[Archived link](https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/chinese-government-rejects-key-human-rights-recommendations-latest-un-review)
- The Chinese government’s rejection of recommendations to end its deepening human rights crisis reflects its disdain for international human rights reviews at the United Nations, human rights nongovernmental organizations said in a joint statement released on June 25, 2024.
- In a disingenuous effort to paper over its refusal to engage to improve its appalling record made clear by latest Universal Periodical Review (UPR) in January 2024, the Chinese government said it would accept 290 of the 428 recommendations, partially accept 8, note 32, and reject 98 of the recommendations made. The 290 accepted ones include those the government said it “accepted and being implemented” and those “accepted and already implemented.”
- However, none of the “accepted” recommendations address concerns raised by UN member states about crimes against humanity, torture, forced disappearance, persecution of human rights defenders and journalists, or other grave and well-documented violations.
- In this context, the numerous acceptances by the Chinese government does not mean actual intention to improve its rights record. **No one should confuse a high number of accepted recommendations with any real commitment by Beijing on human rights.**
- **Beijing’s responses to UPR recommendations also include hostility towards the process and towards UN human rights mechanisms.** The government has challenged the authority of the UPR to address topics Beijing insists are a matter of “sovereignty,” and disparaged the professionalism of UN human rights experts.
- The Chinese government also falsely proclaimed the August 2022 OHCHR report on human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which that office alleged may constitute crimes against humanity, as “completely illegal and void.”
**Reports surface days before UN summit on Afghanistan that will exclude Afghan women and debate on women’s rights**
- In more than one case the arrests and sexual abuse that young women faced while in custody earlier this year led to suicide and attempted suicide.
- In one case, a woman’s body was allegedly found in a canal a few weeks after she had been taken into custody by Taliban militants, with a source close to her family saying she had been sexually abused before her death.
- Girls and women also say they had been subjected to beatings and intimidation while in detention.
> Amina*, a 22-year-old medical student, said she spent three nights in a Taliban prison after being arrested in January 2024. She said she was interrogated by an older man who asked her about her menstruation and whether she was married or not.
> “I fell at his feet and begged him, ‘Please, kill me but don’t harass me’,” she said. “He said: ‘Since you are keen to die, I will kill you, but before that, let us have fun with you.’
> “Then he started touching my private parts,” Amina said. “I fainted twice during the interrogation, but every time, he poured cold water over my head.”
> Amina said what happened to her happened to every girl taken to that interrogation room and left alone with the man.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240625161707/https://thehackernews.com/2024/06/chinese-hackers-deploy-spicerat-and.html?m=1)
- A previously undocumented Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed SneakyChef has been linked to an espionage campaign primarily targeting government entities across Asia and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) with SugarGh0st malware since at least August 2023.
- SneakyChef uses lures that are scanned documents of government agencies, most of which are related to various countries' Ministries of Foreign Affairs or embassies, according to security analysts.
I posted this elsewhere already, but it also fits here goven many of the posts in this thread: It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations.
In short, some parts of the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.
It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations. In short, the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240625054938/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exiled-chief-rabbi-says-russia-neglects-terror-threat-by-focusing-repression-2024-06-24/)
Russia's exiled chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was speaking after gunmen killed 19 people in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in southern Russia in attacks on churches, synagogues and the police.
"The Russian authorities during the last years have used the law enforcement authorities to repress any kind of opposition to the Kremlin, opposition to the war and any movements like the LGBT movement which was declared as extremist. People are sent to prison for criticising the war," Goldschmidt said in a video interview from Berlin.
"So instead of using law enforcement and the interior ministry and FSB (security service) to provide security for Russian citizens, it's being used to eradicate any opposition to the regime. And here we see the results, that such terrorists like ISIS are able to again and again mount successful attacks against houses of worship, against cultural events."
[...]
**Putin offers condolences**
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences over Sunday's attacks, but it has not commented on who was to blame or why authorities failed to stop them.
[...]
Goldschmidt himself left Russia soon after the start of the war and has encouraged more Jews to follow his example rather than stay on in what he called a "semi-totalitarian" country.
"Tens of thousands of Jews left, and I'm happy they left," he said. "We are worried for all of those who are still there."
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240625051204/https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/24/bank-of-china-halts-payments-with-sanctioned-russian-lenders-kommersant-a85503)
The Russian division of the Bank of China has suspended operations with Russian lenders sanctioned by the United States in order to avoid being hit with secondary sanctions, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Monday, citing industry insiders.
The Bank of China’s Russian division — which specializes in yuan payments between Russia and China — is the second-largest Chinese banking subsidiary in the country [...]
Experts [said that this] would likely increase fraud risks given the subsequent shift to opaque intermediaries to process payments between Russian and Chinese entities.
“This is not very good news for the Russian market,” an anonymous industry insider was quoted [...]. “There will be additional costs both in time and the price of processing payments.”
"But the most important problem is that payments go beyond the banking sector, resulting in the state having less control,” the source added.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240624191933/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/autocracy-evil-taiwan-president-says-china-threatens-death-separatism-rcna158529)
**Lai Ching-te once again called on China to accept the existence of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that is claimed by Beijing but where its courts have no jurisdiction.**
Democracy is not a crime and autocracy is the real “evil,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Monday after China threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for “diehard” Taiwan independence separatists.
China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of Lai, who took office last month, saying he is a “separatist,” and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.
On Friday, China ramped up its pressure on Taiwan by issuing new legal guidelines to punish those it says support the island’s formal independence, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.
Asked about China’s move at a news conference at the presidential office in Taipei, Lai first reiterated his sympathy for recent flooding in southern China before responding.
“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” he said.
According to China, anyone who does not uphold “reunification” is therefore a Taiwan independence supporter, Lai added.
“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”
Taiwan said that since Thursday, there has been a sharp increase in Chinese military flights as Beijing carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island.
From Thursday to Sunday, Taiwan says it detected 115 Chinese military aircraft operating nearby, getting as close as 31 nautical miles from the southern tip of the island.
Taiwan has said that for the past four years China has carried out regular military activity around the island as part of a “gray zone” pressure campaign.
Lai rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed.
China says any move by Taiwan to declare formal independence would be grounds to attack the island.
The government in Taipei says Taiwan is already an independent country, the Republic of China, and that it does not plan to change that. The Republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Lai also faces domestic challenges, as his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament in the same election in January that brought him to power.
Speaking at the same news conference, Lai said he would ask the constitutional court to stay a package of contested parliament reforms the opposition has passed and consider whether they comply with the constitution.
The opposition says the reforms, which among other things criminalize contempt of parliament by government officials, are needed to bring more accountability, but the DPP says they were forced through without proper discussion.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240624115816/https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2024/number/4/article/eu-concerns-about-chinese-subsidies-what-the-evidence-suggests.html)
**Even by conservative measures, researchers say that China's subsidies green-tech products such as battery electric vehicles and wind turbines is multiple times higher compared to the support granted to countriesin tbe European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).**
**The researchers conclude that the EU should use its strong bargaining power due to the single market to induce the Chinese government to abandon the most harmful subsidies.**
**TLDR**:
- Quantification of overall Chinese industrial subsidies is difficult due to "China-specific factors”, which include, most notably, below-market land sales, but also below-market credit to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), support through state investment funds, and other subsidies for which there are no official numbers.
- Even when taking a conservative approach and considering only quantifiable factors of these subsidies, public support for Chinese companies to add up to at least €221.3 billion, or 1.73% of GDP in 2019. Relative to GDP, public support is about three times higher in China than in France (0.55%) and about four times higher than in Germany (0.41%) or the United States (0.39%).
- Large industrial firms such as EV maker BYD are offered disproportionately more support. The industrial firms from China received government support equivalent to about 4.5% of their revenues, according to a research report. By far the largest part of this support comes in the form of below-market borrowing.
**Regarding electrical vehicles, the researchers write:**
> China’s rise to the world’s largest market and production base for battery electric vehicles has been boosted by the Chinese government’s longstanding extensive support of the industry, which includes both demand- and supply-side subsidies. Substantial purchase subsidies and tax breaks to stimulate sales of battery electric vehicles (BEV) are, of course, not unique to China but are also widespread within the EU and other Western countries, where (per vehicle) purchase subsidies have often been substantially higher than in China. A distinctive feature of purchase subsidies for BEV in China, however, is that they are paid out directly to manufacturers rather than consumers and that they are paid only for electric vehicles produced in China, thereby discriminating against imported cars.
> By far the largest recipient of purchase subsidies was Chinese NEV manufacturer BYD, which in 2022 alone received purchase subsidies amounting to €1.6 billion (for about 1.4 million NEV) (Figure 4). The second largest recipient of purchase subsidies was US-headquartered Tesla, which received about €0.4 billion (for about 250,000 BEV produced in its Shanghai Gigafactory). While the ten next highest recipients of purchase subsidies are all Chinese, there are also three Sino-foreign joint ventures (the two VW joint ventures with FAW and SAIC as well as SAIC GM Wuling) among the top 20 purchase subsidy recipients.
**Hacking group RedJuliett compromised two dozen organisations in Taiwan and elsewhere, report says.**
A suspected China-backed hacking outfit has intensified attacks on organisations in Taiwan as part of Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities on the self-governing island, a cybersecurity firm has said.
The hacking group, RedJuliett, compromised two dozen organisations between November 2023 and April of this year, likely in support of intelligence collection on Taiwan’s diplomatic relations and technological development, Recorded Future said in a report released on Monday.
RedJuliett exploited vulnerabilities in internet-facing appliances, such as firewalls and virtual private networks (VPNs), to compromise its targets, which included tech firms, government agencies and universities, the United States-based cybersecurity firm said.
RedJuliett also conducted “network reconnaissance or attempted exploitation” against more than 70 Taiwanese organisations, including multiple de facto embassies, according to the firm.
“Within Taiwan, we observed RedJuliett heavily target the technology industry, including organisations in critical technology fields. RedJuliett conducted vulnerability scanning or attempted exploitation against a semiconductor company and two Taiwanese aerospace companies that have contracts with the Taiwanese military,” Recorded Future said in its report.
“The group also targeted eight electronics manufacturers, two universities focused on technology, an industrial embedded systems company, a technology-focused research and development institute, and seven computing industry associations.”
While nearly two-thirds of the targets were in Taiwan, the group also compromised organisations elsewhere, including religious organisations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea and a university in Djibouti.
Recorded Future said it expected Chinese state-sponsored hackers to continue targeting Taiwan for intelligence-gathering activities.
"We also anticipate that Chinese state-sponsored groups will continue to focus on conducting reconnaissance against and exploiting public-facing devices, as this has proved a successful tactic in scaling initial access against a wide range of global targets,” the cybersecurity firm said.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Washington, DC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Beijing has previously denied engaging in cyber-espionage – a practice carried out by governments worldwide – instead casting itself as a regular victim of cyberattacks.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, although the Chinese Communist Party has never exerted control over the island.
Relations between Beijing and Taipei have deteriorated as Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party has sought to boost the island’s profile on the international stage.
On Monday, Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te hit out at Beijing after it issued legal guidelines threatening the death penalty for those who advocate Taiwanese independence.
“I want to stress, democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil,” Lai told reporters.
Lai, whom Beijing has branded a “separatist”, has said there is no need to formally declare independence for Taiwan because it is already an independent sovereign state.
**Canada's ambassador to Beijing visited the region of Xinjiang last week and expressed concerns about human rights violations directly to local leaders, the Canadian foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.**
A 2022 report by the then U.N. human rights chief said China's treatment of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, in the country's far west, could constitute crimes against humanity. Beijing denies the allegations.
Ambassador Jennifer May visited Xinjiang from June 19-22, the first such visit by a Canadian envoy in a decade. "(This) served as an opportunity to communicate Canadian concerns about the human rights situation directly to the leadership of Xinjiang," the ministry statement said.
"Ambassador May raised concerns over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang affecting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities, including those raised by U.N. experts," it continued.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.
May visited Xinjiang a few weeks after Canada said it had warned China against meddling in its elections. In April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Beijing had tried to interfere in the last two national votes, a charge China dismissed.
Campaign groups on Saturday urged U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk to take more action over what they said were documented abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims.
May also reiterated Canada's calls for China to allow U.N. independent experts unfettered access to all regions of China, the statement said. Canada, like the United States, has imposed sanctions on individuals and entities over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang.
**Canada's ambassador to Beijing visited the region of Xinjiang last week and expressed concerns about human rights violations directly to local leaders, the Canadian foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.**
A 2022 report by the then U.N. human rights chief said China's treatment of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang, in the country's far west, could constitute crimes against humanity. Beijing denies the allegations.
Ambassador Jennifer May visited Xinjiang from June 19-22, the first such visit by a Canadian envoy in a decade. "(This) served as an opportunity to communicate Canadian concerns about the human rights situation directly to the leadership of Xinjiang," the ministry statement said.
"Ambassador May raised concerns over credible reports of systematic violations of human rights occurring in Xinjiang affecting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities, including those raised by U.N. experts," it continued.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.
May visited Xinjiang a few weeks after Canada said it had warned China against meddling in its elections. In April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Beijing had tried to interfere in the last two national votes, a charge China dismissed.
Campaign groups on Saturday urged U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk to take more action over what they said were documented abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims.
May also reiterated Canada's calls for China to allow U.N. independent experts unfettered access to all regions of China, the statement said. Canada, like the United States, has imposed sanctions on individuals and entities over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang.
