WASHINGTON — They were promised a chance to earn money, get an education abroad, and gain work experience. Instead, they found themselves assembling military drones in Russia and, in one case, subjected to a Ukrainian drone strike.

A series of investigative reports has shed light on a Russian labor recruitment program that has allegedly lured young African women to work at an industrial park in provincial Russia with false promises and coerced them into contributing to the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

The reported victims of the program, which attracts recruits largely through online job advertisements, includes women from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

Media reports from The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others have exposed the operation, entitled Alabuga Start, but VOA reporting has found that African countries have largely failed to intervene or give an official response. Some even appear to be building ties with the Russian entity behind the program.

That entity called the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, has been intensifying its outreach across the African continent, according to David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and the researcher behind a report exposing the program that exploited the young women. “In some of the initial investigations of this, the recruiters in Africa were oblivious when they were asked where these women were going,” Albright said, adding that some are now aware and that he hopes there will be “pushback from these governments about what exactly [Alabuga is] recruiting these women to do.”

Albright said representatives from Alabuga recently visited Sierra Leone, Zambia and Madagascar, signing memorandums of cooperation with local organizations, despite the reports of misleading recruitment practices and questionable labor actions.

Albright said the young women are forced to handle toxic materials, which he says is forbidden in Russian labor law. But African and other governments have also been willing to send their citizens off to Alabuga Start. VOA discovered a series of documents online indicating the government ministries had officially promoted the program.

VOA reached out to authorities of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Nigeria but several emails and phone calls went unanswered. VOA also requested comment from Alabuga and the Russian Embassy in Washington but received no response.

Recruitment under false pretenses

Located 1,000 kilometers to the east of Moscow in Russia’s Tatarstan region, the city of Yelabuga, known as Alabuga in the local Tatar language, would hardly seem a desirable location for young people from Africa.

But the nearby Alabuga Special Economic Zone has been casting a wide net on the African continent. In promotional materials, it paints an exciting, optimistic picture of life in the Alabuga Start program.

In one recruitment video intended to appeal to potential recruits, an African woman arrives in Alabuga and begins work at a restaurant, where she waits on a young Russian man. At the end of the video, she returns to the restaurant as his pregnant wife.

Other promotional videos show participants working in construction, cleaning and warehouse operations, as well as studying and playing sports with their friends. Only one video features the women assembling drones, but no indication is given that the drones have a military purpose.

According to the Russian independent news outlet Protokol, the program has specifically targeted young women because its organizers believe young men from Africa “could be too aggressive and dangerous.”

Researchers and reporters found that some of the program’s internal documents, as reported by Albright and others, often referred to the women as mulattos using an outdated racial term that is now widely considered offensive.

Its appeal to African young people is not difficult to understand, says Maxim Matusevich, a Russia-Africa expert and a global history professor at Seton Hall University.

“A lot of these nations have very high unemployment rates,” he told VOA. Russia is “offering them attractively packaged and attractively sold job packages.”

Matusevich believes Alabuga Start aims to solve the problem of a shortfall of workers in Russia due to the heavy demand of the war in Ukraine.

Albright said that inaction has global ramifications: Alabuga Start is involving young Africans in Russian violence against Ukrainians.

“It’s been a very deceptive program in the sense that the applicants didn’t know they’d be working in essentially a U.S.- [and] European-sanctioned company making drones that are being used to devastating effect against Ukrainian civil targets, energy targets, electrical plants,” he told VOA.

“And so, in that sense, they’re complicit in a crime, an international crime, given that the war against Ukraine is illegal. They’re getting involved in making drones that are being used against civilian targets, not just military targets.”

Exploitation factory

Alabuga didn’t start out exploiting young African women. Before that, it used young Russians in drone production.

Since 2019, the special economic zone has operated a program called Alabuga Polytech, which recruits Russian high school students. Unlike workers from the African continent and other countries, the Russian students take part in a four-year work-study program, receiving accredited technical education while doing industrial work.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, that program ramped up its activity. It hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing. When the program pivoted to drone production, Alabuga had to lobby the Russian authorities to alter labor laws. According to a July report from the Institute for Science and International Security, that allowed Alabuga to hire children under the age of 18 to work with toxic chemicals.

Parents soon began to complain about the poor work conditions: Participants were working 12-hour factory shifts and their movements were strictly controlled, Albright recounted. He said the program has since stopped recruiting people younger than 18.

When the special economic zone launched Alabuga Start and began recruiting workers from abroad in 2022, the program was almost entirely focused on drone production.

According to estimates by Albright’s organization, only a third of Polytech students work on drone production, while over 90% of Alabuga Start participants do.

Despite that stark distinction, organizers appear to have frequently conflated the two programs, including by sometimes depicting Alabuga Start participants wearing school uniforms in promotional materials.

Multinational conveyer belt

Alabuga’s recent outreach to African nations signals a potential expansion of its recruitment efforts.

VOA found that African and other governments have at times been willing partners. Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education shared on its website a document announcing open admissions to Alabuga Start in 2023.

Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sport shared a similar announcement. In the document upload site Scribd, a digital document library, VOA found two files that appear to be official letters from the government ministries of Mali and Burkina Faso announcing that Alabuga Start had reserved spots for participants from those countries in 2023.

VOA also found a document by Bangladesh’s Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training announcing that applications were open for Alabuga Start in 2023.

The special economic zone’s many meetings with African diplomats and government officials, some of which included the signing of memoranda of understanding, appear to signal a deepening of ties.

Albright emphasizes that the special economic zone’s drone factory has been a linchpin of Russian-Iranian collaboration during the war against Ukraine.

“Alabuga is a special economic zone that basically builds and hires out or sells buildings for civilian industry,” he said. “With the war in Ukraine, their international occupants pulled out and they were desperate for money. And so, they made a contract with the Russian government and the Iranian government to build drones.”

