Friday 21 January 2022

POLITICO

POLITICO

I predicted the fall of journalistic institutions. Now it’s time to lift them up.

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:15 AM PST

John F. Harris is the founding editor of POLITICO and the author of Altitude, a column offering perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.

As we approached the 15th anniversary of POLITICO, I plunged into old files expecting to find a lot that would make me cringe.

Cringe, I did, looking at some of the early stories, replete with typos, clunky writing, strained premises. More cringing: The first edition of our publication — January 23, 2007 — with its high school newspaper design and a red-black logo announcing the arrival of "THE POLITICO." Just like in the early days of "TheFacebook," we soon dropped the "THE."

I was ready to flinch, but did not, when I returned to an old interview that I did with PressThink, a media criticism site. This ran in late 2006, a couple weeks after a colleague and I announced that we were leaving the Washington Post to start a new publication, and six weeks before the venture took flight. Reading old words, I found what seems to me now a fairly crisp articulation of what I believed then.https://ba867b303822d700f2b05ea203f591fb.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

My argument was that the old order of media in which I grew up — one defined by powerful institutions imbued with deep and sometimes suffocating institutional cultures — was acutely vulnerable to disruption. This presented insurgent forces of the sort we represented with an arresting opportunity — one that was exerting a magnetic pull on me.

"We live in an entrepreneurial age, not an institutional one," I asserted to interviewer Jay Rosen. "That's been true of many professions for quite a while, and increasingly (and perhaps somewhat belatedly) it is true of journalism. The people having the most satisfying careers, it seems to me, are those who create a distinct signature for their work — who add value to the public conversation through their individual talents — rather than relying mostly on the reputation and institutional gravity of the organization they work for."

Closely related to this belief in journalistic entrepreneurialism was a conviction that political reporting in particular was due for stylistic renovation. It needed to move away from the oracular voice-of-God tone that used to be commonplace, and come closer to the way reporters actually talk about the subject when they are with one another. This meant more attention to the motives and maneuvering of politicians, to the what-they-really-mean subtext of their official utterances, and more latitude for reportersto share their own voices — the humor, the accumulated insight, the penetrating assessments of what's actually happening beneath the bullshit.

Ben Smith, then a blogger with a rising profile in New York City political circles but not yet any wider reputation, later told me that he decided to join our new startup after reading the PressThink interview. Ben went on to become one of our best known writers in the early years. Then he left to be editor-in-chief of the then-fledgling BuzzFeed. Then he left that to become a widely followed media critic of the New York Times. The other day he announced that he was leaving that to start a new publication aimed at connecting a global audience. Each step on his itinerant path was in its own way a validation of the point I was making in late 2006.

This notion — that in the digital age institutions were losing much of their historic power to set an agenda while individual journalists were gaining it — was at the root of what became POLITICO. It is the same dynamic powering a rapidly growing list of news startups that have blossomed in the political and policy space in recent years (many of them with POLITICO veterans in leadership roles). It is the same dynamic powering the emergence of Substack and its growing roster of writers. It is even the same dynamic powering the remolding of legacy news organizations like the New York Times around star talent like Andrew Ross Sorkin or Maggie Haberman, another POLITICO alum. I was wrong about lots of small and even not-so-small matters over the course of the next 15 years. But I was right about this big thing.

Let me mark the milestone of POLITICO turning 15, and the larger trend that made our success possible, with a comment about the next 15 years. It would be a very good thing if this next period of media history marks the slowing and even partial reversal of that trend. It is time for the pendulum to swing back in the direction of institutional power.

This is not quite a prediction, but it is something more than idle wish. With a strong media economy (at least in some arenas, including Washington, D.C.), we are seeing news organizations enjoy a financial prosperity that is wholly different than the climate of 2007. The Times, whose future once seemed darkly clouded, has revived itself with a robust consumer subscription model. Amid a media bull market, POLITICO owner and co-founder Robert Allbritton in 2021 chose to sell our publication for a reported billion dollars. Our ambitious new owner, the German media firm Axel Springer, has credible plans to expand our content and double our value in the coming years.

Financial power is the indispensable prerequisite for the kind of power that interests me more: Agenda-setting power. This is where media institutions, both established ones and the relative newcomers like POLITICO, need to reclaim ground.

