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Mercenary chief Prigozhin starts exile in Belarus, Putin praises Russian troops

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Founder of Wagner private mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin. (REUTERS)
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This video grab taken from handout footage posted late on June 24, 2023 on the Telegram channel @rstv01 shows a military vehicle of Wagner Group waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to leave the headquarters of the Russian southern military district in Rostov. (AFP)
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Updated 28 June 2023
Reuters
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Mercenary chief Prigozhin starts exile in Belarus, Putin praises Russian troops

  • Lukashenko hailed Prigozhin as a "heroic guy" who had been shaken by the deaths of many of his men in Ukraine
  • "He was pressured and influenced by those who led the assault squads (in Ukraine) and saw these deaths," Lukashenko said
Updated 28 June 2023
Reuters

MOSCOW: Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin flew into exile in Belarus on Tuesday under a deal that ended a brief mutiny by his fighters, as President Vladimir Putin praised his armed forces for averting a civil war.
A plane linked to Prigozhin was shown on a flight tracking service taking off from the southern Russian city of Rostov early on Tuesday and landing in Belarus.
“I see Prigozhin is already flying in on this plane,” state news agency BELTA quoted Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as saying. “Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today.”
In Moscow, Putin sought to reassert his authority after the mutiny led by Prigozhin in protest against the Russian military’s handling of the conflict in Ukraine.
Russian authorities also dropped a criminal case against his Wagner Group mercenary force, state news agency RIA reported, apparently fulfilling another condition of the deal brokered by Lukashenko late on Saturday that defused the crisis.
Prigozhin, a former Putin ally and ex-convict whose mercenaries have fought the bloodiest battles of the Ukraine war and taken heavy casualties, had earlier said he would go to neighboring Belarus at the invitation of Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin and an acquaintance of the Wagner chief.
Ukraine hopes the chaos caused by the mutiny attempt will undermine Russian defenses as Ukraine presses a counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
There was little news about progress on the battlefield on Tuesday, but two Russian missiles struck a restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. Andriy Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration, said on Telegram that four people were killed and 42 injured, including a child.
The building was reduced to a twisted web of metal beams. “None of the glass, windows or doors are left. All I see is destruction, fear and horror,” Valentyna, 64, said.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians since launching what it terms a “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022.

’YOU HAVE STOPPED CIVIL WAR’
Early on Tuesday, flight tracking service Flightradar24’s website showed an Embraer Legacy 600 jet, bearing identification codes that match a plane linked to Prigozhin in US sanctions documents, descending near the Belarus capital Minsk.
It first appeared on the tracking site above Rostov, the southern Russian city that Prigozhin’s fighters captured during the mutiny.
Prigozhin was seen on Saturday night smiling and high-fiving bystanders as he rode out of Rostov in the back of an SUV after ordering his men to stand down. He has not yet been seen in public in Belarus.
Putin meanwhile told some 2,500 Russian security personnel at a ceremony on a square in the Kremlin complex in Moscow that the people and the armed forces stood together in opposition to the rebel mercenaries.
“You have saved our motherland from upheaval. In fact, you have stopped a civil war,” he said.
Putin was joined by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose dismissal had been one of the mutineers’ main demands.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing on Tuesday the deal ending the mutiny was being implemented.
Russian leaders have tried to convey that the situation is returning to normal. Peskov dismissed the idea that Putin’s grip on power had been shaken by the mutiny, calling such thoughts “hysteria.”

