Monthly Archives: September 2020

Polish gov’t to be reshuffled by early October: spokesman

A reshuffle of Poland’s government will take place at the end of September or the start of October, its spokesman has said, following a deal to end a crisis in the country’s ruling coalition.

Government spokesman Piotr Müller added that top officials in Law and Justice, the biggest party in the ruling coalition, would meet on Monday evening to discuss the upcoming changes.

A deal between three conservative groupings that together form the government was signed on Saturday following talks to resolve a crisis that threatened to tear the ruling coalition apart and triggered warnings that Poland faced the prospect of a minority government or early elections.

“I am very happy that our full unity, stability, which is so badly needed today, has been confirmed,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said after the agreement was inked at the weekend.

Tensions between the three ruling parties spilled over after the junior partners in the coalition earlier this month refused to support an animal rights bill strongly backed by Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

State news agency PAP cited what it described as “unofficial” sources as saying that the coalition parties had agreed after talks to cut the number of government ministries from 20 to 14 and to merge some departments.

The two junior coalition partners, the strongly conservative Solidarna Polska party and the Porozumienie (Agreement) grouping, are to receive one ministerial portfolio each, PAP reported, adding that currently the two parties each have two ministries.

The United Right coalition, headed by Law and Justice, has governed Poland since winning a landslide in a 2015 parliamentary election. It secured a second term in power in a parliamentary ballot last October.

Ryszard Terlecki, a senior lawmaker with Law and Justice, has previously said that party leader Kaczyński is set to join the government as a deputy prime minister.

Kaczyński, who is not the premier despite leading the biggest party in government, is expected to take on a new role as the head of a committee overseeing the key justice, defence and interior ministries, a PiS politician told the PAP news agency.

(28. 9. 2020 via thenews.pl)

Armenia, Azerbaijan declare martial law amid heavy clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh

Fighting has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan around the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Both sides have blamed each other; Armenia claims the alleged Azerbaijan attack is a declaration of war.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of reigniting their decades-long conflict in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after fresh violence erupted in the breakaway region.

The two sides resumed open conflict again on Monday morning with the use of heavy artillery. Outbreaks of violence had continued through the night, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan.

“During night battles continued with different intensity. Early in morning, Azerbaijan resumed its offensive operations, using artillery, armored vehicles, TOS heavy artillery system,” Stepanyan wrote on Twitter.

The worst violence in the region since 2016 has raised the prospect of a new war in an area that has been simmering for decades.

At least 31 people — both civilians and military — have died in fighting that erupted on Sunday between Azerbaijani forces and Armenian rebels in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, officials said.

Separatists reported 15 further military casualties on Monday morning.

Both Baku and Yerevan also reported civilian casualties, as did the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced in a televised address that Azerbaijan’s “authoritarian regime has once again declared war on the Armenian people.”

“We are on the brink of a full-scale war in the South Caucasus, which might have unpredictable consequences,” he added. “We are ready for this war.”

He later urged his compatriots to pledge “that we won’t retreat a single millimeter” from defending the disputed breakaway region in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Both countries declared martial law, with Pashinyan announcing a general mobilization of troops. Azerbaijan said they were not mobilizing all of their forces yet.

Pashinyan also spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Putin expressing “serious concern” over the escalation. Russia maintains a military base in Armenia, and is seen as an ally to Yerevan. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet republics.

Turkey, meanwhile, is considered an ally of Azerbaijan, and has been vociferously criticizing the Armenian government.

In a statement posted on Twitter following a phone call with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the Armenian people to stand against leaders who he said were “dragging them to catastrophe,” before adding that Ankara’s solidarity with Baku would “increasingly continue.”

Later, aides to Armenia’s Pashinyan said the Armenian leader spoke to France’s Emmanuel Macron to emphasize the importance of keeping Turkey from interfering in the conflict.

War of weapons, war of words
Armenia’s Defense Ministry accused Azerbaijan of launching a bombing campaign against civilian targets. Yerevan said the military responded by shooting down four of Azerbaijan’s military helicopters, as well as 15 drones and 10 tanks, a claim Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied.

