by tyler | Jun 28, 2023 | CNN, europe
France was bracing for further unrest on Wednesday evening following the death of a 17-year-old boy who was allegedly shot by police during a traffic stop.
The incident triggered violent protests in several suburbs of Paris overnight on Tuesday, during which 24 police officers were injured and 40 cars were set alight, French authorities say.
An extra 2,000 police officers were mobilized Wednesday afternoon in anticipation of the violence stretching into a second evening.
The officer who allegedly shot the teenager was put in custody on Tuesday after the boy, identified as Naël, died after being pulled over at a traffic stop in the Parisian suburb town of Nanterre. The officer will remain in custody for another 24 hours to undergo questioning by prosecutors, Nanterre prosecutor’s office told CNN.
French President Emmanuel Macron described as “unjustifiable” the fatal shooting of the youth, who was in the car, a Mercedes AMG, with two others at the time of the incident, prosecutors said.
Speaking to journalists in Marseille, Macron said: “Nothing, nothing justifies the death of a young man.”
“I would like to express the emotion of the entire nation at the death of young Naël, and give his family of our solidarity and the affection of the nation.
“We need calm for justice to carry out its work. And we need calm everywhere because the situation we can’t allow the situation to worsen,” Macron added.
The death of the 17-year-old was pronounced at 9:15 a.m. local time “following at least one gunshot wound” and despite the intervention of emergency medics, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office said.
A passenger in the vehicle was taken into custody and later released, while another passenger, who is believed to have fled the scene, is missing, the statement said.
An autopsy and additional examinations, including a toxicology report, have been ordered by the prosecutor’s office.
The incident is being investigated by national police, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter.
“Following the death of a young driver in Nanterre, who was being checked by two police officers, the IGPN has launched an investigation to shed light on the circumstances of this tragedy,” he said.
Earlier, Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez told CNN affiliate BFMTV in an interview that the officer fired when the teenager refused to follow police instructions.
“This vehicle made a first refusal to comply, then it was blocked in the flow of traffic where there was a new control attempt by the two police officers,” he said. “At that time the driver, who had first turned off the engine, restarted the vehicle, then left. It was in this context that the policeman used his firearm.”
Angered by the teenager’s death, protesters took to the streets in Nanterre Tuesday. Images show firefighters extinguishing a burning car during the protests.
Around 350 police and paramilitary officers were mobilized, mostly in Nanterre, to quell the clashes, which continued through the early hours of Wednesday, Nunez told French broadcaster CNews on Wednesday.
He said 24 people were detained. “This mobilization will be prolonged for as long as necessary,” the police chief said, as he called for “calm.”
“We have to respect the principle of the presumption of innocence,” he said.
Celebrities and some politicians voiced disgust, concern and outrage at the shooting.
“I am hurting for my France,” tweeted French men’s national football team captain Kylian Mbappe and star player at Paris Saint-Germain. “An unacceptable situation,” he said.
Actor Omar Sy, star of the film “The Intouchables” and the “Lupin” TV show, said on Twitter: “I hope that justice worthy of the name will honour the memory of this child.”
by tyler | Jun 28, 2023 | CNN, europe
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin planned to seize two of Russia top military officials when he launched a short-lived mutiny on Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing Western officials.
Prigozhin’s plot involved the capture of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and top army general Valery Gerasimov when the pair visited a region along the border of Ukraine, the WSJ wrote.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) learned of the plot two days before it was due to take place, forcing Prigozhin to change his plans at the last minute and launch a march towards Moscow instead, according to the report.
Wagner mercenaries took control of a key military base in the city of Rostov-on-Don, and his troops were approaching the Russian capital when Prigozhin called off his mutiny.
When asked about the WSJ report, two European security sources told CNN that while it was likely Prigozhin would have expressed a desire to capture Russian military leaders, there was no assessment as to whether he had a credible plan to do so.
There has been speculation about the role of senor Russian commanders as the mutiny got underway on Friday night. The New York Times, citing US officials who it said were briefed on American intelligence, reported that the commander of the Russian air force, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.”