The Alabuga factory in question primarily assembled the Shahed-136, an Iranian kamikaze drone.

In the first half of 2023, around 100 Alabuga Polytech students traveled to Tehran for two months of training in Shahed-136 airframe production, The Washington Post reported in August 2023.

Alabuga Start participants are largely used as low-skilled labor, assigned to complete the simplest tasks involved in assembling the airframes. A list of 100 Russian words that participants must know to take part in the program drives that conclusion home. It largely consists of basic vocabulary but also includes several higher-level words: “to hook,” “to unhook,” “factory,” and “task.”

The military nature of the work is largely absent from promotional materials for the program viewed by VOA. They typically show participants working in the service industry, construction, or non-military industrial production.

One brochure emphasizes that, after completing Alabuga Start, participants have the opportunity to continue working on a permanent basis, get a job at another Alabuga factory, or enroll in Polytech.

It also includes images that appear to show articles by the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal with headlines praising the factory and its salaries. In reality, the images have been edited to conceal the fact that both stories are about military drone production at the facility.

That work has placed African women in direct danger. On April 22, a Ukrainian drone crashed into the dormitory where Alabuga Start participants live.

A day later, Alabuga Start released a video featuring a Kenyan woman –– one of the program’s public-facing participants –– who said she would be going to work in a cafe. The participant notably said she had come to work and study at Alabuga Polytech — and not Start.

“Those who attacked our hostel today are real barbarians and they deserve serious condemnation,” she said. “In my opinion, they wanted to intimidate us. But I want to tell you they did not succeed. You won’t scare me, because Alabuga is a strong place and we will get through this.”

This story is a collaboration between VOA’s Africa Division and VOA’s Russian Service.
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BRUSSELS — NATO’s secretary-general said he wants to discuss ways to put Ukraine in a position of strength for any future peace talks with Russia during a meeting Wednesday with Ukraine’s president and a small number of European leaders.

But Mark Rutte appeared frustrated at growing speculation in NATO capitals about when those peace talks might start and whether European peacekeepers would be involved, saying that speaking publicly about it plays into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“High on the agenda is to make sure that the president, his team in Ukraine, are in the best possible position one day when they decide to start the peace talks,” Rutte told reporters as he welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his residence in Brussels.

The focus, Rutte said, must be “to do everything now to make sure that when it comes to air defense, when it comes to other weapons systems, that we make sure that we provide whatever we can.”

He said that another issue up for discussion would be “how to make sure that when peace comes one day that we also think about the economy of Ukraine now, but also after a future peace deal.”

Zelenskyy posted on Telegram that he would hold talks with the leaders of the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland and U.K. representatives, who were in Brussels. He’s also due to take part in an EU summit in the Belgian capital on Thursday.

Zelenskyy said that the meeting would provide “a very good opportunity to speak about security guarantees for Ukraine, for today and for tomorrow.” Ukraine sees NATO membership as the ultimate security guarantee, but the U.S. and Germany lead a group of countries that oppose this while war continues.

After separate talks with Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country is making reinforced support for Ukraine its ″absolute priority″ and will continue giving Ukraine ″the means to defend itself and to make Russia’s war of aggression fail,″ according to Macron’s office.

Noting his recent meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Zelenskyy, Macron said he will maintain a ″tight dialogue with Ukraine and its international partners to work for a return to a fair and lasting peace,″ the statement said.

At NATO headquarters earlier, Rutte had said the terms of any peace talks should be up to Ukraine, Russia and any others at the negotiating table. “If we now start to discuss amongst ourselves what a deal could look like, we make it so easy for the Russians,” he said.

“I think we would be very wise to put some lid on this and focus on the business at hand, and the business at hand is to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning,” Rutte added.
…

Washington — “Ehtisham was the darling of the family. He was very fond of cricket. His only obsession was that one day he would go to Europe and poverty would end at home.”

This is a statement from Fazlur Rehman, a close relative of 35-year-old Ehtisham Anjum, who went missing after a migrant boat he was in capsized in Greek territorial waters on Saturday. According to locals, 10 of the passengers, including Anjum, were from Helaan, a village in Pakistan’s central Punjab province.

The initial list of 47 survivors released by the Pakistani embassy in Greece does not include Anjum’s name. But the family is holding out hope that he is still alive. However, according to Pakistan embassy in Greece, the rescue operation for the missing has been called off by the Greek authorities.

According to the embassy in Athens, three boats carrying 175 illegal migrants of different nationalities including Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Sudanese crew members, capsized off the Greek coast.

While all the passengers on two of the boats were rescued, only 39 out of 83 have been rescued from the third. Several teens were on board and at least one 12-year-old Pakistani was among the passengers.

In a video shared with VOA, several Pakistanis give the details of their perilous journey and the poor condition of the boats ferrying them to Greece from Tobruk, Libya.

One survivor of the boat that capsized said the sea was rough, and the boat was small and not in good working condition. Despite that, he said, the smugglers put many people on board, way over the boat’s capacity.

That man and another said the boat hit a coast guard ship or cargo ship before it capsized. They said they were in the water for an hour and a half before being rescued.

Last year more than 350 Pakistanis lost their lives when an overcrowded boat carrying hundreds of illegal migrants sank en route to Greece from Tobruk, Libya.

According to Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights, Pakistan, “in the year 2023 alone over 6,000 Pakistanis undertook illegal journeys to reach European shores” — though some estimates put the number significantly higher. A report released by the commission in May of this year said most of the illegal migrants were motivated by economic concerns.

Human smugglers are a big part of this journey and one of the locals in Helaan village told VOA’s Urdu service that a local agent had asked for the equivalent of $14,380 each from the clients to get them to Europe. The agent went missing after the news of the accident.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency intensified its crackdown on human smugglers in the wake of the tragedy off Greece last year. In 2023, 189 cases were registered, leading to 854 arrests.

