EU council sanctions individuals, entities responsible for destabilising Moldova
A statement by the Council said those targeted were close associates of Ilan Shor, a fugitive business magnate sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in connection with the 2014 disappearance of $1 billion from the Moldovan banking system.
Shor lives in Russia, where he oversees the activities of the pro-Russian "Victory" bloc, accused by Moldovan authorities of illegally financing electoral activities in Moldova, which lies between Ukraine and Romania.
The bloc was barred by the courts from participating in last year's Moldovan presidential election and referendum on Moldova's drive to join the European Union.
Its leaders are barred from entering the EU and are subject to an asset freeze under the directive.
The EU statement said some of the people listed "have been actively involved in vote buying schemes, in the context of the presidential elections and of the constitutional referendum on EU accession of 2024, and bribery to corrupt several politicians".
Victoria Furtuna, leader of the Moldova Mare party and subject to the order, vowed to mount a legal challenge, saying groups in Brussels were "shamelessly and openly ...choosing on their own who is going to run our sovereign state".
Two others on the list are pro-Russian lawmakers who have disappeared after being convicted on corruption charges.
Pro-European President Maia Sandu, who has accused the Kremlin of trying to subvert her country, won re-election last year by a slim margin and a referendum endorsing her EU membership campaign also passed only narrowly.
Moldovan police last year accused Shor of funnelling large sums illegally to voters ahead of the polls and Sandu said the vote-buying scheme had influenced the outcome of the votes.
A poll published on Tuesday credited Sandu's Party of Action and Solidarity with 27.4% of voting intentions ahead of a September parliamentary election, compared to 10.4% for the pro-Russian opposition Socialists and 6.2% for the Victory bloc.
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BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Gareth Jones: The Welsh journalist who exposed Stalin and met Hitler
He only lived to 30, but Gareth Jones witnessed many of the 20th Century's most momentous occasions - including flying with Adolf Hitler on his private plane, and helping to expose man-made starvation in Joseph Stalin's Soviet is now 90 years since his death in 1935, but campaigners want him to be remembered by the naming of a waterfront square in his honour in his hometown of Barry, Vale of as one of Wales' greatest journalists, Jones travelled the world looking for scoops and died in mysterious circumstances reporting on the Japanese occupation of great-nephew Philip Colley believes much of what is remembered is wrapped in myth, and is working on a biography telling his story. It is Jones' time reporting in modern day Ukraine which is perhaps best known, with his accounts of the Holodomor - a man-made starvation which killed millions - at the time rubbished by many western newspapers.A film on the life of the former Western Mail journalist depicts him trying to convince others of the truth of what was Colley believes Jones' work continues to be misrepresented, which he said helped to give current Russian leader Vladimir Putin justification for his war in Ukraine."In 1933, after Gareth reported on Stalin's famine across the Soviet Union, his reputation was attacked by some western media, foremostly the New York Times, suggesting that he'd sensationalised the depth of the crisis there," he said. "Gareth responded by accusing his critics of being 'masters of euphemism and understatement'... according to them, people weren't starving, they were dying of 'illnesses brought about by malnutrition'."Mr Colley added: "In recent times, some historians and politicians have refashioned Gareth's legacy, to fit a modern political narrative. "They suggest that Gareth was a Ukrainian hero exposing a deliberate genocide. "Neither story is quite true, as he was actually pointing to a wider global economic disaster." Mr Colley said that while many historians suggested Jones purely focused on the starvation of Ukrainian "Holodomor peasants", in fact he was equally concerned with the effects of Stalin's policies throughout the Soviet Union, which the journalist considered were created by misguided communist dogma rather than a deliberate attempt to kill a single ethnic group."Gareth travelled widely across southern Russia, as well as Ukraine, and saw little difference in the condition of peasant farmers," he said. "People were dying because of the policies of forced collectivisation of small privately owned farms into government-controlled ones, the loss of farming expertise caused by the expulsion of the Kulaks, and the taking of grain from the mouths of peasants so it could be exported to earn foreign currency." Jones' story began long before his time in the Soviet four first-class honours degrees in languages from Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities, at 24 he was was appointed foreign affairs adviser to former Prime Minister and fellow Welshman David Lloyd a year of graduating from Cambridge Jones was walking the corridors of Whitehall, as well as interviewing the likes of Lenin's widow Krupskaya, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, US President Herbert Hoover, and Irish Taoiseach Eamon de to Mr Colley, he wasn't in the least bit intimidated."You could say, in the nicest possible way, there was a streak of narcissism to Gareth," he said. "Not superiority, more that he believed that his charm, academic brilliance and