French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday that Moscow was issuing Russian passports in Crimea, in southern Ukraine, where Kiev says it will not renew Russia’s Black Sea fleet base.
“We all know that they are handing out Russian passports over there,” Kouchner said in an interview with Kommersant, according to a French translation of his comments written in Russian.
Moscow is in conflict with Kiev over its future in Crimea. Ukrainian authorities want the Black Sea fleet to leave its Sevastopol base when the lease runs out in 2017.
Kouchner told the newspaper that a “danger exists” that Russia might try to make advances in Crimea after the success of its military operation in Georgia in August.
He said, however, that he did not have that impression after holding talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Kouchner met Lavrov in St Petersburg on Tuesday as France holds the presidency of the EU, which has sent ceasefire monitors to Georgia.
Back in August, Kouchner said that after Moscow’s intervention in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia and Abkazia, Russia could have “other objectives,” including “Crimea, Ukraine and Moldova.”
Russia said it went into South Ossetia to defend its citizens, after issuing Russian passports to South Ossetians since 2002, as justification for sending Russian troops.
“Georgia was then attacked. You showed all signs of being prepared. The Russian forces appeared like a miracle at the right moment at the frontier,” Kouchner told the newspaper, but added: “I do not want to accuse anyone.”
Crimea was considered Russian territory until the Soviet Union ceded it in 1954 to Ukraine, a Soviet republic at the time.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
RSS