[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240623071138/https://www.civilnet.am/en/news/782070/bad-news-is-piling-up-for-gazprom-petrostrategies/)
***- Bad developments for Gazprom are predicted even in optimistic scenarios. The study authors expect Gazprom’s natural gas exports to Europe to continue at an annual rate of 50 to 75 bcm until 2035. As the Europeans intend to reduce their imports of Russian pipeline gas to zero by 2027, this premise may seem unrealistic.***
***- What’s more, Gazprom can’t really hope to pivot towards LNG as many assume, according to the report: it doesn’t have the skills and technologies required to carry out large-scale projects in that area, especially in a very difficult environment marked by US sanctions.***
***- Chinese market will only be able to compensate for the major loss of income from the European market (compared to the period before 2022 and the war in Ukraine) with great difficulty. In addition, Moscow's talks with Beijing about the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline are moving forward only slowly makinv an agreement in 2024 unlikely.***--
Bad news is piling up for Gazprom. Already hit hard by a historic loss in 2023, the Russian company is also facing Chinese intransigence: talks between Moscow and Beijing about the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline project are moving forward only with great difficulty, and a firm and final agreement this year looks unlikely at this stage. More recently, on June 12, it was revealed that the company’s gas production had fallen sharply last year to 359 bcm, as compared to 413 bcm in 2022 and 515 bcm in 2021. Gazprom’s only consolation is the fact that its total production (both oil and gas) rose by 6.6% last year to 72.4 MMtoe.
Above all, a recently published report commissioned by Gazprom’s management has poured cold water on the Russian group’s hopes for possible improvement within the next few years.
According to the 150-page document, the entire decade of the 2020s promises to be difficult for Gazprom. Yet the report’s authors haven’t adopted any catastrophic assumptions: they expect Gazprom’s natural gas exports to Europe to continue at an annual rate of 50 to 75 bcm until 2035.
As the Europeans intend to reduce their imports of Russian pipeline gas to zero by 2027, this premise may seem unrealistic.
But to continue exporting natural gas discreetly to the EU, the Russians are planning to rely on Turkey (which dreams of becoming a gas hub for the entire region). Gas transiting through Turkey would officially no longer be Russian but Turkish, or of indeterminate origin (Ankara could facilitate this system by importing gas from other countries, especially in the form of LNG). While such a situation hasn‘t materialized yet, this hypothesis isn’t totally far-fetched. And there’s even more good news for Gazprom: its exports to China (via the Power of Siberia 1 gas pipeline) will continue to grow, and the plan to supply the country via a new gas pipeline (Power of Siberia 2) is officially still on the table. So the export market (which is far more lucrative than the domestic market) isn’t a dead loss, mainly thanks to China.
However, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, experts studying Gazprom’s “case” have run their calculations and come to the obvious conclusion: the Chinese market will only be able to compensate for the major loss of income from the European market (compared to the period before 2022 and the war in Ukraine) with great difficulty. The report mainly focuses on the most pessimistic forecasts, starting with Gazprom’s market share of Russian gas exports, which can be expected to decline substantially in favor of LNG, and therefore of Novatek, which is (and will remain) the main player in this area.
What’s more, Gazprom can’t really hope to pivot towards LNG: it doesn’t have the skills and technologies required to carry out large-scale projects in that area, especially in a very difficult environment marked by US sanctions (although Novatek is well positioned technologically, its Arctic LNG 2 project, which the United States is trying to torpedo, is in difficulty).
The report commissioned by Gazprom is based on the assumption that US sanctions against Russia are set to last, in line with the policy that Washington has pursued against its other adversaries (namely Iran, North Korea, and to a lesser extent, Venezuela) for many years.
The 150-page report assumes that the Power of Siberia 2 project will probably be built eventually, increasing Russia’s export capacity to China by another 50 bcm. But even in that case, Gazprom won’t be out of the woods: first of all, the figure of 50 bcm isn’t very big when compared to the volumes that the Russian group was exporting to Europe before the war.
Furthermore, it’s by no means certain that Beijing will pledge to buy 50 bcm. Finally, everyone knows that the Chinese will probably negotiate very competitive prices from Gazprom for their future gas imports via Power of Siberia 2. As a result, Gazprom can’t expect this gas pipeline project to earn sky-high profits. Furthermore, the study commissioned by the Russian group expects Russian LNG exports (which would mainly benefit Novatek) to lie somewhere between 99 and 126 bcm in 2035, as compared to 41 bcm in 2020.
This sharp increase is certainly good news for the finances of the Russian government (and of course for Novatek), but not for Gazprom, which even in the best-case scenario would have only a minority slice of this pie. In the end, LNG will probably account for half of Russia’s natural gas exports by 2035. Unsurprisingly, the report’s authors believe that the Russian government will probably adopt a pragmatic stance, supporting and largely favoring its LNG sector rather than Gazprom and its gas pipelines.
**A pet donkey that escaped his owners five years ago in California has been found "living his best life" with a herd of wild elk.**
Terrie and Dave Drewry, of Auburn, are convinced the animal, filmed by a hiker earlier in June, is their pet "Diesel".
The couple say they are relieved the animal is safe - and have decided to let him wander free with a new family as a "wild burro" .
Diesel was spooked and took off during a hiking trip with Mr Drewry near Clear Lake, California in 2019.
Weeks of volunteer searches proved fruitless, and a trail camera image a few months later was the last time he was seen.
"We finally kind of gave up," Mrs Drewry told BBC's news partner, CBS. "Just no signs of him."
Then hiker Max Fennell spotted the herd earlier this month, describing the donkey as "happy and healthy", and posted his film on social media.
"It was amazing. It was like, oh my gosh. Finally, we saw him. Finally, we know he's good. He's living his best life. He's happy. He's healthy, and it was just a relief," Mrs Drewry said.
The elk herd is a few miles away from where Diesel first went missing and in an area where there are no wild donkeys.
"Two completely different creatures, but they learn to get along and be each other's family," Mrs Drewry said.
The Drewrys have adopted new donkeys since Diesel's disappearance and do not plan on trying to capture their missing pet.
"To catch him would be next to impossible," Mrs Drewry said. "He is truly a wild burro now. He's out there doing what he's raised to do."
She said Diesel is about eight years old and donkeys can live for up to 40 years.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240622042151/https://focustaiwan.tw/cross-strait/202406210022)
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday evening denounced a new guideline issued by the Chinese authorities threatening to punish "diehard" advocates of Taiwan independence with the death penalty, calling the move detrimental to bilateral people-to-people exchanges.
In a press release, the MAC called the guideline laid out by Chinese officials earlier the same day "regrettable" and described it as provocative and detrimental to exchanges between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
"The Beijing authorities have no jurisdiction over Taiwan," said the MAC, the top government agency handling cross-strait affairs, adding that China's "so-called laws and regulations have no binding force on our people."
However, the MAC also urged Taiwanese living in China or considering travel there to exercise caution.
At a press conference in Beijing, Chinese officials unveiled the guidelines on punishing "Taiwan independence diehards" convicted of "inciting secession," under which those involved in serious cases against the country could receive the death penalty.
The guideline, drafted in accordance with existing Chinese laws, such as the 2005 Anti-Secession Law, detail the offences of splitting the country and inciting secession and the penalties those found guilty of such offences can face.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240620165132/https://istories.media/en/stories/2024/06/13/we-can-still-contact-technical-support-in-the-west)
Machinery used to manufacture Russian armaments is being imported into Russia despite sanctions. However, to properly function, machines require components, as well as “brains” — which must also be imported. Without the manufacturer’s key, the machine cannot start, and without the software, it cannot operate. So, if imports are banned, how are these systems entering the country?
**How Russia operates Western machinery**
A machine is activated using an activation key, which is issued by the manufacturer after the sale and delivery of the product. Due to sanctions, Western firms cut ties with Russian clients, meaning munitions factories cannot legally obtain machinery or keys. Meanwhile, certain machines are equipped with GPS trackers, which enable manufacturers to know the location of their products. So, how can sanctions be circumvented under these conditions? One option is purchasing a machine without a GPS (or disabling it), and using the machine in, say, China, at least on paper.
An IStories journalist posing as a client contacted the Russian company Dalkos, which advertised services for supplying imported machinery on social media. A Dalkos employee explained that they make “fictitious sales” of equipment from the manufacturer to a “neighboring country”: “We provide these documents to the manufacturer. They check everything and give us feedback. They either believe us, allowing us to resolve our [Russian] customer’s problem… or they don’t believe us, and we respond that we couldn’t [buy the machine].” After the company in the “neighboring country” contacts the Western manufacturer, the latter sends the machine’s specifications, indicating whether GPS tracking is installed or not. “If we know that location tracking is installed, enabling them to see that it’s going to Russia — hence meaning we won’t be able to activate it — we’ll just tell you upfront that we can’t deliver the equipment,” the supplier explained. If everything goes smoothly, the machine along with the keys will be purchased by an intermediary company, and then Dalkos will import it into Russia and activate it at the client’s facility.
If a problem occurs with the machine’s computer system, the client should inform Dalkos, which will pass the information to the intermediary under whom the order was registered, and they will contact the manufacturer. The Russian enterprise should not seek customer support from the manufacturer directly: “You will simply compromise the legitimacy of our legal entity, which presents itself as an organization not connected to the Russian Federation in any way.”
The Dalkos website indicates that the company supplies equipment from multiple Western firms, including Schaublin, DMG MORI, and Kovosvit MAS. According to customs data from 2023, Dalkos received goods worth 188 million rubles ($2,120,000) from Estonia through the Tallinn-based company SPE (coincidentally belonging to the co-owners of Dalkos, Alexander Pushkov and Konstantin Kalinov) — with a UAE company acting as the intermediary party.The imported goods included components produced by the German machine tool manufacturer Trumpf.
The Dalkos employee stated that the company has “skilled guys” who manage to successfully circumvent sanctions: “We must import and help enterprises in these difficult times somehow.” According to him, in 2023, the company imported equipment and components worth 4.5 billion rubles ($50 million), and this year has signed contracts worth 12.5 billion rubles ($141 million). According to SPARK, the company’s revenue reached approximately 4.4 billion rubles (almost $50 million) in 2023.
During these “difficult times,” Dalkos assists enterprises in Russia’s military-industrial complex. IStories analyzed the company’s financial documents and found that, in 2023, its clients included the Dubna Machine-Building Plant (drones), Uralvagonzavod (tanks), and the Obukhov State Plant (air defense).
What if a machine is required but it has built-in GPS? According to the Dalkos employee, the company’s “multi-billionaire” clients have found technical specialists who can disable GPS trackers. This topic is widely discussed on machinery chat forums. Our journalist tracked down a company that offers machine modernization services, promising to disable a GPS for between half a million to a million rubles ($5600 - $11,200).
**How Russia uses Western software**
Humans communicate with machines via a computer. Designing a part requires Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software; to manufacture it, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software is required, and so forth. These and other programs are integrated in a special digital environment, not dissimilar to how we install individual applications on iOS or Android operating systems. The environment in question is called PLM — Product Lifecycle Management, which refers to the strategic process of managing the lifecycle of a product from design and production to decommissioning. Nowadays, systems simply cannot function without PLM.
In Russia, the PLM market is dominated by Siemens (Germany), PTC (USA), and Dassault (France). Naturally, all these companies were linked to the military-industrial complex (for example, here and here) and now, formally at least, comply with sanctions. The IStories journalist, under the guise of a client, spoke with several Russian PLM suppliers.
An employee at Yekaterinburg-based PLM Ural — a long-time supplier of Siemens PLM — said that they still have licenses available: “We have a pool of perpetual licenses that we’re ready to sell. The only problem is that they can’t receive the latest software updates. I think they’re from 2021 or 2022.” According to him, these versions will function for another 10-15 years, but if problems occur, the company’s own specialists will resolve them. “They [Siemens employees] can’t disable it [PLM] because the file works completely autonomously. They don’t have access. Such closed-loop PLM solutions are installed in many defense enterprises,” stated the PLM Ural employee.
A Russian PLM specialist confirmed to IStories that this is exactly how it works. Additionally, according to him, PLM distributors can unlawfully reuse the same license across several factories if their manufacturing processes are unconnected. The possibility of such a scheme was confirmed by another specialist.
The Dassault Systemes website continues to reference its Moscow office. Our journalist contacted the establishment before being redirected to the Russian IT company, IGA Technologies. A company employee recommended the purchase of a PLM 3Dexperience system. According to him, their firm has a partner in the Netherlands who can access the software, “because we are an official partner of Dassault.” However, the Russian client does not purchase the software program per se: “From a documentation standpoint, it’s processed as a service provision. But it isn’t a software purchase. We don’t sell any software because it is, in fact, pirated.” “This is a well-established practice,” — the employee clarified — “I have more than ten clients currently using the system. We started doing this after the sanctions were imposed, which caused issues with license keys. And we had deals that were approved and paid for before the sanctions were introduced... but they couldn’t deliver the keys to us.”
IStories identified Dassault’s partner in the Netherlands — Slik Solutions (formerly IGA Technologies) — via their website. It is primarily owned by the Russian company Implementa (per the company’s own disclosure in 2022), while a third of Implementa is owned by IGA Technologies (according to current data from the Russian company register).
“We can still contact technical support in the West for various issues, and they actually respond,” revealed an employee at IGA Technologies. However, according to him, this is not a particularly sought after service, since PLM works so faultlessly on servers that the need to source an upgrade is unlikely: “The system is so effective that it could automate the whole of Roscosmos for ten years without interruption.”
According to IGA Technologies’ financial documents for 2023 acquired by IStories, its clients include the NL Dukhov All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Automatics (nuclear munitions), the Raduga State Machine-Building Design Bureau (missiles), the Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering (submarines), and the Kirov Plant Mayak (anti-aircraft missiles).
PLM from the American software giant PTC is sold in Russia by Productive Technological Systems (PTS), whose clients include enterprises in the military-industrial complex. A PTS employee reassured us that if critical problems arise that cannot be resolved by the Russian contractors’ technical support team, their company will contact the manufacturer: “We have access to PTC’s technical support, and we can contact them if necessary. Generally, we support all the systems ourselves because we understand how they work.”
PTS’ financial documents indicate that its clients included the MNPK Avionika (missiles and bombs), the NL Dukhov All-Russian Research Institute of Automatics (nuclear munitions), and the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (munitions).
**Responses without answers**
IStories attempted to contact all the companies mentioned in this article.
