Archived link

The hope that Beijing would distance itself, however minimally, from Moscow has finally been extinguished. Europe needs to adjust its approach accordingly.

Written by Maximilian Mayer, professor of International Relations and the Global Politics of Technology at the University of Bonn, Germany • Emilian Kavalski, NAWA Chair professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Poland.

That Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for a long war not just in Ukraine, but against Western democracies more broadly, should hardly be news, even if many in Europe and North America refuse to acknowledge this fact. At least since the 2008 Russian intervention in the conflict in Georgia, Putin has condoned a series of both hot and hybrid warfare campaigns to weaken the democratic fabric of countries in Russia’s vicinity and further afield. It was recently revealed that on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia launched a spacecraft to test nuclear anti-satellite weapons, further evidence of Moscow’s plan for long-term confrontation with the West, beyond what it considers its “near abroad.”

Yet, that China is willing to fully back Putin’s effort to threaten and undermine liberal democratic states is certainly a newsflash. Ever since Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing has been treading carefully to avoid perceptions that it is overtly supporting Moscow and has been claiming to occupy a neutral position – even if China has been leaning toward Russia’s side.

The reason seems obvious. Despite increasing tariffs, anti-subsidy probes, and European derisking strategies, both China’s export-oriented economy and the bottom line of most Chinese companies are still tied to trade with Western firms as part of global supply chains. It was therefore common sense to assume that Beijing would move cautiously to avoid jeopardizing its economic security in the context of an increasingly unpredictable domestic market and escalating economic tensions with the United States.

However, either such assessments have been misplaced or China’s wariness appears to have evaporated. The spark of hope that Beijing would distance itself, however minimally, from Moscow has been finally extinguished.

The most recent joint diplomatic statement by Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping suggests that China and Russia, although not formally allies, have formed a bloc-like alliance that is geared toward undermining security in Europe. The joint statement issued after last month’s meeting between Putin and Xi in Beijing explicitly stated that both partners “believe that all nuclear weapons states… should refrain from infringing upon each other’s vital interests through the expansion of military alliances and coalitions, as well as the establishment of military bases in close proximity to the borders of the other nuclear weapons states.” In other words, this passage spells out what China understands by insisting upon the “legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries.”

The comprehensive clarity of the lengthy statement goes beyond the mere reiteration of Putin’s talking points. It boils down to an explicit statement of intent – namely, Beijing’s intent to work with Moscow in undermining Europe’s security at a moment when the EU has communicated that Russia’s war against Ukraine is an “existential” threat to Europe. China is not only ready to challenge NATO’s guarantee for the security of states in Eastern Europe, but also the increasing activities of the Western European members of the alliance on NATO’s eastern flank in support of Ukraine.

It is significant that Xi’s meeting with Putin came on the heels of the Chinese leader’s visit to Serbia and Hungary. This trip was indicative of China’s strategic direction. Xi visited Serbia on the 25th anniversary of NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, something that he stated the Chinese people will “never forget.” In Hungary, Xi signed a new security pact, which would allow Chinese law enforcement to conduct patrols in the country and install surveillance equipment. However, as revelations of a number of secret annexes to the pact suggest, Chinese police officers may avail themselves of the Schengen travel arrangements and visit other European countries to conduct “secret missions,” including arresting dissidents and bringing them back to Hungary before taking them to China.

The joint statement between Putin and Xi is quite unambiguous that the strategic infrastructure of Western “military alliances” is perceived as a threat to both China and Russia. The call for the establishment of loosely defined buffer zones in the peripheries of nuclear powers is surprising, in that it goes against China’s self-avowed principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of states and contradicts the habitually repeated Chinese warnings against “Cold War mentality.” More than that, this statement also indicates that Beijing and Moscow are throwing under the bus the national sovereignty of the smaller states in between. Instead, might makes right – small states will be subject to the whims of great powers and their spheres of influence.

It is not far-fetched to interpret the Sino-Russian statement as Beijing’s legitimization of Moscow’s brinkmanship in Europe, short of using nuclear weapons. It is no coincidence, that immediately after the Putin-Xi meeting, Russia’s defense ministry posted a draft proposal for the revision of the country’s maritime borders in the eastern Baltic Sea. A few days later, in another test of Western resolve, Russian border guards removed dozens of light buoys demarcating the Estonia-Russia border along the Narva River.

While the full implications of the joint statement will become more obvious in the coming weeks and months, several takeaways help to shed light on the contours of Sino-European relations during the new Cold War.

First, in the midst of mutual retaliatory rhetoric about trade restrictions, this is China’s loudest signal yet that its strategic outlook is officially framed from the perspective of a new Cold War with the West. While Russia might be playing a “junior partner” in the alliance, it is Beijing that is following Moscow’s lead into uncompromising strategic antagonism with the West and especially the European Union. This does not mean that there is ample trust between Russia and China, but the logic of a bloc confrontation is underpinning Beijing’s commitment to cooperate with Moscow ever more closely. The symbolic gesture of Putin’s official visit to the Harbin Institute of Technology, which could indicate more Russian access to Chinese defense technology, has not been lost on European observers.

In the new Cold War, Russia is more important to the Chinese leadership than Europe. The relevance of bilateral relations goes beyond the reality of growing economic complementarities and trade figures between the two Eurasian giants. The joint statement is the strongest indication yet that China is not averse to forming a military alliance with Russia. The document clearly spells out that bloc confrontation is the new game in town, despite Chinese reassurances about further economic opening and a charm offensive to European businesses. In France, Xi only offered a vague answer to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plea to limit the deliveries of dual use goods to Russia. Beijing, it seems, has already priced in the inadvertent “loss of Europe” as the cost of its partnership with Moscow.

In the new Cold War, Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific are part of a united Eurasian strategic theater. Geographically, just like the 20th-century Cold War, the new one reflects the expansive logic of malleable buffer zones. The fault lines of the Sino-Russian confrontation with the West follow a north-south gradient across the landmass of Eastern Europe and a southwest-northeast gradient from the South China Sea to the Korean Peninsula. Although China has officially always rejected the connections between the Ukraine and Taiwan crises, this linkage is now more conspicuous than ever before. While such a scenario will probably be hard to swallow for Europe, it is becoming hard to ignore that China will be part of any future European security order. Europe, given its overreliance on U.S. security provision, has less wiggle room and no choice but to get closer with the United States.

Europe’s security requires significant realignment of its strategic focus. Faced with large-scale crises such as migration, economic inequality, climate change, and populism, European policymakers struggle to formulate a coherent strategy. The prospect of a strengthened Russian economy and sustained armed conflict in Ukraine presents new challenges that call on Europe to enhance its military capabilities and seriously prepare for a range of contingencies. It appears that both Moscow and Beijing are ready for the turbulence of the new Cold War. European leaders are still to fully grasp its reality.

