Українська влада розробляє процедуру, яка забезпечить механізм доступу іноземних журналістів до анексованого Росією Криму, повідомило Міністерство інформаційної політики України.
У відомстві нагадали, що Державна прикордонна служба України повідомила про заборону на в’їзд іноземців до Криму на час дії правового режиму воєнного стану.
«Міністерство інформаційної політики у контакті з Державною міграційною службою і Державною прикордонною службою України працюють над виробленням процедури, яка забезпечить механізм доступу іноземних журналістів до тимчасово окупованого Криму», – заявили в МІП.
30 листопада московська кореспондентка шведської газети Dagens Nyheter та фінської Hufvudstadsbladet заявила, що їй не дозволили перетнути адміністративний кордон України із Кримом.
25 листопада російські прикордонники ФСБ у Керченській протоці відкрили вогонь по українських кораблях і захопили три судна з 24 моряками. Після цього Верховна Рада підтримала запровадження з 26 листопада воєнного стану в Азово-Керченській акваторії та 10 областях: Одеській, Миколаївській, Херсонській, Запорізькій, Луганській, Донецькій, Сумській, Харківській, Чернігівській і Вінницькій областях.
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U.S. President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto have signed the new U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, a deal designed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Губернаторка американського штату Род-Айленд Джина Раймондо оголосила грудень 2018 року місяцем пам’яті жертв геноциду українців. Згідно з її офіційною заявою, таке рішення вона ухвалила, аби заохотити громадян вшанувати пам’ять українців, померлих під час Голодомору.
Відповідний документ оприлюднило посольство України в США, повідомивши, що Род-Айленд став 22-м штатом, який визнав Голодомор в Україні 1932-1922 років геноцидом українців.
«Завдяки спільним зусиллям і українських дипломатів у США, і української громади на сьогодні ми вже маємо більше двох десятків американських штатів, які чітко заявляють про свою позицію щодо дій Радянського Союзу на початку ХХ століття в Україні: «Голодомор – це акт геноциду», – йдеться в заяві дипломатичного представництва.
У листопаді 2006 року Верховна Рада України визнала Голодомор 1932–1933 років геноцидом українського народу.
Україна з посиланням на дані науково-демографічної експертизи стверджує, що загальна кількість людських втрат від Голодомору 1932–33 років становить майже 4 мільйони осіб, а втрати українців у частині ненароджених становлять понад 6 мільйонів.
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During Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s successful campaign for the Mexican presidency, his advisers met representatives of dozens of investment funds to allay fears about the leftist’s plans, saying he prized economic stability and wanted to attract foreign capital.
Initially, it worked.
When Lopez Obrador won office by a landslide on July 1, the peso and the stock market rose, buoyed by his conciliatory tone.
The rally continued when Mexico and the United States reached a deal to rework the NAFTA trade pact in late August.
But the mood has since changed.
Lopez Obrador, who takes office Saturday, began saying in September that Mexico was “bankrupt.” When he canceled a new $13 billion Mexico City airport on Oct. 29 on the basis of a widely-derided referendum, investors took flight.
“[Lopez Obrador] behaved quite well from the election in early July until the referendum on the airport. That was really an indication of his true colors,” said Penny Foley, portfolio manager for emerging markets and international equities groups at TCW Group Inc, which manages $198 billion in total.
Foley said the referendum prompted TCW to cut its exposure to bonds issued by state oil firm Pemex, on the grounds that under a Lopez Obrador administration the company would be driven more by politics than by profit.
“We are now slightly underweight Mexico in the dollar fund and neutral in the local currency fund,” she added.
Lopez Obrador wants to attract investment from home and abroad to fuel economic growth and drive an ambitious infrastructure agenda, including a major rail project linking Cancun to Mexico’s southeast, plus a new oil refinery.
Yet decisions such as the airport cancellation have fed investors’ concerns he could push Mexico toward a more authoritarian, arbitrary and partisan form of government.
