Latest news with #Nationalism
Bloomberg
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Tusk Faces Crunch Two Weeks to Fend Off Poland's Nationalists
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his allies have less than two weeks to convince voters to stick with their ruling coalition after a surge in support for nationalists in a presidential election. In what's turned into a referendum on the government's 18 months in power, Tusk ally Rafal Trzaskowski will face Law & Justice opponent Karol Nawrocki in a runoff on June 1. After Sunday's first round, Trzaskowski led Nawrocki by less than two percentage points, a far narrower gap that polls had predicted.
Free Malaysia Today
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Pro-EU centrist wins tense Romanian presidential vote rerun
Voter turnout for the Romanian election between nationalist George Simion (left) and Bucharest mayor Nicusor Dan was close to 65%. (EPA Images pic) BUCHAREST : Nicusor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, won a tense rerun of Romania's presidential election on Sunday, beating nationalist George Simion in a vote seen as crucial for the direction of the EU and Nato member bordering war-torn Ukraine. The ballot came five months after Romania's constitutional court annulled an election over allegations of Russian interference and a massive social media promotion of the far-right frontrunner, who was not allowed to stand again. Dan, who campaigned for an 'honest' Romania, gained close to 54% of the vote, while US President Donald Trump admirer Simion secured some 46%, according to near complete results. 'It's the victory of thousands and thousands of people who… believe that Romania can change in the right direction,' Dan, 55, told supporters, who chanted 'Europe' and 'Russia, Russia, Romania is not yours'. Turnout was close to 65%, compared to 53% for the May 4 first round, in which Simion secured most votes. 'The mobilisation was almost unprecedented,' political scientist Sergiu Miscoiu told AFP, adding 'never has an election been so decisive, with clear geopolitical implications.' Romania's president has significant sway in foreign policy, including holding veto power at EU summits. People's will EU chief Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Dan, vowed it would help work towards 'a strong Europe'. French President Emmanuel Macron said Romanians had 'chosen democracy, the rule of law, and the EU… despite many attempts at manipulation'. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also congratulated Dan, saying it 'is important to have Romania as a reliable partner'. Despite exit polls showing Dan ahead, far-right leader Simion, 38 said he had won the election, but eventually conceded defeat to his rival. 'I would like to congratulate my opponent, Nicusor Dan. He has won the election, and this was the will of the Romanian people,' Simion said in a video on Facebook. He vowed to 'continue our fight' for Romania and to put its 19 million people 'first'. Simion, who leads the far-right AUR party, has criticised what he called the EU's 'absurd policies' and proposed cutting military aid to Ukraine. Simion and Dan both campaigned on a platform of change amid anger over the politicians, deemed corrupt, who have ruled one of the EU's poorest countries since the end of communism 35 years ago. Simion voted in Mogosoaia, just outside Bucharest, with far-right politician Calin Georgescu. Georgescu was the front-runner in last year's cancelled presidential election and was barred from taking part in the rerun. As the duo arrived, dozens of people, some holding flowers, shouted: 'Calin Georgescu for president.' Tense atmosphere The election campaign took place in a tense atmosphere. The cancellation of last year's vote and subsequent barring of Georgescu drew tens of thousands onto the streets to protest in sometimes violent rallies. Top US officials also criticised the decision to scrap the last ballot. The surprise resignation of prime minister Marcel Ciolacu and the collapse of his pro-European government coalition – after their candidate failed to make the runoff vote – further raised the stakes. The new president will have the power to appoint a new prime minister. The election turmoil has increased economic uncertainty in the EU's most indebted country, which has grappled with high inflation. 'The stakes of these elections are huge because there is widespread chaos in Romania right now after the annulment,' voter Runa Petringenaru told AFP. 'We can't wait for it to be over,' the 55-year-old workshop organiser added.
