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A court in Moscow has handed popular blogger Yegor Zhukov a three-year suspended sentence after finding him guilty of inciting extremism online in a case condemned as politically motivated. 
 
The Kuntsevo district court announced the verdict Friday as hundreds of supporters of Zhukov, 21, a student at Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, gathered outside the court building in western Moscow. 
 
“The court has established that Zhukov made public calls for extremist activity using the internet,” Judge Svetlana Ukhnaleva said. 
 
Zhukov was arrested in August amid protests that gripped Moscow for weeks this past summer as Russians vented against the country’s repressive political system. 
 
“Of course, this is not an ultimate victory. A big thank you to everyone,” Zhukov said after the verdict was announced. 
 
In his final court appearance, on Wednesday, Zhukov made an impassioned appeal to his supporters — and offered an indictment of Russia’s political system. Economic inequalityRussia’s current political system has fostered economic inequality that, Zhukov said, destroys any opportunity for human prosperity, with the top 10 percent holding 90 percent of the country’s wealth. 
 
“Among them, of course, there are very honorable citizens. But the bulk of this wealth was obtained not by honest labor, for the benefit of people, but by banal corruption,” he said. 
 
Prior to his predawn arrest on August 2, Zhukov had already drawn a sizable audience on YouTube, where he had posted a series of video blogs in which he vented against President Vladimir Putin and promoted opposition protests across the country.  FILE – A wheelchair-bound woman activist surrounded by journalists holds a poster reading, “The Constitution breakers to be brought to justice!” as she talks to police officers during a protest in the center of Moscow, Aug. 17, 2019.In the series of protests that hit Moscow on consecutive weekends during the summer, police detained hundreds of people on various charges. Most were released for misdemeanor violations. 
 
At a different location in the capital Friday, the Tver district court sentenced Nikita Chirtsov, a 22-year-old programmer who took part in an unsanctioned rally on July 27, to serve one year “in a general penal colony.” 
 
Chirtsov was initially fined 12,000 rubles ($185) for violating regulations for holding public events, after which he left Moscow for the Belarusian capital, Minsk. However, Belarusian officials detained him days later on a Russian request and ordered him sent back to Moscow. 
 
Upon his return, Chirtsov was rearrested and charged with assaulting a police officer during the rally and placed in pretrial detention. Chirtsov maintained his innocence throughout the trial, and the police officer involved told the court in November that the suspect “does not deserve imprisonment.” Other cases
 
The Tver district court also fined Pavel Novikov, 32, 120,000 rubles ($1,850) after finding him guilty of assaulting a police officer during the same July 27 rally. 
 
Meanwhile, the Meshchansky district court on Friday handed Vladimir Yemelyanov a two-year suspended sentence after also finding him guilty of assaulting a law officer during the July 27 rally. 
 
Zhukov was initially charged with mass unrest as a result of his participation in the protests, but amid an outcry from his student supporters, prosecutors reclassified the case against him. 
 