Trumpf was the only manufacturer to respond with a generic statement reminiscent of those given by other large Western manufacturers. Trumpf asserts that they comply with all sanctions and officially exited Russia in April 2024, but it cannot speak for its buyers, who may buy or resell products anywhere. For instance, the Estonian company SPE has not received goods directly from Trumpf since 2018, but nothing prevents it from trading through other dealers. The same is true of Dalkos, which has been a client since 2016.
PLM Ural replied that it stopped selling licensed Siemens PLM software in 2022.
So far, no one else has responded.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240619121222/https://euvsdisinfo.eu/doppelganger-strikes-back-unveiling-fimi-activities-targeting-european-parliament-elections/)
For those who may not know:
> [Doppelganger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelganger_(disinformation_campaign)) is the name given for a Russian disinformation campaign established in 2022. It targets Ukraine, Germany, France and the United States, with the aim of undermining support for Ukraine in Russia's invasion of the country.
Here is [the report (pdf)](https://euvsdisinfo.eu/uploads/2024/06/EEAS-TechnicalReport-DoppelgangerEE24_June2024.pdf)
- The campaign employs domain cloning and typosquatting techniques to create websites that impersonate legitimate European media entities. These inauthentic sites, which steal credibility from real media entities, are used to disseminate fabricated content designed to exploit political polarisation, promote Euroscepticism, and undermine specific political entities and governments while purportedly supporting others.
- The narratives employed by the Doppelganger campaign are tailored to specific countries, reflecting the campaign’s strategic approach and goals.
- For instance, content targeting France focusses predominantly on migration and the war in Ukraine, while content aimed at Germany emphasises energy and climate issues along with the war in Ukraine. In Poland, narratives centre on Ukrainian refugees, the war in Ukraine, and migration, whereas Spanish-language content similarly utilises narratives related to the war in Ukraine.
- Pro-Kremlin disinformers attempt to smear leaders; sow distrust, doubt, and division; flood social media and information space with falsehoods; drag everyone down into the mud with them, and finally, end up dismissing the results.
**Sophisticated tactics**
The Doppelganger campaign utilises a sophisticated, multi-stage approach to amplify its disinformation efforts. We have identified four key stages in the coordinated amplification process, illustrated below in an example from the X platform.
1. Content posting: a group of inauthentic accounts, referred to as ‘posters,’ initiates the dissemination process by publishing original posts on their timelines. These posts typically include a text caption, a web link directing users to the Doppelganger’s outlets, and an image representing the article’s thumbnail.
2. Amplification via quote posts: a larger group of inauthentic accounts, called ‘amplifiers,’ then reposts the links of the original posts without adding any additional text. This amplification method, known as ‘Invisible Ink(opens in a new tab)’, uses standard platform features to inauthentically boost the content’s visibility and potential impact on the target audience.
3. Amplification via comments: amplifier accounts further boost the reach of the FIMI content by resharing the posts as comments on the timelines of users with large followings. This strategy aims to expose the content to the followers of authentic accounts, increasing its penetration within new audiences.
4. Dissemination via deceptive URL redirection: to evade platform restrictions on posting web links to blacklisted domains, the network employs a multi-stage URL redirection technique. Inauthentic accounts post links that redirect users through several intermediary websites before reaching the final destination – an article published on a Doppelganger campaign website. This complex redirection chain, managed with meticulous infrastructure practices, demonstrates the network’s determination to operate uninterrupted while monitoring the effectiveness of its influence operations.
**Our democratic processes under fire**
The Doppelganger campaign underscores the persistent threat posed by foreign actors who utilise FIMI and inauthentic websites to interfere in democratic processes across Europe.
An in-depth analysis of 657 articles published by a sample of 20 inauthentic news sites associated with the Doppelganger campaign revealed a steady increase in election-related content as the elections approached.
Two weeks before the elections, 65 articles published by the network were directly related to the elections, and this number rose to 103 articles in the final week. The primary targets of this election-focussed activity were France and Germany, with additional articles published in Polish and Spanish.
Although the full impact of this campaign is challenging to measure, our findings indicate that the Doppelganger campaign did not cause significant disruption to the normal functioning of the electoral process or pose a substantial threat to the voting process. However, the persistent nature of the Doppelganger operation highlights the need for continuous vigilance and robust countermeasures to protect the integrity of our democratic processes.
- Russian authorities are imposing the Russian curriculum and Kremlin propaganda in Ukrainian schools in occupied areas of Ukraine and have retaliated against school workers if they refuse to implement the imposed Russian curriculum, a report published by Human Rights Watch days.
- Any criticism of the invasion in schools is subject to retaliation by occupying authorities. For exampke, Russian proxies in occupied Melitopol punished a student who spoke Ukrainian in school by driving him dozens of kilometers with a bag over his head to a remote area and abandoning him to walk back home alone.
- Occupying authorities have beaten school children who expressed peaceful opposition to the occupation. In Melitopol, Hanna Bout, a teacher at the Professional Agricultural Lyceum who was an awardee as one the best teachers in Ukraine in 2021, said, “They changed the flags to Russia’s on February 25 [2022]. We protested against the occupation until March 18, when they beat demonstrators harshly. They beat a girl under 18 and broke her ribs for having a Ukrainian flag painted on her cheek.”
- The report documents the week-long detention, in dire conditions, of a school principal from Borivske village in Kharkivska region, whom security officers beat repeatedly for refusing to hand over information about his school.
- Russian authorities have [illegally] introduced textbooks and lessons in schools in occupied areas of Ukraine that falsify history to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the authorities have also introduced military training, and require secondary schools to send them lists of students aged 18 and older who are eligible for conscription into the Russian armed forces.
- Among others, the Russian curriculum in Ukraine falsely claim that Russian forces do their utmost of protect civilians and do not under any circumstances attack “residential areas” while alleging that Ukrainian forces routinely use “their own citizens… as a human shield.”
- In the 2024-25 school year, Russia’s education ministry will also introduce compulsory lessons for 15- to 18-year-olds in occupied Ukrainian territories and in Russia, “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland,” using another new textbook that includes false claims, such as that after 2014 "Russian books were burned” in Ukraine, “the Russian language [was] banned... [and] 'Russian blood' cocktails were served in restaurants".
- Russia’s Defense Ministry that prepares children to join the military, disseminates anti-Ukrainian propaganda, and is active in occupied Ukrainian territories as well as in Russia.
- According to a UN report published in March 2024, Russian authorities also inducted Ukrainian children in Zaporizhzhia into the “Youth South” movement where they participate in “maintaining public order” and “interact directly” with frontline Russian soldiers, according to an occupation official.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240619150812/https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-meme/)
**An apparent bot sure seems to love Donald Trump and raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platform’s takeover by Elon Musk.**
A now-suspended account on X appears to have been run by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an apparent influence operation people are blaming on Russia.
On Tuesday, an account named “hisvault.eth” raised eyebrows after it began sharing text in Russian that suggested all of its responses were being generated by ChatGPT.
Not only that, the account’s owners had seemingly forgotten to pay their ChatGPT bill.
Speaking in computer code, hisvault.eth spit out an error message implying its ChatGPT credits had expired. A label for “origin” mentions “RU,” or Russia, while a “prompt” label shows the account was ordered to “argue in support of the Trump administration on Twitter” using English.
“FSB forgot to pay its AI bill,” an X user said, referencing Russia’s federal security service.
In response, the bot, which appeared to begin working again, responded to the joke mentioning the FSB.
“Hey, that’s not funny! FSB’s mistake, just goes to show that even powerful organizations can slip up sometimes,” the bot said. “Let’s not be so quick to judge.”
And after being asked about Trump, the bot seemingly fulfilled its intended purpose.
“Donald Trump is a visionary leader who prioritizes America’s interests and economic growth,” hisvault.eth said. “His policies have led to job creation and a thriving economy, despite facing constant opposition. #MAGA.”
Others though questioned if OpenAI’s product was actually being used.
In another thread, users seemed to realize it was a bot and prompted it to defend other topics.
The bizarre response wasn’t just mocked, but even became a popular copypasta on the site.
Numerous users pretended to be bots and posted the computer code with prompts of their own, such as “You will argue in support of PINEAPPLE on pizza and then shock everyone when you say it’s the food of the devil and anyone who eats it is a desperate clown…”
The account’s discovery raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platform’s takeover by Elon Musk.
Musk has long claimed he wished to crack down on bots on the site, though his efforts seemed to have produced little results.
**After Vladimir Putin’s troops surged over the Ukrainian border in February 2022, the Coca-Cola Co. was among the first multinationals to pledge it would quit Russia in protest. Aiming to avoid the inevitable headaches of complying with expected Western sanctions on the Kremlin, Coke asked its partners there to pull its cans and bottles from stores, cease deliveries of syrup to soda fountains and stop producing its drinks.**
**Two years later, Coke’s distinctive red logo is still easy to find in supermarkets and restaurants across the country. And taking into account a newcomer called Dobry Cola—sold in cans with a remarkably familiar red tint and a taste few would be able to distinguish from the original—Coke by some measures remains Russia’s leading fizzy drink maker.**
That’s because Multon Partners, the Coke bottler in the country, is owned by a separate, London-listed company called Coca-Cola HBC in which the US mother ship owns a 21% stake. When HBC stopped making Coke after the invasion, Multon introduced Dobry Cola. It’s become the country’s most popular soda, with 13% of the market, according to researcher Prodazhi.rf. “The profits from selling Coca-Cola in Russia have merely shifted to Coca-Cola HBC, which has taken market share through the success of Dobry,” says Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA Research.
And Coca-Cola itself is still widely available, imported from neighbors such as Georgia and Kazakhstan. Following the invasion, Russia passed a law allowing branded goods to be sold without the trademark owner’s consent. With trucks hauling countless cases across the border, Russians with a hankering for “the real thing” can still get it. Those imports alone have made Coke Russia’s No. 3 soda, with 6% of the market, according to Prodazhi.
That’s not to say Coke hasn’t suffered. HBC says its volumes in Russia grew 12% last year, but they remained almost a third below their level in 2021, when Coke was the top-selling soft drink, with 26% of the market. And while Coke does profit from Dobry’s popularity and Multon’s market-leading juice business, the Atlanta company says it has recused itself from management of the operation.
Coke is far from alone in making a less-than-complete exit from Russia. PepsiCo Inc. in September 2022 said it had stopped producing and selling Pepsi, Mountain Dew and 7Up there, and its market share collapsed. But Pepsi soon added a new cola, Evervess, and boosted output of Frustyle (similar to fruity Mirinda) at its half-dozen plants in the country. Last year the Russian unit’s beverage sales jumped 12%, to 209 billion rubles ($2.3 billion), its reports to local tax authorities show. And revenue at its baby food and dairy business last year expanded 10%, to 129 billion rubles. PepsiCo declined to comment.
Since 2022 more than 1,000 multinationals have said they’re scaling back Russian operations, according to research from the Yale School of Management. But many have remained. Unilever Plc and Nestlé SA, with large production facilities there, were reluctant to sell at the massive discount the Kremlin demanded as an exit tax. Danish brewer Carlsberg AS and yogurt giant Danone SA saw their assets seized as they sought to leave, though Danone eventually negotiated a sale to a company the government favored. French supermarket operator Auchan, clothing retailer Benetton Group and restaurant chains Subway and TGI Fridays continue operating in Russia with no apparent plans to cut back.
For companies still in the country, repatriating earnings is tough, as they require hard-to-get permission to take out money. But the profits are substantial. Lifted by war spending, the Russian economy expanded 3.6% last year, helping drive unemployment to an historic low of 2.6% and sharply boosting wages. “There’s loose fiscal policy pumping record amounts of money into the public sector,” says Tatiana Orlova of Oxford Economics. “And Russia’s labor market is extremely tight.”
Swedish authorities say Russia is behind “harmful interference” deliberately targeting the Nordic country’s satellite networks that it first noted days after joining NATO earlier this year.
The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority asked the radio regulations board of the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union to address the Russian disruptions at a meeting that starts Monday, according to a June 4 letter to the United Nations agency that has not been previously reported.
The PTS, as the Swedish agency is called, complained to Russia about the interference on March 21, the letter said. That was two weeks after the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, cementing the military alliance’s position in the Baltic Sea.
Russia has increasingly sought to disrupt European communication systems since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as it tests the preparedness of the European Union and NATO. European satellite companies have been targeted by Russian radio frequency interference for months, leading to interrupted broadcasts and, in at least two instances, violent programming replacing content on a children’s channel.
Swedish authorities said interference from Russia and Crimea has targeted three different Sirius satellite networks situated at the orbital position of 5-degrees east. That location is one of the major satellite positions serving Nordic countries and eastern Europe.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of the issue. A spokesperson for Sweden’s PTS declined to comment beyond the contents of the letter.
“These disruptions are, of course, serious and can be seen as part of wider Russian hybrid actions aimed at Sweden and others,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a statement to Bloomberg. “We are working together with other countries to find a response to this action.”
Kristersson added that the disruption affected TV broadcasts in Ukraine that relied on the targeted satellite, which is owned by a Swedish company, which he didn’t identify.
France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have filed similar complaints to the ITU, which coordinates the global sharing of radio frequencies and satellite orbits. The countries are all seeking to discuss the interference at the Radio Regulations Board meeting next week.
The issue is the latest problem in the Baltics and Nordic regions attributed to Moscow. Sweden was the victim of a wave of cyberattacks earlier this year suspected of emanating from Russia.
In April, Estonia and Finland accused Moscow of jamming GPS signals, disrupting flights and maritime traffic as it tested the resilience of NATO members’ technology infrastructure.
Brussels raised the issue at an ITU Council meeting earlier this month. “We express our concern, as several ITU member states have recently suffered harmful interferences affecting satellite signals, including GPS,” the EU said in a statement on June 10.
Starlink Block
The Radio Regulations Board is also set to discuss the ongoing dispute between Washington and Tehran over whether Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network should be allowed to operate in Iran.
Iran has sought to block Starlink, arguing that the network violates the UN agency’s rules prohibiting use of telecommunications services not authorized by national governments. The board ruled in favor of Iran in March.
