Category: Europe

Merkel to throw more money at immigrants

On May 8, German leaders will hold their own talks in Berlin to channel money and assistance to mayors in carrying out the federal mandate for each of Germany’s 16 states to take their share of migrants, and figure out how to make room for them.

“Wealthy Germany can afford to help,” said Volker Herzog, the mayor of Vorra. The local pastor, the Rev. Björn Schukat, said that instead, there was a tendency among the authorities higher up the chain to simply announce that, for example, a dozen refugees are arriving — “and now you get on with it.”

Behind the worries is a government policy that calls on the 82 million people of Europe’s biggest economy to be generous. The federal and state authorities apportion the quotas and, increasingly, pay to renovate or rent apartments before sending the people to localities.

Some maintain that Germany’s current wealth and Nazi past impose an obligation to accommodate immigrants. But the costs are being felt as social workers grapple with overcrowded reception centers and officials scramble to house asylum seekers.

In the region, known as central Franconia, there are three social workers for a current allocation of 1,000 migrants. It could use 10, said Pastor Schukat in Vorra.

It was only last December that the federal authorities allocated an extra billion euros to the states and smaller communities to care for refugees this year and next. Just three weeks ago, Berlin was rebuffing calls for more. Now, more money is expected to flow from federal coffers after Ms. Merkel gathers with officials and politicians on May 8.

In 2014, some 627,000 people applied for asylum in a European Union country, including 203,000 in Germany. That was more than anywhere else in the bloc, but proportionally, Germany ranked No. 8, with 2.5 asylum applicants per 1,000 inhabitants, compared with 8.4 per thousand in Sweden.

In a recent German poll, more than half the respondents said they thought there was strong hostility to foreigners in the country.

The concern that Germany is inhospitable was also expressed this winter in pro-immigration demonstrations held nationwide to counter swelling anti-immigration marches, above all in Dresden.

With the federal authorities expecting a flood of newcomers — an estimated 300,000 will apply for asylum in Germany this year, after 200,000 in 2014 — places like Vorra, population 1,000, are struggling to make room.

The mayor of Tröglitz, Markus Nierth, quit after marchers opposed to the housing of migrants demonstrated outside his house. At least half a dozen politicians, from big city districts to tiny towns, subsequently told the German news media of harassment and even death threats.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Nierth said he was glad the federal authorities now seemed willing to do more, particularly financially. “It is really hard to make clear to some people that there is no money for a kindergarten or a swimming pool, but there is money to put up refugees,” he said. If the state or federal government absorbed the cost, hostility to refugees would diminish, he said.

Source: NYT

Swedish MP wants safer passage for migrants to EU

A Swedish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) has pointed the finger at EU members for their reluctance to resolve the problem of migrants’ safer passage to Europe.

Sweden’s Member of the European Parliament Cecilia Wikström has blamed EU countries for doing little to ensure migrants’ safe passage to Europe, the Swedish news website the Local reported.

According to Wikström, EU member states’ current support on the issue is so scanty that Sweden’s younger generation may liken their actions to “turning a blind eye to the Holocaust”.

Earlier, the MEP, who has repeatedly called for migrants’ “legal and safe routes to Europe”, told the Swedish TV network SVT that the younger generation would compare the EU’s stance on the matter to the policy of appeasement in World War II.

Source: SputnikNews

Britain, France urge Palestinian peace deal

Britain and France are urging the UN Security Council to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, while New Zealand has begun drafting a resolution on the issue. This was prompted by the US saying it may “reassess” its position on the stalled talks.

France and New Zealand have stressed that it is imperative to act now, given that the Israeli elections are over and there is a current lull in the US before the presidential election campaign heats up.

“We have been working on a text that might serve the purpose of getting negotiations started,” said New Zealand’s UN Ambassador Jim McLay, adding that the country is ready to wait and see how the French initiative for a resolution will turn out.

France announced last month that it wanted to begin talks about drafting “parameters” for ending the conflict in the Middle East, with the hopes of bringing the US onboard, which has repeatedly sided with Israel in the past.

Meanwhile French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that police are holding a heavily-armed man suspected of planning an imminent armed attack on one or two churches in France, Reuters reports.

