LESBOS: Greece: A general strike virtually shut down the Greek island of Lesbos on Thursday as residents protested a European Union migration policy that has left thousands of asylum-seekers stranded here.
Most businesses, shops, cafes and local government offices were shuttered in the main town of Mytilene. The only sign of normality was that police officers were still on duty, and the local tax office was open.
Two protest rallies were planned later in the day when Tsipras was due to speak at a conference. Stores were also closed in protest on the nearby island of Chios.
More than 15,000 migrants and refugees remain stuck on Lesbos, Chios, and three other islands, most staying in severely overcrowded camps.
“Thousands of people are still living in appalling conditions with limited access to medical facilities,” the aid group Doctors Without Borders. Conditions at the largest refugee camp in Lesbos, the group said “were putting the health and lives of people stranded on the island at risk.”
Additional police officers, including anti-riot units, have been sent to Lesbos and took up positions around Mytilene. Supporters and opponents of the government used vans fitted with loudspeakers to promote the protest as well as a speech planned by the prime minister later Thursday.
Under a 2016 EU-Turkey agreement, migrants arriving on Greek islands from Turkey are held on the islands facing deportation to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece. The deal has created a massive backlog.
Tension on the islands has been building as the number of migrants arriving from Turkey has risen sharply in recent weeks.
“The situation on the island is exceptionally difficult. We are feeling the effects of a long-term financial crisis and the way the refugee crisis has been handled,” Lesbos Mayor Spyros Galinos said.
“For there to be any talk of growth or recovery, we must first be lifted out of this emergency situation.”
The government has promised to move thousands of asylum-seekers to the mainland but says the effort will take several months to implement — requiring additional staff and more shelter sites around Greece.
In the meantime, the number of daily arrivals continues to rise on the island and Greece’s land border with Turkey
Authorities said 53 people believed to be from Iraq and Syria were picked up Thursday after a yacht used to smuggle them into the country ran aground on a remote mainland beach in northeastern Greece.
The 12-meter (40-foot) Turkish-flagged yacht ran aground on Molyvoti beach in the northeastern Rodopi region, far from any of the usual smuggling routes used to ferry migrants and refugees from Turkey to Greece.
The group was made up of 19 men, 11 women and 23 children between the ages of 2 and 8.
Greek island on strike to protest migrant policy
Greek island on strike to protest migrant policy
Russia slams Western peacekeeping plan for Ukraine
- “The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova
- She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive“
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday slammed a plan for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “dangerous” and dubbed Kyiv and its allies an “axis of war,” dousing hopes the plan could be a step toward ending the almost four-year-war.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing the warring sides to strike a deal to halt the conflict, running shuttle diplomacy between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a bid to get an agreement across the line.
An initial 28-point plan which largely adhered to Moscow’s demands was criticized by Kyiv and Europe, and now Russia has slammed the attempts to beef-up protections for Ukraine should an elusive deal be reached.
Ukraine’s allies said they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv at a summit in Paris earlier this week, including a peacekeeping force.
But in its first comments since the summit, Moscow said the statements were far away from anything the Kremlin could accept to end its assault.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive.”
The remarks come as Russian strikes plunged hundreds of thousands in Ukraine into darkness, leaving families without heat in below-freezing temperatures — attacks that Zelensky said showed Russia was still set on war.
- ‘Legitimate military targets’ -
European leaders and US envoys announced earlier this week that post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a European multinational force to be deployed when the fighting stops.
But Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” Zakharova said Thursday, repeating a threat previously uttered by Putin.
Zelensky also said Thursday that a bilateral agreement between Kyiv and Washington for US security guarantees was “essentially ready for finalization at the highest level with the President of the United States” following talks between envoys in Paris this week.
Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defense are essential to convince Russia not to re-attack if a ceasefire is reached.
But specific details on the guarantees, the European force, and how it would engage have not been made public.
Zelensky said earlier this week he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer of what they would do if Russia does attack again after a deal.
Zelensky has also said that the most difficult questions in any settlement — territorial control of the eastern Donbas region and the fate of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — were still unresolved.
- Russian strikes cut heating -
Ukraine was meanwhile scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households after a new barrage targeted energy facilities in its Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.
He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.
About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.
In a post on social media, Zelensky said the attacks “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities.”
In addition to the unrelenting pummelling of Dnipropetrovsk, Russia pressed on with its ground assault on the region, claiming to have taken another village there.
It is not one of the five Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