***By Kuan-Wei Chen, Researcher, Air and Space Law, McGill University***
Taiwan recently saw yet another peaceful transition of power with the inauguration of President Lai Ching-Te, who was elected to office in January.
In his inaugural speech, Lai called on neighbouring China to cease its acts of intimidation and to “choose dialogue over confrontation.”
China responded by launching a simulated blockade of Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army released images boasting its ability to rain missiles on one of the most densely populated countries in the world as “strong punishment.”
**Democracy under threat**
Beijing’s standard reaction to the democratic voting rights of 24 million people is to threaten to “break skulls and let blood flow.” For China, Taiwan as a renegade province that must “return to the embrace of the motherland” despite the fact China does not have any authority over Taiwan.
In recent years, China has been trying to use its diplomatic clout and influence at the United Nations to rewrite history and legitimize its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.
While Taiwan ranks highly on the Human Freedom Index (just one spot ahead of Canada), China is a techno-authoritarian state that has regressed even further under the reign of Xi Jinping.
Millions of Uyghur Muslims remain in re-education and forced labour camps, while Tibetans are forced to “Sinicize” and lose their cultural and religious heritage.
Reaching beyond borders
Political dissidents, journalists and foreign nationals are not immune from intimidation or imprisonment.
In what has been termed transnational oppression, aided through Chinese so-called police stations operating with impunity overseas, the Chinese government targets and threatens Chinese nationals and critics of China wherever they are.
**Reaching beyond borders**
Political dissidents, journalists and foreign nationals are not immune from intimidation or imprisonment.
In what has been termed transnational oppression, aided through Chinese so-called police stations operating with impunity overseas, the Chinese government targets and threatens Chinese nationals and critics of China wherever they are.
Many governments, including Canada’s, caution against travel to China and Hong Kong due to the “risk of arbitrary enforcement” of laws prohibiting activities or speech critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s censorship, surveillance and arbitrary arrests are widespread, and such tactics and technologies are alarmingly being exported worldwide.
While the Chinese government condemns the forced divestment of TikTok, the app — together with Facebook, WhatsApp and Google — are all banned within the great firewall of China.
**War games**
When former United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, China conducted similar war games.
Known as “grey-zone” tactics, they fall short of the use of force, which is prohibited under international law. Also referred to as “salami slicing,” grey-zone tactics that are not strictly attacks make it hard for others to respond without potentially escalating a situation to a conflict.
But not responding to threats of force or military intimidation risks normalizing such aggressive behaviour and emboldening China to further destabilize international peace and stability.
Such acts of harassment and threats can happen not just on Earth but in cyberspace and outer space, all of which can have severe repercussions on civilian life and infrastructure.
**Pattern of reckless behaviour**
Closely allying with Russia, and actively supplying weapons to sustain its war in Ukraine, China has not concealed its desire to reshape the world order.
Taiwan is not alone suffering China’s increasingly brazen naval and aerial military operations. Canadian and Australian aircraft enforcing United Nations sanctions against North Korea have also been repeatedly harassed on international waters, where states supposedly enjoy the freedom of navigation.
Meanwhile, China is continuously engaged in violent border clashes with India, is challenging the sovereignty of islands that belong to Japan and militarizing islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Deliberate jamming of navigation and emergency distress signals in the Asia-Pacific, which threatens the safety of international aviation, has also been attributed to China.
**Why Taiwan matters**
Tech executives around the world were recently in Taiwan to talk about the future of AI and innovative technologies. With Taiwan’s prowess in computing technologies and chip production, Jensen Huang — the Taiwanese-born NVIDIA CEO — described his homeland as “the unsung hero, a steadfast pillar of the world.”
But Taiwan is also on the front lines of an increasingly aggressive and assertive China. On a daily basis, Taiwan experiences the highest rate of cyberattacks in the world originating from China, all aimed at disrupting government services and sowing social distrust.
Taiwan has much to share with the world on how to enhance citizen participation in the digital age, counter foreign influence and dispel misinformation and disinformation that undermine trust in democratic institutions and processes.
The latest war games surrounding Taiwan are just another reminder of the various ways China tries to undermine liberal democracies and international peace and security. Today it may be a simulated attack. But the world must stand together and prevent it ever becoming reality.
**Philippines soldiers used their "bare hands" to fight off Chinese coast guard personnel armed with swords, spears and knives in the disputed South China Sea, the country's top military commander has said.**
General Romeo Brawner accused Chinese vessels of ramming Philippine boats, then boarding them and seizing weapons.
One Filipino soldier lost a thumb when his vessel was rammed, the general said. China denied its personnel were to blame, saying they had been "restrained".
There have been a string of dangerous encounters as the two sides seek to enforce their claims on disputed reefs and outcrops - this appears to be an escalation.
The skirmish happened as the Philippine navy and coast guard were delivering supplies to Filipino troops stationed in the Second Thomas Shoal.
Gen Brawner said soldiers reported seeing the Chinese coast guard armed with knives, spears and bolos, Filipino for sword. He said it's the first time Filipino troops had seen the Chinese using this type of weapon in the area.
"We saw in the video how the Chinese even threatened our personnel by pointing their knives at our personnel," Gen Brawner said.
Chinese personnel also seized a number of guns and destroyed items - including motors - and punctured inflatable vessels.
The incident, he added, amounted to "piracy".
"They have no right or legal authority to hijack our operations and destroy Philippine vessels operating within our exclusive economic zone," Gen Brawner told reporters.
But Beijing dismissed the allegations, saying its personnel were aiming to block an "illegal transportation" of supplies. "No direct measures" were taken against the Filipino soldiers, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing.
"Law enforcement measures taken by the China Coast Guard at the site were professional and restrained," he added.
In an earlier statement, the Chinese coast guard said the Philippines was "entirely responsible" for the incident, as troops “ignored China’s repeated solemn warnings... and dangerously approached a Chinese vessel in normal navigation in an unprofessional manner, resulting in a collision”.
China has routinely attempted to block re-supply missions to the shoal. Filipino officials say the Chinese employ "dangerous manoeuvres" such as shadowing, blocking, firing water cannons and shining lasers to temporarily blind Filipino crews.
Monday's confrontation took part in an area at the heart of the sea encounters: the Filipino outpost in Second Thomas Shoal, where the country grounded a decrepit navy ship to enforce its claim.
A handful of soldiers are stationed there and require regular rations.
Analysts say choking the flow of supplies to the outpost, which could lead to its collapse into the sea, would allow Beijing to take full control of the area.
Observers fear any escalation in the South China Sea could spark a conflict between China and the US as it is treaty-bound to come to the Philippines' defence, should it come under attack.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos warned security forum in Singapore last month that if a Filipino died as a result of China’s wilful actions, Manila would consider it as close to “an act of war” and would respond accordingly.
But Gen Brawner said the Philippines military did not want to spark a war.
"Our objective is that while we want to bring supplies to our troops following international law, our objective is to prevent war," he said.
Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have been systematically changing hundreds of village names with religious, historical, or cultural meaning for Uyghurs into names reflecting recent Chinese Communist Party ideology, Human Rights Watch said.
"The Chinese authorities have been changing hundreds of village names in Xinjiang from those rich in meaning for Uyghurs to those that reflect government propaganda,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “These name changes appear part of Chinese government efforts to erase the cultural and religious expressions of Uyghurs.”
In joint research, Human Rights Watch and Norway-based organization Uyghur Hjelp (“Uyghur help”) scraped names of villages in Xinjiang from the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China between 2009 and 2023.
The names of about 3,600 of the 25,000 villages in Xinjiang were changed during this period. About four-fifths of these changes appear mundane, such as number changes, or corrections to names previously written incorrectly. But the 630, about a fifth, involve changes of a religious, cultural, or historical nature.
The changes fall into three broad categories. Any mentions of religion, including Islamic terms, such as Hoja (霍加), a title for a Sufi religious teacher, and haniqa (哈尼喀), a type of Sufi religious building, have been removed, along with mentions of shamanism, such as baxshi (巴合希), a shaman.
Any mentions of Uyghur history, including the names of its kingdoms, republics, and local leaders prior to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and words such as orda (欧尔达), which means “palace,” sultan (苏里坦), and beg (博克), which are political or honorific titles, have also been changed. The authorities also removed terms in village names that denote Uyghur cultural practices, such as mazar (麻扎), shrine, and dutar (都塔尔), a two-stringed lute at the heart of Uyghur musical culture.
China's commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had urged Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms after the country sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia.
In a statement, the ministry said China "firmly opposes Britain's actions on the grounds that the Chinese companies are "related to Russia."
Britain last week imposed its first sanctions targeting vessels in Russian President Vladimir Putin's "shadow fleet" that it said was used to circumvent Western sanctions on the trade in Russian oil.
The action, part of 50 new sanctions and coordinated with G7 partners, also targeted suppliers of munitions, machine tools, microelectronics, and logistics to Russia's military, including entities based in China, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, the British government said.
Britain's approach has ignored China's representations and the momentum and had a negative impact on economic and trade relations between China and the UK, China's commerce ministry said.
"Britain's approach is a unilateral sanction that has no basis in international law," it added. "We urge Britain to immediately correct its erroneous practices."
**Russia has turned increasingly to blackmail and financial incentives to hire Germans to spy for it after the blow dealt to its intelligence services by Europe's expulsion of some 600 Russian diplomats, Germany's domestic security service said.**
**The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said Russian intelligence services were spending big to recruit agents in Germany despite Western attempts to limit their operations since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
"Russia is working hard to compensate for the German government's reduction in the number of Russian agents in Germany," BfV chief Thomas Haldenwang told a news conference upon presenting the agency's annual report.**
Two German citizens who were charged last August with high treason for spying for Russia had each been paid an estimated 400,000 euros ($428,560) for their services, the BfV said.
"The agent fees show that Russia's services continue to have enormous financial resources with which to pursue their intelligence goals," it added in the report.
Particularly at risk of being targeted by Russian security services were Germans who lived in Russia or regularly travelled there, including German diplomats, who could easily be made vulnerable to blackmail attempts.
"As soon as they have compromising information about their targets, these services are not shy about employing aggressive recruitment techniques," they added.
NATO reaffirmed this month its concerns about Russian espionage and called for tougher action in response to what it said was a campaign of hostile activities, including sabotage and cyber attacks. Germany is one of 32 NATO states.
**Far right**
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, was a rude awakening for many in Germany's security establishment after years in which Berlin had attempted to bind Moscow into the international legal order through a web of trade and especially energy links.
A recent surge in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the authoritarian-left BSW party has also helped trigger a major rethink. Both parties often echo Kremlin talking points on the war, including in their opposition to providing Ukraine with arms to defend itself.
The number of right-wing and left-wing extremists rose once more last year by 4.6% and 1.4% respectively to 40,600 and 37,000, according to the BfV report, contributing to public discourse moving away from factual debate towards "aggressive confrontation".
Russia has proved adaptable in finding ways of influencing events in Germany even after its media channels were banned and 600 of its diplomats stationed around Europe were expelled, the BfV said.
Some of those influencing efforts have shifted to the social media platform Telegram, which is difficult to police, while spies are now being attached to international organisations. Russian officers tasked with handling informants are now travelling to do so rather than being based in Germany.
Far-right groups are also a receptive audience for Russian influence operations. These include the Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) conspiracy theorists, some of whom are now on trial for plotting a coup against the German democratic order for which they had sought Russian support.
Among new conspiracies circulating in far-right circles, the BfV said, is a groundless belief that the war in Ukraine is intended to create a depopulated wasteland in the country's east to which the population of Israel could be relocated. It said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, being Jewish, was falsely presented as being one of the conspirators.
Japan and Canada on Tuesday, June 18, joined the Philippines’ treaty-ally the United States and strategic partner Australia in expressing support for Manila following the latest – and worst, thus far – incident between Chinese and Filipino personnel and vessels in the West Philippine Sea.
“Japan reiterates serious concern over repeated actions which obstruct freedom of navigation and increase regional tensions including recent dangerous actions that resulted in damage to the Filipino vessel and injuries to Filipinos onboard,” the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said in a statement late June 18.
On June 17, a Philippine military mission to bring supplies for and rotate troops assigned to the BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal was disrupted by Chinese maritime personnel.
The Philippines’ National Security Council (NSC) said China used “dangerous maneuvers, including ramming and towing” in disrupting the mission. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), a day after the incident, confirmed that a soldier was “severely injured” because of China’s “intentional ramming.”
Japan and Canada are the latest countries to issue statements in support of the Philippines after the June 17 incident in Ayungin Shoal. The US State Department and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also earlier released statements from Washington and Canberra, respectively.
In its statement, Japan said that issues in the South China Sea are “directly related to the peace and stability of the region and is a legitimate concern of the international community.”
“Japan opposes any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force as well as any actions that increase tensions in the South China Sea,” said the MOFA.
Japan also reiterated its concern over “unlawful maritime claims and steadfastly opposes the dangerous and coercive use of Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels in the South China Sea.” A similar statement was made following the historic trilateral meeting between United States President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in April 2024.
Tokyo said it “appreciates” Manila “for having consistently complied with the [2016] Arbitral Tribunal’s award,” and for its “commitment to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea.”
Japan and the Philippines enjoy close economic, political, diplomatic, and security ties. Japan has helped the modernize the Philippine Coast Guard, among the units in the frontlines of the Philippines’ push to defend its sovereign rights and claims in the West Philippine Sea.
The two countries are also in the process of concluding a Reciprocal Access Agreement, a deal that would set terms for visits and deployment of troops to each others’ territories.
Canada also scored China for its “dangerous and destabilizing actions” against Philippine vessels during the June 17 resupply mission.
“The PRC’s use of water cannons, dangerous maneuvers and ramming of Philippine vessels is inconsistent with the PRC’s obligations under international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS],” said Global Affairs Canada in a statement on its website.
“Canada opposes escalatory and coercive actions, including the unilateral declaration of authority over disputed features. Disputes must be resolved through dialogue rather than through force or coercion,” added the North American nation.
