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Germany and the families of Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics have agreed on a compensation offer totaling $28 million, according to an interior ministry spokesperson on Friday.

Last month, the families had said they were unhappy with the latest German compensation offers and that they planned to boycott a ceremony on Monday in Munich marking the 50th anniversary of the attack in protest.

The federal government will contribute $22.5 million, while $5 million will come from the state of Bavaria, and $500,000 will come from Munich, said the spokesperson.

On September 5, 1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage at the poorly secured athletes’ village by Palestinian gunmen from the radical Black September group.

Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were dead after a standoff and subsequent rescue effort erupted into gunfire.
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Human Rights Watch issued a report Thursday documenting the forcible transfer of Ukrainian citizens to Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, which HRW says constitutes war crimes and potential crimes against humanity.

The 71-page report, We Had No Choice: “Filtration” and the Crime of Forcibly Transferring Ukrainian Civilians to Russia, includes interviews with 18 people who went to Russia — 15 from the Mariupol area, one from Donetsk and two from the Kharkiv region. It said Russian and Russian-affiliated authorities also subjected thousands of Ukrainians to a form of compulsory, punitive and abusive security screening called filtration.

Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at HRW, discussed the organization’s work in Ukraine with Natalya Churikova of VOA’s Ukrainian Service in an interview Wednesday.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: Who did you interview for this report? Were they Ukrainians in Russia?

Denber: So, the people who we interviewed were Ukrainians, Ukrainian citizens who had been forcibly transferred to Russia. So, about the time when we spoke to them, they were no longer in Russia. They had already made it out of Russia, for the most part. They were already in the countries of the European Union or Georgia.

VOA: How do you define forced deportation?

Denber: I think this is a really important question because … a forced transfer is a war crime and a potential crime against humanity. In order for it to apply in a situation like in Ukraine, where it’s an armed conflict and one side is bringing people to the opposite side or to other occupied areas, for the term, force transfer, to be applicable, you don’t have to actually put a gun to somebody’s head, or you don’t have to drag them in handcuffs.

What we documented was how Russian authorities, Russian forces, or forces that were affiliated with Russia, pretty much just made clear to Ukrainians to whom they were offering evacuation on a bus that they had no other choice. And that’s, in fact, the title of the report.

They pretty much told them they had no other choice, that they had to … get on this bus. Sometimes they said, “Well if you stay, it’ll be so much worse for you. You’re not going to survive.” Or sometimes they didn’t say anything at all. In some cases, they didn’t tell people where they were taking off to. In other cases, these forces rounded people up from shelters, from the streets, sometimes also from house-to-house searches, and put them on buses to so-called DNR, [Donetsk People’s Republic] and then onward to the Russian border.

VOA: What would be the legal way for Russia to deal with this situation? That they are in a state of war, and they really want the population to be safe?

Denber: The legal way would be to ensure that there was transportation offered to Ukrainian-held areas. Their responsibility was to make that available, because it wasn’t impossible. People who were fleeing either the Mariupol area, or even people who had been through filtration, if they had access to their own transportation, if they had their own car, or if they had enough money to hire a car, they were able to drive away and drive to Ukrainian-held areas. It’s just that if you didn’t have the money, you had no other choice [but] to get on a bus. And that’s the definition of forced transfer.

VOA: What about the filtration camps and the separation of families? We know that families are trying to escape together.

Denber: I think that almost everyone we talked to who went through filtration felt that they were in a very coerced situation. Some people felt like they were hostages. Some people felt like they were being accused of a crime. So, this was a very abusive process that had no legal framework whatsoever. Look, the Russian authorities are entitled to set up a screening process for people who are voluntarily going to Russia. That’s not what the case was here. And second of all, even if they’re setting up a screening process for security reasons for people who are voluntarily going to Russia, there are certain boundaries and limits that they need to observe.

There is nothing that could justify the scope of the screening that they were undertaking … by getting people’s biometric data. That’s hugely invasive, and it’s also consistent with what Russia is doing domestically. They’re using all kinds of mechanisms in order to scrape people’s biometric data with the purpose of controlling them. …

[Also,] they’re asking their opinions about the war. Their opinions about the military. Their opinions about Putin. Why is that? There is no real justification for that other than to intimidate people. And then they were invasively looking into people’s telephones and scraping everything they could. We don’t know what’s happened to that data.

VOA: In the report, you say that some of the civilians who were detained from the Mariupol area who were suspected of sympathizing with this battalion were put in the camp where Ukrainian prisoners of war were recently killed. Do you have any data about this?