travel experience gave him the confidence to debate on an equal footing with the likes of Churchill and Lloyd George."What's more, they took him very seriously too." In 1932 Jones was sent to monitor Hitler's rise to German chancellor, though not even Lloyd George could have anticipated the unprecedented access he would gain to the Nazi hierarchy. He was at his swearing-in ceremony in Leipzig, flew on Hitler's private plane, and appeared on stage with him at an election rally in Mr Colley believes none of this should be interpreted as Nazi sympathy."It's true that Gareth reported positively on some of Hitler's early economic achievements and rise in workers' standards - especially compared with the mess of the Soviet Union, Britain and America during the Great Depression - but so did most of the British press, including the Daily Mail and Daily Express."On the other hand, he was the first to call out the antisemitism at the heart of the Nazis, seeing it as their core belief and not just a fringe thug element within the party." After Jones' fall from grace following his famine pieces, in 1935 he turned his attention to Japanese expansionism into the Chinese territories of Manchuria and Inner was turned away by the Japanese and subsequently captured by Chinese bandits, and after two weeks in captivity shot dead in mysterious Colley said: "It is my belief the bandits had simply grown tired of holding on to him while they were constantly pursued by the Chinese police."Others like to think that his killing was ordered by the Soviet secret service. The Foreign Office at the time suspected that the Japanese had a hand in it." In late 1935, Mr Colley's mother - Jones' niece - Dr Margaret Siriol Colley, travelled from Paddington to Cardiff with his ashes on her Colley said it was a harrowing journey, but one which inspired her to write her own book More Than a Grain of Truth."My mother was determined to give her uncle his rightful place in history after Gareth's sister Gwyneth died, and she found their home virtually untouched since the '30s, with all his original diaries, posters and photographs," he said. "Now more information has become available, I just want to be able to set the record straight, building upon the work my mother had already achieved."
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Inside Ukraine's effort to produce more of its own weapons to fight Putin as Trump's support flip-flops
On Tuesday, Donald Trump gave Vladimir Putin a new deadline – agree to a ceasefire in the Ukraine war or face fresh sanctions. It appeared the US president had finally run out of patience with the Russian leader, declaring he was 'no longer interested in talks' and cutting a previous deadline of 50 days dramatically short. But regardless of how encouraging this apparent renewed sense of urgency might be to Ukraine, Mr Trump's views on the war and support for Kyiv are anything but consistent. From the infamous Oval Office ambush of Volodymyr Zelensky to fluctuating financial commitments from the US, Kyiv has been wise to look elsewhere for reliable supplies – preferably Ukraine's own burgeoning weapons industry. Ukraine has made no secret that a key priority is to build its own missiles that match the destructive power and long reach of the Shahed killer drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles that Moscow has been launching in recent weeks. Russia has launched huge mass aerial attacks against the capital and cities across Ukraine including Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk and Pavlohrad. Pavlohrad, in Ukraine's southeastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, recently suffered its biggest aerial attack since the start of the full-scale invasion. When The Independent drove into the city two days later, a huge plume of smoke, visible from miles away, hung over it as fires continued to rage. It is common knowledge that Pavlohrad has been home to missile production facilities since Soviet times, and Russia's defence ministry claimed, after the attack, it had struck facilities producing components for missiles and drones. Dima, who works in the local coal miners' union communications department, lives in the industrial area of the city that took the brunt of the attack. 'We experience explosions from Russian rockets and drones frequently,' he said. 'But this attack was the biggest and seemed to go on forever. The Russians have increased their aerial attacks and the targets are civilian more often than military to try to cause terror.' With Russia ramping up attacks regardless of any deadline Mr Trump attempts to impose, Kyiv has been looking at new ways to hit back. Ukraine has shown its advanced drones can destroy targets deep inside Russian territory, more than 1,000km from the Ukrainian border. And it is already producing and using a family of missile systems named 'Neptune', 'Palyanytsia,' 'Peklo,' and 'Ruta'. According to Kyiv, production multiplied eight times between 2023 and 2024 with even more growth planned for this year. Mr Zelensky has said Ukraine intends to produce 3,000 cruise and drone missiles in 2025. The homegrown R-360 Neptune cruise missile, with a 150kg warhead has been modified, according to Mr Zelensky, to give it an improved range. However, Neptunes and Ukraine's other missiles have explosive payloads that are only a fraction – sometimes a tenth – of those carried by Russian rockets. Ukrainian engineers are focused on long-range missiles able to inflict on Russia the sort of pain it is daily inflicting on Ukrainians. One of those is called 'Bars' (Leopard), first publicly mentioned at a Ukrainian weapons exhibition last April by the minister for strategic