Surovikin appealed to Prigozhin to halt the mutiny soon after it began, in a video message that made it clear he sided with Putin.
Asked about the New York Times story, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “There will be now a lot of speculation and rumors surrounding these events. I believe this is just another example of it.”
One European intelligence official told CNN that there were indications that top Russian security officials had some knowledge of Prigozhin’s plans, and may not have passed on information about them, preferring instead to see how they played out. “They might have known, and might have not told about it, [or] known about it and decided to help it succeed. There are some hints. There might have been prior knowledge,” the official said.
Even though the mutiny failed, Putin prestige has been dented, the official said. “If that is what factions wanted, then that is what they got.”
Viktor Zolotov, the director of Russia’s National Guard, claimed Monday that senior Russian officials knew of Prigozhin’s plans for a rebellion because people close to the Wagner boss had leaked them, Russian state media agency TASS reported.
Zolotov also claimed the mutiny was “inspired by Western intelligence services” because “they knew weeks in advance.”
Earlier this week, CNN reported that US intelligence officials gathered a detailed and accurate picture of Prigozhin’s plans leading up to his short-lived rebellion, including where and how Wagner was planning to advance.
But, according to sources familiar with the matter, the intelligence was so closely held that it was shared only with select allies, including senior British officials, and not at the broader NATO level.
Prigozhin’s spectacular falling-out with Moscow’s high command appears to have stemmed from a declaration by the Russian Ministry of Defense that it would employ Wagner’s contractors directly. The move would essentially have dissolved Prigozhin’s lucrative operations in Russia.
Prigozhin arrived in Belarus Tuesday, the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko said. Russia says Lukashenko brokered the deal that ended the rebellion.
by tyler | Jun 28, 2023 | CNN, europe
Turkey condemned a decision by Swedish authorities to approve a small Quran-burning demonstration outside a mosque in Stockholm on Wednesday, a move that may jeopardize Sweden’s bid to join NATO before the bloc’s key summit in July.
A single person took part in the planned Quran burning in the Swedish capital and images of the event show he was the only person apart from his translator at the demonstration, which coincided with the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Adha, one of the most significant in the Islamic calendar.
The decision to permit the protest was made in accordance with the right of freedom of speech, Swedish police said, adding that the demonstration does not pose an immediate security risk.
But allowing such an inflammatory protest stirred a backlash in Turkey, a NATO member state that has obstructed Sweden’s accession bid. Sweden and neighboring Finland both formally applied to join the bloc after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.”
Turkey’s foreign minister condemned the protest on Wednesday, calling it a “heinous act.”
“It is unacceptable to allow these anti-Islamic actions under the pretext of freedom of expression. To turn a blind eye to such heinous acts is to be complicit in them,” Hakan Fidan said in a statement.
The Turkish government’s Director of Communicaitons Fahrettin Altun added in a tweet: “We are sick and tired of enabling of Islamophobia and continued instances of hatred for our religion on the part of European authorities especially in Sweden.”
“Those who seek to become our allies in NATO, cannot tolerate or enable destructive behaviors of Islamophobic and xenophobic terrorists,” he said.
NATO officials are hoping to avoid the embarrassment of seeing the alliance miss its own stated aim of admitting Sweden to the alliance by July 11 – the date of its next official summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Officials fear that missing this deadline will send a humiliating and potentially dangerous message to the alliance’s adversaries.
Turkey – a strategically important NATO member due to its geographical location in both the Middle East and Europe, and the alliance’s second-largest military power – has proven the greatest obstacle to Sweden’s NATO accession bid.
Earlier this year, Turkish-Swedish relations suffered a major blow following a rally outside Stockholm’s Turkish Embassy during which an anti-immigration politician set a copy of the Quran alight.
The incident sparked anger in the Turkish capital, Ankara, where protesters took to the streets and burned the Swedish flag outside the Swedish embassy in response.
At the time, the then Turkish foreign minister reportedly blamed the Swedish government, saying it had “taken part in this crime by allowing this vile act” to go ahead, according to state news agency Anadolu.
