Tag Archives: Russia

Generation born under Putin finds its voice in Russian protests

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

By Denis Pinchuk and Svetlana Reiter

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Protests across Russia on Sunday marked the coming of age of a new adversary for the Kremlin: a generation of young people driven not by the need for stability that preoccupies their parents but by a yearning for change.

Thousands of people took to the streets across Russia, with hundreds arrested. Many were teenagers who cannot remember a time before Vladimir Putin took power 17 years ago.

“I’ve lived all my life under Putin,” said Matvei, a 17-year-old from Moscow, who said he came close to being detained at the protest on Sunday, but managed to run from the police.

“We need to move forward, not constantly refer to the past.”

A year before Putin is expected to seek a fourth term, the protests were the biggest since the last presidential election in 2012.

The driving force behind the protests was Alexei Navalny, a 40-year-old anti-corruption campaigner who uses the Internet to spread his message, bypassing the state-controlled television stations where nearly all older Russians get their news.

“None of my peers watches television and they don’t trust it,” said Maxim, an 18-year-old from St Petersburg who took part in a protest there.

He said messages about the demonstration were shared among his friends via a group chat on a messaging app: “Half the group went to the demonstration.”

Navalny, who was arrested at one of Sunday’s protests, tailors his message for YouTube and VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.

One of his recent videos, a 50 minute expose accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of secretly owning an archipelago of luxury homes, has been watched more than 14 million times on YouTube. Medvedev’s spokeswoman called the allegations “propagandistic attacks” unworthy of detailed comment and said they amounted to pre-election posturing by Navalny.

While older Russians may have turned a blind eye to official corruption during years when living standards improved, younger Russians speak of it in terms of moral outrage.

“Why do I believe that what is happening right now is wrong? Because when I was little, my mum read fairy tales to me, and they said you should not steal, you should not lie, you should not kill,” said Katya, a 17-year-old who was at the protest in Moscow. “What I see happening now, you should not do,” she said.

Like other students who spoke to Reuters at the demonstrations, Katya, Maxim and Matvei asked that their surnames not be published to avoid repercussions.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Young people actively seeking change represent a new challenge for the Kremlin. It has built and maintained support for Putin for years by focusing mainly on ensuring stability, which Russians sought after the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet years.

Putin came to power after the 1990s, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and millions found themselves destitute. But young people who do not remember those times have different priorities than those even a few years older, said Yekaterina Schulmann, a political analyst.

“Our political regime is fixated on what it calls stability, that is a lack of change,” she said. “The political machine believes the best offer it can make to society is ‘Let’s keep everything the way it is for as long as possible’.”

“Young people need a model of the future, clear prospects, rules of the game which they recognize as fair, and … a social leg-up. Not only do they not see any of that, no one is even talking about it,” said Schulmann.

According to user data compiled from a social media page for people who said they planned to attend Sunday’s protest in St Petersburg, more than one in six were aged under 21.

It is still too early to say whether the new phenomenon will emerge as a serious challenge to Putin’s rule. It could be a burst of youthful idealism that fizzles out.

In any case, opinion polls show that Putin will win comfortably if, as most people expect, he runs for president next year.

His most serious rival for the presidency, Navalny, trails far behind in polls and could be barred from running because of an old criminal conviction which he says is political.

Still, the involvement of so many young people has forced the Russian authorities to pay attention.

A Kremlin spokesman said youngsters had been offered money by protest organizers to show up. The Kremlin offered no evidence to support this allegation, and none of the young people who spoke to Reuters said they had been offered payment.

Several students said school and university authorities had warned them before the protests they could be punished for taking part.

Pavel, a 20-year-old studying to be a veterinarian who attended a protest in Moscow, said it was worth it to risk some of Russia’s stability in the hope of change.

“Yes, maybe it will be negative; yes, maybe there won’t be the stability that we have now. But for a person in the 21st century it’s shameful to live in the kind of stability we have now.”

(Additional reporting by Natalia Shurmina in Yekaterinburg, Russia; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Peter Graff)

Life under Russia not all it was cracked up to be: Crimean ex-leader

Sevastopol Mayor Alexei Chaliy applauds during a meeting of deputies of the State Duma, Russia's lower parliament house, with members of the Crimean parliamentary delegation in Moscow

By Darya Korsunskaya and Anton Zverev

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (Reuters) – The pro-Moscow Crimean politician who signed a document handing control over the Ukrainian peninsula to Russia in March 2014 said the three years since had been a time of disappointment for many people in the region.

