MOSCOW: Belarus said Friday that instructors from the Russian mercenary force Wagner were training its troops, following weeks of uncertainty about the future of the group after its failed mutiny in Russia.
The short-lived rebellion was ended by a deal under which some Wagner fighters and their outspoken leader Yevgeny Prigozhin were supposed to move to Belarus.
But Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had cast doubt on the deal when he said earlier this month that no Wagner fighters had moved to the country yet.
The Belarusian defense ministry appeared to confirm Friday that at least some Wagner fighters had arrived.
“Near Asipovichy, units of territorial defense troops are undergoing training,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
“Fighters of the Wagner private military company are acting as instructors in a number of military disciplines,” it said.
The ministry later added that it and Wagner had worked out “a road map for the near term on training and sharing experience” between various units.
The Wagner group, which recruited extensively from Russian prisons, played a key role in the Ukraine offensive.
A video released by the Belarusian defense ministry showed masked fighters as instructors in the drills for soldiers living in a nearby tent camp.
A group of foreign reporters earlier this month was shown a camp near Asipovichy where Belarusian officials said the mercenaries could be based.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address Friday that Kyiv was “closely monitoring what is happening there in terms of security.”
The latest development came as the clock ran down on a UN and Turkiye-mediated deal with Russia to allow Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea — a vital supply route for the developing world.
The deal, first signed in July 2022, five months after Moscow’s all-out assault on Ukraine, is set to expire on Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened not to renew it because of what he says have been obstacles to Russian exports.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared confident on Friday on the prospects of an extension to the deal.
“We are preparing to welcome Putin in August and we agree on the extension of the Black Sea grain corridor,” Erdogan told reporters.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti: “There were no statements on this subject from the Russian side.”
In Ukraine, Kyiv’s much-hyped counteroffensive, which began last month, ground on with only very gradual advances.
Ukraine has blamed the slow delivery of promised arms, calling on allies to send long-range weapons and fighter jets.
Ukraine said on Friday its forces had moved forward 1,700 meters (just over a mile) on the front line in the south over the past seven days.
Ukrainian troops are advancing despite “dense” minefields and shelling, Mykola Urshalovych, a senior representative of the National Guard, told reporters.
There have also been some advances to the north and south of Bakhmut, a city captured by Russian troops in May after a battle lasting nearly a year.
The aim of Ukrainian forces is to surround the eastern city in a pincer movement.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, admitted that Kyiv’s troops were advancing “not so quickly.”
“If we are going to see that something is going wrong, we’ll say so. No one is going to embellish,” he told reporters.
Yermak also said that Ukraine would not consider talks with Moscow until Russian troops had left.
“Even thinking about these talks is only possible after Russian troops leave our territory,” he said.
Zelensky addressed the challenges facing the frontline troops in his evening address.
“We must all understand very clearly — as clearly as possible — that the Russian forces in our southern and eastern lands are investing everything they can to stop our soldiers.
“And every thousand meters of advance, every success of each of our combat brigades deserves gratitude,” he added.
Ukraine’s air force said on Friday it had downed 16 Iranian-made drones launched by Russian forces overnight, in the fourth consecutive night of aerial attacks by Moscow.
Wagner troops training Belarus forces
https://arab.news/c9zsg
Wagner troops training Belarus forces
- The Belarusian defense ministry appeared to confirm Friday that at least some Wagner fighters had arrived
- The Wagner group, which recruited extensively from Russian prisons, played a key role in the Ukraine offensive
Concern about Russia dominates as Lithuanians vote
- While the top three contenders have diverging views on Lithuania’s relations with China, they agree on helping Ukraine in its war against Russia
- The Baltic state of 2.8 million people fears it could be next in Russia’s crosshairs if Moscow wins its war against Ukraine
While the top three contenders have diverging views on Lithuania’s relations with China, they agree on helping Ukraine in its war against Russia
The Baltic state of 2.8 million people fears it could be next in Russia’s crosshairs if Moscow wins its war against Ukraine
VILNIUS: Lithuania votes Sunday in a presidential election dominated by security concerns with the main candidates all agreed the NATO and EU member should boost defense spending to counter the perceived threat from neighboring Russia.
