The city of Mariupol lies on the Azov Sea, next to the front lines of Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed rebels. The conflict has touched everyone’s lives as the danger of an escalation looms over the city. Moscow’s continued detention of 24 Ukrainian sailors seized just offshore in November underlines the threat. Faced with such challenges, how do the people here view Sunday’s presidential election, and who holds the key to ending the conflict? Henry Ridgwell reports from the city.
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At the height of the conflict in 2014, the people of Mariupol, Ukraine, feared their city would be the next to fall to Russian-backed rebel forces.

The threat of annexation by Moscow has subsided for now. But the front line lies just six kilometers (3.7 miles) to the east — and the conflict continues to have a big impact on everyday life in the city. 

Moscow’s detention of two dozen Ukrainian sailors seized in a naval clash just offshore in November underlines the continued threat. 

Faced with such challenges, how do the people of Mariupol view Sunday’s presidential election? And who holds the key to ending the conflict? Amid the election campaigns, frustration and exhaustion are palpable.

“I like any of the candidates, but not the one who is in power now. We need more authority for us to have peace, for our economy to grow, for us to be prosperous,” Mariupol resident Tatyana told VOA.

Aleksandr Sidorov, a soldier on leave from the front line, believes the next president can do little about the war with Russia. He’s focused on domestic issues. 

“The main issue for me is for all the corrupt people to be imprisoned,” he said.

Young mother Alina Arabadzhi plans to vote for comedian-turned-presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Why Zelensky? Because it is a new face. Because he has no vested interests. He hasn’t been in politics a single day,” she said.

 

WATCH: Voting on the Front Lines of Ukraine’s War With Russia 

The war is having a huge effect on the local economy. Mariupol used to be an export hub for the Donbas region, Ukraine’s former industrial powerhouse. Most of that region is now controlled by Russian-backed separatists and has been all but cut off. 

Two giant steel plants still dominate Mariupol’s skyline, bringing prosperity but also choking pollution. The products are shipped around the world from the nearby port. However, since its forceful seizure of Crimea in 2014, Russia controls shipping access to the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait — effectively giving it a stranglehold on a key artery of Mariupol’s economy.

The director of the port, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, said he is losing over $7.5 million a year in business.

“Starting in April 2018, Russia started to search all the ships which enter the Azov Sea to reach Ukrainian ports. Then after loading, they check them again when they return back to the Black Sea. The waiting time, the route time, has increased, and it’s had a great financial impact on our export clients,” Aleksandrovich told VOA.

Amid the upheaval, there has been progress in some areas. The organization, Halabuda, began as a group of volunteers taking supplies to soldiers on the front line. It has now morphed into an advice group for residents and businesses.

“A question that concerns every single citizen of Ukraine is corruption. Compared to the corruption in law enforcement that we had five years ago, now after the reforms, we nearly eradicated corruption at the level of the traffic police,” said Halabuda founder Dmitry Chichera.

Corruption and conflict: generational challenges with no easy answers. The people of Mariupol are desperate for change and for the war to end. They know that whoever becomes president, the threat from the east is unlikely to end anytime soon.
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The U.N. Security Council Thursday unanimously passed the first-ever resolution ordering members to enforce laws against terror financing. 

Experts believe as many as two-thirds of U.N. members are not adequately prosecuting those who aid terrorists in acquiring money.

Thursday’s resolution demands all states “ensure that their domestic laws and regulations establish serious criminal offenses” to collect funds or financial resources to terrorist groups or individual criminals.

It also calls on members to create financial intelligence units. 

Nations that fail to carry out the resolution would face U.N. sanctions.

U.N. counterterrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov said the resolution comes at a “critical time,” saying terrorists have gotten their hands on cash through both illegal and legal channels, including drug trafficking, the construction trade and used car sales.

The U.N. resolution would also urge members to stop paying ransom to kidnappers, saying such payments have become a major source of financing for Islamic State and others. 
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Iceland’s budget carrier WOW Air said it had ceased operations and cancelled all flights on Thursday, potentially stranding thousands of passengers.

The collapse of the troubled airline, which transports more than a third of those traveling to Iceland, comes after buyout talks with rival Icelandair collapsed earlier this week.