A 24-year-old information technology student of Muslim origin was arrested on Sunday in the southeastern 13th arrondissement of Paris after he called emergency services for treatment of a gunshot wound.

Cazeneuve said police found handguns, other weapons and bulletproof vests. France strengthened security after Islamists killed 17 people in attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish food shop in January.

Russia bans Hollywood propaganda film

Russia on Wednesday cancelled the release of a Hollywood thriller set in the Stalin era on grounds it distorts history and would be shown as the country celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in WWII.

The film, “Child 44”, starring Tom Hardy, Vincent Cassel and Gary Oldman, tells the story of a serial killer who targets children in the Stalin era. It is based on a fantasy novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith and was due to premiere in Russia on Thursday.

Russia’s culture ministry said the film’s distributors in Russia, Central Partnership, had agreed to withdraw a request for a distribution licence after ministry officials viewed the film.

“Films such as ‘Child 44’ should not go out in our country on mass release, earning money from our cinema audiences, not in the year of the 70th anniversary of victory, not ever,” Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky wrote on the ministry’s website.

The move to effectively ban a major mainstream Hollywood film just a day before it was due to premiere was unprecedented.

In recent years, Russia has cracked down harshly on negative depictions of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, while criticism of those who fought in World War II is frowned upon.

The culture ministry accused the film of “distortion of historical facts and the idiosyncratic treatment of events before, during and after” World War II.

Source: AFP

Some 400 migrants drown in shipwreck off Libya

About 400 migrants died in an attempt to reach Italy from Libya when their boat capsized. This is the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean where the death toll from shipwrecks has surged this year.

The boat, carrying about 550 migrants in total, flipped about 24 hours after leaving the Libyan coast, according to some of the 150
survivors who were rescued and brought to a southern Italian port on Tuesday morning, Save the Children reported.

Before this incident there had already been more than 500 deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa this year, up sharply from 47 in the same period of 2014, says the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

The survivors of the latest shipwreck were mostly sub-Saharan Africans, but no further details were available, a Save the Children spokesperson tells Reuters. It is not clear exactly when the boat had capsized.

The number of boats carrying migrants aiming to reach the EU from Africa has picked up in recent weeks as fine spring weather makes the passage safer.

In February, more than 300 drowned when attempting the crossing in cold weather and rough seas. Save the Children, the IOM and other humanitarian organisations have called for the European Union to bolster its sea rescue operations before the migrant flows soar as they usually do in the summer months.

On Monday, 2 851 migrants were saved in rescue operations in the Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said, adding to at least nine who died and 5 629 who were saved over the weekend. Italy, which handled the largest number of migrant arrivals in the EU, has become increasingly alarmed about the breakdown of law and order in Libya, which has greatly exacerbated the task of tackling the migrant flows.

Source: Reuters

Greece misses deficit target as bailout deadline looms

Cash-strapped Greece fell well short of its budget deficit reduction targets last year, official figures showed Wednesday in a development that’s likely to add pressure on the radical left-led government during tortuous talks with bailout creditors.

The country’s statistical authority said the 2014 deficit was 3.5 percent of Greece’s annual GDP, considerably higher than the 0.8 percent forecast. And after stripping out the cost of servicing Greece’s crippling public debt, a modest primary surplus of 0.4 percent was recorded — short of the 2 percent target.

The new government elected Jan. 25 had already said the shortfall would be bigger than expected. But the official confirmation comes at a time Greece is negotiating a long-delayed rescue loan installment, without which it will run out of cash.

Greece is unable to tap the international bond market for funds due to sky-high borrowing rates, which reflect a lack of confidence in the country being able to repay its debts. Greek stocks closed 1.9 percent down Wednesday, another sign that investors in the country are jittery.

Greece has been surviving on rescue loans from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund since mid-2010, and the new government won a four-month extension to the main, European part of its bailout in February.

Under the extension agreement, Athens must present a series of economic reform measures that meet the approval of its creditors. Authorities are hoping for a final agreement next week, when all 19 finance ministers from the eurozone countries, including Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis, meet on April 24 in the Latvian capital of Riga.

But several European officials have raised doubts about the possibility of a deal then. Greece has some big repayments coming up over the next few months and without the rest of its bailout cash, the country could be staring at a possible default and an exit from the euro.