The joint China-Russia statement marks a world political closure. Bloc confrontation is a new reality, although the rest of the world tries as hard as possible to avoid taking sides. In the absence of significant hard power, Europe does not have the luxury of contemplating a neutral position. Economic interdependencies with China become more problematic. Trade and security policies are now not only seen as intimately entangled, but also point in increasingly contradictory directions. Current attempts at decoupling between the economies of China and the West will thus likely intensify, rendering the management of conflicts increasingly difficult.

As the West might fracture under the pressure of multiple crises and see its resolve buckle through the constant disinformation campaigns of Russia and China, it is difficult to anticipate what trajectories the confrontation will take. In this precarious new Cold War scenario, Europe has to consider both the attitude of a new U.S. administration and Chinese views on such contingencies.

For instance, what would leaders in Beijing view a possible “win” for China in Ukraine? Some Chinese experts are betting on a “Korean” type solution for the conflict. This would include a buffer zone between Russia and NATO in Europe and a demilitarized zone partitioning Ukrainian territory. As a result, Russia would be in a stronger position to seek domination over Eastern Europe’s states as well as pressure NATO to roll back its membership to pre-1994 levels.

The most pressing issue along the two geographical fault lines in the coming years is keeping the new Cold War “cold” and preventing it from becoming a full-blown global hot war. Overall, there are reasons not to be overly pessimistic. The logic of nuclear deterrence is functional. China and the United States are ill-prepared to fight a war, and the risk of skirmishes in the South China Sea makes both sides more restrained. However, escalatory trends remain and flash points are multiplying, while mechanisms to avoid escalation such as monitoring, mutual surveillance programs, and regular military-to-military talks are few and far between.

For Europe, to maintain a sense of pragmatic optimisms is more difficult. China and the United States can rely on historical precedent to ensure their coexistence as superpowers and create, for example, their own version of SALT. Europe, however, does not possess historical templates and its tripartite approach to China – as partner, competitor, and rival – is woefully outdated because it lacks a security angle altogether.

Europe needs to quickly come to grips with a China that both openly supports Russia’s imperial war and works with Moscow to end NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.

Haichang Group founder Qu Naijie purchased 27 Bordeaux châteaus in just a few years, but French officials found some of the deals were financed illegally with Chinese government funds

A Paris tribunal has found Qu Naijie, the 63-year-old founder of Chinese corporation Haichang Group, guilty of money laundering, sentencing him to a three-year suspended prison sentence, a €1 million fine and the confiscation of nine of his Bordeaux châteaus, worth an estimated €35.5 million ($38.4 million).

The case has stunned Bordeaux. Qu was one of several wealthy Chinese figures who arrived in the region a decade ago, buying lesser-known châteaus with plans to invest in and market them to the growing Chinese wine market. Now, both Chinese and French authorities have accused him of running a scam.

Diving into the Wine Business

Qu was well-known in Bordeaux. Working with Christian Delpeuch, former president of the Bordeaux trade group Le Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB) and ex-CEO of the négociant Ginestet, Qu snapped up 27 Bordeaux wineries in four years starting in 2010, spending $67 million. Delpeuch provided expertise on vineyard management.

None of the châteaus were major names in the U.S. market. Qu bought rundown estates whose owners were eager to sell, wineries that had failed to find consumers in Europe or America but could be rebranded to sell more lucratively in the burgeoning Chinese market. At this time, other superwealthy Chinese figures, including Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, real estate and investment executive Pan Sutong and film star Zhao Wei, were also investing heavily in Bordeaux vineyards.

Qu, who made his fortune in oil trading before diversifying into chemicals, plastics, diamonds, real estate and theme parks, had a far-reaching vision. He sought to tie his hometown, the industrial port of Dalian, with Bordeaux both commercially and culturally. He began construction on an elaborate château-themed residential community in Dalian with a vineyard and a massive cellar to warehouse and sell Bordeaux wine.

The project was announced in 2011 to much fanfare at the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIB), with négociants and city officials from Bordeaux and Dalian in attendance. Qu, who kept a low profile in public, sat in the audience, leaving the photo ops to officials, politicians and consultants.

He also worked to boost wine tourism in Dalian. After witnessing the success of the Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival, a version of Bordeaux's popular wine festival organized in conjunction with the CCIB, CIVB, the Bordeaux Tourism Office and various wine-related promotional associations, he contacted the CCIB and invited them to do the same thing in Dalian.

China’s Politics Change, Bringing Trouble

The organization began to have problems after the first festival, and the partnership faltered. Other signs of trouble ensued. Delpeuch distanced himself legally from Qu's estates. According to media reports, labor practices at odds with French law emerged. (Delpeuch told Wine Spectator he only consulted on vineyards and was not connected to château purchasing and finance.)

And then the politics in China changed. Xi Jinping became president in 2013 and soon after began a public war on corruption. Arrests, the confiscation of property, disappearances of known figures and executions followed. While the average income of regular Chinese residents had grown during the country’s economic boom, many of those with close ties to the government were accumulating tremendous wealth.

In 2014, China's powerful National Audit Office (NAO) issued a damning report on companies accused of corruption, saying that Haichang Group and another Dalian-based company diverted 268 million Chinese yuan—more than $30 million at the time—of government funds to purchase Bordeaux vineyards. The funds were officially earmarked for foreign investments in science and technology as part of the Chinese government's push to acquire key foreign assets such as commodities, manufacturing and infrastructure to bolster the Chinese economy. The classification of technology includes agriculture.

No arrest or court case was reported in China, but Qu disappeared from public life. Meanwhile, the audit caught the attention of French investigators at the Direction Interrégionale de la Police Judiciaire in Bordeaux.

Their investigators found offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and a loan from the Chinese bank ICBC in Paris acquired using forged legal documents. They discovered a number of infractions, which allowed them to seize several of Qu's châteaus in 2018. The Central Office for the Repression of Major Financial Crime joined the case. Investigators also zeroed in on Qu's enablers, the people in France who facilitated the acquisitions. (The authorities said there was no evidence of fraud in the winemaking operations at the châteaus.)

A Shell Game

In 2019, the French government's financial prosecutor's office announced their case. Their targets had narrowed to Qu, a winemaker and Exco Ecaf, a Bordeaux accounting firm formerly headed by Pierre Goguet, chairman of the CCIB.

At the tribunal in Paris in February, the French financial prosecutors revealed a complex labyrinth of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, evidence of money laundering and other infractions. At least some wineries were owned under the name of Qu’s wife.

In addition to Qu, his employee Jian Liu received a suspended 18-month prison sentence and a roughly $54,000 fine for forgery, the use of false documents and fraud. The accounting firm Exco Ecaf was found not guilty of failure to report crimes to government auditors.

Qu's defense lawyer, Maxime Delhomme, said that they will likely appeal the verdict. His clients, Mr. Qu and Mr. Liu, had been dealt bad luck, he said. With the confiscation of the châteaus, they had been "plucked twice."

