U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Kyiv, Ukraine, this week, where they announced nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid. Kyiv in turn requested the two nations lift restrictions on using Western weapons to strike targets in Russia. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. Lesia Bakalets contributed to this report. (Camera: Daniil Batushchak, Vladyslav Smilynets)
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washington — The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program remains in limbo with another court hearing set for October 10.

Judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the case, initiated in 2018 by Texas and other Republican-led states seeking to end DACA. The program offers temporary protection from deportation and work permits to undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who are often referred to as “Dreamers.”

The case centers on whether DACA exceeds presidential authority, immigration advocates from the coalition “Home is Here” said during a recent conversation with reporters.

“Our response to that is that presidential authority in the area of immigration, and particularly the discretion exercised by the executive branch, is very broad and certainly encompasses the type of program that DACA is, which is now a regulation,” Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said during the call.

A central issue in the case is whether Texas and other states have the standing to sue.

Texas and other Republican-led states have argued that DACA has harmed them financially because they are spending resources on education, health care and other services on undocumented immigrants who were allowed to remain in the country illegally.

But Perales, who will be one of the attorneys arguing the case in October, said that “Texas cannot show any injury as a result of DACA” because recipients contribute to their communities and states by paying taxes and more.

A final decision could take a while, said Perales, who noted the 5th Circuit could take “as long as 18 months” to rule.

And the case could end in several ways: The 5th Circuit might dismiss the case, send it back to the lower court or rule against DACA, which could then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“One possible scenario is that the 5th Circuit decides [U.S. District] Judge [Andrew] Hanen didn’t evaluate the evidence properly and sends the case back to [him],” she said.

If that happens, Perales said, DACA recipients might benefit from the current case’s legal state, which allows recipients to continue renewing their DACA benefits while awaiting the courts’ final resolution. The Biden administration continues to accept new applications but does not process them.

How we got here

Former President Barack Obama, frustrated with congressional inaction on the Dream Act, created DACA by executive order in 2012. Some DACA recipients arrived legally, but their families later overstayed their visas; others arrived by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization. They are now in their mid-20s to late 30s, and they come from around the world.

In 2018, Texas and other Republican-led states sued the federal government, arguing not only that they were being harmed financially but also that only Congress has the authority to grant immigration benefits.

In 2022, the Biden administration revised the program in hopes of satisfying one of the arguments made in federal courts by Republican-led states — that the program was not created properly. Biden officials issued the new version of DACA in late August. It went through a period of public comments as part of a formal rule-making process to increase its odds of surviving this legal battle.

In a February 2023 statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, wrote in a statement on his website that “the Obama and Biden programs are practically indistinguishable in both the negative harms that they will have on this country and in the illegal means used to implement them. I am therefore calling for the new DACA rule to end in the same way that the Obama-era rule did: struck down as unlawful.”

But DACA has support. In October 2022, a coalition of dozens of influential corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, sent a letter to Republicans and Democrats in Congress urging a bipartisan solution for the almost 600,000 immigrants who are enrolled in DACA.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, DACA has “improved recipients’ employment outcomes, increased the labor force participation rates of those who are eligible, decreased their unemployment rates, and boosted earnings for those with the lowest incomes.”

MPI’s analysis shows that DACA holders contribute “nearly $42 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product each year and add $3.4 billion to the federal balance sheet.”

Bruna Bouhid-Sollod, a former DACA recipient and current senior political director at United We Dream, highlighted the emotional impact of the uncertainty.

“The importance of making [the impact] really clear is really important. … DACA recipients and their families are dealing with an extreme amount of stress,” she said.

With renewal periods lasting just two years, many recipients are in constant limbo, unsure if their work permits and deportation protections will remain intact.

There is a lot at stake, according to immigration lawyers and advocates.

“Unless you’re living in it … you don’t think about the impact it has on the people that are waiting for their lives to be decided by this case,” Bouhid-Sollod said.
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WARSAW, Poland — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with senior Polish government officials on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia and deepening U.S. defense cooperation with Warsaw.

Washington’s top diplomat travels to NATO ally Poland following a visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, where he heard Ukrainian officials’ appeals to be allowed to fire Western-supplied missiles deep into Russian territory.

Blinken is scheduled to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, President Andrzej Duda and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, according to their offices.

More than 2-1/2 years since Russia’s invasion began, Ukrainian forces are being pressured on the battlefield by a better armed and bigger foe, as they try to fend off Russian gains in the east where Moscow is focusing its attacks.

In a bid to regain some of the initiative and divert Russian forces, Kyiv last month sent troops into Russia’s Kursk region, but progress has stalled.

The security of Poland’s eastern flank will also feature in the discussions with Blinken, said Mieszko Pawlak, head of the international policy bureau at Duda’s office.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made defense a top priority for eastern members of the NATO alliance, and Poland has sought to strengthen the borders it shares with Belarus and Russia.

