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On March 17, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. They are charged with responsibility for the illegal deportation of children from occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.
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PARIS — Arson attacks scrambled France’s high-speed rail network for tens of thousands of passengers on Friday, after what officials called premeditated acts of “sabotage” just hours before the Paris Olympics opened.

Friday’s attacks were launched as the French capital was under heavy security ahead of the Games opening ceremony, with 300,000 spectators and an audience of VIPs expected at the event.

The fires that affected France’s Atlantic, northern and eastern lines led to cancellations and delays at a time of particularly heavy traffic for summer holiday travel.

Around 800,000 passengers are expected to be affected over the weekend as the damage is heavy and labor-intensive to repair.

“Early this morning, coordinated and prepared acts of sabotage were perpetrated against installations of SNCF,” the national rail operator, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said.

“There are huge and serious consequences for the rail network,” he added, while security services are hunting the culprits.

SNCF chief executive Jean-Pierre Farandou said that the attackers had started fires in “conduits carrying multiple [fiber-optic] cables” that carry “safety information for drivers” or control the motors for points.

“There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring “hundreds of workers,” he added.

Passenger services chief Christophe Fanichet said there were delays of 90 minutes to two hours on services between Paris and France’s north and east.

“We ask people please not to come to the station, because if you haven’t heard from us, your train won’t be running,” Fanichet told reporters.

One major branch of the network, the line to France’s southeast, was spared.

CEO Farandou said that railway workers doing night maintenance in central France spotted unauthorized people, who then fled when the workers called in police.

Multiple services between Paris and London via northern France were also cancelled, the Eurostar company said, with others suffering delays as they divert onto lines not meant for high-speed trains.

Paris’s RATP transport network was also operating under “increased vigilance” following the railway attacks, its chief executive Jean Castex said as he visited a control station.

The RATP has laid on a denser schedule throughout the day to bring spectators to and from the opening ceremony.

Olympics under heavy security

France’s intelligence services were scrambling to determine the perpetrators of the sabotage, a security source told AFP.

The source added that the arson method used resembled past attacks by extreme-left actors.

In September, arson attacks on conduits holding railway cables caused travel chaos in northern Germany, with a claim of responsibility posted to an extreme-left website.

The attacks happened hours before the Olympics parade on Friday evening that will see up to 7,500 competitors travel down a six-kilometer stretch of the river Seine on a flotilla of 85 boats.

It will be the first time a Summer Olympics has opened outside the main athletics stadium, a decision fraught with danger at a time when France is on its highest alert for terror attacks.

Disappointed travelers

France’s rail network was expected to be busy this weekend not only due to the Olympics but also as people return from or leave for their summer holidays.

At Paris’s Montparnasse train station, passengers were waiting for information, with display boards showing delays of more than two hours.

SNCF said there would be no trains at all from Montparnasse before 1:00 pm (1100 GMT).

“Normal traffic is expected to resume on Monday, July 29,” read one of the signs in the departure hall.

Graphic designer Katherine Abby, 30, clung to hope that her trip would only be delayed and not cancelled. She booked her tickets for Biarritz, a popular southwest beach resort, weeks ago.

“It’s my only vacation of the year,” said Abby, who was traveling with her husband.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a year, I would be pretty demoralized to have to cancel this trip, especially when you see what Paris looks like with the Olympic Games,” she said.

“We’re pretty upset, it’s a bad first impression” of France, said Ellie Scott, 24, an Irish tourist in Bordeaux hoping to reach Paris for the Olympics.

She and her sister Maya, 21, planned to refund their tickets and rent a car instead for a six-hour drive to the capital.

 
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Vientiane, Laos — China and Russia’s foreign ministers met their Southeast Asian counterparts Friday after vowing to counter “extra-regional forces,” a day before Washington’s top diplomat was due to arrive.

Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov were attending a three-day meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc in the Laos capital of Vientiane.

Both held talks with counterparts from the bloc, while Wang also met with new British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

On Thursday Wang and Lavrov agreed to work together in “countering any attempts by extra-regional forces to interfere in Southeast Asian affairs,” according to Moscow’s foreign ministry.

They also discussed implementing “a new security architecture” in Eurasia, Lavrov said in a statement, without elaborating.

According to a readout from Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Wang said Beijing was “ready to work with Russia to… firmly support each other, safeguard each other’s core interests.”

China is a close political and economic ally of Russia, and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive in Vientiane on Saturday morning for talks with ASEAN foreign ministers.

Blinken has made Washington’s alliances in Asia a top foreign policy priority, with the aim of “advancing a free and open” Indo-Pacific — a veiled way of criticizing China and its ambitions.

But Blinken shortened his Asia itinerary by a day to be present for Thursday’s White House meeting between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Wang and Blinken will meet in Laos, a spokeswoman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said, to “exchange views on issues of common concern.”

South China Sea dispute

On Friday Wang met ASEAN foreign ministers and hailed Beijing’s deepening economic ties with the region.