Source: eNCA

Gunter Grass warned of ‘sleepwalking’ into world war in final interview

Germany’s Nobel-winning author Gunter Grass, translated into Afrikaans by PRAAG, said he feared humanity was “sleepwalking” into a world war, in the last interview he gave before his death on Monday.

“We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria,” he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in the interview published Tuesday.

“There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before; so without realising it we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking,” he added.

Spain’s top-selling newspaper said the interview, carried out at the author’s home in Luebeck in northern Germany on March 21, was his last before his death aged 87.

Grass, who achieved worldwide fame with his debut and best-known novel “The Tin Drum” in 1959 opposed the installation of nuclear missiles on German soil.

In his lengthy interview with El Pais, he also expressed concern over climate change and overpopulation.

“As the years went by I realised that we have the possibility to autodestruct, something that did not exist before: it was said that Nature caused famine, droughts, the responsibility lay elsewhere,” he said.

“For the first time we are responsible, we have the possibility and the capacity to auto-destroy ourselves and we don’t do anything to eliminate this danger.

“All of this together makes me realise that things are finite, that we don’t have an indefinite amount of time.

“If we take into account the existence of our planet, we have to recognise that we are guests that spend a short and very determined period in this world and all we leave behind is nuclear waste,” he added.

– ‘Need to understand Russia’ –

His Danzig Trilogy is set in the ethnically-mixed region of his childhood. Danzig was handed to Poland after the war, when its ethnic German population fled or were expelled.

Grass, who was wounded and taken prisoner by the Allies during World War II, said his strong work ethic stemmed from several near-death experiences he had as a youth.

“During the space of three or four weeks, during the war, I had five or six possibilities to die like many others of my age. I am still conscious of that,” he told El Pais.

“The fact that I work as much as possible serves to prove to myself that I have survived, that I exist, that I am still living, that I am alive.”

Grass also discussed the rise of tensions between the West and Russia, saying Russia’s long history of occupations needed to be taken into account.

“There are Russian traumas, since Napoleon, since World War II, with 27 million dead when the Germans arrived… and now the fear of being surrounded by the enemy has returned to it,” he said.

“We need to understand it and that is what we have to do, understand Russia,” he added.

Source: AFP

EU announces antitrust suit against Google

The European Union will accuse Google on Wednesday of abusing its dominant position in Internet searches, opening the US tech company up to a risk of massive fines and enforced changes in its business model, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.

However, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that a formal antitrust charge sheet will not be ready for Wednesday and could take several more months to draw up.

The EU can impose fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover, or more than $6 billion in penalties in Google’s case.

An EU official said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager would make an important announcement about Google on Wednesday, after the EU’s executive holds its weekly meeting.

The Commission’s chief spokesman would not confirm the reports, which cited EU officials, but said there would be a news conference around noon (1000 GMT) after the meeting.

Vestager, who had indicated she would not be rushed into a decision on the five-year-old case, is due to fly to the United States later on Wednesday for a high-profile working visit.

Americans, including business leaders and President Barack Obama, have questioned EU efforts to curb the power of U.S. tech companies.

The Danish liberal will accuse Google of breaching competition law by diverting traffic from rivals to favour its own services, said the FT, adding that some fellow commissioners had been concerned Vestager was narrowing the probe.

The possibility of an early announcement of action against Google was made public earlier this week by Guenther Oettinger, the conservative German commissioner for the digital economy, who has been a sharp critic of Google and has spoken up for the interests of European technology and publishing companies.

Separately, Vestager will launch an investigation into Google’s Android mobile software business, the FT said.

The Commission has been laying the groundwork for a case centred on whether Google abuses the dominant market share of Android to promote its own services.

Vestager made the decision to go ahead with charges on Tuesday together with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and will inform her colleagues on Wednesday, the Journal said.

In office since November, Juncker’s executive has put the fostering of Europe’s digital economy and free trade with the United States among its priorities, but some EU officials are concerned U.S. companies are choking European competitors.

Vestager has narrowed the case, which she inherited from her Spanish predecessor, Joaquin Almunia – who rejected three settlement proposals from Google – the FT said.