Mexico’s S&P/BVM IPC stock index has tumbled 17 percent since the market’s post-election peak on Aug. 28, while the peso has fallen around 8 percent against the dollar.
Bond yields on Mexican 10-year sovereign debt have jumped 121 basis points, a sign investors see it as a riskier bet.
By contrast, yields on Brazil’s 10-year debt have fallen over 20 basis points since the Oct. 28 presidential election victory of Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right politician who has appointed a group of pro-market economists to his team. Mexican corporate debt markets have taken note.
Airport operator GAP, which controls terminals in a dozen cities including Tijuana and Guadalajara, canceled a planned 6 billion peso debt issuance this week.
“We decided to wait for better conditions,” GAP chief financial officer Saul Villarreal told Reuters.
Some European businesses are also in wait-and-see mode, said Alberico Peyron, a board member and former head of the Italian chamber of commerce in Mexico.
There was “no panic so far,” but a few executives had put plans on hold until the picture became clearer, he said, adding: “There are more who are worried than are optimistic.”
‘Errors’ made
After 30 years of kicking against the establishment, the veteran Lopez Obrador, a 65-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, claimed the presidency with a promise to clean up government, cut poverty and tame Mexico’s drug cartels.
Aiming to almost double economic growth to around 4 percent, Lopez Obrador wants to revive Pemex, increase pensions and spur development in the poorer south to contain illegal immigration that has strained ties with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Lopez Obrador says rooting out corruption will free up billions of dollars, while he intends to save more with pay cuts for civil servants. However, critics say the cuts could affect the quality of officials in his new administration.
Johannes Hauser, managing director of the German chamber of commerce in Mexico, told Reuters the association’s annual survey of firms, currently underway, was upbeat on Mexico.
Still, initial results suggested companies were not quite as eager to invest or create new jobs as they were a year ago. And the airport cancellation had been a shock, he said.
During their campaign outreach, some of Lopez Obrador’s advisers sought to play down the airport’s importance to markets, while others suggested it was likely to be completed.
Without providing evidence, Lopez Obrador said the project — which has been under construction since 2015 — was tainted by corruption. But more than once, Lopez Obrador had raised the possibility of turning its completion into a private concession.
Incoming Finance Minister Carlos Urzua, whose team sat down with financial heavyweights such as Bank of America, BlackRock, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, told Reuters in April that foreign investors were “not very worried” about the airport.
Now, the scrapping of the hub has raised the prospect of a messy legal dispute with investors that could cost billions of dollars — as well as cloud interest in new projects.
Some members of Lopez Obrador’s incoming government privately express deep misgivings about the decision to cancel the airport, which was based on a referendum organized by his own party in which barely 1 percent of the electorate voted.
They felt the poll, which critics lambasted as opaque and open to abuse, undermined the credibility he had built up over the years he spent campaigning against corruption and vote-rigging.
Lopez Obrador’s taste for rule by referendum, and changes to laws governing everything from banking to mining and pension funds that have been proposed by his National Regeneration Movement and the party’s allies in Congress, have further curdled sentiment.
“I’ve moved from being cautiously optimistic after the election, to being quite pessimistic now,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister of Mexico. “He’s not building on what he got. He’s destroying little by little what he got.”
Facing questions about the airport controversy from a panel of prominent Mexican journalists this month, Lopez Obrador was unrepentant about the referendum, saying that “errors” made were blown out of proportion by adversaries trying to hurt him.
“What I regard as most important in my life is my honesty,” he said. “We are not creating a dictatorship,” he added, repeating what is a frequent aside in his public pronouncements.
Nevertheless, Arturo Herrera, an incoming deputy finance minister, conceded this week that the transition had tested the next government, which must present its first budget by mid-December.
“What we’re all learning is that we need to be extremely careful,” he told Mexican television.
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It may be the world’s sixth largest, but most other things about India’s economy are up for debate.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is under fire for the release of new historical GDP figures that significantly downgraded growth during the years the opposition Congress party was in power, replacing old government estimates and those prepared by an independent committee.
