УКРОПИ

Erdogan Tells of Two Missile Defense Deals With Russia

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the purchase of S-400 defense systems from Russia was a done deal, adding that Ankara would also jointly produce S-500 defense systems with Moscow. 

U.S. officials have called Turkey’s planned purchase of the S-400 missile defense system “deeply problematic,” saying it would risk Ankara’s partnership in the joint strike fighter F-35 program because it would compromise the jets, made by Lockheed Martin Corp. 

However, Erdogan said at a televised question-and-answer session with university students in Istanbul that Turkey had carried out technical work and found that such a problem did not exist. 

“They [the U.S.] are passing the ball around in the midfield now, showing some reluctance. But sooner or later, we will receive the F-35s. [The U.S.] not delivering them is not an option,” he said.
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May Plans ‘New Bold Offer’ on Brexit

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May will present a “new bold offer” to lawmakers with “an improved package of measures” in a final attempt to get Brexit withdrawal agreement legislation through Parliament. 

After failing three times to get Parliament’s approval for May’s deal to withdraw from the European Union, the government will now put legislation that will enact that deal before Parliament for a vote in early June. 

“I will not be simply asking MPs to think again. Instead I will ask them to look at a new and improved deal with a fresh pair of eyes — and to give it their support,” May wrote in The Sunday Times newspaper. 
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Video Sting Brings Down Austrian Government

Austria raced Saturday toward a snap election as Chancellor Sebastian Kurz pulled the plug on his coalition with the far right after its leader was caught on video offering to fix state contracts with a woman posing as a Russian oligarch’s niece. 

The far-right Freedom Party’s Heinz-Christian Strache resigned as vice chancellor and party leader after the video was released by two German news organizations. He acknowledged that the video was “catastrophic” but denied breaking the law. 

Kurz, a conservative who formed a coalition with the Freedom Party a year and a half ago, said the apparent video sting, in which Strache discusses contracts in return for financial or political favors, was the last straw in the relationship. 

“After yesterday’s video I honestly have to say — enough is enough,” Kurz said in a statement to the media, listing various lesser scandals that had previously strained their relations. 

Kurz said he was proposing to President Alexander Van der Bellen that a snap election be held as soon as possible. Van der Bellen, who can dissolve parliament, said he backed a snap election and would discuss the next steps with Kurz on Sunday. 

“These are shameful images and no one should be ashamed for Austria,” he said of the video. “We need in this sense to rebuild confidence anew. This rebuilding can in this case only happen with a snap election.” 

The downfall of the Austrian coalition came just a week before elections to the European Parliament and was a blow to one of the most successful of the anti-immigrant nationalist parties that have surged across the continent in recent years. 

The Freedom Party is a major part of a new nationalist grouping that aims to score record gains in the European vote. 

The head of the opposition Social Democrats told broadcaster ORF she would not oppose a snap election if a bill calling one were put to parliament. 

‘Difficult to swallow’ 

As Strache announced around midday that he was stepping down, a crowd of thousands with left-wing placards and banners gathered on the square outside Kurz’s office, chanting, “Snap elections now!” Police estimated their number at 5,000. 

Kurz had repeatedly distanced himself from his far-right coalition partners over lesser scandals in the past, mostly involving party officials and anti-Semitism or racism — such as one in which the deputy mayor of Hitler’s hometown wrote a poem likening immigrants to rats. 

“For all these successes in the past two years I had to be ready to withstand a lot and also put up with a lot, from the rat poem to the proximity to radical right-wing groups and the ‘isolated incidents’ that kept coming back,” Kurz said. 

“There were many situations in which I found it very difficult to swallow all that.” 

‘Catastrophic’ 

The video showed Strache meeting the woman in 2017, shortly before the election that brought him into government. 

Strache, whose party has a cooperation agreement with Russia’s ruling United Russia party, described the sting as a “targeted political assassination” and said it never led to any money changing hands. He insisted the only crime that took place was illegally videotaping a private dinner party. 