“The entire responsibility for this lies with the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan,” insisted an Armenian Defense Ministry spokesperson.

Azerbaijan, meanwhile, accused Armenian forces of launching “deliberate and targeted” attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh.

“There are reports of dead and wounded among civilians and military servicemen,” Azerbaijan’s president said.By the afternoon, Azerbaijan claimed to have taken several villages in the region. “We have liberated six villages — five in Fizuli district and one in Jebrail district,” a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Iran has offered to mediate between the two sides. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Tehran was following the violence in the south Caucasus with great concern, news agency ISNA reported.

“We call on both sides to exercise restraint, end the conflict immediately and resume negotiations,” he said, while offering Tehran’s support in working towards a resolution.

Martial law announced
Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said the city of Stepanakert has been shelled and urged residents to get to safety. Numerous houses in villages have been destroyed, with injuries reported.

The breakaway region immediately declared “martial law and total military mobilization,” Karabakh’s president Araik Harutyunyan told an emergency parliament session. He said that those liable for military service had been called up for duty.

European Council President Charles Michel said the renewed violence was “of most serious concern” and called for an end to the fighting.

“An immediate return to negotiations, without preconditions, is the only way forward,” he wrote on Twitter.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also urged a return to diplomatic channels.

“I call on both parties to the conflict to immediately cease all fighting and especially the shelling of villages and towns,” he said, according to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

Months of tension
Silvia Stöber, a journalist and expert on the Caucasus region, told DW that both sides had been preparing for an escalation like this for months.

She blamed the deteriorating economic situation in both countries for the flare-up but said international involvement probably played a role.

“The leadership of Azerbaijan may feel more motivated to escalate the whole situation” due to increased support from its ally Turkey, while the importing of Russian arms into Armenia means that it “looks like a conflict that [will go] further,” Stöber added.

During his noon blessing from St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis asked both sides to make “concrete gestures of goodwill and brotherhood” in order to resolve their differences without the use of force.

Why are there tensions?
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been involved in a dispute since the fall of the Soviet Union and had engaged in border conflicts earlier this year.

Violence first erupted in the region when ethnic Armenians seized Karabakh from Azerbaijan in the 1990s. An estimated 30,000 people were killed during the war.

A ceasefire, which was signed in 1994, largely put an end to the full-scale conflict, but peace talks mediated by France, Russia and the United States collapsed in 2010.

Azerbaijan has made repeated threats to take back the region by force. Although the region declared independence, it is heavily reliant on Armenian support and Armenia has stated that it would defend the territory militarily.

(28. 9. 2020 via dw.com)

Szijjártó: Austria Among Hungary’s Most important Allies

Austria is one of Hungary’s most important and closest allies, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said after talks with Karoline Edtstadler, Austria’s minister for EU and constitutional affairs, in Budapest on Friday.

Hungary holds the current Austrian government in high esteem and though the two countries have their disagreements, bilateral cooperation “will not be held hostage by those issues”, Szijjártó told a press conference he held jointly with Edtstadler.

The two countries agree on the most important issues, such as European Union enlargement in the Western Balkans and the rejection of mandatory migrant quotas, Szijjártó said.

As regards the European Commission’s new migration pact, he said Hungary had a “strongly negative view” of the document, arguing that it appeared that Brussels had “not learned anything from the mistakes it made over the past years and hasn’t given up its pro-immigration policies”.

“This package is a hopeless attempt to avoid referring to something that is a quota as a quota,” he added.

Szijjártó said the proposal was actually about the distribution of migrants across the EU, which he said Hungary opposed. If the EU were to face new migration waves right now, those would also pose serious health risks, he said, adding that Hungary was sticking to the position that migration should be stopped instead of managed. “But this package is still about managing it.”

Hungary continues to protect its borders and will not allow illegal migrants to enter its territory, he said.

On another subject, Szijjártó said Hungary will join other central European member states in challenging the EU’s mobility package in the Court of Justice of the European Union on the grounds that its bureaucratic measures put central European road haulage companies at a disadvantage.

Concerning bilateral economic ties, Szijjártó said Austria was Hungary’s second most important trading partner and its third largest foreign investor. Around 2,500 companies do business in Hungary and employ some 70,000 people, the minister added.