New York Times
17-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Russian Troops Are War-Weary, but Want to Conquer More of Ukraine
In the diplomatic maneuvering over the war in Ukraine, many Ukrainians and their European allies have accused President Trump of offering the Kremlin too many concessions to secure a quick peace deal. Things look very different from Russia's bunkers and military hospitals. To many Russian soldiers and their nationalist supporters, the peace proposals from Washington amount to far too little. Eleven Russian soldiers who are fighting or have fought in Ukraine expressed deep skepticism in interviews of diplomatic efforts that on Friday produced the first direct peace talks in three years, but were brief and yielded little. Speaking by telephone, the soldiers said they rejected an unconditional cease-fire proposed by Ukraine, adding that Russian forces should keep fighting at least until they conquer all of the four southern and eastern Ukrainian regions claimed, but only partly controlled, by the Kremlin. 'We're all tired, we want to go home. But we want to take all of the regions, so that we don't have to struggle for them in the future,' said Sergei, a drafted Russian soldier fighting in the eastern Donetsk region, referring to the annexed territory. 'Otherwise, have all the guys died in vain?' The interviews are a rare window into Russian military morale, underlining the domestic challenges President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would face in ending the war on terms that fall short of his maximalist goals. The soldiers' demands also suggest that Mr. Putin's hasty annexation of four Ukrainian regions early in the war may have limited his current options in negotiations because a significant part of the population would view anything less as a defeat. The New York Times verified identities of the soldiers through social media and personal documents, but is withholding their last names to protect them against retribution. The soldiers, who have fought in different units and different areas, spoke with deep bitterness about their country's officials and civilians, whom they accuse of benefiting from the war while ignoring frontline hardships. Their comments point to the difficulties Russia would face after any peace deal in integrating servicemen back into civilian life, and in moving the wartime economy back onto a civilian footing. 'Do you understand what it means for a country to have a million people who have been trained to kill without fear of blood?' said Dmitri, who fought in Ukraine for a Russian paramilitary unit until October. 'A million angry killers is a pretty serious problem if they will view our rulers as men who are not on their side.' Some of the interviewed soldiers have struggled to reconcile their personal desire for peace, and exhaustion with the war, with a need to make sense of their personal sacrifices through a victorious outcome for Russia. Although both militaries closely guard their casualty figures, independent researchers estimate that a total of more than a million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have died or been seriously injured. 'I'm in the middle of all this mess, and, honestly speaking, I am tired of it,' said a drafted Russian soldier, also named Dmitri, who remains in uniform. 'I have no more desire to keep stewing in this soup.' He and Sergei were among the 300,000 Russian men who were hastily called up by Mr. Putin in late 2022 to halt a surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive that year. The drafted men helped the Russian Army stabilize the front and regain the initiative. Those who have survived have been kept indefinitely on the front lines. The Russian military has also indefinitely extended all service contracts signed by volunteers to boost its ranks. This means that a peace deal, and eventual demobilization, offers the vast majority of Russian frontline soldiers the only realistic chance of returning home soon, alive and in one piece. In interviews, the soldiers complained of lack of leave, corruption among superiors and the indifference of their compatriots. Some of the soldiers accused their country's military command and businessmen of opposing a peace deal because they are benefiting from the wartime public spending boom. 'Someone sent me a video recently: girls, boys are dancing, hanging out in bars, partying until the morning. Meanwhile, there's a war going on,' said Andrei, a volunteer Russian soldier in Donetsk. 'Everyone has forgotten about us. We have long ago stopped being heroes to anyone.' Such resentment has made control of the contested territories, long considered by analysts a bargaining chip amid Russia and Ukraine's deeper disagreements, a nonnegotiable war aim for many Russian servicemen and their supporters. 'We have shown our strength. The whole world is fighting against us, and they are not getting very far,' said Yevgeniy, a Russian contract soldier who fought in Ukraine until December 2023. 'I don't want to see any concessions because I have seen the price of every fistful of land.' Soon after invading Ukraine, the Kremlin conducted sham referendums in the four Ukrainian provinces where the bulk of the fighting took place, purportedly showing overwhelming support for joining Russia, and annexed them soon after. After three years of fighting, however, Russian forces have almost complete control of only one of them, Luhansk. In the other three regions — Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — Russia controls 65 to 75 percent of the territory. Through much of the war, the Ukrainian government categorically rejected ceding land to Russia, demanding a return to the country's internationally recognized borders, and insisting on security guarantees before agreeing to a truce. In recent months, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has softened his position, accepting a proposed cease-fire without security guarantees, suggesting he would accept at least a temporary loss of the territory already under Russian occupation. This proposal to effectively freeze the conflict along the current frontline is seen by many in Ukraine and the West as a major concession to the Kremlin, abandoning millions of Ukrainian citizens to life under occupation and, they fear, legitimizing and rewarding Russian aggression. Interviews with the soldiers and Russian opinion surveys show that such a truce would also fail to satisfy a large part of Russian society. Years of war propaganda and steady, if slow, battlefield gains, have convinced many Russians that their country is fighting an existential conflict against the West, which will not end until Ukrainian capitulation. 