Moldovan election observer tells RT she was ‘openly threatened’ at polling station in EU nation
RT | October 21, 2024
An observer at a Moldovan presidential election polling station in the central Italian city of Perugia has told RT she faced threats from the local election committee.
On Sunday, Moldovans at home and abroad voted for their new leader in an election that also involved a referendum on whether to include the nation’s EU aspirations in its constitution.
The observer, Larisa Brunescu, told RT by phone that election officials had allowed her into the polling station, but wanted to force her out once she tried to film what was going on inside.
“They told me I should not send any videos, [record] conversations, [send] figures, nothing,” Brunescu, who represents the Renaissance Party of former Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev, said.
According to Brunescu, at one point, she was told that the documents allowing her to be an observer were “not OK” and that she should leave.
The committee claimed her documents were not “filled out properly,” Brunescu said, which she denied. Election officials “were openly threatening” her, she added.
According to Brunescu, the committee also tried to prevent her from taking photos, and insisted that she could only report figures which they would provide. The officials looked at her “like dogs,” she added.
The actions of the committee members “speak of some serious irregularities,” Brunescu believes. She claimed that she counted fewer than 1,000 voters at the polling station, though the committee had “4,000 ballots.”
“They can rig the ballots,” she added, while acknowledging that she did not see the committee actually doing so.
Earlier on Sunday, Moldova’s opposition Victory alliance accused the authorities of allowing massive violations at the polling stations, claiming that hundreds of irregularities were reported during the first half of the day. The political bloc also stated that observers were outright banned from accessing some polling stations both at home and abroad “without any valid reasons.” Victory also accused the authorities of suppressing votes that it deemed undesirable.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu was seeking a second term, running against Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general, and Renato Usatii, a former mayor of Moldova’s second largest city, Balti, with seven other candidates also running.
Five out of ten candidates criticized the referendum, arguing that it was held only to ensure Sandu’s reelection. On Sunday evening, it was reported that most voters rejected the pro-EU constitutional changes.
Moldova has been actively pushing for EU and NATO membership since 2020, when Sandu, a critic of Russia and supporter of EU integration, came to power. The opposition has criticized the president for failing to resolve the economic and energy crisis in the country, which is among the poorest in Europe.
Moldova reports dramatic late turnaround in referendum on EU
RT | October 21, 2024
A knife-edge majority of Moldovans have approved incumbent pro-Western President Maia Sandu’s EU accession plans, election officials said on Monday, following an almost complete count of a ballot on the issue.
According to Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission, with 99.5% of the ballots counted, 50.4% of voters backed Sandu’s plan to enshrine integration with the EU in the former Soviet country’s constitution, while 49.6% voted against the step.
The tally came as something of a surprise, given that preliminary results issued late on Sunday had indicated that a slight majority of voters were against the move. According to media reports, the ‘yes’ camp received a last-minute push from ballots cast by Moldovans living abroad, which were counted towards the end.
The ‘yes’ vote means Moldova’s constitution will be supplemented with two new paragraphs. One will state that the identity of the Moldovans will be changed to ‘Europeans’, while the second will name integration into the EU as a strategic goal of the country.
A total of over 1.5 million people, or more than 51% of the electorate, cast their votes in Sunday’s referendum, well above the one-third required for the ballot to be considered valid.
While the referendum has revealed a nearly 50-50 split among Moldovans over EU integration, it is expected that Sandu, who is seeking a second term in office, will press ahead with the plan if reelected.
In a simultaneous presidential election held on Sunday, the incumbent leader failed to secure an absolute majority of 50% plus one vote. Sandu is now set to face off with former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, leader of the Party of Socialists (PSRM), in a runoff scheduled for November 3. The two garnered 41.9% and 26.3% of the vote respectively in the first round.