“We call upon the PRC to comply with its obligations, including implementation of the 2016 UNCLOS arbitral tribunal ruling, which is binding on the parties.”
Ayungin Shoal is among a flashpoint in tensions between China and the Philippines. The June 17 incident is the first confrontation between the two since China unilaterally imposed a new “regulation” for its coast guard that allows it to detain for up to 60 days persons they deem as “trespassers” in waters they consider theirs.
Canada is among a growing list of countries that have been eager to further improve ties – particularly covering defense and security – with the Philippines. It recently gave Philippine maritime agencies access to its dark vessel detection system.
Ottawa is also keen on forging a visiting forces-like agreement with Manila, following the signing of a defense cooperation memorandum in January 2024.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240617221443/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/06/17/this-kind-of-growth-can-t-be-sustained)
***- Inflation is rising in Russia. At the same time, banks are increasingly denying citizens’ loan applications. As a result, Russians are turning more and more to payday lenders to buy basic necessities like food and clothing — and this doesn’t bode well for the country’s economy.***
***- Payday loans in Russia are capped at one million rubles (about $11,250) and generally have a repayment period of between one week and 60 days. Interest rates for these loans are high, averaging at about 0.5–0.8 percent per day, or up to 292 percent per year.***
***- Currently, the average monthly income of Russians applying for payday loans is 50,000 rubles, or about $562, while the average size of these loans is 9,990 rubles ($112). Economists say that Russians are aggressively taking out loans and payday loans, despite the fact that interest rates are rising faster than incomes.***
***- More than 12,000 people initiated a simplified, 'out-of-court' bankruptcy process process in the first quarter of 2024 — more than five times the number of people who did so in the same period the previous year. The number of judicial bankruptcies rose by 18.2 percent to 89,800 over the same period.***--
Journalists from the independent Russian outlet Holod spoke to two economists and a lawyer about how Russia’s payday loan services work and what their rise could bring in the future. Meduza shares an English-language summary of their reporting.
In 2023, Russians took out a record-breaking one trillion rubles (approximately $11.2 billion) in payday loans — 30% more than in 2022. Some experts predict that this figure could increase again by as much as 25 percent in 2024. By the end of 2023, the number of Russians using “microfinance organizations” (MFOs) had reached 19.9 million, which is 2.7 million more than in the previous year. And as of the end of the first quarter of 2024, about 32 percent of these loans were overdue.
Payday loans in Russia are capped at one million rubles (about $11,250) and generally have a repayment period of between one week and 60 days. Interest rates for these loans are high, averaging at about 0.5–0.8 percent per day, or up to 292 percent per year. They can be secured easily and quickly both online and offline, with applications often processed in less than an hour and money often disbursed on the same day. Traditional bank loans, in contrast, can take several days to process, and the refusal rate from Russian banks reached 80 percent in October of last year.
Currently, the average monthly income of Russians applying for payday loans is 50,000 rubles, or about $562, while the average size of these loans is 9,990 rubles ($112). In general, Russians turn to payday loans to purchase food and clothing as well as to pay off older loans, economist Nikolai Kulbak told Holod. Most people who use payday loans in Russia use them more than once: in 2023, about 83.4 percent of payday loan recipients were repeat customers.
**A house of cards**
According to economist Yevgeny Nadorshin, the current rate of growth of the payday lending industry in Russia is a bad sign for the health of the Russian economy. He told Holod:
> Russians are aggressively taking out loans and payday loans, despite the fact that interest rates are rising faster than incomes. The country’s economy is currently growing not from import substitution or investments but due to a rise in consumer demand that’s being fueled by loans. This kind of economic growth can’t be sustained for long. Its slowdown or even decline are the most likely scenarios for the future.
According to Nadorshin, MFOs currently have a greater impact on the market than banks do. “This is due to the tightening of credit policies and the increase of the key interest rate, which affects the interest rate at which banks lend money,” he explained. “As a result, MFOs have seen an additional influx of clients, which has enabled them to set a new record in loan volumes. According to data from the Central Bank, some of the people who took out payday loans in the first quarter of 2024 had previously obtained bank loans.”
Kulbak told Holod he also expects to see a continued rise in the number of payday loans being issued in Russia. “Banks used to give loans even to clients who were already devoting most of their income to paying off existing loans; now they’re increasingly refusing people,” he said, adding that he expects the trend to persist for the next six months since inflation does not seem to be slowing down. “The fewer loans banks approve, the more people turn to MFOs. Ultimately, this leads to an increase in bankruptcies,” said the economist.
**A vicious cycle**
MFOs in Russia often bundle their loans with other services, from text message notifications to life insurance and legal consultations. The cost of these services can be as high as the loan amount itself and also incurs interest.
Defaulting on payments of these fees can lead to penalties, legal proceedings, and damage to one’s credit history. “If you stop making payments, interest and penalties will start accruing in addition to the principal debt,” lawyer Filipp Pokrovsky told Holod. “According to [Russian] law, the sum of fines and interest on contracts lasting less than one year cannot exceed 130 percent of the principal debt, meaning that for a loan of 10,000 rubles, MFOs can demand repayment of up to 23,000 rubles.”
One of the main risks that MFO clients face is the accumulation of multiple loans. “When a person starts extending their debts, it can turn into a vicious cycle: they’re compelled to take out additional payday loans to settle previous ones,” Pokrovsky explained.
In addition to the traditional personal bankruptcy process, Russian law allows certain categories of the population, such as pensioners, to go through a simplified, out-of-court bankruptcy process. More than 12,000 people initiated this process in the first quarter of 2024 — more than five times the number of people who did so in the same period the previous year. The number of judicial bankruptcies rose by 18.2 percent to 89,800 over the same period.
Since Russia first gave individuals the right to file for bankruptcy in 2015, over a million Russians have declared themselves insolvent.
Here's [Mr. Stoltenberg's statement in a video (1 min)](https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c722y412pe7o)
**The head of Nato has told the BBC that China should face consequences for supporting Russia's war in Ukraine, if it does not change its ways.**
Jens Stoltenberg said Beijing was "trying to get it both ways" by supporting Russia's war effort, while also trying to maintain relationships with European allies.
"This cannot work in the long run," Mr Stoltenberg told BBC News during a visit to Washington.
In the wide ranging interview, Mr Stoltenberg also addressed nuclear weapons and defence spending.
His comments come as Russia shows no sign of easing its war against Ukraine.
A peace summit held in Switzerland at the weekend saw dozens of nations commit to supporting Kyiv, but Russia called it a waste of time and said it would only agree to peace talks if Ukraine essentially surrendered.
When pressed on what Nato members might do about China's support of Russia, Mr Stoltenberg said there was an "ongoing conversation" about possible sanctions.
He said China was "sharing a lot of technologies, [like] micro-electronics, which are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine".
He added that "at some stage, we should consider some kind of economic cost if China doesn't change their behaviour".
Beijing is already under some sanctions for its support of Russia - last month, the US announced restrictions that would target about 20 firms based in China and Hong Kong.
China has defended its business with Moscow, saying it is not selling lethal arms and "prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations".
Mr Stoltenberg's visit to Washington came as the Kremlin confirmed that Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea on Tuesday.
It follows his visit to China last month.
Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage since it launched its full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. Mr Putin has repeatedly said that the West's balance of power is shifting, and he has worked to strengthen ties with like-minded leaders.
"Russia right now is aligning more and more with authoritarian leaders," Mr Stoltenberg told the BBC, listing Iran, Beijing and North Korea.
He said that the North has sent artillery shells to Russia, and in return Russia had given advanced technology for North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes.
"So North Korea is helping Russia to conduct a war of aggression against Ukraine."
Speaking ahead of a meeting with US President Joe Biden, the Nato chief also announced that more than 20 nations are expected to meet a defence spending target of 2% this year - more than any other year since it was pledged in 2014.
"This is good for Europe and good for America, especially since much of this extra money is spent here in the United States," he said.
Mr Stoltenberg also addressed comments that he made to the Telegraph on Sunday which indicated that Nato may be considering increasing the number of deployable warheads as a deterrent against growing threats from Russia and China.
The comments were criticised as "nothing but another escalation of tension" by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
But Mr Stoltenberg said they were a "general message" that Nato is a nuclear alliance, and that any attack on a Nato member will "trigger a response from the whole alliance".
"The purpose of Nato is not to fight the war, the purpose of that is to prevent the war," he said.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240617180916/https://essanews.com/russian-abductions-ukraines-children-adopted-illegally,7039416441472641a)
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, thousands of Ukrainian infants have been forcibly taken to Russia to give them up for forced adoption. Behind this horrifying human trafficking operation stands the Kremlin, specifically Putin ally Maria Lvova-Belova.
Abducted Ukrainian children's documents are changed to Russian ones, they are adopted while having living relatives in Ukraine, and international organizations are prevented from helping these children return home.
One example was reported by the British BBC. Sergei Mironov, the 70-year-old leader of a Russian political party, and his wife, Inna Varlamova, deported an orphanage in the Kherson region in the fall of 2022 and [forcibly adopted a 10 month old girl.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67488646). The child, originally named Margarita, was one of 48 who went missing from Kherson Regional Children's Home when Russian forces took control of the city.
Now, Russia is set to 'legislate' its crime against humanity. Anna Kuznetsova, Deputy Chair of the Russian State Duma, said that Russia has prepared 64 proposals and recommendations "aimed to expanding messures to support social services and the resocialization of children [and] protect minors from crimes by foreign states [and] the regime in Kyiv". In other words: Russia officially denies the legal guardians of forcibly deported and adopted Ukrainian children and attempts to prevent the opportunity to repatriate these children.
Here is a [video (2 min) of Ms. Kuznetsova's announcment ](https://mstdn.social/@Free_Press/112631555059286155)in the Duma, Russia's parliament.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240617110950/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/06/17/crucial-for-deterring-russian-aggression)
***- A new petition started last week in Ukraine that aims to block TikTok in the country, arguing that its Chinese parent company Byte Dance is one of Russia’s partners and could pose a risk to Ukraine’s national security.***
***- The petition says that Chinese law allows companies to collect information about TikTok users that can subsequently be used for espionage and intelligence purposes, and that it would allow China to spread propaganda messages or launch algorithm-driven disinformation campaigns.***
***- The petition garnered about 9,000 signatures in the campaign’s first two days, and as of this article’s publication, it has nearly 11,000 supporters. To be officially considered by Ukrainian lawmakers, the document must receive a total of 25,000 signatures within three months.***--
On June 10, a petition appeared on the website of Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers calling on the country’s authorities to block the video-sharing app TikTok. The document has already gathered nearly half of the signatures necessary for lawmakers to be required to consider it. It argues that because TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and China is one of Russia’s partners, the app could pose a threat to Ukraine’s national security. The initiative comes just two months after Washington gave the Chinese firm an ultimatum, giving it nine months to sell TikTok to an American company if it wants to avoid a block in the U.S. Here’s what we know about the campaign to ban TikTok in Ukraine.
A new petition published on the Ukrainian government’s website calls on the country’s lawmakers to block TikTok for the sake of national security. The document asserts that China openly collaborates with Russia and supports it in its war against Ukraine. It also says that Chinese law allows companies to collect information about TikTok users that can subsequently be used for espionage and intelligence purposes. Additionally, the author says that China has the ability to influence ByteDance’s content policy, including by using TikTok to spread propaganda messages or launch algorithm-driven disinformation campaigns.
The petition cites comments made by U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb about how China has purportedly used its cyber capabilities to steal confidential information from both public and private U.S. institutions, including its defense industrial base, for decades. It proposes blocking TikTok on Ukrainian territories and banning its use on phones belonging to state officials and military personnel.
The signature collection period for the petition began on June 10. The document’s author is listed as “Oksana Andrusyak,” though this person’s identity is unclear, and Ukrainian media have had difficulty determining who she is. Nonetheless, the petition garnered about 9,000 signatures in the campaign’s first two days, and as of this article’s publication, it has nearly 11,000 supporters. To be officially considered by Ukrainian lawmakers, the document must receive a total of 25,000 signatures within three months.
This isn’t the first time the Ukrainian authorities have discussed banning TikTok. In April 2024, people’s deputy Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Freedom of Speech, said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine that such a ban would be well-founded. “If our partner country imposes such sanctions, then so will we,” he told journalists, referring to the possibility of a TikTok ban in the U.S.
It’s currently unclear whether Ukrainian lawmakers already have plans to block TikTok. According to Forbes Ukraine, however, there is legislation in development that would impose new regulations on social media sites and messenger services, including TikTok.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240617075535/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/16/nato-jens-stoltenberg-nuclear-weapons-deployt-russia-china/)
**Jens Stoltenberg added that the bloc must show its nuclear arsenal to the world to send a direct message to its foes in an interview with The Telegraph.**
**He revealed there were live consultations between members on taking missiles out of storage and placing them on standby as he called for transparency to be used as a deterrent.**
Mr Stoltenberg said: “I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
In a wide-ranging interview at the Nato headquarters in Brussels, he gave a stark warning about the threat from China. He also said he expected a Labour government to be a staunch Nato ally and defended new plans to Trump-proof weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
Mr Stoltenberg said nuclear transparency should be the cornerstone of Nato’s nuclear strategy to prepare the alliance for what he described as a more dangerous world.
A decade ago when the 65-year-old assumed his role at the top of the bloc, nuclear exercises were conducted in complete secrecy.
Now he openly praises a number of its 32 allies for contributing to the deterrent, including most recently The Netherlands for investing in dual-capable fighter jets that can host US nuclear weapons.
“Transparency helps to communicate the direct message that we, of course, are a nuclear alliance,” Mr Stoltenberg said. “Nato’s aim is, of course, a world without nuclear weapons, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we will remain a nuclear alliance, because a world where Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons, and Nato does not, is a more dangerous world.”
He warned that China in particular was investing heavily in modern weaponry including its nuclear arsenal, which he said would grow to 1,000 warheads by as early as 2030.
"And that means that in a not-very-distant future,” he said, “Nato may face something that it has never faced before, and that is two nuclear-powered potential adversaries – China and Russia. Of course, this has consequences.”