The last video he posted before being detained had been viewed more than 300,000 times as of Thursday. Since his arrest, the videos posted to his YouTube channel by his supporters and allies have garnered hundreds of thousands more.
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Britons vote next Thursday in the country’s third general election in under four years, with pollsters and politicians warning it isn’t going to be easy to forecast the outcome. As the clock ticks toward the most consequential vote in a generation, the battle for Downing Street appears to be coming down once again to the two main storied parties  Labor and the Conservatives, say analysts, who note that voters have never held the leaders of either group in such high disdain as they do now.The fracturing of the two dominant parties, the revival of the country’s perennial third party, the Liberal Democrats, as well as the formation of a new anti-European Union party and the scrambling of traditional party allegiances, was adding too many variables for accurate prediction, the analysts cautioned, made more complicated by the country’s first past-the-post-voting system. This is where the candidate with the majority of the votes becomes the winner.One opinion poll after another and television debate after television debate have brought home how distrusting the British public has become of both the ruling Conservatives’ Boris Johnson and Labor’s Jeremy Corbyn.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson sits on a train in London, Dec. 6, 2019, on the campaign trail ahead of the general election on Dec. 12.Johnson is seen widely as an opportunist who will say anything to remain at No. 10 Downing Street but who doesn’t mean what he says and doesn’t say what he means. His public representation for being economical with the truth stretches back to when he was fired as a journalist by The Times newspaper for making up quotes.Corbyn is viewed as more in touch than Johnson with the trials and tribulations of ordinary people, but is judged an impracticable far-left figure from a bygone era whose plan to re-nationalize a chunk of the economy would likely bankrupt the country and who promises far more than can be delivered when it comes to redistributing wealth and reinvesting in Britain’s crumbling public services.Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks during a press conference in London, Dec. 6, 2019, ahead of the general election on Dec. 12.Corbyn’s fudge on Brexit — in which he wants to renegotiate yet another exit deal with the European Union and then hold a second referendum while remaining neutral on the plebiscite — has provoked derision from studio audiences.Johnson, too, has faced ridicule in TV studios as well as snubs on the streets when campaigning. “Is that a lie again?” queried an irate Yorkshire woman when he visited flood-hit parts of Britain last month and faced a barrage of criticism from furious locals over Conservative promises of cash aid that had amounted to nothing. In vain he tried to engage some in conversation. “You’ve not helped us … I don’t know what you’re here today for,” sniped one woman, who insisted he get out of her way.Mid-week, fast food giant Burger King decided to use the election to poke fun at Johnson’s reputation for misrepresentation with a new advertisement slapped on the side of London buses, mocking his Brexit promises. “ANOTHER WHOPPER ON THE SIDE OF A BUS. MUST BE AN ELECTION,” the ad declared, a tongue-in-cheek reference both to Burger King’s signature burger, the Whopper, and to political lies.”With a week to go before the election, the central issue seems to come down to trust,” according to The Guardian columnist Gary Younge. “For the Conservatives it is about whether people trust what they say; for Labor, it is about whether voters trust that it can do what it says. The challenge for the Tories (Conservatives) goes all the way to the top,” he added.People attend a “Stop the Brexit landslide” rally in London, Dec. 6, 2019.Many voters do not rate either of the main leaders so they must choose their least worst option, the “lesser of two evils,” say analysts.Conservative strategists hope the distrust voters harbor for Corbyn and Johnson will cancel out each other and that in the end they will win through and maintain their seven-point lead over Labor by garnering all the pro-Brexit vote. They are banking on the pro-EU vote fracturing between Labor and the Liberal Democrats, depriving Corbyn of sufficient seats to form a parliamentary majority or enough seats to cobble together a coalition government with Scotland’s nationalists, who are likely to make major gains north of the border with England.The Conservatives have stayed rigidly on message, trying to make the election as much about Brexit as possible and marketing the fact that they will take Britain out of Europe by the end of January, if they form the next government. Their discipline is working to make sure they are seen as the only real political vehicle for Brexit to happen and the challenge from the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage is collapsing.Nigel Farage, Leader of Britain’s Brexit Party poses after speaking on stage at the launch of their policies for the General Election campaign, in London, Nov. 22, 2019.Farage’s party is polling at about 5 percent and midweek, three of the party’s high-profile members urged voters to back the Conservatives, if they want “Brexit to be delivered,” angering Farage.Conservative strategists are also banking on Britons not wanting another deadlocked parliament and that Brexit exhaustion will persuade even pro-EU Conservatives to back Johnson on the grounds that the Brexit mess needs now to be brought to a conclusion and that if Johnson isn’t returned to Downing Street the political impasse will merely be prolonged.The polls in the final days of campaigning have narrowed, with the Conservatives’ lead almost dropping from 13 percent  to 9 or 7 percent, but that is not enough to give Labor much hope of overtaking the Conservatives. Labor’s support in its heartland districts of the north, many of which backed leaving Europe in the 2016 Brexit referendum, is also looking increasingly shaky.But tactical voting by pro-EU voters to upset the Conservatives is a wild card and could upend polling predictions — two former prime ministers, Labor’s Tony Blair and the Conservatives’ John Major, both of whom want Britain to remain in the EU — have been urging Britons to vote tactically in constituencies to deny Johnson a parliamentary majority. Pro-EU organizations have created interactive electoral maps to encourage tactical voting.More people than ever before are expected to vote tactically when a divided Britain has its say on Dec. 12 after more than three years of Brexit uncertainty, according to a Sunday Times poll with up to 6 to 10 percent of its readers thinking about voting tactically.
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The leaders of Russia and Ukraine hold their first face-to-face talks in Paris next week as part of a European summit aimed at ending the five-year war between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine.  
 
In advance of the latest attempt to end the bloodshed in Ukraine’s Donbas region, observers caution that entrenched differences mean Russia and Ukraine may work toward more trust-building measures, rather than aim for a grand bargain.
 