Earlier on Monday, Sandu challenged Stoianoglo to a debate, saying that the two should present their ideas on the country’s future to the public and let Moldovans decide which path to take. Stoianoglo has accepted the challenge, but suggested the debate be held on a “neutral platform,” not those of “government-dependent media.” Sandu has been repeatedly criticized for the reported closure of news outlets that are not pro-Western, as well as for allegedly targeting opposition figures and those who do not support her EU drive.
Moldova rejects EU integration in referendum
RT | October 20, 2024
Voters in Moldova have rejected the government-backed proposal to enshrine eventual integration with the EU in the former Soviet country’s constitution.
During Sunday’s referendum, held simultaneously with a presidential election, voters were asked whether the constitution should be amended to reflect the “irreversible European course” of the country and affirm the “integration into the European Union as a strategic objective” of the nation.
With more than 86% of the ballots counted, 54.55% voted against the proposal, while 45.45% voted in favor, according to the preliminary results cited by the news channel TVR.
The highly contentious presidential election is likely heading to a second-round runoff, as no candidate has succeeded in winning 50% of the votes.
With more than 85% of the ballots counted, the pro-EU incumbent president, Maia Sandu, is leading with 37.08%. Former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, the leader of the Party of Socialists (PSRM), is second with 29.1%.
The high-stakes election was marred by the accusations of rigging and voter manipulation from the government and the opposition alike.
The opposition alliance ‘Victory’ accused the authorities of allowing irregularities, ranging from organized busing of voters to polling stations to allegations of voter intimidation.
Chisinau, meanwhile, has accused Russia of attempting to influence the outcome of the election and has shut down several TV channels critical to the government. “Moldova has come under an unprecedented attack. Criminal groups, united with foreign powers, have attacked our country with lies and propaganda,” Sandu said during a press conference shortly after the preliminary results were announced. She claimed to have “evidence and information that a criminal group had attempted to buy 300,000 votes.”
The election, widely seen as pivotal to Moldova’s aspirations to join the EU, were dominated by the issues of corruption and low living standards, as well security concerns stemming from the ongoing fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
Lights out for the city on the hill

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 20, 2024
Throughout the decades of the Cold War, whilst the blocs were competing, two major attractions worked powerfully to the advantage of the West. Firstly, the comfort and prosperity that it was able to provide to its citizens, which its Eastern rivals could hardly match. The second feature that in the eyes of the world gave the West a huge competitive edge was the comparatively better performance of its institutions with regard to individual liberties.
The twin advantages of prosperity and the impression that the West valued freedom successfully neutralised much of the theoretical critique of the capitalist social and economic model. In particular, the West’s ostensible commitment to personal liberties acted as a powerful magnet. As a political weapon it served its purpose effectively. It is indisputable that so long as scrupulous adherence to the rule of law and respect for individual rights were seen as the distinguishing characteristic of Western societies they were widely perceived as a desirable alternative to the competing systems, which often disregarded strict legality and did little to diminish arbitrariness.
This is the state of affairs that prevailed until roughly the 1990s, when the Western bloc finally reached the pinnacle of its global might and was widely perceived as triumphant over its adversaries. But ever since the social gains which had made the lives of common people relatively comfortable and safe, and society cohesive across class lines, are being dismantled throughout the Western world. The sense of legal security that for decades citizens of Western countries unquestionably enjoyed proved equally evanescent. The phenomena of lawless abuse and vulnerability to the powers that be, normal elsewhere but long extirpated from the practice of Western societies and largely faded from the memory of their citizens, have reappeared with a vengeance. On both the domestic and international levels, the “rule of law” rapidly morphed into its unrecognisable caricature. That metamorphosis ultimately became jokingly known as the “rules based order.”
With scant internal opposition or even much public awareness, the core countries of the collective West became infected with the contagion of arbitrariness in the interpretation of inherent human rights and application of legal principles erected to protect them. The transformation, which in historical terms took place with lightning speed, was spearheaded by a ruthless and duplicitous political cabal and was implemented with the connivance of a judiciary which was utterly corrupt and shamefully impotent.