Fazlur Rehman, the relative of Ehtisham Anjum, says four youngsters from the same village died four years ago while trying to get to Europe illegally. He adds that people are becoming greedier and will soon forget the dangers involved.

This story originated in VOA’s Urdu Service, with Ehtisham Shami and Ishraq Nazir contributing.
…

Russia has long considered the Balkans a part of its sphere of influence, but its current focus on its war in Ukraine is creating a power vacuum in the region and giving an opportunity for Turkey to expand its role. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet Wednesday with NATO chief Mark Rutte and European leaders in Brussels as Ukraine seeks to bolster its defenses against Russian forces.

Zelenskyy on Tuesday cited an urgent need to boost military aid to Ukraine, especially air defense systems.

“We must do everything possible to destroy Russia’s ability to wage war from as far away as possible,” Zelenskyy said. “For this, we need more drones, more modern artillery, and long-range missiles.”

Wednesday’s talks come a month before U.S. President Donald Trump takes office, bringing uncertainty about the level of continued U.S. support for Ukraine from the new administration.

Among those expected to meet with Zelenskyy in Brussels were German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Ahead of the talks, Russia launched another round of overnight aerial attacks.

Ihor Taburets, governor of Ukraine’s Cherkasy region, said Wednesday on Telegram that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 13 drones. He said there was no damage to infrastructure in the area.

Khmelnytskyi Governor Serhii Tiurin said Wednesday that Ukrainian forces shot down two drones.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday it destroyed two Ukrainian aerial drones over the Belgorod region, along with a drone over Bryansk and another over Kursk.

Moscow attack 

Russia said Wednesday it detained a suspect in the killing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces. 

Authorities described the suspect as a citizen of Uzbekistan who was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services to carry out the Tuesday attack in Moscow. 

An official with Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, said Tuesday the agency was behind the attack and called Kirillov a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.” 

Several countries, including Britain and Canada, had sanctioned Kirillov, 54, for his actions in Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The European Parliament awarded Venezuelan opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia the bloc’s highest human rights recognition. 

Click here to see the full story in Spanish. 
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Ruling parties often have an advantage in elections. But in history’s biggest election year so far, incumbents of all political stripes found that presiding over a period of economic inflation carries a heavy price at the ballot box.
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The outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden plans in its final weeks to “continue tightening the noose” around Russia’s key energy exports with new sanctions to deprive Moscow of revenue for its war on Ukraine, according to Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt. 

Pyatt over the past two weeks has traveled in Europe and Asia to discuss energy security with allies and the G7+Ukraine energy resilience group. 

In an interview with VOA Ukrainian’s Oksana Bedratenko, Pyatt said Europe should use the Dec. 31 expiration of a gas transit contract between Ukraine and Russia to decisively end its dependency on Russian energy. 

He said he is encouraged that Europe sees American liquid natural gas (LNG) as part of its energy solution, noting that countries in Europe and even Japan — which imports 10% of its gas from Russia — understand the need to find alternative energy suppliers. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

VOA: Over recent weeks Russia staged several massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector. With all of the preparations, with all of the help from Ukraine’s allies before winter, what is your assessment of Ukrainian energy sector resilience?  

Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt: We knew coming into this winter that this was going to be a very fragile period, but I think the good news is support for Ukraine, support for Ukrainian energy workers, is as strong as it’s ever been. We saw another brutal attack on Friday, especially in western Ukraine, in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk. … And this is the bitterest part of the winter. So we know we need to continue to work together. I’ve just returned from two weeks of travel. I was in Tokyo and before that I was in Paris and London. The message I heard consistently from all of our G7 partners was a very clear focus on doing everything we can to help ensure that Russia’s attempt to weaponize the winter is a failure.   

VOA: The gas transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expires at the end of this year. Do you think Europe is ready for it? There has already been some pressure on Ukraine to continue the gas transit. Do you think this will actually be the end of Europe’s dependency on Russian gas?  

Pyatt: I certainly hope so. And importantly, the pressure that I see is only coming from one or two countries. I was very glad to see the statements over the weekend from the new [EU] Energy Commissioner [Dan] Jorgensen making very clear the need to make progress on gas phaseout, on nuclear, on all forms of dependency on Russian energy, in line with the EU goal of getting to zero by 2027. Obviously, Brussels and Kyiv need to make some decisions in the next couple of weeks. But I think long-term it is very clear that the energy and gas trade in particular has been the principal vector of Russian influence on the Ukrainian economy since independence. So why on earth would anybody be interested in extending that relationship?   

VOA:  Europe has been buying more LNG from Russia. Are there any plans to have more sanctions on Russian LNG projects? 

Pyatt: We welcome Europe’s steps. Just today [Dec. 15], the 15th sanctions package, which is quite substantial. I have said publicly on a couple of occasions recently that there will be more coming from the Biden administration. I’m very confident of that. And we’re working very hard to maintain alignment between Washington, Brussels, London. That’s part of what I was doing in Europe two weeks ago. Everybody’s pace of operations is slightly different. … I was glad to see Commissioner Jorgensen also talk about the important role of American LNG as part of Europe’s energy solution. So, I’m very confident that we are going to continue to tighten the noose. We’re going to do everything that we can to drive down [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s energy revenues, which go to pay for the North Korean missiles and the Russian drones that are destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure every day of the week. 

VOA: When we look into the next year, the U.S. support for Ukraine might go down. Do you think that Europe and other allies are ready to step up and continue supporting Ukrainian energy? 

