World

BRUSSELS, Belgium  — Sweden’s accession to NATO adds a final puzzle piece to the alliance around the shores of the strategically important Baltic Sea — but Russia still poses a threat above and below water.

After Finland joined last year, Sweden’s membership — which cleared the final hurdle Monday with Hungary’s vote on ratification — means all the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, except Russia, will be part of the US-led military alliance.

That has led some to label the sea a “NATO lake”, with the Western allies now appearing well-placed to strangle Russia’s room for manoeuvre in the crucial shipping route if a war with Moscow ever breaks out.

But analysts warn that while Sweden’s entry makes it easier for NATO to exert control and reinforce its vulnerable Baltic states, Russia can still menace the region from heavily-armed exclave Kaliningrad and threaten undersea infrastructure.

“If you look at a map then geographically the Baltic Sea is becoming a NATO lake, yes,” said Minna Alander a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

“But there is still work to do for NATO.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a series of high-profile incidents involving pipelines and cables under the Baltic Sea have given NATO a wake-up call over its vulnerabilities.

In September 2022 a sabotage attack hit the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Europe. Over a year on, investigators have still not publicly named those responsible.

Then last October a gas pipeline and a cable from Finland and Sweden to Estonia were damaged. Finnish police say they believe a Chinese cargo ship was likely involved.

NATO has bolstered its naval deployments in response and is looking to step up its monitoring capabilities, but keeping an eye on what’s happening beneath the water is a major task.

“It’s very difficult to have overall control of a sea as you would control territories on land,” said Julian Pawlak, a researcher at Germany’s Bundeswehr University in Hamburg.

“What the Nord Stream sabotages have shown, among others, is that it remains hard to be aware exactly what is happening below the surface and on the seabed.”

Kaliningrad threat 

Sweden has long had a close partnership with NATO but its formal membership will allow it to be fully integrated into the alliance’s defence plans.

Beyond its long Baltic coastline, Sweden brings with it the island of Gotland which would play a central role in helping NATO impose its will.

But just across the water Russia has its own vital outpost — the exclave of Kaliningrad.

Wedged between Poland and Lithuania, Moscow has in recent years turned the region into one of the most militarised in Europe, with nuclear-capable missiles stationed there.

Russia’s Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad is a shadow of what it was during the Cold War and the invasion of Ukraine has sapped some of its forces from the region.

But John Deni, a research professor at the US Army War College, said the Kremlin has kept up investments in undersea capabilities and still has the firepower to stage small-scale landings or threaten NATO supply routes.

“In terms of artillery, indirect fires and nuclear-capable weapons they out-gun and out-range NATO allies in the region,” Deni told AFP.

“Allies have to meet that threat and counter it.”

On the other side, while Stockholm brings with it a rich heritage of naval history, like other NATO states in the area its sea power in the Baltic remains understrength.

“Even if you count Sweden, NATO naval assets are relatively limited,” Deni said, adding that the allies need to develop their ability to carry out demining under fire.

Reinforcing the

Baltic states 

Three countries breathing a particular sigh of relief over the entry of Sweden — and Finland — are NATO’s Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, long seen as an Achilles heel for the alliance.

War planners have struggled to work out how to stop them being cut off if Russian land troops seized the 65 kilometre Suwalki Gap between Belarus and Kaliningrad.

Sweden’s position straddling both the North and Baltic Seas opens up a key route for transiting more NATO forces to protect them in case of attack.

“It allows US forces to reinforce the Baltic Sea nations in a timely manner, but especially the frontline states,” said Tuuli Duneton, Estonian undersecretary for defence policy.

Despite the joy at NATO over welcoming Sweden to the fold, however, US academic Deni insisted the alliance should lay off considering the Baltic its own property.

“Calling it a ‘NATO lake’ leads to complacency,” Deni said.

“The challenge and the threat posed by Russia in the region is significant in some ways and the allies for now lack the capacity to counter that in a crisis.”

CHARLESTON, United States — Donald Trump cruised to a lightning victory Saturday in South Carolina’s Republican primary, blitzing rival Nikki Haley in her home state and continuing his march to the nomination and a White House rematch with Joe Biden in November.

Trump completed a sweep of the first four major nominating contests, converting a year of blockbuster polls into a likely insurmountable lead going into the “Super Tuesday” 15-state voting bonanza in 10 days.

Haley had vowed to fight on regardless of the outcome but Trump, seeking to move quickly from the primary to the general election, didn’t mention her once during a victory speech in which he turned his fire on Biden.