DEMONSTRATION OF PROTEST
Prigozhin, 62, said he launched the mutiny to save his group after being ordered to place it under command of the defense ministry, which he has cast as ineffectual in the war in Ukraine.
His fighters halted their campaign on Saturday to avert bloodshed after nearly reaching Moscow, he said. “We went as a demonstration of protest, not to overthrow the government of the country,” Prigozhin said in an audio message on Monday.
Lukashenko said on Tuesday that his country offered Wagner fighters an abandoned military base. “Please — we have a fence, we have everything — put up your tents,” Lukashenko said, according to BELTA.
The prospect of Wagner establishing a base in Belarus was greeted with alarm by some of its neighbors. Latvia and Lithuania called for NATO to strengthen its eastern borders in response, and Polish President Andrzej Duda described the move a “negative signal.”
Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda said deployment of Wagner fighters in Belarus would destabilize neighboring countries.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting with leaders of seven NATO countries in the Hague that the alliance “sent a clear message to Moscow and Minsk that NATO is there to protect every ally, every inch of NATO territory.”
Washington, which has given Ukraine more than $10 billion in military assistance, announced $500 million in new aid including vehicles and munitions, according to a Pentagon statement.

 

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict belarus Alexander Lukashenko Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin

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Resurgent terror groups in Afghanistan will strike West, warns resistance leader

Updated 01 May 2024
Arab News
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Resurgent terror groups in Afghanistan will strike West, warns resistance leader

  • Exiled head of National Resistance Front says Al-Qaeda, Daesh presence growing in country
  • Taliban emboldened by Western commitment to Ukraine, focus on Middle East
Updated 01 May 2024
Arab News

London: Terrorist groups in Afghanistan are regrouping in the wake of the Western evacuation from the country and will strike on US and European soil, the leader of an anti-Taliban movement has warned.

The exiled leader of Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front, Ahmad Massoud, said a terror attack in the US or Europe is “not about a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” The Independent reported.

Massoud said circumstances in the country and the wider region resemble the pre-9/11 landscape, with terror training camps opening across Afghanistan.

Ali Maisam Naziry, the NRF’s head of foreign relations, said of the resurgent groups: “The attacks in Russia, Iran and Brussels, and the neutralised attack in Germany, are examples of how fast they are moving to threaten global security.”

He added that since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Afghanistan has witnessed a “massive influx” of foreign terrorist fighters who belong to the more than 20 militant networks operating in the country, including Al-Qaeda, Daesh-Khorasan and the Haqqani Network.

Massoud warned that the West’s commitment to Ukraine and Israel is serving as a distraction, emboldening the Taliban in the process.

Afghanistan is “no longer a priority” for the Biden administration in the US, he told The Independent last year.

Nathan Sales, a former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, said last year: “The continued partnership between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is perhaps best seen in the fact that after the US withdrawal, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri resurfaced in Afghanistan, living in a safe house associated with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban faction that maintains close ties to Al-Qaeda and is itself a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“The key takeaway is that the Taliban felt emboldened to welcome Al-Qaeda’s leader back to Kabul, and Al-Qaeda’s leader felt it was safe enough there to accept the offer.”

Topics: Afghanistan

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Sudanese man detained in UK for deportation to Rwanda: NGO

Updated 01 May 2024
Arab News
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Sudanese man detained in UK for deportation to Rwanda: NGO

  • Asylum seeker attended routine sign-in at immigration center in London on Monday
  • Home Office: First flight to African country ‘set to take off in 10-12 weeks’
Updated 01 May 2024
Arab News

LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker in the UK has been told of his imminent deportation to Rwanda after attending a routine Home Office appointment, The Guardian reported.

SOAS Detainee Support, an NGO, told the newspaper that the case is believed to be the first under the Rwanda scheme, which has received royal assent.

The UK government policy aims to deport rejected asylum seekers to the African country through a bilateral agreement.

The Sudanese man said he had arrived on Monday to sign in at the Lunar House immigration reporting center in Croydon, south London, but was told he would be deported to Rwanda, and was subsequently detained.

He is one of three people being held after attending the facility, including an Afghan national, SDS said.

The NGO, which offers advice and support to detained asylum seekers, said it had received an “alarmingly high number of calls” since the government’s announcement of Rwanda flights.

A Home Office spokesperson said in a statement: “Now that the Safety of Rwanda Act has passed and our treaty with Rwanda ratified, government is entering the final phase of operationalising this landmark policy to tackle illegal migration and stop the boats.