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Andreas Schwab, a German conservative member of the European Parliament who has pushed for the EU executive to consider even breaking up Google, told Reuters earlier this week he expected the Commission to bring competition charges against the company.

However, industry and EU sources played down earlier on Tuesday suggestions that Vestager was about to announce charges against the Google.

The EU investigation is one of the highest profile competition cases of recent years, rivalling probes into Microsoft Corp, and comes amid political disquiet in Europe at the perceived dominance of U.S. tech companies.

Almunia launched the probe in 2010 and initially concluded that Google may have hurt competitors by favouring its own products and services in search results and blocking advertisers from moving their campaigns to rival platforms.

Since then, Google has offered three proposals to resolve the case.

Most recently, just over a year ago, it offered to give competing products and services bigger visibility on its website, let content providers decide what material it can use for its own services and make it easier for advertisers to move their campaigns to rivals.

Almunia initially accepted that deal, only to reverse his decision six months later and demand more concessions, leaving the ultimate decision to his successor.

Microsoft has been hit with total EU fines of more than 2.2 billion euros ($2.34 billion) over the past decade. ($1 = 0.9390 euros).

Source: Reuters

Putin lifts ban on S-300 missile system supplies to Iran

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to lift the ban on supplies of S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran.

“The decree cancels the ban from transit through Russia (including by air), transportation outside the territory of Russia to the Islamic Republic of Iran and also handover to the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the territory of Russia with the use of ships and aircraft flying the Russian state flag of the air defense missile systems S-300,” the Kremlin’s press-service has said.

The decree is effective immediately.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to make a statement on the decision to lift the ban soon.

It introduces amendments to the presidential decree of September 22, 2010 on measures for implementing the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1929 of June 9 2010. The sub-item concerning S-300 has been removed from it.

The implementation of the Russian-Iranian contract of 2007 for supplying the S-300 systems was suspended following the introduction of sanctions against Iran in September 2010. Tehran later protested that decision in court.

Shortly after Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu visited Iran last January the US Department of State said that supplies of Russian air defense systems to Iran would be unacceptable. In the meantime, Iran has repeatedly voiced the hope Russia would eventually agree to provide the launchers.

The head of the Rostech corporation, Sergey Chemezov, in February said that Russia had offered Tehran to buy the upgraded system Antey-2500 instead of S-300 and that Iran was still considering that option and remained undecided. The US Department of State said it had no objections to Russia’s alternative proposal to Iran.

S-300 systems (NATO reporting name SA-10 Grumble) are designed to defend major facilities from air attacks. They are considered to be some of the world’s most capable anti-aircraft missile systems.

Meanwhile the Pentagon slammed the Russian move to sell missiles to Iran.

Source: Itar-TASS

Wilders rallies thousands of PEGIDA followers

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders rallied thousands of PEGIDA followers in eastern Germany Monday to counter society’s “Islamisation”.

The “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, founded half a year ago in the city of Dresden, had aimed to top their previous record from January of 25,000 people joining a rally.

Many were waving Germany’s red-black-gold national flag and yelling their standard chant of “we are the people”.

“Dresden is showing how it’s done,” said the flamboyant Dutch politician with the trademark peroxide blond hair, who has called Islam a fascist religion and compared the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.

“We have had enough of the Islamisation of society,” he said, speaking in German to loud cheers from the crowd.

“Immigrants have to adopt our values, not the other way around.”

He also insisted that “we don’t hate Muslims, but they have to integrate” and demanded the reintroduction of border controls within the European Union.

More than 2,000 anti-fascist counter-demonstrators had rallied in the afternoon, away from the PEGIDA protest site which was blocked off by police.

PEGIDA marches, which have also targeted “criminal asylum seekers”, mainstream political parties and the media — began with several hundred supporters last October and peaked in January, just after the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris.

Wilders, 51, who heads the Party for Freedom, was again accused of inciting racial hatred after pledging last year to ensure there will be “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.

The German integration commissioner, Aydan Ozoguz, had warned citizens against attending the PEGIDA event, saying that by inviting Wilders the group had shown its true extremist colours.

“Anyone who still marches behind their flag is joining an openly far-right movement,” Ozoguz told the Welt daily.

