Page 4 - BNE_magazine_07_2020

4 I The Month That Was bne July 2020
Politics
Eastern Europe
Russian metals major Norilsk Nickel had to admit another environmental violation after reports from RBC business portal and Novaya Gazeta claimed the company was discharging waste from its Arctic Talnakh enrichment plant into local rivers. The company stemmed the flow of waste discharge and opened an internal investigation into the matter, while
the regional office of the Investigative Committee began an audit of the plant.
Forest fires in Siberia have grown at least threefold as Siberia suffers from a record breaking heat wave, according to Russia’s agency for aerial forest fire management Aviales. The figures state that 1.37mn hectares (3.4mn acres) were burning
in areas unreachable to firefighters.
The number of officially registered unemployed in Russia has jumped 3.5-fold since April 2020, according to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Putin said in his latest address the government and regional authorities to recover the labour market from the consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) by 2021.
The largest US producer of phosphate fertilisers Mosaic has called for an investigation to levy a countervailing duty on imports from Morocco and Russia. Large volumes of unfairly subsidised imports are causing harm to its operations, Mosaic said. The possible investigation could harm Russian phosphate fertiliser major PhosAgro.
One in three (37%) Russians would refuse to take a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) even if one were available, according to Russia’s Higher School of Economics. Only
16% of respondents said they would be vaccinated immediately. Another 37.7% said they would never do it.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in the US National Interest dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the victory in the
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World War II, in which it offered "a comprehensive assessment of the legacy" of the war that caused a lot of outrage for his “revisionist” version of history.
In remarkably candid comments, former Georgian president and recently appointed head of Ukraine’s Reform Committee Mikheil Saakashvili said that Russia was
“way ahead” of Ukraine in many key reforms. “Russia has lots of things
we are trying to mend in Ukraine,
and they are solved [in Russia] much more quickly and more successfully than here,” Saakashvili said in an interview.
Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko asked the White House for support in the 2019 presidential elections in Ukraine, according to the latest excerpts released of the memoirs to be published of John Bolton, who served as National Security Adviser to US President Trump for 15 months.
Central Europe
Poland’s incumbent President Andrzej Duda and his rival Rafal Trzaskowski will meet in a run off in July in Poland’s presidential election. Duda, backed heavily by the government and the servile state media, won the first round on June 28 with 43.67% of the vote. Trzaskowski was the runner-up with 30.34%.
Russian state gas exporter Gazprom has agreed to pay its Polish customer PGNiG $1.5bn by July 1 for overcharging for past gas supplies. An arbitration court in Stockholm ruled in late March that Gazprom had been
charging PGNiG too much for gas under their long-term gas supply contract.
Journalists at Hungary’s leading online news website Index.hu fear losing their independence and jobs after a controversial organisational overhaul was put up for debate at
the board of the country’s flagship independent media. The state has been tightening its control over critical media.
Hungarian MPs voted on June 16 to pass a law withdrawing the special powers granted to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government at the height of the coronacrisis. The powers were met with criticism of creating a European dictator.
Peter Sabo, an investigative reporter at daily Aktuality.sk, found a bullet in his letter box, according to the Slovak News Agency. Lucansky refused to provide more specific information, stressing that the case is being investigated. The threat follows the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé in February 2018 that led to countrywide demonstrations.
Southeast Europe
French President Emmanuel Macron has accused Nato ally Turkey of playing "a dangerous game" in Libya that undermines international talks to resolve the conflict. Turkey’s military assistance appears to have secured Libya’s capital Tripoli and the west of the country for the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) against eastern military leader Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).
Bulgarian independent investigative journalist Nikolay Staykov, who founded the NGO Anti-corruption Fund, is a victim of phone threats and his home has been attacked, the NGO reported on June 19. Media freedom has been assessed as very poor in the EU’s most corrupt member for years and the situation has been constantly worsening.