The breakdown of legality is generally a precursor of worse things to come, which almost invariably takes the form of increasingly egregious abuse of power. The point can be illustrated with disturbing but by no means isolated examples of the emerging state of affairs in the countries of the collective West that used to be envied for their freedom. Readers will recall the famous line, “they hate us for our freedom.” The utterance in 2001 of that false assertion whilst doing nothing to advance the cause of freedom did introduce an orgy of destruction and mass slaughter.
The most striking representation of the breakdown of the legal order can be cited today is the illegal kidnapping and incarceration by the German judicial system of German-American lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, under fabricated embezzlement charges. There are many solid reasons for deep state cabal’s virulent hatred of Dr. Fuellmich. He was the spoiler who in 2020 had the temerity to found the Covid pandemic research committee, just as the social control experiment was gaining momentum. The committee’s outstanding work in uncovering the sordid motives and homicidal objectives of the orchestrators of the bogus medical emergency was a major blow to them, especially because it was delivered successfully under conditions of nearly total informational blockade. Dr. Fuellmich’s ultimate, and perhaps overambitious and naively conceived goal of a medical Nurenberg to bring the culprits to justice was never achieved but the very thought of it must have caused nightmares to those he intended to be prosecuted.
“This agenda has been long planned,” Dr. Fuellmich summarised his Committee’s findings. “It’s ultimately unsuccessful precursor was the swine flu some 12 years ago, and it is cooked up by a group of super-rich psychopathic and sociopathic people who hate and fear people at the same time, have no empathy, and are driven by the desire to gain full control over all of us, the people of the world.”
The time came for the psychopaths to seek their sweet revenge, and the operation was not exceedingly difficult because they happen to control the mechanisms of power. Eleven months ago Dr. Fuellmich was imprisoned in Germany on the false allegation of a colleague who had been infiltrated into the Covid Committee that he misused the organisation’s assets for personal benefit. A charge that under German law is a misdemeanour and for which there is no precedent of lengthy pre-trial imprisonment resulted in incarceration that has now lasted for over 400 days under Abu Ghraib conditions, except that it is in Germany and not in Iraq. For a shocking portrayal of those detention conditions, see here. And see here for the disgraceful procedural deficiencies of the trial itself, which is currently in progress, stained by practices incompatible with the image of Rechtsstaat, that Germany along with the collective West regimes associated with it are misleadingly cultivating.
The lawless persecution of Dr. Fuellmich for the “offence” of performing a remarkable public service by uncovering and documenting the fraudulent nature and sinister background of the Covid “pandemic” is, however, but the tip of the iceberg in the collapse of the rule of law in the societies that portray themselves as its champions. Additional examples illustrate the breakdown and flesh out the picture of the legal disarray which undercuts the elementary freedoms of citizens and renders them defenceless before the demands of unaccountable Power.
In Ireland, the entire Burke family of Christian believers who refuse to bend their knee to the dictates of gender ideology is being targeted for vindictive persecution. One of the sons, Enoch, who is a school teacher, has so far spent over 400 days in solitary confinement, like Dr. Fuellmich in Germany. His “offence” is that in formerly Christian and Catholic Ireland he refuses to use the pronoun preferred by one of his students who claims other than his biological gender, because Burke holds that acquiescence to the gender identity charade would be a violation of his religious principles. Enoch Burke is being punished for refusing to debase himself as a professional educator and as a free human being by falsely confessing under the duress of his persecutors that 2 + 2 = 5. Nothing short of such a recantation of his conscientiously held beliefs would satisfy his country’s legal and educational overseers, who have gone berserk. He therefore remains in an Irish prison, despite being assured of instant release if only he manifested submission to their lunatic demand. For an insight into the broad official scope of that lunacy, see here.
Enoch’s brother Simeon, who has completed his law studies with honours, is being excluded from admission to the Irish Bar for reasons that have not yet been revealed with full clarity but which appear to also be related to his firmly held religious world-view, identical to his brother’s, which in contemporary Ireland apparently disqualifies one from working in a professional setting. For good measure, Enoch and Simeon’s father, Enoch Burke Sr., has been punished for objecting to LGBT symbols on Irish postal vehicles. For his temerity, taxpayer Burke was informed that henceforth he may come to the local post office to pick up his mail, but that it will no longer be delivered to him.