For more than five years, Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists have been locked in a grinding war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that has killed more than 13,000. Over that period, the Kremlin has maintained, against all evidence, it is not part of a war in which Russian soldiers, rebranded as “volunteers,” have joined in the fighting on the side of the rebels.
 
European powers, too, have repeatedly tried, and failed, to negotiate an end to the violence.
 
Against that backdrop, enters a newcomer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.  A comedic actor made famous for a role playing an accidental Ukrainian president on TV,  Zelenskiy won the real thing in a landslide election victory earlier this year. His central promise to voters was to end the war in east Ukraine.
 
Russian analysts say the Kremlin has taken notice.
 
“He promised peace. That was one of the most important points of his election campaign and he tries to deliver,” says Andrey Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council in an interview with VOA. “So we see a new flexibility on the Ukrainian side which allowed them to reach a couple of agreements on specific issues.”
 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, center, visits reconstruction of the bridge crossing over the Siverskyi Donets River, where the local residents cross the delimitation line in Stanitsa village, Luhanska in eastern Ukraine.Successes include a mass prisoner exchange negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in September.  
 
Then, last month, Russia returned three Ukrainian naval ships it had seized a year before,  a gesture that turned sour after Kyiv accused Moscow of stripping the vessels into disrepair.
 
Still, Russian polls indicate a “Zelenskiy effect” as Russian attitudes hardened by state propaganda demonizing Ukraine as overrun by “fascists” have begun to soften.   
 
Zelenskiy’s past television performances, often conducted in the native Russian he grew up speaking, help him jump one of the cultural pitfalls of the Ukraine conflict, says Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor of sociology at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, who has studied political movements in Ukraine and Russia.
 
“There are millions of people in Russia who saw these performances and movies, who laughed at his jokes. He’s funny,” says Kagarlitsky in an interview with VOA in Moscow. “And an enemy should be scary. Zelenskiy’s not,” he adds.  
 
The laughs don’t extend to Donbas — with Ukraine still looking to regain control over territory lost to pro-Russian rebels.
Russia, in turn, is insisting on special status for, and perhaps influence over, self-styled “independent republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Though not recognized by Moscow formally, the east Ukrainian separatist movements provide the Kremlin with a tool to sabotage Ukraine’s stated ambitions to join western institutions, such as the European Union and NATO.Ukrainian policemen patrol a street near the new line of contact in Katerynivka, Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Nov. 2, 2019.Meanwhile, foreign policy experts argue the addition of France and Germany to the talks — part of the so-called Normandy Format quartet of nations addressing the Ukraine crisis  — can do little to mask fundamental differences between Moscow and Kyiv over the future of the Donbas.
“On the whole Russia and Ukraine are headed to the Paris summit with such radically different positions over the key aspects of the peace deal, that expecting any serious progress in the Normandy Format is not to be expected,” wrote analyst Vladimir Frolov in the Russian online magazine, Republic.  
“The problem is that each side is certain that the strategic concession should be done by the other,” added Frolov.
Meanwhile, Zelenskiy faces other political challenges:
 
His efforts to make peace with Moscow have alienated nationalist forces at home. Recent polls show a 20-point drop in his ratings, which is inevitable, Zelenskiy’s supporters say, for impossibly inflated hopes.
 
Another factor is European pressure on Ukraine to accept the terms of earlier failed peace efforts — negotiated between France, Germany and Russia under Zelenskiy’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko — as simply the best deal Ukraine can get against its more powerful Russian neighbor.  Among agreed measures, the so-called Minsk II Protocols allow Russia to decide whether Ukraine had made adequate constitutional concessions to the Donbas separatist regions before handing back control of Ukraine’s eastern border.The Paris talks’ host, French President Emanuel Macron, in particular, has signaled a recent readiness to mend relations with Moscow despite hybrid military campaigns that saw Russian “volunteer” soldiers stream into east Ukraine to join in the fighting. There’s also the lingering question of Moscow’s direct annexation of Crimea from its neighbor in 2014.
 
Finally, there is Ukraine’s cameo role in the impeachment hearings in Washington — a focus that has put Trump administration’s support for Ukraine into question just when Zelenskiy needs it most.  
 
Given the complexities, both sides are playing down expectations for now, while hinting at other trust-building agreements.  
 
Possible Plan B deliverables would include a second prisoner exchange or a deal to deliver Russian oil and gas through Ukraine to Europe.
 