An Eastern European diplomat told CNN that as well as “emboldening the enemies” of NATO, any delay to Sweden’s accession risks “giving the sense of Erdogan’s power over the alliance.” The diplomat added that “Erdogan will use the moment to squeeze every drop from this situation and will throw the ball to Sweden – making them hostage of their (own) anti-terrorist laws.”
Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Sweden has fulfilled the necessary requirements set out by Turkey in order to join NATO, including introducing a new terrorism law.
“New legislation has recently entered into force in Sweden that makes it illegal to participate in a terrorist organization in any way that promotes, strengthens or supports it. We are thereby delivering on the last parts of our agreement,” Billstrom said.
But the decision to permit a Quran-burning protest may further damage Sweden’s relations with Turkey and dent the country’s hopes to join NATO.
Speaking to CNN on the phone earlier on Wednesday, the protester Salwan Momika said he came to Sweden five years ago from Iraq and has Swedish citizenship. He told CNN he identifies as an atheist.
He said he was doing this demonstration after three months of legal battles in court.
“This book should be banned in the world because of the danger it causes to democracy, ethics, human values, human rights, and women’s rights. It just doesn’t work in this time and age,” he said.
A police permit obtained by CNN states that the “security risks and consequences connected to a Quran burning are not of such a nature that, according to current law, they can be the basis for a decision to reject an application for a general meeting.”
The permit for the demonstration says that Quran burnings “mean an increased risk of a terrorist attack” and “can also have foreign policy consequences.”
However, it added that for “security problems to be the basis for a decision to refuse a general assembly, these must have a clear connection to the planned gathering or its immediate surroundings.”
Authorities granted permission for the gathering according to certain conditions, including a fire ban in place in Stockholm since June 12, which “applies until further notice.”
Speaking to CNN on the phone, Stockholm police spokesperson Helena Bostrom Thomas said that police had informed the applicant to find out about those restrictions but added that “freedom of speech weighs heavier than if he acts against the restrictions of the fire ban.”
by tyler | Jun 27, 2023 | CNN, europe
For two days after Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his abortive mutiny, Russian President Vladimir Putin said nothing in public. Having faced the greatest challenge to his authority in 23 years, and almost witnessed his country tip into civil war, many expected the president to respond with sound and fury.
Instead, the silence was broken first by his adversary. In an 11-minute audio message posted to his Telegram channel, Prigozhin claimed to have merely staged a protest, rather than a coup, attempting to “bring to justice” Russia’s top military brass for their “mistakes during the special military operation.”
When Putin finally addressed the nation again on Monday, he was remarkably clement. The last time he had been seen on Saturday, he told the nation that Prigozhin’s mutiny was “a stab in the back of our country and our people,” and promised to hold the insurgents “accountable.”
Now, he thanked the insurgents for making the “right decision” in halting their advance, and offered them contracts to join the Russian ministry of defense’s force. He also claimed that the “armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway,” without specifying how.
For a leader renowned for delivering grand historical theses in hour-long tracts, Monday’s speech was terse, lasting only a few minutes – and leaving more questions than answers.
Why has Prigozhin been allowed to flee to Belarus? Why have the insurgents not been punished? And how does Putin attempt to reassert his authority?
In a bizarre and chaotic 36 hours, Prigozhin drove 800 miles from the border of Ukraine towards Moscow, captured a regional military command, stormed a large city, and claimed to have shot down a military helicopter.
Many expected Putin’s response to be swift and brutal. He said in his Saturday address that Wagner’s “treachery” was a “betrayal” of their country.
“Putin values loyalty above all else,” Dmitri Alperovitch, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, told CNN. “You can steal under him, you can kill, you can be a criminal. But the one thing you cannot be is disloyal.”
Given this, Putin’s apparent reluctance to punish the insurgents seemed puzzling.
But, according to Kirill Shamiev, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Putin’s first priority will be to “demilitarize, disarm and demobilize the Wagner group,” before issuing any potential punishment.