“All WOW Air flights have been cancelled. Passengers are advised to check available flights with other airlines,” the carrier said in a statement.

“Some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, in light of the circumstances. Information on those airlines will be published, when it becomes available.”

WOW Air, founded in 2011, exploited Iceland’s location in the middle of the North Atlantic to offer a low-cost service between Europe and North America as well as tapping into a tourist boom to the volcanic island.

However it had flown into financial trouble in recent years due to heightened competition and rising fuel prices, and had been searching for an investor for months.

On Monday WOW Air said it was in talks to restructure its debt with its creditors after Icelandair ended brief negotiations over buying a stake in the no-frills airline.

WOW Air was left needing $42 million to save the company, according to the Frettabladid newspaper.

The privately-owned airline has undergone major restructuring after posting a pre-tax loss of almost $42 million for the first nine months of 2018.

It has reduced its fleet from 20 to 11 aircraft, eliminating several destinations, including those to the US, and cutting 111 full-time jobs.

A report by a governmental work group has warned that a WOW Air bankruptcy would lead to a drop in Iceland’s gross domestic product, a drop in the value of the krona and rising inflation.

 
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Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the leaders of France and Germany this week and signed lucrative deals in an attempt to cozy up to the European Union. Analysts say the efforts were aimed at softening restrictions on Chinese trade and investments in Europe, but it is unlikely that his trip will weaken the EU’s resolve.

Xi’s European tour included stops in Italy, Monaco and France. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker came to Paris to meet the Chinese leader.

Overall, analysts said, the visit has improved the general atmosphere of relations between the EU and China, but the European backlash and increased scrutiny of Chinese companies and their investments is not likely to change.

Billions in deals

The “EU will not be softening its posture on its core demands (fair and reciprocal economic ties, including elimination of coerced technology transfers and respect from the EU’s community-based standards) in spite of the breakout of amity and huge deals during President Xi’s swing through the continent,” said Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the Institute of China-America Studies in Washington.

During the visit, Xi signed 29 deals worth $2.8 billion with Italy and placed orders for 300 jets with Airbus worth $34 billion in France, the same number of Boeing planes that he bought from the U.S. during President Donald Trump’s 2017 visit to Beijing.

In turn, Italy became the first Group of Seven country to sign up for the Belt and Road Initiative despite Washington’s criticism of the BRI and China’s “vanity project.”

“The buying binge may grab the headlines but that’s mostly just water under the bridge,” Gupta said adding, “and Italy’s formal BRI entry is a nice, shiny medal that will keep Beijing attentive and incentivized to adhere to European practices.”

Xi’s motivation

What motivated Xi’s visit is the lurking danger of dual pressures from the U.S. and EU to change some of the internal systems like state subsidy and financing of Chinese companies.

Many of the issues raised by Brussels and Washington are similar, but some additional demands from Europe are adding to Beijing’s headaches.

Ana Andrade, research analyst in the Europe team of The Economist Intelligence Unit, said there is a distinct difference in the way the European Union and United States approach China.

“EU and U.S. demands on China are not fully identical. The EU is very aware of the importance of China as a trading partner,” she said adding, “the EU is not interested in decoupling from China or creating a bilateral conflict as the U.S. has done.”

China is the biggest market for European luxury goods and the biggest single-country market for Airbus.

​Competitive edge

EU’s demands for reforms in China intensified since the U.S. launched a series of aggressive trade actions raising duties on Chinese goods leading to a trade war nearly nine months ago.

“The EU’s strategy is to piggy-back on the momentum for action generated by the Trump administration’s pressure on Beijing and engage and press China to make these market-leveling (allow fair competition) and market-opening reforms,” Gupta said.

Chinese analysts argue, however, that the EU’s demands are not necessarily additional pressure on Beijing and instead that the demands dovetail with reforms the U.S. is demanding.

“If China would make a deal with the U.S. on some of the issues, I think that would not only apply to the U.S. but China would adjust its overall position to apply to all countries,” said Shen Dingli, a Shanghai based analyst of international relations. The new foreign investment law, which was approved by the Chinese legislature this month, will apply to all countries and not just the U.S., he pointed out.

Both the U.S. and EU were driven into action because of concerns that China’s government has long been giving Chinese companies a competitive leg up through subsidies, inadequate transparency, lax standards on protection of labor, environment and intellectual property.