Either would prove a smaller but important step toward rebuilding a modicum of trust.
 
They’re also a tacit acknowledgement: Ukraine and Russia remain locked as neighbors, whether they like it or not. 
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Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in Madrid Friday to join thousands of other young people in a march to demand world leaders take real action against climate change.
                   
After making it through a swarm of media cameras and microphones at the Spanish capital’s northern train station, the Swedish teen posted an ironic tweet saying that she had “successfully managed to sneak into Madrid.”
                   
“I don’t think anyone saw me,” she added. “Anyway it’s great to be in Spain!”
                   
Madrid is hosting two-week, United Nations-sponsored talks aimed at streamlining the rules on global carbon markets and agreeing on how poor countries should be compensated for destruction largely caused by emissions from rich nations.
                   
The talks came as scientific evidence mounts about disasters that could ensue from further global warming, including a study commissioned by 14 seafaring nations due to be published Friday predicting that unchecked climate change could devastate fishery industries and coral reef tourism.
                   
Thunberg paid a surprise visit to the venue of the talks and joined a group of some 40 teens staging a sit-in there to demand real action against climate change.
                   
Holding hands, the teens sang a version of John Lennon’s “Power To the People” and displayed banners with the logo of Fridays for Future, the global climate movement inspired by Thunberg.
                   
Thunberg did not appear unsettled by the commotion surrounding her presence.
                   
“It’s absurd. I laugh at it. I do not understand why it has become like this,” the 16-year-old was quoted as saying by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, whose reporter rode with them in an electric car in Madrid.
                   
“I don’t like being at the center of the focus all the time, but this is a good thing,” she told Aftonbladet. “As soon as the media writes about me, they also have to write about the climate crisis. If this is a way to write about the climate crisis, then I guess it is good.”
                   
While Thunberg seemed bemused by the attention, her father Svante was startled, saying it was total madness.''
                   
“I have never seen anything like this,” he told Aftonbladet.
                   
The study commissioned by seafaring nations says climate change  could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses by 2050, adding that limiting global warming would lessen the economic impact for coastal countries, but that they also need to adapt to ocean changes.
                   
The presence in Madrid of Thunberg is expected to shift the attention to demands for greater action by non-governmental organizations and a whole new generation of environment-minded activists.
                   
Past appearances have won her plaudits from some leaders and criticism from others who've taken offense at the angry tone of her speeches.
                   
An advocate for carbon-free transportation, Thunberg traveled by train overnight from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, where she arrived earlier this week after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the United States by catamaran.
                   
That became necessary after a sudden change of venue for the COP25 summit following a wave of anti-government protests that hit Chile, the original host.
                   
Separately Friday, an alliance of American states, cities, academic institutions and companies opened its own venue at the U.N. climate talks, aiming to show that despite the federal administration's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accord, many Americans remain committed to the treaty's goal of curbing global warming.
                   
Elan Strait, who manages the “We Are Still In” initiative for the environmental conservationist World Wildlife Fund, said the movement isa short-term band-aid not only to get those carbon dioxide emissions down but also to encourage policymakers to lay the ground for further achievements.”
                   
“And that, regardless of the color of the government that is in power,” Strait said.
                  
Over 3,800 organizations and corporations representing 70% of U.S. economic output have joined the coalition, organizers claim, amounting to roughly half of the country’s emissions.
                   
The U.S. Climate Action Center is hosting Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin; Pat Brown, the chief executive of non-meat burger company Impossible Foods; Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh; and others.
                   
The venue is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charitable organization founded by billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is now seeking the Democratic nomination to run in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
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A nationwide strike about planned pension reforms that has paralyzed most of France enters its second day Friday.Concern that the proposed pension overhaul would force millions of people to work longer or have less lucrative benefits has prompted the strike, bringing much of the country to a halt.Tens of thousands of workers in France walked off the job Thursday as unions staged a nationwide strike against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to reform the country’s pension system.The strike shut down transportation, forced most schools to close, left hospitals understaffed and basic government services unmet.Largely peaceful demonstrations were held in Paris and in more than two dozen cities throughout the country.Protesters hide behind a wooden board and an umbrella during a demonstration against the pension overhauls, in Nantes, Dec. 5, 2019, as part of a national general strike.Violence erupted, however, near Place de la Republique in eastern Paris, where thousands of protesters had gathered. Some protesters set fire to a construction trailer and police responded by firing tear gas, witnesses said.Police also used tear gas against protesters in the northwestern city of Nantes and in the southeastern city of Lyon.Union leaders have promised to continue protesting unless Macron abandons the proposed pension overhaul, which officials admit would force employees to gradually work longer.Officials have given few details about the plan, but Macron’s office said Thursday that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would unveil the framework next week after negotiations with unions.The strike is a test of the political prowess of Macron, a former investment banker who won the presidency on the promise to transform France.
 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel entered the hallowed grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz on Friday as she began her first ever visit to the most notorious site of the atrocities that Adolf Hitler’s regime inflicted on Europe.
                   