Asked about the government’s restrictive measures concerning the novel coronavirus epidemic, Szijjártó said that if conditions allowed, the government was prepared to ease restrictions but also to tighten them, if necessary.

On the topic of solidarity, Szijjártó said it was “unacceptable” that only the admission of illegal migrants counted as solidarity, adding that Hungary would maintain its refusal to take in migrants even if it meant having to face “political attacks”.

Border protection is a form of solidarity, Szijjártó said, arguing that it prevented the rest of the continent from being flooded by illegal immigrants.

Edtstadler called Hungary a reliable partner and a friend, saying the two countries must strive to preserve the current state of their cooperation.

On the topic of the EC’s migration pact, she said the mandatory distribution of migrants had failed as a policy.

Solidarity is important, she said, adding, however that there were other ways of expressing it, besides taking in illegal immigrants.

Edtstadler also underscored the importance of the rule of law, saying it was a fundamental value for Austria on which it was unwilling to compromise.

(25. 9. 2020 via hungarytoday.hu)

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Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic ‘oppose EU’s new migration pact’

The EU’s bid to reform its migration policy has been met with mixed reactions from a number of countries with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic outright opposing it.

Zoltan Kovacs, the spokesman for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said on Twitter the country’s stance on migration “has been clear and unchanged” since 2015.

“We must ensure that the external borders of the EU and the Schengen Area remain perfectly sealed along all section.”

“Though it appears under a different name in the European Commission’s new package of proposals on migration and asylum, the migrant quota is still there, and Hungary opposes it, along with Poland and the Czech Republic,” he added.

The Commission’s proposed migration pact was unveiled on Wednesday and aims to streamline the migration and asylum process with faster screening. Member states will have to contribute their “fair share” based on their GDP ad population with those reticent to welcoming migrants and asylum seekers expected to help out in other ways.

Following the unveiling of the pact, leaders of the four countries making up the Visegrad group — Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland — met with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Czech President Andrej Babis also emphasized on Twitter after the meeting that “the protection of Europe’s border and the cessation of illegal migration” must be the main components of the bloc’s migration pact.

“I was also supported by the prime ministers of Hungary and Poland. What pleases me is that the proposal no longer includes mandatory quotas,” he went on.

Austria, which like Budapest has championed a restrictions immigration policy, has been more nuanced.

Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the Commission “has already moved a lot in our direction — especially in the areas of repatriations, protection of external borders and co-operation with third countries.”

“One thing is clear: the mandatory distribution of migrants has failed and has no future in the European Union.

“The Austrian asylum system is already more than strained. I will continue to work to ensure that this is taken into account in the upcoming negotiations,” he continued.

Earlier this year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Budapest, Warsaw and Prague broke the law by refusing to take in refugees. The ECJ also found that Hungary’s policy of keeping asylum seekers in so-called transit zones amounts to detention.

The European Court of Human Rights also repeatedly ordered Hungary to stop depriving food to an asylum seeker held in a transit zone.

(24. 9. 2020 via euronews.com)

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Hungary’s PM Orban endorses Trump’s re-election bid

Viktor Orban said US Democrats built their diplomacy on ‘moral imperialism’ which ‘illiberal’ leaders like him rejected.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has endorsed Donald Trump’s re-election bid for the US presidency, saying his rival Democrats have forced “moral imperialism” on the world that illiberal leaders like himself reject.

“We root for Donald Trump’s victory, because we know well American Democratic governments’ diplomacy, built on moral imperialism. We have been forced to sample it before, we did not like it, we do not want seconds,” Orban wrote in an essay on Monday.

Nationalist Orban faces a steep challenge to his decade-long rule in parliamentary elections due in early 2022 as Hungary braces for the economic and social impact of a second wave of coronavirus infections.

The vote would be decisive, as the international liberal elite was out to destroy Christian conservatives in Europe, he wrote in the pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet.

“They prepare for a decisive battle in 2022, backed by the international media, Brussels bureaucrats, and NGOs disguised as civil organisations,” Orban said. “It is time for us to line up too.”

