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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2138283

Archived

Nate Vance, the cousin of U.S. Vice President JD Vance and a volunteer fighting on Ukraine's front lines, said he is "disappointed" in his relative's stance on Ukraine.

Vance, a former U.S. Marine, defended Ukraine from 2022 to January 2025 as a member of the Da Vinci WolvesFirst Motorized Battalion, a volunteer unit.

"Being your family doesn't mean I'm going to accept you killing my comrades," Vance saidin an interview with Le Figaro published on March 9.

Vance's remarks come at a low point in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, as Washington has halted intelligence sharing and military aid to Kyiv. The freeze followed a contentious meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President Vance, and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Nate Vance said he was disappointed in how his cousin treated Zelensky during the meeting.

"When (JD Vance) criticized aid to Ukraine, I thought it was because he needed to appeal to his electorate, that it was part of the political game," Vance said.

"But what they did to Zelensky was an ambush of absolute dishonesty."

The vice president's continued distrust of Zelensky is unjustified, as are his views on Ukraine, Vance said.

"I thought I was going to choke ... His own cousin was on the front lines. I could have told him the truth, without pretense, without personal interest. He never tried to find out more."

Vance said he tried to get in touch with his cousin several times with no success.

"I left messages at his office. I never heard from him," he said.

Vance volunteered to fight in Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, but left shortly before the U.S. presidential inauguration out of fear of being captured by the Russian army.

"It had become complicated to stay. I couldn't take the risk of being captured," he said.

JD Vance has criticized Ukraine and Zelensky in the past, at times repeating Kremlin talking points.

[...]

Archived

** "If the whole world could hear me, I would say that we need to win this war as soon as possible so that all children can see their families again..." - Those words come from 12-year-old Sashko from the southeast Ukrainian city of Mariupol, who was separated from his mother by Russians during the so-called "filtration" procedure in the Donetsk region.**

Sashko is one of the thousands of children taken to the Russian Federation from the occupied regions of Ukraine under the guise of evacuation and ensuing rehabilitation ,to teach them to "love Russia."

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of facilitating the forced deportation of children from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, violating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[...]

**How Russian "filtration" works **

Last spring, Sashko was cooking with his mother Snizhana over a fire in partially occupied Mariupol. The shelling started, they did not have time to run to the shelter, and a piece of shrapnel hit the boy in the eye. In search of medical care, his mother took him to the Ilyich steel plant, where Ukrainian military doctors treated the wounded.

The Russian military took the boy's mother for re-interrogation. He never saw her again.

But later, the occupiers took them prisoner and sent them to a filtration camp in Donetsk Oblast. There, Sashko and his mother were met by representatives of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and registered. After that, the Russian military took the boy's mother, to interrogate her further. He never saw her again.

Sashko was held in the "republican trauma center" for two months until he found a way to call his grandmother, who eventually managed to take him away.

Doctors now say that Sashko won't be able to out of his injured eye. The fate of Sashko's mother, Snizhana, is still unknown.

[...]

Rhetorics such as "your parents don't need you" and "you don't have a future in Ukraine" is one of the propaganda methods used by Russians with Ukrainian children living in Russian-occupied regions, or who have been taken to Russia.

"They say that Ukraine has abandoned you; they teach you to hate your parents, then your country, and then to love Russia," says lawyer Myroslava Kharchenko.

[...]

"Whenever they played the Russian anthem, we would put on our headphones and listen to the Ukrainian anthem," says 16-year-old Vitaliy, who was sent to a camp in Crimea last fall.

"On New Year's Eve, we had to watch Putin's address, and some of us left the room and started shouting 'Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!" says Taisiya, 16 too. She says that children who disobeyed their teachers were locked up for several days in an "isolation room."

[...]

"On some of the Ukrainian territories, children have lived under Russian propaganda for eight years. They are taught to see Ukraine as an enemy," says Aksana Filipishyna. Such measures can contribute to the fact that, in a few years, these children will end up hating their homeland. Like, for example, this 20-year-old soldier I met at one of the checkpoints in occupied Donetsk last fall. He was born there. When the war started in 2014, he was 11 years old, almost like Sashko from Mariupol. Now he is convinced that he is fighting for his homeland and against the Nazis. He grew up on Russian propaganda.

[...]

Archived

Health ministers from Belgium, Czechia, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain have called for a Critical Medicines Act set to be proposed this week to be integrated within broader EU strategic autonomy and security efforts, putting the measure effectively under the umbrella of defence funding.