Relations between Poland and Russia have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Warsaw has ramped up defense spending in response and expects record defense spending in 2025 of $47.95 billion.

Deepening energy cooperation is also expected to be a topic of discussion while Blinken is in Warsaw, the State Department said on Tuesday. Pawlak said cooperation on civilian nuclear energy including building the first Polish nuclear power plant would be on the agenda.
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MOSCOW — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American blasted off Wednesday for an express trip to the International Space Station. 

The space capsule atop a towering rocket set off at 1623 GMT from Russia’s manned space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and was scheduled to dock with the space station three hours later, in contrast to some missions that last for days. 

The mission commander is Alexei Ovchinin, with Russian compatriot Ivan Vagner and American Donald Pettit in the crew. 

The blast-off took place without obvious problems and the Soyuz entered orbit eight minutes after liftoff, a relief for Russian space authorities after an automated safety system halted a launch in March because of a voltage drop in the power system. 

On the space station, Pettit, Vagner and Ovchinin will join NASA’s Tracy Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, and Russians Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko. 
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Support for the far-right among young voters appears to be growing in several European countries – not least in Germany, where the AfD party is hoping to secure another victory in an upcoming state election. Henry Ridgwell has more from London. (Videographer: Henry Ridgwell)
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LONDON/DAKAR — Among the dozens of Wagner mercenaries presumed dead after a lethal battle with Tuareg rebels during a desert sandstorm in Mali in July were Russian war veterans who survived tours in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, according to interviews with relatives and a review of social media data.

The loss of such experienced fighters exposes dangers faced by Russian mercenary forces working for military juntas, which are struggling to contain separatists and powerful offshoots of Islamic State and Al Qaeda across the arid Sahel region in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The Mali defeat raises doubts over whether Moscow, which has admitted funding Wagner and has absorbed many of its fighters into a defense ministry force, will do better than Western and U.N. troops recently expelled by the juntas, six officials and experts who work in the region said.

By cross-referencing public information with online posts from relatives and fighters, speaking to seven relatives and using facial recognition software to analyze battlefield footage verified by Reuters, the news agency was able to identify 23 fighters missing in action and two others taken into Tuareg captivity after the ambush near Tinzaouaten, a town on the Algerian border.

Several of the men had survived the siege of Bakhmut in Ukraine, which Wagner’s late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin called a “meat grinder.” Others had served in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. Some were former Russian soldiers, at least one of whom had retired after a full-length army career.

Grisly footage of dead fighters has now circulated online, and some of relatives told Reuters the bodies of their husbands and sons had been abandoned in the desert. Reuters could not confirm how many of the men it identified were dead.

Margarita Goncharova said her son, Vadim Evsiukov, 31, was first recruited in prison where he was serving a drug-related sentence in 2022. He rose through the ranks in Ukraine to lead a platoon of 500 men, she said. After coming home, he worked as a tailor but struggled with survivor’s guilt and secretly traveled to Africa in April to join his former commander, she said.

“He wanted to fly to Africa many times. I discouraged him as much as I could,” Goncharova said in an interview with Reuters. “I told him ‘fate has given you a once-in-a-million chance. You can start your life again; you’ve won such a crazy lottery’.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Wagner did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

After Prigozhin died in August last year, Wagner employees were invited to join a newly created group called the Africa Corps, under the defense ministry, “to fight for justice and the interests of Russia,” according to the Africa Corps channel on social-media platform Telegram.

On the channel, Africa Corps says about half its personnel are former Wagner employees who it allows to use Wagner insignia. Wagner’s social media channels remain active.

The Russian government has not publicly commented on the Tinzaouaten battle.

Mali’s armed forces-led government said the defeat had no impact on its goals. The Malian Armed Forces “are committed to restoring the authority of the state throughout the country,” army spokesman Colonel Major Souleymane Dembele told Reuters.

Wagner has acknowledged heavy losses in the Mali ambush but gave no figure. The Malian army, which fought alongside the Russians, also did not give a toll. Tuareg rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland, said they had killed 84 Russians and 47 Malians.

Reuters could not independently establish how many were killed in battle. One video, out of more than 20 sent to Reuters by a Tuareg rebel spokesman, showed at least 47 bodies, mostly white men, in military-style uniforms lying in the desert. Reuters verified the location and date of the video.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, a prominent blogger close to the Russian defense ministry, said on social media platform RuTube in August that the defeat showed Wagner fighters who arrived from Ukraine had underestimated the rebels and the Al Qaeda fighters.

Missing in action

Wagner-linked Telegram accounts named two of the dead as Nikita Fedyakin, the administrator of The Grey Zone, a popular Wagner-focused Telegram channel with over half a million subscribers, and Sergei Shevchenko, who the accounts described as the unit commander. Reuters could not verify the identity of Shevchenko.