Denber: So, all of the information that we got, we got from interviewing people — and quite detailed interviews. We interviewed many people who had been through the filtration process. We specifically asked people about what happened to people who flunked the filtration process, who the Russian or Russian-affiliated forces detained after they finished the gathering of data and the interviews, then the interrogations. And we understand that people told us that they have heard that people were taken to various other locations, including what their fate was after that. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to follow up on those things.

We did get details of one case of a man who was held because he flunked the filtration process, and he was eventually released. He didn’t want to talk about [his] experience, and he also talked about his son who was picked up in Mariupol and held for several weeks. He was suspected of being affiliated with the Ukrainian military, and … it was pretty clear that he was quite badly beaten.

VOA: Ukrainian authorities say almost 6,000 Ukrainian children are being deported to Russia, and some of them are being put up for adoption. Have you come across any of these cases?

Denber: In our report, we documented only one case of a forced transfer of children. And that was, of course, [the] transfer of 17 children who had been in an institution in Mariupol, and they were forcibly transferred. Somebody who ran the institution had a plan to get them out of Mariupol, and he was intercepted by some DNR person who took the children to the DNR. And that was it. We didn’t document any other cases other than that, but that doesn’t mean that those cases don’t exist.

VOA: We asked the U.N. refugee agency about their numbers, and they said the Russian Federation gives them the numbers, and they put them up for the public in their portal, and that Russia has become the biggest country to receive Ukrainian refugees. They said they didn’t have the means to check the numbers independently. Would your report be a basis for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to change the definition on the status of the Ukrainians in the Russian Federation?

Denber: That’s an excellent question. Our report certainly raises questions about how to define the people who have crossed the Ukrainian border into Russia. Look, we can’t say how many people were forcibly transferred into Russia. We don’t know. But we do know that large numbers of people were, because there were busloads and busloads and busloads of people. We do know that people were rounded up en masse and put on buses in this manner that is coercive. … It’s very hard to say exactly how many people were displaced from Ukraine and who ended up in Russia. It’s very hard to say how many of those people who ended up in Russia are genuinely refugees. How many of them are forcibly transferred. How many of them went voluntarily to Russia. It’s a very difficult numbers game.

VOA: Can Ukraine use your report as evidence in the International Court of Justice, where it has sued Russia for human rights violations?

Denber: I hope that anybody who is interested in justice will use our report as evidence of the crime of forced transfers. … We documented a number of cases, and I very much hope that our report is used by anybody who’s looking for justice.

VOA: In which case does forced deportation represent a crime against humanity?

Denber: It would have to do with the scale and the numbers. I think once we see who actually was forcibly transferred, we could talk about whether it was systematic, and whether it was combined with other crimes.

VOA: What would be the benchmark?

Denber: I really couldn’t say. I think that’s something the court would have to determine.
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Belarus has become an accomplice to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Russian troops used it as a launchpad for missile strikes and air raids on Ukraine. In response, Western countries have imposed tough sanctions on Belarus. Maxim Moskalkov reports. Camera: Elena Matusovsky.
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Russia this week shut off a major gas pipeline to Germany as Europe and the U.S. accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponizing” energy. And as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, there are growing environmental concerns about an unexplained Russian gas flare close to the Arctic.
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Russia closed the major Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany on Wednesday, claiming the three-day shutdown is necessary for the maintenance of turbines. Europe and the U.S. dispute that claim and accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponizing” energy.  

Last year, Russia supplied 40 percent of the European Union’s gas. In recent weeks, Russia has reduced the flow through Nord Stream 1 to just 20 percent of capacity. Moscow blamed the latest shutdown on Western sanctions that have targeted its economy. 

Visiting the town of Lubmin on Germany’s Baltic coast Tuesday, where the Nord Stream pipeline comes ashore, Markus Soeder, the premier of the German state of Bavaria, said his country was in a difficult position. 

“Putin is playing a game with Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. I think it’s a kind of game. Our problem right now is that we are not in a position to adequately respond to this game,” Soeder told reporters. 

Current European gas prices have soared to about 10 times their average price over the past decade. Germany declared a gas crisis in June and warned that consumers and businesses must cut back. Consumption has since fallen by around 20 percent. 

In a stark speech last week, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of “the end of abundance” and said the French people would have to make sacrifices. 

“Our freedom — the system of freedom, which we are used to living in — has a cost. And at times, if it needs to be defended, that could entail sacrifices to reach the end of certain battles we must carry out,” Macron said at a cabinet meeting August 24. 

Looking for other sources

As Russia turns off the taps, Europe is scrambling to find alternative sources. Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have helped Europe fill gas storage sites to 80 percent capacity, two months ahead of the EU target. That has calmed markets and brought down prices in recent days. But storage will only last so long, said Tom O’Donnell, who teaches at the Free University in Berlin and is the founder of energy analyst group The Global Barrel.

“Storage by itself isn’t enough for the winter,” O’Donnell told VOA. “With all the pipelines cut off — which is what we have to expect from Russia, that all their pipelines will be cut off — [even with] all the LNG we can take, that storage is going to last 2½ months in heating season. And then, you know, Europe’s stuck.”

Europe is trying to wean itself off Putin’s gas, but it will take at least two years, O’Donnell said. 

“In the meantime, he has leverage and he will use it all he can before totally loses the business,” O’Donnell said. “The dependence of Europe on Russian-delivered gas by pipeline is much greater than, let’s say, the importance of that money for Putin, because he makes so much more money from oil.” 

Meanwhile, there is growing concern over a Russian gas flare, which has been burning close to the Finnish border for two months. Experts say it’s burning an estimated $10 million worth of gas every day, sending the equivalent of 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

“It is on the site where the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany is starting,” said professor Esa Vakkilainen of Lut University in Lappeenranta, the closest city to the border.

“But it is also a place where the Russians have built an LNG plant to deliver LNG, and that plant was supposed to open this spring,” Vakkilainen told the Reuters news agency. “And so, it is probably operating. But due to the war in Ukraine, there is very little information about what is actually happening there. So, we can only speculate that right now there are some technical difficulties either involved with Nord Stream or with this LNG station.”

Across Europe, new LNG terminals are under construction, old coal and nuclear power plants are being fired up again, and there is a big investment in renewable power. But in the short term, it may not be enough, and governments are warning of a difficult winter ahead.
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The death of the late Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has come at a critical moment in Russia’s history. Society is divided over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and analysts say the government of Vladimir Putin is becoming increasingly authoritarian and repressive, as explained in this report from the VOA Moscow bureau, narrated by Marcus Harton
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Russia on Thursday launched weeklong war games involving forces from China and other nations in a show of growing defense cooperation between Moscow and Beijing as they both face tensions with the U.S.

The maneuvers are also intended to demonstrate that Moscow has sufficient military might for massive drills even as its troops are engaged in military action in Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise will be held until Sept. 7 at seven firing ranges in Russia’s Far East and the Sea of Japan and involve more than 50,000 troops and over 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.

Russian general staff chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, will personally oversee the drills that will involve troops from several ex-Soviet nations, China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Syria.

The Defense Ministry noted that as part of the maneuvers, the Russian and Chinese navies in the Sea of Japan will “practice joint action to protect sea communications, areas of marine economic activity and support for ground troops in littoral areas.”

The drills showcase increasing defense ties between Moscow and Beijing, which have grown stronger since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. China has pointedly refused to criticize Russia’s action, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking Moscow, and has blasted punishing sanctions imposed on Moscow. Russia, in turn, has strongly backed China amid the tensions with the U.S. that followed a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Putin has drawn parallels between U.S. support for Ukraine and Pelosi’s trip, describing them both as part of alleged efforts by Washington to foment global instability.

Alexander Gabuyev, a political analyst who closely follows Russia-China ties, noted that “it’s very important for Beijing to show to the U.S. that it has levers to pressure America and its global interests.”

“The joint maneuvers with Moscow, including the naval drills, are intended to signal that if the pressure on Beijing continues it will have no other choice but to strengthen the military partnership with Russia,” Gabuyev said. “It will have a direct impact on the interests of the U.S. and its allies, including Japan.”

He noted that the Kremlin, for its part, wants to show that the country’s military is powerful enough to flex its muscle elsewhere despite the campaign in Ukraine.

“The Russian leadership demonstrates that everything goes according to plan and the country and its military have resources to conduct the maneuvers along with the special military operation,” Gabuyev said.

The exercise continues a series of joint war games by Russia and China in recent years, including naval drills and patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. Last year, Russian troops for the first time deployed to Chinese territory for joint maneuvers.

China’s participation in the drills “aims to deepen pragmatic and friendly cooperation between the militaries of the participating countries, enhance the level of strategic cooperation among all participating parties, and enhance the ability to jointly respond to various security threats,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei said last week.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have developed strong personal ties to bolster a “strategic partnership” between the former Communist rivals as they both are locked in rivalry with the U.S.

Even though Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin has said that such a prospect can’t be ruled out. He also has noted that Russia has been sharing highly sensitive military technologies with China that helped significantly bolster its defense capability.
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The death of the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms led to the disintegration of the former communist giant in 1991, is seen by many in China as a reminder to avoid the same fate as its neighbor.

Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91, is lauded in China for normalizing Sino-Soviet relations, paving the way for solid ties between the two countries in subsequent years. But Beijing also blames him for bringing about the dissolution of its ally, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

While the West saw Gorbachev as a brave hero who brought much needed democratic reforms to his country and freed the Soviet satellite states to be independent, China sees him as a weak leader who failed his country.

Both countries were at a crossroad in the late 1980s. The Soviet Union’s economy was near collapse and changes were urgently needed; China’s people were yearning for political reforms after decades of poverty and political turmoil.

Whereas Gorbachev allowed political reforms, China’s then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping crushed protesters and put reformist General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Zhao Ziyang under house arrest.

At that time and even now, China thinks it made the right decision.

“Back in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping believed Mr. Gorbachev got the perestroika (restructuring) wrong,” said Victor Gao, a former interpreter for Deng. He is currently a professor at China’s Soochow University and vice president of the Center for China and Globalization. “Gorbachev was pushing political reform ahead of economic reform; China under Deng was promoting economic reform ahead of political reform.”

Gorbachev loosened control over not only the USSR’s state-controlled economy but also its political society, leading eventually to satellite states such as Latvia and Lithuania and later Eastern European countries splitting off and chaos in the Russian economy.

To Deng, this was not a smart move.

“Deng believed Gorbachev got the priorities and the sequence wrong. By the end of the day, what matters the most is whether you can bring bread and butter to the table for the people,” Gao said.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of international relations at the International Christian University in Japan, said the Soviet Union’s collapse led China’s leadership to harden its commitment to socialism.

To make sure that socialist principles were sustainable, Deng opened up the Chinese economy, starting by setting up special economic zones to grow prosperity, Nagy said.

His successor, Jiang Zemin, allowed the country’s growing number of capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party. Current leader Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has campaigned to root out corruption to maintain the legitimacy of the party.

Today, China is much wealthier than it was in the 1980s and is soon to become the world’s biggest economy, whereas Russia still suffers serious economic problems.

The two countries’ different fates also may be because of their “very different” political systems, Nagy said.

“Russia today is a kleptocracy, it’s very few men and it’s always men who run the economy, it’s like a mafia state. They don’t have centralized control and a centralized state. It’s very corrupt,” Nagy said.

In China, the Chinese Communist Party has been able to exert centralized control to govern effectively, he said.

“Whatever you can say about the CCP, in China, 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty, they have really good infrastructure, a lot of people are well off, and this is due to relatively good governance of the party,” Nagy said.

Critics argue that China risks eventual collapse, given problems such as an unhealthy property market, a slowing economy and disruptions from its zero-COVID policy that has led to major cities being locked down.

However, a former Taiwanese official who has dealt with China believes that regardless of the challenges China may face, it is impossible for Chinese leaders to ever accept the disintegration of their country as Gorbachev did.

“Chinese people always have a sense that their country must be unified, it can’t be split for whatever reason. This mindset goes back to the first emperor who unified China. This feeling of unification is very strong among Chinese people,” he said. “The Soviet state on the other hand was made up of many countries. Their views of one nation are not so strong.

“China definitely wouldn’t let Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan split off,” added the former official, who requested anonymity to avoid problems ahead of upcoming local elections in Taiwan.

It is unclear whether China’s growing economy and attendant problems will ever lead to the kind of political reforms that Gorbachev fostered, he said.

Nagy also questions whether China will ever move toward the kind of political reforms initiated by Gorbachev.

“In the Chinese context, I’m not sure a democratic system will be able to deal with all their challenges and manage the stable economic growth without the current control of the state,” he said. “Something more fractious like Taiwanese democracy could create problems in the internal stability in the Chinese context.

“I don’t think any political system can deal with the challenges in China today: demographics, environmental problems, productivity problems in economy, quality of economic growth, debt, water security, food security, selected diversification from Chinese supply chains.”

At the end of the day, Gao said, the Chinese leadership’s top priority is maintaining political stability.

“The collapse of the USSR under Mr. Gorbachev has been closely studied and analyzed by China. China has been successful in navigating through more than four decades of reform and opening to the outside world,” Gao said.

“However … maintaining political stability has always been a most important task. … China believes reform needs to be steady, but not hasty; gradual, but not in one stroke.  Stability needs to be protected at all cost,” Gao said.

“China will continue to push for greater reform and opening to the outside world, in building a unique system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

In response to Gorbachev’s death, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday: “Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev made positive contribution to the normalization of relations between China and the Soviet Union. We mourn his passing and extend our condolences to his family.”
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U.N. nuclear inspectors expect to begin their work Thursday at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, assessing safety and security matters amid international concern that fighting in the area could endanger the facility.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told reporters there has been “increased military activity, including this morning,” near the plant.

“But weighing the pros and cons and having come so far, we are not stopping,” Grossi said.

Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the area near the power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe and a key source of energy for Ukraine.

That continued Thursday, with Russia saying Ukraine sent a team of troops to try to seize the plant, while Ukraine said Russian forces shelled the route the IAEA team would travel to get to the site.

The company that oversees Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, Enerhoatom, said Russian shelling led the Zaporizhzhia plant’s emergency protection system to shut down one of its reactors.

Grossi said he expects his team’s initial work to last a few days and that he hopes to establish a permanent presence.

With the nuclear plant in the midst of a war zone, world leaders have expressed fears it could be damaged and result in a radiation disaster like that at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant in 1986.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday reiterated his call for Russia to fully demilitarize the area around the plant.

“They are playing games. They are gambling with the nuclear security,” Borrell said. “We cannot play war games in the neighborhood of a site like this.”

Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder welcomed the presence of the IAEA team and called on Russia to enable them to do their work at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Ryder also announced U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will lead a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Sept. 8 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Ryder said the meeting, the group’s fifth, would bring together defense ministers and senior military officials from 50 nations to discuss the Ukraine conflict and coordination for Ukraine aid.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday there would be an announcement in the coming days about “future security assistance” for Ukraine on top of the $13 billion already pledged by the United States.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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As the world marks the passing of former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh shares the thoughts of international journalists and his own memories of what it was like to report on the international statesman.
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When Caroline Muscat filed Freedom of Information requests in Malta to access public contracts and payments to the director of a prominent media company, the agencies in Malta told her the information “does not exist.”

Muscat, founder and editor of a small independent news website called The Shift, appealed. After investigating, the Data Protection Commission ruled in her favor, ordering the agencies in July 2021 to share the information.

Instead, 40 government ministries and agencies sued The Shift, appealing the ruling.

Some of the lawsuits alleged that The Shift’s requests, filed in December 2020, amounted to harassment of officials, the news website reported.

“This is nothing more than an attempt to dissect our work and cripple us financially,” Muscat told VOA.

To fight the cases, the website needs to raise $40,185 — half of its yearly operational budget.

“We are a community-funded newsroom, and having to raise this amount of money in such a short period of time is close to impossible,” Muscat said.

The Maltese Embassy did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Legal fight

The use of mass lawsuits — known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs — to target journalists is not new.

At the time of her death in October 2017, the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing 48 libel cases — five criminal and 43 civil.

Many were filed by government officials, including former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who is unrelated to The Shift founder.

The Council of Europe criticized authorities for not immediately dismissing the cases after a car bomb killed Galizia, who came to prominence reporting on political corruption in Malta.

But the tactic is not confined to Malta. Over a decade, 570 cases of SLAPPs have been recorded in Europe, with the number increasing every year, according to data collected by the nongovernmental Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) and Amsterdam Law Clinics.

Oliver Money-Kyrle, head of Europe advocacy and programs at the International Press Institute, described SLAPPs as legal action “with the intent not of winning the case, but with the intent of silencing the person and intimidating them so they either settle out of court, or they withdraw what is being published.”

Corinne Vella of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation — a nonprofit set up after her sister Galizia’s death — said the journalist’s experience aligned with this apparent lack of intent to win the cases.

“Eventually, the cases collapsed because [the plaintiffs] never turned up in court,” Vella said of the lawsuits against Galizia. “So, very clearly, they found excuses just to harass her.”

With The Shift’s case, Vella said it appeared to be “an orchestrated attempt to prevent any information from being accessed by The Shift and being made public.”

SLAPPs are “very effective” in hindering journalists’ work, according to Vella, because of how exhausting, expensive and time-consuming it can be to fend off so many cases.