“This includes detaining people in preparation for the first flight, which is set to take off to Rwanda in 10-12 weeks.”

Topics: Sudan Rwanda United Kingdom (UK) UK immigration bill

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Daesh claims gun attack killing six in Afghan mosque

Updated 01 May 2024
AFP
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Daesh claims gun attack killing six in Afghan mosque

  • Daesh said numerous gunmen had stormed the mosque with machine guns
Updated 01 May 2024
AFP

HERAT: The Daesh group has claimed a gun attack on a minority Shiite mosque in western Afghanistan that killed six people on Monday.
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said Tuesday morning that “an unknown armed person shot at civilian worshippers in a mosque” in Herat province’s Guzara district at around 9:00 p.m. (1630 GMT) the previous night.
“Six civilians were martyred and one civilian was injured,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Late Tuesday, the regional chapter of Daesh group claimed responsibility and said numerous gunmen had stormed the mosque with machine guns — contradicting the official account of a single assailant.
Locals said the mosque, located just south of provincial capital Herat, served the minority Shiite community and that an imam and a three-year-old child were among those killed.
They said a team of three gunmen had staged the attack.
“One of them was outside and two of them came inside the mosque, shooting the worshippers,” said 60-year-old Ibrahim Akhlaqi, the brother of the slain imam. “It was in the middle of prayers.”
“Whoever was in the mosque has either been martyred or wounded,” added 23-year-old Sayed Murtaza Hussaini.
Taliban authorities have frequently given death tolls lower than other sources after bombings and gun attacks, or otherwise downplayed them, in an apparent attempt to minimize security threats.
Daesh in Afghanistan
The regional chapter of Daesh is the largest security threat in Afghanistan and has frequently targeted Shiite communities.
The Taliban government has pledged to protect religious and ethnic minorities since returning to power in August 2021, but rights monitors say they’ve done little to make good on that promise.
The most notorious attack linked to Daesh since the Taliban takeover was in 2022, when at least 53 people — including 46 girls and young women — were slain in the suicide bombing of an education center.
Taliban officials blamed Daesh for the attack, which happened in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital Kabul.
Afghanistan’s new rulers claim to have ousted IS from the country and are highly sensitive to suggestions the group has found safe haven there since the withdrawal of foreign forces.
A United Nations Security Council report released in January said there had been a decrease in Daesh attacks in Afghanistan because of “counter-terrorism efforts by the Taliban.”
But the report said Daesh still had “substantial” recruitment in the country and that the militant group had “the ability to project a threat into the region and beyond.”
The Daesh chapter spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia claimed responsibility for the March attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow, killing more than 140 people.
It was the deadliest attack in Russia in two decades.

Topics: Afghanistan Daesh

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UK local polls could determine PM Sunak’s fate

Updated 01 May 2024
AFP
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UK local polls could determine PM Sunak’s fate

  • The polls are the last major electoral test before a general election that Sunak’s party, in power since 2010, seems destined to lose to the Labour opposition
Updated 01 May 2024
AFP