The figures, released by the government’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), showed growth in the 10 years of Congress rule to 2014 averaged 6.7 percent, below an average of 7.4 percent under the current government. A previous government estimate had growth under Congress at 7.8 percent.
P. Chidambaram, a former Congress finance minister, called the release “a joke”. In response India’s current finance minister, the BJP’s Arun Jaitley, said the CSO was a credible organization.
The fallout comes at a critical time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India’s economy grew a weaker-than-expected 7.1 percent in the July-September quarter, from a more than two-year high of 8.2 percent in the previous quarter, government data showed on Friday.
Modi faces a general election next year, when the performance of the economy under his pro-business administration compared with the Congress era is likely to dominate campaigning.
The spat has also alarmed India’s top statisticians, who have long faced the difficult task of estimating growth and unemployment in an economy with hundreds of millions of informal workers, and dominated its financial press and political cartoons in recent days.
“The entire episode threatens to bring disrepute to India’s statistical services,” said an editorial in Mint, one of the country’s leading business newspapers, on Friday.
A joke widely circulated on WhatsApp said the government would soon be reinterpreting the last cricket World Cup, in which India crashed out in the semi-finals, to say the country won based on a new methodology.
COMPETING INTERESTS
Unlike many major economies, India lacks an independent statistical body.
An organization called the National Statistics Commission (NSC) was formed in 2005 with that intention, though it is yet to be recognized as the official body for generating statistics.
Last year the NSC set up a committee, chaired by economist Sudipto Mundle, to come up with a new set of historical GDP figures.
Its report, published in July, showed growth averaged 8.1 percent in the decade before the BJP took power.
After the figures were cheered by the Congress, the government issued a clarification saying the report “had not yet been finalised and various alternative methods are being explored”. Shortly after, the report was pulled from the government’s website.
“The whole thing has unfortunately become very political,” said Mundle, on the battle between the two parties. “It is very troubling.”
Attempts to formalize the NSC’s role have been successively stonewalled by both Congress and the BJP, said N R Bhanumurthy, who sat on the committee chaired by Mundle.
“They have not shown much interest in making it independent from our government,” he said.
The debate over India’s true level of growth is the latest to frustrate economists looking to measure the performance of the country of 1.3 billion people.
India has not published its official employment survey since 2015, while a smaller quarterly survey on companies employing more than 10 workers has not been released since March while the government comes up with new methodology.
India’s large informal sector made calculating employment “almost impossible”, Bhanumurthy said, leading to a vacuum that was filled with competing political interests.
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President Trump criticized the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller Friday in a tweet from the G-20 summit site in Argentina, again calling it a “Witch Hunt!” and saying he didn’t end up doing any development deals in Russia.
“Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail…,” the president tweeted.
Reporters traveling with Trump say he has been in a bad mood and distracted after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in New York Thursday that he misled lawmakers about the timing of talks with Russia for building a Trump tower in Moscow.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling, brought the charges against Cohen. Cohen is already facing prison time for bank fraud and activities related to his taxicab business.
Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that negotiations between the Trump organization and Russia to build the tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. The talks actually continued as late as June of that year, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Cohen also admitted to lying to Congress about other details of the Moscow project, including his own contacts with Russian officials and that he never asked Trump to fly to Moscow himself.
According to the charging documents, Cohen’s close friend and onetime Trump employee Felix Sater talked about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Trump tower as a ploy to get Russian oligarchs to pay top dollar to also live there.
Cohen told the judge he lied to Congress because he wanted to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging” and out of his desire “to be loyal” to Trump.
Trump’s plans to build a hotel-retail-apartment complex in Moscow go back more than 20 years.
The president insisted throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia and had no connections to the Kremlin.
But earlier Thursday, while standing outside the White House, Trump told reporters he had been “thinking about building a building.”
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” he asked reporters.
Cohen had once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump.