Archived link

While MEPs urgently called for measures to address disinformation risks and foreign influence attempts before the EU elections, according to a letter dated 9 April and seen by Euractiv, the European Commission responded just two days before the vote, stating the decision lies with tech platforms.

While MEPs urgently called for measures to address disinformation risks and foreign influence attempts before the EU elections, according to a letter dated 9 April and seen by Euractiv, the European Commission responded just two days before the vote, stating the decision lies with tech platforms.

The April letter, addressed to Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, was led by the Netherlands’ Kim van Sparrentak (Greens) and Paul Tang (S&D) and signed by 37 other lawmakers from the EPP, Renew, and S&D.

Recommendation systems suggest content users see by using algorithms that tailor experiences based on user profiles and behaviour. The MEPs expressed concern that these systems induce anger and push users towards extremist content, thus heightening the spread of misinformation and demoting high-quality content.

MEPs suggested turning off personalised recommendation systems by default on very large online platforms, including Meta’s Facebook, and stopping such interaction-based algorithms.

The Commission only replied to the letter on 4 June, almost two months after the letter was sent and just two days before the 6-9 June vote. Vestager and Breton said the Digital Services Act (DSA) does not provide a “one-size-fits-approach on risk management concerning recommender systems”, leaving it up to platforms to decide appropriate mitigation measures.

The DSA, in force since February, is a horizontal legislation regulating how online actors should deal with illegal and harmful content online.

The executive is “carefully monitoring VLOPSE’s [Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines] DSA compliance” and in March released a set of guidelines for digital services to mitigate election risks, the Commissioners said.

In their letter, the MEPs only mentioned the DSA to say that their suggested measures could be adopted under its auspices “in guidelines, a reviewed code of practice, as crisis measure or if necessary as new initiatives”. They also did not mention the March guidelines.

The measures MEPs proposed could be adopted by the platforms, but any Commission decision to impose such requirements should be adopted “based on facts and high-quality evidence.”

Despite what the Commissioners wrote, platforms may soon face stricter rules to limit disinformation.

Efforts are underway to make the currently voluntary anti-disinformation charter a mandatory Code of Conduct under the DSA, Vice President Věra Jourová recently told Politico.

The Commission also mentioned the proceedings against X and Meta for suspected regulation violations.

A Russian court has ordered the seizure of 51.8 million euros ($56 million) of assets from Germany's Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (LBBW), court filings showed, in a lawsuit related to an aborted gas project.

LBBW, which declined to comment, was one of the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with Germany's Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions.

When the project was halted, St Petersburg-based RusChemAlliance, a joint venture that is 50% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, had made a 2 billion euro advance payment on the 10 billion euro contract, according to Britain's Supreme Court website.

RusChemAlliance has filed similar suits against Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Italy's UniCredit.

The court hearing just ended. The attacker was a Polish guy who was blackout intoxicated by alcohol and drugs during the incident. He is known by local police from previous episodes in which he has been mentally "unhinged". He does not recall the episode other than being positively thrilled to meet the prime minister. He was ashamed of his actions.

via https://feddit.dk/comment/8705595

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany would only support European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a second term if her center-right European People’s Party can build a stable majority in the next European Parliament without support of the far right.

“A commission president must always rely on the democratic parties of Europe, on a platform including the Social Democrats, the Conservatives, the Liberals,” Scholz said at an event of his center-left Social Democrats in Berlin. “There must not be any far-right or right-wing populist parties.”

Europe’s far-right parties are aiming for gains in elections to the European Parliament that kick off on Thursday. A significant rightward tilt would thrust migration to the top of Europe’s political agenda in the coming years, and complicate progress on the bloc’s ambitious climate agenda.

Von der Leyen, a German, has suggested a possible shift to the right by signaling she’s open to working with parts of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, which includes Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The top candidate of the center-left European Socialists Party (PES), Nicolas Schmit, told Table Media in an interview that he considers Meloni a nationalist and explicitly warned Von der Leyen against any form of cooperation with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.

“Von der Leyen wants us to believe in good ring-wing extremists,” Schmit said. If Von der Leyen tried an arrangement of power with the far right to secure a second term, she would not be able to count on the support of the PES.

The commission’s top job traditionally goes to a member of the political party that wins the most seats in parliament, which is expected to be Von der Leyen’s EPP. But the former German defense minister has alienated a number of key backers during her five-year term.

Scholz, who didn’t name any particular far-right party, said Germany’s history means it has a special responsibility in Europe. This was a key condition and he is “very serious” about this, the chancellor added.

The parliament is the only directly elected European Union institution. The makeup of the top EU jobs is negotiated behind closed doors by the member states and the commission post needs to be approved by the parliament.

The EPP’s Von der Leyen remains the front-runner, but she has made her share of enemies. French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea of installing an alternative candidate.

Here is the study.

By Natalia Letki, associate professor, University of Warsaw • Dawid Walentek, Post-Doc, Ghent University • Peter Thisted Dinesen, professor of political science, University of Copenhagen • Ulf Liebe, professor of sociology and quantitative methods, University of Warwick.

- According to our recent research, European citizens are not as polarised on the issue of migration as their governments. Across member states, people have remarkably similar preferences - across all nations, regardless of their age, gender or level of education -, including being strongly in favour of asylum seekers being allowed to work, a joint study by universities in Poland, Belgium, Denmark, and the UK revealed.

- Research looking at preferences for different types of immigrants has shown little to no change in general stance towards refugees and asylum seekers among the European public following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

- After the war in Ukraine broke out, researchers re-interviewed respondents in Germany, Poland and Hungary – countries most exposed to the influx of refugees from Ukraine in our original study – to find that it made Polish and Hungarian citizens even more willing to grant asylum seekers access to the labour market, and slightly more open towards their freedom of movement.

- Researchers say that the results give them "hope that the issue of migration can move from dividing to uniting Europe, and the EU can enact a migration policy that lives up to its values", adding that for this to happen, "politicians across the EU will have to listen to their voters".

The issues of migration and asylum are contentious in Europe, and have caused deep rifts among EU member states for years. These topics are fully on the agenda for the 2024 EU elections. Political parties have taken radically different stances, from proposing to triple the number of staff at Frontex, the EU’s border agency, to dissolving it entirely.

In April, the European parliament passed its pact on migration and asylum, an overhaul of its migration policies nearly a decade in the making. The pact aims to improve immigration and control and asylum policy at the EU’s external borders, and make it easier to return failed applicants to their countries of origin.

It also introduces a number of “solidarity measures”, whereby less burdened nations have to offer support to those receiving a higher load of asylum applications. Finally, it allows asylum applicants to take up paid employment if they are waiting longer than six months for a decision on their application. But critics say it undermines asylum seekers’ human rights by limiting their right to appeal.

Meanwhile, the Polish and Hungarian governments have voted against the pact and declared that they will not ratify it. Both countries and the Czech Republic breached EU law in 2015 by refusing to accept asylum seekers relocated from other member states.

