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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Russia insists on sticking to its war demands amid Trump sanctions threat
Russia has said it is open to peace with Ukraine but insists achieving its goals remains a priority, days after Donald Trump gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia's demands on Sunday, including Ukraine withdrawing from Russia-annexed regions and abandoning its Nato aspirations – terms that Kyiv and its allies have rejected. 'The main thing for us is to achieve our goals,' Peskov told state TV. 'Our goals are clear.' Ukrainian officials proposed a new round of peace talks this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday, while Russian state media said on Sunday that no date had yet been set for the negotiations but Istanbul would probably remain the host city. A week ago Trump, the US president, threatened Russia with 'severe tariffs' unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days and announced a rejuvenated pipeline for US weapons to reach Ukraine amid his frustration at unsuccessful talks to end the war. Russia's biggest oil producer Rosneft has condemned European Union sanctions on India's Nayara Energy refinery as unjustified and illegal, saying the restrictions directly threatened India's energy security. The EU's 18th package of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine was approved on Friday and is aimed at further hitting Russia's oil and energy industry. Rosneft said on Sunday it held less than 50% in Nayara – one of the targeted companies – and called the EU's justification for the sanctions 'far-fetched and false in context'. The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said the sanctions package is one of the strongest yet against Russia and 'we will keep raising the costs, so stopping the aggression becomes the only path forward for Moscow'. Two women were injured in southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region when a drone struck their house on Sunday, according to the regional military administration. Two more civilians were injured in the north-eastern Kharkiv province after a drone slammed into a residential building, local Ukrainian officials said. Drones struck a leafy square in the centre of Sumy later on Sunday, wounding a woman and her seven-year-old son, officials said. The strike also damaged a power line, leaving about 100 households without electricity, according to Serhii Krivosheienko of the municipal military administration. Ukraine's air force said it shot down 18 of 57 Shahed-type and decoy drones launched by Russia overnight into Sunday, with seven more disappearing from radar. Russia's defence ministry said its forces shot down 93 Ukrainian drones targeting Russian territory overnight, including at least 15 that appeared to head for Moscow. Ten more Ukrainian drones were downed on the approach to the Russian capital on Sunday, according to mayor Sergei Sobyanin. He said one drone struck a residential building in Zelenograd, on Moscow's outskirts, damaging an apartment but causing no casualties.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE 'Don't come here. We'll put you in jail or send you home': That's the message from Greece's new immigration minister as his overwhelmed nation passes a hardline law. So will Keir Starmer take the slightest notice?
The Greek immigration minister does not mince his words. He may be new to the job but his message to the millions of young men waiting in North Africa to come to his country for a life in Europe is clear: 'Don't come here. We will put you in jail or send you back home.' In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Thanos Plevris said: 'The Greeks, like the rest of Europe, want to help real refugees, but we will not be taken for fools. It is the end of the fairy tale that those coming to Greece and Europe in incredible numbers are all women and children. They are mainly men aged between 18 and 30 who are economic migrants. We are not a hotel any more. 'Many are from safe countries, such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Now we are telling them that if you sail in illegally by boat to Greece, do not expect asylum but get ready for five years in jail or a ticket home instead.' Greece is on the frontline of Europe's out-of-control migration crisis that, as Britons know well, has reached northern France where trafficking gangs are using fleets of small boats to send tens of thousands of migrants to Dover. Greece, on the other side of the continent, has its own relentless wave of newcomers. This year, at least 10,000 migrants have reached its biggest island, Crete, from lawless Libya a few hundred miles away across the Mediterranean Sea. In the first week of this month alone, just after Mr Plevris was appointed immigration minister, a surge of 4,000 arrived illegally on the island, which is struggling to cope. The coastguard and police are holding the uninvited foreigners in emergency camps in empty warehouses where they get a chilly welcome, basic rations and sleep on concrete floors. As we witnessed, they are young men growing dangerously angry while incarcerated against their will in the stifling summer heat. 'Our big problem today is with Libya and who they are sending over,' the plain-speaking and unapologetic Mr Plevris told me as he promised to stifle the migration flow for ever. 'Libya is using big vessels carrying 200, even 300, people. Of all those who have arrived, 85 per cent are male, and the majority of them are young. They are using Greece to enter Europe illegally for a new life. 