[...]

The move seeks to access the €800 billion the European Commission is expected to mobilise over the next four years through the Rearm Europe plan, the main principles of which were agreed by leaders at last week's extraordinary EU summit.

[...]

The ministers argue that their proposal aligns with the United States’ Defence Production Act, which designates pharmaceutical supply chains as a national security issue.

[...]

In an op-ed, the minister say that Europe, once a leader in pharmaceutical production, "now depends on Asia for 60–80% of its pharmaceutical supply." Price pressure on cheap generics, along with higher labour and environmental costs, are the main drivers of this shift, they write.

[...]

Early blueprints of the next seven-year EU budget suggest that its health portion could be merged with other funds or even eliminated altogether.

The proposed mechanism would allow for increased health spending at least at the national level by loosening EU budget rules, enabling higher expenditure without penalties.

In practice, this would mean that defence spending—potentially expanded to include critical medicines—of up to 1.5% of GDP would be exempt from EU spending limits for four years.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2050298

Archived

Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has called on European governments to make Russian assets and “elite interests” pay for the war in Ukraine, as his charity made another multimillion-dollar donation to the war-torn country.

Following the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Minderoo Foundation announced another $5 million funding package to de-mine agricultural areas, launch peace-building activities and financially support households.

[...]

“While philanthropy can play a crucial role, governments across Europe should redouble their efforts to make Russian assets and elite interests pay for the war of aggression they have waged on Ukraine.

“Looking forward, Ukraine has the capability to draw on her deep pools of talent, vast natural resources and remarkable resilience to drive a powerful economic recovery. I look forward to working with president Zelensky and his team to recover Ukraine’s peaceful growth.”

[...]

The comments come as the US and Ukraine are reportedly on the cusp of inking a critical minerals deal Zelensky hopes will secure the support of Washington and bring an end to the war.

[...]

Archived

Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has called on European governments to make Russian assets and “elite interests” pay for the war in Ukraine, as his charity made another multimillion-dollar donation to the war-torn country.

Following the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Minderoo Foundation announced another $5 million funding package to de-mine agricultural areas, launch peace-building activities and financially support households.

[...]

“While philanthropy can play a crucial role, governments across Europe should redouble their efforts to make Russian assets and elite interests pay for the war of aggression they have waged on Ukraine.

“Looking forward, Ukraine has the capability to draw on her deep pools of talent, vast natural resources and remarkable resilience to drive a powerful economic recovery. I look forward to working with president Zelensky and his team to recover Ukraine’s peaceful growth.”

[...]

The comments come as the US and Ukraine are reportedly on the cusp of inking a critical minerals deal Zelensky hopes will secure the support of Washington and bring an end to the war.

[...]

Archived

Here is the study (pdf)

Most recently, the imposition of Chinese sanctions against individuals and institutions from the EU and the United Kingdom – including independent researchers that are members of the ETNC network [European Think-tank Network on China (ETNC)] – in retaliation for Western sanctions against Chinese individuals accused of grave human rights violations in Xinjiang have paved the way to an escalation in tensions between Europe and China. Even before these developments, however, it had become clear that Beijing’s efforts to developing soft power across the continent were increasingly ineffective.

Summary:

• Developing soft power has been a pillar of Chinese foreign policy since 2007 and remains a stated goal of China’s long-term policy orientation to 2035.
• We identify three prominent Chinese approaches to developing soft power in Europe: promoting Chinese language and culture; shaping China’s image through the media; and using the secondary soft-power effects of economic prowess.
• Recently, and over the last year in particular, China has become more assertive in attempting to shape its image by expanding its toolkit, particularly to enhance its political messaging. This includes the systematic use of social media.
• On the importance of China’s economy, the lines can often be blurred between the attractiveness of economic cooperation and the pressures of economic coercion. Withholding market access for European firms and products has long been an observed practice of reactive Chinese diplomacy, but an increasingly formalized development of sanctioning mechanisms, including “unreliable entity lists” and export control legislation, is a cause for growing concern.
• In other words, market access, trade and investment opportunities are perhaps the single largest factor determining China’s appeal in Europe, but also a major source of its coercive power.