“We’re going to be up here on November 5 and we’re going to look at Joe Biden — we’re going to look him right in the eye, he’s destroying our country — and we’re going to say, Joe, you’re fired. Get out,” Trump said to cheers at his victory party in state capital Columbia.

Haley has repeatedly questioned the 77-year-old former president’s mental fitness and warned another Trump presidency would bring “chaos”, but her efforts appeared to do little to damage his standing among Republicans.

By about 7am (1200 GMT) Sunday, major national news outlets had Trump just shy of 60 per cent of the vote, with almost all votes counted.

US networks had felt able to call the race for Trump within seconds of the polls closing, suggesting little doubt over the outcome.

David Darmofal, a politics professor at the University of South Carolina, said the speed of Trump’s projected victory confirmed him as “effectively the presumptive Republican nominee for president”.

“This quick call is a bad result for former governor Haley in her home state. The quickness of the call will likely lead to additional pressure for her to drop out of the race,” he told AFP.

Haley, a popular governor of South Carolina in the 2010s and the only woman to have entered the Republican contest, was looking to outperform expectations in her own backyard and ride into Super Tuesday with wind in her sails.

But she was never able to compete in a battleground that preferred Trump’s brand of right-wing “America first” populism and personal grievance over the four criminal indictments and multiple civil lawsuits he faces.

Trump had already won Iowa by 30 points and New Hampshire by 10, while a dispute in Nevada led to the real estate tycoon running unopposed in the first official contest in the western United States.

‘Not giving up’

Biden reacted to the South Carolina result with a brief written statement warning Americans of “the threat Donald Trump poses to our future as Americans grapple with the damage he left behind”.

Meanwhile Haley reminded supporters as she congratulated Trump in her concession speech that she had already vowed to fight on, regardless of the outcome.

“I’m a woman of my word. I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” she said.

Trump aides have been clear that they want to see off Haley long before the Republican National Convention in July — and are expecting the party to coalesce around the front-runner ahead of the first of his criminal trials on March 25.

A traditional conservative who espouses limited government and a muscular foreign policy, Haley has argued that a Trump presidency would be mired in scandal from day one.

Her central argument — that polling shows her performing better than Trump in hypothetical matchups with Biden — may have fallen on deaf ears but she has vowed to stay in the race at least through Super Tuesday.

Analysts say she is building her profile for a potential 2028 run — and is poised to step in should legal or health problems knock Trump out of the race.

“Nikki Haley’s an incredible role model,” said one Republican voter, Julie Taylor. “She’s not giving up, she’s showing strength and grace and courage.”

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s ex-president Jair Bolsonaro takes his legal woes to the street on Sunday, calling for a mass protest from supporters amid accusations he plotted a coup to stay in power.

The 68-year-old former army officer has urged his backers to attend a “peaceful rally in defence of the democratic rule of law” in the economic capital Sao Paulo which organisers hope will draw at least 500,000 people.

Bolsonaro has had his passport seized by police as he and his inner circle face scrutiny over plans to try to remain in power after he lost 2022 elections to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The far-right former president Bolsonaro has denied the accusations and he refused to answer questions during a half-hour interrogation on Thursday at federal police headquarters in Brasilia.

“No one attempted a coup in Brazil. That is the great truth,” Bolsonaro told radio station CBN Recife.

A week after Lula took office on January 1, 2023, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the presidential palace, congress and supreme court, urging the military to intervene to overturn what they called a stolen election.

Bolsonaro, who was in the United States at the time, denies responsibility, and has even suggested the protesters were not really his supporters.

However, investigators allege months of anti-democratic maneuvers by Bolsonaro, from a plan to discredit Brazil’s electronic voting system with a “disinformation” campaign ahead of the elections to “legitimise a military intervention” if he lost.

Police say Bolsonaro edited a draft presidential decree that would have declared a state of emergency, called new elections and ordered the arrest of supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, the head of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal.

They also released a video of a July 2022 meeting where a shouting, swearing Bolsonaro ordered Cabinet ministers to help him discredit the election system.

Bolsonaro, who led Brazil from 2019 to 2022, claims to be the victim of “persecution.”

In June, the electoral tribunal barred Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030 over his attacks on the election system.

Nevertheless, Bolsonaro is still considered the leader of the opposition and is adored by his fervent supporters.

LISBON — Portugal’s official election campaign begins Sunday, with the March 10 legislative vote likely to see a breakthrough by populist parties after an influence peddling scandal brought down eight years of Socialist government.