Merkel also brought a donation of 60 million Euros ($66.6 million). The money will go to a fund to conserve the physical remnants of the site – the barracks, watchtowers and personal items like shoes and suitcases of those killed.
                   
Together, those objects endure as evidence of German atrocities and as one of the world’s most recognizable symbols of humanity’s capacity for evil. But they also are deteriorating under the strain of time and mass tourism, prompting a long-term conservation effort.
                   
That donation to the Auschwitz Foundation comes in addition to 60 million euros that Germany donated when the fund was launched a decade ago, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.
                   
That brings the total German donation to 120 million euros and makes Germany by far the most generous of 38 countries that have contributed. As with the earlier donation, half comes from the federal government and half from the German states, an acknowledgement of the German nation’s responsibility.
                   
Since becoming chancellor in 2005, Merkel has paid her respects at other Nazi concentration camps, and she has been five times to Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial Yad Vashem.
                   
Still, Poland’s Foreign Ministry called her visit “historic,” in an obvious acknowledgement of the unique status Auschwitz has in the world’s collective memory. The ministry also noted that it was just the third visit of an incumbent head of a German government.
                   
Nazi German forces killed an estimated 1.1 million people at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex during their occupation of Poland during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews transported from across Europe to be killed in gas chambers. But tens of thousands of others were killed there too, including Poles, Soviet prisoners of war and Roma, or Gypsies. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945.
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Russia and Turkey are working on a contract for the delivery of a new batch of Russian S-400 missile systems, the Interfax news agency cited a senior official at a Russian military cooperation agency as saying on Friday.Such a deal would be likely to further strain Ankara’s relations with Washington which has suspended Turkey from the U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jet program in which it was a producer and buyer, to penalize it for buying S-400 batteries this year.“We’re gradually working on this question. Most importantly, both sides are intent on continuing cooperation in this sphere,” the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation was quoted as saying.The official, Dmitry Shugaev, said he thought there was a “fairly high likelihood” Turkey and Russia would sign a contract for the delivery of an additional batch of S-400s next year.The head of Russia’s state arms exporter told RIA news agency on Nov. 26 that Moscow and Ankara were actively discussing Ankara taking up an option in its original missile contract for it to receive more S-400 systems.
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The largest concentration of black African churches outside of Africa can be found in South London. Each week, about 20,000 people attend one of the mostly Pentecostal churches in the city. Reporter Marthe van der Wolf has more from London.
 
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A reception center for minors in Madrid became the focus for clashing views on immigration and social welfare Thursday, a day after police defused a grenade found there. The row around the center, in the suburb of Hortaleza, crystallized worries about immigration and insecurity that helped the far-right Vox party double its result in last month’s election to become the third-biggest bloc in parliament.Vox repeatedly singled out the center during the campaign, with party leader Santiago Abascal denouncing “criminal foreign youngsters.” Last month, an extreme right-wing group called Hogar Social staged a protest at the gates, demanding the center’s closure to restore “security.”Police have made no arrests and some officials say gang violence may also have been behind the incident — with the device most likely thrown over the walls in a bag, according to Tedax, the Spanish police bomb squad. The grenade contained a minimal explosive charge, and no one was hurt. Dangerous climate
 
But government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa said the inflammatory rhetoric from Vox, which staged a visit to the area by party spokeswoman Rocio Monasterio during the campaign, had created a dangerous climate. 
 
“Words are ultimately internalized and intoxicate our consciences,” she told reporters. “We don’t like these words. We believe they incite certain behaviors from citizens which are not desirable in a country which desires social cohesion and peace for all.” 
 
With Spain’s Socialist party still struggling to form a government after the election and separatist riots in Catalonia fresh in collective memory, Wednesday’s incident has added to a volatile political climate in Spain. 
 
The center houses around 90 youngsters, most from North Africa, as well as some Spaniards. Several residents appeared wary, although according to city authorities, Hortaleza has some of the lowest crime rates in Madrid. 
 