As in the Fuellmich case, the collective and exemplary punishment meted out to the Burke family is being kept out of the public eye as much as possible. Political and even religious figures refuse to take a stand or comment on it, and the controlled media studiously avoid discussing the subject.
Not to round off this complex picture of civilizational decline but merely to supplement it with another unsettling detail, the institution of thought crime portrayed in George Orwell’s novel, once considered no more than literary fiction, appears now to be enshrined in British law. For the present it appears to be a pilot programme, perhaps a precursor of even more frightening things to come. It operates as a prohibition of prayer within a designated exclusion perimeter around abortion “clinics” in Great Britain. The incriminating prayer would presumably be for the souls of children that departed this world due to the medical attention that they received in those establishments. The private performance of such unauthorised religious offices is now prohibited as it may cause “harassment and distress” to the employees of the “clinics” and their clients. And ominously, according to the Home Office, “anyone found guilty of breaking the law will face an unlimited fine.” One wonders if the European Court of Human Rights would have anything to say about such open-ended punishment schemes. Was anything of the sort ever before recorded in the annals of civilised jurisprudence?
Interaction between the thought police, who of course are merely “following orders,” and citizens suspected of mentally violating the “law” may be watched here by all who cherish their liberty and human integrity.
Wretched British jurisprudence (sceptics should also see here) now boasts its first successful prosecution of a thought crime violator. British Army veteran Adam Smith-Connor was recently found guilty of silently praying for his aborted son inside an abortion “clinic” buffer zone, was sentenced conditionally to two years in prison, and fined £9000 in costs for His Majesty’s court’s expense and trouble in prosecuting him. The courts still are not imposing “unlimited fines,” as the Home Office recommends, but for a retired person who must support a family arguably even that is a considerable sum.
Smith-Connor, be it noted, is far from the only victim of abortion-related thought crime harassment in the United Kingdom.
And also for the record, the theme here is not one’s personal position on Covid, transgenderism, or abortion. The central issue in every one of the cited instances, and others of a similar nature too numerous to mention, is the evident crumbling in the collective West of the legal order. That now makes it possible to impose on peaceful citizens draconian punishments wholly disproportionate to the alleged conduct they are being accused of. To what limits will the severity of punishment extend, or is it potentially as “unlimited” as the threat of monetary assessment the British Home Office is prepared to impose on those undertaking to silently pray in public for unborn babies?
The famed “City on the Hill” that many had been tricked into believing was illuminating mankind from on high is now forlorn and largely deserted. Its lights are getting progressively dimmer, life in it increasingly intolerable. Its deceived inhabitants and ardent admirers are dispersing in every direction. Word is out that a new City of great luminosity and magnetic attraction is being erected elsewhere, and that its architects will soon meet, in Kazan.
US, Canada and European countries suppressing Pro-Palestine protests: UN rapporteur

Palestinian Information Center – October 19, 2024
NEW YORK – The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has accused the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Belgium of suppressing the right to protest in support of the Palestinian cause. She also condemned Israeli authorities for carrying out dangerous attacks on media personnel in Palestinian territories, criticizing the assassination of journalists.
In a report submitted to the UN General Assembly and the press on Friday, the special rapporteur, Irene Khan—an “independent” expert with the UN since 2020—accused several European countries of imposing measures to restrict freedom of expression and suppress protests against the massacre in Gaza, as well as banning pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Khan, a Bangladeshi lawyer working in human rights, referred to “demonstrations at universities in the United States that were violently suppressed,” mentioning the intervention of riot police in New York at the end of April to disperse dozens of pro-Palestinian activists occupying part of Columbia University.
