Ukraine uncovers drone procurement corruption scheme
The Ukrainian president had pushed through a controversial bill that removed the autonomy of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (Sapo), placing them under the control of the General Prosecutor's Office, which is led by Zelensky loyalists and mistrusted by many Ukrainians.
Thousands of protesters descended onto the streets of Kyiv last week, and there was mounting pressure from top European officials, who warned Ukraine was jeopardising its bid for EU membership.
The law was reversed days ago in the Ukrainian parliament and on Saturday, Mr Zelensky announced on Saturday that the agencies had arrested an MP in his ruling party and the head of a local district administration.
'It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law passed on Thursday guarantees them all the tools necessary for a real fight against corruption,' the Ukrainian president said in a statement posted on X, along with pictures of him meeting with the heads of the agencies.
'[Nabu] Director Semen Kryvonos and Head of the [Sapo] Oleksandr Klymenko delivered a report,' he wrote. 'A Ukrainian MP, along with heads of district and city administrations and several National Guard service members, were exposed for bribery. I am grateful to the anti-corruption agencies for their work.'
'There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork in uncovering it, and ultimately, a fair sentence.'
In a statement published by both agencies, Nabu and Sapo also said they had caught a sitting lawmaker, two local officials and an unspecified number of national guard personnel taking bribes.
'Today, a number of operations were carried out to expose individuals involved in committing a corruption-related crime. The essence of the scheme was to conclude state contracts with supplier companies at deliberately inflated prices,' it said, adding that the offenders had received kickbacks of up to 30 per cent of a contract's cost. Four people had been arrested.
A spokesperson for the Nabu agency added that the operation was 'made possible' by the bill which Mr Zelensky signed into law earlier this week, reversing the previous contentious bill.
'This operation is an example of how institutional support and high-level teamwork contribute to real change. We thank the President of Ukraine for supporting the independent anti-corruption infrastructure.'
One of the individuals detained was Oleksiy Kuznetsov, an MP from Mr Zelensky's ruling Servant of the People party, the Financial Times reported. Serhiy Haidai, head of the Mukachevo district, was reportedly also arrested.
Allies warned Zelensky
Mr Zelensky and Andriy Yermak, his powerful chief of staff, had claimed last week that they had rushed through the original bill to counter Russian interference within the corruption agencies.
However, critics alleged the step had been designed to protect his political allies from prosecution.
Kyiv's western allies, including France, warned the Ukrainian president against following through with the reforms.
MPs on Thursday voted 331 to 0 in favour of the new bill in Kyiv's 450-seat legislature to restore their political independence.
That was not before two MPs descended into a public brawl in the chamber before others broke up the tussle.
Eradicating graft and shoring up the rule of law are key requirements for Kyiv to join the EU, which Ukrainians see as critical to their future as they fend off a Russian invasion.
Around 70 MPs from Mr Zelensky's ruling party had expressed doubt over the fresh bill over fears of 'revenge' from the anti-corruption agencies. Zelensky's ruling party had expressed doubt over the fresh bill over fears of 'revenge' from the anti-corruption agencies.