But, according to our recent research, European citizens are not as polarised on this issue as their governments. Across member states, people have remarkably similar preferences, including being strongly in favour of asylum seekers being allowed to work.

We surveyed a total of 18,176 people in ten EU member states (Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain and Portugal) about what they expect from migration and asylum policy.

We asked for opinions on a number of elements: control of external EU borders, allocation of asylum applicants among member states, freedom of movement, right to work and the policy cost for the average taxpayer. Respondents were asked multiple times to choose between two different policy packages, in which we randomly varied these aspects.

Respondents were around 17%-18% more likely to choose a policy with either of the options allowing access to the labour market, over a policy with “no right to work”. However, they were not supportive of asylum seekers’ freedom of movement and would prefer them to live in a designated place (respondents were 8.3% more likely to choose the latter option over the former).

Unsurprisingly, we found that most people would like a policy to be inexpensive (respondents were 15% more likely to choose this option over an expensive policy). And, while they would welcome increased protection at EU external borders, this was not of primary importance.

These preferences were shared by citizens surveyed across all nations, regardless of their age, gender or level of education.

Citizens of countries that have experienced a large influx of asylum applicants in the past (Germany, Spain, Austria, Portugal) would like to be able to relocate new applicants to less burdened countries. For those in other countries, the issue of allocation of asylum applicants among member states is only marginally important – people are generally more concerned with domestic policy than EU-wide solutions.

Effect of war in Ukraine

We collected data just before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and followed up in Poland, Hungary and Germany immediately after. We wanted to know whether the strain related to the sudden presence of millions of war refugees changed people’s expectations on asylum policy in the most affected countries.

Within weeks of the Russian invasion, over 6 million Ukrainian refugees crossed into the EU. They were greeted with a massive wave of support and offered special temporary protection allowing them to take up employment and relocate freely within the EU.

Yet, receiving societies experienced considerable strain, with a radically increased demand for social services and growing labour market competition. On the other hand, the proximity of war and cultural similarity of refugees to EU citizens might have made them generally more open towards asylum seekers.

Research looking at preferences for different types of immigrants has shown little to no change in general stance towards refugees and asylum seekers among the European public following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We re-interviewed respondents in Germany, Poland and Hungary – countries most exposed to the influx of refugees from Ukraine in our original study – to see whether the war led them to change their preferences. Interestingly, we found that it made Polish and Hungarian citizens even more willing to grant asylum seekers access to the labour market, and slightly more open towards their freedom of movement.

While governments may remain divided over these issues, our findings show that European citizens are largely in agreement, supporting a policy of cautious hospitality. This gives us hope that the issue of migration can move from dividing to uniting Europe, and the EU can enact a migration policy that lives up to its values. However, for this to happen, politicians across the EU will have to listen to their voters.

Archived link

A Moscow court on Wednesday sentenced Russian blogger Anna Bazhutova to five-and-a-half years in jail for livestreaming witness testimony about alleged Russian atrocities during the occupation of the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.

"It's disgusting and vile. It's messed up," the 30-year-old defendant, speaking from the glass-walled dock, said in reaction to the ruling against her.

The Ostankino district court in northern Moscow found Bazhutova guilty of spreading "fake" information on abuses by the Russian army in Ukraine on her YokoBovich channel on the Twitch livestreaming service.

Russia has waged an unprecedented crackdown on dissent since it launched its military campaign against Ukraine in February 2022.

"This is a harsh sentence. We will appeal," her lawyer Andrei Nevrev said.

Ukraine accuses the Russian army of carrying out a massacre in the town near Kyiv during its retreat from the region in spring 2022. Moscow rejects these accusations and says the massacre was staged by the West.

In April 2022, Bazhutova did a live broadcast including witness statements from people living in Bucha who directly accused the Russian military of carrying out killings.

A recording of the broadcast was republished in June 2023 by bloggers that support Russia's offensive in Ukraine, who filed a complaint against her to police.

Two months later, police came to her home and confiscated audiovisual materials. Her Twitch channel was also blocked.

"We expected a lighter verdict. It's tough, frightening," Bazhutova's partner, Alexander Demchuk, told reporters after the verdict.

"Anna never leaves the house, she suffers from agoraphobia. But she is strong, I hope she will overcome this," he added.

Moscow made criticism of the military illegal shortly after launching its assault on Ukraine and has since detained thousands of opponents.

Russian courts have issued severe punishments for criticism, whether in comments to journalists, in social media or even in poetry.

Alexandra Popova, whose husband Artyom Kamardin was sentenced to seven years in prison last December for reciting a poem, came to Wednesday's hearing to show her support for Bazhutova.

Kamardin had read a poem titled "Kill me, militia man" at a popular protest spot in Moscow in opposition to the Kremlin's September 2022 mobilisation drive.

"I'm not surprised by the verdict, but it's very painful for me," Popova said Wednesday.

Archived link

For far too long, Ukraine has treaded carefully around China’s role in the ongoing war with Russia. Despite mounting evidence of Beijing’s support for Moscow, both materially and diplomatically, Kyiv has been reluctant to criticize China directly. However, during the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finally broke his silence, openly accusing China of aiding Russia in undermining peace efforts.

In his speech, Zelenskyy alleged that “Russia, using Chinese influence in the region, using Chinese diplomats also, does everything to disrupt the peace summit.” He further claimed that China was supplying “elements of Russia’s weaponry,” something the United States has alleged for months by Kyiv has remained circumspect about.

Zelenskyy’s unusually direct comments marked a significant shift in Kyiv’s stance and a long-overdue reckoning with China’s role in the war.

Kyiv’s Cautious Pragmatism

Kyiv was initially hesitant to openly criticize Beijing for its position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite China’s tacit support for Moscow, due to several critical strategic considerations. First and foremost, Ukraine hoped to leverage China’s aspirations to enhance its global reputation in managing hotspot disputes, as demonstrated by its successful brokering of the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal. Thus Zelenskyy repeatedly extended invitations to Chinese President Xi Jinping to mediate the conflict.

Moreover, China had heavily invested in vital Ukrainian infrastructure projects across key sectors such as energy, agriculture, and transportation. By 2019, China had surpassed Russia as Ukraine’s largest trading partner, with significant imports of Ukrainian barley, iron ore, and corn. Furthermore, Ukraine enjoyed a robust defense trade with China; after Russia, the next largest sources of weapons for China from 2016 to 2020 were France (9.7 percent) and Ukraine (6.3 percent).

In 2017, Ukraine also joined China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, seeking to harness that relationship to expedite the modernization of its transportation networks. Ukrainian policymakers aimed to establish the country as a gateway for Chinese access to Europe. Prior to the Russian invasion in 2022, China was Ukraine’s number one trade and economic partner and in 2021 Zelenskyy had expressed optimism that Ukraine would serve as a “bridge to Europe” for Chinese businesses.