Hungary and other central European countries would place economic efficiency over European Union policies such as “climate goals elevated to absurdity, a social Europe, a common tax code and a multicultural society”, he said.

The EU is set to try to implement the multi-trillion-euro post-pandemic revival plan with key political discussions yet to be conducted among member states, some of which want to regulate the self-styled illiberal Orban much more strongly.

The idea of strict conditions on the disbursement of EU aid and funds to the rule of law has prompted a threat of veto for the whole package from Orban, who said the system was more aptly described as “rule of blackmail”.

Orban said the outcome much depended on the succession battle in Germany as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s term nears an end.

(21. 9. 2020 via aljazeera.com)

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Poland’s Law and Justice left to rule alone, after United Right coalition collapses

Leading politicians of Poland’s Law and Justice party on Friday announced the collapse of the ruling coalition and the creation of a minority government after a political disagreement during a parliamentary vote on a bill beefing up animal protection.

Late on Thursday night many members of the ruling United Right coalition either voted against the bill or abstained.

The ‘United Right’ political alliance, led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS), had been in power since 2015.

For now, PiS will carry on as a minority Government, but negotiations could make it permanent or bring elections forward.

The announcement Friday morning came after justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and his party members refused to vote for an animal welfare bill which powerful Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński proposed.

Kaczyński, 71, is a lawmaker in parliament and has no official government role, but he is widely understood to be Poland’s dominating political force, deciding government policies and appointments.

The lower house of parliament, or Sejm, approved provisions of the proposed bill that include the prohibition of breeding fur animals and limitations on ritual slaughter.

Law and Justice managed to get the bill passed with the support of opposition lawmakers.

Suski confirmed that Kaczyński told members of Law and Justice’s junior partners in a closed-door meeting before the vote that “the tail cannot wag the dog.”

Suski said it was important to not accept cruelty to animals, adding “only good people should govern Poland.”

The next Parliamentary election is scheduled for 2023.

Euronews’s Lezsek Kablak has more from Krakow in the media player at the top.

(21. 9. 2020 via euronews.com)

Polish ruling party officials to meet amid coalition crisis

Top Polish ruling party politicians are scheduled to meet on Monday in a bid to defuse a simmering crisis within the governing coalition.

The meeting comes after 15 rebel MPs from Poland’s governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) were suspended as party members at the end of last week amid a political crisis that officials said could result in early elections.

Agriculture Minister Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski was among those who broke party discipline to vote against an animal rights bill strongly backed by the grouping’s leader.

The vote saw tensions coming to a boil between three conservative parties which have together ruled Poland for five years.

Recriminations started flying around after some politicians from the junior partners in the ruling coalition refused to support the bill, which seeks to ban fur farming and the production of halal and kosher meat for export markets.

Ryszard Terlecki, head of the parliamentary caucus of Law and Justice, the senior coalition partner, warned on Friday that a minority government or early elections in Poland could not be ruled out.

Terlecki, who also serves as a deputy Speaker of the lower house of Poland’s parliament, said: “At the moment the situation is such that the coalition is practically nonexistent.”

He added that if early elections were to be held, his Law and Justice party would contest them alone.

Law and Justice, allied with two smaller groupings in a United Right coalition, secured a second term in power in a parliamentary ballot on October 13.

The three partners have recently been trying to hammer out a new coalition agreement and decide on the allocation of ministerial posts in a long-expected government reshuffle. The talks have now been halted.

The United Right coalition, which is headed by Law and Justice and also comprises the strongly conservative Solidarna Polska party and the Porozumienie (Agreement) grouping, has ruled Poland since winning a landslide in a 2015 parliamentary election.

Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who heads Law and Justice, said last month that the coalition government would undergo a reshuffle by the end of September or in early October at the latest.

Kaczyński said earlier this summer: “This is a plan that includes a far-reaching reduction in the number of ministries and a merger of various departments so that they are overseen by a single minister.”

He elaborated at the time that the number of government ministries would be cut to “around 12,” from 20 at the moment.

Kaczyński has said that Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will keep his job as head of government.