Alexei Chaliy, who at the time of Russia’s annexation was the self-proclaimed governor of Crimea’s biggest city Sevastopol, said he has no regrets about the region becoming part of Russia – a status that Ukraine and most other countries do not recognize.

But he took issue with the way the region had been run since, saying local leaders who took over from him were ineffective, plans to develop the economy had gone nowhere, and prices for consumer goods had shot up.

“If we’re talking about changes linked to quality of life in the region, then here – we have to acknowledge – in a significant way things don’t correspond to what was expected,” Chaliy said.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in the days after an uprising installed pro-Western leaders in the Ukrainian capital, prompted Europe and the United States to impose sanctions on Russia and dragged east-West relations to their lowest level since the Cold War.

Chaliy, a 55-year-old businessman, played a major role in events on the ground leading up to the annexation.

While Russian soldiers appeared on the streets, and many officials loyal to Kiev fled, Chaliy took de facto control of the local administration in the city of Sevastopol. Crimea voted to join Russia in a referendum that is regarded as illegitimate by Ukraine and Western states.

Soon after the vote, Chaliy, dressed in his trademark tight black sweater, attended a March 18 Kremlin ceremony with Russian President Vladimir Putin to co-sign a document on Crimea’s status within Russia.

Afterwards, he served briefly as the Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol before stepping aside for new leaders. He is now a member of the Sevastopol legislative assembly.

In an interview in his office in the city – three years after the annexation – Chaliy said that Sergei Menyailo, who took over from him as Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, had failed to follow up on a strategy for economic development.

“Why didn’t it work out? Because the executive arm which came in … turned out to be incompetent and unwilling,” Chaliy said. “Therefore if we’re talking about expectations, then a lot of expectations were not fulfilled.”

He also said that funds injected from Moscow were misspent by the local administration.

Menyailo was moved from the post last year and is now the presidential plenipotentiary for Siberia. He did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Chaliy said he supported the new governor.

Most Crimean residents interviewed by Reuters reporters over several visits in the past few months said they had no wish to go back to rule from Kiev.

HARSH REALITY

Chaliy said many people in Crimea had hankered for the certainties of life in the Soviet Union, the last time the peninsula was ruled from Moscow.

“There are lots of people who are disappointed because … it wasn’t Russia they were joining but, for many of them, it was the Soviet Union. Back to 1988 or 1989, when factories were operating and there were loads of specialists and jobs.”

“They don’t understand that this won’t happen, and cannot happen.”

Soon after Russian’s annexation, pensions and public sector wages rose dramatically because they were brought into line with Russian levels, higher than in Ukraine.

This though was offset by a rise in prices in stores, partly the result of difficulties of getting goods to the peninsula – which is not connected by land to Russia.

“For us, 2015 and 2016 were very difficult from the point of view of inflation. Now the process has stabilized. As a whole, prices are at a high level. In Sevastopol they’re higher than anywhere else,” said Chaliy.

“Of course, if you compare this with people’s expectations, then in this sense a lot of people are disappointed.”

The private sector, heavily dependent on tourism, has suffered. Ukrainian tourists stopped visiting, and major companies, including some Russian ones, suspended investments because of the risk of being hit by sanctions.

“Businessmen are accustomed to going skiing in Europe and nobody wants to leave themselves open” to being included on a list of people barred from entering the European Union, Chaliy said.

He saw no prospect of the sanctions being lifted any time soon, and offered advice to his fellow Crimeans: “Breathe slowly, relax, and live under a state of sanctions.”

(Editing by Christian Lowe and Pravin Char)

Russia may be helping supply Taliban insurgents: U.S. general

Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti speaks during a news conference in Tallinn, Estonia, March 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan.

“I’ve seen the influence of Russia of late – increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban,” Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

He did not elaborate on what kinds of supplies might be headed to the Taliban or how direct Russia’s role might be.

Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s.

But Russian officials have denied they provide aid to the insurgents, who are contesting large swaths of territory and inflicting heavy casualties, and say their limited contacts are aimed at bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under control of the insurgents, who are seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

Underlying the insurgents’ growing strength, Taliban fighters have captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials said on Thursday.