industries, Herman Smetanin. The scant information that has emerged about it suggests it is a hybrid between long-range drones and cruise missiles powered by a turbojet engine, giving it great speed and with a range of 700-800km with a warhead of 50-100kg of explosives. But it is not certain that Bars are the game-changing missiles on which Ukraine is pinning its hopes. A payload of only 100kg gives it a far weaker punch than that of Russian rockets, which often pack one-ton warheads. Mr Zelensky alluded last year to the successful test of an engine for a homemade ballistic missile. Military experts have speculated it is an offspring of the Sapsan Operational-Tactical Missile System – also known as Hrim and Hrim2 – that was conceived in the early 2000s but was dogged by funding problems and lack of political will. It was revived after Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and eastern Donbas region. One person, who did not want to be named and works with his country's defence industry, told The Independent information about missile development is probably Ukraine's most closely guarded secret. He said: 'Everyone, even senior officials, are forbidden to talk about this subject. If you do, you'll probably be arrested. The only person allowed to reveal anything is President Zelensky.' Strategic Industries minister Mr Smetanin, spearheads the efforts to grow the country's weapons production capacity. Adviser to the ministry, Yuri Sak, said that Ukraine heard the warning bells after the US first cut off support for Ukraine over the autumn and winter of 2023 to 2024. 'We realised that we had to start moving towards becoming self-sufficient and as a result our ministry was tasked with pretty much resuscitating Ukraine's defence industry. We began to make contingency plans, which we have in place now. 'Despite the war, despite the missile attacks, despite the hundreds of Shahed drones that are launched against Ukraine pretty much every night, we were able to increase our defence industry output by 35 times during the last three years.' Russia's stocks of arms and ammunition and her high capacity to manufacture weapons of all kinds meant it massively outgunned Ukraine initially, but Western-supplied weapons helped dramatically even up the odds. Mr Sak said that, since Russia's initial invasion in 2014, the number of weapons-related companies in Ukraine has mushroomed to about 100 state-owned defence industry enterprises and almost 700 private companies. From producing one howitzer per month in 2022, Mr Sak said Ukraine is now delivering 15 each month. The conflict in Ukraine has changed the nature of warfare and seen a profound shift toward drones, with Ukraine planning to produce five million this year. 'We are also producing domestically the full spectrum of unmanned and robotic systems, land drones, naval drones, aerial drones, which include both reconnaissance drones and bombers, and drones with ranges of up to 2,000km,' Mr Sak said. 'These very successfully target Russian war machinery and their oil refineries and depots because all the profits from their oil trade go to finance their war and to prosecute war crimes.' But the Russians know Ukraine is ploughing huge resources into producing its own missiles and other weapons and are trying to destroy any locations they identify where those are being developed or manufactured. Mr Sak said: 'We try to be as quiet as possible about the locations of our defence industry. Where possible, we have relaunched existing facilities that have been idle for the last 20-plus years and, in other cases, we are building new facilities. All this is kept confidential because the Russians are targeting our defence industry enterprises.' Much of Ukraine's defence production has been split up, so that three or four smaller, concealed sites replicate the same weapons system and, if one is hit, overall production continues. The Independent visited one such facility in western Ukraine on condition that no details were published that would allow its location to be identified. Concealed within a sprawling, somewhat dilapidated, Soviet-era industrial zone, the facility produces BTR-4E 'Bucephalus' armoured personnel carriers. The eight-wheeled Ukrainian design went into production in 2012. Until 2022, it was produced at a large plant in the east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, targeted by Russia early in the full-scale war. The owner of the plant, calling himself Andriy for this article, is a former soldier who has himself seen action against the invading Russian forces. His factory previously produced heavy precision machinery and engine parts and converted to weapons manufacture in early 2024 to become one of three concealed facilities scattered across Ukraine producing Bucephalus APCs. Speaking with the glow of the plant's foundry behind him, Andriy said: 'We cast and produce almost everything for the construction of the APC, hull, turret, wheels, axles. The engines are brought in from Germany and the weapons are fitted elsewhere. We produce four per month and plan to increase that number.' In addition to the 300 plant employees, inspectors working for the Ukrainian defence ministry, minutely scrutinise each component produced there. The concealed sites are protected by air defences to counter Russian missiles and drones. Such secret weapons production sites are keenly sought out by Russian spies and informers on the ground and by satellite surveillance, and Andriy has security guards and equipment watching the perimeter of the plant. 'But mostly we rely on trust,' he explained. 'That people who live in the same community and know each other will not betray each other or their country.'