Different patterns of Chinese soft power projections can be seen across four groups of countries analysed in this report:

• In the first group (Austria, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia), China does not appear compelled to actively project its soft power, mostly because of the lack of public interest in these countries.
• In Italy and Greece, China’s soft power approach aims to arrest the trend of a deteriorating image and is geared towards damage containment.
• In Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the UK, perceptions of China are clearly becoming less favourable, and Beijing is struggling with growing vigilance.
• Finally, in Czechia, Denmark, France, and Sweden, China’s soft power is clearly in a state of free fall.

In turn, EU institutions appear to follow the trend described in the third group, of growing vigilance, as the risks posed by China’s geopolitical ambitions increasingly underlined.

A number of factors have driven these trends, from the fallout of COVID-19 to Chinese domestic developments (including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong) and the impact of growing US-China rivalry. These factors ultimately appear to be more substantive drivers of European perceptions and attitudes towards China today than the traditional sources of soft power.

In response, the Chinese government’s public messaging in Europe has become increasingly proactive, even aggressive, including through the imposition of sanctions.

These new methods, though deployed differently across the continent and aimed in part at a Chinese political audience, point to Beijing’s objective to increase its sway over Europe by influencing related discourse. They are presumably designed to prevent negative publicity and criticism, rather than achieve likeability.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2044105

Archived

Resistance to the £225m project from ministers, councillors and police has gradually been extinguished by big pressure and small gifts.

The Chinese government’s long campaign to create a new embassy by the Tower of London has involved the politics of international diplomacy and the politics of the town hall.

On the sidelines of the G20 summit last year, President Xi lobbied Sir Keir Starmer about the proposed renovation of the Royal Mint Court, a £225 million property that for more than a century served as the site for manufacturing the nation’s coins. His warning was clear: a reset in relations and future investment depended on the project being approved.

A year earlier, official records now reveal, the People’s Republic adopted a softer approach towards the council in whose gift the application lay. It bestowed a gift of a single box of biscuits upon Lutfur Rahman, the Tower Hamlets mayor, who had been removed from office for electoral fraud a decade earlier, only to come back as an independent. Its declared value: £25. Late last year China gave a bottle of wine, in this instance worth £20, to one of Rahman’s allies: a councillor, Iqbal Hossain, who was vice-chairman of the committee reviewing the application. One local powerbroker, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled being sent a box of mooncakes (a delicacy), a bottle of Chinese white wine, a desk diary, a book on tea and a bottle of red wine.

It now appears China is within touching distance of victory after Starmer asked Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, to “call in” the scheme. This means she will have the final say, as opposed to the council or the London mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan, following an unusually speedy inquiry that finished hearing evidence on Thursday. She must act as a quasi-judge, acting neutrally and taking into account the apparent merits of the scheme. Any evidence of bias, or procedural errors, could be used to challenge the decision. Yet China critics fear the die is cast.

If she approves it, Beijing will have the largest embassy in all of Europe: a sign of diplomatic and economic strength eclipsing even the £1 billion US embassy a short ride down the Thames.

[...]

Fear of spying hub

Most bullish of all is China itself. Last week Christopher Katkowski KC, the country’s barrister, filed a document in which he lashed out at those who had criticised the Met’s sudden U-turn, saying allegations of government influence were “ludicrous”, “absolute nonsense” and “reflect very badly on those who made them”. As for the proposed barrier, he said that, while China wished to have “the best of relations” with the Foreign Office, it rejected the idea outright.

He said that the People’s Republic had asked him to state on the record that Lammy’s “concern can be addressed through measures based on further discussion between the relevant parties”, including the ambassador granting the British government permanent access to the paved forecourt.

As Rayner weighs up whether to approve the scheme, those offering outright opposition are a coalition of Chinese dissidents, critics of the Chinese Communist Party and MPs belonging to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, such as Duncan Smith. They are also joined by residents who do not want a Chinese “spy-hub” overshadowing their area. Earlier this month, all groups were out in force outside Royal Mint Court to stage a protest, numbering some 3,000, to remind ministers of the depth of opposition to the project and to challenge the Met’s belated insistence that the site can easily accommodate such numbers.

One person present was Chloe Cheung, a 19-year-old pro-democracy activist living in the UK who is the subject of a £100,000 bounty issued by the Hong Kong government. She says the stakes could not be higher, describing the embassy as an “expansion of the CCP on British soil”.