For the customary joint handshake, Wang stood next to Myanmar’s representative Aung Kyaw Moe, permanent secretary to the foreign affairs ministry.

The ASEAN bloc has banned Myanmar’s junta from high-level meetings over its 2021 coup and crackdown on dissent that have plunged the country into turmoil.

Lavrov also met ASEAN counterparts at the venue in Vientiane but did not take questions from journalists.

ASEAN ministers are expected to issue a joint communique after the three-day meeting.

One diplomatic source said the joint communique is being held up by lack of consensus over the wording of the paragraphs on the Myanmar conflict and disputes in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims the waterway — through which trillions of dollars of trade passes annually — almost in its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

Several Southeast Asian countries have competing claims. 
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Washington — Over the past three weeks, Shirali Abdurehim, a 39-year-old Uyghur honey seller in Istanbul, has been detained in an immigration detention center.

Abdurehim, a father of nine children, has lived in Turkey with his wife since 2013 as a refugee after fleeing repression in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. He is one of at least a dozen Uyghurs who have been detained in recent weeks, according to detainees, lawyers and rights advocates.

VOA has also seen at least four posts on the social media site Facebook calling for the release of family members since last weekend.

“Turkish agents came to my residence on July 4 and said there was an allegation against me that I conspired with other foreigners from Uzbekistan to produce and sell counterfeit Turkish passports,” Abdurehim told VOA in a phone interview.

“They were very polite when they took me for interrogation. They first said they would immediately release me after taking a statement,” he said.

Family facing eviction

During the interrogation, Abdurehim says he denied the allegations, claiming that the accusations were fabricated by the Chinese government or Chinese agents in Turkey.

“After that interrogation, they said they couldn’t release me and instead transferred me to an immigration detention center, where I joined six other recently arrested Uyghurs,” he said. “My wife and nine children are desperately waiting for my return. They can’t survive without me, and now they face eviction from the apartment we rent.”

VOA emailed the Turkish Interior Ministry’s Immigration Department for more information regarding the cases of Abdurehim and the other Uyghurs detained in recent weeks. The ministry has yet to respond.

Abdurehim’s wife, who asked that her first name not be published to protect her relatives in Xinjiang, told VOA that the family had been living day-to-day on her husband’s honey sales. “Our landlord demanded six months’ rent in advance, but we can’t afford it. With my husband in indefinite detention, we’re also struggling to put food on the table.”

Turkish flag T-shirt

Abdurehim says his troubles trace to 2010 when Chinese authorities arrested him in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

“I was arrested for months in 2010 for wearing a T-shirt with a Turkish flag,” Abdurehim said. “It was a time when many Uyghurs felt grateful for [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s statement in 2009.”

Unrest had broken out in Urumqi in July of that year amid protests over government inaction following reported killings and injuries of Uyghurs by a Chinese mob in Guangdong province. Initially peaceful, the protests escalated into clashes when Chinese armed police intervened. Subsequently, Uyghurs faced accusations of attacking unarmed Chinese individuals, resulting in arrests, disappearances and detentions.

Erdogan had characterized China’s actions toward Uyghurs as “genocide,” a sentiment that resonated within the Uyghur community.

Fleeing China

After his release, Abdurehim fled the country without a passport. Because of China’s historical restrictions preventing many Uyghurs from obtaining passports legally, he sought assistance from human traffickers in Yunnan province in southwest China.

“In 2012, I journeyed from Yunnan through Vietnam and Thailand, eventually arriving in Malaysia. It was there that my wife, our only child at the time, and I received humanitarian travel documents from the Turkish Embassy, enabling us to relocate to Turkey in 2013,” he recounted.

“For the first time, I felt liberated from government repression in a country I came to cherish deeply, a place I was prepared to sacrifice everything for, including my life.”

After arriving in Turkey, Abdurehim opened a grocery shop in Istanbul. However, in late 2018, he was detained by Turkish authorities on unspecified allegations. He was released in early 2019 without any charges.

“I spent three months in detention due to baseless accusations, which I believe were influenced by Chinese authorities or their agents in Turkey,” Abdurehim recounted.

“Thankfully, Turkish authorities eventually recognized my innocence and released me. However, the ordeal forced me to sell my grocery shop to cover legal expenses and defense fees.”

Refuge in Turkey

Turkey is home to one of the largest Uyghur diaspora communities outside China, with a population estimated at 50,000 to 75,000, according to Uyghur groups there.

Since the 1950s, Turkey has been a refuge for Uyghurs fleeing what they describe as severe repression by the Chinese government, including allegations of genocide, mass arbitrary detention affecting over 1 million people, forced labor, forced sterilization, torture and other abuses.

China denies all those allegations, but in recent years, the U.S. and several Western parliaments have officially labeled China’s recent policies and treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide. The U.N. human rights office has suggested that these actions may constitute crimes against humanity.

Initially denying these accusations, China later referred to the facilities holding Uyghurs as “re-education centers” aimed at countering “extremism, terrorism and separatism.” China continuously describes accusations of Uyghur human rights abuses as “lies fabricated by U.S.-led anti-China forces” to contain China’s development.

