1UA TV

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday returned to Ukraine to face court on treason charges he believes are politically motivated. 

At the Kyiv airport, where he arrived on a flight from Warsaw on Monday morning, Poroshenko was greeted by several thousand cheering supporters. Some carried banners reading “We need democracy,” and “Stop repressions.” 

From the airport, Poroshenko is expected to head straight to court, which will rule on whether to remand him in custody pending investigation and trial. 

A prosecutor has alleged that Poroshenko, owner of the Roshen confectionery empire and one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen, was involved in the sale of large amounts of coal that helped finance Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014-15. 

Poroshenko’s assets have been frozen as part of its investigation into the allegations of high treason. The former leader of Ukraine faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. 

Poroshenko insists that he is innocent. He accuses his successor, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of seeking to discredit him politically to distract from Ukraine’s widespread problems, including economic woes and rising deaths from COVID-19. 

The charges are the latest in a string of accusations leveled against Poroshenko since he was defeated by Zelenskyy in 2019. The allegations have generated concerns of undemocratic score-settling in Ukraine and also alarmed Ukraine’s allies. They come as Russia has built up troops along the Ukraine border and the United States has voiced concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be planning an invasion of Ukraine. 

Poroshenko was defeated by voters following a corruption scandal and a mixed record on reforms, but he emerged with strong patriotic credentials for his work in rebuilding the Ukrainian army as it fought Russian-backed insurgent fighters in the east. 

Zelenskyy says he is waging a fight against oligarchs that is aimed at reducing their influence in Ukraine’s political and economic life. 

Poroshenko has been outside of Ukraine for weeks, meeting with leaders in Brussels, Berlin and other European capitals. 

His supporters view charges against him as politically motivated. “It is a revenge of the authorities and an attempt by Zelenskyy to eliminate his biggest rival in Ukraine’s politics,” Anton Ivashchenko, 42, told The Associated Press at the airport. “Persecution of Poroshenko sows animosity and discord among those who push for … Ukraine’s closer ties with the West.” 
…

Greek artist Alekos Fassianos, whose work drew on his country’s mythology and folklore, died Sunday at the age of 86, his daughter Viktoria told AFP.

Described by some admirers as a modern-day Matisse and by others as the Greek Picasso, his works, which included paintings, lithographs, ceramics and tapestries, have been shown around the world.

While he resisted comparison with Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, he admired both artists, but insisted he had drawn on many different influences.

Fassianos, who had been bedridden at his home in the suburbs of Athens for several months, died in his sleep, Viktoria Fassianou said. 

Ill health had forced the artist to put down his paintbrushes in 2019.

“All the work of Fassianos, the colors that filled his canvases, the multidimensional forms that dominated his paintings, exude Greece,” Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said in a statement.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis paid tribute to Fassianos as a painter who “always balanced between realism and abstraction.”

Fassianos, he added, “leaves us a precious heritage.”

The artist split his time between Greece and France, where he studied lithography at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.

The website devoted to his work says his style was forged in the 1960s and that his main themes have always been man, nature and the environment. 

From Paris to Munich, Tokyo to Sao Paolo, Fassianos’s works were shown around the world. Examples of his work can be found in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and in the Pinacotheque in Athens.

“Greekness has always been his inspiration, from mythology to contemporary Greece,” the artist’s wife, Mariza Fassianou, told AFP during a visit to his home last year. “He has always believed that an artist should create with what they know.”

Her husband would work on the floor or even scratch the corner of a table, she said. “He destroyed what he didn’t like.”

An Athens museum devoted to his work will open in autumn 2022 and display some of the works that currently adorn his home.

His friend, architect Kyriakos Krokos, entirely redesigned the central Athens museum that will showcase his work, collaborating with Fassianos himself.

France has bestowed upon him some of its top awards, including the Legion of Honor (Arts and Letters) and he is also an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts.
…

The North Macedonia’s parliament late Sunday elected Social Democrat technocrat Dimitar Kovacevski as prime minister after more than two months of political turmoil in the country.

Kovacevski, a former deputy finance minister, succeeds Zoran Zaev, who stepped down last month following his party’s heavy defeat in municipal elections.

The new coalition Cabinet, led by Kovacevski’s Social Democrats (SDSM), was backed by 62 MPs of those present in the 120-seat parliament. Forty-six lawmakers voted against.

Presenting his agenda to the parliament on Saturday, Kovacevski had said a key goal of his government would be “higher and sustainable economic growth.”

He also promised to address the country’s energy crisis and to try to bring it closer to the European Union.

Kovacevski, 47, assumed leadership of the SDSM helm last month.

He takes over as prime minister after the previous government, also SDSM-led, survived a no-confidence vote in November after weeks of negotiations with smaller parties.

Ever since however, the opposition has accused the government of lacking legitimacy and has called for early elections. Kovacevski insists the elections will be held as scheduled in 2024.

As deputy finance minister Kovacevski, who holds a PhD in economics, kept a low profile.

Political analysts have questioned whether he will be able to negotiate the challenges the nation faces.

At home, they say, he will have to face the complex relations within the ruling coalition and the corruption crippling the country’s economy.

His biggest foreign policy challenge is thought to be getting progress on EU membership talks, which are stalled because of the opposition of Bulgaria.

In 2019, the country added the geographical qualifier “North” to its official name to distinguish it from the Greek province of Macedonia.

The change enabled North Macedonia to join NATO and was a precondition for paving the way for its possible EU membership.

But Bulgaria stands in the country’s path to EU membership because of a dispute over historical issues and the origin of the Macedonian language.
…

France’s parliament gave final approval on Sunday to the government’s latest measures to tackle COVID-19, including a vaccine pass contested by anti-vaccine protesters.

Lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted 215-58, paving the way for the measure to enter force in the coming days.

The new law, which had a rough ride through parliament with opposition parties finding some of its provisions too tough, will require people to have a certificate of vaccination to enter public places like restaurants, cafes, cinemas and long-distance trains.

Currently, unvaccinated people can enter such places with the results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. Nearly 78% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry on Saturday.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to seek a second term in an April election, told Le Parisien paper this month that he wanted to irritate unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting the COVID vaccine.

Thousands of anti-vaccine protesters demonstrated in Paris and some other cities on Saturday against the law, but their numbers were down sharply from the week before, just after Macron’s remarks.

France is in the grips of its fifth COVID-19 wave with daily new cases regularly hitting record levels over 300,000. Nonetheless the number of serious cases putting people in ICU wards is much lower than the first wave in March-April 2020.
…

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says he is returning to Ukraine to fight treason charges — even though he views them as politically motivated — because he believes that fighting them is part of his defense of national unity.

Poroshenko spoke Sunday at a news conference in Warsaw hours before he is to fly Monday from the Polish capital to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he is to face the allegations in court.

A prosecutor has alleged that Poroshenko, one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen, was involved in the sale of large amounts of coal that helped finance Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014-15. He is owner of the Roshen confectionery empire. The Kyiv court has already frozen Poroshenko’s assets as part of its investigation into the allegations of high treason.

Poroshenko insists that he is innocent. He accuses his successor, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, of seeking to discredit him politically to distract from Ukraine’s widespread problems, including economic woes and rising deaths from COVID-19.

“I will return to Ukraine to fight for Ukraine,” Poroshenko said, adding that he considers fighting the “politically motivated” charges to be part of his patriotic fight for the nation.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, Poroshenko seemed upbeat Sunday. When asked by a reporter if he expects to be arrested upon his return home, he answered, “Definitely not.”

The charges are the latest in a string of accusations leveled against Poroshenko since he was defeated by Zelenskiy in 2019. The allegations have generated concerns of undemocratic score-settling in Ukraine and alarmed Ukraine’s allies. They come as Russia has built up troops along the Ukraine border and the United States has voiced concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be planning an invasion of Ukraine.

Poroshenko said he sees charges he faces as harmful for the country at such a time. He said Ukraine’s leadership is responsible for national unity, and what “Russia is really looking for is disintegration and conflict inside the country.” 

“I think this is a very irresponsible action of the current leadership to disintegrate the country and ruin the unity,” he said. 

Poroshenko was defeated by voters following a corruption scandal and a mixed record on reforms, but he emerged with strong credentials a patriot for his work in rebuilding the Ukrainian army as it fought Russia-backed insurgent fighters in the east.

For his part, Zelenskiy says he is waging a fight against oligarchs that is aimed at reducing their influence in Ukraine’s political and economic life.

Poroshenko has been outside of Ukraine for weeks, meeting with leaders in Brussels, Berlin and other European capitals.
…

Iranian authorities confirmed that they have re-incarcerated French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah for breaking house arrest restrictions. 

The judiciary news website Mizan.news on January 16 quoted the deputy head of the judiciary, Kazem Gharibabadi, as saying Adelkhah, who had been furloughed with an electronic-monitoring bracelet, violated judicial restrictions “dozens of times.” 

The official claimed that Adelkhah, 62, violated the limits of her house arrest “despite repeated warnings from judicial authorities.” 

On January 12, the French Foreign Ministry condemned Adelkhah’s new imprisonment and demanded her immediate release, saying her case has negative consequences on the relationship between Paris and Tehran. 

She holds both Iranian and French passports, but Iran doesn’t recognize dual nationality. Iranian officials insist that Adelkhah is an Iranian citizen and have denied French consular staff access to her. 

Adelkhah, an expert on Iran and Shi’a Islam at France’s prestigious Paris Institute of Political Studies, was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran airport. 

Adelkhah was given a five-year sentence for conspiring against national security. Iranian authorities have not provided any solid evidence to back the charges. 

In October 2020, she was allowed to live under house arrest at her sister’s home in Tehran, wearing an electronic-monitoring bracelet. 

Adelkhah is one of at least a dozen Western nationals believed to be held in Iran. Rights groups accuse Iran of using foreign detainees as bargaining chips for money or influence in negotiations with the West. 

Iran denies it, though there have been such prisoner exchanges in the past. In March 2020, Iran released Adelkhah’s French colleague and partner, Roland Marchal, in a prisoner exchange with France. 

Marchal, who was arrested in June 2019 alongside Adelkhah, was swapped for Iranian engineer Jalal Ruhollahnejad. 

Information from AFP and AP was used in this report 
…

A Roman villa housing the only mural by Caravaggio and at the center of a legal battle between a former Playboy model and the sons of her late husband, an Italian prince, will go up for auction Tuesday.

The sprawling property, valued at 471 million euros (almost $540 million), is a Baroque jewel with gorgeous gardens and a valuable art collection that also includes frescoes by Guercino.

Art lovers are demanding the Italian state step in to buy the spectacular property, arguing that artistic treasures should be protected and available for public viewing.

But the government might not have enough to pay for it — the auction is only open to those who can put up 10% of the starting price of 353 million euros — and rumored buyers include Bill Gates and the Sultan of Brunei.

The auction was ordered by a Rome court following a dispute among the heirs of Prince Nicolo Ludovisi Boncompagni, the head of the family who died in 2018.

The dispute is between the prince’s third and final wife, Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi, a 72-year-old American former real estate broker and actor who once posed for Playboy, and the children from his first marriage.

Auction of the century

The residence of the noble Ludovisi Boncompagni family for hundreds of years, the 2,800-square-meter Casino dell’Aurora is located in central Rome between the Via Veneto and the Spanish Steps.

Its sale is being held behind closed doors and has been dubbed by Italian media as the “auction of the century” in its breathless reporting on the legal wrangling around it and who could buy it.

There are those who believe the cultural gem should be preserved for the nation.

Almost 35,000 people have called on the Italian government to exercise “its pre-emptive right” to buy the building and the Caravaggio, which alone is valued at 350 million euros, according to a petition on change.org.

“Sign this petition to prevent another piece of Italy, such a beautiful one, from being sold off,” it said.

However, the estimated price of the villa represents a quarter of the annual budget of the culture ministry.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini wrote this month to Prime Minister Mario Draghi and the finance minister to raise the issue of the sale, according to reports.

Under Italian law, the government can only exercise its pre-emptive rights after the sale to a private individual, and then within 60 days of the sale’s competition — and for the same price.