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Ukrainian attack sparks blaze at Russian oil depot as countries trade strikes
An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on an oil depot near the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi has ignited a raging fire, as the two countries traded strikes at the end of one of the deadliest weeks in Ukraine in recent months. More than 120 firefighters were trying to put out the blaze, said the regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, as emergency officials reported a fuel tank with a capacity of 2,000 cubic metres (70,000 cubic feet) was burning. Drone wreckage hit an 'oil tank, which caused a fire', Kondratyev said on the Telegram messaging app. Sochi, which hosted the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, is about 250 miles (400km) from the Ukrainian border. Video clips on social media showed huge black pillars of smoke pouring out from the facility. Russia's civil aviation authority temporarily halted flights at Sochi airport. Kyiv has repeatedly pounded infrastructure in Russia that it sees as key to Moscow's war effort but attacks on Sochi have been relatively rare. The strike came as a Russian missile hit a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, according to the state emergency services, wounding at least seven people. In Russia's Voronezh region, authorities said four people were hurt in a separate Ukrainian drone strike. As Moscow rebuffs repeated calls by the US president, Donald Trump, for a ceasefire, a Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv on Thursday killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150 in one of the worst single-day tolls in several months. The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, described the assault as 'depraved' and posted a picture of the bloc's flag at half mast. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been appealing to allies for more air defence systems to rebuff the Russian escalation. On Friday, Germany said it would soon start delivering two more US-made Patriot launchers in addition to three Patriot systems already delivered to Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Trump on Tuesday gave the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a shorter deadline of 8 August for peace efforts to move forward, as attacks continue unabated. The US leader has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. The Ukrainian air force said on Sunday Russia had launched 76 drones and seven missiles against Ukraine overnight. It said it destroyed 60 drones and one missile, but 16 others and six missiles hit targets across eight locations. Early in the war, the Mykolaiv region faced frequent Russian artillery strikes and aerial attacks. Even after Russian forces were pushed back in late 2022, drones and missiles have remained a constant danger. The Russian defence ministry said its air units intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one over the Krasnodar region and 60 over the Black Sea. Ukrainian authorities said at the weekend they had targeted other key sites for Russia's energy and defence sectors in retaliation for the recent deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities. The week also brought political turbulence for Kyiv, after nationwide protests prompted parliament to restore the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies. Over the weekend a Ukrainian lawmaker and other officials were arrested after those agencies unearthed an alleged wide-ranging bribery scheme linked to the purchase of drones and other weapons systems. Pledging 'zero tolerance' for corruption, Zelenskyy himself announced the arrests on X. The scheme is believed to have hiked prices by up to one-third in state contracts with suppliers. A previous, hotly contested bill that MPs passed in July with support from Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, which had made the fight against sleaze its calling card, had stripped powers from the independent national anti-corruption bureau, known as Nabu, and the specialised anti-corruption prosecutor's office, Sapo. The changes would have brought them under the control of Zelenskyy's handpicked general prosecutor, alarming EU allies and triggering a popular revolt. Activists in Kyiv, who had mounted street protests, on Thursday cheered the passage of a new law essentially annulling the measures, in what one demonstrator called a victory for 'the values that our soldiers are defending on the frontline'. Ukraine was granted the status of an EU membership candidate in 2022 and the battle against corruption is seen as integral to its bid. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
