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Protesters rally in France against appointment of prime minister

PARIS — Thousands of protesters took to the streets across France Saturday, responding to a call from a far-left party leader who criticized as a power grab the president’s appointment of a conservative new prime minister, Michel Barnier.

The protests are a direct challenge to President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to bypass a prime minister from the far-left bloc following a deeply dividing legislative election in July. The left, particularly the France Unbowed party, views Barnier’s conservative background as rejecting the electorate’s will, further intensifying the EU’s second-largest economy’s already charged political atmosphere.

Authorities expected tens of thousands of demonstrators. In Paris, protesters gathered at Place de la Bastille, and tensions ran high as police prepared for potential clashes. Other rallies were planned in 150 points nationwide, including the southwestern cities of Montauban and Auch.

In Montauban, the demonstrators denounced Barnier’s appointment as denying democracy, echoing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s fiery rhetoric from recent days. “The people have been ignored,” a rally speaker told the crowd.

While Barnier was meeting with health care workers at Paris’ Necker Hospital for his first official visit as prime minister, opponents say the unrest in the streets is shaping his government’s future.

Barnier, who is working to assemble his Cabinet, expressed a commitment to listening to public concerns, particularly about France’s public services.

Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally, warned that Barnier was “under surveillance” by his party as well. Bardella, speaking at the Chalons-en-Champagne fair, called for the prime minister to include his party’s priorities in his agenda, particularly regarding national security and immigration.

Barnier, 73, is the oldest of the 26 prime ministers that have served modern France’s Fifth Republic. He replaces the youngest, Gabriel Attal, who was 34 when he was appointed just eight months ago.

Attal was forced to resign after Macron’s centrist government suffered a major defeat in the July snap legislative elections. Macron called the election in the hopes of securing a clear mandate, but it instead produced a hung parliament, leaving the president without a legislative majority and plunging his administration into turmoil.

Attal was also France’s first openly gay prime minister. French media and some of Macron’s opponents, who immediately criticized Barnier’s appointment, quickly dug up that, when serving in parliament in 1981, the new prime minister had been among 155 lawmakers who voted against a law that decriminalized homosexuality.

Although Barnier brings five decades of political experience, his appointment offers no guarantee of resolving the crisis. His challenge is immense: He must form a government that can navigate a fractured National Assembly, where the political spectrum is deeply divided between the far left, far right and Macron’s weakened centrist bloc. The snap poll’s outcome, far from clarifying, has served only to destabilize the country and Macron’s grip on power.

The president’s decision to turn to Barnier, a seasoned political operator with deep ties to the European Union, is seen as an attempt to bring stability to French politics. And Barnier, who gained prominence as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has faced daunting tasks before.

Critics say Macron, elected on the promise of a break from the old political order, now finds himself battling the instability he once promised to overcome.
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Chinese activist risks deportation after Denmark rejects asylum bid

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — Chinese dissident Liu Dongling is at risk of deportation back to China after Denmark rejected her asylum application in June, a situation some rights advocates say reflects challenges Chinese dissidents face when seeking refuge abroad, especially in Europe.

Liu has been leading the “Ban the Great Firewall” online campaign against China’s internet censorship regime since August 2023, when founder Qiao Xinxin was deported back to China from Laos and detained on subversion charges.

Danish immigration authorities informed Liu in June they rejected her asylum application following a two-year review and would repatriate her back to China in seven days. Fearing similar charges if deported to China, Liu fled to Sweden with her teenage son the next day.

“I’ve been in Sweden for more than two months, and I still can’t work here since I don’t have a proper legal status,” she told VOA in an interview in Stockholm.

Lui cannot apply for asylum in Sweden due to the Dublin Regulation, an agreement between European Union countries that establishes that a single country is responsible for examining an applicant’s request for asylum.

Contacted by VOA, the Danish Immigration Service and Danish Return Agency said they could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality required by law.

Human rights advocates contacted by VOA said that based on Qiao’s detention, Liu will likely face imprisonment if the Danish authorities deport her.

“Apart from leading the online free speech campaign, Liu has also been collecting information about human rights violations for the China Human Rights Accountability Database, so she would definitely be given prison sentences if she were sent back to China,” Lin Shengliang, a Chinese activist based in the Netherlands and the founder of the human rights database, told VOA by phone.

