World

BELGRADE — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stepped down as the leader of his party on Saturday after more than a decade at the helm, but he is widely expected to remain the most powerful political figure in the Balkan country.

Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won parliamentary elections by a landslide last year, but has been regularly accused of corruption, as well as recently coming under increased pressure from mass protests over two shootings.

Despite no longer being party chief, Vucic will remain Serbia’s president and the country’s most influential politician — just as he did when he stepped down from being prime minister and became president in 2017.

The 53-year-old, who has served as SNS chief since 2012, said he will not leave the party he helped found.

“Whatever you do, I will always be with you and by your side,” Vucic told party members during a televised convention.

“I just think a slightly different approach is needed to unite a greater number of forces of those who want to fight for the victory of a patriotic, successful Serbia.”

Plans for new movement 

Vucic has already announced plans to form a nationwide movement that is planned to include prominent intellectuals, artists and other public figures, and is expected to gradually combine with the SNS.

According to analysts, Vucic is significantly more popular than his party, which is regularly the target of accusations of corruption, and a fresh coalition would help rebrand the side, potentially avoiding poor election results in the future.

“It’s a way to overcome a crisis that could potentially brew inside the Serbian Progressive Party,” Bojan Klacar, the head of the independent election monitor CESID, told AFP.

“By creating a new movement, he wants to secure himself another mandate in the office,” Klacar added.

Vucic’s opponents accuse him of increasingly relying on autocratic measures to keep the opposition in disarray and media outlets and state institutions under his thumb.

Vucic’s ruling party has also been under rising pressure over the last month, after back-to-back shootings triggered a mass movement against the government which brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets.

Defence Minister Milos Vucevic, the former mayor of Serbia’s second largest city Novi Sad, was elected as the new president of the SNS Party, and he immediately rebuffed the protesters.

The new SNS leader shot down a request from some of the protesters for a transitional government ahead of new elections, saying the government cannot be elected “off the streets and through violence”.

MOSCOW — Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Russia had begun moving nuclear weapons to its ally Belarus, after Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced plans to transfer them in March.

"The transfer of nuclear munitions has begun," Lukashenko said in an official video, adding it was "possible" that the weapons were already in his country.

Meanwhile, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said on Thursday his troops had started transferring their positions in the flashpoint eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut to the Russian military.

His announcement comes days after Moscow's military said it had deployed jets and artillery on Russian soil against a "sabotage" group that crossed from Ukraine.

The Kremlin said, meanwhile, that China's special envoy for Ukraine would be visiting Russia on Friday as part of a tour of European capitals including Kyiv.

The battle for Bakhmut has raged for nearly one year, levelling the city and decimating waves of Wagner recruits who have led Russia's assault on the industrial hub.

“We are withdrawing units from Bakhmut today. We are handing over positions to the military, ammunition and everything,” Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video released on social media.

“We pull back, we rest, we prepare and then we will get new tasks,” added Prigozhin, who was dressed in tactical body armour and a military helmet.

Earlier this week, he conceded that around 10,000 prisoners he had recruited to fight in Ukraine had been killed on the battlefield.

The 61-year-old Kremlin ally toured Russian prisons last year to persuade inmates to fight with Wagner in exchange for a promised amnesty on their return, should they survive.

 Drone barrage 

Prigozhin’s announcement came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of again terrorising Ukrainians by launching a wave of Iranian-made attack drones at targets across his country.

“The enemy continued to terrorise Ukraine by launching 36 Shaheds. None reached their target,” Zelensky said in a social media post.

“I’m grateful to our air defence forces for the 100 per cent result.”

The Ukrainian military said Russia was probably targeting key infrastructure and military facilities in the western regions of Ukraine.

Russia subjected Ukraine to a campaign of aerial bombardments on infrastructure including energy facilities during the winter months but these attacks diminished recently.

And Kyiv has become increasingly adept at taking down waves of Russian cruise missiles and drones after appealing to Western allies for greater air defence capabilities.

Russian-installed authorities in the Crimean peninsula meanwhile announced their air defence systems had intercepted several drones targeting various parts of the territory annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“Six drones were shot down or blocked... in different parts of Crimea,” Governor Sergei Aksyonov announced on social media, adding that no-one had been injured in the attack.

Separately, Russia’s FSB security service said it had arrested two Ukrainians who had allegedly planned to target nuclear power plants in the country.

The aim was to cause “serious economic harm to Russia and damage its reputation”, the FSB alleged in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Also on Thursday, Russia’s foreign ministry announced a visit to Moscow by China’s special envoy for Ukraine, Li Hui, who has been touring European capitals.

His visit to the Russian capital, where he is expected to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, comes after Li met Zelensky in Kyiv.

Li has said there is “no panacea to resolve the crisis”.

Russia and China have close relations.

President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in March and said ties were “entering a new era”.

And while China says it is a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict, it has been criticised for refusing to condemn Moscow for its offensive.