Regarding European countries, Khan specifically mentioned “Germany, which has imposed a complete ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations since October of last year, along with restrictions on such protests in various regions of Germany since then.” She added that these restrictions have never been imposed on demonstrations in support of Israel, but always on those supporting Palestinians.
She continued that “France attempted to take similar measures, but the courts rejected them, and evaluations are now made on a case-by-case basis,” noting that “Belgium and Canada have adopted similar stances.”
At the beginning of the Israeli extermination war on Gaza over a year ago, the French Interior Ministry called for a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations for fear of public disorder. However, the Council of State, the highest administrative court, urged the French government to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Khan also criticized Israel for “assaults on media in the occupied Palestinian territories—Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem—targeted assassinations of journalists, arbitrary arrests, and numerous cases of destruction of infrastructure and journalistic equipment in Gaza, as well as refusing to allow international press access.”
The independent rapporteur concluded that “the tightening of censorship in Israel and the occupied territories indicates that Israeli authorities have a strategy to silence critical journalism.”
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation, with unlimited American support, has been waging an extermination war on Gaza, resulting in over 142,000 dead and injured, the majority of whom are women and children, 10,000 missing, massive destruction of infrastructure, and a deadly famine.
US to pay $20 billion into loan for Ukraine – FT
RT | October 19, 2024
The US is set to provide up to $20 billion to Ukraine as part of a G7 loan, which will then be repaid using proceeds generated by the Russian assets immobilized by the West as part of Ukraine-related sanctions, Financial Times has reported, citing sources.
Kiev’s backers have been trying to accelerate negotiations over the loan in an effort to secure funding to Ukraine before the end of the year, due to mounting concern that Washington’s aid to the country could be cut off if Donald Trump wins the upcoming US election, FT noted, in an article posted on Friday. The former US president has repeatedly threatened to scale back assistance to Kiev if he were elected.
The US and its allies have frozen an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian state after the Ukraine conflict broke out in 2022. The bulk of the money, nearly €197 billion ($214 billion) is being held by Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear. The immobilized funds have generated €3.4 billion ($3.7 billion) in interest as of mid-July, according to the depository.
Moscow has denounced the freeze as “theft” and said that any seizure of its funds would be against the law and would further undermine global trust in the Western financial system.
In June, G7 members agreed to grant Kiev a $50 billion loan to be financed by interest from the frozen Russian assets. The US and the EU were initially expected to provide $20 billion each as Canada, Japan and the UK were set to jointly lend the rest of the massive loan.
Later, to reassure allies that the bloc’s sanctions regime on the funds is not lifted, Brussels proposed a three-year extension of the EU’s mandate to freeze Russian assets. EU lawmakers have been renewing their sanctions every six months by unanimous decision, meaning that each vote may bring about a break in restrictions. Hungary opposed the proposal, and announced plans to postpone the decision until the US presidential elections on November 5.
Last week, the EU approved its own contribution of up to €35 billion to the G7 loan, but the bloc would need to contribute less if Washington provided the full $20 billion, Reuters reported last week. The funds, which will be managed by the World Bank, will be used for several purposes, including defense or humanitarian needs.
US senior officials, however, told FT that Washington would provide the full agreed $20 billion, even if the EU failed to convince Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban to drop his veto on extending EU sanctions, which had previously been voiced among the US demands. According to two sources cited by the paper, G7 finance ministers will make a statement on the distribution and structure of the loan on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank meetings on October 25.
Orban Says Will Call on French, German Leaders at EU Summit to Start Talks With Russia

Sputnik – 17.10.2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday that he will call on the leaders of France and Germany at the EU summit to start negotiations with Russia on behalf of the EU to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.
Earlier Volodymyr Zelensky unveiled the so-called “victory plan” which was slammed by Russian officials as repetition of US strategy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
“Today I will call on the German chancellor and the French president to start negotiations with Russia as soon as possible on behalf of the entire European Union, so that we can find a way out of this situation [the conflict in Ukraine],” Orban wrote on social media.
The prime minister also said that the “victory plan” of Volodymyr Zelensky “gives shivers” and the EU should change its strategy and start a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.