The president now blasts him as a “weak person” who lied to Mueller to get a lighter prison sentence for his financial crimes.
Trump also stressed that his Moscow deal was never a secret and that he abandoned the idea because he wanted to focus on running for president.
The talks between Russia and Cohen for a Trump tower appear to be unrelated to the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
But the negotiations over the deal were going on at the same time Russia was interfering in the election by hacking Democratic party e-mails.
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They haven’t spoken in days, not since President Donald Trump called to congratulate Nancy Pelosi on Democrats’ election night win.
But they don’t really need to. Trump and Pelosi go way back, from the time she first showed up at Trump Tower fundraising for the Democrats long before he would become president or she the House speaker. Two big-name heirs to big-city honchos — Trump and Pelosi each had fathers who were political power players in their home towns — they’ve rubbed elbows on the Manhattan social scene for years.
And despite daily barbs in Washington, he’s always “Mr. President” to her, and she’s one prominent politician he has not labeled with a derisive nickname.
Not quite friends, nor enemies, theirs is perhaps the most important relationship in Washington. If anything is to come of the new era of divided government, with a Republican president and Democratic control of the House, it will happen in the deal-making space between two of the country’s most polarizing politicians.
The day after their election night phone call, Trump and Pelosi did speak again, indirectly, across Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I really respected what Nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House. “That’s what we should be doing.”
Pressed after his unusual public lobbying for Pelosi to become House speaker, Trump insisted he was sincere.
“A lot of people thought I was being sarcastic or I was kidding. I wasn’t. I think she deserves it,” he said. “I also believe that Nancy Pelosi and I could work together and get a lot of things done.”
Pelosi sent word back a few minutes later from her own press conference at the Capitol, which she delayed for nearly an hour as the president conducted his.
“Last night, I had a conversation with President Trump about how we could work together,” Pelosi said, noting that “building infrastructure” was one of the items they discussed.
“He talked about it during his campaign and really didn’t come through with it in his first two years in office,” she nudged. “I hope that we can do that because we want to create jobs from sea to shining sea.”
Despite all the campaign trail trash talk, both Trump and Pelosi have incentive to make some deals.
The president could use a domestic policy win heading into his own re-election in 2020, alongside his regular railing against illegal immigration, the “witch hunt” of the Russia investigation or other issues that emerge from his tweets.
Democrats, too, need to show Americans they can do more than resist the Trump White House. It’s no surprise that two of the top Democratic priorities in the new Congress, infrastructure investment and lowering health care costs, dovetail with promises Trump made to voters, but has not yet fulfilled.
“I do think there’s opportunities to pass legislation,” said former White House legislative director Marc Short.
Trump has long viewed Pelosi as both a foil and a possible partner, and she sees in him the one who can sign legislation into law.
The president has told confidants that he respects Pelosi’s deal-making prowess and her ability to hang on to power in the face of a series of challenges from the left wing of the party, according to four White House officials and Republicans close to the White House. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and requested anonymity.
He told one ally this month that he respected Pelosi “as a fighter” and that he viewed her as someone with whom he could negotiate.
“The president respects her,” said Short.
Short described the interaction between Pelosi and Trump during a 2017 meeting with other congressional leaders at the White House to prevent a government shutdown. “They were throwing pros and cons back at each other,” he said.
“The question I can’t answer is to what extent will Democrats give Pelosi political bandwidth” to strike deals, Short said. He pointed to potential areas of agreement like infrastructure, drug prices and prison reform.
But part of Trump’s push for Pelosi to return to power was more nakedly political. Pelosi has long been a popular Republican target, spurring countless fundraising efforts and attack ads. And Trump has told advisers that, if needed, he would make her the face of the opposition in Democratic party until the 2020 presidential field sorts itself out.
Pelosi’s name draws some of the biggest jeers at his rallies and he believes that “she could be Hillary” in terms of a Clinton-like figure to rally Republicans against, according to one of the advisers familiar with the president’s private conversations.
