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Poroshenko returns to Ukraine, faces prosecution for ‘treason’
How Ukrainians play politics
FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik / Stringer
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, declared wanted last month for a number of serious crimes, including high treason, has flown back to Kiev in time for a court hearing that could see him remanded in custody.
Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, left the country last month around the same time a summons was issued for his interrogation. He is being investigated over his alleged involvement in the funding of separatist fighters in the Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, through the illegal sale of coal. This, according to the law, is illegal, and he is subsequently accused of treason and promoting terrorism.
Another suspect in the treason case is Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the political council of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, the country’s largest opposition group in Parliament. Poroshenko and Medvedchuk are the two main opposition leaders and the most significant political threats to current President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to Poroshenko, he is being persecuted for purely political reasons. His arrival is thought by many to be a precursor to a showdown between the former president and Zelensky, who faced off in the 2019 election.
After landing in Kiev, on a budget flight from Warsaw, and successfully passing through passport control, Poroshenko left the capital’s Zhuliany Airport and spoke to gathered supporters. He told the assembled thousands that he was not arrested at the airport due to the masses of people who came to support him, as well as the number of journalists present.
“In front of the whole world, [the security forces] showed cynical and irresponsible behavior,” Poroshenko said and dubbed the case against him a “challenge” to the whole of Ukraine.
Following his speech to the crowd, Poroshenko headed for Kiev’s Pechersky District Court, where he could be remanded in custody after officially being charged.
Louvre threatens to sue Marine Le Pen
How the French play politics
A tv grab taken on January 15, 2022 from the Facebook page of the Rassemblement National shows France's far-right party Rassemblement National candidate for the 2022 French presidential election Marine Le Pen delivering a speech by the Louvre Pyramid in Paris. © AFP / facebook Rassemblement National
The Louvre Museum in Paris has hit out at right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen after she claimed the landmark ‘as her own’ in a campaign video. The museum has asked her to remove the advertisement.
On Sunday, the Louvre said that Marine Le Pen, the National Rally party leader, did not have permission to film her presidential campaign video in front of its infamous glass pyramid, which sits at the heart of the building’s courtyard.
In the video, filmed on January 11, Le Pen claimed the Paris landmark “as her own,” the museum said. In the three-and-a-half minute ad, Le Pen attacks incumbent President Emmanuel Macron for his “interlude of a Macronism that’s been toxic for the country and that began here.” Macron had made his victory speech after the 2017 election from the Louvre pyramid.
I wonder if he had permission?
Philippe Olivier, one of Le Pen’s campaign advisors, told the New York Times that the campaign video was made to show that “Macron is the opponent” and “that’s what the symbolic act of being at the Louvre is about.”
“We belong to the entire French population,” a museum spokesperson told Le Parisien, adding that “in her video clip, Le Pen claims the Louvre as her own.”
The museum said they did not want to be part of tit-for-tat politics.
Le Pen’s campaign team said their video was in line with the museum’s official rules, which says permission is not needed when the filming isn’t for commercial purposes. The video remains online.
The Louvre added that they were “considering what action may be taken regarding the conditions under which the video was filmed and broadcast.”
While Macron is yet to announce his candidacy for the election in April, he remains the favorite. Le Pen faces stiff competition from other right-wing candidates who may pip her to second place in the first round of the election, thereby preventing her from reaching the run-off.
I have been watching Marine Le Pen for several years now, and there has never been a federal French election where Marine wasn't accused of something, charged with something, in court over something, that seems to disappear after the next election. This is the French way of doing politics. At least, she hasn't been charged with treason yet.
Presidential hopeful fined for inciting hatred
It's not just Marine Le Pen who is abused, but anyone on France's far right
Journalist and essayist Eric Zemmour, who is running in the 2022 French presidential election, was fined €10,000 ($11,400) on Monday for inciting hatred against migrants on TV.
A Paris court tried Zemmour for the remarks he made on a TV show in September 2020.
While speaking about unaccompanied minors entering the country, the journalist said: “They’ve got no reason being here, they are thieves, they are killers, they are rapists, that’s all they do, they should be sent back.”
The broadcast took place days after a Pakistani-born Islamist went on a stabbing spree outside the former office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, wounding two people.
The prosecution argued that Zemmour “crossed the limits of the freedom of expression.”
Zemmour’s lawyer Olivier Pardo said his client will appeal Monday’s verdict. He added that Zemmour was voicing his political views and describing “the reality,” sometimes “in a brutal way.”
The presidential candidate himself dismissed the ruling as “ideological and stupid.”