He said he would be replaced as party leader by Transport Minister Norbert Hofer, his deputy, who narrowly lost a 2016 presidential election and is more popular than Strache. 

In the footage, Strache discussed rules on party financing and how to work around them, although he also insisted on having to act legally. 

“It was dumb, it was irresponsible and it was a mistake,” Strache told a news conference, fighting back tears as he asked his wife and others to forgive him. 

“In the cold light of day, my remarks were catastrophic and exceedingly embarrassing,” he said.

He also apologized for flirting with the woman. “It was typical alcohol-fueled macho behavior in which, yes, I also wanted to impress the attractive female host and I behaved like a bragging teenager,” he said. 
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Austrian Leader Calls Crisis Meeting After Deputy Filmed Discussing Deals

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called a crisis meeting late on Friday after two German newspapers published footage purportedly showing his deputy discussing state contracts with a potential Russian backer in return for political support.

Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was filmed talking about the contracts with someone posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch in Ibiza in July, 2017, months before parliamentary elections, Der Spiegel and Sueddeutsche Zeitung said. 

Strache did not reply to a request for comment on the video. Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of the footage independently, and the German newspapers did not say how they obtained it.

Kurz planned to make a statement on the case on Saturday, a government source told Reuters. The opposition called for Strache to resign.

Strache is head of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which became junior partner in a coalition with Kurz’s conservatives in December 2017 after winning 26 percent of the votes in the October elections.The FPO’s General Secretary, Christian Hafenecker, said the party’s lawyers were evaluating the material. Neither Strache nor the Freedom Party ever received or granted any benefits from the persons concerned, Hafenecker said in a statement.

“Since the video was obviously recorded illegally, we are also preparing appropriate legal steps.”

The footage, parts of which were posted by the newspapers, showed Strache and party colleague Johann Gudenus with the woman in a room in what the newspapers said was a villa in Ibiza.

The woman said she wanted to invest several hundred million euros in Austria, according to the newspapers. Strache and Gudenus discussed investment opportunities for her, including taking over a 50 percent stake in Austria’s influential tabloid Kronen Zeitung and using it to support Strache and the FPO party in the election.

Gudenus was not immediately available for comment.

“If she takes over the Kronen Zeitung three weeks before the election and get us into first place, then we can talk about everything,” Der Spiegel quoted Strache as saying in the video.

Strache held out the prospect of awarding her public contracts in road construction if she helped the Freedom Party succeed, according to the video.

Vienna prosecutors said they would study the reports and decide whether there was sufficient cause to open an investigation, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors said.
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Western Powers Clash at UN with Russia, Syria over Syrian Hospital Attacks

The United Nations said on Friday at least 18 health centers have been attacked in the past three weeks in northwestern Syria, prompting a confrontation between western powers and Russia and Syria at the Security Council over who is to blame.

While the area is nominally protected by a Russian-Turkish deal agreed in September to avert a new battle, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces — backed by Russians — have launched an offensive on the last major insurgent stronghold. Some three million civilians are at risk, the United Nations said.

“Since we know that Russia and Syria are the only countries that fly planes in the area, is the answer … the Russian and Syrian air forces?” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Karen Pierce said to the 15-member council on where the blame lay.

Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen said Russia and Syria were responsible for the attacks on the health centers. He said it was “most alarming” that several of the centers attacked were on a list created by Russia and the United Nations in an attempt to protect them.

Pierce said it would be “absolutely grotesque” if health facilities that provided their locations were “finding themselves being the authors of their own destruction because of deliberated targeting by the regime.”

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the Syrian and Russian forces were not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure and questioned the sources used by the United Nations to verify attacks on health centers.

“We categorically reject accusations of violations of international humanitarian law,” Nebenzia told the council. “Our goal is the terrorists.”