“The prime minister will stay on, but the government will be restructured so as to eliminate a situation in which some decisions have to go through several different ministries,” Kaczyński told public broadcaster Polish Radio in early August.

He indicated at the time that the bottom line was to make the decision-making process within the government less “dispersed” and more efficient.

(21. 9. 2020 via thenews.pl)

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Germany to take in 1,500 migrants from Greek islands after Lesbos fire

Germany plans to welcome more than 1,500 migrants from Greece after a fire devastated the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, governmental sources have said.

This represents a sharp increase from the initial pledge to host some of the 400 unaccompanied children evacuated from Lesbos to mainland Greece following the September 8 blaze.

More than 12,000 people lived in cramped conditions in the Moria camp, which was built to accommodate fewer than 3,000. The vast majority of the 12,000 are now sleeping rough around the island.

Germany and France have both urged other European Union countries to show more solidarity and said the incident demonstrated the bloc needs to find a common answer to the migratory question.

The German plan to welcome 1,553 migrants – families with children – from five Greek islands was first approved by Angela Merkel, from the Christian Democratic Union, and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, from the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, sources said.

It was then backed by the third coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD) whose leader had previously called for the country to take up thousands of migrants from Greece.

Some 400 families with children have already been granted asylum.

It comes as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) called on the EU to urgently support the immediate shelter and care of the displaced migrants and refugees in Greece and to set up longer-term solutions rooted in European solidarity.

“While the priority right now is to address the immediate needs of migrants and refugees in Lesbos, more sustainable solutions are needed,” IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino said in a statement.

“The are many other children and families in need of this lifeline, and we urge more states to come forward and support ongoing efforts to de-congest the island and assist Greece,” he added.

The European Union Council President, Charle Michel, who visited Lesbos on Tuesday, said Europe “must support frontline countries like Greece. We must take our responsibility.”

“Migration requires a European response. It’s not easy. There are different opinions in Europe. There’s no miracle solution when it comes to migration. We need coherent measures based on values that bring us together,” he added.

Greece’s migration ministry announced on Tuesday that just 800 of the 12,000 asylum seekers on Lesbos have been housed in a new temporary camp on the island.

Many, however, are refusing to enter the new accommodation over fear they will be unable to leave once inside.

Officials also announced that five migrants have been arrested as part of the investigation into the fire, and that a sixth suspect is still at large.

Minister Michalis Chrysohoidis said the arrests “discredits the scenario” according to which “extremists” set fire to the migrant camp.

But incidents between asylum seekers and islanders, including far-right supporters, opposed to keeping migrants in Lesbos, have been increasing since last year.

Angry residents are called to demonstrate Tuesday afternoon to demand “the removal of migrants from the island”.

(15. 9. 2020 via euronews.com)

Germans fear Donald Trump more than coronavirus

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump tops the list of things Germans fear the most, a new survey found. But in a twist that surprised researchers, Germans reported feeling less scared overall than they’ve been in years.

The results surprised even the researchers. For the past 28 years, an annual survey into the fears of people living in Germany has been carried out on behalf of R+V, Germany’s largest insurance firm. And now somehow in 2020, the year of the coronavirus pandemic, Germans turn out to be less afraid than they’ve been in decades.

Of course, they are wearing masks in public and are cautious, but only a few are afraid of contracting COVID-19. That’s one of the reasons why this year’s so-called fear index fell from 39 to 37%, the lowest value since the survey began in 1992.

“Germans are not reacting to the pandemic by any means with panic,” Brigitte Römstedt, head of the R+V Infocenter, told DW. “Many of the worries seem to be subsiding.”

People have the feeling that “we have everything under control and we can handle this,” Römstedt explained. That attitude is different to what it was a few years ago when war, terrorism, immigration, and extremism were among the Germans’ biggest fears.

For the study, some 2,400 men and women in Germany aged 14 years and older were surveyed. Between the beginning of June until the end of July this year, researchers asked people about their greatest political, economic, personal, and environmental fears.

What they found was that Germans are relatively unafraid of the current pandemic. Only 32% (the year before it was 35%) said they were afraid of falling sick with a serious illness, despite this coronavirus-dominated year.