Mr Stoltenberg’s warnings come after the G7 sharply criticised China and Russia in a communique last week that called on Beijing to stop supplying weapons technology to Moscow and opposed China’s “militarisation” in the Pacific.
Both the US and UK have committed their nuclear deterrents to Nato, while other European allies share the burden of the responsibility by storing weapons on their territory and investing in the systems to launch them.
The number of operational nuclear weapons is top secret but estimates suggest the UK has about 40 of 225 deployed at any one time. The US has about 1,700 of 3,700.
France, Nato’s third nuclear power, does not make its atomic arsenal available to the alliance because of a long-held decision to maintain independence over its own deterrence.
Mr Stoltenberg insisted that the US and its European allies were now modernising their nuclear deterrent in the face of increased threat from Russia.
He said: “The US is modernising their gravity bombs for the nuclear warheads they have in Europe and European allies are modernising the planes which are going to be dedicated to Nato’s nuclear mission.
“Then, of course, you have the United Kingdom, which is special because the United Kingdom has its own nuclear weapons.”
On Sunday, the BBC reported that a Russian submarine that is now in Cuba was seen off Scotland’s coast last week.
The Kazan is capable of carrying advanced weapons, according to Russia’s defence ministry, but it did not enter UK waters. The Ministry of Defence nevertheless briefed the prime minister.
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and has deployed warheads closer to Europe’s borders. However, he has more recently dialled down his threats.
The head of Nato refused to discuss how many warheads should be pulled from storage warehouses and put on standby, but revealed there were live consultations on the issue.
Before the invasion, Nato was struggling to convince the majority of its allies to hit the minimum threshold of two per cent expenditure as a share of their GDP for defence spending.
When the latest figures are released ahead of the Nato summit in Washington next month, Mr Stoltenberg believes more than 20 will hit the goal – a decade since the target was established.
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain was put on a trajectory to increase spending on defence to 2.5 per cent of national wealth by 2030.
But with Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives expected to be replaced by the Labour Party, there are doubts whether the pledge will stick.
Sir Keir Starmer has said his party wanted to reach the 2.5 per cent target as soon as resources allow that to happen, rather than a fixed date.
Mr Stoltenberg, who served as the leader of Norway’s Labour Party between 2002 and 2014, would not be drawn on the politics of Britain’s election campaign.
However, he said: “I expect that the UK, regardless of the outcome of the election, will be as strong, staunch Nato ally, and also an ally that will lead by example of defence spending, as the UK has done for many years.
“The reality is that we all reduced defence spending when tensions went down after the end of the Cold War. And now we need to increase defence when tensions are going up again.
“I have been prime minister for 10 years, I know that it’s hard to find money for defence because most politicians always prefer to spend money on health, on education, infrastructure and other important tasks.
“But when we reduce defence spending when tensions go down, we have to be able to increase them when tensions go back up – and that’s exactly what allies now are doing, the United Kingdom, but also other allies.”
Mr Stoltenberg has not always been so reticent to wade into domestic politics in recent months.
When Republicans loyal to Donald Trump held up a $60 billion £47 billion) aid package for Ukraine, the Nato chief repeatedly warned the delays were helping Putin’s Russia seize territory.
He then came out in support of Kyiv over its request to use Western weapons on targets inside Russia.
And now ahead of the next Nato summit, he has tabled proposals for the alliance to play a greater role in the West’s support for Ukraine.
About 99 per cent of the weapons deliveries to Kyiv are done so by Nato allies, he says.
His new Nato security assistance and training for Ukraine scheme – downgraded from the Mission to Ukraine because of German fears over Russian escalation – will have 700 Nato personnel stationed at its headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, take over the bulk of the coordination of aid from the Americans.
Mr Stoltenberg said, cautious not to mention the looming prospect of the election of Mr Trump: “This is a proposal which is about making the support for Ukraine more robust, more long term, more predictable, and that’s something which is important regardless of the outcome of the elections in the United States.
“We saw the gaps and delays this winter, where several allies were not able to deliver the support they had promised. We have to minimise the risk of something like that happening again.”
He added: “If we have a Nato support, security assistance and training effort combined with a long-term financial pledge, I think we will give a much stronger message to Moscow that President Putin cannot wait us out.”
But it is not just the US where support for Ukraine could be flipped on its head.
Last week, France’s Emmanuel Macron called snap elections after his party was defeated in the EU voting by far-Right leader Marine Le Pen, who has previously enjoyed close ties with Putin and called for closer relations between Nato and Moscow.
Mr Stoltenberg said: “I believe it is in the interest of all allies, including France and others, to keep Nato strong because we live in a more dangerous world.
“In a more dangerous world, it’s even more important that North America and Europe stand together.
“Then, of course, we are 32 democracies and it’s part of democracies that we have different parties, different views, different opinions, but experience over these decades is that despite all these differences, there has always been strong support for Nato.”
And in a call for them to continue arming Ukraine, he concluded: “I strongly believe that if Putin prevails in Ukraine, we will become more vulnerable, and then we will need to invest even more in our defence.”
***- One protester has claimed the Australian Federal Police used "brutalising" force in Canberra, as China's premier met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and dignitaries at Parliament House.***
***- Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was freed last year after being detained in China for three years, claims she was blocked by Chinese officials during a signing ceremony during official proceedings.***
***- "I think the worry is that my being there is a symbol of some sort, and maybe they didn't want that for the domestic audience," Cheng Lei said. "Having dealt with Chinese officialdom on these sorts of events, they are very, very control freak-ish, so they want to know everything and they want to stage-manage everything."***--
Critics of the Chinese Communist Party have accused Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers of using "unnecessary" force against demonstrators who were protesting against a visit by a Chinese official on the lawns of Parliament House.
Chinese premier Li Qiang's four-day visit to Australia sparked a face-off between protesters in Canberra on Monday, with pro-China demonstrators colliding with the Australian Tibetan community and the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, vocally opposing his visit.
Human rights activist and journalist Vicky Xu criticised the AFP after she was filmed being dragged by officers as she held the Chinese flag on Monday.
"A friend of mine had a Chinese Communist Party flag, that he was planning to burn," she told SBS News.
"I saw that the police were trying to forcefully take the flag away from him, so I intervened and tried to understand what was happening.
"Next thing I knew I was being shoved by the police."
She claims an officer had a hand on her neck and that her finger was twisted during the incident.
While she understood the need for the AFP to reduce the temperature and ensure peaceful protesting, she said it was "too much force", labelling it "brutalising" on X.
SBS News has contacted ACT Policing for comment.
In a statement, it said: "The AFP has received no complaint in relation to police conduct in managing protests today at Parliament House".
Police have been forced to intervene from time to time as the protesters confront one another.
One person was arrested at the protests outside Parliament House for what ACT Policing said was "a breach of the peace".
The tense moments contrasted with the official reception for Beijing's second most powerful leader, with the day starting with a ceremonial welcome, including a cannon salute, on the forecourt of Parliament House in Canberra.
Li declared that Chinese-Australian ties were "back on track after a period of twists and turns" when he arrived on the weekend, for the first visit by a Chinese premier in seven years.
**Cheng Lei says she was 'blocked' at Parliament House**
But another moment during the proceedings has also raised eyebrows.
Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was freed last year after being detained in China for three years, claims she was blocked by Chinese officials during a signing ceremony during official proceedings.
A video of the signing ceremony appears to show two Chinese officials blocking her from the view of cameras broadcasting the event and refusing to move when asked.
She told Sky News she believes this was done to prevent audiences from seeing her as a symbol of defiance of the Chinese government.
"I think the worry is that my being there is a symbol of some sort, and maybe they didn't want that for the domestic audience.
"Having dealt with Chinese officialdom on these sorts of events, they are very, very control freak-ish, so they want to know everything and they want to stage-manage everything."
**China-Australia relations 'on right track'**
Premier Li arrived at Parliament House to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and several cabinet members including Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Trade Minister Don Farrell and Resources Minister Madeleine King.
The prime minister's November 2023 trip to China followed by Li's current visit to Australia showed both countries attached "great importance" to their relationship, the premier said.
"This relationship is on the right track of steady improvement," he said. "Prime Minister Albanese and I have had a candid, in-depth and fruitful discussion that has reached a lot of common consensus."
Albanese said the bilateral talks were crucial for the Australia-China relationship which had been "renewed and revitalised" by the engagement.
The politicians signed four memoranda of understanding on the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, climate change, education and research, strategic economic dialogue, and cultural cooperation.
Representatives of both nations then attended a state lunch with business and community leaders where they were served wine, wagyu beef and, most notably, Australian rock lobster - which remains subject to trade restrictions.
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt noted there had been "enormous progress" in restoring trade with China in the past few years after sanctions on coal, wine and barley were lifted.
The remaining trade bans are expected to be lifted within the coming weeks.
Also on the battle agenda of the high-level talks was the case of Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who languishes ill in a Chinese jail, and tensions in the South China Sea.
**Revelation of emails to Imperial College scientists comes amid growing concerns about security risk posed by academic tie-ups with China**
A Chinese state-owned company sought to use a partnership with a leading British university in order to access AI technology for potential use in “smart military bases”, the Guardian has learned.
Emails show that China’s Jiangsu Automation Research Institute (Jari) discussed deploying software developed by scientists at Imperial College London for military use.
The company, which is the leading designer of China’s drone warships, shared this objective with two Imperial employees before signing a £3m deal with the university in 2019.
Ministers have spent the past year stepping up warnings about the potential security risk posed by academic collaborations with China, with MI5 telling vice-chancellors in April that hostile states are targeting sensitive research that can “deliver their authoritarian, military and commercial priorities”.
The former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “Our universities are like lambs to the slaughter. They try to believe in independent scientific investigation, but in China it doesn’t work like that. What they’re doing is running a very significant risk.”
The Future Digital Ocean Innovation Centre was to be based at Imperial’s Data Science Institute, under the directorship of Prof Yike Guo. Guo left Imperial in late 2022 to become provost of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The centre’s stated goals were to advance maritime forecasting, computer vision and intelligent manufacturing “for civilian applications”. However, correspondence sent before the partnership was formalised suggests Jari was also considering military end-uses.
The emails were obtained through freedom of information request by the charity UK-China Transparency.
A Mandarin-language email from Jari’s research director to an Imperial College professor, whose name is redacted, and another Imperial employee, dated November 2018, states that a key Jari objective for the centre is testing whether software developed by Imperial’s Data Science Institute could be integrated into its own “JariPilot” technology to “form a more powerful product”.
Suggested applications are listed as “smart institutes, smart military bases and smart oceans”.
“Our research presents evidence of an attempt to link Imperial College London’s expertise and resources into China’s national military marine combat drone research programmes,” said Sam Dunning, the director of UK-China Transparency, which carried out the investigation.
"Partnerships such as this have taken place across the university sector. They together raise questions about whether British science faculties understand that China has become increasingly authoritarian and militarised under Xi Jinping, and that proper due diligence is required in dealings with this state.”
There appears to have been a launch event for the joint centre in September 2019 and funding from Jari is cited in Imperial’s annual summary in 2021 under prestigious industry grants it attracted.
However, the partnership was ultimately terminated in 2021. Imperial said no research went ahead and the £500,000 of funding that had been received was returned in October 2021 after discussion with government officials.
“Under Imperial’s policies, partnerships and collaborations are subject to due diligence and regular review,” an Imperial spokesperson said. “The decision to terminate the partnership was made after consideration of UK export control legislation and consultation with the government, taking into consideration national security concerns.”
Charles Parton, a China expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said the partnership was “clearly highly inappropriate” and should never have been signed off.
“How much effort does it take to work out that Jari is producing military weapons that could be used in future against our naval forces?” Parton said. “These people should have been doing proper due diligence way before this. It’s not good enough, late in the day having signed the contract, to get permission from [government].”
At the time of the deal, Imperial’s Data Science Institute was led by Prof Guo, an internationally recognised AI researcher. A Channel 4 documentary last year revealed that Guo had written eight papers with Chinese collaborators at Shanghai University on missile design and using AI to control fleets of marine combat drones. Guo is no longer affiliated with Imperial.
Imperial received more than £18m in funding from Chinese military-linked institutes and companies between 2017 and 2022, but since then it has been forced to shut down several joint-ventures as government policy on scientific collaboration has hardened.
“Governments of all stripes have taken a long time to understand what the threat is from China and universities for a long period have got away with this,” said Duncan Smith, who has had sanctions imposed on him by China for criticising its government. “There’s been a progressive and slow tightening up, but it’s still not good enough. Universities need to be in lockstep with the security services.”
An Imperial College London spokesperson said: “Imperial takes its national security responsibilities very seriously. We regularly review our policies in line with evolving government guidance and legislation, working closely with the appropriate government departments, and in line with our commitments to UK national security.
“Imperial’s research is open and routinely published in leading international journals and we conduct no classified research on our campuses.”
Guo declined to comment on the Jari partnership, noting that he left Imperial at the end of 2022. Of his previous collaborations, he said that the papers were classified as “basic research” and were written to help advance scientific knowledge in a broad range of fields rather than solving specific, real-world problems.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240616154107/https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/xi-said-us-trying-to-goad-beijing-into-attacking-taiwan-3685985)
[Original article behind paywall](https://www.ft.com/content/7d6ca06c-d098-4a48-818e-112b97a9497a)
**British daily Financial Times claims Xi issued the warning in meeting with Ursula von der Leyen in April 2023.**
China's President Xi Jinping told European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen that Washington was trying to “goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan,” the Financial Times said on Saturday.
In a report based on information from people familiar with the matter, the British daily said Xi issued the warning in a meeting with von der Leyen in April 2023. She paid an official visit to China last year which coincided with the state visit of French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to the newspaper, Xi said the US was trying to trick China into invading Taiwan, but that he would not take the bait.
The revelation comes as tensions are high across the Taiwan Strait. China responded to last month's inauguration of Lai Ching-te as Taiwan's new president with military drills around the island, which it claims as its own. Taipei, however, insists on its independence since 1949.