Viktor Orban repeatedly stressed that Ukraine had no realistic chance to defeat Russian and urged for immediate peace talks that will take into account Moscow’s stance and Moscow’s security concerns.
Pathetic Europeans green-light Israel to continue war crimes
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 15, 2024
It’s almost hilarious if it wasn’t so damnable. The Israeli regime is attacking United Nations peacekeepers and all the pathetic European governments can muster is a mealy-mouthed plea “that these attacks must stop immediately.”
Some 15 members of the UN’s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been injured so far after the Orwellian-named Israeli Defense Forces attacked their bases. There are credible reports of IDF tanks deliberately crashing into a UNIFIL base, a watchtower being blown up by Israeli artillery, and chemical weapons fired at peacekeepers.
UNIFIL is deployed in Southern Lebanon under a United Nations Security Council resolution to uphold a peace deal brokered after the 2006 war with Israel. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last month and the ongoing bombardment of the entire country is a gross violation of the UNSC resolution 1701.
Troops from 16 European nations participate in the UNIFIL peacekeeping operation, with France, Italy, and Spain providing the largest contingencies.
The European Union issued a statement: “The EU condemns all attacks against UN missions. It expresses particularly grave concern regarding the attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which left several peacekeepers wounded. Such attacks against UN peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law and are totally unacceptable.”
It added: “We are also deeply concerned by Hezbollah’s continued launch of rockets into Israel that has to stop, and by IDF strikes in densely populated areas of Lebanon, causing a heavy toll on civilians and the displacement of many. We urge all parties to respect International Humanitarian Law, in all circumstances.”
Note how the European governments sneakily hedge and qualify the condemnation of the Israeli regime and insinuate that Hezbollah is also involved in “all attacks against UN missions.”
The European response to Israeli attacks on its UN troops is pathetically craven. The empty bluster about “grave concern” is nothing but a green light for Israel to continue its war crimes.
Ironically, the European NATO armchair generals like to invoke the “appeasement” argument when they talk about how important it is to stand up to Russia over Ukraine. That argument is completely baseless in the case of Russia and Ukraine. However, it is entirely appropriate regarding Israel and genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, where the Europeans are the most contemptible appeasers.
In the same week that the Israeli regime attacked UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon, it blew up a UN-run school for refugees in Gaza killing dozens, and it incinerated women and children sheltering in tents outside a UN-supported hospital.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza, now extended to Lebanon, has absolute contempt for the UN and international law. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has even been declared persona non grata by the Israeli regime.
Israel’s psychopathic prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has the gall to tell the UN to get its peacekeepers out of Southern Lebanon, “out of harm’s way.” With twisted logic, he claims that Hezbollah is using the UNIFIL troops as “human shields.” This is the same perverse logic that Netanyahu’s fascist regime has used to justify the murder of over 42,000 Palestinians who were described as human shields for Hamas.
As a sign of protest, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has urged the European Union to suspend a free trade agreement with Israel. Sanchez’s call will be ignored. Just like French president Emmanuel Macron’s call to halt weapons exports to Israel was ignored.
Meanwhile, this week, the European Union imposed trade sanctions on Iran over dubious allegations that it has supplied ballistic missiles and drones to Russia for the conflict in Ukraine. Iran and Russia have strenuously denied the allegation. But the EU has no hesitation in imposing the sanctions.
EU’s ‘arm-twisting’ making Serbia turn to BRICS – Kremlin
RT | October 16, 2024
BRICS is a more welcoming and member-oriented group than the European Union, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, commenting on the possibility that Serbia could seek to join the economic bloc.
His comments came after Belgrade said that instead of EU membership, it would explore the option of joining BRICS, which is currently chaired by Russia.
“Serbia has been having its arm twisted. They [the EU] always lay down conditions for cooperation and demand certain actions,” Peskov told the Mayak radio station. “We are certain that Serbia will make decisions that are most beneficial to its people,” he added.