Helping China

Ding Yuan, dean at the China Europe International Business School, does not agree with the claim that a lack of transparency in business dealings gives Chinese companies a competitive edge over their counterparts in the rest of the world.

“Lack of transparency is never an advantage. If lack of transparency was an advantage, China shouldn’t have done the economic reforms and opening, and Soviet Union should have been there still, stronger than the U.S.,” he said.

Ding believes the critics and business rivals may be working at cross-purposes. They are actually helping China to take forward its reforms agenda and consolidate its position in the industrial world, he said.

“By blaming China on the role of the state, by promoting (the idea) Chinese state intervention as the core competence or the core competitive advantage of the Chinese success story, actually we are consolidating, helping Chinese authorities to consolidate their approach,” he said.
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A Maltese special operations team Thursday boarded a tanker that had been hijacked by migrants it rescued at sea, and returned control to the captain, Malta’s armed forces said. 

The tanker was being escorted to a Maltese port, where the migrants will be turned over to police for investigation, they said. 

Authorities in Italy and Malta on Wednesday said that the migrants had hijacked the Turkish oil tanker El Hiblu 1 after it rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea, and forced the crew to put the Libya-bound vessel on a course north toward Europe.

‘Act of piracy’

Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, said the ship had rescued about 120 people and described what happened as “the first act of piracy on the high seas with migrants” as the alleged hijackers.

The ship had been heading toward Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa and the island of Malta when Maltese forces intercepted it. 

Maltese armed forces established communications with the captain while the ship was still 30 nautical miles off shore. The captain told Maltese armed forces he was not in control of the vessel “and that he and his crew were being forced and threatened by a number of migrants to proceed to Malta.” A patrol vessel stopped the tanker from entering Maltese waters, they said.

The special team that restored control to the captain was backed by a patrol vessel, two fast interceptor craft and a helicopter. 

There was no immediate word on the condition of El Hiblu 1’s crew.

Migrants mistreated

Humanitarian organizations say that migrants are mistreated and even tortured in Libya, and have protested protocols to return migrants rescued offshore to the lawless northern African nation. Meanwhile, both Italy and Malta have refused to open their ports to humanitarian ships that rescue migrants at sea, which has created numerous standoffs as European governments haggle over which will take them in. 

A private group that operates a rescue ship and monitors how governments treat migrants, Mediterranea, urged compassion for the group on the hijacked vessel and said it hoped European countries would act “in the name of fundamental rights, remembering that we are dealing with human beings fleeing hell.”

Mass migration to Europe has dropped sharply since 2015, when the continent received 1 million refugees and migrants from countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The surge created a humanitarian crisis in which desperate travelers frequently drowned and leading arrival spots such as Italy and Greece struggled to house large numbers of asylum-seekers.

Along with the dangerous sea journey itself, those who attempt to cross the Mediterranean risk being stopped by Libya’s coast guard and held in Libyan detention centers that human rights groups have described as bleak places where migrants allegedly suffer routine abuse.

EU members “alert the Libyan coast guard when refugees and migrants are spotted at sea so they can be taken back to Libya, despite knowing that people there are arbitrarily detained and exposed to widespread torture, rape, killings and exploitation,” said Matteo de Bellis, an international migration researcher for Amnesty International.

European Union member countries, responding to domestic opposition to welcoming immigrants, have decided to significantly downscale an EU operation in the Mediterranean, withdrawing their ships and continuing the mission with air surveillance only.

“This shameful decision has nothing to do with the needs of people who risk their lives at sea, but everything to do with the inability of European governments to agree on a way to share responsibility for them,” de Bellis said.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May bowed to Conservative Party critics Wednesday and said she would quit as the country’s leader once Britain had split from the European Union, but it was unclear when she might step down. 

 

May, whose Brexit deal she negotiated with EU leaders has twice been overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Commons, said she would quit as prime minister “earlier than I intended” in hopes of winning passage of her divorce deal from the 28-nation bloc. 

 

Her comments to Tory lawmakers were the first she made about leaving No. 10 Downing Street, even as her Brexit plan was defeated by 230 votes in January and by 149 votes earlier this month. 