Portugal, which this April celebrates half a century since its “Carnation Revolution” put an end to an almost equally long fascist dictatorship, has avoided the right-wing and anti-establishment parties that have recently scored successes elsewhere in Europe.

That exception is expected to end.

The Chega Party (“Enough” in Portuguese), formed in 2019 by a former football commentator who has become an ardent critic of the country’s political and economic elites, is credited with 15 to 20 per cent of the vote.

The surprise resignation of Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who is not running for re-election, has helped Chega, said Antonio Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.

“The theme of corruption, in this European conjuncture, favours the radical right,” he said.

Several European countries, including Italy, Slovakia, Hungary and Finland, are run by coalitions either headed by or including far-right parties.

The Netherlands could join this list after the victory of Geert Wilders in last November’s legislative elections.

Chega, which is anti-immigrant but not always anti-European Union, already became the country’s third largest political force in Portugal’s January 2022 elections with seven per cent of the vote and 12 deputies in the 230-seat parliament.

Andre Ventura, its president, aims to displace the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) as the dominant force on Portugal’s right, which is expected to have a majority of the seats in parliament.

For the moment, the PSD is slightly ahead in the polls with about 30 per cent of the vote, just in front of the incumbent Socialist Party.

PSD leader Luis Montenegro, who has formed an alliance with two small conservative parties, has for the moment ruled out any coalition with Chega.

‘No is no’ 

“No is no,” Montenegro repeats each time the question is asked.

Costa’s successor at the Socialist Party, Pedro Nuno Santos, has said he wouldn’t block the formation of a minority government headed by the centre-right should they finish first but without a working majority.

But according to analyst Costa Pinto, the “sanitary cordon around the extreme right hasn’t worked in other European democracies, and Portugal will be another example”.

Prime minister since the end of 2015, Costa improved the government’s finances and oversaw a largely healthy economy, but was brought down by a series of scandals.

The final blow came when a probe into influence peddling reached his own chief of staff, who was found with 75,800 euros ($82,000) in cash hidden in his office.

Costa’s name was cited in the probe and he resigned in November, saying he wouldn’t seek a new term.

CHARLESTON, United States — Donald Trump and Nikki Haley go head-to-head on Saturday evening in South Carolina’s Republican primary, with the ex-president set to trounce his former charge in her home state as he closes in on the nomination.

Haley was a popular governor of the state before becoming Trump’s UN ambassador in 2017, but her old boss is backed by the local party establishment and nearly two-thirds of voters in opinion polling.

Since the early nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire in January, the rhetorical fire has intensified between the two as the primary narrowed into a two-horse race.

But seeking to demonstrate that he is looking beyond Haley, Trump has vowed to show President Joe Biden and the Democrats “that we are coming like a freight train in November”, when the general election will be held.

In remarks released early to the US media, Trump will say in a speech later Saturday that “if we can break out of this Biden nightmare, we have it in our grasp to make America richer, safer, stronger, prouder and more beautiful than ever before”.

Polls in the southern US state opened at 7:00am local time (12:00 GMT).

South Carolinians do not have to indicate party allegiance when they register to vote, and are allowed to have their say in either the Democratic or the Republican primary.

Haley — a more traditional conservative who espouses limited government and a muscular foreign policy — will hope for votes from moderates, but the tactic did little for her as she lost to Trump in each of the first four nominating contests.

Economy, migration 

Voters interviewed by AFP in South Carolina capital Columbia were complimentary about both candidates, although one voter felt Haley wasn’t ready for the highest office and another criticised Trump for being divisive.

“He’ll go after people that don’t agree with him. Being a Christian, I don’t feel good about that,” said financial advisor and Haley voter David Gilliam, 55.

Meantime, husband and wife Jeff and Susan Stottler laughingly explained why they were not voting for the same candidate.

Jeff, a 61-year-old banker, said Trump will “override everything that Joe Biden has done to put us in the economic and immigrant mess we’re in”, while Susan, who is 60, said her vote for Haley was really meant to encourage Trump to pick her as his vice president.

Trump — who faces four criminal indictments — is tightening his hold over the party as he pushes toward a second term in the White House.

Haley has sought to focus on the “chaos” that she says follows Trump, predicting that his total outlay on court cases this year could top $100 million.

“Everything he touches is chaos that leads to a loss,” she said on Saturday. “How many more times do Republicans have to lose before they realise that maybe he’s the one that’s the problem?”