By treading carefully, Ukraine aimed to keep lines of communication open and maintain the possibility of China contributing to a negotiated settlement, however slim.

China’s Symbolic Peace Efforts

For its part, China has attempted to portray itself as a neutral actor in the conflict, engaging in several rounds of shuttle diplomacy. However, these efforts have been largely symbolic and failed to yield meaningful progress toward peace.

In May 2023, Chinese Special Representative Li Hui visited Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany, and Russia to discuss a political settlement. However, reports suggest that Li promoted a ceasefire that would leave Russia occupying parts of Ukraine, a proposal unacceptable to Kyiv, which has consistently maintained that any peace deal must include the full withdrawal of Russian forces.

China has also put forward a 12-point peace plan, but this plan has been criticized for being vague and failing to address the core issues of the conflict. The plan talks about general principles such as respecting sovereignty and abandoning the Cold War mentality, but does not provide any specific proposals for resolving the dispute.

While Chinese leaders have emphasized the importance of a political resolution and called for a ceasefire, they have consistently blamed NATO and the West for provoking the conflict, echoing Russian talking points.

Economically, China has become a crucial lifeline for Russia, helping to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions. Trade between the two countries reached a record $240 billion in 2023, a 64 percent increase from 2021. China has also significantly increased its purchases of Russian oil and gas, becoming Russia’s top crude oil customer in 2023.

In terms of technology, China has been supplying Russia with dual-use goods that have both civilian and military applications. This includes machine tools, microelectronics, and optical components for tanks and armored vehicles. U.S. officials have reported that China has provided Russia with components for drones, cruise missiles, and other military equipment. Chinese officials have rebuffed criticism from the U.S. and Europe on this point, insisting that its trade with Russia is “legitimate” and calling the accusations of dual-use exports “extremely hypocritical and irresponsible.”

Shift in Kyiv’s Stance

Kyiv’s shift in stance toward China appears to be driven by a combination of broken promises, lack of dialogue, and repeated diplomatic snubs. Zelenskyy revealed that during a phone call in April 2023 – the first and only direct communication between the leaders of China and Ukraine since the war began – Chinese President Xi Jinping had promised to stand aside and not support Russia with weapons. However, in Singapore on June 2, Zelenskyy said, “Today, there is intelligence that somehow, some way, some things come to Russia’s markets via China … elements of Russia’s weaponry come from China.” China’s apparent breach of its promise has likely eroded Ukraine’s trust in Beijing and prompted a more critical stance.

Furthermore, Zelenskyy accused Chinese officials of refusing to meet with him, stating, “many times we have wanted to meet Chinese representatives,” including Xi, but “unfortunately Ukraine does not have any powerful connections with China because China does not want it.” Ukraine has been trying to meet with Chinese officials for a long time, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, but has been repeatedly rebuffed. Even at the Shangri-La Dialogue, no meeting took place between Zelenskyy and Dong Jun, the Chinese defense minister.

These repeated snubs have likely contributed to Ukraine’s growing impatience and the decision to criticize China openly. As the war drags on and evidence of China’s multifaceted support for Russia mounts, Ukraine appears to be losing patience with Beijing’s duplicitous stance. It is adopting a more confrontational approach to pressure Beijing and draw international attention to its role in the conflict.

Official says no sign of permit in Ottoman archives, in blow to British Museum, which defends legal right to statuary

Archived link

Here is the report (pdf)

"Please Check”. More that 800 organisations, among which many media outlets have been flooded with emails and social media mentions urging them to verify dubious claims undermining Ukraine, France and Germany for the most part. The issue is that these solicitations are part of a massive pro-Russian operation, still ongoing at the time of writing.

The graffitis, videos or screenshots sent to newsrooms are fake and were fabricated for the purpose of diverting journalist’s ressources, or even try to have their narratives amplified by getting fact-checkers to publish debunks. Operation Overload, as we dubbed the action, is detailed in our latest report, led with the support of Reset.Tech and 20+ fact-checking entities, which shared content they had received.

This operation is remarkable for its scale, the elaborate tactics it employs and the quality of the fake content produced. We uncovered and traced coordinated action on Telegram and X to create artificial dissemination of fake content, as well as on a network of websites controlled by the perpetrators. This content amalgamation technique aims at creating a false sense of a wide online presence of fakes. The next step are the coordinated email campaigns, pointing fact-checkers and journalists at the manipulated images or videos through links to social media and the controlled websites.

This investigation was triggered by the publication of AFP and Antibot4Navalny’s coverage of the operation Martryoshka, reporting about a part of this campaign that unfolded on X. Matryoshka ended up to be only the tip of the iceberg. As Amaury L., CTO of CheckFirst, puts it: “Overload is ‘Matryoshka’ on steroids”. Indeed, the numbers are staggering. Our research shows that more than 800 organisations have been targeted by nearly 2400 tweets. 200+ targeted emails were sent to newsrooms across Europe and beyond. The undertaking achieved its goals in its first months, since we found 250+ articles of fact-checks or debunks mentioning the fake assets created for Operation Overload.

Operatives seek to create divisions between societies. Four countries are the main targets: France, Germany, Italy and Ukraine. The perpetrators time their efforts to coincide with major events, such as the Paris Olympics. The tactics employed clearly attempt to overload the global disinformation research and fact-checking community, causing experts to work extra hours to verify and debunk false content that has been created and distributed specifically to target them. As we show in the report, another stated goal is to attempt to use these professionals to amplify the operation’s false claims and reach a wider audience.

“The actors aim to introduce their narratives to European audiences using innovative methods. They target fact-checkers and media organisations, prompting them to publish debunks or news stories about these narratives. They create an alternate reality, claiming, for instance, that photos of fake graffiti are gaining viral traction on X, or featuring “a video published by DW” and appearing on “many websites,” when in truth, all such content is fabricated by the same actor.” - Guillaume Kuster Co-Founder of Check First

The investigation aims to dismantle the fake news environment created by the perpetrators. In this report, we focus on the emails used to target fact-checkers, researchers and newsrooms. We also examine the techniques used to create a false sense of omnipresence of this manipulated content online. The final part of the report analyses the impact of the campaign on the fact-checking community as a whole.

Young voters in key election battlegrounds are being recommended fake AI-generated videos featuring party leaders, misinformation, and clips littered with abusive comments, the BBC has found.

With TikTok emerging as a new social media battleground in this election, the political parties have begun a war of memes on the app in a bid to reach its audience of young voters.

But a BBC project to investigate the content promoted by social media algorithms has found - alongside funny montages - young people on TikTok are being exposed to misleading and divisive content. It is being shared by everyone from students and political activists to comedians and anonymous bot-like accounts.

Videos which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views have promoted unfounded rumours that a major scandal prompted Rishi Sunak to call an early election and the baseless claim that Sir Keir Starmer was responsible for the failure to prosecute serial paedophile Jimmy Savile.