 

“I know there is a desire for a new approach — and new leadership — in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations, and I won’t stand in the way of that,” she said. 

 

Her intentions became known as Parliament prepared to vote on new Brexit plans.

The House of Commons was planning a five-hour debate on several plans, with lawmakers being asked to vote for any of the proposals they could accept. The intention then is to hold a second vote next Monday on the most popular plans in the hope that one can win majority support.

Wednesday’s debate is occurring two days after the parliamentarians wrested control over the Brexit debate from the government.

May said she would consider support for other plans as “indicative votes,” but she has refused to say she will adhere to the result.

There are 16 options under consideration, including proposals for leaving the 28-nation EU without details of a departure in place, remaining in the EU and holding a new nationwide referendum on the issue.

Britons voted nearly three years ago to leave the EU, but as Friday’s scheduled departure date grew near, so did turmoil over terms of the deal May negotiated with EU leaders. The contention centered on trade and the border between EU member Ireland and London-controlled Northern Ireland, which local residents routinely cross daily without stopping.

Last week, the EU said that if Parliament approved the deal it had negotiated with the British government, Brexit would occur May 22. If not, Britain has until April 12 to say what it plans to do.

May hopes to put her plan up for another vote, despite the decisive earlier losses.

Pro-Brexit members of her Conservative Party had called for her resignation, but until Wednesday she had resisted. 

 

“It is my sense of responsibility and duty that has meant I have kept working to ensure Brexit is delivered,” she said. 

 

Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn contended that May was “unable to compromise and unable to reunite the country.” He said May must “either listen and change course or go.” 
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The stained-glass windows of Podilske’s towering concrete cultural hall radiate the idealized vision of Ukraine’s Soviet past: bucolic scenes of bountiful wheat fields, agricultural mechanization and content families toiling the land for the greater good.

The modern reality is very different.  Many of the village houses and farms are abandoned.  The bus calls twice a day to take workers away to a nearby town, leaving behind pensioners, the unemployed, and schoolchildren.

Like many villages, Podilske’s future appears bleak.  As Ukraine prepares to choose its next president in elections scheduled Sunday, one of the biggest challenges remains its sluggish economy.  With unemployment at close to 10 percent, it’s in the rural villages where the hardship is felt most – once the breadbasket of the Soviet collective system, but now struggling to stay competitive in a global economy.

Podilske, which lies some 140 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, achieved minor fame in 2015 when it elected the country’s youngest mayor, Artiom Kukharenko, who was just 24 years old when he took on the role.  For the past five years he’s been trying to stem the tide of young people leaving the village for a better life.

“What does the youth need today?  A house, a decent job, which provides a decent salary, which may offer them a start.  The poor credit system that we’ve got is a huge burden, not only for the youth but also for people who are better established,” Kukharenko says.

Everyone VOA spoke to voiced the same concern.  The village school’s Ukrainian language teacher, who gave only her first name of Lilya, says most of her students leave after graduation.

“It’s clear that people want more money, and there is no vision for that in small villages.  So that is why quite a lot of young people just go abroad.”

Viktor Lytsik, who heads the Podilske’s cultural center, agrees.

“We don’t have anywhere to work here.  All the people have to go somewhere else.”

Seventy percent of Ukraine’s land is given over to agriculture, which generates $18 billion in exports.  Mayor Kukharenko says agro-industrial corporations are swallowing up family farms and jobs.

“No matter who is to become a president, they must pay attention to the creation of new jobs and social security of the people, because the economy has ground to a halt, not only in villages but also in small towns as well.”

Few of the villagers who spoke to VOA voiced optimism that any of the presidential candidates offered the answers to their problems.

Kukharenko says the high unemployment leads to alcoholism and mental illness among some residents.  It seems a bleak future.  But for a dose of optimism, head to Podilske’s primary school.

Ukrainian folk music blasts out of the stereo as a dozen six-year-olds rehearse for the upcoming national dance championship.  The students embrace the traditions with enthusiasm and are determined to win the competition for their village.

Two elder children told VOA of their hopes for the future.

“I don’t want to leave Ukraine.  But I want to go to another city and then return here to look after my parents and look after my village,” 10-year-old Anastasia Rudenko said.

Her friend Julia Shilova also plans to leave the village.

