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4 I The Month That Was bne August 2020
Politics
Eastern Europe
Half of Russians support the anti- Kremlin protests in the Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk, according
to the independent Levada Center. Mass protests broke out in July after the arrest of the Khabarovsk region’s popular governor Sergei Furgal and his replacement with a Putin-appointed lawmaker from an outside region. The protestors have been on the street every day since.
Two thirds of Ukrainians think that the country is headed in the wrong direction. According to the Rating Group’s latest survey on the socio- political situation in Ukraine, 19% of respondents believe that the country is headed in the right direction – 68% are of the opposite opinion.
Ukraine has fulfilled 41.6% of
the requirements outlined in its Association Agreement with the EU, according to a monitoring report from the Ukrainian Center for European Policy.
A criminal hijacked a mass transit microbus with 13 passengers in the city of Lutsk on July 21, prompting a 12-hour standoff that concluded with his arrest and all his captives being released without injury. The hijacking drew the personal involvement of Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who spoke with the hijacker for seven to ten minutes
and even satisfied his key demands of recording a video statement and making a Facebook post.
Belarusian security services are linking the arrest of 33 Russian mercenaries to jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky and have increased the severity of the charges against him as his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya runs a highly successful presidential bid campaign that has drawn thousands of supporters.
Central Europe
The EU has rejected six Polish towns’ application for EU grants under the bloc’s twinning programme that passed anti-LGBT regulations. "EU values and fundamental rights must be respected by member states and public authorities,” Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli said.
Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine
agreed on July 28 to step up their cooperation aimed at assisting Ukraine to combat Russian aggression with the so-called Lublin Triangle agreement. The declaration was signed by the Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers in the Polish city of Lublin.
Poland’s largest opposition party, the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), filed a complaint with the Supreme Court on July 23 seeking a rerun of July’s presidential election on the grounds that it was unfair. The incumbent ally of the ruling coaltion led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, Andrzej Duda, won the contest on July 12, scooping just over 51% of the votes. Duda’s rival, PO’s Rafal Trzaskowski, won nearly 49%.
YouTube closed the channel of the head of Czech right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy party Tomio Okamura, which he complained on his Facebook profile was because he posted content depicting violence and criminal activities by migrants in Europe. Okamura’s SPD was one of the main forces disseminating hatred and xenophobic content in the country in 2019.
Hungary's leading online news site collapsed after pro-government business took the leading independent news website Index.hu over and sacked the editor-in-chief. The next day 80 of the publication journalists quit in protest. The unprecedented event further narrows the number of free media outlets in Hungary where the landscape is dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's allies.
Southeast Europe
Russia and Turkey have agreed to continue efforts to achieve a long- term and sustainable ceasefire in Libya. Russia, as well as countries including Egypt and the UAE, backs eastern Libya commander Khalifa Haftar who heads the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).
Bulgaria’s government led by Prime Minister Boyko Borissov survived the fifth no-confidence vote sponsored
by the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) as expected on July 21. Borissov sacked five ministers to try and quell public anger two days later, but the daily protests in Bulgaria reached their highest numbers yet
on July 29. Protesters are demanding Borissov’s government and chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev resign.
Eurasia
The Trump administration is “paying little attention” to the worst fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the two countries’ “Four Day War” in April 2016, according to an assessment of the hostilities by Paul Stronski, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.
Iran has handed over to French experts the black box flight recorders recovered from the wreckage of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 shot out of the sky with missiles after it took off from Tehran in early January.
A total of 176 people lost their lives.
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