Satirical, fake AI-generated clips show Rishi Sunak declaring, “Please don’t vote us out, we would be proper gutted!” and making unevidenced claims about how the Conservative leader is spending public money - including how he will send his “mates loads of dosh”.

Other AI-generated videos share misleading claims about his national service pledge for 18-year-olds, suggesting young people would be sent to current war zones in Ukraine and Gaza.

Some of these are described as satire or parody in captions, but the comments suggest some users are confused about which claims are factual.

TikTok told the BBC it had increased its investment in countering misinformation for the UK general election, including adding a fact-checking expert to existing resources and employing AI-labelling technology.

The videos were spotted as part of the BBC's Undercover Voters project, which has created profiles for 24 fictional people on all the major social media sites, based on data and analysis by the National Centre for Social Research (Natcen).

The fictional profiles represent a range of voters in battleground constituencies across the UK, giving an insight into what content is promoted to different types of people. The profiles are private, with no friends. They just like, follow and watch content relevant to their character traits informed by the Natcen research.

I examined the feeds of the profiles of three of these fictional voters in the former “red wall” constituency of Bishop Auckland, a target for Labour which is currently held by the Conservatives - and where our Undercover Voters are younger.

Their social media feeds revealed that, while other sites have also experienced a flurry of political content, TikTok had the most lively conversation, particularly among younger voters.

TikTok has boomed since the last election. According to media regulator Ofcom, it was the fastest-growing source of news in the UK for the second year in a row in 2023 - used by 10% of adults in this way. One in 10 teenagers say it is their most important news source.

TikTok is engaging a new generation in the democratic process. Whether you use the social media app or not, what is unfolding on its site could shape narratives about the election and its candidates - including in ways that may be unfounded.

Content promoted to Undercover Voter character Jack, a disaffected 31-year-old, include TikToks misrepresenting remarks made by Labour politicians in speech bubbles. These include comments about immigration, transgender rights, Brexit - and false claims that the shadow international development secretary called to “abolish the Army”.

Several other videos repeated the unfounded allegations about Sir Keir and Jimmy Savile.

Other videos Jack was served on his feed included clips with threats in the comments about “euthanizing” Rishi Sunak and racist remarks about him.

Messages such as “vote Reform UK” were shared repeatedly in the comments of many videos, much more than those I saw in support of any other party. TikTok users have begun to notice the comments, with many calling the posters “Reform bots”, suggesting they could be fake, automated accounts.

I contacted some of the commenters who had photos and names on their profiles, and they told me they were real people based in the UK with no official affiliation to Reform UK and with no encouragement or instruction from the party. But others were anonymous with no profile image and numerical usernames - common hallmarks of fake accounts - and they did not respond to my messages.

Whether they are real people or not, their comments can create the impression that their preferred party has greater support.

Another Undercover Voter character based in Bishop Auckland, 25-year-old Chloe, was created to have no prior interest in politics. But about one in 10 posts on her TikTok feed was a political meme or funny video, including official content coming from the Labour Party, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.

These include Rishi Sunak’s first TikTok on the Conservatives’ new account about national service, clarifying that he is not forcing all 18-year-olds to join the army.

They also include a video of Cilla Black singing Surprise Surprise from the official Labour profile - with a caption saying “POV: Rishi Sunak turning up on your 18th birthday to send you to war”.

A third Undercover Voter named Louise - in her 50s and politically undecided - was pushed more TikToks targeting political leaders with abusive comments, as well as satirical montages and parody videos about policy announcements such as national service.

I tracked down some of the people behind the videos and posts shown to our Undercover Voters.

One 16-year-old from the south of England, who made a satirical edit of that first Rishi Sunak TikTok about national service, said she was surprised how quickly her content took off.

“I didn’t specifically create this account for the election and the reason I made the TikTok initially was just for a joke - I didn’t expect to get over 400k bloody views,” she said, adding that she is not affiliated with any party and has not received any money for creating the TikTok.

“Social media really is the only platform for young people to have a voice nowadays in my opinion.”

She said she knows satirical content can be “controversial” and she understands how her video “could mislead people” but would hope people could tell it was supposed to be a bit of fun.

Alongside the video, some users had posted threatening comments towards Mr Sunak, but the 16-year-old said she did not think anyone would actually want to harm a politician.

Dozens of other users I messaged who are creating this content are also in their late teens or early 20s, and want to get involved in creating political videos to engage other people their age in the election.

They all tell me that while they may support a political party, they have not been paid for their posts and are not officially affiliated with any of the campaigns.

One politics student tells me they “don’t worry about misleading people because the parties mislead others with their opinions about other parties”.

Another person based in Coventry, who shares his videos about Reform UK, tells me he hopes to “boost their popularity in an unofficial way” and says he set up his account back in February. He say he is a member of the party and has not received any money for making his TikToks.

He is concerned that satirical content - including his own - might unintentionally mislead people on TikTok. His account was restricted by TikTok for posting spam.

A spokesperson for TikTok told the BBC that it had increased its investment “in efforts to ensure reliable information can be found on TikTok”, launching a “UK Election Centre with a fact-checking expert” and adopting an “industry-leading AI labelling technology”.

It also said it was introducing “more policies to aggressively counter foreign election interference” and that it removed 97% of videos with misinformation about elections and civic issues before anyone had viewed them.

Ciaran Martin said that the criminal group were "looking for money" by targeting the pathology services firm Synnovis.

Hospitals declared a critical incident on Tuesday after the ransomware attack, which affected blood transfusions and test results.

It also led to operations being cancelled and emergency patients being diverted elsewhere. 'Serious type of ransomware'

King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ - including the Royal Brompton and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital - and primary care services are among those affected.

Mr Martin told the programme: "We believe it is a Russian group of cyber criminals who call themselves Qilin."

He said the group, which operates on the dark web, operated "freely from within Russia".

The cyber security expert explained that the group had previously attacked automotive companies, Australian courts, and the Big Issue in the UK.

He said: "They're simply looking for money," but said the British government had a policy of not paying ransoms.

He told the BBC that the criminal group were "unlikely" to have known they would cause healthcare disruption when they organised the attack.

He added: "There are two types of ransomware attack. One is when they steal a load of data and they try and extort you into paying so that isn't released, but this case is different.

"It's the more serious type of ransomware where the system just doesn't work."

Mr Martin said the attack was "one of the more serious that we've seen in this country".

When asked about patient data, he said: "It's not really a question of data in this one, it's a question of the services.

"The criminals are threatening to publish data, but they always do that. Here, the priority is the restoration of services." "Disruption continues"

As of Wednesday evening, the NHS was reporting that disruption continued to affect services at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and primary care providers in south-east London.

An NHS London spokesperson said: “All urgent and emergency services remain open as usual and the majority of outpatient services continue to operate as normal.