The top U.S. commander in the country, General John Nicholson, said last month that Afghanistan was in a “stalemate” and that thousands more international troops would be needed to boost the existing NATO-led training and advisory mission.

Scaparrotti said the stakes were high. More than 1,800 American troops have been killed in fighting since the war began in 2001.

“NATO and the United States, in my view, must win in Afghanistan,” he said.

Taliban officials have told Reuters that the group has had significant contacts with Moscow since at least 2007, adding that Russian involvement did not extend beyond “moral and political support.”

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Ukraine sees Russian hand in ammo warehouse blasts

Flames shoot into the sky from a warehouse storing tank ammunition at a military base in the town of Balaklia (Balakleya), Kharkiv region, Ukraine, March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander Sadovoy

By Pavel Polityuk

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine suspects the Russian military or its separatist rebel proxies were responsible for blowing up a warehouse storing tank ammunition at an eastern military base early on Thursday morning, Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said.

Fire and explosions caused the detonation of ammunition in several sites at the base, possibly set off by a drone attack or a radio or timed device, Poltorak told a press conference.

Nobody was hurt but around 20,000 people have been evacuated from the surrounding area in the eastern Kharkiv region. Firefighters have struggled to douse the flames and explosions at the site continue, sending clouds of thick grey smoke into the sky.

“We have a ‘friendly’ country – the Russian Federation,” Poltorak said. “I think that first of all it could be representatives who help the (separatist) groups that carry out combat missions,” he said.

Ukraine did not provide evidence of Russian or rebel involvement. The Russian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The base, which held about 138,000 tonnes of ammunition, is located in the city of Balaklia, about 100 km (60 miles) from the frontline of Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed separatists.

The warehouse was guarded by around 1,000 people, some of whom heard the sound of an aircraft just before the explosions.

Military spokesman Oleksander Motuzyanyk said security around other bases was being beefed up. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman was due to fly to the area.

A third of the base is still burning and the airspace above it was closed off, Poltorak said, adding that the attack would not significantly affect Ukraine’s military capacity.

Saboteurs previously tried to destroy the same base using drones in 2015, another military spokesman, Yuzef Venskovich, told the 112 TV channel.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict between Ukraine and the separatist rebels since 2014, and a ceasefire agreed in Minsk in 2015 is routinely violated.

Russia has repeatedly denied sending troops or military equipment to eastern Ukraine.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Matthias Williams)

France’s Le Pen to visit Moscow on Friday

Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate for French 2017 presidential election, addresses supporters during a political rally in Metz, France, March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

MOSCOW/PARIS (Reuters) – French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen will visit Russia on Friday, a country whose leader she admires and which has been at the center of allegations of interference in the French election campaign via media outlets.

A spokesman for the National Front leader confirmed the trip to Moscow after Russian news agencies reported an invitation from Leonid Slutsky, head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, to meet Russian lawmakers.

“I confirm the visit to Moscow”, said a Le Pen spokesman by text message. He did not respond when asked whether she would meet President Vladimir Putin.

Last year Le Pen, one of the frontrunners in France’s presidential election, said she, U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin “would be good for world peace” and she has taken a foreign policy line strongly supportive of Moscow.

Her stance pre-dates the warm words of Trump for a man whom other world leaders mistrust and who is subject to economic sanctions by the European Union and the United States over his annexation of Crimea.

While most mainstream political groups in Europe have condemned Russia in connection with the Ukraine conflict, Le Pen has said the EU provoked the crisis by threatening Russia’s interests.

Le Pen’s ties to Russia have been subject to intense scrutiny. Her party took a 9-million-euro loan from a Moscow-based bank in 2014. Senior National Front figures have been frequent visitors to Moscow, according to diplomats.

A senior aide to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen’s main opponent in the election and the favorite to win, has accused Russia of using its state media to spread fake news to discredit Macron and influence the outcome of the vote.

The Russian connections of the number three presidential contender, Francois Fillon, have also been a feature of the campaign ahead of the first-round vote in a month’s time.

The Kremlin has denied meddling in the campaign. It also said this week that a French media report alleging Fillon was paid to arrange introductions to Putin was “fake news”.