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The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Choir that drowned out Germany's AfD leader happy to ‘bend the ear' of country
It was while Alice Weidel was being interviewed on the terrace of a parliament building overlooking the River Spree in Berlin that members of the Corner Chor's mobile phones began to ping with alerts as their song in protest at her far-right party, Scheiß AfD Jodler (Shit AfD Yodellers), blasted out from a 100,000-watt sound system on the other bank. 'We were hugely surprised and truly happy to hear at that moment that our song was receiving such a public airing,' one choir member told the Guardian. The choir had not known of the carefully orchestrated plans by the Centre for Political Beauty (ZPS) – an association of action artists led by the philosopher Philipp Ruch – to use their song to disrupt the so-called summer interview, a regular annual TV fixture in which leaders of the main political parties are questioned in turn, typically in a relaxed setting. Neither had the authorities, nor the public broadcaster ARD. And disrupt it certainly did. The sweet-sounding 19th-century Styrian Christmas yodel, which Corner Chor had rewritten as a three-voice protest song against the far right, managed to drown out much of the hour-long exchange, prompting Weidel to lean into the interviewer Markus Preiß and tell him: 'I have problems understanding you against this noise.' She insisted on continuing with the interview, however, at the same time as accusing the choir of being state-funded, an erroneous slur increasingly used by the party to attack its opponents. The party's leaders later said they had been victimised and insisted on a rerun, which the broadcaster has so far refused to entertain. Ruch called the action less of a disruption and 'more of an embellishment'. The state had classified the AfD as rightwing extremists earlier this year, he said in an interview. He added ''[ARD] should have figured out for themselves that this in itself was an indecent idea.' Corner Chor, from the southern city of Augsburg, has been quietly making a name for itself as an activist choir, part of a growing trend in Germany. Established six years ago as a musical education project, it appears everywhere from street corners to festivals, performing its songs and mantras in myriad settings from river swims to squats, to underground passageways. Its topics, alongside anti-fascist activities, include campaigning for free sanitary products or against extortionate rents and the gender pay gap. It is a 15-strong collective of self-described feminist Flinta-friendly singers (a German acronym standing for women, lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans and agender people). The singers emphasise they are not just interested in political protest, also singing everything 'from sea shanties to Mozart'. However, the broadcast of their yodel has taken the collective into a new realm as well as heightening their sense of social responsibility, four members told the Guardian in a recent interview over Zoom, for which they did not want to be individually identified, citing their wish to be viewed as a collective voice, as well as fears for their safety. 'We simply wanted to expose the AfD's content in a non-aggressive way, through this very uncomplicated, mantra-like song, which has something very contemplative about it because it's usually sung at Christmas and allows us to express exactly what we wanted to say, as clearly as possible,' a second singer said. The song was inspired by a notorious 2023 meeting of neo-Nazis and other extremists that party members had taken part in, where the mass deportation of foreigners was a central topic, and which sparked a wave of nationwide protest. The singers, who come from all walks of life, admitted to being a little shocked by the resonance their song had enjoyed since going viral at the Weidel broadcast, having reached No 6 in the iTunes Germany charts. It received 60,000 plays on Spotify, drew thousands of new followers on their Instagram account and an innumerable number of downloads from SoundCloud of a Scheiß AfD ringtone. The choir has also attracted donations for forthcoming projects. The song has already been widely remixed by other musicians, picked up by choirs around the country and become a regular feature at demonstrations, including recent Pride marches, with many citing the 'earworm' quality of what the Corner Chor describes as '15 seconds of music against rightwing extremism'. Yet the reception has not been entirely positive. The choir, which describes itself and its weekly rehearsals as a 'safe space', has received threats and offensive posts on social media. Its critics have accused it of trying to silence the fifth of German voters who support the AfD, the largest opposition party in the Bundestag. 'We must ask ourselves: who exactly are we giving a platform to? And how loud are they allowed to be?' a third member said. 'Attempts to label us as a bunch of hysterical women are ill advised. We are humorously disruptive, peaceful protesters … We had not intended to bend the ear of the whole country but we're happy we've done so. People are speaking about this way beyond the event itself, about the AfD.'