At the same time, Trump has not publicly branded Pelosi with a mocking nickname. She’s no “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer, as he calls the top Senate Democrat, or “Little” Adam Schiff at the Intelligence Committee or “Low IQ” Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who will chair the Financial Services Committee.
On whether Trump likes Pelosi as ally or adversary, Short said, “I don’t think those are mutually exclusive.”
Pelosi, perhaps more than her Republican counterparts — outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — became an early observer, and adapter, to the Trump style of governing.
When Trump and Democrats were trying to broker an immigration deal in September 2017, she suggested he could tweet his assurances to the young Dreamers. And he did.
Around the same time when Trump and congressional leaders convened at the White House to avoid a federal government shutdown, Republicans and Trump’s own Cabinet team pressed for their preferred solution. But Pelosi kept asking a simple question: How many Republican votes could they bring to the table? When it was clear they could not bring enough for passage, Trump intervened and agreed with Democrats “Chuck and Nancy,” as he came to call them.
Votes, Pelosi explained later, were the “currency of the realm.” Trump, as a businessman, she said, got it.
Pelosi is poised to become House speaker again if she wins her election in January. Asked this week how Trump might react to having a woman in power, Pelosi recalled the first time she held the office, when George W. Bush was president, in 2007.
Bush would call her “No. 3,” she said, a reference to the speaker’s spot in the presidential succession line, after the president and the vice president.
“He treated me and the office I hold with great respect,” she said. “I would expect nothing less than that from this President of the United States.”
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Ukrainian officials on Friday upped the ante in the growing confrontation with Russia, announcing a travel ban for most Russian males and searching the home of an influential cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The long-simmering conflict bubbled over Sunday when Russian border guards rammed into and opened fired on three Ukrainian vessels near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The vessels were trying to pass through the Kerch Strait on their way to the Sea of Azov. The Russians then captured the ships and 24 crew members.
The Ukrainian parliament on Monday adopted the president’s motion to impose martial law in the country for 30 days in the wake of the standoff.
There has been growing hostility between Ukraine and Russia since Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Russia has also supported separatists in Ukraine’s east with clandestine dispatches of troops and weapons. Fighting there has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014 but eased somewhat after a 2015 truce.
Petro Tsygykal, chief of the Ukrainian Border Guard Service, announced at a security meeting on Friday that all Russian males between 16 and 60 will be barred from traveling to the country while martial law is in place.
President Petro Poroshenko told the meeting that the measures are taken “in order to prevent the Russian Federation from forming private armies” on Ukrainian soil.
The announcement follows Thursday’s decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to scrap the much-anticipated meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trump said it isn’t appropriate for him to meet with Putin since Russia hasn’t released the Ukrainian seamen.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian intelligence agency announced on Friday that they are investigating a senior cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ihor Guskov, chief of staff of the SBU intelligence agency, told reporters that its officers are searching the home of Father Pavlo, who leads the Pechersk Monastery in Kiev. He said the cleric is suspected of “inciting hatred.”
The Pechersk Monastery, the spiritual center of Ukraine, is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Ukrainian church, which has been part of the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries, moved close to forming an independent church — fueled by the conflict with Russia Ukraine’s Orthodox communities earlier this year.
There are currently three Orthodox communities in Ukraine, including two breakaway churches. Ukrainian authorities sought to portray the Russian Orthodox clerics in Ukraine as supporting separatists.
Ukraine’s president announced on Thursday that the Constantinople patriarchy has approved a decree granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, a major boost to the president’s approval ratings.
Both the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian authorities are strongly against the move and have warned Ukraine not to do it, fearing sectarian violence.
Russian government-appointed ombudswoman for Crimea told Russian news agencies that all the seamen have been transported from a detention center in Crimea. The three commanders have been taken to Moscow, she said. It wasn’t immediately clear where the other 21 have been taken.
A Crimea court earlier this week ruled to keep the Ukrainian seamen behind bars for two months pending the investigation.