Pyatt: Everybody is already stepping up. As I think you saw Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken just signed with [Ukrainian] Foreign Minister [Andrii] Sybiha a second energy [Memorandum of Understanding]. This is for the implementation of $825 million in additional energy sector assistance just from the United States. … That very high level of U.S. assistance is exceeded by the assistance that has come from the other G7-plus partners. This is a really important point that it’s not just the United States that’s providing this assistance, and in fact, the majority of assistance in the energy sector has come from the other G7-plus countries.  

VOA: In the MOU there’s a lot of attention going to the protection of Ukrainian companies from political influence. How important are reforms in Ukraine even during the war? 

Pyatt: Well, as you know, I’ve been working on these reform issues for 10 years now. So I can appreciate the progress that has been achieved, and that progress is real. Look for instance at the improved production numbers at Naftogaz. Maybe that improved production is because of better management; maybe it’s because production that was previously skimmed off is now being declared transparently. But either way, it’s a positive outcome. There’s more that needs to be done. … Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union in one day, but I think fulfilling the aspirations that the Ukrainian people expressed during the revolution of dignity, when I was ambassador in Kyiv, is as important today as it’s ever been, and aligning Ukraine’s energy sector with the highest European and OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) standards is very much part and parcel of that larger process of becoming a member of the EU.
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Affected by negative factors such as the Russia-Ukraine war and tariff disputes, China-EU relations in 2024 show no obvious sign of recovery. Observers predict that China-EU relations will most likely remain at a low level in 2025. If U.S.-China relations deteriorate further during President-elect Donald Trump’s term, Beijing will need to maintain a relatively stable relationship with the EU even more, analysts say.

Click here to see the full story in Mandarin.
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London — A lawyer accused of trying to interfere in British politics on behalf of the Chinese government has lost a legal challenge against the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency MI5.

Britain’s Security Service issued a security alert to all lawmakers in January 2022, warning that London-based lawyer Christine Lee was knowingly engaged in “political interference activities in the U.K.” in coordination with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, an organization known to exert Chinese influence abroad.

The House of Commons’ Speaker warned at the time that Lee had “facilitated” covert donations to British political parties and legislators “on behalf of foreign nationals.” Members of Parliament are required to declare the source of donations they receive, which must be from U.K.-registered electors or entities.

Lee’s firm, Christine Lee & Co., provided legal services mainly to the British Chinese community and had acted as a legal advisor to the Chinese embassy in London. Her son, Daniel Wilkes, worked for lawmaker Barry Gardiner as a diary manager for five years, while she had donated some 500,000 pounds ($635,000) to Gardiner, mostly for office costs, according to official records.

Lee, who was not accused of a criminal offense, brought a legal action, arguing that the security alert against her was political and that it breached her human rights.

On Tuesday, three judges at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal unanimously dismissed her claim, saying MI5 had issued the warning for “legitimate reasons.”

The tribunal decision came the day after British authorities named Chinese national Yang Tengbo as an alleged spy who cultivated close ties with Prince Andrew and sought to exert influence among British establishment figures on behalf of China’s United Front Work Department.

Yang, 50, also known as Chris Yang, was banned from entering the U.K. last year after MI5 found that he was believed to have carried out “covert and deceptive activity” for China.

Authorities said his relationship with the royal had a covert nature, citing correspondence that referenced getting people “unnoticed in and out of the house of Windsor.”

Yang strongly denied the claims.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian on Tuesday called the spying allegations against Yang “ridiculous,” while the Chinese Embassy in Britain condemned U.K. lawmakers for “smearing” China.

“We urge the UK side to immediately stop creating trouble, stop anti-China political manipulations, and stop undermining normal personnel exchanges between China and the UK,” a statement released on the embassy’s website said.
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Moscow — Kazakhstan’s state-controlled nuclear resources company said on Tuesday that Russia’s state Rosatom corporation was selling its stakes in vast uranium deposits that it had been developing with the world’s largest uranium producer.  

Kazatomprom said that Rosatom unit, Uranium One Group, had sold its 49.979% stake in the Zarechnoye mine to SNURDC Astana Mining Company Limited, whose ultimate beneficiary is China’s State Nuclear Uranium Resources Development Company. 

Uranium One Group is also expected to give up 30% in the Khorasan-U joint venture to China Uranium Development Company Limited, the ultimate beneficiary of which is China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN, China), Kazatomprom said. 

Kazatomprom’s stakes will remain unchanged, it said. 

Zarechnoye’s uranium reserves amounted to approximately 3,500 tons at the beginning of 2024, according to Kazatomprom.  

Khorasan-U operates at the Kharasan-1 block of Severny Kharasan deposit in the Zhanakorgan district of the Kyzylorda region. Uranium reserves of the deposit amounted to about 33,000 tons at the beginning of 2024, with an expected maturity in 2038, Kazatomprom said. 

Rosatom did not immediately comment. Uranium One produced 4,831 tons of uranium in Kazakhstan in 2023.  

Kazatomprom is the world’s largest producer of uranium and has the largest reserve base. It accounted for approximately 20% of global primary uranium production in 2023.  

 
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TALLINN, estonia — Twelve Western countries have agreed to measures to “disrupt and deter” Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of vessels in order to prevent sanctions breaches and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine, Estonia’s government said Monday. 

The measures were agreed to by Germany, Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, the five Nordic nations and the three Baltic states, said Estonia, where leaders of the 10-nation Joint Expeditionary Force were due to meet Tuesday. 

Western nations have slapped sanctions on a wide range of ships they say are used by Moscow to avoid restrictions on the export of Russian oil and other cargoes. Vessels in the shadow fleet are not regulated or insured by conventional Western providers. 

“We are taking concerted steps to deter Russia’s shadow fleet and avoid attempts to evade sanctions,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said in a statement. 

Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland and Estonia will begin to check insurance documents of ships under suspicion passing through the English Channel, Danish straits, the Gulf of Finland and the sound between Sweden and Denmark, he added.
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BRUSSELS — The EU on Monday for the first time imposed fully fledged sanctions, including asset freezes and visa bans, on Chinese firms for supplying Russia’s military for the war on Ukraine.

It has also added North Korea’s defense minister to its sanctions blacklist after the secretive state sent troops to Russia to reinforce its military.

The move — part of the EU’s 15th round of sanctions over the conflict — represented a heightened effort to tackle the crucial role allegedly being played by China in keeping Russia’s war machine going.

The EU said it was blacklisting four Chinese companies for “supplying sensitive drone components and microelectronic components” to the Russian military.

Two other firms and one Chinese businesswoman were hit for circumventing EU sanctions aimed at stopping equipment flowing to Moscow.

Among the companies was Xiamen Limbach, alleged to have supplied engines for long-range attack drones used by Russia against Ukraine.

The EU has targeted Chinese firms before for supporting Russia’s military.

But until now the bloc has imposed bans on European firms doing business with the Chinese companies — rather than the tougher sanctions now being applied.

The EU also took aim at North Korea in the latest package, after Pyongyang dispatched troops to Russia to fight Ukraine.

The 27-nation bloc added defense minister No Kwang Chol and deputy chief of the general staff Kim Yong Bok to a number of North Korean officials already blacklisted.

Ukraine said Monday that its troops killed or wounded at least 30 North Korean soldiers who had been deployed in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine has seized territory.

In a bid to limit Russian revenues, the EU included around 50 oil tankers from Moscow’s “shadow fleet” used to help the Kremlin get around Western oil sanctions.
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GENEVA  — Migrants play a crucial role in the global economy by filling essential jobs in foreign countries and sending much-needed remittances to their home countries, according to a report released Monday by the International Labour Organization.

The report’s release comes as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. During his presidential campaign, he accused them of draining economic resources and taking jobs from native-born Americans.

The ILO report says migrants usually bring a net economic benefit to the countries they enter and those from which they depart.

“Migrants drive economic growth in destination countries, and they support home countries through their remittances and skills transfer,” Sukti Dasgupta, director of the ILO’s conditions of work and equalities department, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva on Monday.

Rafael Diez de Medina, chief statistician at ILO, said the report debunks the assertion by some that “migrants are taking away [the] jobs of nationals.”

“I would like to say that migrant workers often fill specific roles in low-wage or specialized jobs, and often as seasonal workers, and that they complement, rather than displace, the national labor force.

“There might be competition in specific contexts, but we do not really have evidence of migrants taking away jobs from nationals,” he said.

“In this report, migrants in the labor force include all foreign-born persons in the labor force of a host country who are employed or unemployed regardless of their legal status in the country,” Diez de Medina added. “So, documented and undocumented, regardless of the employment permission to the host country, are included in our figures.”

The report presents global and regional estimates of migrants in the labor force covering 189 countries and territories for 2022, representing 99% of the world population at that time.

Migrant labor force increases

The report says 167.7 million migrants were part of the international labor force as of 2022, accounting for 4.7% of the working force worldwide.

The report finds that the migrant global labor force has increased by more than 30 million since 2013, but notes that from 2019 to 2022, “the rate of growth slowed down to less than one percent annually.” This is attributed largely to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While migration patterns have changed in some regions of the world, the ILO said the overall composition of migrant workers has remained relatively stable, with men accounting for about 61% percent and women making up 39%.

About 68% of international migrants in the labor force, the report noted, were concentrated in high-income countries located in northern, southern and western Europe, North America, and the Arab states.

“Migrants were concentrated in high-income countries drawn by higher living standards and more job opportunities,” said Dasgupta, who added that most migrants work in the service sector.

“This is where we find 70 percent of all working migrants, and this is particularly true for women,” she said.

Diez de Medina said the estimates presented are based on a new and improved methodology that allows for more detailed breakdowns than before.

In 2022, the ILO reported that more migrants faced a higher unemployment rate of 7.2% compared to the rate of 5.2% for non-migrants, with more migrant women than men out of work.

According to the report, “This disparity may be driven by factors such as language barriers, unrecognized qualifications, discrimination, and limited childcare options.”

Migrants and legal protections

Diez de Medina stressed the importance of ensuring that migrant workers have access to social and labor protection and “are covered by the country’s labor laws, particularly for domestic workers.”

Instead of being a drain on society, he said, migrant workers are a benefit and “are essential for the global economy, particularly in certain sectors such as services, manufacturing and agriculture.”

“If there were to be major restrictions on the movement of migrant workers, there would be labor shortages in particular sectors in the destination countries,” he said.

Dasgupta agreed that migrants contribute significantly to host economies through taxes, social security payments and other means.

“Their employment to population ratios are often higher,” she said, noting the report finds that “migrants contribute more than they withdraw, particularly for the second-generation migrants.”
…

Washington — Ten countries and the EU called North Korea’s growing involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine a “dangerous expansion” on Monday, in a joint statement released by the United States.

Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s war effort, including to the Kursk border region where Ukraine reported Monday that its fighters had killed or wounded at least 30 North Korean soldiers.

“Direct DPRK support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine marks a dangerous expansion of the conflict, with serious consequences for European and Indo-Pacific security,” the statement said, referring to North Korea by its official acronym.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and the high representative of the European Union signed the release.

They also said that they were “deeply concerned about any political, military, or economic support that Russia may be providing to the DPRK’s illegal weapons programs, including weapons of mass destruction.”

North Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Experts say the nuclear-armed North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is keen to acquire advanced technology from Moscow and battle experience for his troops.

The statement signatories said they “condemn in the strongest possible terms the increasing military cooperation” including the “deployment of DPRK troops to Russia for use on the battlefield against Ukraine.”