BERLIN — German police on Wednesday raided homes of climate activists known for their controversial street blockade protests that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has blasted as “completely nuts”.

The raids were ordered in an investigation targeting seven people aged 22 to 38 of the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) group, as Germany toughened its stance against their eye-catching action.

Gluing themselves to roads, flinging mash at masterpieces and blocking airstrips — the activists have in recent months split public opinion with their protests to push authorities to do more to combat climate change.

Wednesday’s raids were part of a probe over suspicions that the activists were “forming or supporting a criminal organisation”, said a joint statement by Bavaria’s police and prosecutors.

Fifteen properties were searched, two bank accounts seized and an asset freeze ordered.

The suspects are accused of “organising a fundraising campaign to finance further criminal acts” for the group via its website.

At least 1.4 million euros ($1.5 million) had been collected, said the authorities, adding that “these funds were, according to current information, mostly used for the commission of further criminal acts by the association”.

The authorities did not specify the “criminal acts” to which they were referring but said two of the suspects are alleged to have tried to sabotage an oil pipeline between Trieste, Italy, and Ingolstadt, Germany, deemed “critical infrastructure” in Bavaria.

The group’s spokeswoman Carla Hinrichs, described the moment when she found police storming her apartment and an officer “wearing a security vest pointing a weapon at her”.

“I’m afraid that this state is sending its civil servants with weapons drawn to storm my apartment. But I’m even more afraid that it is letting us speed into this [climate] disaster without doing anything,” she said in a clip on Twitter.

The group vowed to continue with its tactics, announcing protests in several cities later Wednesday.

‘Irritate people’ 

Many climate activists have been put before the courts in recent weeks over their traffic blockade actions.

Most have received fines for disrupting traffic or obstructing police but some courts have also begun to hand down jail time.

Scholz and his coalition partners including the Greens have expressed frustration at the activists.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens has said the street blockades were “not a helpful contribution to climate protection” because they don’t win consensus but they “irritate people”.

Angry motorists shouting at the glued activists or dragging them off the streets have been a feature of many of the blockades.

Police across the country have registered more than 1,600 criminal offences — most involving Letzte Generation street blockades — by climate protesters over the last year, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the Funke media group.

“I don’t have the slightest understanding of these actions and the crimes committed,” said Faeser.

‘A warning’ 

The activists argue that their protests are vital in the face of inadequate action taken by the government and society to prevent catastrophic global warming.

“We, who are alive today, are the last who can still hinder the irreversible collapse of the climate,” the group said.

The UN has warned that the world will cross the key 1.5ºC global warming limit in about a decade, with devastating impacts of climate change in turn hitting faster than expected.

Berlin has relatively ambitious climate targets, including plans for carbon neutrality by 2045. It is also aiming to produce 80 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

But Letzte Generation believes those goals are not ambitious enough to stop Earth from tipping into irreversible warming.

Besides Letzte Generation, Germany has seen a host of other climate activist groups carrying out audacious protests.

Another group, Scientist Rebellion, hurled cake at Volkswagen bosses at the German car maker’s annual shareholders’ meeting earlier this month.

Across Europe, dramatic action has also become more frequent.

On Tuesday, protesters disrupted air traffic at Geneva airport while dozens of activists blocked a business jet convention nearby.

On Sunday, activists turned Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain black, saying deadly floods in the country’s northeast were “a warning”.

ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on Tuesday an aid package worth 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to help northeastern areas affected by floods that killed 15 people, displaced thousands and left swathes of farmland submerged.

After an emergency cabinet meeting, Meloni declared help for households, businesses, farms, transport systems, schools, healthcare services and the tourism industry, while warning that the full extent of the damage has yet to be determined.

"In the current situation in which Italy finds itself, finding 2 billion euros in a few days is not an easy thing," said Meloni, who visited the worst-hit areas of the Emilia Romagna region on Sunday.

"We clearly know that we are talking about emergencies, that there will be a reconstruction phase in which we are not yet able to quantify the overall need and the damage," she said.

Late Tuesday, local news media reported that the death toll from the floods had risen to 15 with the discovery of the body of a 68-year-old man in the small city of Lugo, in the southeast of Emilia Romagna.

Some flooded areas remain under water after six months' worth of rain fell over just 36 hours a week ago.

Around 23,000 people were still unable to return to their homes, officials said on Tuesday, with 2,700 sleeping in emergency shelters.

After the region requested a special commissioner to investigate the state of the country's drainage systems, Meloni said the task would go to an official appointed just weeks ago to deal with what had been a national drought.

"It's a bizarre transition whereby today the commissioner of drought is also dealing with floods," Meloni said.

Tax on museum tickets 

The money is being diverted from different departmental budgets, with no immediate indication on the possible impact on debt-laden Italy's public finances.

Almost half has been earmarked to help employees and the self-employed, while there are also funds to help businesses, particularly exporters, and farmers, including those who have to replace damaged machinery.