She said: “”It will be a huge surveillance hub in the future if it is built. For us who have a bounty on our head, from Hong Kong or from China, from Tibet, from Uighur, from Taiwan, we worry this will give them the space to do more surveillance.” Pointing to the previous use of unofficial Chinese “police stations” in the UK and violent tactics against dissidents, she said: “Having a larger embassy means more people have diplomatic protection to do whatever they want.” Asked about the government’s evolving stance, Cheung added: “”It’s mainly because of the £600 million [investment] deal by [Rachel] Reeves with China, but for me it’s too naive to just sign a deal and say, ‘Oh, the UK can give whatever the Chinese want’ and say yes to whatever terms and conditions …it’s not worth betraying those who believe the plan will threaten their safety.”

[...]

Archived

Resistance to the £225m project from ministers, councillors and police has gradually been extinguished by big pressure and small gifts.

The Chinese government’s long campaign to create a new embassy by the Tower of London has involved the politics of international diplomacy and the politics of the town hall.

On the sidelines of the G20 summit last year, President Xi lobbied Sir Keir Starmer about the proposed renovation of the Royal Mint Court, a £225 million property that for more than a century served as the site for manufacturing the nation’s coins. His warning was clear: a reset in relations and future investment depended on the project being approved.

A year earlier, official records now reveal, the People’s Republic adopted a softer approach towards the council in whose gift the application lay. It bestowed a gift of a single box of biscuits upon Lutfur Rahman, the Tower Hamlets mayor, who had been removed from office for electoral fraud a decade earlier, only to come back as an independent. Its declared value: £25. Late last year China gave a bottle of wine, in this instance worth £20, to one of Rahman’s allies: a councillor, Iqbal Hossain, who was vice-chairman of the committee reviewing the application. One local powerbroker, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled being sent a box of mooncakes (a delicacy), a bottle of Chinese white wine, a desk diary, a book on tea and a bottle of red wine.

It now appears China is within touching distance of victory after Starmer asked Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, to “call in” the scheme. This means she will have the final say, as opposed to the council or the London mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan, following an unusually speedy inquiry that finished hearing evidence on Thursday. She must act as a quasi-judge, acting neutrally and taking into account the apparent merits of the scheme. Any evidence of bias, or procedural errors, could be used to challenge the decision. Yet China critics fear the die is cast.

If she approves it, Beijing will have the largest embassy in all of Europe: a sign of diplomatic and economic strength eclipsing even the £1 billion US embassy a short ride down the Thames.

[...]

Fear of spying hub

Most bullish of all is China itself. Last week Christopher Katkowski KC, the country’s barrister, filed a document in which he lashed out at those who had criticised the Met’s sudden U-turn, saying allegations of government influence were “ludicrous”, “absolute nonsense” and “reflect very badly on those who made them”. As for the proposed barrier, he said that, while China wished to have “the best of relations” with the Foreign Office, it rejected the idea outright.

He said that the People’s Republic had asked him to state on the record that Lammy’s “concern can be addressed through measures based on further discussion between the relevant parties”, including the ambassador granting the British government permanent access to the paved forecourt.

As Rayner weighs up whether to approve the scheme, those offering outright opposition are a coalition of Chinese dissidents, critics of the Chinese Communist Party and MPs belonging to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, such as Duncan Smith. They are also joined by residents who do not want a Chinese “spy-hub” overshadowing their area. Earlier this month, all groups were out in force outside Royal Mint Court to stage a protest, numbering some 3,000, to remind ministers of the depth of opposition to the project and to challenge the Met’s belated insistence that the site can easily accommodate such numbers.

One person present was Chloe Cheung, a 19-year-old pro-democracy activist living in the UK who is the subject of a £100,000 bounty issued by the Hong Kong government. She says the stakes could not be higher, describing the embassy as an “expansion of the CCP on British soil”.

She said: “”It will be a huge surveillance hub in the future if it is built. For us who have a bounty on our head, from Hong Kong or from China, from Tibet, from Uighur, from Taiwan, we worry this will give them the space to do more surveillance.” Pointing to the previous use of unofficial Chinese “police stations” in the UK and violent tactics against dissidents, she said: “Having a larger embassy means more people have diplomatic protection to do whatever they want.” Asked about the government’s evolving stance, Cheung added: “”It’s mainly because of the £600 million [investment] deal by [Rachel] Reeves with China, but for me it’s too naive to just sign a deal and say, ‘Oh, the UK can give whatever the Chinese want’ and say yes to whatever terms and conditions …it’s not worth betraying those who believe the plan will threaten their safety.”

[...]