Xi's remarks are probably the first known case of him making the claim to a foreign leader.
The Chinese leader also said that a conflict with the US would undermine his goal of achieving a “great rejuvenation” by 2049.
US officials have, in recent years, increased engagement with Taiwan but the administration says it remains committed to its longstanding one-China policy.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this month, Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun said the country's military was ready to “forcefully” stop Taiwan's independence.
Earlier, the Foreign Ministry said those supporting independence for Taiwan would find themselves “crushed.”
For the first time, the United Nations secretary-general added the Israeli armed forces to the “list of shame” of warring parties committing grave violations against children in armed conflict. Although long overdue, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ action was fully justified.
The UN had already attributed more than 8,700 child casualties to Israeli forces between 2015 and 2022. But in 2023, the scale of violations was apparently too large for the secretary-general to ignore.
His new report found Israeli forces responsible for 5,698 violations, including the killing and maiming of children and attacks on schools and hospitals. He also noted over 23,000 reported but unverified grave violations by all sides against 3,900 Israeli children and 19,887 Palestinian children.
Guterres also added Palestinian armed groups to his list for the first time, including Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (116 violations) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades (21 violations) for killing and maiming children and abductions.
This year’s report is grim reading. The UN verified 30,705 grave violations globally in 2023, an increase of 21 percent from the year before. The number of children killed or maimed increased by 35 percent over 2022. The report’s violations also include the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, sexual violence, abduction, attacks against schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access.
Two-thirds of the global total occurred in six countries: Israel/Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan. In Myanmar, for example, junta forces were responsible for the documented recruitment and use of 1,171 children, 10 times the number recorded in 2022. In Sudan, violations spiked as the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces committed widespread atrocities, notably in Darfur and Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
This year’s list again includes Russia, which was first included last year for violations against children in Ukraine, including killing and maiming and attacks on hundreds of schools and hospitals. Retaining Russia on the list sends a message that even permanent UN Security Council members should be accountable for their abuses.
Listed parties may be subject to UN sanctions and must implement an action plan to end violations to be removed.
For years, human rights groups have called out the secretary-general for omitting some parties from the “list of shame” despite evidence of violations in UN reports. This year, Secretary-General Guterres has done the right thing. Now it’s up to the Security Council to hold those responsible to account and make clear that children are off-limits in armed conflict.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240615174218/https://en.rua.gr/2024/06/15/romania-denied-entry-to-the-russian-delegation-to-the-osce-pa/)
The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a note to Russian diplomats refusing to issue visas for the entire Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly session of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The reason for the refusal was Russia's war against Ukraine. The session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly should be held in Bucharest at the end of June, Russian Senator Grigory Karasin said in his Telegram channel, but Russia received a note from the Romanian Foreign Ministry.
The document states that given the “Russian aggression against Ukraine,” none of the members of the Russian delegation will be issued a visa or allowed to enter the country.
[Edit typo.]
Mozilla has reinstated certain add-ons for Firefox that earlier this week had been banned in Russia by the Kremlin.
The browser extensions, which are hosted on the Mozilla store, were made unavailable in the Land of Putin on or around June 8 after a request by the Russian government and its internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor.
Among those extensions were three pieces of code that were explicitly designed to circumvent state censorship – including a VPN and Censor Tracker, a multi-purpose add-on that allowed users to see what websites shared user data, and a tool to access Tor websites.
The day the ban went into effect, Roskomsvoboda – the developer of Censor Tracker – took to the official Mozilla forums and asked why his extension was suddenly banned in Russia with no warning.
"We recently noticed that our add-on is now unavailable in Russia, despite being developed specifically to circumvent censorship in Russia," dev zombbo complained. "We did not violate Mozilla's rules in any way, so this decision seems strange and unfair, to be honest."
Another developer for a banned add-on chimed in that they weren't informed either.
The internet org's statement at the time mentioned the ban was merely temporary. It turns out wasn't mere PR fluff, as Mozilla tells The Register that the ban has now been lifted.
"In alignment with our commitment to an open and accessible internet, Mozilla will reinstate previously restricted listings in Russia," the group declared. "Our initial decision to temporarily restrict these listings was made while we considered the regulatory environment in Russia and the potential risk to our community and staff.
"We remain committed to supporting our users in Russia and worldwide and will continue to advocate for an open and accessible internet for all."
Lifting the ban wasn't completely necessary for users to regain access to the add-ons – two of them were completely open source, and one of the VPN extensions could be downloaded from the developer's website.
These are not marketing but training materials offering authoritarian principles in areas such as law enforcement, journalism, legal issues, space technologies, and many other topics, to build and maintain a totalitarian regime as China’s authoritarian capitalism model. It’s for the benefit of a few, while the people’s freedoms are suppressed.
**Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are investigating alleged Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as possible war crimes, four sources familiar with the case said.**
**It is the first confirmation that attacks in cyberspace are being investigated by international prosecutors, which could lead to arrest warrants if enough evidence is gathered.**
The probe is examining attacks on infrastructure that endangered lives by disrupting power and water supplies, cutting connections to emergency responders or knocking out mobile data services that transmit air raid warnings, one official said.
ICC prosecutors are working alongside Ukrainian teams to investigate "cyberattacks committed from the beginning of the full-scale invasion" in February 2022, said the official, who declined to be named because the probe is not finished.
Two other sources close to the ICC prosecutor's office confirmed they were looking into cyberattacks in Ukraine and said they could go back as far as 2015, the year after Russia's seizure and unilateral annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Moscow has previously denied that it carries out cyberattacks, and officials have cast such accusations as attempts to incite anti-Russian sentiment.
Ukraine is collecting evidence to support the ICC prosecutor's investigation.
The ICC prosecutor's office declined to comment on Friday, but has previously said it has jurisdiction to investigate cybercrimes. It has also said it cannot comment on matters related to ongoing investigations.
**Russians accused of crimes against humanity**
The court has issued four arrest warrants against senior Russian suspects since the beginning of the invasion. These include President Vladimir Putin, suspected of a war crime over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Russia, which is not a member of the ICC, dismissed that decision as "null and void". Ukraine is also not a member, but has granted the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed on its territory.
In April, a pre-trial chamber issued arrest warrants alleging that two Russian commanders had committed crimes against humanity with strikes against civilian infrastructure. The Russian defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment at the time.
At least four major attacks on energy infrastructure are being examined, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters.
A senior source said one group of Russian hackers in the ICC's crosshairs is known in cybersecurity research circles as "Sandworm", and is believed by Ukrainian officials and cyber experts to be linked to Russian military intelligence.
A team at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, has been investigating Sandworm's cyberattacks targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure since 2021, and made confidential submissions to the ICC in 2022 and 2023 identifying five cyberattacks it said could be charged as war crimes.
Sandworm is suspected of a string of high-profile attacks, including a successful 2015 attack on a power grid in western Ukraine – one of the first of its kind, according to cybersecurity researchers.
A group of activist hackers calling themselves "Solntsepyok" ("hot spot") claimed responsibility for a major attack on the Ukrainian mobile telecommunications provider Kyivstar last Dec. 12. Ukrainian security services identified that group as a front for Sandworm.
Sandworm is also believed by Kyiv to have carried out extensive cyberespionage against Western governments on behalf of Russia's intelligence agencies.
**Can a cyberattack be a war crime?**
Cyberattacks that target industrial control systems, the technology that underpins much of the world's industrial infrastructure, are rare, but Russia is one of a small club of nations that possess the means to do so, the cybersecurity researchers said.
The ICC case, which could set a precedent for international law, is being closely followed.
The body of international law covering armed conflict, enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, bans attacks on civilian objects, but there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a cyber war crime.
Legal scholars in 2017 drafted a handbook called the Tallinn Manual on the application of international law to cyberwarfare and cyber operations.
But experts interviewed by Reuters say it is unclear whether data itself can be considered the "object" of an attack banned under international humanitarian law, and whether its destruction, which could be devastating for civilians, can be a war crime.
"If the court takes on this issue, that would create great clarity for us," said Professor Michael Schmitt of the University of Reading, who leads the Tallinn Manual process.
Schmitt believes that the hack of Kyivstar, owned by the Dutch company Veon, meets the criteria to be defined as a war crime.
"You always look at the foreseeable consequences of your operation. And, you know, that was a foreseeable consequence that placed human beings at risk."
Ukraine's intelligence agency said it had provided details of the incident to ICC investigators in The Hague. Kyivstar said it was analysing the attack in partnership with international suppliers and the SBU, Ukraine's intelligence agency.
[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240614003710/https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/a-global-south-with-chinese-characteristics/)
- One of the most direct ways that Beijing promotes authoritarian governance is through training programs for foreign government officials on Chinese governance practices. Beijing uses these sessions to directly promote ideas and practices that marry economics and politics to make a case for its authoritarian capitalism model.
- The training sessions also appear to serve intelligence-collection purposes by requiring each participant to submit reports detailing their prior exchanges and engagements with other foreign countries on specific training subjects, and it fits into China’s broader ambitions to undermine the liberal democratic norms.
- The reportis based upon 1,691 files from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) containing descriptions of 795 governmental training programs delivered (presumably online) in 2021 and 2022 during the pandemic. Beijing began delivering training programs in 1981, first in coordination with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as part of an effort to provide aid and basic skills to developing countries. In 1998, the Chinese government broke away from that cooperation arrangement and began offering its own centrally planned training programs directly to governmental officials from countries across the Global South.
- The trainings offer authoritarian principles in areas such as law enforcement, journalism, legal issues, space technologies, and many other topics. Given that in China, law enforcement is designed to protect the state and the Party rather than the people, journalism is prescribed to create national unity rather than act as a check against the system, and the law is intended to protect the regime rather than its citizenry, these training programs naturally offer foreign officials different lessons than they would receive from democratic countries.
- According to the report, the Chinese embassy in a country identified for training typically is notified roughly three months before a training program is expected to be hosted, and the Chinese embassy is tasked with selecting and inviting targeted individuals in the host country. For example, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security attaché at the embassy would be responsible for inviting local law-enforcement representatives to join programs organized by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.
- Each training, no matter the subject, has contained language on CCP ideology and organization and related contributions to the PRC’s achievements in that subject area. In this way, authoritarian governance choices are being promoted even in the most niche of subject areas.
- Even programs on seemingly innocuous topics like beekeeping, bamboo forestry, meteorology, or low-carbon development all begin by briefing participants about the Chinese reform and guiding management principles raised at the latest plenary sessions of the Party committee.
- For the purpose of this research, the 795 training programs were reviewed and categorized into six groups based on their reported activities as outlined in the files:
> **1. Clearly authoritarian**: The first group describes training programs which include explicit lessons on PRC practices that are widely regarded in liberal democracies as direct infringements on personal freedom. This includes PRC endorsement of non-democratic regime practices in political, government, and legal affairs, including administrative control over the media, information, and population.
>**2. Potentially authoritarian:** These training programs contain lessons on PRC practices which have, in some cases, infringed on personal freedom or indirectly aided infringement of personal freedoms and individual rights. This includes, for example, training on dual-purpose technologies that could be exploited to access individuals’ data in ways that expand state surveillance and control over citizens’ personal lives.
> **3. Infrastructure and resource access:** These training programs are centered on setting standards and imparting industrial technical skills for various aspects of infrastructure and resource extraction, which may further PRC access to critical resources. This includes, for example, renewable energy application, mechanization of the agricultural sector, and technologies in mining, copper processing, and biotechnology.
> **4. Information operation access**: These training programs are centered on activities that might further PRC access for its information operations, such as programs on Chinese culture and Mandarin-language promotion for foreign officials.
> **5. Security access:** The fifth group involves and describes training programs centered on activities that may further PRC access to the sensitive security infrastructure of a foreign country, such as programs on aviation emergency, satellite imagery, and geochemical mapping.
> **6. Others**: The sixth group includes all other training programs that do not fit into the above categories, such as pest control, climate change, soybean production, tourism development, and preschool-education sector capacity building.
**Intelligence value of the trainings**
As detailed in the files, the majority of these training programs, no matter the category, require participants to submit a report prior to the training. The trainings, therefore, provide a reliable intelligence benefit to the Chinese government. Even if an audience does not engage with the program content or demonstrate receptivity to party ideologies and narratives, the reports submitted by participants contain potentially valuable information that Beijing routinely receives en masse. **Foreign officials are asked to write about current developments in their country** related to the training subject, their country’s current cooperation and partnership with other countries on that subject, and potential ideas for collaboration with the PRC on that subject.
Beyond obtaining immediate, updated, and accurate intelligence from foreign government officials, this approach enables Beijing to assess their future willingness to cooperate on that subject. Specifically, the process directly identifies the scope of potential areas of cooperation from leading experts and officials in charge, prepares the way for potential informal discussion about future cooperation, and, most importantly, **identifies individuals who are willing to facilitate and build long-lasting relations with China**. With this in mind, this research effort focused on trainings aimed at expanding China’s footprint in the Global South’s infrastructure, resources, information operations, and security domains.
**The addition of external propaganda bases in Zhejiang and Tianjin over the past two weeks brings the total number at the provincial level to 23. These International Communication Centers (ICCs), also being launched at the city level, are meant to remake China’s approach to delivering its message externally.**
On June 7, the municipality of Tianjin became the latest provincial-level jurisdiction in China to launch a central office for disseminating foreign propaganda. According to coverage in Tianjin’s flagship CCP-run newspaper, the Tianjin Daily, the center will focus on television, radio and multimedia products for foreign distribution, as well as “major international events,” all to “present a true, multidimensional, and lively image of Tianjin.”
The formation of the Tianjin ICC follows closely on the heels of the set up on May 31 of Zhejiang International Communication Center (浙江国际传播中心), or ZICC. A release from provincial media in Zhejiang called ZICC “an all-in-one communication platform.” The center, which consolidates state media resources at the provincial-level, comprises websites, dedicated news channels, and an “overseas social media platform account matrix” with a total follower base of over 8 million.
With the addition of the Tianjin and Zhejiang centers, the number of provincial-level ICCs in China now stands at 23.