London: Britain’s ruling Conservative party is expected to suffer heavy losses in crunch local elections this week that are likely to increase pressure on beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The polls are the last major electoral test before a general election that Sunak’s party, in power since 2010, seems destined to lose to the Labour opposition.
Sunak has said he wants to hold the nationwide vote in the second half of the year, but bruising defeats in Thursday’s votes could force his hand earlier.
“These elections form a vital examination for the Sunak premiership — road-testing its claim that the plan is working and the degree to which voters still lend that notion any degree of credibility,” political scientist Richard Carr told AFP.
Incumbent governments tend to suffer losses in local contests and the Conservatives are forecast by pollsters to lose about half of the council seats they are defending.
Sunak’s immediate political future is said to rest on whether two high-profile Tory regional mayors get re-elected in the West Midlands and Tees Valley areas of central and northeast England.
Wins for the Conservative mayors, Andy Street and Ben Houchen, would boost hopes among Tory MPs that Sunak can turn around their party’s fortunes in time for the general election.
But speculation is rife in the UK parliament that a bad showing could lead some restive Conservative lawmakers to try to replace Sunak before the nationwide poll.
“If Andy Street and Ben Houchen both lose, any idea that Sunak can carry on is surely done,” said Carr, a politics lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.
“Whether that means he rolls the dice on a general election or gets toppled remains to be seen.”
Factional infighting has plagued the Tories in recent years, serving up five prime ministers since the 2016 Brexit vote, including three in four months from July to October 2022.
A group of restive Conservative MPs have drawn up a “policy blitz” for a potential successor to Sunak in the event of massive losses this week, British media have reported.
Some observers say it would be madness for the Conservatives to topple another leader when Sunak has provided some stability since succeeding Liz Truss in October 2022.
Others say the party’s credibility is already shot so why not try one last desperate throw of the dice to try to stop a predicted Labour landslide.
Some 52 MPs would need to submit letters of no confidence in Sunak to trigger an internal party vote to replace him — a tall ask.
“I still expect Sunak will lead the Conservatives into the general election,” Richard Hayton, a politics professor at Leeds University, told AFP.
“But some MPs may seek to move against him, which will further damage his standing with the general public.”
Sunak, 43, was an internal Tory appointment following Truss’s disastrous 49 days premiership in which her unfunded tax cuts caused market turmoil and sank the pound.
Despite numerous leadership resets under Sunak, the Tories have continued to trail Labour, led by Keir Starmer, by double digits in most opinion polls.
An Ipsos poll earlier this month put Sunak’s satisfaction rating at a joint all-time low of minus 59 percent.
More than 2,500 councillors are standing in England on Thursday, as well as London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan who is seeking a record third term in office.
Most of the council seats up for re-election were last contested in 2021, when ex-Tory premier Boris Johnson was popular as he rolled out Covid-19 vaccines.

Topics: rishi sunak UK elections

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UN Human Rights Chief troubled by ‘heavy-handed’ action against protesters at US colleges

Updated 01 May 2024
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UN Human Rights Chief troubled by ‘heavy-handed’ action against protesters at US colleges

  • Volker Turk says ‘freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues’
  • Protests have taken place on campuses in several states as students demand colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s assault on Gaza
Updated 01 May 2024
Ephrem Kossaify

NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s high commissioner for human rights on Tuesday said he is troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by education authorities and law enforcement officials to break up protests at college campuses in the US.
Volker Turk said: “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues, as there are in relation to the conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spread across college campuses in Texas, New York, Atlanta, Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, California and other parts of the US as students protest against the death toll during the war in Gaza, call for a ceasefire and demand authorities at their colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s military assault on Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian protestors hold a rally outside of Columbia University in New York City on April 30, 2024. (AFP)

Though largely peaceful, at some locations the protests have been dispersed or dismantled by security forces. Hundreds of students and teachers have been arrested, some of whom face charges or academic sanctions.
Turk expressed concern that some of the responses by law enforcement authorities at several colleges might have been disproportionate, and called for such actions to be scrutinized to ensure they do not exceed what is necessary “to protect the rights and freedoms of others.”
He added that all such actions must be guided by human rights law, while “allowing vibrant debate and protecting safe spaces for all.”

Members of the NYPD set up a large perimeter around the Columbia University campus to clear pro-Palestinian demonstrators from a protest encampment in New York City on April 30, 2024. (AFP)

He reiterated that antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activities and speech are “totally unacceptable, deeply disturbing (and) reprehensible.” However, the conduct of protesters must be assessed and addressed individually rather than through “sweeping measures that impute to all members of a protest the unacceptable viewpoints of a few,” Turk added.
“Incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of identity or viewpoints, whether real or assumed, must be strongly repudiated. We have already seen such dangerous rhetoric can quickly lead to real violence.”

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