Reuters separately identified 23 Wagner operators missing in Mali via relatives who posted in an official Wagner Telegram chat group, checking the names against social media accounts, publicly available data and facial recognition software. All the relatives received calls from Wagner recruiters on Aug. 6 to notify them their men were missing in action, they said in the chat group.

Lyubov Bazhenova told Reuters she had no idea her son Vladimir Akimov, 25, who had briefly served in Russia’s elite airborne forces as a conscript, had signed up. She was angry with Wagner for sharing no further information about his fate or the whereabouts of his body. She said letters to the prosecutor’s office, defense ministry and foreign ministry had gone unanswered.

Facial-recognition software was used to identify another two men captured by Tuareg fighters, based on photographs and videos of the ambush site published by Tuareg sources. The Tuareg rebels posted videos and photos of the two captives on social media. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for the rebel alliance, confirmed the men were in rebel captivity as of late August.

One of the missing fighters, Alexei Kuzekmaev, 47, had no military experience, his wife Lyudmila Kuzekmaeva told Reuters.

“Neither my hysterics, nor tears, nor persuasion – nothing helped. He just confronted me a month before he left home. He said ‘I bought a ticket and will be leaving.'”

Among the most experienced men was Alexander Lazarev, 48, a Russian army veteran who served in wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s, according to his wife’s posts in the Wagner channel.

She declined to comment. Lazarev appears in many photos on the Russian Facebook equivalent VKontakte wearing military uniform, with symbols linked to several army subdivisions.

Parastatal mercenary force

Democratic governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were overthrown since 2020 in a series of coups driven by anger with corrupt leaders and a near decade of failed Western efforts to fight insurgencies that have killed thousands and displaced millions.

The military juntas have kicked out French and U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers.

In Africa, Wagner emerged in Sudan in 2017 as the deniable face of Russian operations. Its enterprises soon ranged from protecting African coup leaders to gold mining and fighting jihadists. Wagner is also active in Central African Republic. It first appeared in Mali in late 2021.

Wagner’s fortunes rose and fell last year. In May, the group led Russia to its first significant Ukrainian battlefield victory in almost a year with the capture of Bakhmut. But after his criticism of Russian military leaders and his effort to lead a rebellion weeks after the Bakhmut victory, Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash in August. The Kremlin has rejected as an “absolute lie” U.S. officials’ claim that Putin had Prigozhin killed.

Eric Whitaker, the top U.S. envoy to Burkina Faso until retiring in June, who previously served in Niger, Mali and Chad, said the Putin administration has achieved complete control over the Wagner brand in the post-Prigozhin era.

“Africa Corps earns (the Russian government) hard-currency payments from host governments for its services and also gains a significant sources of revenue from gold derived from its activities in the Sahel,” he said.

Russian mercenary activity soared in Mali after Africa Corps was formed, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group. Based on media reports and social media documenting, the data shows violent events linked to Russian mercenaries rose 81% and reported civilian fatalities rose 65% over the past year, compared to the year before Prigozhin’s death.

Wagner does not publish recruitment figures. Jędrzej Czerep, an analyst at Warsaw-based think tank Polish Institute of International Affairs, estimated that around 6,000 Russian mercenaries serve in Africa, while three diplomatic sources said about 1,500-2,000 were in Mali.

“When Africa Corps started to promote and recruit, they were flooded with applications,” said Czerep.

“Being sent to one of the African missions was seen as far safer than Ukraine,” he said.

Tuareg spokesman Ramadane said the rebel alliance was preparing for more clashes.

Further losses could eventually drive Russia out, said Tibor Nagy, the top U.S. envoy to Africa in 2019, when Wagner withdrew from northern Mozambique months after around a dozen of its men were killed during a conflict with an Islamic State affiliate.

“They were out of there very quickly,” said Nagy.

Wagner has not publicly commented on its plans in Mali.

 
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Przemysl, Poland — The top U.S. and British diplomats headed together into Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss further easing rules on firing Western weapons into Russia, whose alleged acquisition of Iranian missiles has raised new fears.

In a rare joint trip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taking the train to Kyiv with Foreign Secretary David Lammy, whose 2-month-old Labor government has vowed to keep up Britain’s role as a key defender of Ukraine.

The pair, who boarded the train early Wednesday at the Polish border town of Przemysl, are expected to meet in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has kept pressing the West for weapons with more firepower and fewer restrictions.

U.S. President Joe Biden, asked in Washington whether he would let Ukraine use longer-range weapons, said: “We’re working that out right now.”

Biden, while strongly supportive of Ukraine, has previously made clear he wants to avoid devolving into direct conflict between the United States and Russia, the world’s two leading nuclear powers.