They added that the export of ballistic missiles, artillery shells and other military materiel by Pyongyang to Russia as well as Moscow’s training of North Korean soldiers involving arms “represent flagrant violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

“We urge the DPRK to cease immediately all assistance for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including by withdrawing its troops,” the statement said.

The United States and South Korea have accused the North of sending more than 10,000 soldiers.
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BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German parliament on Monday, putting the European Union’s most populous member and biggest economy on course to hold an early election in February.

Scholz won the support of 207 lawmakers in the 733-seat lower house, or Bundestag, while 394 voted against him and 116 abstained. That left him far short of the majority of 367 needed to win.

Scholz leads a minority government after his unpopular and notoriously rancorous three-party coalition collapsed on November 6 when he fired his finance minister in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany’s stagnant economy. Leaders of several major parties then agreed that a parliamentary election should be held on Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally planned.

The confidence vote was needed because post-World War II Germany’s constitution doesn’t allow the Bundestag to dissolve itself. Now President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has to decide whether to dissolve parliament and call an election.

Steinmeier has 21 days to make that decision — and, because of the planned timing of the election, is expected to do so after Christmas. Once parliament is dissolved, the election must be held within 60 days.

In practice, the campaign is already well under way, and Monday’s three-hour debate reflected that.

What did the contenders say?

Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat, told lawmakers that the election will determine whether “we, as a strong country, dare to invest strongly in our future; do we have confidence in ourselves and our country, or do we put our future on the line? Do we risk our cohesion and our prosperity by delaying long-overdue investments?”

Scholz’s pitch to voters includes pledges to “modernize” Germany’s strict self-imposed rules on running up debt, to increase the national minimum wage and to reduce value-added tax on food.

Center-right challenger Friedrich Merz responded that “you’re leaving the country in one of its biggest economic crises in postwar history.”

“You’re standing here and saying, business as usual, let’s run up debt at the expense of the younger generation, let’s spend money and … the word ‘competitiveness’ of the German economy didn’t come up once in the speech you gave today,” Merz said.

The chancellor said Germany is Ukraine’s biggest military supplier in Europe and he wants to keep that up, but underlined his insistence that he won’t supply long-range Taurus cruise missiles, over concerns of escalating the war with Russia, or send German troops into the conflict. “We will do nothing that jeopardizes our own security,” he said.

Merz, who has been open to sending the long-range missiles, said that “we don’t need any lectures on war and peace” from Scholz’s party. He said, however, that the political rivals in Berlin are united in an “absolute will to do everything so that this war in Ukraine ends as quickly as possible.”

What are their chances?

Polls show Scholz’s party trailing well behind Merz’s main opposition Union bloc, which is in the lead. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the environmentalist Greens, the remaining partner in Scholz’s government, is also bidding for the top job — though his party is further back.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, which is polling strongly, has nominated Alice Weidel as its candidate for chancellor but has no chance of taking the job because other parties refuse to work with it.

Germany’s electoral system traditionally produces coalitions, and polls show no party anywhere near an absolute majority on its own. The election is expected to be followed by weeks of negotiations to form a new government.

Confidence votes are rare in Germany, a country of 83 million people that prizes stability. This was only the sixth time in its postwar history that a chancellor had called one.

The last was in 2005, when then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroder engineered an early election that was narrowly won by center-right challenger Angela Merkel.
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Saint-Denis de la Reunion, France — Rescuers raced against time Monday to reach survivors after a devastating cyclone ripped through the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, destroying homes across the islands, with hundreds feared dead.

Images from Mayotte, which like other French overseas territories is an integral part of France and ruled from Paris, showed scenes of devastation, with homes reduced to piles of rubble.

The crisis, which erupted at the weekend the day after President Emmanuel Macron appointed Francois Bayrou as the sixth prime minister of his mandate, poses a major challenge for a government still only operating in a caretaker capacity.

The cyclone has left health services in tatters, with the hospital extremely damaged and health centers knocked out of operation, Health Minister Genevieve Darrieussecq told France 2.

“The hospital has suffered major water damage and destruction, notably in the surgical, intensive care, maternity and emergency units,” she said, adding that “medical centres were also non-operational”.

Macron was due to chair a crisis meeting in Paris, the Elysee said.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose super ministry is responsible for Mayotte, arrived on the island.

Cyclone Chido caused major damage to Mayotte’s airport and cut off electricity, water and communication links when it barreled down Saturday on France’s poorest territory.

Asked about the eventual death toll, Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the top Paris-appointed official on the territory, told broadcaster Mayotte la Premiere “I think there will definitely be several hundred, perhaps we will come close to a thousand or even several thousand.”

With roads closed, officials fear that many could still be trapped under rubble in the inaccessible areas.

The mayor of Mayotte’s capital Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, told AFP the storm “spared nothing”.

“The hospital is hit. The schools are hit. Houses are totally devastated,” he said.

Some 160 additional soldiers and firefighters arrived, to reinforce the 110 already deployed.

The nearby French island of La Reunion was serving as a hub for the rescue operations.

 ‘Apocalyptic scenes’

Chido was packing winds of at least 226 kilometers per hour when it slammed into Mayotte, which lies to the east of Mozambique.

At least a third of the territory’s 320,000 residents live in shantytowns, where homes with sheet-metal roofs were flattened by the storm.

One resident, Ibrahim, told AFP of “apocalyptic scenes” as he made his way through the main island, having to clear blocked roads himself.

As authorities assessed the scale of the disaster, a first aid plane reached Mayotte on Sunday.

It carried three tons of medical supplies, blood for transfusions and 17 medical staff, according to authorities in La Reunion.

Patrice Latron, prefect of Reunion, said residents of Mayotte were facing “an extremely chaotic situation, immense destruction.”