Seeking asylum in Denmark

Liu has been an activist since 2014, when she helped forced eviction victims seek compensation through legal channels. She said she started being followed and her son started being banned by teachers from participating in activities he enjoyed.

“My son began to refuse to go to school so I decided to move to Thailand and let him go to school there,” Liu told VOA.

In June 2019, she began documenting human rights violations for the Chinese news website Boxun, which covers activism and human rights violations in China.

But soon, Chinese prosecutors in China’s Henan province started repeatedly contacting her, increasing her concern over her safety. She nevertheless returned to China twice in 2019 to renew her Thai visa. At the time, she wasn’t arrested or detained by local authorities.

In June 2022, fearing deportation back to China considering the Thai detention and repatriation of Chinese dissidents, Liu applied for a Danish tourist visa and flew there with her son, applying for asylum when they arrived.

As Danish authorities began to review her asylum application in March 2023, she also became involved with the online free speech campaign. She tried to spread information about how to bypass China’s internet censorship through virtual private networks to Chinese people while informing Chinese people working in the cybersecurity sector that they might be assisting the Chinese government with violating Chinese people’s basic human rights.

Two months after she joined the campaign, movement co-founder Qiao Xinxin went missing in Laos. In August 2023, his family confirmed he had been detained in a Chinese prison under subversion charges.

Despite Qiao’s and her extensive history of activism, Liu said Danish authorities repeatedly questioned whether she was at risk of arrest if she returned to China, citing her successful returns to China in 2019 as proof that she could freely leave the country.

“The Refugee Appeals Board finds that the applicant left China legally for Thailand in 2018 and later, she traveled back and forth between China and Thailand legally twice without experiencing issues,” the Danish Refugee Appeals Board wrote in an official case document seen by VOA.

The Danish immigration authorities ultimately determined that Liu had not provided “credible evidence” to prove that she had faced persecution in China and that if she returned to China, she would be persecuted by Chinese authorities.

Some analysts say while Liu has a long track record of criticizing the Chinese government and engaging in human rights issues, some missing pieces of evidence made it difficult for her to prove the authenticity of her claims to the Danish authorities.

However, several human rights organizations, including Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders, are trying to push the Danish immigration authorities to reassess her case.

“We have prepared all the paperwork to support the reassessment of her case,” said Peter Dahlin, the director of Safeguard Defenders.

He told VOA that Denmark’s rejection of Liu’s asylum application shows the need for Chinese dissidents to be well-prepared before applying for asylum in a foreign country.

“If Chinese dissidents are going to seek asylum abroad, they need to prepare all necessary paperwork and evidence to back up their claims,” he said in a phone interview.

Dahlin said if the Danish authorities decided to follow through on deporting Liu to China, human rights organizations will consider filing an interim measure requesting the European Court of Human Rights to weigh in on the decision.

“I don’t think Denmark wants the embarrassment of having been told by the European Court of Human Rights to stop their action,” he told VOA.

While human rights organizations are pushing Danish authorities to reassess Liu’s initial asylum application, she and her son may need to wait months before the Danish government finishes reassessment of her case.

“They will live in Sweden with no legal rights, and that’s not an easy situation to be in especially when Sweden and Denmark are hardening their stance on asylum and immigration,” Dahlin said.

Since it remains unclear whether Danish authorities would reassess her case, Liu said she is still haunted by her possible deportation back to China. “I have no clue what my next step is, and the only thing I could do now is to lay low and wait to see if Danish authorities reassess my asylum application,” she told VOA.
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Britain, US spy chiefs call for ‘staying the course’ on Ukraine

LONDON — The heads of the U.S. CIA and Britain’s spy service said in an op-ed on Saturday that “staying the course” in backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia was more important than ever and they vowed to further their cooperation there and on other challenges.

The op-ed in the Financial Times by CIA Director William Burns and Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, was the first ever jointly authored by heads of their agencies.

“The partnership lies at the beating heart of the special relationship between our countries,” they wrote, noting that their services marked 75 years of partnership two years ago.

The agencies “stand together in resisting an assertive Russia and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” they said.

“Staying the course (in Ukraine) is more vital than ever. Putin will not succeed in extinguishing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence,” they said, adding their agencies would continue aiding Ukrainian intelligence.

Russian forces have been slowly advancing in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian troops have been occupying a large swath of Russia’s Kursk region and Kyiv has been pleading for more U.S. and Western air defenses.