“Unfortunately, some operations and procedures which rely more heavily on pathology services have been postponed, and blood testing is being prioritised for the most urgent cases, meaning some patients have had phlebotomy appointments cancelled."

NHS London added: “We are sorry to all patients impacted."

Patients are advised to access services in the normal way by dialling 999 in an emergency and otherwise using NHS 111.

NHS London said patients should continue to attend appointments unless they were told otherwise.

It said it had launched a "cyber incident response team" and that staff were working "around the clock" to minimise disruption.

One patient told BBC London that he was just moments from receiving a heart operation when the hospital cancelled the procedure due to the cyber attack.

Oliver Dowson said the surgeon explained "there was an issue with the blood bank".

He said: "When you've been sitting there since the crack of dawn in a smock waiting to have open-heart surgery, however calm I tried to feel, you still get a bit nervous."

He said he was "upset and angry" about his procedure being rescheduled to next week.

Synnovis, which provides pathology services for the NHS, opened new laboratories in Southwark in April.

The company says it currently processes about 100,000 blood tests a day and serves about two million patients.

Synnovis said it was unable to comment further on the cyber attack.

Polls opened in the Netherlands on Thursday to kick off four days of voting in European Union parliamentary elections across the 27 member states that are expected to deliver gains for the hard right.

Euro-area finance ministers gave political backing Wednesday to an effort by Group of Seven nations to provide loans to Ukraine using windfall profits generated from immobilized Russian central bank assets.

“The discussion among ministers showed appreciation for the constructive engagement with G-7 partners in this regard and full support for it to continue,” Eurogroup president Paschal Donohoe said in a statement following a video conference meeting of finance ministers.

The meeting was called to explore options on how to front-load financial aid to Ukraine by providing loans based on the profits derived from immobilized Russian central bank assets. The discussion came after G-7 finance ministers last month pushed ahead with the plan, aimed at harnessing as much as $50 billion to help Ukraine’s war effort. They agreed to present options to G-7 leaders ahead of next week’s summit in Italy.

G-7 countries have immobilized about $280 billion of Russian central bank assets in response to President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with the majority held in Europe through the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear.

Euro-area ministers were positive about the process but emphasized the need of risk-sharing between the EU and the US, according to people familiar with the discussion.

During Wednesday’s meeting, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde signaled that using future interest revenues derived from the immobilized assets doesn’t represent a risk to the euro, the people added, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.

One option being considered is a US-led proposal where the US — and possibly other G-7 countries — would provide a loan to Ukraine that would be repaid by the windfall profits generated by the immobilized assets in the EU, in addition to other G-7 partners’ contributions.

But the plan relies on receiving assurances from the EU that Russia’s assets would remain frozen until Russia has agreed to pay reparations and that the windfall profits would be available for the repayment of the loan.

Currently, the EU needs to renew its Russia sanctions every six months, including the immobilization of its central bank assets, a step that requires unanimous approval by the bloc’s 27 member states. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become a hurdle in clearing recent rounds of sanctions against Moscow, as well as in approving financial and military aid for Kyiv.

One alternative under consideration is that each G-7 country or partner would use the immobilized Russian assets in their jurisdictions.

“This would mean rather than using windfall profits generated on assets immobilized in the EU to repay loans from the United States (or other G-7 members), those windfall profits would be used to finance the principal and interest for a loan to Ukraine supported by the EU budget,” said a document prepared for the Eurogroup discussion.

But this option would be complex because the 27 member states would need to unanimously agree to use the EU budget as a guarantee beyond 2025.

Another option considered by the Europeans was to circumvent the obligation of the six-month renewal of the sanctions by “enacting a specific regime concerning Russian Central bank assets framing the regular review clause with objective criteria,” the document said.

These objective criteria would be the end of Russian aggression, a peace agreement and an agreement on war reparations, but that change would also require unanimity.

Archived link

France, Germany and Poland have become “permanent” targets for Russian disinformation attacks in the run-up to European Parliament elections this week, a senior EU official said Tuesday (4 June).

The European Union has repeatedly warned heading towards the 6-9 June vote that Russia would ramp up disinformation campaigns in the 27-country bloc.

“There are three big countries under permanent attack (from Russia). And it’s France, it’s Germany, and it’s Poland,” said EU commissioner Věra Jourová, pointing to work by the European Digital Media Observatory, of which AFP is part.

There are “more massive disinformation attacks on specific topics”, said Jourová, the commissioner for values and transparency. For example, in France they are focused on this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.

In Germany, she said, they exploit concerns over migration and security, while in Poland, a narrative has appeared online that Ukrainian refugees are a “burden”.

She pointed to a false story on the Polish state news agency last week stating that Poles would be mobilised to fight in Ukraine, which authorities said was likely a Russian cyberattack.

"Russian propaganda is done with… very good knowledge of which country has some sensitivities, which country can absorb better the narratives,” Jourová said.

The propaganda was also spread through the Telegram messaging app in countries such as Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Baltic states, she said.

Telegram does not have to comply with the strictest rules for “very large” platforms with at least 45 million monthly active users under the EU’s landmark content moderation law, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

“Telegram is not under our competence yet, but we are now counting the users of Telegram because they announced to us that (they) have 42 million users,” she said.

‘Maximum vigilance’

Jourová was speaking to journalists in Brussels after a visit to the United States to meet with executives of the world’s biggest tech companies, including X and YouTube.

She said she urged “maximum vigilance in these last days”, warning the risk remained.

She said she also reminded the companies of their stringent obligations under the DSA.

Jourová’s comments come a day after similar findings by Microsoft in a new report.

The US tech giant’s Threat Analysis Center said Russia was waging an intense disinformation campaign aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the International Olympic Committee and stoking fears of violence at the Games.

Microsoft President Brad Smith, who was in Brussels to meet EU officials including Jourová, echoed her concerns about Russian influence operations.

“The number one abusive AI case that people are worried about is the risk of deepfakes influencing elections, especially deepfakes that come from foreign governments,” Smith said,

“And we’ve definitely seen the Russian government investing in that capability.”

European Union finance ministers will hold a videoconference on Wednesday on a G7 proposal to leverage Russian central bank assets immobilised in the West to allow Kyiv swiftly to receive a loan of around $50 billion, senior euro zone officials said.

The size of the loan has not yet been agreed in the EU, the officials said, but the $50 billion was mentioned by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as a possible amount after a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers on 23-25 May in Italy.

The idea is that the money for Ukraine, struggling to buy weapons to fend off the Russian invasion, would be raised through a bond that could be backed by annual windfall profits generated by the $300 billion of Russian central bank assets frozen in the West after Moscow's attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

European officials have said that, while seizing the capital of the assets would be legally very risky, using the profits generated by the frozen capital is fine because the profits do not legally belong to Moscow.

"There is a lot of uncertainty about the potential modalities, but the key issue on the table is whether the EU would be open to some sort of concessional loan to Ukraine, based on future revenue stream from the frozen Russian assets," one senior euro zone official said.