An array of insurgents have a foothold in northwestern Syria – Idlib province and a belt of territory around it. The most powerful is the jihadist Tahrir al-Sham, the latest incarnation of the former Nusra Front which was part of al Qaeda until 2016.

U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council he did not know who was responsible, but “at least some of these attacks are clearly organized by people with access to sophisticated weapons including a modern air force and so called smart or precision weapons.”

Lowcock said 49 health centers had partially or totally suspended activities, some for fear of being attacked, while 17 schools have been damaged or destroyed and many more closed. He said that in the past three weeks up to 160 people have been killed and at least 180,000 people displaced.

U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo warned the Security Council: “If the escalation continues and the offensive pushes forward, we risk catastrophic humanitarian fallout and threats to international peace and security.”

 
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Britain’s Labor Party: No Chance of Brexit Ratification by July  

Brexit talks appear to have collapsed a day after British Prime Minister Theresa May set out a timetable for her exit from office — the latest sign of a government in tatters.

Britain’s Labor party head Jeremy Corbyn has sent a letter to May saying the Brexit talks have “gone as far as they can” because of the instability of her government and its refusal to change its position. 

The two major British parties have been at a stalemate for weeks over a deal outlining the conditions by which Britain will withdraw from the European Union. The deadline for withdrawal was originally set for March 29, but the revised date — to give time for more negotiation — is Oct. 31.

Corbyn said in his letter to the prime minister that the two parties “have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us.” He added, “Even more crucially, the increasing weakness and instability of (May’s) government means there cannot be confidence in securing whatever might be agreed” between the Tory and Labor parties.

Corbyn also told reporters Friday there is no chance of ratifying even a partial Brexit deal by July.

May has said the process is hampered by a lack of consensus among Labor party members about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a new referendum in hopes of stopping it.

Parliament has rejected May’s plan in three separate votes and is set to hold another vote in early June. While May has promised some tweaks to the bill before the next vote, the plan is not expected to undergo any radical changes — meaning the impasse between the lawmakers likely is to remain unchanged.

Conservative lawmaker and former London mayor Boris Johnson, who has led the Brexit movement and supports leaving the EU even without a plan in place, has announced he will stand for the prime minister’s position after May vacates it.
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Labour: Brexit Talks Are Dead

Britain’s tumultuous divorce from the European Union was again in disarray Friday as last-ditch cross-party talks over breaking the Brexit impasse “have gone as far as they can go,” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May, because of the instability of the government.

Corbyn said the Conservative Party’s moves toward selecting a new leader mean the government has become “ever more unstable and its authority eroded — undermining confidence in the “government’s ability to deliver any compromise agreement.”

Nearly three years after the United Kingdom unexpectedly voted in a referendum to leave the EU, it is still unclear how, when or if it will ever indeed quit the European club it joined in 1973.

May ends in June

The Brexit talks ended hours after May agreed Thursday to set out a timetable for her departure in early June.

“If the talks are not going anywhere, from my point of view that leads to only one conclusion,” Hilary Benn, the chairman of parliament’s Brexit committee, told BBC radio. “There are only two ways out of the Brexit crisis that we’ve got: either parliament agrees to a deal or we go back to the British people and ask them to make the choice.”

Labour talks a Hail Mary 

After the Brexit deal that May struck with Brussels was defeated a third time by parliament, she announced April 2 that she would open talks with Labour. But the two parties have failed to agree on major issues such as the opposition party’s demand for a post-Brexit customs union.

Labour leader Corbyn, a veteran socialist who voted against membership of the EU in 1975, has said that May refused to budge on key demands.

May’s hands have been tied, knowing that to make concessions to Labour would lead to fury in her divided party. Labour has feared that any compromises on issues such as workers’ rights would be torn up by May’s successor.

May agreed Thursday to set out a timetable for her departure in early June, after a fourth and final attempt to push her Brexit deal through parliament.

Boris Johnson, the face of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, said he would be standing as a candidate to replace May as Conservative leader.