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Poetry pulled me out of the abyss': keeping culture alive in Kharkiv
The city of Kharkiv, just 18 miles from the Russian border, is a paradoxical mix of tended-to and broken. Public sculptures are wrapped and coddled in sandbags to protect them from missiles. Flowerbeds in parks are punctiliously maintained. The life of the streets is several notches quieter than you would expect from a European country's second city – and yet, bookshops, coffee shops and restaurants are open and doing a steady business. People browsing the books at Pochaina market But the signs of Russia's unrelenting attacks on this frontline city are omnipresent. On the roads are rows of rusted lines of the spiky metal tank obstacles known as 'hedgehogs'. The magnificent 1920s Derzhprom building, a constructivist masterpiece and the architectural pride of the city, is now badly battered. Across the city, windows, blown out from buildings by nightly explosions, have been replaced by sheets of chipboard. One panel in the city centre has been pasted over with a paper cutout of two enfolding arms and the words, 'I love you, beloved Kharkiv.' Cultural life clings on. But it has largely burrowed below ground: the basements of theatres are now their main stages; bookshops' event venues are subterranean. One Kharkiv visual artist, Kostiantyn Zorkin, has created an apt metaphor for the atmosphere of this underground world. A series of his works imagines wartime Kharkiv as a ship alone in stormy seas, its inhabitants huddled, in relative safety, in the vessel's hold. The city's population now consists of those who have moved here from places even more dangerous; and those who have stayed in their own city either because they must, or from a refusal to let Kharkiv's urban life die. Such resolve to stay involves a having made a personal accommodation with the proximity of death. Air defences in Kharkiv are few, and Russia is near. By the time the air-raid alarm sounds, often the missiles are already falling. Under these circumstances, something as intimate and emotionally charged as a poetry festival – such as the recent two-day event in a below-ground venue in the city centre – takes on a significance and intensity unimaginable in peacetime. When Kharkiv's most celebrated poet, novelist and musician Serhii Zhadan performs his own poems, some rapt audience members mouth along, clearly knowing the verses by heart. 'There are more than a million people in Kharkiv,' says Zhadan, now serving with the local Khartiia brigade, between readings. 'They have cultural needs. The festival is important from a psychological point of view: they see that they are not alone, that they have not been abandoned, that there are many people around them who share their values, are on the same wavelength.' Poet Yuliia Paievska on stage at the festival The festival, organised by publisher Meridian Czernowitz, is the first of its kind in Kharkiv, though the publishing house has conducted events in southern frontline cities such as Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson since 2023. 'People from frontline cities can go to a shelter and feel safe and listen to poetry – and while they are doing that, they are not sitting at home listening to drones or reading Facebook,' says organiser Evgenia Lopata. 'Being here means being part of a community that is supporting each other,' she says. It is partly a case of people connecting to fellow Ukrainian speakers in a city that for years has been mainly Russophone, Lopata adds. Though many inhabitants, particularly in the city's creative community, have shifted to Ukrainian since Russia launched its invasion in 2022. 'People are searching for Ukrainian identity, a lot of people took a big decision to change language to Ukrainian, and people want Ukrainian literature to read,' says Lopata. 'We print all our books in Kharkiv,' she adds, 'and we can produce our books only because the people employed at the printworks are still working. The least we can do is come here and do readings.' The sizeable printing industry in Kharkiv is precarious, however: in May last year, several S300 bombs badly damaged the city's Factor Druk printworks and killed seven people. The first poet to read at the Kharkiv poetry festival is Yuliia Paievska, a celebrated combat medic with the nom de guerre 'Taira'. She was captured in March 2022 while treating a civilian in Mariupol, and held in captivity in Russia for several months. She endured appalling conditions and torture until her release in June 2022. Paievska started writing poems in captivity, she says, by taking a tiny piece of plaster and scratching words into the cell wall – a forbidden act. 'It pulled me out of the abyss,' she says. Afterwards, she could not remember those fragments with any clarity, only the feelings that had created them. But after her release she began writing poems in earnest. 'It was a way of remaining human, of preserving your mind,' she says of those wall-scratchings after her reading. 