Blinken, speaking Tuesday in London alongside Lammy, said the United States was committed to providing Ukraine “what they need when they need it to be most effective in dealing with the Russian aggression.”

But Blinken, who is on his fifth trip to Kyiv since the war, said it was also important to see if Ukrainian forces could maintain and operate particular weaponry.

Pressed later in an interview with Sky News on whether the United States would green-light long-range weapons, Blinken said, “We never rule out, but when we rule in, we want to make sure it’s done in such a way that it can advance what the Ukrainians are trying to achieve.”

The renewed talk about long-range weapons comes after the United States said that Iran has sent short-range missiles to Russia, which could strike Ukraine with them within weeks.

The Iranian shipments have raised fears that Moscow would be freed up to use its long-range missiles against comparatively unscathed areas in western Ukraine.

Western powers announced new sanctions against Iran’s clerical state over the sale, which defied repeated warnings.

The United States earlier this year gave its blessing for Ukraine to use Western weapons to hit Russian forces when in direct conflict across the border.

But Ukraine last month launched a surprise, daring offensive directly into Russian territory in Kursk, hoping to restore morale and divert Moscow as Russian troops trudge forward in the front lines of eastern Ukraine.

British media reports said Biden, who meets Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, was set to end objections to letting Ukraine fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.

Britain has repeatedly pushed the United States, by far Ukraine’s biggest military supplier, to be more forward on weapons.

One key ask of Ukraine is to loosen restrictions on U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which can hit targets up to 300 kilometers away.

In a joint letter to Biden, leading members of Congress from the rival Republican Party asked him to act on ATACMS immediately.

“As long as it is conducting its brutal, full-scale war of aggression, Russia must not be given a sanctuary from which it can execute its war crimes against Ukraine with impunity,” said the letter signed by Representative Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Republicans, however, are deeply divided over Ukraine, and a victory in November by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over Biden’s political heir Kamala Harris could dramatically shift US policy.

Trump aides have suggested that if he wins, he would leverage aid to force Kyiv into territorial concessions to Russia to end the war.
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LONDON — Google lost its last bid to overturn a European Union antitrust penalty, after the bloc’s top court ruled against it Tuesday in a case that came with a whopping fine and helped jumpstart an era of intensifying scrutiny for Big Tech companies.

The European Union’s top court rejected Google’s appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, for violating antitrust rules with its comparison shopping service.

Also Tuesday, Apple lost its challenge against an order to repay $14.34 billion in back taxes to Ireland, after the European Court of Justice issued a separate decision siding with the commission in a case targeting unlawful state aid for global corporations.

Both companies have now exhausted their appeals in the cases that date to the previous decade. Together, the court decisions are a victory for European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is expected to step down next month after 10 years as the commission’s top official overseeing competition.

Experts said the rulings illustrate how watchdogs have been emboldened in the years since the cases were first opened.

One of the takeaways from the Apple decision “is the sense that, again, the EU authorities and courts are prepared to flex their [collective] muscles to bring Big Tech to heel where necessary,” Alex Haffner, a competition partner at law firm Fladgate, said by email.

The shopping fine was one of three huge antitrust penalties for Google from the commission, which punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own Google Shopping service over competitors.

“We are disappointed with the decision of the Court, which relates to a very specific set of facts,” Google said in a brief statement.

The company said it made changes to comply with the commission’s decision requiring it to treat competitors equally. It started holding auctions for shopping search listings that it would bid for alongside other comparison shopping services.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” Google said.

European consumer group BEUC hailed the court’s decision, saying it shows how the bloc’s competition law “remains highly relevant” in digital markets.

“It is a good outcome for all European consumers at the end of the day,” Director General Agustín Reyna said in an interview. “It means that many smaller companies or rivals will be able to go to different comparison shopping sites. They don’t need to depend on Google to reach out to customers.”

Google is still appealing its two other EU antitrust cases: a 2018 fine of $4.55 billion involving its Android operating system and a 2019 penalty of $1.64 billion over its AdSense advertising platform.

Despite the amounts of money involved, the adverse rulings will leave a small financial dent in one of the world’s richest and most profitable companies. The combined bill of $17 billion facing Apple and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, represents 0.3% of their combined market value of $5.2 trillion.

Those three cases foreshadowed expanded efforts by regulators worldwide to crack down on the tech industry. The EU has since opened more investigations into Big Tech companies and drew up a new law to prevent them from cornering online markets, known as the Digital Markets Act.

Google is also now facing pressure over its lucrative digital advertising business from the EU and Britain, which are carrying out separate investigations, and the United States, where the Department of Justice is taking the company to federal court over its alleged dominance in ad tech.

Apple failed in its last bid to avoid repaying its Irish taxes Tuesday after the Court of Justice upheld a lower court ruling against the company, in the dispute that dates back to 2016.

The case drew outrage from Apple, with CEO Tim Cook calling it “total political crap.”
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