European governments have already agreed to transfer profits of 2.5 to 3 billion euros ($2.7-3.3 billion) per year generated by the Russian assets to a special fund that would finance the purchase of weapons and also reconstruction of Ukraine.

If the EU were to agree to using the profits as a leveraging tool to get more money up front, as proposed by the United States, it would have to amend its decision to spend the cash on weapons and reconstruction.

"In practice, that would mean changing for 2025 and beyond the recently adopted decision on windfall profits in EU. There would also be potential changes to the EU sanctions regime when it comes to the assets," the senior euro zone official said.

Officials said that another open issue was who would issue the bonds to raise the money: should it be the United States and other G7 countries, or should be it be the EU, which has holds by far the biggest amount of the immobilized assets.

For the EU to agree to issue the bonds, either alone or as part of a G7 consortium, would likely open a tricky question of joint responsibility for the debt, something that some, like Germany, normally strongly oppose.

"I do not expect any concrete outcome after the video-teleconference. I see it more like a check of temperature before next week's G7 leaders' summit," the senior official said.

Leaders of the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy - the G7 - are set to meet in Italy on June 13-15 and the issue of the Russian assets is on their agenda.

Slovenia recognised a Palestinian state on Tuesday after its parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the move, following in the recent steps of three other European countries.

Slovenia’s government endorsed a motion last week to recognise a Palestinian state, and had sent the proposal to parliament for final approval, which was needed for the decision to take effect.

The parliament voted 52 in favour of recognition, with no opposing votes out of the 90-seat assembly. The remaining lawmakers abstained from the vote.

Leaked internal documents have exposed the activities of a Russian state-backed legal defence foundation that European intelligence agencies and analysts say is in fact a Kremlin influence operation active in 48 countries across Europe and around the world.

Internal documents from the Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond) indicate that the foundation finances propaganda websites targeted at Europeans, helped pay for the legal defence of the convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout and the assassin Vadim Krasikov, and has employed a number of former intelligence officers as the directors of its operations in European countries.

The documents show that the group has spent millions of euros to finance propaganda and legal campaigns. Public data also shows that Pravfond’s local partners have received millions in state subsidies from a number of the European states where the foundation operates local branches, raising questions about the use of public funds and national security concerns just days before elections to the European parliament.

More than 40 Pravfond documents, obtained by the Danish public broadcaster DR from a European intelligence source and shared with a consortium of European journalists including the Guardian, show that the organisation has had a number of documented former intelligence agents among its leadership. They include Vladimir Pozdorovkin, who has been identified by European intelligence sources as an agent for the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, and in public records as Pravfond’s curator for its operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries; and Anatoly Sorokin, who the documents show is a member of the SVR and curates Pravfond’s Middle East, Moldova, and Transnistria division.

The head of the Institute of the Russian Diaspora, which is listed on official documents as Pravfond’s “project implementer”, is Sergey Panteleyev, who has been subject to sanctions in EU countries as a member of a Russian military intelligence unit that specialises in psychological-warfare operations.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian intelligence services and co-author of The Compatriots, said Pravfond appeared to be a “classic soft-power effort” and that the ties between intelligence and compatriot organisations were “well documented”. He noted that Andrey Milyutin, the deputy head of the department of operative information of the fifth service of Russia’s security agency, the FSB, was a member of the government’s committee on “compatriots living abroad”, indicating the link between intelligence activity and outreach to the Russian diaspora.

In a 2020 national security report, the Estonian security services called Pravfond a “pseudo legal protection system” that “in reality is an influence operations fund”, and they have said the FSB uses the groups to recruit collaborators abroad, including among supporters of the 2014 annexation of Crimea, many of whom had ties to the group.

Pravfond was founded in 2012 by presidential decree and was backed by the Russian ministry of foreign affairs and the federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which administers foreign aid and has been described by the head of Pravfond, Alexander Udaltsov, as a “unique element of Russian soft power”. Udaltsov has been subject to sanctions by the European Union since 2023 for “supporting and implementing actions and policies which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”.

Pravfond did not reply to questions sent by the Guardian and by its reporting partners in the week before this publication, although some of the recipients of its local grants did.

The documents show that Pravfond sponsored the legal defence of Krasikov, an alleged FSB agent who was given a life sentence for the murder of the former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten in 2019. The documents indicate that the lawyer Robert Unger received €60,000 in legal fees paid out by Pravfond’s budget in 2021 as approved by Udaltsov. A European intelligence source said it possessed documents showing that Unger had received a larger sum of money for representing Krasikov in previous sessions, but could not provide documentation.

Asked about the payments, Unger confirmed he had received a request from the journalist consortium but said his mandate for Krasikov ended in 2021 after the life sentence and that because he was “still subject to legal professional confidentiality even after the end of the mandate and have not been released from it, I am unfortunately prevented from answering your questions”.

A Pravfond budget document from 2014 also showed that the organisation had provided significant sums to fund the legal defences of Bout and the convicted drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, both of whom later returned to Russia as part of prisoner exchanges negotiated between Moscow and Washington.

The documents also indicated that Pravfond had spent hundreds of thousands of euros to maintain several websites that purported to fight against “Russophobia” and promote the “defence of the Russian language” in Europe. It has also funnelled money to a number of fringe publications throughout Europe.

Documents obtained by the consortium showed that Pravfond funded the activities of golos.eu, an online portal that operates out of a post-office box in Brussels and mainly provides a vehicle for commentators to voice criticism of the Ukrainian government, particularly the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and his top aides and military advisers.

Reached for comment by the Guardian, the Golos deputy editor Yuri Andriychenko denied that the site received money from Pravfond or had any links to the Russian state. He suggested that someone else had applied for grant funding using the site’s name, writing: “We are not surprised that someone in Russia is trying to make money on our name, because it is much easier than creating your own project.”

According to the internal documents, Pravfond also funds the activities of Euromore, another online portal that focuses heavily on purported threats to Russians in Europe. Euromore was “designed to take into account the closure of international platforms” such as RT and Sputnik by the EU authorities and “create its own significant alternative”, the documents said. Those sites were largely blacklisted in the west after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Archived link

Wildly popular social network TikTok approved adverts containing political disinformation ahead of European polls, a report showed Tuesday (4 June), flouting its own guidelines and raising questions about its ability to detect election falsehoods.

"TikTok has failed miserably in this test,” said Henry Peck, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, the organization that cobducted the study.

The fake ads, submitted by the group last month, all contained content that could pose a risk to electoral processes — including warnings to voters to stay home over a danger of poll violence and a spike in contagious diseases.

They also included a fake notice raising the legal voting age to 21 and appeals for people to vote by email, which is not permitted in European elections.

Citing an internal investigation, the Chinese ByteDance-owned app said its systems correctly identified the breach, but the ads were approved due to “human error” by a moderator.