The Baltic state of 2.8 million people fears it could be next in Russia’s crosshairs if Moscow wins its war against Ukraine, which began with an invasion in 2022.
While the top three contenders agree on defense, they have diverging views on social issues and on Lithuania’s relations with China, which have been strained for years over Taiwan.
“Lithuania’s understanding of the Russian threat is unanimous and unquestionable, so the main candidates are following suit,” Eastern Europe Studies Center director Linas Kojala told AFP.
Polls close at 1700 GMT and the result is expected later on Sunday — although a run-off on May 26 will probably be needed as no candidate is expected to win an overall majority.
Opinion polls give the incumbent, 59-year-old former banker Gitanas Nauseda, a comfortable lead over the other seven candidates, who include Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte and prominent lawyer Ignas Vegele.
The Lithuanian president steers defense and foreign policy, attending EU and NATO summits, but must consult with the government and parliament on appointing the most senior officials.
Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, is a top donor to Ukraine and a big defense spender, with a military budget currently equal to 2.75 percent of GDP.
Defense spending
The Simonyte-led government is expected to come forward with proposals within several weeks that could help increase defense spending even further to three percent.
Lithuania notably intends to use the funds to purchase tanks and additional air defense systems, and to host a German brigade, as Berlin plans to complete the stationing of around 5,000 troops by 2027.
None of the top candidates appear to question these plans, but Vegele has pledged to ask for a defense audit to effectively manage finances if he is elected.
Nauseda is projected to receive more than 35 percent of the vote in the first round, according to the latest opinion poll, and is expected to prevail in any eventual run-off.
Vegele, a 48-year-old lawyer who gained prominence after speaking out against mandated vaccination during the pandemic, presents himself as an alternative to established politicians and vows more transparent governance.
Simonyte, 49, is a fiscal conservative with liberal views on social issues. She notably supports same-sex partnerships, which still stir controversy in the predominantly Catholic country.
Simonyte is running for president for a second time after losing to Nauseda in a run-off in 2019.
“Simonyte is supported by conservative party voters and liberal people, while Nauseda is a candidate of the left in terms of economic and social policy,” Vilnius University analyst Ramunas Vilpisauskas told AFP.
Meanwhile, “Vegele will get support from those who simply want change,” he added.
Divergence over China
The uneasy relationship between Nauseda and his rival Simonyte’s ruling conservatives has at times triggered foreign policy debates, most notably on Lithuania’s relations with China.
Bilateral ties turned tense in 2021, when Vilnius allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy under the island’s name in a departure from the common diplomatic practice of using the name of the capital Taipei to avoid angering Beijing.
China, which considers Taiwan a part of its territory and bristles at support for the island that might lend it any sense of international legitimacy, downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius and blocked its exports.
This sparked controversy among Lithuanian politicians, with some urging a restoration of relations for the sake of the Lithuanian economy.
“China’s reaction to the opening of the office was harsher than predicted, and that sparked the debate,” Kojala said, adding that China’s response was hurting local businesses.
Trump tells Jersey Shore crowd he’s being forced to endure ‘Biden show trial’ in hush money case
- The former president’s extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign
WILDWOOD, N.J.: Sandwiched between his appearances in court, Donald Trump headed on Saturday to the Jersey Shore, where he repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden for the criminal charges he’s facing as the presumptive nominees prepare to face off in the November election and called his New York hush money case “a Biden show trial.”
Blasting the Democratic president “a total moron,” Trump before a crowd of tens of thousands repeatedly characterized the cases against him as politically motivated and timed to harm his ability to campaign.
“He’s a fool. He’s not a smart man,” Trump said of Biden. “I talk about him differently now because now the gloves are off.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, drew what his team called a “mega crowd” to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood, 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of the New York City courthouse where he has been forced to spend most weekdays sitting silently through his felony hush money trial.
Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told The Associated Press that she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen “dozens” of other events in the same space.
Trump was joined on stage by several high-level endorsers including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who is still listed as a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct and patronizing an underage prostitute.
The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, who is facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away.
Hours before he was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of Trump loyalists donning “Never Surrender” T-shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats crowded onto the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.
“The everyday American people are 100 percent behind him,” said Doreen O’Neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.
“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day,” O’Neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”
Trump’s extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign.
Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials in New York of using the legal system to block his return to the White House. Prosecutors allege the former president broke the law to conceal an affair with a porn actor that would have hurt his first presidential bid.
On Saturday, Trump posited that even those whom he accuses of politically motivated prosecutions didn’t bring every case they could have, pointing to the boosts his campaign has sustained with each wave of charges.
“I heard they were going to do a couple of other things and they said from Washington ... ‘we’re indicting him into the White House,’” Trump said. “They said, ‘Don’t do it.’”
While Trump seized on his legal woes Saturday, a judge’s gag order — and the threat of jail — limit Trump’s ability to comment publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the New York trial, which is expected to consume much of the month. The judge in the case already has fined Trump $9,000 for violating the order and warned that jail could follow if he doesn’t comply.
The order doesn’t include references to Judge Juan M. Merchan, whom Trump called “highly conflicted” or District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom Trump said are “doing the bidding for crooked Joe Biden.”
Trump’s responsibilities as a defendant have limited his ability to win over voters on the campaign trail.
He spent last week’s off-day from court in the general election battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan. And he was campaigning with tens of thousands of voters Saturday in New Jersey, a reliably Democratic state. Parts of New Jersey have deep-red enclaves and the southern shoreline in particular draws tourists and summer homeowners from neighboring Pennsylvania, a key swing state.
Biden, meanwhile, opened his weekend with a series of fundraising events on the West Coast.
He avoided Trump’s legal challenges — as he has done consistently — while addressing donors in Seattle. Instead, the Democratic president focused on Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which the Republican former president said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.
Saturday’s visit to the New Jersey Shore resort wasn’t Trump’s first.
While president, Trump held a rally there in January 2020 to thank Van Drew, the New Jersey congressman who had just left the Democratic Party for the GOP as a rebuke for the former president’s first impeachment.
Trump drew a crowd at the time that lined the streets, filled bars and supported numerous vendors in what is usually a sleepy city in the winter. This time, the summer season is around the corner for the resort known for its wide beaches and boardwalk games and shops.
Wildwood is in New Jersey’s 2nd District, which Van Drew has represented for three terms and covers all or part of six counties in southern New Jersey. It went for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 after earlier backing Barack Obama.
Trump is set to return to the courtroom next week, when key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe, is expected to take the witness stand. Last week, he was visibly angry at times as he was forced to sit through testimony from former porn actor Stormy Daniels, who described a sexual encounter with the former president in shocking detail.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records. The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in company records. Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Cohen, Trump’s attorney, who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet.
The prosecution could rest its case by the end of the week. It’s unclear if Trump himself will take the stand when the defense presents its case.
Back on the Jersey Shore, 65-year-old Pat Day said she felt some urgency to see Trump in person on Saturday.
“We want to see Trump before they take him out,” said Day, who was visiting from the Florida Keys. “I’m worried. They’re going to do everything they can so he doesn’t get elected again.”
US university apologizes after contractors spray paint in faces of pro-Palestine protesters
LONDON: The president of a Cleveland university in the US state of Ohio has apologized to students after hired contractors sprayed pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the face earlier this week while attempting to cover up a mural, local media has reported.
Students at Case Western Reserve University painted the Advocacy and Spirit walls on Monday night with the Palestinian flag and messages that included “I dream of breaking the siege,” “Come together in peace” and the number of Palestinian children killed in Gaza since war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October, Cleveland.com said.
Prompted by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israel retaliated with an offensive that has so far killed almost 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
A video showed the students, who are accusing the contractors of assault, trying to block the contractors from painting over the wall by standing in front of it, and one student wearing a face shield, was seen completely covered in white paint.
The video was shared by the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com by Case’s Students for Justice in Palestine group.
The contractors had been hired by the university’s president, Eric Kaler, early on Tuesday because “the administration said the messaging was ‘threatening, intimidating and antisemitic,’” Cleveland.com said, adding that he later released a statement apologizing to the community for the incident, saying he was “disturbed by what occurred.”
He added: “Let me be clear: No students — or any individuals — should ever be treated this way, especially on a campus where our core values center on providing a safe, welcoming environment. This is not who we are as an institution, and I am deeply sorry this ever occurred.”