The spy chiefs said their agencies would keep working to thwart a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe by Russian intelligence” and its “cynical use of technology” to spread disinformation “to drive wedges between us.”

Russia has denied pursuing sabotage and disinformation campaigns against the U.S. and other Western countries.

Burns and Moore noted that they had reorganized their agencies to adapt to the rise of China, which they called “the principle intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st Century.”

The agencies, they said, also “have exploited our intelligence channels to push hard restraint and de-escalation” in the Middle East, and are working for a truce in Gaza that could end the “appalling loss of life of Palestinian civilians” and see Hamas release hostage it seized in its Oct. 7 assault on Israel.

Burns is the chief U.S. negotiator in talks to reach a deal.
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US ‘alarmed’ by reports Iranian missile transfer to Russia is imminent or completed

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Ukraine pleads for more air defense, permission for long-range attacks on Russian soil

As Kyiv continues its offensive inside Russia and the Russian army nears a key hub in Ukraine’s Donbas region, leaders of more than 50 nations, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, met in Germany on Friday to help get Kyiv the support it seeks. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports.
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US adversaries step up efforts to influence results of next election

washington — Russia, Iran and China are ramping up efforts to impact the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and down-ballot races, targeting American voters with an expanding array of sophisticated influence operations.

The latest assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies, shared Friday, warns that Russia remains the preeminent threat, with Russian influence campaigns seeking to boost the chances of Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Russian actors, led by networks created by the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, “are supporting Moscow’s efforts to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and diminish the prospects of the vice president,” a senior intelligence official told reporters, briefing on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

“RT has built and used networks of U.S. and other Western personalities to create and disseminate Russia-friendly narratives while trying to mask the content in authentic Americans’ free speech,” the official said.

And RT, the official added, is just part of a growing Kremlin-directed campaign that is looking to impact not just the race for the White House, but smaller elections across the United States, with an added emphasis on swing states.

“Russia’s influence apparatus is very large and it’s worth highlighting that they have other entities that are active,” the official said. “Russia is working up and down ballot races, as well as spreading divisive issues.”

Tracking the Russian influence efforts has become more difficult, with U.S. officials saying that there is a greater degree of sophistication and an increased emphasis on amplifying American voices with pro-Russian views rather than seeding social media with narratives crafted in the Kremlin.

“It’s not just about Russian bots and trolls and fake social media persona, although that’s part of it,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told VOA Friday.

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” he added. “There’s no question that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has every intent to try to sow discord here in the United States, to try to pump disinformation and Russian propaganda through to the American people, through what he believes were our credible sources, be they online or on television and we have to take that seriously.”

The intelligence officials declined to share additional specifics about Russia’s network of influence operations. But indictments Wednesday from the U.S. Justice Department have shed some light on the scope of the Kremlin’s recent operations.

In one case, the U.S. charged two employees of RT with using fake personas and shell companies to funnel almost $10 million to Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company producing videos and podcasts for a stable of conservative political influencers.

The aim, prosecutors said, was to produce and disseminate content promoting what Moscow viewed as pro-Russian policies.

In a separate action, the U.S. seized 32 internet domains linked to an operation directed by a key aide to Putin. The aim, U.S. officials said, was to mimic legitimate U.S. news sites to spread Russian-created propaganda.

RT publicly ridiculed the allegations while some of the influencers working with Tenet posted statements on the X social media platform saying they were unaware of the company’s links to Moscow.

As for the latest U.S. intelligence allegations, the Russian Embassy in Washington has yet to respond to VOA’s request for comments, though it has described previous accusations as “Russophobic.”

Requests for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns have also, so far, gone unanswered.

But earlier U.S. intelligence assertions of Russian support for Trump have raised the ire of the Trump campaign, which has pointed to public statements by Russia’s Putin supporting Trump’s opponents.

“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were deterred, because they feared how the United States would respond,” national press secretary for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, told VOA in an email this past July.

U.S. intelligence officials, however, said it would be a mistake to put any faith in Putin’s words, including public comments Thursday expressing support for Harris.

The U.S. intelligence community “does not take Putin’s public statements as representative of Russia’s covert intentions,” the senior official said. “There are many examples over the past several years where Putin’s public statements do not align with Russian actions. For example, his comments that he would not invade Ukraine.”