'If there's no cease-fire now, we need to keep going until the end,' said Nikolai, a Russian soldier in Ukraine. 'Because if we don't, sooner or later — in five years or in 10 — there will be a war again.' Kyiv and its supporters have voiced the same fear, claiming that a peace deal without Western security guarantees for Ukraine would lead to a new Russian invasion in the future. From the outset, Mr. Putin has said his invasion aims were to 'demilitarize and denazify' Ukraine, which implies removing the democratically elected government in Kyiv; preventing Ukraine from ever joining the NATO alliance; and protecting Ukraine's Russian speakers, who the Kremlin says, falsely, faced genocide. A survey conducted in Russia in mid-April by an independent polling company, Chronicles, found that nearly half the respondents said they would not support a peace deal that falls short of those initial goals. Such polls show the difficulty that Mr. Putin would face in presenting to Russian society the current status quo in Ukraine as a victory. Few in Russia expect Mr. Putin, who wields absolute power, to pay an immediate political cost for any peace deal. His control of the country's media would allow him to present any outcome as a success, at least at first. But an unconvincing victory could eventually bubble up into the kind of discontent that fueled the Wagner paramilitary force mutiny in 2023. Kremlin officials will most likely remember the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 after an inconclusive war, which angered many veterans and contributed to the collapse of the Communist state. An underwhelming Russian military victory in the breakaway region of Chechnya bred public discontent that helped bring Mr. Putin to power in 1999. 'Of course I want a cease-fire because even a bad peace is better than a good war,' said Dmitri, the former paramilitary soldier. 'But we have also taken such a large step forward, that we cannot stop now.' 'Otherwise, is it all a game? Has Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin played a little game, killed a million people, and all is OK?' he said. 'This would not be such a good government, I think,' he added.
Reuters
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Polish election frontrunner speaks Europe's language
SZCZECIN, Poland, May 16 (Reuters) - Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, the Oxford-educated son of a jazz musician and frontrunner in Sunday's Polish presidential election, made friends across the European Parliament when he worked there, including with Portugal's now-foreign minister. "He was very well known, not only because he was very talented," Paulo Rangel said during a break from campaigning for his own country's election, referring to their time together as EU lawmakers from 2009. "He really became very popular... because he was a very easy-going person but at the same time he could speak five languages," he added. Trzaskowski can communicate in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian. His supporters hope his friendships with high-ranking European policymakers like Rangel can further Poland's growing influence in Europe since Prime Minister Donald Tusk succeeded a eurosceptic nationalist in 2023. But it is also part of the reason some Poles going to vote in the first round of a presidential election on May 18 view him as part of a liberal metropolitan elite whose concerns are far removed from their own. Trzaskowski paints the vote as a choice between Western liberal values and the rising nationalism across central and eastern Europe, where eurosceptic parties have already won power or are poised to do so. "These elections are about whether we will be part of the West or part of the East," he told a rally in the northern port city of Szczecin. "Look where Slovakia is today, where Hungary is, what's happening in the Balkans. Look - this very same battle is happening in Romania... These parties are either pro-Russian or repeat Russian propaganda. They simply don't feel at home in Europe. Why? Because Europe is too positive for them." His rivals are fighting back. "He is so European he has forgotten he is Polish," said Marek Suski, a lawmaker from the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. PiS backs conservative historian and amateur boxer Karol Nawrocki to become president, a role with limited executive powers but the right to veto legislation, in the election, which is likely to go to a second round. Outgoing PiS President Andrzej Duda has used his power of veto to block many of Tusk's pro-European reforms. After studying in Oxford and Paris, Trzaskowski wrote a PhD thesis in Warsaw called "The dynamics of reforming the decision-making system of the European Union". He worked as an adviser and an elected member of the European Parliament before becoming Poland's Minister of Administration and Digitalisation and then Deputy Foreign Minister. As mayor of Warsaw since 2018, he has gained a reputation as a supporter of liberal causes such as LGBT rights. His critics say he is a deeply polarising figure in a country where many Poles, especially outside the big cities, hold socially conservative views, and they are scathing about his perceived rightward shift during the presidential campaign. His rivals also say his pro-European stance means he will put the interests of other countries above those of Poland. His supporters say he is trying to reach out to all sides of the political spectrum. "His goal is to reduce the polarisation we see in Poland," said Agnieszka Pomaska, a lawmaker from the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) and a member of Trzaskowski's campaign team. "He's definitely not someone who rejects ideas just because they come from another political camp." Rangel said Trzaskowski could cement Poland's place as a major player at the heart of European policymaking over the twin challenges of Russia's invasion of Poland's eastern neighbour Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. Trzaskowski's international track record "will open a lot of doors," Rangel said.