'I wrote in order to remember who I was … Everything in the Russian penitentiary system is aimed at making you sure that you cannot control anything.' All she could control, she says, were 'my breathing and poem-making'. It is life as a civilian that celebrated film-maker and poet Iryna Tsilyk describes as she takes to the stage, reading, among other poems, My Day, an account of the way that contradictory experiences – sheltering from an air attack, making breakfast for a child, weeping in the shower, choosing wine in the supermarket – are uncomfortably compressed together in wartime Kyiv. She speaks too of a mounting preoccupation in Ukraine: how those from different parts of society, coping with widely differing experiences of war and trauma, are divided by mutual incomprehension. She tells the audience of her own experience, when her husband, novelist Artem Chekh, returned home from the frontline in 2016 (he is now serving in Kyiv, after a stint in the battle for Bakhmut in 2023). 'It was a date you've been waiting for for six months, and a stranger arrives with sunken shoulders and a glassy stare, because he had spent 10 months in the trenches,' she tells the audience. 'You have no idea how you can be together, how to talk, and how to rebuild a shared space of intimacy. I think that many couples are experiencing this and some, unfortunately, do not survive.' Many audience members – most of them in their 20s and 30s – stay for the entire programme of conversations and readings that lasts from lunchtime through to 8.30pm. One of the audience, IT worker Olena Dolya, has a fatalistic approach to remaining in the city: 'My windows and balcony are intact,' she says. 'And I'm more comfortable at home than anywhere else.' She takes regular trips to Kyiv to experience a fuller cultural life: 'I need it and I miss it.' She is reading now more than she has since childhood – 'it's one of my ways of staying sane, and it calms me', she says. 'It's very important to have culture during war,' says copywriter Arsenii Vasyliev, also in the audience. 'It shows you are human.' According to his girlfriend, ex-librarian Sofia Kyshkovarova, 'The festival is a sign that Kharkiv is alive.' According to Zhadan: 'War is a state of maximum abnormality, maximum disintegration. It seems to me that culture, above all else, is capable of somehow conveying these things, of somehow articulating them. 'In 50 or 100 years, if humanity survives, if books survive, then we will learn about this war primarily through literature.'
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Footballer, journalist, fashionista: whatever French Muslims do, we're treated as the enemy within
Being a Muslim in a country with a long colonial history, which has also had to deal with terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam, is an everyday challenge. In January 2015, for example, I was as profoundly shocked as everyone else in France by the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris. As the country mourned, I was invited by a major radio station to comment, but was first asked, live on air, to 'dissociate' myself from the attackers. I had been critical of Charlie Hebdo's publications in the past, but my comments always fell within the scope of legitimate political debate. Nevertheless, as a Muslim, I was now treated as if I was under suspicion. In order to be tolerated on the airwaves, I had to profess my innocence: state publicly that I had nothing to do with the violence. I couldn't hold back my tears – because, even with a media profile, I was reduced to the most racist perception of my identity. I was strongly defended that night by others who took part in the show, and received much support online, but I couldn't help thinking of the millions of French Muslims who, unlike me, would have no microphone to defend themselves against vile accusations. Some years later I was invited to take part in a TV debate on the thesis: is the white man always guilty. I was expecting a conversation about gender and race. But my opponent, the philosopher Pascal Bruckner, immediately took me to task, claiming that I had used my status 'as a Black, Muslim woman' to incite hatred against Charlie Hebdo. He claimed that I had, in effect, blood on my hands, that my words had 'led to the murder of 12 people at Charlie Hebdo'. I immediately protested, stating as firmly as I could, that I had 'absolutely no responsibility for any terrorist attack'. But Bruckner wouldn't let go. He attacked me for having signed a joint statement in 2011, following a night-time petrol-bomb attack at the Charlie Hebdo premises that caused, fortunately, only material damage. Nothing in the statement – which I did not draft and was co-signed by 20 other academics and activists– had called for hatred or violence. It had been critical of the disproportionate media treatment of the fire at Charlie Hebdo when vandalism of Muslim places of worship featured rarely in the news. Signatories had expressed dismay at the selective nature of French national outrage, highlighting the indifference shown after an arson attack on a Paris building inhabited by Roma people, in which a man died. But Bruckner repeated his accusations in an interview the next day, claiming without any evidence that he had simply 'reminded Rokhaya Diallo of her involvement in political Islam' adding – as if it were a crime – that I had 'criticised Charlie Hebdo by calling them Islamophobic and racist'. I felt I had no option but to file a defamation lawsuit against Bruckner, believing the accusation to be not just outrageous and insulting, but influenced by my origins and my faith. But defending myself was viewed as another provocation. Le