“It makes you a target in more ways than one because once you’ve hit so many lawsuits, people can start to think that you’ve actually done something wrong,” Vella said. “And this certainly was the case for Daphne.”

Resource drain 

The Shift has argued that its freedom-of-information requests are important to the public interest because they concern the administration of public funds. Since the 40 lawsuits were filed, 12 rulings have been issued, all in favor of the news website.

But those rulings are being appealed.

“You have 40 government agencies — and we’re talking 40 to 60 lawyers over there — that the government is paying to fight an individual newsroom,” Muscat said. “Why? Simply because it does not want to abide by, first of all, the Freedom of Information Act — its own legislation — and two, government-appointed bodies that have already ruled in our favor.”

The rise of SLAPPs in Europe has led to a heightened awareness of the lack of legislative safeguards against such practices.

Since Galizia’s killing, media groups and some members of the European Parliament have advocated for EU-wide legislation protecting journalists from SLAPPs.

In April, the European Commission proposed an anti-SLAPP directive that would allow judges to quickly dismiss such cases.

“[The experiences of] both The Shift and Daphne show very, very clearly just how important it is to have protection mechanisms built into law,” Vella said. “It’s not a matter of tinkering with existing legislation and adding clauses and provisions. There has to be a law that comprehensively protects people from abusive lawsuits.”
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Britain will have a new prime minister next week, nearly two months after the resignation of Boris Johnson in July, following a series of scandals. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Johnson’s successor faces a series of daunting challenges — while Britain’s allies, including Ukraine, are watching closely.
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Mikhail Gorbachev could have been celebrated for involuntarily opening a path toward Ukraine’s independence, but his support for Crimea’s annexation and silence in the face of Russia’s invasion have stained his reputation there.

Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, triggered its demise in 1991, which led to the formation of 15 new independent countries including Ukraine.

But it is no accident that the Ukrainian government is still mute, a day after the death of Gorbachev, whose mother and wife were of Ukrainian origin.

Ukrainians walking through the streets of Kyiv on Wednesday did not mince their words about the leader of the “occupying” and “imperialist” Soviet power.

“I’m very happy he died. The more enemies and their supporters die, the happier I’ll be,” said 32-year-old Oleksandr Stepanov.

Katerina Boyuk, a 17-year-old student, is convinced that Gorbachev “did not really care” about Ukraine and that the country’s independence has “nothing to do” with him.

“He was just the ruler of the USSR, and he couldn’t manage to keep his throne,” she said.

“I think he’s as much of an aggressor as the current Kremlin leaders,” said Vytalya Formantchuk, 43, adding that Gorbachev “put a lot of effort into destroying Ukrainians, their culture and their language.”

The visible hostility of Ukrainians toward Gorbachev also stems from his silence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Gorbachev, mostly popular in the West, never publicly commented on what has turned out to be the worst conflict in Europe since World War II.

One member of his close circle, Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov, said in July that Gorbachev was “disappointed, of course.”

Even worse, Gorbachev said he “approved” Moscow’s annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014.

He argued that “the people” had spoken in the referendum on the unification of the peninsula to Russia, widely regarded as a sham.

Kyiv never forgave him for that.

Gorbachev is perceived in Ukraine “with a lot of skepticism — we do not share the enthusiasm we’ve been seeing in obituaries all around the world,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher and editor-in-chief of the ukraineworld.com website.

“His destiny is the same destiny as many Russian reformers who want reforms, but only up to a certain point: when people start questioning Russian imperialism and decolonization,” he said.

Gorbachev was Soviet leader in 1986, when Chernobyl’s No. 4 nuclear reactor exploded, causing the world’s worst nuclear accident and spreading radioactive contamination across Europe.

Moscow first tried to downplay the extent of the disaster, which delayed evacuation of locals.

Gorbachev is widely blamed for this and for the decision to maintain the May 1 parade in Kyiv five days later.

Thousands of people, including many children, marched through the city holding flowers and singing songs, blissfully unaware of the radioactive cloud surrounding them.

Gorbachev “was an ordinary Russian imperialist. He simply did everything he could to save the USSR and restore the Russian Empire, which is now waging war against us,” popular blogger and activist Yuri Kasyanov posted on Facebook.

Disliked by Russians, rejected by Ukrainians, Gorbachev still regularly talked about his Ukrainian roots.

“I am, after all, half Ukrainian. My mother was Ukrainian, and my wife, Raisa, was too. I spoke my very first words in Ukrainian, and the first songs I heard were Ukrainian,” he said in a 2015 interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel.
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