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Russia and China are among several countries attempting to “stress-test” the resolve of traditional powers, according to a report from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
It claims so-called “challenger” nations are persistently testing the tolerance of established powers for different forms of aggression, from proxy wars to cyberattacks.
The researchers cite the seizure this week of three Ukrainian naval vessels by Russian forces in the Azov Sea off Crimea, the territory that was forcibly annexed in 2014. Moscow claims these are Russian waters, in contravention of a 2003 deal between Moscow and Ukraine, which agreed the Azov Sea would be shared.
Ukraine warns its Black Sea ports are being cut off. A bridge built by Russia linking it with Crimea now limits the size of ships able to navigate the Kerch Strait.
Probing for weaknesses
The aim is to change the facts on the ground, said Nicholas Redman, co-author of the institute’s “Strategic Survey” report.
“They’re testing tolerances, probing for weaknesses, getting a measure of the resolve of other states by acts that are generally aggressive but are below the threshold of something that would obviously require a military response,” Redman told VOA.
Iran is also accused of conducting “tolerance warfare” by using its Revolutionary Guard and proxies across the Middle East to destabilize other countries, such as Syria.
Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea are also seen as part of the strategy to test Western resolve in that arena.
“China has used not its navy, but its coast guard or some other at-water capabilities in order to slowly push the envelope in the South China Sea. And obviously, the island-building campaign and the growth of infrastructure around there is about — without directly confronting anyone — nevertheless changing facts on the ground,” Redman said.
How to respond
So how should those on the receiving end of “tolerance warfare” respond? The report’s authors praise Britain’s reaction to the attempted chemical poisoning of a former double agent on British soil earlier this year, which London blamed on the GRU, the intelligence branch of Russia’s armed forces.
“What we saw was a powerful, asymmetric response. Sanctions, a tremendous degree of allied solidarity over diplomatic expulsions, and then an information operation over several months to systematically expose GRU activity,” Redman said.
The report warns a new era of geopolitical competition urgently requires new rules governing international behavior but negotiating such a global framework is fraught with difficulty.
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Російське Міністерство охорони здоров’я і «Росспоживнагляд» назвали некоректною доповідь, згідно з якою Росія займає перше місце серед країн Європи за темпами поширення ВІЛ за 2017 рік.
У російських відомствах наполягають, дослідження Європейського центру з профілактики та контролю захворювань і Європейського регіонального бюро Всесвітньої організації охорони здоров’я (ВООЗ) засноване на групах ризику і не враховує широкі верстви населення.
У своєму прес-релізі «Росспоживнагляд» і МОЗ називають Росію єдиною державою, що впровадила широке обстеження населення на ВІЛ та індивідуальний облік всіх пацієнтів з ВІЛ-інфекцією. У російських відомствах вважають, що якби такий метод застосували в Європі, показники там виявилися б вищими за російські.
Згідно з доповіддю ВООЗ, у 2017 році ВІЛ виявили у 160 тисяч людей у регіоні, причому на Східну Європу припадає 130 тисяч нових випадків, 104 тисячі з яких були зареєстровані в Росії.
Автори доповіді стверджують, що на кожні 100 тисяч осіб у Росії припадає 71 хворий на ВІЛ, в Україні – 37 випадків, у Білорусі – 26. У Західній Європі – трохи більше ніж шість нових випадків. Найнижчі показники – в Боснії і Герцеговині, Словаччини й Словенії.
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У США обвинувачена в незаконному лобіюванні інтересів Росії Марія Бутіна веде переговори з федеральною прокуратурою про можливе досудове врегулювання її кримінальної справи. Це випливає із судових документів і заяв родини Бутіної.
Адвокати Бутіної і прокуратура в поданому до суду документі заявили, що «залишаються оптимістично налаштованими на досудове вирішення» справи. А російське державне агентство новин ТАСС 20 листопада написало, що сім’я Бутіної очікує, що її адвокатам вдасться досягти угоди, щоб закрити справу.