The largest problem with the dilution of institutional power in an age of media hyper-saturation is that it is a gift to public officials seeking to evade accountability. Every day during the Donald Trump years, and still fairly often during Joe Biden's attempted return to normality, I see stories that 20 or 30 years ago would have stirred weekslong or even monthslong media uproars. It is easy enough now for any politician who doesn't like some story with a troubling revelation to denounce the platform as biased, to rally supporters who don't care much whether the story is true or not, and rely on vagrant public attention to move on to the next thing.

One thing a powerful media institution can do that the most talented writer on Substack, or even a small startup site, cannot do is marshal sustained focus from a wide swath of the public on a subject that deserves it. An example is what the late Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post opinion page, aided by former executive editor Martin Baron and publisher Fred Ryan (a key member of the early POLITICO gang), did in response to the October 2018 murder by the Saudi Arabian regime of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump wanted to move on. So did Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman. But no well-informed person could not be aware of the Khashoggi atrocity because the Post has kept its editorial drumbeat going for three years. In this same category, if I may, I would include POLITICO's relentless focus during the Trump years on accountability reporting about his cabinet. These stories, though far removed from the gaudy show in the Oval Office, led to multiple resignations and scuttled nominations.

Powerful media institutions can defend themselves in lawsuits, and stand up to intimidation from public officials, corporate interests and advertisers in a way that smaller entities and individuals cannot. Our new owner once said goodbye — temporarily, as it turned out, but no way to know that at the time — to tens of millions of dollars in advertising after critical coverage of Volkswagen in Die Welt.

These institutions can also help counteract one of the infuriating hazards of modern life — the shredding of collective memory. Amid the barrage of content, who even remembers what they were indignant about the day before yesterday? Self-confident and self-disciplined editors can help the reader regain his or her bearings.

Finally — maybe? — news organizations with a strong rudder amid the cultural and ideological storms of the moment may be able to revive the notion of a public square, in which people have shared acceptance of hard facts even as they argue about the proper response to these facts. Truth be told, there is not a hell of a lot of evidence lately for this. It's clear that many readers and viewers do not even want such an approach to news. Still, I think a majority of the audience does. It is hard to see a democracy functioning for the long haul without an appreciation that arguments about what should be in the future must start with agreement about what present reality actually is.

This ideal, which is quite different than tepid neutrality or equivocating both-sides-ism, is what POLITICO has aspired to for 15 years. This includes the early days, when we were a startup with 50 employees, to the present, as a global news operation approaching a thousand employees with reportorial assets across nine time zones on both sides of the Atlantic. I expect we will seek to defend and vindicate the same ideal in the next 15.

Some of the words above may seem a bit abstract. Of course there is nothing abstract about my feelings toward POLITICO and this wild ride that so many people shared in over the past 15 years.

How to convey the visceral intensity of that first year? They were exceedingly long days and short nights. It was a kaleidoscopic blur of contradictory experience: exhilaration, fear, celebration, the knotted stomach and racing pulse from constant reminders that we were only steps away from disaster. We had put our professional reputations on the line for a venture that looked quite fragile from the outside and much more fragile from the inside.

I smile these days when I hear of media types announcing startups and then taking many months or even a year to actually launch. My co-founder Jim VandeHei and I had two months after leaving the Post to hire a staff, assign and edit stories, and race the clock to have a (barely) functional content management system to publish our work.

Yet, soon enough, there they were, tiny blades shooting up from the ground that suggested this thing might actually work. A cable news screen with a banner saying "Politico reports … ." Presidential campaigns dealing regularly with our reporters.

At the outset, we had no illusion that we could compete on even terms with our old colleagues at legacy publications. What we sought instead was the journalistic equivalent of asymmetric warfare — guerillas taking on larger forces by darting quickly and opportunistically into stories where we might have a chance to win.