'If we just continue to sit and watch, it will never end. Three million migrants are today massing in Libya. 'Now I plan to deter them from setting off for here.' Ten days ago, the Greek parliament passed a new law to help Mr Plevris get his wish. It suspended all asylum applications from those arriving illegally from North Africa for 'at least three months' due to the 'extraordinary' migration emergency. The European Union has sided with Athens, saying the Greek crisis is 'exceptional'. Under the legislation, due to be introduced within days, most of the illegal arrivals will have two choices: a five-year prison spell or deportation to their home country, at Greece's expense. 'We will no longer tolerate an invasion from North Africa,' Mr Plevris said. Migrant camps with prison-like accommodation are being prepared on the mainland to house future arrivals. 'Our immigration ministry is not a hotel service,' Mr Plevris added in a headline-grabbing television soundbite after the law won overwhelming support in parliament. He is also reviewing the 'current situation' where migrants are placed, sometimes for years, in welcoming reception centres with 'menu-style' meals and state benefits, while it is decided if they are genuine refugees or not. Greece's revolutionary agenda is backed by the country's prime minister. A key aide said: 'This is an urgent situation. We are taking extraordinary steps that are difficult and strict. Our government can no longer accept the migration flows from North Africa. People there need to think twice before they pay a large sum of money [to traffickers] to come to this country.' It is anybody's guess if the thousands of young men who have reached Crete in the new surge realise what a bleak future lies ahead. But in the few days since the law was voted in, no boats have arrived from Libya. When the Mail visited two of Crete's emergency holding camps, we were allowed to walk inside among the migrants but not permitted to speak to them. 'Be careful,' I was warned by an armed police officer guarding 400 migrants at a camp on the outskirts of Chania, two hours from the Crete capital of Heraklion. 'These are dangerous people. They all want something from you, even just a cigarette, and they get angry if you don't hand it over.' Inside the warehouse camp, the smell of unwashed men and urine made my eyes smart. As we walked in, the migrants shouted for help, putting up their hands to show ten fingers, the number of days they have been incarcerated here. There was a tinderbox atmosphere and the conditions were unpalatable, to say the least. Some migrants were lying on mattresses, resorting to sharing because there are so few. For the unlucky ones, it was a concrete floor with a T-shirt for a pillow. 'They all sit with their own nationalities, the Egyptians together, the Palestinians together, and so on,' said one female guard at the door of the warehouse. 'They are very difficult to control. There are so few of us, just five, and so many of them. We are tired, they are tired. It is not a safe situation.' One pitiful boy, who whispers to me that he is an Egyptian and 14, is barefoot and wearing just underpants and a shredded T-shirt. In one corner, standing alone, is a tall figure with dark hair and his neck covered in the red and white scarf of Palestine. 'He will say he is Egyptian, if he is asked,' a guard told me. 'But he has come from Gaza. 'He won't have an identity document because he will have destroyed it before reaching Greece. It makes our job of finding out who these people are, if they are bad or good, more difficult.' The police guards, just three men and two women, were under stress. If they open by a crack the giant metal doors to the warehouse to get in and out, throngs of men run to the entrance to try to reach the fresh air and escape the stench for a minute or two. 'No, no, no,' shout the inmates in one crescendo of furious male voices as the doors are snapped shut. Nearer Heraklion, in the mid-Crete town of Rethymno, is a second warehouse camp. If anything, the atmosphere was more tense still. It is on rough land overlooking the sea and a beach, and had nearly 180 men inside when we visited. Inside, we saw a gruff-looking police officer using a metal baton to control the migrants. One Egyptian who argued with him, after dilly-dallying for a few minutes on a visit to the latrine block in the yard, was chased and hit on the arm by the officer. 'You can show my stick on your photographs,' the officer said to me, 'but not my face.' He added: 'These men are disappointed, angry, and increasingly volatile. They will remember me. They expected to get a free pass into Europe because the Libyan boat traffickers told them that. Now we are keeping them here. They are not getting what they wanted or hoped for. It is difficult to make them stay calm. You must be wary.' It is at the Rethymno camp that we saw migrants being deported, first to Heraklion port and then to mainland Greece, in an operation resembling the movement of prisoners. During the afternoon, they were brought out of the warehouse in six nationality groups and made to sit on the ground in the blazing sun for half an hour to wait for buses to take them to the ferry for Athens where migrant camps have already been toughened up. Some held cardboard from torn-up boxes over their heads to protect themselves from the sun as they sat in the dust. Nearly all were barefoot, some bare-chested, and each carried a blue plastic bag of possessions plus a bottle of water. We were told that the migrants and the buses would remain in a closed deck area of the ferry away from fee-paying passengers for the night crossing. It was an operation with little compassion for the migrants, but the country has clearly run out of patience. Mr Plevris, who belongs to the Right-wing faction of Greece's ruling and increasingly conservative New Democracy party, said: 'Our prime minister has warned for years of the problems with immigration. 