“On the tactical level, it’s important to pacify a bit, to make it calm, to give some hope and benefits to the ordinary Wagner mercenaries and senior command, to reduce their incentives to act,” Shamiev told CNN.
Putin is currently engaged in a balancing act. His instinct may have been to respond swiftly, to demonstrate that mutiny won’t be tolerated and to project an image of strength. But if he moves too quickly, he risks stirring up another rebellion – and of giving the impression of panic.
“If you react too swiftly, it can show the elites that you’re scared,” said Shamiev. Paradoxically, taking the “strongman” approach can instead reveal weakness.
Prigozhin must be made an example of, according to Shamiev, but it is a careful question of timing. The war in Ukraine is entering an uncertain phase: Kyiv’s counteroffensive may have gotten off to a stuttering start, but the unity and morale of Russia’s forces has come under question since the chaos of the past weekend.
If the Kremlin were to have somehow dispatched Prigozhin immediately, and Russia’s forces were to crumble in Ukraine, the Wagner chief’s criticisms may simply have been proved correct.
“It would look like, ‘Oh, Prigozhin was right, actually. He was right about the military, he was right about how unprepared and uneducated the generals are – and now they’ve killed him.’ It’s a bad look for the Kremlin,” said Shamiev.
Hence Putin’s somewhat chastened response may prove prudent. He was more visible on Tuesday, as he thanked security officers for their apparent role in quelling the mutiny. “You stopped a civil war,” he told officials at an address in the Kremlin.
“In a difficult situation, you acted clearly and in a well-coordinated manner, you proved by deed your loyalty to the people of Russia and to the military oath and showed responsibility for the fate of the Motherland and its future,” he said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) also said Tuesday that it is dropping the case against Wagner, since “its participants stopped their actions directly aimed at committing a crime,” according to state media RIA Novosti.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko also broke his silence Tuesday, confirming that Prigozhin had traveled to Belarus, under the terms of a “deal” Lukashenko had brokered with him, allowing him to leave Russia without facing criminal charges.
Lukashenko claimed he told Prigozhin that he would be “crushed like a bug” if he continued his advance towards Moscow, and persuaded him to call of the mutiny. But, while he disclosed some of the details of Saturday’s negotiations, Lukashenko said little about Prigozhin’s future.
During a crisis, visibility matters. Now that the dust has settled after a chaotic weekend, Putin is attempting to project an image of control. But he has been unable to call on another method to reassert control that other leaders have used after facing similar challenges to their authority: Mobilizing political support.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced a coup attempt in 2016, his response was rapid and uncompromising. Thousands were imprisoned within days. He publicly announced he was considering reinstating the death penalty. Even a year later, his fury was palpable. “We are going to behead these traitors,” he said.
Throughout the crisis, Erdogan hardly left the airwaves. He attended the funerals of those killed in the mutiny. He rallied protesters to his support, organizing mass pro-government demonstrations in major cities.
Such sights have been absent in Russia. The only public demonstrations of support have been for Prigozhin. As he was driven out of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday evening, people lined the streets to cheer him, like fans waiting outside a stadium to get a glimpse of their favorite sports star.
“The Kremlin’s power is heavily reliant on the depoliticization of the majority of the Russian population. Voluntary, independent depoliticization – so that people don’t go on the streets on their own,” said Shamiev.
Because of this long-cultivated tactic, Putin cannot expect millions of Russian citizens to rally to his defense, as in Erdogan’s case.
For now, it is a case of biding his time before deciding on how and when to punish Prigozhin.
But, during this delay, doubts may grow in Russia. “If he is not jailed, if he is not killed by Putin, that is going to send a signal to everyone that Putin is weaker than they thought, and you can get away with a lot,” said Alperovitch.
“There’s no question that his power is now weakened. There’s no question that a lot of people around the country – the elites, various governors, various people in the security services – are probably asking themselves: If Prigozhin can really get away with this, with challenging state power like this, what can I get away with?”
by tyler | Jun 26, 2023 | CNN, europe
Wagner mercenary boss Yevegeny Prigozhin over-reached and lost.