China-Turkey ties

Memettohti Atawulla, an Istanbul-based senior project manager at the Washington-based Center for Uyghur Studies, notes that the recent surge in arrests of Uyghurs in Turkey came shortly after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Xinjiang.

During the trip, “Turkey expressed its commitment to cooperate in what China terms as ‘anti-terrorism,’ a label that masks China’s harsh policies targeting Uyghurs,” Atawulla told VOA. “This may be a significant factor contributing to the increased arrests of Uyghurs in Turkey.”

During his visit to Urumqi, Fidan emphasized Turkey’s support for China’s anti-terrorism efforts in a meeting with Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui.

“We support China against armed terrorist groups. We do not approve international initiatives seeking to incite strife in China and to stop China’s economic development,” Fidan said in China. He also urged China to respect Uyghurs and let them “live their values.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request from VOA for comment on whether the recent arrests were related to “anti-terrorism” cooperation between the two countries.

Recent uptick

According to Jevlan Shirmehmet, an Istanbul-based lawyer advocating for Uyghurs, the reasons for the recent arrests extend beyond accusations related to terrorism.

He said it is hard to determine the total number of Uyghurs detained, but he personally knows of at least five detainees and was meeting with one detained Uyghur in a prison in Istanbul when VOA spoke with him.

He added that arrests of Uyghurs are not new, but that there has been a recent uptick.

“This issue of Uyghur detentions in Turkey has persisted over several years, and I have personally seen a variety of cases,” Shirmehmet said.

“One common scenario involves allegations conveyed by China, while another type accuses Uyghurs of espionage for China. Additionally, there are cases related to civil crimes that occur in any community.”
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kyiv, ukraine — The former prisoners of war still puzzle over the strange events leading up to the night now seared into their memories, when an explosion ripped through the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison barracks and killed so many comrades two years ago.

Among the survivors: Kyrylo Masalitin, whose months in captivity and long beard age him beyond his 30 years. Arsen Dmytryk, the informal commander of the group of POWs that was shifted without explanation to a room newly stocked with bare bunks. And Mykyta Shastun, who recalled guards laughing as the building burned, acting not at all like men under enemy attack.

“Before my eyes, there were guys who were dying, who were being revived, but it was all in vain,” said Masalitin, who is back on the front line and treated as a father figure by the men he commands.

The Associated Press interviewed over a dozen people with direct knowledge of details of the attack, including survivors, investigators and families of the dead and missing. All described evidence they believe points directly to Russia as the culprit. The AP also obtained an internal United Nations analysis that found the same.

Despite the conclusion of the internal analysis that found Russia planned and executed the attack, the U.N. stopped short of accusing Russia in public statements.

Of 193 Ukrainians in the barracks, fewer than two dozen made it back home. More than 50 died on the night of July 28, 2022. Around 120 are missing and believed detained somewhere in Russia. Russia accused Ukraine of striking its own men with U.S.-supplied missiles.

There are no active international investigations into the attack and a Ukrainian inquiry is one of tens of thousands of war crimes for investigators there, raising wider questions about whether those who committed crimes in occupied areas can ever face justice.

The U.N. has rejected Russia’s claims that Ukrainian government HIMARS targeted the men, as do the victims who returned in prisoner exchanges, like Masalitin. When the former POWs have time to reflect – rare since many have returned to the fight – they say too many things don’t add up.

In the days following the Olenivka deaths, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres launched an independent mission to investigate. Russia refused to guarantee the mission’s safety and its members never traveled either to occupied territory in the eastern Donetsk region or to Ukrainian-held territory. It dissolved five months later.

But when survivors began to return to Ukraine in exchanges, a U.N. field team that had been in-country since 2014 sought them out.

That team analyzed 70 open-source images, 20 statements by Russian officials along with 16 survivor interviews from Russian television. They conducted in-depth interviews with 55 freed POWs who were in the barracks or elsewhere in Olenivka during the attack. Their conclusion: Russia planned and executed the attack.

The 100-page analysis circulated at the highest levels of the U.N. but was never intended to be published in full. Some of the evidence was incorporated piecemeal into broader U.N. reports on the war, including one that said the missile traveled from east to west. The Russian Federation controls the territory east of where the prisoners were kept. The U.N. never publicly blamed Russia.

Names on a list

The lists of names the Russians drew up in late July 2022 had no explanation, no context. All the men listed were from the Azov unit who became national heroes after holding out for months against an overwhelmingly larger Russian force in the city of Mariupol. The prisoners were told to be ready. No one knew why.

On the morning of July 27, 2022, the group was rounded up and led to an industrial section of the colony, away from the other five POW barracks. They were taken to a cinder-block building with a tin-plate roof and 100 bunks, no mattresses and a hastily dug pit toilet, multiple survivors told AP.

“Everything in the barracks was prepared very quickly,” said Arsen Dmytryk, who outranked the others and became the informal leader. The barbed wire was cheap and flimsy, and there were machine tools inside, indicating that the building was recently a workshop.