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Rotterdam (Netherlands) is leading an investigation into suspected large-scale customs fraud and money laundering related to the import of e-bikes from China.

Yesterday, as part of this investigation, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) carried out searches at a private residence and business premises of the suspects in the province of North Brabant. The two suspects allegedly facilitated the fraudulent import of e-bikes by submitting false customs declarations and engaging in money laundering.

E-bikes from China are sold at very low prices on the European market and are subject to anti-dumping duties and anti-subsidy measures to protect EU manufacturers. These duties can amount to up to 80% of the purchase price.

According to the investigation, at least 25 containers were allegedly smuggled into the EU via Poland, with customs declarations falsely describing the goods as something other than e-bikes. The EU budget is estimated to have suffered a loss of at least €1.8 million in unpaid anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures.

All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty in the competent Dutch courts of law.

The EPPO is the independent public prosecution office of the European Union. It is responsible for investigating, prosecuting, and bringing to judgment crimes against the financial interests of the EU.

[...]

Many people might wonder why a person living in a largely stable economy where the GDP per capita is roughly in line with the global average [such as in China] might choose to take so many risks to start a new life in a foreign country.

[...]

Ling [a Chinese migrant who fled to Germany] started thinking about leaving China more than 20 years ago. But it wasn’t until the government’s harsh Covid-19 lockdown restrictions that he seriously considered taking action. During the pandemic he lost his job and saw his salary halve to 3,000 yuan (£326) a month as he picked up replacement work as a delivery driver. He grew increasingly uncomfortable with [his daughter] Feifei’s education, such as her being required to wear the red neckerchief of the Young Pioneers, the Chinese Communist party’s organisation for children aged six to 14. He was appalled when a teacher showed Feifei’s class videos portraying the US and western countries as “bullying China”.

“Education should be about teaching children how to love people around them and society, rather than promoting hatred and distorting the minds of children from an early age,” he says, adding that he felt discriminated against as a Christian.

[...]

Crossing rivers and mountains for a new life in the west is known on Chinese social media as zouxian, or “walking the line”.

Wealthier Chinese are also abandoning their homeland for a new start in Europe. In February this year, Mou* and his family landed in Frankfurt for a transfer to Serbia. In the transfer hall, Mou called an emergency family meeting. We’re not going to Serbia, he told his three children, and we’re not going back to China either. Mou, his wife, their children and Mou’s parents approached Frankfurt airport staff and said they wanted to claim asylum. The plane tickets for the family of seven had cost more than 45,500 yuan.

[...]

Pre-Covid, the 42-year-old businessman [Mou] enjoyed his life in China. He ran several food export companies, including a rougamo company that exported the popular Xi’an street food snack to the US. He owned several properties.

But the pandemic battered his business, and also his faith in the government. In 2022 he got into a fight with security officers because he refused to obey a lockdown order. He was detained for three days at the police station. Later, the police asked him to come back and “record some videos”. Mou refused to cooperate and was warned that his children’s future education would become “problematic”.

“My body was shaking when I got the call, full of fear and desperation … I immediately talked to my wife and said let’s leave,” Mou [said].

[...]

Most of all, the new migrants hope that anti-immigration sentiment doesn’t take aim at them. “Germany has taken care of me when I have no job and am making no contribution,” says Ling, who is living on a government handout of 700 euros (£581) a month as he awaits the outcome of his asylum application. “I hope to become a legal citizen, to work and to pay taxes. If the country needs me one day, I would contribute without hesitation”.

*All names in the article have been changed.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called on the European Union to confiscate the assets of the Russian Central Bank, which are frozen due to sanctions, to finance future financial support for Ukraine.

So far, the bloc has only used the extraordinary revenues of the assets held in its territory, estimated to be worth €210 billion, to deliver financial and military assistance to the war-torn nation. The option of asset confiscation remains a slippery slope, however, because the money is considered Russia's sovereign property and is therefore protected by international law.

"Enough talking, it's time to act" Donald Tusk posted on X on Thursday. "Let's finance our aid for Ukraine from the Russian frozen assets."

Tusk's bold idea comes amid heightened fears that US President Donald Trump, who is currently immersed in a bitter feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, might soon cut all assistance for Kyiv, leaving it vulnerable to Russia's aggression.

Trump shocked allies when he put the blame for the invasion on Ukraine and described Zelenskyy as a "dictator without elections," echoing Kremlin propaganda.

[...]