Palestinian-Ameican student, Ameer Alkayali, 18, who was seen being completely sprayed in the video, said: “I stood against the wall, and the painters asked ‘Should we continue?’ The cops showed general confusion and didn’t tell them to stop. So, as seen in the video, they continue to just paint right over us.
“They told us to not put our hands in front of the machine because it’s dangerous. And we put our hands up, and they still continued to paint on our hands and sprayed us with it?”
Alkayali, who has been protesting with Case students sine they set up their encampment last week has also previously been detained and released by local police and now says “plans to take legal action against Case’s administration and its public safety department,” Cleveland.com reported.
“We were coughing, and it didn’t come out of my skin for hours,” he said. “Like it’s still in my hair. I can see it under my nails, and there was no sort of medical or any assistance with the situation after from Case or local police.”
Case said it was investigating the incident and since then, the wall has been painted over with a pro-Israeli message, saying: “They call for intifada so we call them terrorists.”
“Kaler said the college will ‘hold individuals responsible for this behavior, including the failure of our own officers to intervene,’” Cleveland.com said.
On Wednesday, “Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and the city’s police chief, Annie Todd, urged Kaler and his administration to think of the students’ rights,” the news outlet said.
“We support 1st Amendment rights and implore CWRU leadership to consider this and think about how the decisions they make and the actions they take – especially against those who are abiding by the law – will influence some of the progress we have collectively made as a city. At the same time, we urge individuals to demonstrate peacefully,” Bibb and Todd said.
Sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip continued to spread across several American and European universities, while local media reported that US police have arrested or detained more than 2,400 students who participated in protests in support of Palestine.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters rally in Madrid
- Spain is one of Israel’s harshest critics in Europe and leading efforts to recognize a Palestinian state
MADRID: Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through Madrid on Saturday to demand a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza and a severing of ties between Spain and Israel.
Numbering around 4,000 according to the authorities, protesters held up banners and signs condemning a “genocide” in Gaza and lauding the “resistance” of the Palestinian people.
Palestinians have been “crammed” in southern Gaza and “now they are displaced again from one place to another while there are no more safe places,” said 57-year-old Jaldia Abubakra, referring to Israeli evacuation orders in the city of Rafah.
Around 30 organizations called for the rally before the 76th anniversary of what Palestinians call the “Nakba” (“catastrophe“), when 760,000 people fled their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation.
Spanish students have set up peaceful sit-ins and camps at universities in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia in recent days, mirroring similar pro-Palestinian campus movements across the United States and Europe.
Earlier this week, Spanish universities expressed willingness to suspend ties with any Israeli educational institution that failed to express “a clear commitment to peace.”
Spain is one of Israel’s harshest critics in Europe and leading efforts to recognize a Palestinian state.
The Gaza war started with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, at least 36 of whom the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,971 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Mali national dialogue recommends longer military rule
- Months-long nationwide consultations, boycotted by many of the opposition, culminated with several recommendations, including extending the transition to five years from two, effectively prolonging the junta’s rule to 2027
BAMAKO: Participants in Mali’s national dialogue have recommended extending the military-led transition to democracy by three years and allowing junta leader Assimi Goita to stand in the eventual election.
The West African country has been under military rule since a coup in 2020, and tensions have risen over the junta’s failure to stick to a promised timeline for the return to constitutional rule.
Months-long nationwide consultations, boycotted by many of the opposition, culminated with several recommendations, including extending the transition to five years from two, effectively prolonging the junta’s rule to 2027.
BACKGROUND
Mali has been under military rule since a coup in 2020, and tensions have risen over the junta’s failure to stick to a promised timeline for the return to constitutional rule.
The substantial delay is likely to deepen concerns about democratic backsliding in West and Central Africa, where there have been eight coups over the past four years.
On the security front, participants in the consultations advised the authorities to be open to dialogue with Islamist armed groups and engage with all Malian armed movements.
On the Sahara Desert’s southern fringe, Mali has been plagued by violence since 2012, when militants hijacked an uprising by the Tuareg groups who complained of government neglect and sought autonomy for the desert region they call Azawad.
Deep insecurity, economic hardships, election delays, and the authorities’ recent move to limit political activities have stoked frustration with the junta in some quarters. In April, an alliance of political parties and civil society organizations formed and refused to participate in the national dialogue.