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk and Simon Carraud; Writing by Alessandra Prentice and Andrew Callus; Editing by Christian Lowe and Richard Balmforth)

Exclusive: Tillerson plans to skip NATO meeting, visit Russia in April – sources

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks in Washington. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip a meeting with NATO foreign ministers next month in order to stay home for a visit by China’s president and will go to Russia later in April, U.S. officials said on Monday, disclosing an itinerary that allies may see as giving Moscow priority over them.

Tillerson intends to miss what would have been his first meeting of the 28 NATO allies on April 5-6 in Brussels so that he can attend President Donald Trump’s expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, four current and former U.S. officials said.

Skipping the NATO meeting and visiting Moscow could risk feeding a perception that Trump may be putting U.S. dealings with big powers first, while leaving waiting those smaller nations that depend on Washington for security, two former U.S. officials said.

Trump has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Tillerson worked with Russia’s government for years as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp, and has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said could harm U.S. businesses.

A State Department spokeswoman said Tillerson would meet on Wednesday with foreign ministers from 26 of the 27 other NATO countries — all but Croatia — at a gathering of the coalition working to defeat the Islamic State militant group.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was due to have arrived in Washington on Monday for a three-day visit that was to include talks with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and to take part in the counter-Islamic State meetings.

The State Department spokeswoman said Tillerson would not have a separate, NATO-focused meeting the 26 foreign ministers in Washington but rather that they would meet in the counter-Islamic State talks.

“After these consultations and meetings, in April he will travel to a meeting of the G7 (Group of Seven) in Italy and then on to meetings in Russia,” she added, saying U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon would represent the United States at the NATO foreign ministers meeting.

‘GRAVE ERROR’

Representative Eliot Engel, the senior Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, said that Tillerson was making a mistake by skipping the Brussels talks.

“Donald Trump’s Administration is making a grave error that will shake the confidence of America’s most important alliance and feed the concern that this Administration simply too cozy with (Russian President) Vladimir Putin,” Engel said in a written statement.

“I cannot fathom why the Administration would pursue this course except to signal a change in American foreign policy that draws our country away from western democracy’s most important institutions and aligns the United States more closely with the autocratic regime in the Kremlin,” he added.

A former U.S. official echoed the view.

“It feeds this narrative that somehow the Trump administration is playing footsie with Russia,” said the former U.S. official on condition of anonymity.

“You don’t want to do your early business with the world’s great autocrats. You want to start with the great democracies, and NATO is the security instrument of the transatlantic group of great democracies,” he added.

Any Russian visit by a senior Trump administration official may be carefully scrutinized after the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday publicly confirmed his agency was investigating any collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.

Trump has already worried NATO allies by referring to the Western security alliance as “obsolete” and by pressing other members to meet their commitments to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.

Last week, he dismayed British officials by shrugging off a media report, forcefully denied by Britain, that the administration of former President Barack Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race with the aid of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency.

A former U.S. official and a former NATO diplomat, both speaking on condition of anonymity, said the alliance offered to change the meeting dates so Tillerson could attend it and the Xi Jinping talks but the State Department had rebuffed the idea.

The former diplomat said it was vital to present a united front toward Moscow. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 to serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.

“Given the challenge that Russia poses, not just to the United States but to Europe, it’s critical to engage on the basis of a united front if at all possible,” the diplomat said.

(Additional Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Lisa Shumaker & Simon Cameron-Moore)

New U.S.-led force to deter Russia in Poland with NATO

U.S. (R to L), Poland's flags and jack of the President of Poland are seen during the inauguration ceremony of bilateral military training between U.S. and Polish troops in Zagan, Poland,

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A U.S.-led battalion of more than 1,100 soldiers will be deployed in Poland from the start of April, a U.S. commander said on Monday, as the alliance sets up a new force in response to Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

More than 900 U.S. soldiers, around 150 British personnel and some 120 Romanian troops will make up the battlegroup in northeastern Poland, one of four multinational formations across the Baltic region that Russia has condemned as an aggressive strategy on its frontiers.

“This is a mission, not a cycle of training events,” U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Steven Gventer, who heads the battlegroup, told a news conference. “The purpose is to deter aggression in the Baltics and in Poland … We are fully ready to be lethal.”

Britain, Canada and Germany are leading the other three battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are due to be operational by June. They will have support from a series of NATO nations including France.

In total, some 4,000 NATO troops – equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, air support and hi-tech mission information rooms – will monitor for and defend against any potential Russian incursions.