Two military aircraft are expected to follow the initial aid flight, while a navy patrol ship was also due to depart La Reunion.

There have been international pledges to help Mayotte, including from the regional Red Cross organization, PIROI.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc is “ready to provide support in the days to come.”

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the WHO “stands ready to support communities in need of essential health care.”

With around 100,000 people estimated to live clandestinely on Mayotte, according to France’s interior ministry, establishing how many people have been affected by the cyclone is proving difficult.

Ousseni Balahachi, a former nurse, said some people did not dare venture out to seek assistance, “fearing it would be a trap” designed to remove them from Mayotte.

Many had stayed put “until the last minute” when it proved too late to escape the cyclone, she added.

Chido is the latest in a string of storms worldwide fueled by climate change, according to experts.

The “exceptional” cyclone was super-charged by particularly warm Indian Ocean waters, meteorologist Francois Gourand of the Meteo France weather service told AFP.

Chido blasted across the Indian Ocean and made landfall in Mozambique on Sunday, where officials said the death toll stood at three.

The UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, warned 1.7 million people were in danger and the remnants of the cyclone could also dump “significant rainfall” on Malawi through Monday.
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Norway announced Monday $242 million in new military aid for Ukraine, including help securing access to the country’s vital Black Sea ports.

“It is essential to protect the Ukrainian population and Ukrainian infrastructure from attacks by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a statement.  “It is also important to protect exports by sea of grain and other products, which generate crucial revenues for Ukraine.”

The aid includes funding for training Ukrainian soldiers as well as mine clearance operations.

Norway’s Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram said mines are a “significant threat” in the Black Sea and that the aid will help Ukrainian forces detect and defuse mines near the coast.

Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 27 of the 49 drones that Russian forces deployed in overnight attacks.

The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions, the Ukrainian air force said.

Cherkasy Governor Ihor Taburets said debris from a destroyed drone damaged power lines, but caused no casualties.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday its forces destroyed three Ukrainian aerial drones over the Kursk region.

Some information for this story was provided by Reuters
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VIENNA — Three years ago, Andrea Vanek was studying to be an arts and crafts teacher when spells of dizziness and heart palpitations suddenly started to make it impossible for her to even take short walks.

After seeing a succession of doctors she was diagnosed with long COVID and even now spends most of her days in the small living room of her third-floor Vienna apartment, sitting on the windowsill to observe the world outside.

“I can’t plan anything because I just don’t know how long this illness will last,” the 33-year-old Austrian told AFP.

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in China in December 2019, sparking a global pandemic and more than seven million reported deaths to date, according to the World Health Organization.

But millions more have been affected by long COVID, in which some people struggle to recover from the acute phase of COVID-19, suffering symptoms including tiredness, brain fog and shortness of breath.

Vanek tries to be careful not to exert herself to avoid another “crash”, which for her is marked by debilitating muscle weakness and can last for months, making it hard to even open a bottle of water.

“We know that long COVID is a big problem,” said Anita Jain, from the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.

About six percent of people infected by coronavirus develop long COVID, according to the global health body, which has recorded some 777 million COVID cases to date.

Whereas the rates of long COVID after an initial infection are declining, reinfection increases the risk, Jain added.

‘Everything hurts’

Chantal Britt, who lives in Bern, Switzerland, contracted COVID in March 2020. Long COVID, she said, has turned her “life upside down” and forced her to “reinvent” herself. 

“I was really an early bird…. Now I take two hours to get up in the morning at least because everything hurts,” the 56-year-old former marathon runner explained.

“I’m not even hoping anymore that I’m well in the morning but I’m still kind of surprised how old and how broken I feel.”

About 15 percent of those who have long COVID have persistent symptoms for more than one year, according to the WHO, while women tend to have a higher risk than men of developing the condition.

Britt, who says she used to be a “workaholic”, now works part-time as a university researcher on long COVID and other topics. 

She lost her job in communications in 2022 after she asked to reduce her work hours.

She misses doing sports, which used to be like “therapy” for her, and now has to plan her daily activities more, such as thinking of places where she can sit down and rest when she goes shopping.

A lack of understanding by those around her also make it more difficult.

“It’s an invisible disease…. which connects to all the stigma surrounding it,” she said.

“Even the people who are really severely affected, who are at home, in a dark room, who can’t be touched anymore, any noise will drive them into a crash, they don’t look sick,” she said.

Fall ‘through the cracks’

The WHO’s Jain said it can be difficult for healthcare providers to give a diagnosis and wider recognition of the condition is crucial.

More than 200 symptoms have been listed alongside common ones such as fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive dysfunction.

“Now a lot of the focus is on helping patients, helping clinicians with the tools to accurately diagnose long COVID, detect it early,” she said.

Patients like Vanek also struggle financially. She has filed two court cases to get more support but both are yet to be heard.

She said the less than $840 she gets in support cannot cover her expenses, which include high medical bills for the host of pills she needs to keep her symptoms in check.

“It’s very difficult for students who get long COVID. We fall right through the cracks” of the social system, unable to start working, she said.

Britt also wants more targeted research into post-infectious conditions like long COVID.

“We have to understand them better because there will be another pandemic and we will be as clueless as ever,” she said.
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Istanbul — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Ethiopia and Somalia early next year after brokering a deal to end tensions between the two Horn of Africa neighbors, he said on X Sunday. 

“I will visit Ethiopia and Somalia in the first two months of the New Year,” he wrote in a message that referred to the deal between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Ankara on December 11.

The pair agreed to end their nearly yearlong bitter dispute after hours of talks brokered by Erdogan, who hailed the breakthrough as “historic.”

The dispute began in January when landlocked Ethiopia struck a deal in with Somalia’s breakaway region Somaliland to lease a stretch of coastline for a port and military base. 