Zemmour, known for his anti-migrant and anti-Islam statements, is a highly divisive figure in France. He was prosecuted around 15 times and convicted of incitement of hatred in 2011 and 2019. An appeal of the 2019 ruling will be decided on Thursday.
The French will vote for their president in April.
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Kremlin identifies ‘red line’ in NATO-Russia relations
NATO created a situation Russia “couldn’t tolerate any more,” Putin's spokesman claims
NATO’s “gradual invasion” into Ukraine has brought the US-led bloc right up to Moscow’s “red line,” the Kremlin has told CNN. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman says the situation poses an imminent threat to European security.
In an interview aired on Sunday, Dmitry Peskov cited documented Western promises, which, he noted, have never been “fixed in a legally binding way,” that NATO would not expand further eastwards into the former Soviet bloc. In contrast to these pledges, over the past few years, NATO has used its ‘open door policy’ to absorb several former Warsaw Pact countries.
Moscow has drawn the line at Ukraine, Peskov told the American broadcaster.
“First, there were just words but with time we have seen the gradual invasion of NATO into Ukrainian territory, with its infrastructure, with its instructors, with supplies of defensive and offensive weapons, teaching [the] Ukrainian military and so on,” Peskov said.
Putin's long time spokesman went on to say that these moves have brought NATO directly “to the red line,” creating a situation which constitutes a “real threat” both for Russia and for the whole “European [security] architecture.” Russia has a 3,000-km border with Ukraine, which, until the Ukrainian war broke out in 2014, was almost completely unfortified.
These circumstances, which Moscow “couldn’t tolerate anymore,” prompted Putin's team to come up with a set of proposals to improve collective security, Peskov said.
The proposals include guarantees that NATO will not expand eastwards and that no former Soviet country bordering Russia would be permitted to join the alliance. The US, as well as NATO – which Peskov called “a weapon of confrontation” on Sunday – have already rejected these particular proposals. Unless a compromise is found, Peskov said tensions will only escalate further.
Peskov also said during the interview that Moscow “will be ready to take counter-actions” should NATO deployments to Ukraine continue, though he stressed that this does not mean all-out military action.
At the start of the interview, Zakaria told Peskov that, according to “some people,” Russia has “created this crisis” itself. Kiev and Washington have insisted for months that Russia has been amassing troops at the Ukrainian border, in preparation for an invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied having plans to invade its neighbor. Peskov once again dismissed the idea on Sunday, pointing the finger at NATO instead for threatening Russia’s security over the past two decades.
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Germany wants to 'normalize' relations with Russia – Baerbock
Berlin’s foreign minister emphasized that there is a “long list” of issues to resolve
Germany is still intent on normalizing relations with Russia, the country’s top diplomat has said before a planned visit to Moscow, insisting that recent bilateral talks can’t be expected to solve every problem at once.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock downplayed the breakdown of talks between Russia and the West, arguing that productive diplomacy between the two sides is still very much possible.
“There have been no joint talks with Russia within the framework of NATO for two years,” she explained. “I don’t think anyone came to the negotiating table and thought: ‘We haven’t talked to each other for two years, now we’ll solve in a few hours everything that hasn’t been discussed in the last few years.’”
The foreign minister, who will be traveling to Moscow and Kiev this week for negotiations, emphasized that solving problems diplomatically is rarely easy. “Diplomacy, especially in times of crisis, is characterized by the fact that it requires a lot of perseverance, a lot of patience, and strong nerves,” she said. “We are doing everything we can to ensure that there is no further escalation.”
On Monday, Baerbock indicated that she will be arriving in Moscow with a “long list” of issues to discuss, and said that she will make clear Germany’s position. She named science, culture, trade, renewable energy, and climate issues as possible subjects.
No technology security?
“Cooperation between civic communities is particularly important to us,” she went on. “I also want to talk to my Russian colleague about these opportunities and how we can create the conditions to use them more effectively,” she added, saying that she will also listen attentively to her interlocutors in both Moscow and Kiev.
Baerbock’s comments come after a series of talks held last week between diplomats from Russia, the US, and NATO on the subject of security in Europe. Moscow has requested written guarantees that the US-led military bloc will not expand into Ukraine, an agreement that Western leaders have said is off the table. Meanwhile, American intelligence services have been warning for months that they fear an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin has dismissed as misinformation.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that he expected the Western powers to make a written reply to Moscow’s security proposals within a week.
In an exclusive television interview with RT in December, Lavrov said Russia was eager for diplomacy with Germany, but that some factions in Berlin were more interested in lecturing Moscow than finding common ground. “The approach they have that one side is doing everything perfectly, and the other side should change its behavior altogether – well, you understand that that cannot happen,” he commented.
Pride and arrogance have no place in negotiations.
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