His hubris-fuelled insurrection failed through a combination of hot-headed ambition and his inability to read Putin’s inner circle, of which he was a member, properly.
As one informed Moscow resident told me, the “system wasn’t ready for the radical change” he wanted.
When he packed up his tanks and pulled out of the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, well-wishers rushed up to say thank you.
His battle-hardened troops, like veteran actors at a curtain call after a long and tense 24-hour performance, waved goodbye to an apparently adoring audience.
Whether it had it all been theater, we may never know, but in Prigozhin’s mind on Friday evening when he called his heavily armed forces to action on Russia’s not Ukraine’s streets, the time had come for him to take center stage.
For weeks, months even, he’d been arguing Russia’s war in Ukraine was being badly and unnecessary fought by an elite who couldn’t care less how many Russian lives were lost.
His message gained easy traction among Russians who understand that Putin and his coterie habitually lie and tolerate it only as long as their leader is strong and they enjoy stability.
It’s a compact forged across generations: resistance to dictatorship is useless, just put your head down and survive.
For months now, Prigozhin struck a chord with his charismatic and carefully choreographed front-line rants from Bakhmut where his fighters were dying in their hundreds so Putin could claim a tiny gain in his grindingly slow war in Ukraine.
To many, Prigozhin seemed brave. No Russian general was seen going so close to danger.
Prigozhin claimed his troops were being starved of ammunition by another of Putin’s trusted inner circle, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.
The Wagner boss’s obvious hatred of Shoigu had developed into a festering turf war over who would control Wagner. At stake were the vast money-making ventures Prigozhin developed and owned for the Kremlin in Africa and beyond.
Putin, whose hitherto iron-fisted rule relies on manipulating his inner circle’s interests to keep them in line, should have shut the feud down sooner.
What the Russian public was hearing from Prigozhin, about how badly the war was going, was dangerous for Putin. The renegade mercenary boss’s regular diatribes about a screwed-up, lying military leadership were seeds of dissent falling on fertile soil.
Prigozhin’s miscalculation was how fertile that soil was, or more specifically which bits weren’t.
Not only had his message been gaining traction with the public, he’d also been drawing support from top military ranks. At the end of April, he recruited Deputy Defense Minister Mikhail Mizintsev direct from the Kremlin.
Another top defense official, Sergey Surovkin, who for a while last year was put in charge of Russia’s war in Ukraine, was a favorite of Prigozhin. “This is the only person with the star of the General of the Army who knows how to fight,” Prigozhin said, at the height of his spat with the defense ministry in Moscow.
Rumors were the respect was reciprocated.
Around the same time Putin’s massively powerful and vital ally Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov heaped praise on Prigozhin’s troops. “The Wagner PMC has very good, courageous, necessary, necessary people,” Kadyrov said.
As Prigozhin threatened to pull his forces from the front lines Kadyrov was trying to mediate. “If you stay with us,” Kadyrov said, “I promise you that we will give you more, create better conditions, than you have today. We will try to make everything top notch for you.”
At 9 p.m. Friday night, Prigozhin claimed he met with Shoigu. What they discussed is still unknown. Shoigu left abruptly. Hours later, Prigozhin said he wasn’t budging till Shoigu came back to talk, and in the meantime said he had dispatched a fighting force to Moscow.
Late Saturday morning, as Prigozhin was still holed up in the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, Kadyrov played kingmakers’ hand: “What is happening is not an ultimatum to the Ministry of Defense. This is a challenge to the state, and against this challenge it is necessary to rally around the national leader,” he declared.
He called Prigozhin “treacherous” and said he was sending his special forces to rout the mercenary boss. The walls were closing in.
Any thought Prigozhin might rally Russian army generals to his cause was evaporating too. Hours earlier, Surovkin, the only general he valued, released a video message telling him to “stop” and to “obey the will” of President Vladimir Putin.
Facing a potential Alamo, Prigozhin appeared to negotiate his way out on Saturday afternoon – or at least, he thought he did.
Prigozhin claimed he called off his march on Moscow to save “Russian blood,” but the reality was that his neck was on the line.