“I don’t feel safe passing by the center’s gates alone,” said Elizabeth Lopez-Vega, 34, who said a young man she was told lived in the center had tried to steal her mobile phone last week. ‘Nobody is teaching them’
 
“They need more social educators,” she said. “Nobody is integrating them into society and nobody is teaching them a thing.” 
 
Social workers say the center is run down, although it no longer suffers from the severe overcrowding it faced earlier this year, when minors were forced to sleep on the floor. 
 
But they feel “singled out, like a cross has been painted on our door,” said one social worker who asked to remain anonymous. “We’re tired, afraid and fed up.” 
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In the swirl of protests in Moscow this summer against a political system that many deem repressive, an eloquent 21-year-old political science student stood out. Yegor Zhukov, who studies at Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, has drawn a sizable audience on his YouTube channel. In a series of video blogs, he has railed against President Vladimir Putin, promoting opposition protests across the country.  Zhukov was arrested before dawn on August 2.  Since then, his videos have garnered hundreds of thousands of views — more than 300,000 as of Thursday. Sentencing set for FridayZhukov now faces up to four years in prison, the sentence prosecutors have requested for charges of inciting extremism online. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday at the Kuntsevo District Court in western Moscow. He was initially charged with mass unrest as a result of his participation in the protests. But amid an outcry from student supporters, prosecutors reclassified the case against him.  FILE – Student and blogger Yegor Zhukov, detained during a protest for fair elections, is seen on a screen via a video link during a court hearing in Moscow, Aug. 15, 2019.In his final court appearance on Thursday, Zhukov offered a blistering indictment of the arbitrariness of Russia’s political system. “The state has made it clear. ‘Guys, you can wander around in your mink coats, just don’t interact with each other. More than two of you aren’t allowed to gather on the street. We’ll put you in jail for holding a demonstration. You’re not allowed to work together on some socially beneficial project. We’ll label you a foreign agent.’ Where does trust come from in such an environment?” he said. Zhukov joins a growing list of prominent individuals, which includes Nobel laureate poet Joseph Brodsky, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and former Russian economics minister Alexei Ulyukayev, whose eloquent courtroom statements over the decades have captured the Russian imagination. Russia’s current political system has fostered economic inequality that Zhukov says destroys any opportunity for human prosperity, with the top 10% holding 90% of the nation’s wealth. ‘Banal corruption'”Among them, of course, there are very honorable citizens. But the bulk of this wealth was obtained not by honest labor for the benefit of people, but by banal corruption,” Zhukov said. “Our society is divided into two levels by an impenetrable barrier. All money is concentrated at the top, and nobody from there will give it back. From the bottom, without exaggeration, only hopelessness remains.” In protests that clogged Moscow’s streets on consecutive weekends, police arrested dozens of people on various charges. Most were released for minor misdemeanor violations. 
But more than two dozen protesters have been prosecuted on more serious charges. Several have receivedwhat their supporters said were disproportionately harsh sentences.  FILE – A supporter of blogger Yegor Zhukov, who was detained during an earlier protest for fair elections, holds a placard during a rally to demand authorities allow opposition candidates to run in local elections in Moscow, Aug. 10, 2019.In court on Thursday, Zhukov claimed the government had “dehumanized” Russians, resulting in “an attitude that is highlighted every day by beatings with truncheons, torture in prisons, ignoring the HIV epidemic, closing schools and hospitals.” “Russia is gradually disappearing at an average rate of 400,000 people a year,” he said.  “You don’t see the people behind the statistics. So, go find out who they really are! It’s those [who] drink out of helplessness. It’s those freezing in cold hospitals. It’s those killed by someone else. It’s those who are killing themselves.” Still, Zhukov said he was optimistic for the future. “I look forward beyond the horizon, years ahead, and see Russia filled with responsible and loving people, where there will be a truly happy place,” he said. “Let everyone imagine such a Russia. Let this image guide you in your work in the same way that it guides me.” 