Moscow, which denies having any expansionist or aggressive agenda, accuses NATO of trying to destabilize central Europe and has respond by forming four new military divisions to strengthen its western and central regions and stepping up exercises.

Seeking to avoid stationing troops permanently on Russia’s borders, the new NATO force across the Baltics and Poland can rely on a network of eight small NATO outposts in the region, regular training exercises and, in the case of attack, a much larger force of 40,000 alliance troops.

“We are not the entirety of NATO’s response,” said U.S. Army Major Paul Rothlisberger, part of the U.S.-led battalion to be based in Orzysz, 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Warsaw.

The alliance is seeking to show the ex-Soviet countries in NATO that they are protected from the kind of annexation Russia orchestrated in February in 2014 in Ukraine’s Crimea.

It also wants to avoid a return to the Cold War, when the United States had some 300,000 service personnel stationed in Europe, and stick to a 1997 agreement with Moscow not to permanently station forces on the Russian border.

The plan is being implemented as Western powers try for a peace settlement in eastern Ukraine, where NATO says Russia supports separatist rebels with weapons and troops.

Russia plans to stage large-scale war games near its western borders this year, but has not said how many troops will take part.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Russian parliament backs investigation into U.S. media

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has approved a proposal to launch an investigation into U.S. media organizations that operate in Russia, it said in a statement posted on its web site late on Friday.

The investigation, which will be conducted by the Duma’s information policy, technologies and communications committee, will check whether CNN, the Voice of America, Radio Liberty and “other American media” are complying with Russian law.

The statement said the Duma backed the move on Friday evening after Konstantin Zatulin, an MP from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, proposed an investigation to retaliate for what he called a “repressive” U.S. move against Russian state-funded broadcaster RT.

He said he was referring to an initiative by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has introduced a bill to empower the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by RT.

Shaheen, a Democrat, cited a U.S. intelligence agency assessment that suggested RT was part of a Russian influence campaign to help Donald Trump win the White House last year. The Kremlin and RT have strongly rejected that allegation.

Foreign media in Russia are overseen by the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose spokeswoman Maria Zakharova this week singled out Shaheen’s demarche for criticism, quipping ironically that the senator should have included a clause drawing up a list of books for burning.

The U.S. move also solicited the ire of Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, who on Wednesday told the daily Izvestia it had echoes of the activities of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who oversaw a campaign to expose people he regarded as communists in the 1950s.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Julia Glover)

Syrian rebels, civilians begin leaving Homs district in deal with government

Syrian army soldiers (back L) and Russian soldiers (back R) monitor as rebel fighters and their families evacuate the besieged Waer district in the central Syrian city of Homs, after an agreement was reached between rebels and Syria's army, March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

By Ellen Francis

HOMS, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebels and their families began leaving their last bastion in the Syrian city of Homs on Saturday, state media and a Reuters witness said, under a Russian-backed deal with the government expected to be among the largest evacuations of its kind.

The agreement underlines Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s upper hand in the war, as more rebel fighters opt to leave areas they have defended for years in deals that amount to negotiated withdrawals to other parts of the country.

Several buses drove out of the al-Waer district in Homs, which was an early center of the popular uprising against Assad.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 rebels and civilians would evacuate in batches over the coming weeks under the deal, according to opposition activists in al-Waer and a war monitor.

Homs governor Talal Barazi told Reuters that he expected 1,500 people, including at least 400 fighters, to depart on Saturday for rebel-held areas northeast of Aleppo, and that most of al-Waer’s residents would stay.

“The preparations and the reality on the ground indicate that things will go well,” Barazi said.

The Syrian government has described such deals as a “workable model” that brings the country closer to peace after six years of conflict. But the opposition decries them as a tactic of forcibly displacing people who oppose Assad after years of bombardment and siege.

Along with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), Russian and Syrian forces were overseeing the evacuation, which would take about six weeks, Barazi said.

FULL EXIT

He said there was communication with other rebel-held areas north of Homs city to reach similar deals, including the towns of al-Rastan and Talbiseh.

“We are optimistic that the full exit of armed (fighters) from this district will pave the way for other reconciliations and settlements,” he said.

The government has increasingly tried to press besieged rebel areas to surrender and accept what it calls reconciliation agreements.