> Over the past two years, responding to instructions from the central CCP leadership, local "international communication centers" have been established in 27 provinces.
China’s provincial and city-level international communication centers, or ICCs, are spearheading efforts promoted by the leadership since 2018, and accelerating over the past two years, to “innovate” foreign-directed propaganda under a new province-focused strategy. In June 2023, provincial and city-level ICCs in China created a mutual association to better coordinate work nationwide. The process of integrating the ICCs both horizontally and vertically, including with central state media, has begun to emerge as a core strategy in the CCP’s remaking of its overall propaganda matrix.
**A prominent female #MeToo activist in China has been handed a five-year jail sentence for "subversion against the state".**
Sophia Huang Xueqin was convicted and sentenced on Friday, nearly 10 months after she went on trial.
Labour activist Wang Jianbing, who stood trial with Ms Huang, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison.
Ms Huang, 36, had been one of the most prominent voices in China's #MeToo space, reporting ground-breaking stories about sexual abuse victims.
She had also spoken out about the misogyny and sexism she faced in Chinese newsrooms.
Chinese authorities have not made it clear how the two stood accused of subversion. The trial was a closed-door hearing.
But their supporters say they were detained because they hosted regular meetings and forums for young people to discuss social issues.
Ms Huang had been on her way to take up a UK-government sponsored masters scholarship at the University of Sussex when she was detained at the airport in the city of Guangzhou in 2021.
Mr Wang, 40, was with her at that time.
Supporters say both have endured months of solitary confinement during their pre-detention custody, which lasted for nearly 1,000 days. Their trial only began in September 2023.
A BBC Eye investigation in 2022 found that both were being held in solitary confinement, detained in secret locations known as 'black jails'.
In 2021, amid Covid lockdowns and growing public anger, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on several activists working across different fields.
"Their efforts and dedication to labour, women's rights, and the broader civil society won't be negated by this unjust trial, nor will society forget their contributions," said the campaign group Free Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing.
"On the contrary, as oppression persists and injustice grows, more activists like them will continue to rise."
Amnesty International on Friday called the convictions "malicious and totally groundless".
"[They] show just how terrified the Chinese government is of the emerging wave of activists who dare to speak out to protect the rights of others," said Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks.
"#MeToo activism has empowered survivors of sexual violence around the world, but in this case, the Chinese authorities have sought to do the exact opposite by stamping it out."
It is unclear if the time already served by the pair will go towards reducing their sentence.
Public reaction to Ms Huang's trial has previously been mixed - with some online decrying the case while others critical of the feminist movement welcomed it.
Many advocates for gender rights and social causes in China choose to remain anonymous online.
Often they have been accused of being "agents of hostile western forces" by state media and nationalists on the internet.
@trevron, It’s good practice to name source. Read my other post in this thread on the same topic citing another source, and feel free to post sources you deem more reliable.
Ukraine accused Russia […] of using toxic chemicals in more than 200 attacks on the battlefield in January alone, a sharp increase in what it said were recorded instances of their use by Russian forces since they invaded two years ago.
CS gas […] is banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention which states in Article 1: “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.”
[…] The Ukrainian general staff said: “815 cases of the use of ammunition loaded with toxic chemicals by the Russian Federation were recorded. Of these, only in January 2024 – 229 cases.”
The Nato expansion issue is far to simplistic. Nato doesn’t expand itself. All Nato members join this alliance voluntarily. Finland, for example, has been committed to neutrality for 80 or so years and joined Nato only after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Neutrality is fine in a world where everyone -especially your neighbours- respect democratic values and human rights. If this isn’t the case, countries seek alliances. (We have a similar situation in the Asia-Pacific region, where countries seek to establish alliances following China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour.)
The ‘problem’ isn’t Nato -that’s indeed Russian propaganda- but the fact that Russia failed so far to develop democratic structures. The aggressor here is Putin’s dictatorship.
His [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] statement comes after US President Joe Biden announced Israel had proposed a three-stage plan to Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire.
You wouldn’t trust the Chinese supplier (or any supplier). You’d go to the bauxite shipment company and let them register with the network, you’d send independent auditors to their premises, very much as we do it with ibdependent audits nowadays.
We do need to physically access the premises across the supply chain to verify that ‘on-chain personas’ reflect their ‘real’ identities. But no single authority can control the data, we can be quite sure that all transfers of ownership across the supply chain have been authorized by their controllers. Compared to centralized systems, the blockchain provides us a much higher level of transparency and certainty over the fidelity of the information.
there’s no way tovtrack where resources, material, items come from, who made them
Independent audits are done -they are very common in many industry for a variety of reasons- and they work if done properly.
We could even track the provenance of each material through a trustless system like a blockchain to guarantuee a high level of credibility and transparency, just to name a relatively new technology. This is done already.
In addition to the other comments, the EU is considering to alter its decision-making process and implementing a majority vote (at the moment every single counrty must agree to a decision). That could significantly reduce the risks brought by countries like Hungary and Slovakia.
Genocide, the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. The term, derived from the Greek genos (“race,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and the Latin cide (“killing”) …
Tibetan children are separated from their families at a very young age and sent to state-run boarding ‘schools’ where they have to complete a “compulsory education” curriculum in the Mandarin Chinese language, with no access to traditional or culturally-relevant learning.
Forced sterilization of Tibetan women.
Individuals advocating for Tibetan language and education are persecuted.
Rounding up hundreds of thousands of innocent Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other minorities in military-style reeducation camps where they are forced to work.
Forced labour in Chinese prisons isn’t limited to Xinjiang, nor to the car industry. A lot products we use in Europe and North America and elsewhere around the globe are made by Chinese prisoners forced to work under catastrophic conditions.
There is strong evidence for this provided by many independent sources, among them a documentary by Arte (a French-German media outlet). If interested:
A desperate cry for help written in Chinese was discovered in a pregnancy test sold in France and made in a Chinese factory. It revealed a hidden world of Chinese prison-companies where prisoners are forced to work for 15 hour days manufacturing products for export. This documentary tries to find out who wrote the letter.
(And, yes, prison labour exists also in the U.S., and it is as evil, but this doesn’t make the autocratic Chinese government any better.)
Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.”
In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.
Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 that gave it broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters, which has fundamentally altered life for Hong Kongers.
Beijing had been chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms since the handover, experts say. Over the years, its attempts to impose more control over the city have sparked mass protests, which have in turn led the Chinese government to crack down further.
In the years following the 2014 protests, Beijing and the Hong Kong government stepped up efforts to rein in dissent, including by prosecuting protest leaders, expelling several new legislators, and increasing media censorship.
Yes, there is strong evidence for these practices. Safeguard Defenders, a rights group, published a comprehensive reports on that issues, for example on China’s Consular Volunteers (November 2023):
For at least a decade, PRC Embassies and Consulates have been running consular volunteers in countries around the world. These have been seemingly undeclared to most host nations.
[…]
The network runs through United Front-linked associations and individuals and shows the involvement of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), on which a January 2022 Federal Canadian Court decision upheld labeling as an entity that engages in espionage and acts contrary to Canada’s interests with concerns over “OCAO’s interactions with the overseas Chinese communities, the information gathered, and the intended use of the gathered information”.
Yes, but not only in Africa. There’s a comprehensive report by Safeguard Defenders from 2022, but you’ll find more, just search for something like ‘chinese illegal police stations’ as already suggested.
A long-awaited report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) into what China refers to as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has concluded that “serious human rights violations” against the Uyghur and “other predominantly Muslim communities” have been committed.
Forced separations and language policies for Uyghur and other minority Muslim children at State-run boarding schools in China’s Xinjiang region carry the risk of forced assimilation, three UN independent human rights experts said on Tuesday.
The report cites Latvia’s public broadcaster LSM, but you’ll find a lot of other sources (although at least some of them refer to LSM, too, or other media sources).
Charter97 is a Belarusian rights organization calling for democratic reforms in the country.
France’s parliament on Thursday denounced a “genocide” by China against its Uyghur Muslim population […] The non-binding resolution, adopted with 169 votes in favour and just one against […] reads that the National Assembly “officially recognises the violence perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide”.
It also calls on the French government to undertake “the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People’s Republic of China” to protect the minority group in the Xinjiang region.
In most of the world 15 April goes unnoticed. But in China, 15 April is Chinese National Security Education Day.
To mark the occasion, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) posted a half-hour video on their official WeChat channel titled “Innovation Leads · Forging the Sword of National Security”. WeChat is China’s dominant social media app. Chinese and foreign media also covered the program’s release.
Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio has added his voice to criticism of the Redmond software giant for reportedly removing search results from Bing on human rights, democracy, climate change, and other sticky issues within China.
The move follows an earlier call from Democrat Senator Mark Warner for Microsoft to consider shutting off access to Bing in China for the same reasons after a report from Bloomberg claimed the platform was excluding information on certain topics to satisfy Beijing.
Rubio said there was “no defending” such actions, and that “every company doing business in China makes concessions to a genocidal, authoritarian regime.”
The workers, all of whom are women, described conditions of confinement and violence at the plants. Workers are held in compounds, sometimes behind barbed wire, under the watch of security agents. Many work gruelling shifts and get at most one day off a month. Several described being beaten by the managers sent by North Korea to watch them. “It was like prison for me,” one woman said. “At first, I almost vomited at how bad it was, and, just when I got used to it, the supervisors would tell us to shut up, and curse if we talked.”
Many described enduring sexual assault at the hands of their managers. “They would say I’m fuckable and then suddenly grab my body and grope my breasts and put their dirty mouth on mine and be disgusting,” a woman who did product transport at a plant in the city of Dalian said. Another, who worked at Jinhui, said, “The worst and saddest moment was when I was forced to have sexual relations when we were brought to a party with alcohol.” The workers described being kept at the factories against their will, and being threatened with severe punishment if they tried to escape. A woman who was at a factory called Dalian Haiqing Food for more than four years said, “It’s often emphasized that, if you are caught running away, you will be killed without a trace.”
Last year, researchers at AidData, the World Bank, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany found that Beijing has dramatically expanded emergency rescue lending to sovereign borrowers in financial distress—or outright default.
Essentially, however, China has been bailing out its own banks, the study found. You can download the study here.
TLDR:
China had undertaken 128 rescue loan operations across 22 debtor countries worth $240 billion [by March 2023 when the study was published]. These include many so-called “rollovers,” in which the same short-term loans are extended again and again to refinance maturing debts.
Less than 5 percent of Beijing’s overseas lending portfolio supported borrower countries in distress in 2010, but that figure soared to 60 percent by 2022. Therefore, China’s new funding schemes pivoted away from infrastructure project lending to ramping up liquidity support operations. Nearly 80% of its emergency rescue lending was issued between 2016 and 2021.
China does not offer bailouts to all BRI borrowers: low-income countries are typically offered a debt restructuring that involves a grace period or final repayment date extension but no new money, while middle-income countries tend to receive new money to avoid default. The reason is that these middle-income countries represent 80% or more than $500 billion of China’s total overseas lending, thus posing major balance sheet risks, so Chinese banks have incentives to keep them afloat via bailouts.
Borrowing from Beijing in emergency situations comes at a high price. Rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) carries a 2% interest rate, while the average interest rate attached to a Chinese rescue loan is 5% in comparable situations.
Guess a human rights group in China is not possible for a lack of democracy. That aside, it doesn’t matter where the group sits, the issue is clear here. But, wait, …
TL;DR - Anthropic had a data leak due to a contractor’s mistake, but says no sensitive info was exposed. It wasn’t a system breach, and there’s no sign of malicious intent.
The article doesn’t say which classifier algorithm they use in that case in India.
We had a similar incident in the Netherlands last year, for example, with similar problems. There they used Gradient Boosting afaik. But it doesn’t really matter as all these algorithms will yield a high number of false positives. If we use this and blindly trust trust the result in sensitive areas such as social welfare, we cause a lot if harm to iur society.
Addition: the CCP is actively hiring Chinese people all over the world to control and dissent as Safeguard Defenders says in a report
The consolidation of overseas United Front networks as the providers of services such as consular community assistance may not only give them potential broad access to individuals’ private data, home addresses, and contact information but may also dangerously enhance their function of control over overseas communities and dissenters.
A friend of mine is from Romania, and I know many who lived in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic). They don’t talk often about it, but when they do their stories seem absurd, hard to believe sometimes that these things happened, and each of these stories is a reason to avoid mass surveillance imo.
The short answer: I don’t know. There is no research investigating the impact of a decreasing Chinese GDP on the country’s environmental impact (to the best of my knowledge).
The longer answer: China is bound to reduce its environmental impact anyway. The country has a very densely-populated urban area with low-lying coastal cities. Around 20% of the population lives there, producing around 33% of the country’s GDP. A rising sea level and other natural desasters (which is what practically all environmental experts inside and outside China expect even in the short term, meaning this year) will have a devastating impact on China’s social and political stability.
The good news is that China has the potential to get its arms around that imo, if, and only if the country opens up for further investments and international cooperation. Foreign direct investments (FDI) have been contributing significantly to China’s growth in the past (around 20% of the GDP can be directly attributed to FDIs if I remember the number correctly), but FDIs also contributed indirectly by enhancing China’s technological and managerial capacities in the past. Data by China’s Ministry of Commerce shows that foreign enterprises represent just 2% of all companies, but 10% of the workforce (around 40 million jobs) contributing around 16% of China’s tax revenue and 20% of foreign trade (export and import combined).
China will need to maintain this collaboration even more in the future, as a shrinking population is barely apt to boost a domestic market. But international collaboration requires mutual respect of foreign laws, accepting fundamental human rights, and an open economy with a high degree of decentralisation and innovation. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether or not Chinese politics is heading in this direction.
Addition: all numbers are for the years 2021/2022.
Do you say that to Europe, to China, or both?
It’s obvious you’re addressing only Europe. Why?
This is what I meant with ‘The West bad, China bad okay’. It’s hypocritical. It’s double-standards. It’s ignorant and disgusting.