‘Beautiful, important building’

The oil mural by Caravaggio — real name Michelangelo Merisi — dates to 1597 and is located on the ceiling in a corridor on the first floor of the palace.

It depicts Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune with the world at the center, marked by signs of the zodiac.

“It’s certainly one of his earliest (works) and is very interesting because the subject is a mythological subject, and Caravaggio painted almost only sacred works,” art historian Claudio Strinati told AFP.

The palace was originally an outbuilding in the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi, of which nothing remains today. Its name comes from a Guercino fresco depicting the goddess Aurora, or Dawn, on her chariot.

“It is a very beautiful, very important building, with some very beautiful paintings,” said Strinati, a former museum curator in Rome.

“It would certainly be a positive thing if it became public property, it could become the home of a museum or particularly important cultural activities.”

The auction is due to start Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) and will last 24 hours.

 
…

Microsoft said late Saturday that dozens of computer systems at an unspecified number of Ukrainian government agencies have been infected with destructive malware disguised as ransomware, a disclosure suggesting an attention-grabbing defacement attack on official websites was a diversion. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

The attack comes as the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine looms and diplomatic talks to resolve the tense stand-off appear stalled.

Microsoft said in a short blog post that amounted to the clanging of an industry alarm that it first detected the malware on Thursday. That would coincide with the attack that simultaneously took some 70 government websites temporarily offline.

The disclosure followed a Reuters report earlier in the day quoting a top Ukrainian security official as saying the defacement was indeed cover for a malicious attack.

Separately, a top private sector cybersecurity executive in Kyiv told The Associated Press how the attack succeeded: The intruders penetrated the government networks through a shared software supplier in a so-called supply-chain attack in the fashion of the 2000 SolarWinds Russian cyberespionage campaign targeting the U.S. government.

Microsoft said in a different, technical post that the affected systems “span multiple government, non-profit, and information technology organizations.” It said it did not know how many more organizations in Ukraine or elsewhere might be affected but said it expected to learn of more infections.

“The malware is disguised as ransomware but, if activated by the attacker, would render the infected computer system inoperable,” Microsoft said. In short, it lacks a ransom recovery mechanism.

Microsoft said the malware “executes when an associated device is powered down,” a typical initial reaction to a ransomware attack.

Microsoft said it was not yet able to assess the intent of the destructive activity or associate the attack with any known threat actors. The Ukrainian security official, Serhiy Demedyuk, was quoted by Reuters as saying the attackers used malware similar to that used by Russian intelligence. He is deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

A preliminary investigation led Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, to blame the web defacement on “hacker groups linked to Russia’s intelligence services.” Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement in cyberattacks against Ukraine.

Tensions with Russia have been running high in recent weeks after Moscow amassed an estimated 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border. Experts say they expect any invasion would have a cyber component, which is integral to modern “hybrid” warfare.

Demedyuk told Reuters in written comments that the defacement “was just a cover for more destructive actions that were taking place behind the scenes and the consequences of which we will feel in the near future.” The story did not elaborate and Demedyuk could not immediately be reached for comment.

Oleh Derevianko, a leading private sector expert and founder of the ISSP cybersecurity firm, told the AP he did not know how serious the damage was. He said also unknown is what else the attackers might have achieved after breaking into KitSoft, the developer exploited to sow the malware.

In 2017, Russia targeted Ukraine with one of the most damaging cyberattacks on record with the NotPetya virus, causing more than $10 billion in damage globally. That virus, also disguised as ransomware, was a so-called “wiper” that erased entire networks.

Ukraine has suffered the unfortunate fate of being the world’s proving ground for cyberconflict. Russia state-backed hackers nearly thwarted its 2014 national elections and briefly crippling parts of its power grid during the winters of 2015 and 2016.

In Friday’s mass web defacement, a message left by the attackers claimed they had destroyed data and placed it online, which Ukrainian authorities said had not happened.

The message told Ukrainians to “be afraid and expect the worst.”

Ukrainian cybersecurity professionals have been fortifying the defenses of critical infrastructure since 2017, with more than $40 million in U.S. assistance. They are particularly concerned about Russian attacks on the power grid, rail network and central bank.