The prison director visited to tell them that their old barracks were under renovation, although plenty of other prisoners had remained. Ukrainians who have been since released said there was no renovation.

That first day, the guards dug trenches for themselves, said Shastun. Ukraine’s Security Service told AP that their analysis confirmed the presence of the unusual new trenches.

On July 28, the colony management ordered the guard post moved further away, and for the first time the barrack guards “wore bullet-proof vests and helmets which they had not done before and unlike other colony personnel who rarely wore them,” according to a section of the internal U.N. analysis later incorporated into public reports.

On the night of July 28 around 10:30 p.m., Dmytryk completed his checks, cut the lights, climbed into the top bunk and fell asleep at once. An explosion woke him perhaps 45 minutes later, followed by the sound of a Grad missile launcher. But he’d heard that before and drifted back to sleep.

Ukrainian POWs elsewhere in the colony told the U.N. investigators that the Grad fire muffled sounds of the bigger explosions.

Pleas for help returned with threats

Dmytryk’s memories then turn apocalyptic. His body burned with shrapnel wounds. Fire raged. Men screamed in pain. And he climbed down from his bunk, he checked the pulse of the man below him. He was already dead. He and other witnesses told AP they ran outside through broken walls to beg the guards to send help for the injured.

“They fired into the air, saying, ‘Stay away from the gates, don’t come closer,'” Dmytryk recalled.

If Dmytryk’s memories are a narrative of horror, Shastun’s are more like disjointed film scenes. He recalled the guards just stood there laughing, tossing rags and flashlights at the panicked Ukrainians.

It took hours before POW medics were sent from the other barracks to help, around the same time as Russian forces brought in trucks and told survivors to load them with the most severely wounded.

“We carried them on stretchers, lifted them into the car, unloaded them and then ran back to get the other wounded,” Shastun said. One person died in a comrade’s arms. It was mid-morning when they finished, and the trucks were piled with bloody men.

Dmytryk was among them, his face caked in dried blood. He said men in another truck died before they made it to the hospital in Donetsk. The U.N. said in its public report of March 2023 that slow medical care worsened the death toll.

“They transported us like cattle, not stopping, speeding over bumps and taking sharp turns,” he said.

Also among the wounded was Serhii Alieksieievych, whose wife, Mariia, last caught sight of him in his hospital bed in a video circulating on Russian media, slowly answering questions as he recovered from his injuries.

Survivors isolated from other prisoners

Back at Olenivka, Shastun was one of approximately 70 survivors with lesser injuries who were taken to two 5×5 meter cells as the last of the trucks drove away, to be isolated from the rest of the prison colony. There were wooden pallets for sleeping and a single toilet in each.

The internal U.N. analysis said their isolation was intended to prevent survivors speaking to others in the colony about what happened that night because some prisoners had access to mobile phones and had direct contact with Ukraine. It also left them unaware of the debate raging outside.

According to the analysis, other Ukrainian prisoners were then sent to the bombed barracks and ordered to remove debris and the remaining bodies. Two hours later, that group was sent into a nearby hangar, and some saw men in camouflage bringing boxes of ammunition to the blast site and setting HIMARS fragments on a blue bench nearby.

Russian officials soon arrived, accompanied by Russian journalists whose images of twisted, charred bunk beds, HIMARS fragments and bodies laid out in the sun spread across the world.

The Ukrainians in the nearby hangar said after everyone was gone, the men in camouflage returned everything to the boxes and left.

As the clock ticked down to a U.N. Security Council meeting later that day, Russia and Ukraine blamed each other.

Russia opened an investigation and said Kyiv did it to silence soldiers from confessing to their “crimes” and used their recently acquired American-made HIMARS rockets. Ukraine denied the charge and said Russia was framing Ukraine to discredit the country before its allies.

The international community didn’t know who to believe. That’s when the U.N. announced it would conduct its own investigation, but negotiations to access the site were long and ultimately fruitless. Guterres’ special mission was disbanded on January 5, 2023, having never traveled to Ukraine.

“The members of the mission were of the view that it would be indispensable for them to be able to access all the relevant sites, materials and victims in order to fulfill its task and establish the facts of the incident,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told AP. Without that, the mission “was not in a position to provide any conclusions.”

But the separate Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which had been based in the country since Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, didn’t wait. The team combed through testimonies on Russian television from 16 survivors taken to the hospital, examined public images from the site and analyzed 20 statements made by Russian officials who visited the prison.

The mission informally shared an abridged version of its preliminary analysis with the U.N.’s newly formed Olenivka probe.

Then on September 22, a surprise prisoner swap gave the Human Rights Monitoring Mission its first chance to speak to witnesses and survivors. But from the date of the explosion, it would take eight months for any of that material to emerge publicly, and then only in pieces.

Dujarric did not respond to questions about the internal analysis.