“I want to go to the most polluted places in Ukraine, to the cities, and work on improving the environmental problems there.”

Their big ambitions are welcomed by teachers and parents, but underline the challenges ahead as Ukraine’s rural populations head for the cities.

In villages like Podilske, the biggest battle is survival itself.

 
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As Ukraine prepares to choose its next president in elections scheduled Sunday, one of the biggest challenges remains its sluggish economy. Henry Ridgwell reports from Podilske, one hundred and forty kilometers southeast of Kyiv, where the local mayor is trying to stop the exodus of young people leaving the village.
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Spain is seeking extradition from the United States as many as 10 people who burst into the North Korean embassy in Madrid last month and tried to pass stolen information to the FBI.

A Spanish judge believes all 10 fled to the U.S. after the Feb.  22 raid. He calls them members of a criminal organization and accuses them of trespassing, burglary, assault, and threats.

The leader of the group has been identified as Adrian Hong Chang — a Mexican citizen who is a U.S. resident. Others in the group include American and South Korean citizens. 

The suspects call themselves Cheollima Civil Defense and describe the group as a human rights movement working to liberate North Korea. 

According to the Spanish court complaint, the 10 barged into the North Korean embassy in Madrid on Feb. 22, wearing full head masks and armed with knives and fake handguns. 

They allegedly tied up and gagged the staff while they took a North Korean diplomat into the embassy basement and tried to talk him into defecting.

When the embassy official refused to go with them, they allegedly bound and gagged him too.

Spanish police say an embassy employee managed to jump out of a window and alert officers. Hong Chang posed as a diplomat and assured police everything was fine. The group allegedly escaped with computers and hard drives in a stolen embassy car. 

Hong Chang is suspected of attempting to pass the material to the FBI when he arrived in the US. 

It is not known if the FBI took the stolen information. The FBI issued a statement saying “it is standard practice to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

There have been no comments from the Spanish, South Korean, or North Korean governments.

But a State Department spokesman said Tuesday the United States government had nothing to do with the raid.
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An Irish-American man described by the FBI as “the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet” faced a U.S. judge for the first time this week, on allegations that he ran an anonymous web hosting service that allowed users to post images of child rape.

After five years in Irish custody, Eric Eoin Marques, 33, was extradited on March 23 and stood before a federal judge in Maryland two days later.

He is charged with four counts related to the advertisement and distribution of child pornography.

In a 16-page criminal complaint outlining the case against Marques, an FBI agent describes the graphic content of two Dark Web sites only available through special software, and hosted by a service that allowed users to remain “anonymous or untraceable.”

The complaint contains explicit descriptions of images of sexual torture, bestiality, and rape that were available — and searchable — to website users. The child victims included infants, according to court documents.

Investigators reviewed more than one million files from one website and found that “nearly all of the files depict children who are engaging in sexually explicit conduct with adults or other children, posed nude and/or in such a manner as to expose their genitals, in various states of undress, or depict child erotica,” the U.S. Department of Justice summarized. 

The U.S. government alleges Marques ran the now-defunct business, Freedom Hosting, for at least five years, from July 2008 to July 2013, according to the complaint. He was arrested in Dublin in 2013.

In a Dublin court bail hearing, FBI Special Agent Brooke Donahue described Marques as “the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet.” 

“Criminals cannot hide on the dark web or in foreign countries,” said U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur.  “We will find them and bring them to justice.”

Hacktivist group Anonymous repeatedly targeted Freedom Hosting in 2011, taking down links to what they claimed were more than 40 child pornography sites. 

When an administrator restored services, Anonymous “once again infiltrated the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting and stopped service to all clients,” the group described. They declared the hosting service “Enemy Number One” in their collective anti-child pornography efforts, known as Operation DarkNet.

“The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death,” Anonymous stated at the time. 

The Irish media closely monitored Marques’ case over the years, as the dual US-Irish citizen fought extradition in the Irish courts.  

Last week, however, Ireland’s Supreme Court cleared the way for his removal to face the U.S. charges. 

Marques was born in New York to a Brazilian father and Irish mother. The family moved to Ireland when Marques was 6, according to media reports. 

He is scheduled to make a second appearance in Maryland district court on March 27 for a detention hearing.
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