In return, Somaliland — which declared independence from Somalia in 1991 in a move not recognized by Mogadishu — said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition, although this was never confirmed by Addis Ababa.

Somalia branded the deal a violation of its sovereignty, setting international alarm bells ringing over the risk of renewed conflict in the volatile Horn of Africa region.

Turkey stepped in to mediate in July, holding three previous rounds of talks — two in Ankara and one in New York — before last week’s breakthrough, which won praise from the African Union, Washington and Brussels. 

Fresh from his latest diplomatic success, Erdogan on Friday telephoned Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and he offered “to step in to resolve the disputes between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates,” his office said.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been mired in a brutal conflict between army chief Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo who leads the RSF. 

Sudan’s army-backed government has repeatedly accused the UAE of supporting the RSF — a claim which the UAE has consistently denied.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 11 million more.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that he would provide Syria with grain and other agricultural products on a humanitarian basis, a week after the fall of Moscow’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

“Now we can help the Syrians with our wheat, flour and oil: our products that are used globally to ensure food security,” he said in his daily address.

“We are coordinating with our partners and the Syrian side to resolve logistical issues. We will support this region so that stability there becomes a foundation for our movement towards real peace,” Zelenskyy added.

According to him, these possible deliveries will be part of the “Grain of Ukraine” program, launched in 2022 to provide food aid to the poorest countries.

Even at war, Ukraine, one of the world’s largest producers of grain, retains immense production capacities.

And despite Moscow’s threats to shoot ships sailing in the Black Sea, Kyiv has set up a corridor there to export its agricultural products from the summer of 2023.

After an 11-day offensive, the rebel coalition dominated by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Dec. 8 overthrew Assad, who took refuge in Russia.  

The fall was a serious setback for Moscow, which, along with Iran, was the former Syrian president’s main ally and had been intervening militarily in Syria since 2015.
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AJACCIO, Corsica — Pope Francis on the first papal visit ever to the French island of Corsica on Sunday called for a dynamic form of laicism, promoting the kind of popular piety that distinguishes the Mediterranean island from secular France as a bridge between religious and civic society.

Francis appeared relaxed and energized during the one-day visit, just two days before his 88th birthday, still displaying a faded bruise from a fall a week ago.

He frequently deviated from his prepared homily during Mass at the outdoor La Place d’Austerlitz, remarking at one point that he had never seen so many children as in Corsica — except, he added, in East Timor on his recent Asian tour.

“Make children,” he implored. “They will be your joy and your consolation in the future.”

Earlier, at the close of a Mediterranean conference on popular piety, Papa Francescu, as he is called in Corsican, described a concept of secularity “that is not static and fixed, but evolving and dynamic,” that can adapt to “unforeseen situations” and promote cooperation “between civil and ecclesial authorities.”

The pontiff said that expressions of popular piety, including processions and communal prayer of the Holy Rosary “can nurture constructive citizenship” on the part of Christians. At the same time, he warned against such manifestations being seen only in terms of folklore, or even superstition.

The visit to Corsica’s capital Ajaccio, the birthplace of Napoleon, is one of the briefest of his papacy beyond Italy’s borders, just about nine hours on the ground, including a 40-minute visit with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Francis was joined on the dais by the bishop of Ajaccio, Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who organized the conference that brought together some 400 participants from Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and southern France. The two-day meeting examined expressions of faith that often occur outside formal liturgies, such as processions and pilgrimages.

Often specific to the places where they are practiced, popular piety in Corsica includes the cult of the Virgin Mary, known locally as the “Madunnuccia,” which protected the island from the plague in 1656 when it was still under Genoa control.

Corsica stands out from the rest of secularized France as a particularly devout region, with 92 confraternities, or lay associations dedicated to works of charity or piety, with over 4,000 members.

“It means that there is a beautiful, mature, adult and responsible collaboration between civil authorities, mayors, deputies, senators, officials and religious authorities,” Bustillo told The Associated Press ahead of the visit. “There is no hostility between the two. And that is a very positive aspect because in Corsica there is no ideological hostility.”

The visit was awash in signs of popular piety. The pope was greeted by children in traditional garb and was continually serenaded by bands, choruses and singing troupes that are central to Corsican culture from the airport to the motorcade route, convention center and cathedral. Thousands stood along the roadside to greet the pontiff and more waved from windows.

Renè Colombani traveled with 2,000 others by ship from northern Corsica to Ajaccio, on the western coast, to see the pope.

“It is an event that we will not see again in several years. It may be the only time that the pope will come to Corsica. And since we wanted to be a part of it, we have come a long way,” Colombani said.

The island, which Genoa ceded to France in 1768, is located closer to the Italian mainland than France.

From the conference, the pope traveled to the 17th-century cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta to meet with clergy, stopping along the way at the statue of the Madunnuccia where he lit a devotional candle.

The pope celebrated Mass beneath a looming statue of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor whose armies in 1808 annexed the papal states and imprisoned two of Francis’ predecessors — Popes Pius VI and VII — before being excommunicated and eventually defeated on the battlefield. Thousands packed the esplanade where Napoleon is said to have played as a child.

Francis will meet privately with Macron at the airport before departing for the 50-minute flight back to Rome.

They are expected to talk about the world’s crises, including wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and environment and climate-related issues, Macron’s office said.

The pontiff pointedly did not make the trip to Paris earlier this month for the pomp surrounding the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral following the devastating 2019 fire. The visit to Corsica seems far more suited to Francis’ priorities than a grand cathedral reopening, emphasizing the “church of the peripheries.”

It is Francis’ third trip to France, each time avoiding Paris and the protocols that a state visit entails. He visited the port of Marseille in 2023, on an overnight visit to participate in an annual summit of Mediterranean bishops and went to Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament and Council of Europe.
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