The Balkan country applied to join the EU in 2009 and has been a candidate for membership since 2012. In an interview on Sunday, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin accused Brussels of moving the goalposts for accession, most recently by linking Belgrade’s membership to severing relations with Moscow.
“BRICS does not impose any conditions on anyone. It’s based on mutual respect and the readiness to address concerns and interests of members. No one there says ‘either, or.’ That’s why [the group] is so attractive to a raft of countries,” Peskov stated.
Another long-time EU hopeful, Türkiye, officially applied to join BRICS in September, becoming the first NATO state to do so.
Azerbaijan, Algeria, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Palestine, DR Congo, Gabon, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait, Senegal, Cuba, Belarus, and Bolivia are among the other nations that have expressed their wish to join BRICS.
The Russian city of Kazan will host the annual BRICS Summit later this month. A Serbian delegation will attend, along with others from a raft of countries, including members Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September that the current BRICS states had agreed to discuss granting partner status to some aspiring members and to potentially approve some of the bids during the Kazan summit from October 22 to 24.
If agreed upon, partner status will become a new form of partial BRICS membership, intended to act as a gradual transition toward full integration into the group.
Iran Halts Flights to Europe Over Sanctions Slapped on Iran Air – Association
Sputnik – 15.10.2024
TEHRAN – Iran has suspended all flights to Europe after the European Union imposed sanctions against the Iran Air national carrier, the Association of Iranian Airlines (AIRA) said on Tuesday.
“Iran Air was the only airline that operated flights to Europe in our country. After new EU sanctions were imposed on Iran Air, no Iranian aircraft will fly to Europe,” AIRA Secretary General Maqsoud Asadi Samani was quoted as saying by the Ilna news agency.
Brussels accused the persons and entities under the latest package of sanctions of being involved in ballistic missile supplies to Russia. Iran rejected the accusations.
On Monday, the Council of the EU adopted sanctions against seven Iranian individuals and seven organizations, including Iran Air, for alleged military cooperation with Russia.
French MEP backs Medvedev’s attack on NATO
RT | October 14, 2024
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was stating the “absolute truth” when he took aim at NATO countries and their support for Ukraine in a scathing recent social media post, French MEP Florian Philippot has said.
The European Parliament member was commenting on a post published by Medvedev on Sunday, in which he pointed to the problems that Ukraine’s Western backers are facing with their economies.
“The West has no money to clean up Florida after Hurricane Milton, no money for French farmers, no money to revive the German industry,” Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of the Russian Security Council, wrote on Telegram.
These countries, however, still have funds to bankroll “a bunch of drunk and crazy” Ukrainians and to produce weapons “to exterminate the Slavs in the military conflict,” he added.
In a post on X, Philippot, who is leader of the Patriots party, wrote that Medvedev “just smashed the NATO countries by throwing absolute truths at them.” Philippot also took aim at French President Emmanuel Macron, saying he is “also taking a beating” for his recent pledge of a “new check for 3 billion to Zelensky.”
Philippot called on Macron to “stop these checks and these arms shipments,” arguing that Medvedev’s remarks are “factually terribly true!”
During a visit last week to a military camp in eastern France to inspect the training of Ukrainian troops, Macron pledged some €3 billion ($3.3 billion) worth of military aid for Kiev this year. Earlier in 2024, French farmers staged massive protests across the country, demanding that preferential trade rules granted to Kiev be lifted and calling for more government support.
In the US, former President Donald Trump last week accused the administration of President Joe Biden of neglecting the survivors of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern part of the country while sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Germany, which has emerged as one of Kiev’s top backers, is facing a new recession and its economy is set to contract for a second straight year due to shrinking industrial output, high energy prices, and weak foreign demand, according to reports.
EU Leaders Face Grim Reality: How Did Bloc Seal Status as Wilting Geopolitical Power?