In July 2023, U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Turk publicly stated what the internal report had first said nearly a year before — that HIMARS were not responsible. Three months later, the U.N. devoted a section to Olenivka in its annual report on the human rights situation in Ukraine. Again, cribbing from the internal analysis, the report noted that HIMARS were not responsible, that the fragments shown by Russian officials were not “in situ,” the scene had been contaminated and physical evidence disturbed.

The report concluded that the damage “appeared consistent with a projected ordnance having travelled with an east-to-west trajectory.” It failed to note that Russia controlled the eastern territory.

Fading hopes for justice

A Ukrainian investigation is ongoing, according to Taras Semkiv of the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s war crimes unit. The challenge is to identify the weapon used, in hopes that could lead to who ordered the attack. Semkiv said it’s been narrowed to three possibilities — artillery, planted explosives or a grenade launcher.

The Olenivka director is named as a suspect in “conspiracy for the ill-treatment of POWs” but the investigation leaves open the probability that more people were involved. At the war crimes unit headquarters of the Ukraine Security Service, known as the SBU, meters-long charts line the walls, illustrating the hierarchy of Russian officials responsible for various sections of the front line.

Semkiv said no international investigators have requested information from the General Prosecutor’s Office since the deaths at Olenivka, including the disbanded U.N. fact-finding mission. He said initial optimism about the mission faded as soon as it became clear that they would not investigate at all if there was no access to the prison.

“Technology is advancing rapidly, and there are ways to assess the situation without the direct presence of an investigator or prosecutor at the scene,” he said.

Relatives of those missing from the bombed barracks say they’re now alone in their search for answers.

First there was hope “that the world would not turn its back on us,” said Mariia Alieksieievych, the wife of the soldier seen recovering in the Donetsk hospital video. Her letters to her husband are shots in the dark – she hands them to the Red Cross, but as far as she knows there’s never been access to the prisoners. She said Ukraine’s government gives them no help or news about whether the men could be included in any future exchanges and has ignored requests for a day of remembrance for the Olenivka victims.

Her fading hopes for an international investigation have been replaced by determination.

She and other relatives want the International Criminal Court to take up the case, but she’s realistic enough to know that’s a distant possibility.

Her goal in the meantime: “To save the lives of our defenders, to bring them home. Because in Russian captivity, death is not an isolated case.”
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Athens — Greece formally approved an offer to buy 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the United States as part of a major defense overhaul, government officials said Thursday.

“The letter of acceptance for the F-35s has been signed and sent to the United States,” Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said while visiting a military air base near Athens.

The purchase, he said, would create “a powerful deterrent presence in our region.”

Delivery of the fifth-generation jet made by Lockheed Martin is expected to start in 2028, while Greece maintains the option to purchase 20 additional F-35 jets as part of an $8.6 billion deal.

The purchase of the first 20 jets along with additional support will cost some $3.5 billion, Greek officials said.

Greece is overhauling its military in a decade-long program following a protracted financial crisis and continued tension with neighbor and NATO ally Turkey, mostly over a volatile sea boundary dispute. 

Turkey was dropped from the F-35 program five years ago over its decision to buy Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system, a move seen in the United States as a compromise to NATO security. 

In Athens, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis described the current military modernization campaign as the most significant in “many decades.” 

“We will continue to implement this major program, equipping our country and armoring its defenses,” Marinakis said.

Athens has been seeking an advantage in the air since Turkey’s exclusion from F-35 purchases and has also acquired advanced French-made Rafale fighter jets. Deliveries to the Greek air force began in 2021, starting with jets previously used by France’s military that will be supplemented by new aircraft built by French defense contractor Dassault Aviation. 

Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the F-35 program, described the aircraft as being ideal to “strengthen Greece’s sovereignty and operational capability with allies.” “It is our honor to continue (our) relationship as Greece becomes the 19th nation to join the F-35 program,” she said. 

The U.S. State Department in January approved the sale that could eventually total 40 F-35 aircraft, along with 42 engines as well as services and equipment including secure communications devices, electronic warfare systems, training, logistics, and maintenance support. 

Current members of the F-35 program, either as participants or through military sales, are: the United States, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Japan, Korea, Belgium, Poland, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
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In the internationally accepted economic ranking by nominal GDP, the U.S. remains the world’s leading economy, while Russia ranks 11th. Volodin referred to Russia’s ranking by the purchasing power parity, or PPP, not the actual size and strength of the economy.
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WASHINGTON — Retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who was chief of staff on former President Donald Trump’s national security council, spoke with VOA about his vision for ending the war in Ukraine.

Kellogg says he is not a formal adviser to the former president and has not presented his plan to Trump, but it is one of the options that he could consider if he is elected in November.

Kellogg also served as the national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence in the Trump administration. He now co-chairs the Center on American Security at America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group.

The Ukraine strategy was published back in May by AFPI as part of their An America First Approach to U.S. National Security, edited by Fred Fleitz, who also served as chief of staff at the National Security Council during Trump’s presidency and co-wrote with Kellogg the chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war.