Haley refuses to quit 

In common with Democrats, Haley has also been hitting Trump over his outlook on the international stage and oft-voiced admiration for the leaders of the world’s most authoritarian regimes.

She has blasted Trump’s reaction to the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny — in which he avoided criticism of President Vladimir Putin — and his threat to encourage Moscow to attack NATO nations that had not met their financial obligations.

But Haley’s central argument for months has been that polling shows her performing better than Trump in hypothetical matchups with Biden.

She has vowed to compete in the Republican primary through “Super Tuesday” — when multiple states vote on March 5 — regardless of what happens in South Carolina.

Reproductive rights are likely to figure prominently in the election, with Trump avoiding taking a clear position on proposals for a nationwide abortion ban after appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped gut federal protections.

A wrinkle was added when Alabama’s supreme court ruled last week that frozen embryos can be considered children, signaling a new front in the debate and posing questions for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics.

Trump — keenly aware the Alabama decision risks alienating moderate and women voters — voiced support on Friday for preserving access to IVF programmes, calling on the state’s legislature to “act quickly to find an immediate solution” to ensure it remained available.

VALENCIA, Spain — Hundreds of people observed five minutes of silence in the Mediterranean port city of Valencia on Saturday to honour the 10 victims of a huge fire that ripped through a residential high-rise two days earlier. 

As the clock struck midday, the large crowd gathered outside city hall fell silent, some wearing dark glasses to mask red eyes, while others wiped away tears as they recalled the victims of the terrible blaze that began just before nightfall on Thursday. 

At the end, onlookers broke into spontaneous applause as officials embraced family members who lost loved ones in the tragedy, their faces drawn with exhaustion, shock and sorrow.

“There are no words to describe the pain this city feels at this moment, and all Valencians are sharing in this pain with this moment of silence and respect,” said Mayor Maria Jose Catala. 

By Friday evening, rescuers had found nine bodies, but discovered another on Saturday morning, officials said as the city observed three days of mourning over the tragedy. 

Experts said the building was covered with highly flammable cladding, which could account for the rapid spread of the blaze which gutted the 14-storey high-rise and an adjoining 10-storey block which together housed 138 flats. 

“It was just horrifying. I live in that neighbourhood and it was very close, I saw the whole thing from the street,” 60-year-old Concha Lopez told AFP outside the town hall, her voice breaking as she wiped away tears. 

“These people have lost everything.”

The blaze spread like lightning, the flames quickly visible in every window, sending clouds of black smoke high into the air over the western Campanar district, dramatic footage showed.

“I get goosebumps just thinking about it, and it happened again during the minute of silence,” said 75-year-old Sara Navia. 

“It’s just terrible. We’ve got to help these people in any way we can because they’ve been left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

Adrian Sobrino Moral, a 33-year-old factory worker, said it was hard to take in just how much the victims had lost in such a short space of time. 

“Just imagine leaving home to go to work then on your way back, the neighbours call to say your flat is on fire, that’s really tough. You spend your whole life working to save money then you lose everything and are suddenly left in the street,” he told AFPTV. 

“Nobody should have to go through that.”

Earlier, police forensic experts found another body inside the wreckage, the Spanish government’s delegation in Valencia wrote on X, saying the discovery “raised to 10 the total number of bodies found inside the building”. 

Delegation representative Pilar Bernabe told reporters that all the people reported missing had now been accounted for, with experts now starting on the “complex” task of identifying the dead. 

“We will keep looking,” she said, but “the number of victims we’ve found corresponds with the number of people listed as missing.” 

Identification of the victims “will be complicated because they will need to be identified with DNA tests”, she said, in a nod to the absolute voracity of the fire, indicating it was not possible to say how long that would take. 

The fire broke out around 5:30pm (1630 GMT) in one of the flats on the middle floors and within 30 minutes the blaze had consumed the entire building, no thanks to high winds of more than 50 kilometres per hour which also complicated firefighting efforts.

Such was the heat that the firemen could not enter the building and had to work only from the outside, managing to pluck a father and his daughter to safety from one of the upper balconies. 

They were only able to enter the blackened ruin of the residential block on Friday, smoke still wafting from its shattered windows and the once-white facade charred with the residue of smoke and flames.

Fifteen people were treated for injuries of varying degrees, including a seven-year-old child and seven firefighters, but their lives were not in danger.

A top official from Valencia’s Industrial Engineers Association said the fire had spread rapidly because the building was covered with highly combustible polyurethane cladding.