29-річну студентку університету у Вашингтоні Марію Бутіну затримали 15 липня. Їй інкримінують незадекларовані дії як лобіста на користь іноземного уряду. Самі по собі такі дії порушенням не є, якщо особа офіційно зареєструється як «іноземний агент».
Прокурори звинувачують Бутіну у підтриманні зв’язків з американськими політиками й політичними організаціями під керівництвом високопосадовця Центробанку Росії Олександра Торшина. Сам Торшин перебуває під санкціями через зв’язки з президентом Росії Володимиром Путіним. Їй загрожує до 10 років ув’язнення.
Адвокат Бутіної Роберт Дрісколл стверджує, що вона не є російським агентом. Вона сама також відкидає звинувачення. МЗС Росії вимагає звільнити росіянку.
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Уродженець Херсона, зірка балетної сцени Сергій Полунін заявляє, що став громадянином Росії. Фото свого російського паспорта він виклав в Instagram і написав, що «щасливий», а також вкотре висловився на підтримку політики російського президента Володимира Путіна.
«Моя підтримка Володимиру Путіну, який не продав свою країну і підтримує свій народ. Не можу уявити, наскільки важко він працював і наскільки складно йому було», – заявив Полунін.
Сергій Полунін народився 20 листопада 1989 року в Херсоні. Він почав займатися гімнастикою у 4-річному віці, а вже у 9 років Сергій переїхав з матір’ю до Києва, де вступив до Київського державного хореографічного училища.
Від 2007 до 2012 років Полунін був прем’єром Королівського балету в Лондоні. Від 2012 року він виступав у російських театрах.
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Україна має намір скасувати ще близько 40 договорів з Росією через агресію в Азовському морі. Про це в ефірі ток-шоу «Право на владу» на каналі «1+1» заявив міністр закордонних справ України Павло Клімкін.
«Ми за останній час вбили 48 двосторонніх угод, але до них потрібно ставитися дуже акуратно в контексті того, щоб те, що ми ці угоди вбиваємо, не завадило нашим українським громадянам. Наступна порція буде дуже швидко. Близько 40 договорів. Ми докорінно переглядаємо всю двосторонню нашу договірну базу», – зазначив міністр.
Клімкін додав, що вважає непотрібними дипломатичні стосунки з Росією і виступає за введення візового режиму для росіян.
Павло Клімкін 21 вересня повідомив, що Київ передав Москві повідомлення про відмову від пролонгації договору про дружбу.
Договір про дружбу між Україною і Росією був підписаний 1997 року і нині є чинним. Він, серед іншого, передбачає, що сторони «поважають територіальну цілісність одна одної і підтверджують непорушність існуючих між ними кордонів», а також «будують відносини одна з одною на основі принципів взаємної поваги до суверенної рівності, непорушності кордонів, мирного врегулювання спорів, незастосування сили або загрози силою».
Читайте також: «Нікуди не дінуться»: Москва говорить про «добросусідські відносини» з Україною»
Документ був укладений на термін у десять років; у 2008 році його дію було автоматично продовжено. Щоб припинити дію договору, Україна мала офіційно сповістити Росію не пізніше ніж за шість місяців до закінчення чергового десятирічного періоду – тобто до 30 вересня 2018 року.
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Reporters traveling with President Donald Trump to the G-20 Summit in Argentina say he is in a bad mood and distracted after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in New York Thursday, admitting he misled lawmakers about the timing of talks with Russia for building a Trump tower in Moscow.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling, brought the charges against Cohen. Cohen is already facing prison time for bank fraud and activities related to his taxicab business.
What Cohen said to Congress
Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that negotiations between the Trump organization and Russia to build the tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. The talks actually continued as late as June of that year, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Cohen also admitted to lying to Congress about other details of the Moscow project, including his own contacts with Russian officials and that he never asked Trump to fly to Moscow himself.
According to the charging documents, Cohen’s close friend and onetime Trump employee Felix Sater talked about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Trump tower as a ploy to get Russian oligarchs to pay top dollar to also live there.
