarus state television reported Wednesday that authorities sent a recently arrived group of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to train with the Belarusian military to learn how to evacuate in the event of a fire.

Ukraine and the Belarusian opposition allege that Russian ally Belarus is engaging in the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus on a mass scale, which critics say is a campaign to indoctrinate the children as pro-Russian.

Wednesday’s report referred to 35 children from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Antratsyt in eastern Ukraine that Belarusian authorities said were sent to the eastern Belarusian city of Mogilev.

The Belarus1 state television channel said the children are being housed in a sanatorium and are being cared for by employees from the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The military is “teaching the children how to behave in extreme situations,” the state television channel said.

Children wear Russian flag

More than 2,400 Ukrainian children aged 6 to 17 have been brought to Belarus from four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Russian troops, a recent Yale University study found. The Belarusian opposition has called on the International Criminal Court to bring Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and officials in his government to justice for their involvement in the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus.

State television footage released Wednesday showed the Ukrainian children wearing the Russian flag sewn onto their sleeves. The state television program said the Belarusian military is conducting “emergency survival training” for the children.

During the report, screams were heard in a smoke-filled room while the program showed the children learning to leave during a fire while holding onto the wall.

“This is not just dry theory, but our classes are conducted in a playful format and are aimed at children,” said Evgeniy Sokolov, inspector of the Mogilev military training center for the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

‘Children are being indoctrinated,’ says activist

Ukrainian authorities said they are investigating the deportation of the children as possible genocide. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine has said Belarus is also being investigated over the alleged forced deportation of more than 19,000 children from occupied Ukrainian territories.

Pavel Latushka, the former Belarusian culture minister turned opposition activist who presented the ICC with evidence of Lukashenko’s alleged involvement in the illegal deportation of children, said that “Belarusian authorities are not hiding the fact that children are being indoctrinated.”

Ukrainian children are being “subjected to re-education and indoctrination” to make them pro-Russian, Latushka told The Associated Press. According to Latushka, there are instances of Ukrainian children being taken to Belarus and then to Russia where they were put up for adoption.

In March, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of war crimes over the illegal deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia. Moscow has rejected the accusations.

Belarus has been Moscow’s closest ally since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, when Lukashenko allowed the Kremlin to use Belarus to invade Ukraine. Russia has also stationed some of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
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ATHENS, GREECE — Two migrants were killed and 30 were rescued in Greece Wednesday after a dinghy crashed into rocks in high winds on the island of Lesbos, local authorities said.

The incident occurred near the resort town of Thermi on the east of the island, facing the nearby coast of Turkey.

Authorities said many of those rescued were found in a remote area on land near the accident site, apparently trying to make their own way to the nearest town. A search was also launched at sea, but it remained unclear whether others were missing.

Strong winds disrupted ferry traffic in many parts of Greece Wednesday.

Lesbos remains a transit point for illegal migration into the European Union despite rigorous patrolling by the Greek coast guard and the EU border protection agency Frontex.
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Helsinki, Finland — Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and China’s Xi Jinping on Wednesday said their countries held “constructive dialogue” over a Baltic Sea gas pipeline that Finnish authorities believe was damaged by a Chinese vessel, Helsinki said.

Finnish police in late October recovered an anchor believed to have damaged the Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia on October 8.

They said findings suggested it belonged to the Chinese cargo ship Newnew Polar Bear.

“The presidents noted the constructive dialogue between the countries regarding the Balticconnector pipeline incident,” a statement from the Finnish presidency said.

A Chinese statement about the presidents’ video-link meeting made no mention of talks on the damaged pipeline.

Finnish officials said in late October that China was cooperating in its investigation.

The incident came just over a year after underwater explosions struck three of four Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, cutting off a major supply route to Europe from Russia at a time of heightened tensions between Moscow and the West over the war in Ukraine.

The cause of that sabotage remains unknown.

The Finnish operator of Balticconnector said in October it would take at least five months to repair the pipeline, leaving Finland dependent on liquefied natural gas imports for the winter.

Natural gas accounts for around five percent of Finland’s energy consumption, being mainly used in industry and combined heat and power production.