 
…

Kyiv believes a hacker group linked to Belarusian intelligence carried out a cyberattack that hit Ukrainian government websites this week and used malware similar to that used by a group tied to Russian intelligence, a senior Ukrainian security official said.

Serhiy Demedyuk, deputy secretary of the national security and defense council, told Reuters that Ukraine blamed Friday’s attack – which defaced government websites with threatening messages – on a group known as UNC1151, and that it was cover for more destructive actions behind the scenes.

His comments offer the first detailed analysis by Kyiv on the suspected culprits behind the cyberattack on dozens of websites. Officials on Friday said Russia was probably involved but gave no details. Belarus is a close ally of Russia.

The cyberattack splashed websites with a warning to “be afraid and expect the worst” at a time when Russia has massed troops near Ukraine’s borders, and Kyiv and Washington fear Moscow is planning a new military assault on Ukraine.

Russia has dismissed such fears as “unfounded.”

The office of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Demedyuk’s remarks.

Russia’s foreign ministry also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his remarks. It has previously denied involvement in cyberattacks, including against Ukraine.

“The defacement of the sites was just a cover for more destructive actions that were taking place behind the scenes and the consequences of which we will feel in the near future,” Demedyuk said in written comments.

In a reference to UNC1151, he said: “This is a cyber-espionage group affiliated with the special services of the Republic of Belarus.”

‘Track Record’

Demedyuk, who used to be the head of Ukraine’s cyber police, said the group had a track record of targeting Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine and had spread narratives decrying the NATO alliance’s presence in Europe.

“The malicious software used to encrypt some government servers is very similar in its characteristics to that used by the ATP-29 group,” he said, referring to a group suspected of involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“The group specializes in cyber espionage, which is associated with the Russian special services [Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation] and which, for its attacks, resorts to recruiting or undercover work of its insiders in the right company,” Demedyuk said.

The messages left on the Ukrainian websites Friday were in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and Polish. They referred to Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, where mass killings were carried out in Nazi German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The episode remains a point of contention between Poland and Ukraine.

Demedyuk suggested the hackers had used Google Translate for the Polish translation.

“It is obvious that they did not succeed in misleading anyone with this primitive method, but still this is evidence that the attackers ‘played’ on the Polish-Ukrainian relations [which are only getting stronger every day],” he said. 
…

Kosovo’s parliament on Saturday passed a resolution banning ethnic Serbs from voting on Kosovan soil in Serbia’s national referendum on constitutional amendments.

Serbia will hold a referendum on Sunday on amendments to the constitution that would change how judges and prosecutors are elected, a move the government says is aimed at securing an independent judiciary, a condition for EU membership.

Kosovo’s independence backers—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and the EU mission—urged Prime Minister Albin Kurti to allow Serbs in Kosovo to vote in the referendum.

But in an extraordinary session on Saturday afternoon, 76 out of 120 deputies voted in favor of a declaration banning Serbia from opening polling centers in Kosovo.

Kurti told parliament that establishing polling stations in majority Serb areas of Kosovo would be against the constitution, and that ethnic Serbs could vote by mail or in Belgrade’s government liaison office in Pristina.

“Kosovo is an independent and sovereign state and should be treated as such,” Kurti said.

Serbia, which still considers Kosovo part of its territory, has been organizing elections for its ethnic kin since the Kosovo War ended in 1999.

Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence but has pledged to normalize relations with its former breakaway province before joining the EU.

The head of Serbian Office for Cooperation with Kosovo said the ban was aimed at “annulling political and civic rights of Serbs [in Kosovo].”

“Kurti and his extremists should not think that in the future they will succeed in banning Serbs in Kosovo from voting, notably in April 3 elections,” Petar Petkovic said in a statement.

Serbia is holding presidential and parliamentary elections on April 3. Early on Saturday, Kosovo police confiscated two trucks of the Serbian election commission transporting ballot papers as they crossed the border at Merdare to head towards Serb-majority areas.

“We call on the Kosovo government to allow Serbs in Kosovo to exercise their right to vote in elections and electoral processes in accordance with this established practice,” Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, United States and the EU said in their joint statement Friday.
…