Meloni said that businesses and taxpayers in affected areas would also benefit from a suspension of tax and mortgage payments.

The package also calls for a temporary one-euro hike in the price of tickets for state-run museums, to begin mid-June for three months.

The floods were the second to hit the area within weeks, following a deluge earlier in May that killed two people.

In the most recent disaster, almost two dozen rivers burst their banks.

Water flooded entire neighbourhoods in the wealthy region, which boasts both rich agricultural farmland and industry.

'Lost everything' 

In the province of Ravenna, where schools reopened on Tuesday, teams from Slovenia and Slovakia helped pump water from sodden areas overnight.

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter that pumping equipment and a team of 40 soldiers were on their way to help in the efforts.

But in nearby Forli, schools remained closed until Wednesday due to continuing disruption on the road network.

The region estimates that damage worth more than 620 million euros has been caused to infrastructure, including roads and railways.

The agricultural lobby Confagricoltura said at least 10 million fruit trees would have to be uprooted, and possibly as many as 40 million.

"There are people who have lost everything," said the head of the Emilia Romagna region, Stefano Bonaccini.

Some 14 mostly inactive bombs from World War I or World War II also emerged from the floodwaters, which were "all blown up as a precaution" by the army, a local military source said.

Italy has been beset by a number of extreme weather events in the past year, which many people — including former premier Mario Draghi — have linked to climate change.

A dozen people died after flash floods in the Marche region in September, while a landslide on the island of Ischia in November killed 12.

ATHENS — Greece’s leftist former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who nearly crashed his country out of the eurozone in 2015, has been left reeling by electoral defeat, which he conceded on Tuesday had been a “painful shock”.

The left suffered a stunning defeat to the incumbent conservatives on Sunday, leaving Tsipras stony-faced before the media on Tuesday after being forced to forego any hopes of joining a coalition government.

“The result of the elections is a shock for us... unexpectedly painful,” he said outside the presidency, where he declined a power-sharing mandate.

With the conservative Party of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis grabbing 146 seats to 71 seats for Tsipras’ Syriza party after its vote share imploded, notably among young voters, any coalition talk was futile.

It was Tsipras’s fourth defeat to Mitsotakis at local, national and European elections since 2019 and by far the heaviest.

With a hung parliament emerging from Sunday’s ballot, Mitsotakis is pushing for a new, decisive election as early as June 25.

President Katerina Sakellaropoulou still has to go through the motions of inviting parties to form a government, but after that a senior judge will be named interim prime minister and call for new elections.

The fresh election will be governed by different rules that grant the winner up to 50 bonus seats in parliament, facilitating Mitsotakis’s efforts to form a single-party government.

New Democracy thumped Syriza by 20 points — 40.79 per cent to 20.07 — and with the socialist Pasok-Kinal party also unexpectedly beating the leftists in six regional constituencies, doubts are swirling over Tsipras’ political future.

For now, the 48-year-old engineer has vowed to lead his party into the next battle.

Not giving up 

“I am here. I will not give up,” he said on Sunday. “Syriza is here and will remain so”.

On Monday, he said checks on Mitsotakis’s power were imperative.

An “all-powerful” government would be “bad for democracy and for the country”, Tsipras said.

Tsipras is a known orator and can whip up a crowd, but analysts said he focused too much on attacking the government without articulating a persuasive alternative to Mitsotakis, who put Greece on a path of growth, cut taxes and increased wages.

“Syriza conducted a problematic campaign,” political analyst Panagiotis Koustenis told state TV ERT.

“It did not appear before the electorate as a competent alternative to New Democracy,” he said.

Despite a campaign aimed at young voters, Syriza won only 28.8 per cent of Greeks aged 17-24, against 31.5 per cent for New Democracy, the exit poll showed.

In the final days before the election, Tsipras was also criticised for publicly appealing to former voters of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, whose leaders were jailed in 2020.

Gerasimos Moschonas, professor of comparative politics at Panteion University, says Syriza brought together “a coalition of dissatisfied people: Dissatisfied with their personal finances, dissatisfied with the institutions”.

“The dissatisfied do not give a majority”, he said.

Greeks have never quite forgiven Tsipras for his resounding about-face in 2015 when he was seen to betray an anti-austerity referendum called by his own government.

In July 2015, he backed down after a six-month showdown with European creditors and adopted drastic austerity measures whose devastating effects are still felt today.

The finance minister at Tsipras’ side during the disastrous negotiations, maverick economist Yanis Varoufakis, was another casualty of Sunday’s vote.

His MeRa25 Party crashed out of parliament after failing to garner the minimum three percent of the vote required.

Varoufakis, 62, blamed his defeat on the “Erdoganisation and Orbanisation” of Greece — comparing Mitsotakis on the rule of law and press freedom to the authoritarian policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungarian leader Viktor Orban.