In the Finnish statement, Niinisto, whose country joined NATO last year, said he had also raised the issue of the war in Ukraine in his talks with Xi and “stressed the role of China in achieving a just and lasting peace.”

In a summary of the meeting on Chinese state television CCTV, Xi said the Asian nation was “firmly pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace.” 
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kyiv, ukraine — For nearly two years, some of Ukraine’s largest broadcasters have worked together under the United TV Marathon.   

But as the fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its third year, critics are questioning the usefulness and multimillion-dollar budget that goes into the broadcast.   

Formed in February 2022, the coalition of six major broadcasters produces 24/7 coverage during the war. Each broadcaster — Suspilne, 1+1, Starlight Media, Media Group Ukraine, Inter Media Group, and the parliamentary Rada TV Channel — airs content for a set number of hours, with prime-time slots rotating between stations.    

See related video by Cristina Caicedo Smit:

When the Marathon — as the united broadcaster is called — was first announced, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said the broadcasts were needed to consolidate resources and provide round-the-clock information objectively and promptly from across the country. 

But journalists are starting to question whether the Marathon still offers value. Its relevancy was among the questions presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a press conference in late December.    

A journalist from Life magazine noted that viewership is low and asked Zelenskyy’s press secretary why the state allocates large sums to support it.      

The state budget for 2024 allocates more than $45 million for the Marathon, along with the production of TV programming. 

The Marathon restricts certain freedoms of journalists, said Iryna Sampan, a freelancer who works with outlets including Hromadske Radio and the Butusov Plus YouTube channel.      

“It is possible to work freely and independently, but basically everything rests on the United Marathon,” Sampan said. “The journalists themselves are already saying that it is not needed in the second year of the war.”    

She added that research showed the Marathon is “no longer needed. It has exhausted itself.”   

But Orest Drymalovsky, a TV presenter at Marathon member Starlight Media, defended the production.   

“The Marathon played a very important role at the beginning of the Russian invasion, in the first days when chaos — people are running, lack of information, Russian PSYOPs, a lot of fakes,” said Drymalovsky, host of the program “Vikna.”    

“Broadcasting was not interrupted,” he said. “It was not possible to hack our system.” 

With the war in its second year, “we are doing important things,” Drymalovsky said. “We can look at the information and coverage of events at the front. There are certain specifics that we can exhibit so as not to harm our defense force.”  

‘Necessary’ at the start

Otar Dovzhenko, an expert at the nongovernmental Lviv Media Forum and chair of the Independent Media Council, agrees that in the early months, the Marathon was “relevant and necessary.”      

At the start of the full invasion, the Marathon “was seen as an effective tool for countering disinformation, a central official source of information that could replace people’s less reliable sources,” Dovzhenko said.     

But “by the summer of 2022, the situation stabilized, and the need for the Marathon disappeared,” he said. 

Criticism of the broadcasts are less focused on the budget it takes to sustain it, and more that it is now seen as ineffective, Dovzhenko said, adding that some in the media “see it as a tool with which the government tries to influence society.”  

Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy did not respond to VOA’s request for comment. 

Some media outlets are excluded from the Marathon. Neither 5 Kanal nor Priamyi, which are associated with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, nor the opposition Espreso TV channel, are part of the Marathon.   

Ukraine also took steps to close or sanction outlets with Russian affiliations.   

In 2021, Zelenskyy signed a decree sanctioning ZIK, NewsOne and 112 Ukraine — three television stations believed to be affiliated with pro-Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk.   

Olha Bereziuk, a journalist at the English-language news website Gordon, said she believes the closure of media from Medvedchuk’s circle “is a step that provides security and protects the information space.”  

But, she said, “There are doubts about the control of the opposition media, in particular from Poroshenko’s circle. I don’t know if they will be represented and in what quantity. But it is felt that they need to allocate a little more airtime, and the Marathon itself is a little questionable about its existence, its purpose and its financing.”   

In a study published in August by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, half of the respondents said they did not watch the Marathon, and only 13% said they watched regularly. Of those who did watch, only 14% said they had complete trust in the information.    
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London — China’s arrest of a man allegedly working as a spy for Britain could be retaliation, analysts say.  