Putin, fabled for rewarding loyalty and punishing the disloyal, had only hours earlier accused Prigozhin of “treason” and “armed rebellion.” Now, he hid behind a diplomatic fig leaf, allowing his weak Belarus neighbor and supplicant, President Alexander Lukashenko, to announce an amnesty and sanctuary for Prigozhin.
But by Monday, that amnesty appeared to have evaporated. Russian state media said charges against Prigozhin had not been dropped, and since Belarus is an enfeebled client of Russia, it can surely offer little safety for Prigozhin.
If the Wagner boss does have any leverage left, it is bundled up in his shady diamond, gold and other dealings with Kremlin clients he helped recruit in Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan and Libya.
Such currency rarely holds its value long.
Prigozhin’s world is a much smaller and more dangerous place now, but there can be little satisfaction for Putin in this as his empire is the most fragile it’s been since he consolidated his power from a wholly different group of oligarchs two decades ago.
by tyler | Jun 26, 2023 | CNN, europe
A candidate from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won a local leadership post for the first time on Sunday in a resounding victory for a group whose anti-migrant, Euroskeptic and anti-Muslim agenda is under surveillance by German authorities.
The AfD’s Robert Sesselmann triumphed over incumbent Jürgen Köpper of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party to become district administrator of Sonneberg, in Thuringia, central Germany, at the weekend.
Sesselmann was elected with 52.8% of the vote, while Köpper gained 47.2%, according to the Thuringian State Office for Statistics.
Opposition lawmakers sounded the alarm on Sesselmann’s win, saying it threatened the political center and signaled a rise in populism among the electorate.
Köpper told reporters on Sunday that “the excruciating policies of the German government” led to the AfD’s success.
“Unfortunately, it has not been a personal election as state elections have always been, it has become a pure party election,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party’s chairwoman Saskia Esken called the AfD victory in Sonneberg a “political dam-break” on Monday.
Chairwoman of the Green Party, Ricarda Lang, tweeted that the results were a warning to all democratic parties. “The result of the state election in Sonneberg is dismaying,” Lang said.
Mario Czaja, secretary general of the CDU, tweeted on Sunday that the elections in Sonneberg were “a bitter result for the political center.”
However, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Germany maintains a strong democracy, adding that geopolitical factors including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation, energy prices, climate transformation and the European migrant crisis meant more cross-party “discussions” needed to be conducted “objectively.”
“Dividing, setting one group against another, or blaming migrants for something for which they cannot be held responsible at all, is not a recipe that will lead this country to a good future,” Hebestreit said on Monday.
German officials have ramped up scrutiny of the AfD in recent years as it cements its status as the country’s most successful far-right party since World War II.
In March 2021, it was formally placed under surveillance by Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service on suspicion of trying to undermine Germany’s democratic constitution – making it the first party to be monitored this way since the Nazi era crumbled in 1945.
Earlier this year, BfV labeled the party’s youth wing, whose members are as young as 14, as “extremist” after four years of investigation.
Even though the move doesn’t apply to parent party AfD, it revealed a growing segment of young Germans united by extreme views on migration and anti-feminism.
Dresden-based political scientist, Hans Vorländer, said Sunday’s results indicate that trust in Berlin “is at an almost historical low.”
“Unless there is a dramatic change in political opinion, next year’s state and local elections could turn into a triumph for the AfD,” Vorländer told CNN on Monday, adding that winning an election would not necessarily mean participation in regional governments, as the other parties would then try harder to form coalitions.
“The chaos of the German government is contributing to a very poor mood; trust in the government is at an almost historic low. Right-wing ideas are also strongly rooted among the population of Saxony and Thuringia, much more so than in western Germany,” he added.
“While this victory was a symbolic victory for AfD, in next year’s state elections in the eastern German states, the AfD could win a large number of seats; at the national level, 25% is conceivable.”
AfD co-chairwoman Alice Weidel tweeted that Sesselmann had made history by having been elected first AfD-district administrator, adding that this victory was “only the beginning.”