In an interview with Chinese TV station Phoenix last week, Assad said deals brokered locally with rebels were “the real political solutions”. He added that he had not expected anything from Geneva, where U.N.-led peace talks ended this month with no breakthrough.

Broadcasting live from the al-Waer departure area, Syrian state television spoke to a Russian colonel, who said via an interpreter that security would soon return to the district.

“This agreement was reached only under the patronage of the Russian side … and it will be implemented with Russian guarantees,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the buses would go to the Jarablus area held by Turkey-backed rebels in the northern Aleppo countryside.

Once completed, it would mark the biggest evacuation during the war out of one Syrian district, which is home to about 40,000 civilians and more than 2,500 fighters, the monitoring group said.

“It’s because there is zero trust in Assad’s government. That’s why the numbers are high,” said the head of the Homs Media Center, run by opposition activists. “For years, it has besieged us…and bombed people’s homes.”

Many did not want to stay out of fear of arrest, and around 15,000 people had signed up to evacuate so far, he said.

“People are going to live in tents, in refugee camps,” the activist said, adding that he also planned to leave in the coming weeks. “They are willing to leave their homes, their land, towards the unknown.”

ON THE BACK FOOT

Dozens of buses stood at a crossing in the morning waiting to leave al-Waer, accompanied by SARC ambulances, a Reuters witness said.

Police officers searched people before the buses drove out, the Homs police chief told Syrian state television.

In the coming weeks, evacuees could be shuttled to other rebel-held areas in northern Syria, including the insurgent stronghold of Idlib province, state TV said.

Under the agreement, fighters could stay in al-Waer if they hand over their weapons and settle their affairs with the government, it said.

State-owned al-Ikhbariya TV cited the Homs governor as saying that 20 buses had left so far and that rebels carried their small arms out with them.

The government would start returning its services to the district with the departure of the last batch of rebels, Barazi said. Allegations of an evacuation of al-Waer’s residents were “devoid of truth”, the channel quoted Barazi as saying.

The deal follows others that were never fully implemented between the government and rebel groups in al-Waer, which has been pounded by air strikes in recent weeks.

A few hundred rebels from the district have previously been allowed safe passage to Idlib in the northwest.

Rebels and civilians have poured into Idlib at an accelerating rate over the last year, bussed out of other parts of western Syria that the government and allied forces recaptured from rebels.

Rebel groups have been on the back foot in Syria, following Russia’s intervention into the war on Assad’s side, bringing its air power to bear in support of his army and its Iranian and Shi’ite militia allies.

The wide array of mostly Sunni rebel factions includes some jihadists as well as some groups supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut; Additional reporting by Marwan Makdisi in Homs; Editing by Dale Hudson and Stephen Powell)

Russian court to consider ban on ‘extremist’ Jehovah’s Witnesses HQ

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Supreme Court is to consider whether Jehovah’s Witnesses is an “extremist” organization after the justice ministry applied for an order to shut down the group’s national headquarters near St Petersburg.

The U.S.-founded Jehovah’s Witnesses says it numbers about 8 million people worldwide.

The religious organization is known for its foreign ministries as well as its door-to-door campaigns, but has had problems for years with Russian authorities, who view it as a pernicious cult, an allegation it denies.

Authorities have put several of its publications on a list of banned extremist literature, and prosecutors have long cast it as an organization that destroys families, fosters hatred and threatens lives, a description the organization says is false.

A filing on the Supreme Court’s website said it would convene on April 5 to consider the justice ministry’s application to order the closure of the organization’s Russian headquarters and ban its activity.

The Russian branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses said it rejected the charge it was an extremist organization. It said such a ban would directly affect around 400 of its groups and impact on all of its 2,277 religious groups in Russia which it said united 175,000 followers.

“Millions of believers all over the world consider the ministry’s actions a big mistake,” it said in a statement. “If this lawsuit is successful, it will entail catastrophic consequences for freedom of religious worship in Russia.”

Russian investigators conducted a large-scale inspection of its national headquarters near St. Petersburg earlier this year, carting off many documents.

According to Amnesty International, 16 members of the group in southern Russia were found guilty of organizing and participating in a banned “extremist organization” in late 2015.

Rights activists have criticized Russia for the way it applies a 2006 law which widened the definition of extremism.

(Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Toby Davis)