It suggests that the U.S. should begin a formal policy “to seek a cease-fire and negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict.” The U.S. would continue to arm Ukraine to deter Russia from attacking during or after a deal is reached, but under the condition that Kyiv agrees to enter into peace talks with Russia.

To persuade Russia to participate in the negotiations, the U.S. and other NATO partners would delay Ukraine’s membership in the alliance for an extended period in exchange for a “comprehensive and verifiable deal with security guarantees.”

They write that Ukraine will not be asked to give up its ambition to regain all land seized by Russia, but Kyiv should agree to use diplomatic means only and realize that it might take a long time to regain all the territories. The strategy proposes to use the partial lifting of sanctions on Russia to encourage the Kremlin to take steps toward peace and establish levies on Russian energy imports to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The interview with Kellogg, recorded on July 18 at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: Can you tell a little bit about the plan? I think it’s the most detailed paper coming publicly from Republican and Republican-affiliated groups.

Retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg: We’ve said very clearly in our paper that Ukraine has fought valiantly. They are very well led. We think the Russians did clearly an unwarranted invasion of a sovereign state and this must be addressed. President Trump, to his credit, said in the very first debate when he was asked by one of the commentators, Dana Bash, do the Russians basically get to keep the territories? He said no, not at all. He said not once, he did it twice.

So, there’s a negotiation, you are going to figure out what your starting points are going to be. You want to make sure that Ukrainians are not put at the position when they’re operating from weaknesses, but from strength. So, the question is how do you do that? And how you put all the pieces and parts in place? Nobody is ever saying that: “Oh, we just have to make Ukrainians to give up land and give it to Russia.” Look when you look at your losses, the losses in Ukraine alone, depending on who you talk to, you’re talking between 100,000 and 130,000 deaths. That’s enormous because when I look at [Russia’s losses] they have had three times that. The United States of America lost 60,000 in the Vietnam war. That was a 20-year war we went away from. The Russians, then the Soviets, lost 15,000 in Afghanistan and walked away from it.

If the Ukrainians say no and the Russians say no, then they can do it in a different way. But I think you started to ask yourself questions is this what’s best for Ukraine as a nation? I don’t care about Russia. I care about Ukraine.

Let’s say a year and a half ago the Russians turn their heels and if the West had provided the equipment that [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy asked for, then you probably could have finished the job. You could have gotten into the Sea of Azov through Kherson, splitting them in half, and that is what you wanted to do. So, I blame this administration and the West to a degree for not supporting Ukraine when they should have.

VOA: The Biden administration is saying that they want to put Ukraine in the position of strength before it can negotiate with Russia. You are suggesting pretty much the same, right?

Kellogg: No, that’s a false statement. Have the United States given Ukraine a support of F-16s? No. Did we provide long-range fires early for the Ukrainians to shoot in Russians? No. Did we provide permission for them to shoot deep into Russia? No. Did the United States provide them the armored capabilities they needed? We gave 31 tanks. Thirty-one tanks is not even a battalion in the United States army. So, they talk about it, but it didn’t really happen.

VOA: Ukrainian officials might be cautious about entering into the negotiations with Russians because it might send a signal to their partners that they don’t need military aid anymore.

Kellogg: You have to give more arms to them because you can’t trust the Russians. You just have to do it, and the question is, do you do this before Europe tires, Americans tire, Ukrainians tire? Two and a half years — that’s a long war and the destruction is enormous. Sometimes you have to look at what we call in America the long game. And that is security guarantees, financial support and military support. We have to bring that to the American people, you know, President Biden has only talked to American people one time. You got to talk to them a lot. President Biden has only talked to [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin one time. When I was with President Trump, he was talking to him 17 different times. It doesn’t mean he likes him. But you have to talk to your adversary.

VOA: Why would Russians want to negotiate?

Kellogg: You need to give them reasons to negotiate. You can give an extreme reason and say, OK, you’ve got to get back all the land from Ukraine. Maybe, short-term you tell Ukraine, we’re not going to support you coming to NATO, but we give you a bilateral security agreement.

VOA: The U.S. and Ukraine have just signed a security agreement.

Kellogg: That was not a defense agreement. A defense agreement should be ratified by the Senate. What you have to do is to come up with a peace agreement like we’ve done with Korea, we did years ago with Taiwan.

VOA: But what is the contingency plan if Russia doesn’t abide by the agreement.

Kellogg: That is part of negotiation. That’s where both sides draw the red lines. That’s where both sides make the determination: this is what we’re going to do or not do.

VOA: Ukraine already tried that signing the Minsk agreements with Russia.

Kellogg: Minsk agreements worked very well, didn’t they? They’re lousy. They didn’t do anything because nobody trusted anybody, and nobody worked together. You had Minsk 1, failed; Minsk 2, failed. Budapest memorandum, failed. So, you have to have some kind of degree of confidence and security.

VOA: One of the reasons why the negotiations in Istanbul broke down was that Russians demanded Ukraine’s demilitarization, a smaller army.