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Cyprus has petitioned the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to safeguard its offshore mineral rights, its president said on Thursday, upping the ante with neighbor Turkey which disputes its claims.Cyprus’s internationally recognized government discovered offshore gas in 2011 but has been at loggerheads with Turkey over maritime zones around the island, where it has granted licenses to multinational companies for oil and gas research.Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said Cyprus is committed to protecting its sovereign rights with every legal means possible.”Our recourse to The Hague has that very purpose,” he told journalists in Nicosia.Turkey, which does not have diplomatic relations with Cyprus’s government, says that some areas Nicosia operates in are either on the Turkish continental shelf, or in areas where the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state has rights over any finds.It has sent its own drill ships to the island.The ICJ has the power to issue binding decisions.The actual petition Cyprus has filed has not been disclosed and officials in Nicosia declined any immediate further comment.Anastasiades said Cyprus had attempted to deliver a notice of its intentions to Turkey’s embassy in Athens but it was not accepted. “So it was sent another way,” he said. “There is proof that it was received, so that gives (Cyprus) the right to recourse.”Cyprus’s Sigma TV, which first reported the petition, said the notice was then sent by fax.The ICJ declined comment on whether it had received a petition from Cyprus.”This news illustrates that the proper way to resolve international disputes or situations is through peaceful means, including, as a last resort, recourse to the courts,” said Dr. Klearchos Kyriakides, assistant professor of law at the Cyprus Campus of the University of Central Lancashire. “That’s what the rule of law requires.”EU member Cyprus was divided in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup. Turkey supports a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in north Cyprus.Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots created the Republic of Cyprus in 1960 but the partnership crumbled in acrimony in 1963, leaving Greek Cypriots running the island.
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A court in Kosovo has sentenced a lawmaker who once served as a government minister to two years in jail for denying a massacre by Serb forces in 1999 — which prompted NATO’s intervention to halt the war.Ivan Todosijevic was serving as a minister in the Pristina government in March this year when he described NATO as an aggressor, declared the “Racak massacre was fabricated” and called Albanians “terrorists.”Serbs killed 44 Albanians in the village of Racak in 1999 before NATO went to war to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo, ending a counter-insurgency war in which more than 13,000 people, mainly local Albanians, were killed.Kosovo’s 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority praises NATO for halting the war, a development that paved the way to independence in 2008.In the ruling the judge said Todosijevic’s remarks, during a commemoration of the start of the NATO bombing, “intentionally incited and publicly promoted hatred, division and intolerance among national, racial and ethnic groups living in Kosovo.”Todosijevic’s lawyer said his client, who was subsequently dismissed from his job as a minister because of his comments, would appeal against the verdict.”The verdict is a proof that human rights are being violated in Kosovo. My client is sentenced for something which is not even considered a criminal act,” lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic told Serb media.Serb President Aleksandar Vucic said the verdict was “terrifying.”Kosovo’s statehoodKosovo has been recognized by more than 110 states but not by five EU member states, Serbia and Russia.Serbia’s former southern province, Kosovo is still seen by Serbia as part of its territory. Many Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of their nation and Orthodox Christian faith.Todosijevic comes from the Serb minority which accounts for about 5 percent of the country’s population of 1.8 million.Serbs in Kosovo refuse to accept Kosovo’s statehood.After 78 days of bombing, under the terms of an armistice, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ordered his troops to withdraw from Kosovo and be replaced with NATO control.Less than 4,000 NATO peacekeepers are still deployed.
 
