PARIS: A leading opponent of Vladimir Putin, freed in a prisoner swap last month, on Monday urged the West against allowing the Russian leader any “face-saving” way out of the war against Ukraine, saying the end of his quarter-century of rule was the only solution for peace.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony on treason and other charges after denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, was one of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals freed on August 1 in the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse in Paris, Kara-Murza, 43, predicted he would be able to return to his homeland as the “regime” of Putin would not last.
Arriving in France after visits to countries including Germany, he acknowledged there was “fatigue” in Western societies over the war sparked by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine but insisted the “Putin regime must be defeated.”
“It is very important that Vladimir Putin is not allowed to win the war against Ukraine,” said Kara-Murza, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron later Monday.
“It is very important that Vladimir Putin is not allowed to have a face-saving exit from this war in Ukraine.”
The Cambridge-educated Kara-Murza lashed out at Western “realpolitik” in dealing with Russia under Putin, which he said had made the Russian leader “the monster he is today.”
“Enough of realpolitik,” he said.
“If, God forbid, the Putin regime is allowed to present the outcome of this war as a victory and survive in power, all this means is that a year or 18 months from now we will be talking about another war, conflict or another catastrophe.”
Kara-Murza, a dual Russian and UK national, said he would be “honored” to go to Ukraine and meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that he was in favor of building bridges between Russia’s pro-democracy movement and Ukraine.
“We will have to find ways of living together and of overcoming this horrendous tragedy that the Putin regime has unleashed,” he said.
“It is not going to be an easy process, it’s not going to be a quick process, but we know that it’s possible.”
He said he felt a “special kind of solidarity” with Ukrainian officers who were held in his Siberian prison camp, even though they were not allowed to speak to each other.
Kara-Murza said he had been “absolutely certain” he would die in the penal colony in the Omsk region — until one morning he was suddenly put on a plane to Moscow and then with other prisoners involved swapped in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Nobody has ever asked our consent,” he said. “They herded us on a plane like cattle and threw us out of Russia.”
Macron applauded the Kremlin opponent for his “courage” during their meeting late Monday, while reiterating “France’s support for all defenders of human rights and freedom of expression,” the presidency said in a statement.
Kara-Murza earlier said he had no doubt he would return to his country.
“Not only is the Putin regime not forever, I think... it will be over in the very foreseeable future,” he said.
“And we will have a mammoth task ahead of us in rebuilding our country from the ruins that Putin is going to leave.”
Pointing to the collapse of Tsarist rule in 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kara-Murza said that “major political change in Russia comes suddenly, unexpectedly and no one is ever prepared for it.”
Kara-Murza, who sees as his mentor the campaigner Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015, brushed off fears for his own safety outside Russia.
“Security is not a word that comes into the vocabulary of somebody who is in opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia,” said Kara-Murza, who was the target of two poisoning attacks against his life even before his arrest in 2022.
“Whether Putin likes it or not, the future is coming,” he said.
Kara-Murza recalled his own shock at hearing about the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic prison camp in February.
“I heard the news on the radio,” he said. “I don’t think I have the words to describe the feeling,” he said, adding that at first he could not believe it.
“After months and months in solitary confinement, your mind starts playing tricks on you,” he said. “I thought that maybe I’d made all of this up.”
He said he was confident Navalny was killed on the orders of Putin.
“Any Western leader who shakes hands with Vladimir Putin is shaking hands with a murderer.”
His wife Yevgenia, who tirelessly campaigned for his release, said “rage” against the “crimes” committed by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Russia had sustained her.
“The rage that I’ve been feeling for all these years... outweighs any fears that I can experience,” she said, pledging to continue to fight for the release of other political prisoners.
Vladimir called himself “the luckiest man in the world.”
“I would not be sitting here speaking with you today if it wasn’t for Yevgenia,” he said.
Kremlin opponent Kara-Murza urges against ‘face-saving exit’ for Putin in Ukraine war
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Kremlin opponent Kara-Murza urges against ‘face-saving exit’ for Putin in Ukraine war
- Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony on treason and other charges after denouncing the invasion of Ukraine
Russia hits civilian, critical infrastructure, injures 10 in Ukraine
Russian troops also shelled Kherson and damaged energy equipment
KYIV: Attacks by Russian forces on Ukraine overnight and on Thursday across the country hit civilian and critical infrastructure facilities, injuring at least 10 people, Ukrainian authorities said.