Cohen told the judge he lied to Congress because he wanted to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging” and out of his desire “to be loyal” to Trump.
Trump tower in Moscow
Trump’s plans to build a hotel-retail-apartment complex in Moscow go back more than 20 years.
The president insisted throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia and had no connections to the Kremlin.
But earlier Thursday, while standing outside the White House, Trump told reporters he had been “thinking about building a building.”
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” he asked reporters.
Trump landed in Buenos Aires late Thursday for the Group of 20, a meeting of leaders from industrial and emerging-market nations.
Cohen had once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump.
The president now blasts him as a “weak person” who lied to Mueller to get a lighter prison sentence for his financial crimes.
Trump also stressed that his Moscow deal was never a secret and that he abandoned the idea because he wanted to focus on running for president.
The talks between Russia and Cohen for a Trump tower appear to be unrelated to the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
But the negotiations over the deal were going on at the same time Russia was interfering in the election by hacking Democratic party e-mails.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said Cohen’s plea is another example of Trump allies being untruthful about Russia, asking reporters, “What are they covering up for?”
Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee next year, said Cohen’s guilty plea clearly demonstrates “the president’s own denials during the campaign were false or misleading.”
Trump has tried to distance himself from Cohen, despite their long relationship. Cohen testified in August that Trump ordered him to illegally arrange payments before the 2016 election to buy the silence of two women who claim they had affairs with Trump, something Trump has denied.
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A second Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, has said he will vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as a district judge in North Carolina, likely dooming the prospects of Thomas Farr filling the nation’s longest court vacancy.
Civil rights groups such as the NAACP have heavily criticized Farr for his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans. Farr is nominated to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina.
Scott announced Thursday that he would not vote for Farr, joining Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and 49 Democratic lawmakers in opposing the nominee.
Former Helms campaign lawyer
Farr once served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent mostly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting.
The postcards targeting black voters said they could be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to five years if they tried to vote in a precinct in which they had lived for fewer than 30 days.
Farr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, “I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans.”
A 1991 Justice Department memo, first reported by The Washington Post, raised questions about Farr’s claim that he was never consulted about the postcards. The memo said Farr had met with key campaign officials and had advised them “that a postcard mailing like the mailing conducted in 1984 would not be particularly useful” except as evidence in post-election challenges.
The 1984 mailing contained an endorsement of Helms from a black minister and included an address correction request so the card would be returned if undelivered, setting up a potential avenue to challenge the legitimacy of a voter.
Memo raises concerns
Scott, who is African-American, cited the memo as to why he would vote against Farr.
“This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush came to light that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities,” Scott said. “This, in turn, creates more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr’s nomination.”
Scott has supported the overwhelming majority of Trump’s judicial nominees, but in July, the nomination of Ryan Bounds to serve on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was withdrawn after Scott said he “had unanswered questions that led to me being unable to support him.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had repeatedly criticized Republicans in recent days for moving forward with the Farr vote. He said Scott “has done a courageous thing.”
“Thomas Farr has been involved in the sordid practice of voter suppression for decades and never should have been nominated, let alone confirmed to the bench. Thankfully, he won’t be,” Schumer said.
Earlier Thursday, senators had agreed to postpone the vote on Farr until next week. That decision came less than 24 hours after Republicans needed Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote Wednesday to move Farr’s nomination forward for a final vote.
Longest judicial opening
The history of the judicial opening has contributed to the acrimony. President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither got a hearing.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina both supported Farr’s nomination. Tillis said earlier in the week he believed that Farr was being treated unfairly.
Scott is the lone black Republican in the Senate. The NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus had been highly critical of Farr for his work defending state laws they said suppressed the black vote.
GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision.
Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period.
North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the state’s legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, “I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so.”
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes said Farr is “fundamentally an honest, decent and honorable man, who did nothing to deserve the assault on his character. We will continue to work to see him confirmed.”
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