Saxony state Interior Minister Markus Ulbig said: “This is not a good day for Saxony. With Geert Wilders they have invited a person who has hate inside him, who is divisive”.

Dresden police declined to provide a crowd estimate for the PEGIDA event.

Source: AFP

Pope calls Armenian genocide first of 20th century

Pope Francis described the massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians as “the first genocide of the 20th century” at a 100th anniversary Mass on Sunday, prompting Turkey to summon the Holy See’s ambassador in Ankara in protest.

Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians died in clashes with Ottoman soldiers beginning in 1915, when Armenia was part of the empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.

It was the first time a Pope has publicly pronounced the word “genocide” for the massacre, repeating a term used by some European and South American countries but avoided by the United States and some others to maintain good relations with an important ally.

In 2001, Pope John Paul II and Armenian Apostolic Church Supreme Patriarch Kerek in II called it “the first genocide of the 20th century” in a joint written statement.

Francis, who has disregarded many aspects of protocol since becoming pope two years ago, uttered the phrase during a private meeting at the Vatican with an Armenian delegation in 2013, prompting a strong protest from Ankara.

As the archbishop of Buenos Aires before becoming the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, Jorge Maria Bergoglio had already publicly characterised the mass killings as genocide.

After Francis’s remarks on Sunday, Turkey swiftly summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Ankara to protest and seek an explanation, a senior official told Reuters.

Will Kiev take down statue of Soviet general?

Rumors are swirling the man who liberated Kiev from the Germans may not be allowed to rest there any longer

There have been rumors in the Russian press about Ukraine’s alleged plans to dismantle the monument to Vatutin in central Kyiv, a stone’s throw from parliament.

According to the reports, Ukrainian authorities intend to cremate Vatutin’s remains, buried under the monument, unless his relatives collect them.

Kyiv, however, firmly denies the claims.

A Just Russia, a Russian political party seen as loyal to the Kremlin, ratcheted up tensions this week by stating that Vatutin’s daughter had requested that her father’s body be repatriated to Russia after authorities in Kyiv personally informed her of their plans.

Party leader Sergei Andrei Mironov was quick to throw his weight behind the reburial initiative.

“Our duty is to shield the grave and the monument from the danger they face today,” in the April 8 press release. “Reburying the general and transferring the monument to his homeland would be a correct and timely act.”

With relations between Russia and Ukraine at their lowest since the demise of the Soviet regime, Vatutin has become a polarizing figure.

The Russian general commanded Red Army operations in Ukraine during World War II.

Despite liberating Kyiv from Nazi German forces, he was attacked by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan unit that fought both Nazi troops and the Red Army, and died of his wounds in April 1944.

The UPA was organized by supporters of controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, branded a neo-Nazi by Russian state media.

Since Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted following mass protests in Kyiv, Russia has repeatedly accused the new Western-leaning government in Kyiv of being followers of Bandera, or “Banderovtsy.”

A Just Russia is no exception.

“General Vatutin died after being attacked by nationalists, Banderovtsy from the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” Mironov wrote in the press release. “Today, their heirs and successors are in power in Ukraine. And they don’t hide their hatred for heroes of the Great Patriotic War such as Nikolai Vatutin.”

Vatutin’s daughter, too, has only harsh words for the Ukrainian leadership.

Yelena Vatunina, who lives in Prague, confirms writing to Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to petition for her father’s reburial in Moscow.

She has yet to receive an answer.

“My father’s grave is located where they stirred all this trouble, near the Verkhovna Rada,” she told RFE/RL. “And who are they? They are all Banderovtsy. My father also died because of Banderovtsy.”

But she says her request was inspired solely by her distaste for Ukraine’s new government and denies being contacted by Ukrainian authorities about plans to dismantle the memorial.

“We don’t know anything yet,” she says.

Vatunina is also unlikely to back proposals to transfer the entire monument, which she describes as an architectural “monster,” to Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine insists the monument will remain in place, together with Vatutin’s ashes.

Lawmaker Oleksandr Brygynets, the former head of the Kyiv City Council’s commission on culture, admits that feelings are mixed in Ukraine about Vatutin’s legacy.

But he says the general’s final resting place should still be in Ukraine, not Russia.