“Tories must go with Boris Johnson if they want to survive or they’ll end up as dead as a dodo,” Sun columnist Trevor Kavanagh said. “Even sopping wet Remainers can see the writing on the wall and want Theresa May out as fast as possible.”

The winner of a leadership contest will automatically become prime minister and will take control of the Brexit process, which has plunged Britain into its worst political crisis since World War II.
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Ukraine Ruling Coalition Breaks Up; Snap Elections Likely

Ukraine’s ruling coalition broke up Friday after the People’s Front party quit outgoing President Petro Poroshenko’s faction, potentially paving the way for incoming President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to call a snap election. 

“We declare our withdrawal from the current coalition, the cessation of its activities … and the initiative to form a new coalition with a new agenda,” Maksym Burbak, the People’s Front faction leader, told parliament.

Parliament now has one month to form a new coalition or else the president can dissolve parliament and call snap parliamentary elections.

Zelenskiy won a landslide against Poroshenko last month but his newly formed party lacks any representation in parliament.

A snap election would probably suit Zelenskiy, whose popularity is high and whose party is on course to win the election while falling short of a majority.

Zelenskiy, a comedian with no prior political experience, is to be inaugurated Monday.

Speaker Andriy Parubiy told parliament the coalition had ceased its activities and said “within one month from today … a new coalition should be formed.”

 
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Russia Presents UN Measure to Rein in Chemical Weapons Watchdog

Russia on Thursday presented a draft resolution to the Security Council accusing the UN’s chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, of politicization just before a new probe begins of chemical attacks in Syria.

The draft text, seen by AFP, states that the Council — where Russia holds veto power — is the only international body that can impose measures on countries that violate the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) agreed last year to set up a mechanism that would identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks, a move bitterly opposed by Russia and Syria.

Russian proposal

The proposed resolution notes “with concern the continuing politicization of the work of the OPCW and growing deviation from the established practice of taking consensus-based decisions.”

UN diplomats said the Russian proposal was aimed at keeping the OPCW in check as it pushes ahead with the investigation to uncover those behind chemical weapons use in Syria.

“What it’s really about of course is the Russians trying to strangle OPCW,” said a diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The West pushed through the new blaming powers after OPCW reports confirmed chemical weapons use in Syria, as well as a nerve agent attack on Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury in March 2018.

“The Russian rationale is to weaken the OPCW and the Chemical Weapons Convention, with an eye on Syria but also Salisbury,” said another diplomat.

Time frame for resolution

It remained unclear when the draft resolution would be put to a vote. UN resolutions require nine votes and no vetoes to be adopted in the council.

The proposed resolution is backed by China, diplomats said.

“This looks like a desperate bid to prevent further confirmation that the Syrian government, like ISIS, repeatedly used chemical weapons in violation of international law,” said Louis Charbonneau, UN director for Human Rights Watch.

The Russian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

OPCW chief Fernando Arias said in March that the new investigation of chemical attacks in Syria would begin in the coming weeks.

Western countries are calling on the team to start work on identifying the culprits behind a deadly attack in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018.

Missile strike

The United States, Britain and France launched a one-off missile strike on Syria in April last year in response to the use of chemical weapons in Douma. 

The OPCW said in a report that chlorine was likely used in that attack, which killed more than 40 people, but Russia and Syria have rejected those findings. 

Douma attack

The report did not specify who was behind the Douma attack as it was not in the OPCW’s mandate at the time.

In 2015, the council unanimously agreed to establish the OPCW-UN joint investigative mechanism (JIM) to identify those responsible for chemical attacks in Syria.

But in late 2017, Russia vetoed a bid to renew the mandate of the JIM after the panel blamed the Syrian government for chlorine attacks and for using sarin in a deadly assault on the town of Khan Sheikhun that same year.

Russia has used its veto 12 times at the council to shield its Syrian ally from international action. 
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