Kellogg: Yes. And this is an unacceptable demand. And you don’t walk into negotiating with unacceptable demands. But you have to have an ability, we call it an interlocutor. An interlocutor is somebody who can sit down and actually negotiate with both parties. It can be Trump, President Trump believes he can do it, but you also have to look at who else is out there. President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey, do you think he could do it? No, he’s not going to do it. [Chancellor Olaf] Scholz from Germany, you think he will do it? No, he is not going to do it. [President Emmanuel] Macron from France, he tried but hasn’t done it. Well, now they had a change in government in Britain. So that’s gone away. You know, I don’t know maybe [Klaus] Iohannis, [the president] of Romania. Maybe he could do it, but you have to have somebody that both sides could talk to.

President Trump is talking to both parties. And President Biden is not. Now the option is quite clear: If Ukraine doesn’t want to negotiate, fine, but then accept the fact that you can have enormous losses in your cities and accept the fact that you will have your children killed, accept the fact that you don’t have 130,000 dead, you will have 230,000–250,000. Demographically, what does that do to the country?

You have to accept the fact that maybe the threat will remain on Kyiv, you have to accept the fact that Kharkiv will have more damage or do you want to say this is time maybe we take a pause and figure out how to push the Russians out of there so that they don’t get territorial gain. And how do you have a long-term peace agreement?

Let’s use NATO as an example. NATO has already said they’re not going to support Ukraine going into NATO until the war is over. That’s the reality and that’s where you need somebody to stand as a negotiator and say no, this is where we want to go.

The size of this war is not appreciated in the West. That is the largest war in Europe since World War II, it is between the two largest countries in Europe. The losses have been horrific.

It is too great of a country, and I’ve been there. I have been to Izyum, I’ve been to Kharkiv and I’ve seen what Russians did to it. There’s no love for Russians. There’s a support for sovereignty. Figure out a way does not mean we say give up land.

VOA: The other reason why the negotiations in Istanbul broke down is because it became known what happened in Bucha. It means that if Ukraine allows Russia to continue occupying any of its lands, it condemns the people who live there. …

Kellogg: Who is saying to give up land?

VOA: Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance alluded to that.

Kellogg: J.D. Vance was just nominated as the vice president last night. Until that, he was just a senator, one of 100. Yeah, you can say a lot of things in the Senate. When you speak for an administration, things change. 
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New Delhi — The United Nations’ cultural agency rejected recommendations Wednesday to place Stonehenge on the list of world heritage sites in danger over concerns that Britain’s plans to build a nearby highway tunnel threaten the landscape around the prehistoric monument.

Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in southern England in stages, starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period about 2,500 B.C.

It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986 — an honor bestowed upon sites that have special cultural or physical significance.

UNESCO experts had recommended listing Stonehenge as “in danger” over the plans for highway development.

But at the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee, which maintains the list and oversees the conservation of the sites, members led by Kenya and Qatar said Britain’s plans to mitigate the effect on the site were sufficient and that it should not be added to the “in danger” list.

The highway project, which has been touted for decades and mired in legal challenges, is aimed at trying to ease traffic along a stretch of road prone to gridlock by moving the main highway underground and slightly farther away from the famous stone circle.

It has faced fierce opposition from local residents and archaeologists, as well as concern from UNESCO, over potential damage to the environment, wildlife and possible new archaeological finds.

Kenya, in amending the recommendation to list the site as in danger, focused on the fact that the main stone circle would be farther away from the road with the new construction, and not the experts’ assessment that the road project would significantly impact the greater site. It also noted that Britain had considered more than 50 proposals for the highway plan.

“What needs to be protected is not just the henge but the overall landscape of which the henge is a central focus,” the UNESCO experts had argued in their draft proposal, which was rejected.

“The main henge is a highly visible and well-known monument and the proposed tunnel would improve its immediate setting, but this monument has to be considered in its context, surrounded by and inextricably linked to a large number of prehistoric features, which together form an ancient landscape.”

After rejecting the proposal to list Stonehenge as in danger, the committee agreed to ask Britain for an updated report on the state of conservation of the property by December 2025.

UNESCO says a site’s inclusion on its List of World Heritage Sites in Danger is not punitive, but rather meant to draw international attention to the urgent need for conservation measures and “encourage corrective action.”

If issues are not rectified, sites face the possibility of being de-listed by UNESCO, though that is rare.
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Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday he will keep a centrist caretaker government on through the Olympics to avoid “disorder,” brushing aside an 11th-hour prime minister nomination by the country’s leftist coalition.

Macron made his widely expected announcement in a TV interview late Tuesday. Just prior to that appearance, the leftist coalition that won the most votes in this month’s parliamentary elections selected little-known civil servant Lucie Castets as their choice for prime minister.

But Macron told the France 2 network that the current government, who resigned last week to take on a purely caretaker role, would “handle current affairs during the Olympics,” which are being staged in Paris and elsewhere in France through Aug. 11.