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BOLSOVER, ENGLAND — Dennis Skinner is a no-nonsense, unchanging socialist and the only British MP ever to heckle the Queen’s Speech Ceremony, when Britain’s lawmakers process from the Commons annually to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s address outlining the government’s legislative program.Nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover,” a reference to the Derbyshire constituency he has represented since 1970, the 87-year-old Skinner has traditionally occupied the seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons, where invariably wearing a tweed jacket and red tie, he has harangued those he deems “class enemies,” earning himself a dozen cooling off’ suspensions for what was deemed “unparliamentary language.”The son of a coal miner — his father was sacked after the historic coal strike of 1926 — and a former miner himself, his first brush with the Speaker of the House of Commons was in 1984 when he dubbed the leader of a group of Labour defectors a “pompous sod” and was ordered out of the chamber when he agreed to withdraw only the word “pompous.” In 1992, he incurred another suspension for describing the then Conservative agriculture minister as “a little squirt” and “a slimy wart on Margaret Thatcher’s nose.”Skinner’s working-class constituents, many of them former coal-miners or the sons and daughters of miners, have been relentlessly behind their pugnacious tribune with the snappy bark, and they have been loyal to the Labour Party. The closure of local collieries by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s only deepened Bolsover’s allegiance to Labour and to their MP, who took a pay cut himself in support of the miners during a ferocious 1984-85 miners’ strike.But the times are changing and the country’s oldest serving MP may became next week a casualty of electoral war thanks to the scrambling of British politics by Brexit and a makeover of the Labour Party, which has become more focused on metropolitan issues pushed by progressive urban recruits, irritating older and more socially conservative traditional Labour voters.FILE – Labour party MP Dennis Skinner listens to a speech at a Labour party conference in Liverpool, England, Sept. 25, 2018.Britain’s ruling Conservatives hope Boris Johnson can pull off what his predecessor at 10 Downing Street, Theresa May, failed to do in a snap election 18 months ago. Their hope is that Johnson will breach the Labour Party’s so-called northern red wall,’ once thought to be impregnable, by persuading anti-European Union northern working-class voters to defect to the class-enemy Conservatives to “deliver Brexit.”Skinner’s constituency is one brick in that wall and on the streets of Bolsover in the north east of the county of Derbyshire amid rolling hills, the talk is the December 12 general election may mark the end of the long-serving lawmaker’s political career. Locals say while they still admire their local MP, who’s been unable to campaign personally because of recent hip-replacement surgery, Brexit is driving them away from a Labour Party, which wants to hold a second Brexit referendum, if it wins power.
Bolsover voted 70 percent to Leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and because of that high proportion of pro-Brexit voters, the seat is a key target for the Conservatives. On a cold, breezy day when VOA visited the town center, which has the feel of left-behind desperation about it with boarded-up shops, shuttered pubs, neglected terrace houses and shabby cheap takeaways, it wasn’t difficult to find locals planning to switch their votes to either the Conservatives or the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage.One former miner, Dave Michaels, a stocky 65-year-old wearing a flat cap, said, “I’ve been Labour all my life, as was my father, and I don’t like Johnson, don’t trust the man, but I think he’ll get us out of the EU and stop all the dithering.” He voiced annoyance at the influx of eastern European migrants to staff new warehouses and online retail distribution centers. Locals complain migration has altered the social cohesion of this corner of Derbyshire and strained already under-resourced public services.Others expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that Skinner’s 5,000 majority may well collapse next week, adding to a possible seismic change in British politics that could see Labour and the Liberal Democrats snatch traditional Conservative seats in the pro-EU south of England and the commuter belt around London, but lose heartland seats of their own in the north, midlands and southwest of the country.Britain’s Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s rival in the country’s upcoming election Jeremy Corbyn takes pictures with people outside the University of London, in London, Britain, Dec. 3, 2019.The Conservatives’ assault on the “red wall” will make or break Johnson’s dream of securing a parliamentary majority and dictate whether Britain leaves the European Union or not.Daphne, a 52-year-old, who’d just finished shopping in a butcher’s shop, said she’ll be voting for Skinner’s Conservative rival Mark Fletcher. The mother of two grown up daughters, Lewis says she remains grateful to Skinner for all he’s done in the past, but he is “long in the tooth” and it is time for a change. “The Conservatives seem to have a goal,” she says.The 34-year-old Fletcher, the grandson himself of a miner who was educated at state schools before heading to Cambridge University, says locals “want to get Brexit done and the Labour party has lost its way.” He’s convinced he can win Bolsover and that the Brexit Party won’t deny him victory by splitting the Leave vote. He is buoyed by a seat-by-seat opinion survey last week produced by the YouGov polling agency that predicted he will win the seat on December 12 with 42 percent of the vote, with Labour trailing 38 percent and the Brexit Party picking up 12 percent.But the remaining days will be crucial before voting — in Bolsover, as well as in 49 other Labour seats in Wales, the midlands and northern England targeted by the Conservatives. At the last general election there were hints the ‘red wall’ isn’t as strong as Labour strategists suppose — two of Bolsover’s neighboring constituencies, North East Derbyshire and Mansfield, defected to the Conservative camp.The Labour activists are hitting the doorsteps hard in the northern constituencies, though, trawling residual party support. And while the Conservatives are doing well when it comes to the issue of Brexit, they are on the back foot when it comes to public-service issues, and especially in regards to the under-staffed and under-funded National Health Service.But Brexit isn’t Labour’s only problem in the north in what commentators describe as a “hold-your-nose election.” Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, seen widely as the most far-left leader the party has ever had, are vying in the unpopularity stakes, and according to opinion polls neither are trusted by voters. Johnson is the most disliked new prime minister in the modern history of opinion polling, while Corbyn is the most disliked leader of the opposition.General election victory or defeat may come down to who is disliked the most. 
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