Experts say Iran, China trying to influence results

U.S. intelligence agencies Friday emphasized Russia is not alone in its effort to shape the outcome of the U.S. elections in November, warning both Tehran and Beijing are sharpening their influence campaigns with just about 60 days until America voters go to the polls.

“Iran is making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections, even as its tactics and approaches are similar to prior cycles,” the intelligence official said, describing a “multi-pronged approach to stoke internal divisions and undermine voter confidence in the U.S. democratic system.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously assessed that Iran has focused part of its efforts on denigrating the Trump campaign, seeing his election as likely to worsen tensions between Tehran and Washington.

U.S. officials last month also blamed Iran for a hack-and-leak operation targeting the Trump campaign, though they said that Iran-linked actors have also sought to infiltrate the Harris campaign.

As for China, U.S. intelligence officials said it appears Beijing is still content to stay out of the U.S. presidential race, seeing little difference between Trump and Harris.

But there are indications China is accelerating its efforts to impact other political races.

U.S. intelligence “is aware of PRC [People’s Republic of China] attempts to influence U.S. down-ballot races by focusing on candidates it views as particularly threatening to core PRC security interests,” the official said.

“PRC online influence actors have also continued small scale efforts on social media to engage U.S. audiences on divisive political issues, including protests about the Israel-Gaza conflict and promote negative stories about both political parties,” the official added.

‘Malicious speculations against China’

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, Friday, rejected the U.S. intelligence assessment.

“China has no intention and will not interfere in the U.S. election, and we hope that the U.S. side will not make an issue of China in the election,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email.

Liu added that accusations Beijing is using social media to sway U.S. public opinion “are full of malicious speculations against China, which China firmly opposes.”

While U.S. intelligence officials have identified Russia, Iran and China, as the most prominent purveyors of disinformation, they are not alone.

Officials have said countries like Cuba are also engaging in influence operations, though at a much smaller scale.

And other countries are edging closer to crossing that line.

“We are seeing a number of countries considering activities that, at a minimum, test the boundaries of election influence,” according to the U.S. assessment. “Such activities include lobbying political figures to try to curry favor with them in the event they are elected to office.”

Misha Komadovsky contributed to this report.
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Lviv starts to rebuild in wake of Russia’s missile attack

A Russian missile strike on the historic Ukrainian town of Lviv on September 4 killed at least seven people and damaged parts of the city’s historic downtown. On Thursday, rebuilding began, even as the city mourned the dead. Omelyan Oshchudlyak reports. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych.
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Moscow accuses Washington of undue pressure on Russian media

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Ukraine reacts to Zelenskyy’s government shakeup

Ukraine has a new foreign minister, one of the latest moves as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy embarks on the largest overhaul of his administration since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports on the appointment of nine new ministers in the Cabinet shakeup. Videographer: Daniil Batushchak
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Poland orders arrests over Belarus dissident’s plane diversion 

Warsaw — A Polish court on Friday ordered the arrest of three Belarusian officials accused of illegally diverting a Ryanair flight in 2021 in order to seize a dissident journalist on board. 

Air traffic control officials forced the plane heading from Greece to Lithuania to land in Minsk after a false bomb alert and arrested journalist Roman Protasevich and his companion Sofia Sapega. 

Following investigations, “the Warsaw regional court announced three arrest orders for three people” involved in the diverting of the Polish-registered plane, the tribunal’s spokeswoman, Anna Ptaszek. 

Poland’s state prosecution service identified them as a former director of the Belarusian aviation agency, a team leader at Minsk air traffic control, and an official from Belarus’s KGB security service. 

The three men are residents outside Poland, but Ptaszek said the court orders “allow prosecutors to seek procedures to pursue them internationally”, Ptaszek said. 

The court said the three face possible sentences of 15 years for diverting an aircraft, on aggravated charges categorizing it as a “terrorist” action. 

Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza cited audio recordings from the Minsk airport control tower on the day of the flight that were leaked by a controller who later fled to Poland. 

In January 2022 a New York federal court charged four Belarusians with “conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy.”

The U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization called the diversion “unlawful.” 

The bomb threat “was deliberately false” and was ordered by “senior government officials of Belarus,” it said in a statement in July 2022. 

Protasevich was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2023 but was later pardoned after recording a “confession” video that his allies said was coerced. 
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Zelenskyy emphasizes to allies the need to maintain military strength  

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