The case, which was announced on Monday by China’s Ministry of State Security, comes amid growing and vocal concern in Britain over Beijing and the security threat the communist country poses. It also follows last year’s arrest of a British parliamentary researcher on suspicion of spying for China. 

According to a post Monday on the ministry’s official WeChat social media account, Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency recruited a man surnamed Huang in 2015, who has since then passed 17 pieces of intelligence to and recruited personnel for the agency using spy equipment provided by the British government. 

Chinese authorities did not reveal Huang’s nationality or gender but said the alleged spy was from an unspecified “third country” and underwent recruitment and training in Britain and other locations. They also said the individual was working under the guise of being an overseas consultant.

The ministry did not provide evidence to support the claims nor disclose Huang’s current condition or whereabouts. But it did say that state security “promptly reported and arranged consular visits, protecting Huang’s lawful rights in accordance with the law.”

When contacted by VOA, Britain’s Foreign Office on Tuesday replied: “It is our longstanding policy to neither confirm nor deny claims relating to intelligence matters.”

Peter Humphrey, a former journalist who later worked for more than a decade as a fraud investigator for Western firms in China, said the case looks like “a complete joke.”

“Firstly, I think this is the continuation of Beijing’s attack on Western consultancies. Secondly, I think Beijing is trying to find a case to throw back at us because we have caught them doing things in the U.K., America, Belgium, etc.,” Humphrey told VOA in a telephone interview. “Beijing is desperately looking for a case to throw back at us.”

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said a Chinese American U.S. Navy service member was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine after pleading guilty in October to taking bribes to give sensitive military information to a Chinese intelligence officer.

Britain has accused Chinese spies of targeting officials in key ministries, while China has unveiled multiple cases accusing foreign citizens, including British and Americans, of espionage.

In September, The Times newspaper reported that Britain’s intelligence agency arrested British parliamentary researcher Chris Cash on suspicion of spying for China. Cash has close ties to Minister of Parliament Alicia Kearns, the current chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Tom Tugendhat, the former defense secretary and security minister.

Another policy researcher working in the British Parliament, who asked to remain anonymous in an interview with VOA because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the level of security at parliament has changed since Cash was arrested. 

“Within about a month, they changed their entire security protocols. And so now the application process is completely different,” the researcher said, adding that the golden age of British-China relations is dead. 

Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chair of the Britain-based rights group Hong Kong Watch, told VOA the accusations made by China not only worsen Sino-British relations but also significantly impact foreign citizens and companies operating in China. 

“Whether there is any truth in China’s allegations or whether it is a tit-for-tat retaliation in response to allegations of Chinese espionage activities in Westminster remains to be seen, but either way, this incident contributes to a more risky and dangerous environment for British citizens doing business in or traveling to China,” he said. 

David Moore, a policy researcher at the British Parliament, said Britain shouldn’t fear retaliation from the Chinese government.

“About time we need to crack down on Chinese espionage, whether it be trying to infiltrate our institutions or on our streets with Chinese police stations that have been operating across the Western world,” he told VOA referring to alleged policing by Chinese security forces in foreign countries including the U.S. 

In a speech in July at the British Embassy in Prague, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service said China was their single most important strategic focus. “We now devote more resources to China than anywhere else, reflecting China’s increasing global significance.”

VOA reached out to the Chinese Embassy in London for comment, but by the time of publication, no response had been received. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has exported 15 million metric tons of cargo through its Black Sea shipping corridor, including 10 million tons of agricultural goods, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said Tuesday.

Ukraine launched the corridor hugging the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria in August shortly after Russia withdrew from a 2022 U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain export deal and threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets.

“Over the five months of the corridor’s operation, 469 new vessels have called at our Ukrainian ports for loading,” Kubrakov said in a statement.

He said that currently, 39 ships were being loaded in the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi while another 83 vessels had confirmed their readiness to call at the ports and export 2.4 million tons of various cargoes.

Ukraine, a major global grain grower and exporter, says its exportable grain surplus totals 50 million tons in the 2023/24 July-June season. It had exported 19.4 million tons of grain as of Jan. 8.

 
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