Figaro, the leading conservative daily, published a highly offensive article on the eve of the trial, which, without even bothering to interview me, stated: 'Inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, 'anti-racist' activists like Rokhaya Diallo are multiplying lawsuits to silence critics of Islamism.' Taking legal action as a Muslim woman was framed as a 'jihadist' political plot. This kind of smear tactic is used again and again to discredit any Muslim who calls out Islamophobia. When the footballer Karim Benzema spoke in support of the people of Gaza in October 2023, the then interior minister Gerard Darmanin declared – without a shred of evidence – that the player had 'well-known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood'. In May, a report commissioned by the interior ministry into the Muslim Brotherhood fuelled suspicion of all French Muslims by recycling conspiracy theories around supposed 'infiltration'. The report was as the the socio-anthropologist Hamza Esmili put it, 'intellectually impoverished'. Yet Bruno Retailleau, the current interior minister, used alarmist conspiracy tropes to describe its conclusions, claiming it had identified 'a very clear threat to the republic and to national cohesion' and 'a quiet form of Islamist infiltration whose ultimate goal is to bring all of French society under sharia law'. But even the report stated unequivocally: 'No recent document demonstrates any intent by Muslims of France to establish an Islamic state in France or to enforce sharia law there.' It added that the Brotherhood's members in France today are estimated to number 'between 400 and 1,000 people'. As Esmili argues, French Muslims present a paradox: we are part of every social sphere, yet many of us have not given up our cultural specificities. And that is precisely what we are blamed for – integration without assimilation. This is why the same government can claim it uses the law to fight against Muslim 'separatism' while denouncing the threat of Muslim 'infiltration'. Muslims can't win: we are blamed for being part of the national community and for being outside of it. Thus, no matter what level we reach in the social pecking order, being Muslim always carries the suspicion of association with a radical and dangerous ideology: of being the enemy within. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion So when Léna Situations, a major fashion influencer in France, appeared on the Cannes film festival red carpet wearing a long dress with a headscarf, a senior official in Emmanuel Macron's party suggested on social media that she was practising a form of religious 'infiltration'. As if an outfit was in itself proof of extremism. The influencer never mentioned her religion but it made no difference – her Algerian heritage alone was enough to disqualify her. Even non-Muslims who take a stand against this hostile climate are subjected to similar accusations. Emile Ackermann – a rabbi vocal on Islamophobia – was accused by a self-proclaimed academic 'expert' of being inspired by a 'Brotherist' discourse. Such absurd accusations would be laughable if the situation weren't so volatile, with Islamophobic crime on the increase. Take the case of the hairdresser Hichem Miraoui, killed in June in the south of France, in what investigators are treating as a racially motivated act of domestic terrorism. Miraoui had been the target of racist rhetoric posted on social media by a neighbour who also denounced the French state as 'incapable of protecting us from Muslims'. Yet, the very same state constantly fuels a narrative portraying Muslims as a problem. During the defamation lawsuit I launched against Bruckner, and its appeal, my accuser and his lawyer leaned into these cliches. While the philosopher repeated his accusations and suggested that I was funded by 'foreign powers', his lawyer told the court that, given that Charlie Hebdo's case files amounted to several tonnes of documents, no one could say for sure whether my name was not mentioned in them. Elyamine Settoul, a political scientist and expert on jihadism, testified, however, that terrorists are radicalised through direct contacts and in no way rely on intellectual debates or interventions. And the expert and former Islamic State hostage Nicolas Hénin testified that my name appeared 'neither in the legal proceedings concerning the January 2015 attack, nor in the research conducted on the subject'. He told the court that 'the jihadist sphere holds nothing but contempt' for people like me because of my 'multicultural progressivism, which aligns with none of their religious doctrines'. Bruckner was acquitted in the first instance on the grounds that he had attributed to me only 'purely moral responsibility' and invited me to 'take ownership of the weight of my words and commitments'. The appeal court overturned the initial judgment, recognising the defamatory nature of Bruckner's remarks, yet still acquitted him on the grounds that he had made his statement 'in good faith'. Just like the 'yellow peril' once attributed to east Asians, or the supposed 'cosmopolitanist' trope used about Jews, the image of an allegedly foreign group secretly infiltrating France's circles of influence is once again thriving, in a sadly familiar strain of dangerous racist rhetoric. Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist