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 13.10.2024
Back in the spring of 2022, Russia’s president warned that the European Union’s “suicidal” and “absolutely political” decision to wean itself off of cheap and dependable Russian pipeline energy would culminate in the serious and “perhaps irreversible” loss of competitiveness against other world powers.
“The European project is approaching a tipping point” and threatens to fall into “apathy” and geopolitical irrelevance thanks to internal “political paralysis, external threats and economic malaise,” Bloomberg European Politics & Economics managing editor Ben Sills has suggested in a wistful ode to the EU’s unenviable political and economic prospects in the years to come.
“After decades of warnings and sub-par growth, the region’s leaders are suddenly confronting a barrage of evidence that decline is becoming unstoppable,” Sills’ piece, appearing on the NY-headquartered business news agency’s front page on Sunday, warned.
Pointing to a string of political and economic ‘bad news’ for Europe’s Europhile forces, from gains by the populist right in France to German carmaker giant Volkswagen’s threats to close factories, to Silicon Valley’s exit from European markets over stringent AI rules, the observer suggested that the developments demonstrate “the EU’s failure to act as a cohesive and dynamic economic bloc” against both adversaries and potentially, its allies across the Atlantic.
“If you wanted to be a geopolitical power, then economic might is the key ingredient,” Free University in Brussels professor Guntram Wolff told the outlet, stressing that in Europe, “productivity growth has just been a disaster,” and that while the region “is still rich… these differentials over 20 years have massive implications.”
“Something is changing very dramatically and very, very deeply in this world,” ex-Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said. “We can’t react correctly, because we are too slow,” he warned.
By comparison, while the US and China – Europe’s major competitors, face problems of their own, they at least have institutions for centralized decision-making, and the ability to “generate vast amounts of private or public capital for defense and investment in cutting-edge technology” – something that’s not the case in the EU’s case.
Sills pointed to surprisingly frank comments by Emmanuel Macron at a panel in Germany earlier this month, where the French president highlighted the “risk” the bloc faces of finding itself “out of the market” if it continues its classic strategies, and pointed to the loss of cheap Russian energy supplies after 2022, combined with the Biden administration’s moves to lure European industries out of the bloc via cheap energy and subsidies, as central to undermining the EU’s export-centered economies’ competitiveness.
“That adds to pre-existing challenges posed by the rise of China and its own vast manufacturing machine, and the global leap forward in technology innovation that has largely bypassed the region,” Sills suggested, warning that “the result threatens to cause damage that goes beyond simply lagging in investment and productivity,” causing EU leaders to ‘lose faith’ in the European project itself.
“It’s not just Eurosceptics like Hungary’s Victor Orban, a perennial thorn in the bloc’s side. Officials in core European countries are starting to view the EU as an obstacle they need to get around – rather than the source of prosperity and protection it has represented until now,” the observer stressed, pointing, for example, to Paris’s talk of integration with a smaller bloc of Western European economies, and divisions on issues like defense and Chinese investment inflows.
But the EU’s woes have been a longtime coming, Sills stressed, pointing out that the bloc has been in “relative decline” going as far back as the euro monetary union in the late 1990s, and citing a Bloomberg analysis estimating that the bloc would be €3 trillion richer “if it had kept pace with the US – enough to boost the income of the average worker by about €13,000 a year.”
Instead, after 2008 and particularly since 2022, many of the region’s traditional powerhouse economies, including Germany, have been teetering on the brink of and occasionally slipping into recession, and facing deindustrialization amid self-inflicted, unsustainably high energy prices, loss of markets and increasingly potent foreign competition.
“Today we see that for absolutely political reasons, due to their own ambitions and under pressure from their American overlords, European countries are imposing more and more sanctions on the oil and gas market,” President Putin said in May 2022 as Brussels announced plans to wean itself off of cheap and dependable pipeline-delivered Russian oil and gas.
“Rejection of Russian energy resources means Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world… This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin said at the time. “One gets the impression that our Western colleagues, politicians and economists have simply forgotten the foundations of the elementary laws of economics, or, to their detriment, prefer to deliberately ignore them,” he added.