'We want to support refugees, but we believe it is important for our society that we only take those who want to be part of Europe.' He pointed out how many of the illegal migrants want to 'transfer' their own cultures and religious beliefs to Europe. 'They want to go on living by their own rules and they want us to accept that. But we will no longer do so,' he added. Mr Plevris said the European asylum system was skewed. It encourages migrants who cheat by throwing away their passports (to avoid showing they come from safe countries) or lying about their age to boost their chances of being allowed to stay. Egyptians wanting to escape military service destroy identity papers to disguise the fact they come from a country listed as safe by the United Nations and European Union. If the words of Mr Plevris, 48, sound like common sense today, his critics have dredged up the fact that he was a political firebrand when first elected to parliament in 2007 as a member of a now defunct hard-Right anti-immigration party. In 2011, he made a much criticised speech in parliament, which is still on YouTube. He said: 'In my opinion, the immigration issue can be solved in two ways. The first way is border security, which cannot exist if there are no deaths [to the migrants]. 'The second is that we must understand the logic of disincentives. We must tell the migrants when you come here you will have no social benefits, you will not be able to drink, you will not be able to go to hospital. '[The migrant] must tell others in Pakistan that he is having a worse time in Greece than back home. Unless he sees a life of hell and not a paradise, he will come.' Controversial though his speech was, his appointment is popular with ordinary Greeks today. As I travelled in Athens to interview Mr Plevris, the taxi driver recognised the address. 'Ah. Are you going to see the new minister,' he asked. 'I would like to send him a message from people like me. Tell him on migrants that enough is enough. No more must come in. We all feel the same. We wish him good luck with his new law.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Water industry faces ‘root and branch reform' after landmark review
The water industry is set to be completely overhauled following the publication of a landmark review of the sector on Monday. Environment Secretary Steve Reed is expected to promise 'root and branch reform' of the sector in a bid to clean up England's rivers and limit rises in water bills. The commitment will follow the publication of the final report of the Independent Water Commission led by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe. In a speech responding to Sir Jon's report, Mr Reed is set to describe the water industry as 'broken' and welcome the commission's recommendations to ensure 'the failures of the past can never happen again'. He is also widely reported to be preparing to abolish the industry's beleaguered regulator Ofwat, which has faced criticism for overseeing a sharp rise in sewage pollution while failing to crack down on executive pay and large dividends at debt-ridden water companies. In his interim report, Sir Jon criticised the way the sector was regulated, with duties split between Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. On Sunday, Mr Reed would not confirm that Ofwat was in line to be scrapped, but declined to express confidence in the regulator either, saying it was 'clearly failing'. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have agreed that water regulation needs to change. Urging the Government to be 'transparent' about what would replace Ofwat and how it would work, Tory shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins said: 'No one disputes that the water sector is under pressure, and we all want to see meaningful improvements. 'Reforming regulation must be focused on improving performance and guaranteeing water security.' Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has called for the creation of a Clean Water Authority that could 'hold these water companies to account' and 'fine them when they fail'. While Mr Reed has pledged to avoid the need for 'huge shock hikes' in water bills, such as the 26% increase seen this year, reform is unlikely to lead to a fall in costs for consumers. The Government hopes that investment in long-neglected infrastructure will make large bill increases unnecessary, but Mr Reed acknowledged on Sunday that there needed to be 'appropriate bill rises' to secure 'appropriate levels of investment'. He is also unlikely to commit to expanding social tariffs that could help households struggling with bills at the cost of higher charges for wealthier families, saying he was yet to be convinced that this was needed. Prior to Monday's announcement, Mr Reed had already committed to halving sewage pollution in England's rivers by 2030 thanks to a £104 billion investment from the sector in upgrading infrastructure. He has also announced the creation of a new, legally binding water ombudsman, expanding the role of the voluntary Consumer Council for Water and bringing the sector into line with other utilities. But the Conservatives have accused Labour of copying the policies of the previous government. Ms Atkins said: 'Labour have already wasted a year since the general election as they came into office with no plans for water, instead claiming that the work we started in office is their own.'