“I’m not in favor of people who symbolize Soviet rule being actively represented in the streets of Kyiv,” he says. “On the other hand, I strongly believe we need to preserve monuments to people who are part of Kyiv’s history, and Vatutin is unquestionably one of them.

Source: Radio Free Europe

Vatican turns down gay French ambassador

Three months after appointing an openly gay diplomat as France’s ambassador to the Vatican, Paris is still waiting for the green light from Rome.

While the Vatican usually declares it has accepted a candidate around a month after an appointment is made, it makes no public statements at all if the answer is no.

Paris appears determined to stick with seasoned candidate Laurent Stefanini, a 55-year-old practising Catholic whom the foreign ministry described as “one of our best diplomats”.

“That’s why we appointed him. We are waiting for a reply to our request,” it said.

Sources close to President Francois Hollande said his appointment was “the wish of the president” and the cabinet of ministers.

The French cabinet approved Stefanini’s appointment on January 5 but has not yet received a reply.

“A delay of three months like this is not normal,” a well-informed source in Rome told AFP.

“Homosexual people are rejected in the Vatican, despite their merits (and) indisputable qualities,” said Flavio Romani, who heads the Italian gay rights group Arcigay.

Accusing the Holy See of failing to implement its “teachings of openness”, he blasted the Vatican as acting “like Uganda”, where gays are unwanted.

Source: AFP

French intel chief questions NATO claims

France’s intelligence chief has questioned NATO’s claims of Russia preparing to attack Ukraine as their agents failed to spot any activities signaling this – either before or after the crisis began.

A statement by the chief of France’s military intelligence, General Christophe Gomart, was published on the National Assembly’s website.

“NATO announced that the Russians were about to invade Ukraine. But, according to French intelligence, there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis – we determined that the Russians were deploying neither command posts nor logistical facilities, including field hospitals, needed for a military incursion,” General Gomart told a parliamentary hearing.

NATO’s top brass has been incanting mantras about a “Russian invasion” ever since the crisis in Ukraine began a year ago. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as his predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have lashed at Russia on numerous occasions, claiming that the Russian military is present on the ground in Ukraine, but failing to provide evidence supporting these claims.

“Our conclusion eventually proved correct because even if some Russian soldiers had indeed been seen on the Ukrainian side of the border, it was just a ploy, meant to bring pressure to bear on President Poroshenko, rather than an attempt to invade Ukraine,” General Gomart said.

The French intelligence chief’s remarks came in the context of France’s role in NATO. Gomart noted that at the moment the alliance is dominated by US intelligence, while France’s intelligence is taken not taken into consideration so much.

“France will not be fooled. France has its own sources of information and we are aware what the explanation for the crisis in Ukraine is,” Philippe Migault, expert on Ukraine from the University of International and Strategic Relations, said.

Meanwhile an American RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft was buzzed by a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet over the Baltic Sea near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, according to the Pentagon.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that the interception was launched after “Russian air defense radars spotted an unidentified air target over the Baltic Sea making steady progress toward the national border.” The aircraft had its transponder turned off, Konashenkov said.

The head of Russia’s Upper House Committee for Foreign Relations, Konstantin Kosachev, called on to NATO to stop their “hysterics” over flights by the Russian Air Force, “presenting them as aggression and demonizing Russia.”

“In connection with the incident over the Baltic one should keep in mind that Russia is a Baltic country, whereas the US is not,” Kosachev said.

Frants Klintsevich, of the United Russia party, said the report showed US intelligence has been working to fulfill a political order.

Meanwhile, on Friday five Northern European states, non-NATO Finland and Sweden included, signed a declaration on the expansion of military cooperation to counter “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

Since Finland and Sweden intend to interact with NATO on a matching contribution basis, which might indicate a desire to join the alliance, Moscow will view this declaration as an act of aggression, Norwegian defense analyst Janne Haaland Matlary warned.

“Finland and Sweden have also decided to keep their exercises to NATO standards, which implies a step on the way toward NATO. Today, there are no political grounds for them to join NATO, public opinion is not frightened enough, and referendums will be required. But what is happening now still looks like a preparation for membership,” Matlary told Aftenposten newspaper on Friday.