Russia launched two ballistic missiles on the southern city of Mykolaiv in the early afternoon, targeting critical infrastructure, regional Governor Vitaliy Kim said.
Two people were wounded and a piece of equipment destroyed, he said in televised comments, without giving more details.
Russian troops also shelled Kherson and damaged energy equipment, according to Roman Mrochko, head of the southern city's military administration. Several settlements and part of the city were facing power outages, he said.
Separately, a flurry of Russian guided bombs early in the morning injured six people, including a 17-year-old girl, and damaged 29 buildings in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, its regional governor Ivan Fedorov, said.
Ukraine's air force said on the Telegram messaging app that it had downed 41 out of 62 drones launched by Russia. Russian forces also launched eight missiles, it added, while 14 drones were "locationally lost".
"As a result of the Russian missile and drone attacks civilian objects and critical infrastructure facilities in the Odesa, Poltava and Donetsk regions were hit," it said.
A drone attack on the central city of Kryvyi Rih injured two people and damaged a five-storey residential building, causing a fire, Dnipropetrovsk region governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
The emergency services rescued seven people from the damaged part of the building and put out the fire at the site, he added.
Separately, a cruise missile attack late on Wednesday damaged a storage area at an infrastructure facility in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv, causing a blaze that was later extinguished, the governor said.
Regional authorities also reported late on Wednesday that a ballistic missile attack had hit port infrastructure in the Odesa region, killing eight people and damaging a Panama-flagged container ship.
UK religious hate crime hits record high over Gaza war
- There were 3,866 hate crimes against Muslims and hate crimes against Jewish people more than doubled to 3,282
- “The appalling levels of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes outlined in today’s figures are a stain on our society,” said interior minister Yvette Cooper
LONDON: Religious hate crime in England and Wales rose by a record 25 percent in the last year, fueled by a spike since the start of the war in Gaza, government data showed Thursday.
The highest annual figure of religious hate crimes in over a decade was due to a rise in offenses “against Jewish people and to a lesser extent Muslims” since the Hamas attack of October 7 last year, the interior ministry said.
Overall, there were 140,561 hate crimes — defined as an offense based on a person’s race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity — recorded by the police in the 12 months to March.
Most — 98,799 or 70 percent — were racially motivated.
Both the overall and race hate crime figures are down five percent on the previous 12 months.
But religious hate crimes surged from 8,370 in 2022-23 to nearly 10,500 — the highest annual figure since data collection began in 2012.
Hate crimes against Jewish people more than doubled to 3,282 while there were also 3,866 hate crimes against Muslims.
“The appalling levels of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes outlined in today’s figures are a stain on our society,” said interior minister Yvette Cooper.
She promised to tackle “this toxic hatred wherever it is found,” adding: “We must not allow events unfolding in the Middle East to play out in increased hatred and tension here on our streets.
“Those who push this poison — offline or online — must face the full force of the law.”
The latest data comes just days after marches and memorials took place across the country to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack against Israel and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, which the group controls.
British faith leaders, including from Jewish and Muslim communities, have called for the public to reject “prejudice and hatred in all its forms.”
Police in England and Wales recorded a fall in hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation, disability, and against transgender people.
Myanmar junta authorities arrest prominent protest leader
- Paing Phyo Min was arrested late Wednesday after authorities entered a residence in east Yangon’s Thaketa township
BANGKOK: Myanmar security forces have arrested a prominent democracy activist and protest leader in a nighttime raid in commercial hub Yangon, a member of his protest group said on Thursday.
Paing Phyo Min was arrested late Wednesday after authorities entered a residence in east Yangon’s Thaketa township, Nan Lin of the “Anti-junta Alliance Yangon” protest group said.
Paing Phyo Min had not been heard from since, he said, adding, “We are very concerned about his life and safety.”
Amnesty International said it understood Paing Phyo Min and Shein Wai Aung, another activist, “were arrested on 9 October and sent to an interrogation center.”
Shein Wai Aung and his father, mother and sister were all uncontactable, Amnesty said.
Junta authorities in Yangon were not immediately reachable when contacted by AFP.
In 2019, under the quasi-civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, Paing Phyo Min was jailed for six years for performing a satirical poem criticizing the military.
The sentence sparked criticism from rights group Amnesty International and he was released in 2021, according to the watchdog.
Following the military’s 2021 ouster of Suu Kyi’s government, Paing Phyo Min helped organize pro-democracy demonstrations in Yangon that were later crushed by security forces.
The junta maintains a widespread network of informants and undercover police in Yangon and has largely squashed open challenges to its rule in the city of around eight million.
“The Myanmar military must urgently account for the whereabouts and wellbeing of Paing Phyo Min and of Shein Wai Aung and his family,” Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman said.
“Unless they can be charged with an internationally recognized crime, they must be immediately and unconditionally released.”
More than 27,000 people have been arrested by the junta in its crackdown on dissent since the coup, according to a local monitoring group.
“Protesting in Myanmar today is not the same as it was before the coup. Anyone involved in any kind of dissent against the military faces long jail terms, torture and other ill-treatment, and even death in custody,” Freeman said.
Security forces have used torture and sexual violence in their crackdown on dissent, according to rights groups, and the United Nations rights office said in 2022 at least 290 people had died in custody.
Shooting at Israeli company in Sweden, no injuries: police, media
- No injuries had been reported and that a young suspect had been arrested
Stockholm: An office of Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems in Gothenburg was the target of a shooting Thursday, according to media, with Swedish police saying there were no injuries.
Police told AFP that they had responded to a shooting “against an Israeli object in Kalleback” in Gothenburg, a coastal city in southwestern Sweden.
They added that no injuries had been reported and that a young suspect had been arrested.
Newspaper Aftonbladet said the suspect was under the age of 15.
An investigation has been opened into “attempted murder” and an “aggravated weapons crime,” police spokesman Fredrik Svedemyr said.
Svedemyr said police had sent several patrols and a helicopter to the scene.
Elbit Systems said in an email to AFP that they “currently had no comment.”
In early June, police said they had found a “suspected explosive object” outside the offices of the military technology firm, known for its unmanned aerial systems.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, there have been several incidents apparently targeting Israeli interests in Sweden.
In February, police found a grenade on the grounds of the Israeli embassy compound, which the ambassador said was an attempted attack.
In mid-May, gunshots were fired outside the Israeli embassy, which prompted the country to boost security measures around Israeli interests and Jewish community institutions.
The Scandinavian country’s intelligence agency Sapo said in late May that Iran was recruiting members of Swedish criminal gangs to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden — a claim Iran denied.
Last week, police said once again that it was stepping up security around Israeli and Jewish interests in response to a second shooting at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm and twin blasts, suspected to be caused by hand grenades, outside the Israeli embassy in neighboring Denmark.
Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in London for talks with UK’s Starmer, NATO’s Rutte
- Zelensky and Starmer have both said the war with Russia is at a critical point
- Ukrainian leader is keen for the West to deliver long-range missiles to change the balance on the battlefield
LONDON: President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in London for talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday, a boost for Ukraine after a summit of its main backers was canceled at a difficult moment in its fight against Russia.
Zelensky and Starmer have both said the war with Russia is at a critical point, and the Ukrainian leader is keen for the West to deliver long-range missiles and other support to try to change the balance on the battlefield.
The Ukrainian president had been due to present a “victory plan” for the war to allies in Germany this week, but the summit was postponed after US President Joe Biden canceled his visit to focus on Hurricane Milton.
Starmer said at the start of his meeting with Zelensky in Downing Street that it was “very important we are able to show our continued commitment to support Ukraine” and it was a chance to “go through the plan, to talk in more detail.”
NATO’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, was also due to meet Starmer and Zelensky in Downing Street later on Thursday.
Zelensky is traveling in Europe to meet allies this week. He was in Croatia on Wednesday and will meet Pope Francis on Friday.
Ukraine’s arms donors had been set to convene at the Ramstein Air Base for their highest-level meeting on the sidelines of a Biden state visit to Germany.
But the White House said Biden needed to oversee preparations for Hurricane Milton and relief efforts after another hurricane last month killed more than 200 people.