“Until mid-August, we’re not in a position to be able to change things because it would prompt disorder,” Macron said. “I have chosen the stability” to safeguard the Games, which will soon gather about 10,500 athletes and millions of fans.

Party leaders in the leftist coalition immediately slammed Macron’s unwillingness to immediately consider their prime minister candidate.

There is no firm timeline for when Macron must name a new prime minister, following legislative elections that left the National Assembly, France’s influential lower house of parliament, with no dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern Republic.

Asked about the leftist coalition’s choice, Macron said “the issue is not a name provided by a political group,” adding that there must be a parliamentary majority behind the candidate to “pass reforms, pass a budget and move the country forward.”

France has been on the brink of government paralysis since the National Assembly elections resulted in a split among three major political blocs: the leftist New Popular Front, Macron’s centrist allies and the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen.

Macron, who has a presidential mandate until 2027, has the ultimate say in who is appointed prime minister. However, that person would need enough support from lawmakers to avoid a no-confidence vote.

Macron urged politicians from both the moderate left, the center and the moderate right to “work together” during the summer, arguing that with no outright majority, none of the main blocs can implement their political platforms.

He said “compromises” are needed.

Macron said he’d like to form a government as soon as possible, but that “Obviously, until mid-August, we need to be focused on the Games.”

The leftist coalition has repeatedly demanded the right to form a government after it won the most seats in the National Assembly, yet deep internal divisions have prevented its members from agreeing on a prime minister candidate for more than two weeks. The coalition is composed of three main parties — the hard-left France Unbowed, the Socialists and the Greens.
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TOKYO — Russia has banned the head of Toyota and 12 other senior Japanese business figures from entering the country, prompting a protest by Tokyo on Wednesday.

The list published by Russia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday includes Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, Rakuten chief Hiroshi Mikitani and Akihiko Tanaka, president of the government-backed Japan International Cooperation Agency.

The decision was a “response to Japan’s ongoing sanctions against our country in connection with the special military operation,” the foreign ministry statement said, using Moscow’s term for its invasion of Ukraine.

It did not explain how individuals were chosen for the list, which did not include the heads of major Japanese firms like Mitsubishi, Honda and Sony.

Japan has strongly backed the Western position on Ukraine, providing Kyiv with financial and material support and sanctioning Russian individuals and organizations.

Japan’s pacifist constitution restricts it from exporting weapons, but in December, Tokyo loosened arms export controls to enable it to sell domestically made Patriot missiles to the United States.

The move was aimed at replenishing U.S. inventories of the air defense missile systems that have run low because of supplies sent to Ukraine.

“Measures announced by Russia this time will restrict fair activity by Japanese companies, and are absolutely unacceptable,” Japanese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said Wednesday.

He said Tokyo had lodged a protest and that “all of our sanctions stem from Russia’s Ukraine invasion, which is a clear violation of international law.”
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Rights groups accuse French authorities of “social cleansing” ahead of the Paris Olympics by uprooting migrants, sex workers and others around the capital — undermining promises of making these Games the most inclusive ever. The government says it’s simply trying to address a longstanding problem. Lisa Bryant has more from the French capital.
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Budapest, Hungary — Hungary’s foreign minister voiced indifference on Tuesday over a decision by the European Union’s top diplomat to shift an EU ministers’ meeting from Budapest to Brussels in a sign of disapproval over Hungary’s initial use of the EU presidency.

“It was all the same to me in the beginning, and it’s all the same to me now,” Peter Szijjarto said in a statement.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell acted after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban began a self-styled Ukraine peace mission by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Orban, a nationalist who has often been at odds with broader EU policy, embarked on his quest without coordinating it with other EU government leaders or Ukraine just days after Hungary took on the 27-bloc’s rotating presidency on July 1.

“We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal,” Borrell told reporters in Brussels on Monday after the last meeting of EU foreign ministers before the summer break.

Borrell said there had been no consensus among EU members over whether to attend the ministerial meeting in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, planned for Aug. 28-29  and a gathering of defense ministers afterwards.

He said he opted to switch both meetings to Brussels given that a majority of countries wanted to send a message to Hungary over Orban’s outreach to Russia, which is subject to EU sanctions over its nearly two-and-a-half-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
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WASHINGTON — The United States has invited the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for U.S.-mediated cease-fire talks starting on August 14 in Switzerland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. 

The talks will include the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations as observers, Blinken said in a statement. Saudi Arabia will be a co-host for the discussions, he added.  

“The scale of death, suffering, and destruction in Sudan is devastating. This senseless conflict must end,” Blinken said, calling on the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, to attend the talks and approach them constructively. 

The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has forced almost 10 million people from their homes, sparked warnings of famine and waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF. 

Talks in Jeddah between the army and RSF that were sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia broke down at the end of last year. 

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday that the goal of the talks in Switzerland was to build on work from Jeddah and try to move the talks to the next phase. 

“We just want to get the parties back to the table, and what we determined is that bringing the parties, the three host nations and the observers together is the best shot that we have right now at getting the nationwide cessation of violence,” Miller said.
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