“Similarly, only around one in three of those who were surveyed fear that they or others in their social circle could be infected with the coronavirus,” Römstedt said. A similar finding was made at the beginning of this month by the Deutschlandtrend survey.

Economic impact scarier than virus itself
Despite the rising number of infections and the awareness of the dangers of the coronavirus, people in Germany are staying fairly relaxed. Only 42% of those surveyed fear that globalization could lead to more frequent pandemics in the future.

“Given the rapid spread of the virus worldwide, we had expected higher figures. According to our findings, people are much more afraid that the virus could threaten their economic well-being rather than their health,” Römstedt said.

The economic forecasts for 2020 appear to be gloomy. An economic downturn is on the way, with some even talking of a deep recession. According to German government estimates, the country’s gross domestic product will shrink by around 6% this year. This will of course have an impact on the overall mood in Germany.

Economic fears and possible job losses are again at the top of this year’s fear index. Concerns about the rising cost of living came in at second place with 51%.

The results did not come as a surprise for Professor Manfred G. Schmidt, a political scientist at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg. He has been advising the R+V insurance company for years and helping with the evaluation of the annual study.

According to Schmidt, one uncertainty continues to hover in the minds of many in Germany: “The fear that a second coronavirus infection wave could lead to a further and even deeper economic slump contributes to the widespread uncertainty of the future of the economy.”

There’s also concern about unemployment. Although this fear “only” ranks 13th out of 20 on the list, around 40% of Germans fear unemployment could spike — and increase of 12% from the previous year.

Trump tops fear list — again
On November 3, US voters will head to the polls to elect a new president or re-elect the old one. For many Germans, a second term for US President Donald Trump would probably be a nightmare.

Trump ranks number one this year on Germans’ list of fears at 53%. The US president has topped the R+V fear scale as early as 2018.

Schmidt sees these concerns as “justified,” pointing to the trade war with China or verbal attacks on even allied countries like Germany.

“Trump’s foreign policy has repeatedly caused serious international entanglements,” the political scientist said, adding that Washington also continues to withdraw from international cooperation.

Political topics, which have caused great anxiety among Germans in the past, are losing importance, according to the survey.

Worries about the topic of immigration have dropped the most, falling by more than 10% to their lowest level in five years. In 2020, 43% of the people surveyed said they worried that a continued influx of foreigners could lead to tensions between Germans and the new arrivals. The year before, that figure was 55%.

The number of people concerned that the German state could be overwhelmed by the number of refugees also dropped from 56% to 43%.

The results also revealed another surprising twist: Germans have more confidence in politics and politicians again. Only around 40% of Germans said they currently worried that politicians are not up to their job — the lowest number recorded in this millennium.

According to the authors of the study, this has to do with general satisfaction with the German government’s crisis management during the coronavirus pandemic.

Römstedt put it this way: Politicians are “still not star pupils, but they’re moving up.”

(10. 9. 2020 via dw.com)

V4 Prime Ministers condemn suspected poisoning of Navalny

The prime ministers of Poland and three other Visegrad Group countries have condemned the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a joint statement published on Polish FM’s website on Saturday.

Prime Ministers of Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which together form the regional cooperation platform wrote in the statement that “V4 unequivocally condemns the assassination attempt on the most prominent Russian opposition leader.”

“We urge Russian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation, that will lead to the punishment of the perpetrators,” the statement also added.

Last week, the European Union condemned the apparent poisoning of Navalny and demanded a transparent probe into “the assassination attempt” after toxicological analysis by a specialized German laboratory found traces of a military-grade chemical nerve agent in his body.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the time that Navalny, who is in intensive care in a Berlin hospital, had been poisoned with a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him.

In response to the news, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement that the “European Union condemns in the strongest possible terms the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.”

Navalny, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was flown to Germany for treatment after he collapsed on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow.

Navalny, a lawyer and anti-corruption activist, has been repeatedly detained in Russia in recent years and served several prison terms for leading anti-Kremlin protests.

Novichok is the same highly toxic substance that Britain said was used against former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an attack in the southern English town of Salisbury in March 2018.

(13. 9. 2020 via thenews.pl)