Among our early reporters, Ben Smith was behind only Mike Allen, the original author of our Playbook newsletter, in terms of influence. Some of Smith's early work captures the nature of our micro-obsessions in those days. He sent traffic soaring with a short, funny item on how pretty boy presidential candidate John Edwards was paying $400 for his haircuts, and charging them to his campaign. (This was later revealed to be a leak from Barack Obama's campaign.) But the drive for being a step ahead on incremental stories of interest mainly to political obsessives burned Smith, and us, when he posted an item saying that Edwards was dropping out of the campaign to support his wife's battle with cancer. I knew his source, and it was entirely reasonable to assume the source was right. But the source was wrong, and so were we. (Or, as I later joked with Ben, not wrong — just months premature.) The Post cackled gleefully, "Web Site Rushes to Crack the Story And Ends Up With Egg on Its Face."

Our focus on this kind of stuff was always a means to an end. The goal was to create a platform that was larger and more substantial — not just covering political sausage-making but illuminating the larger purposes of politics and the work of governance. But that wasn't always obvious to the naked eye.

In 2010, President Barack Obama at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner did a riff on our "focus on trivial issues, political fodder, gossip." He imagined our coverage of momentous events in history: "Lincoln Saves Union But Can He Save House Majority?" "Japan Surrenders — Where's The Bounce?" At the dinner, Patty Stonesifer, the spouse of journalist Michael Kinsley, gave me an elbow and whispered urgently, and wisely, "People have to see you laughing!" Apparently my frozen expression looked like a scowl. I was not at all offended by Obama's routine. What my face reflected astonishment. What still seemed to me like a quirky and precarious publication was being taken seriously enough to be roasted at a venue like this.

Early shallow successes made more consequential long-term success possible. This included POLITICO's march into policy coverage, which is now supported by hundreds of reporters and editors in the United States and Europe, and funded by high-value subscriptions purchased by policy professionals. Last year, POLITICO purchased E&E News, whose expertise on energy and environmental issues allows us to attack what is likely the century's most important story — climate change and efforts to halt or mitigate its most catastrophic effects.

A paradox: As hard as those early start-up years were, when the possibility of failure seemed so near, the later years were sometimes harder, as we grappled with the reality of success.

What I've liked most about 15 years with POLITICO: Friendship, laughter, shared commitment to important work. What I've like least: The fact that some good and talented people tended to get lost in the hectic swirl of a startup, and disagreements among us at the top over power, money, recognition.

These tensions reached a peak early in 2016. "Politico implodes," read the Post headline, in words that are tattooed in my memory, as several of my co-founders announced their departure.

As unwelcome as the moment was, it was a usefully clarifying moment for the larger project of institution-building. The most common outcome for media startups, even ones that draw sizzling notice at the outset, is to streak like a comet across the sky for a season, then fade. Gawker is clinging to life. Huffington Post is a shadow of what it was for a while.

It fell to a new team of leaders, most of them not around during the start-up years, to make sure the Post's headline turned out to be wrong. This team, of which I am proud to be part, passed the test of building a genuinely durable enterprise. Within five years the publication had more than doubled in revenue, and turned from what had been increasingly worrisome losses to strong and disciplined profitability.

Twin questions are woven throughout many of the developments in the media landscape in recent years. What is the essential engine of impact — is it talented individuals or the institutional platforms that create the conditions for these individuals to be successful? And, if successful, how should the rewards be shared?

People who believe in the essential value of institutional platforms, as I do, have often labored to get the balance right. In my early days in the profession, there was often a stark imbalance at top publications, though nobody seemed to pay it much mind.

When these news organizations began to be disrupted, starting nearly a generation ago, it's at least somewhat fair to say they had it coming. Many resisted embracing the digital age, and instead focused on plainly futile efforts to mitigate its effects on their core business model. In addition, for many years they had become accustomed to reaping vast financial rewards, while expecting even senior editorial talent to be content to be paid heavily in psychic currency — the prestige that came from being in a top role at a highly respected publication.

As different people have reported on the POLITICO story over the years, it is frequently asserted that Jim VandeHei and I in 2006 took our ideas for building a new platform to cover politics to our bosses at the Washington Post, and they foolishly turned us away. That tale is not quite right. In fact, they encouraged us to stay and build there, with incentives that were generous in the context of the Post at that time. Don Graham was six years away from selling the Post to Jeff Bezos. He was then and remains still among the people I most respect in my career. But there were logical reasons for leaving to join Robert Allbritton in a wholly new venture. An established place like the Post, struggling to retain as much of its old business model as possible while groping warily to build a new one, could not in those days credibly promise a genuinely entrepreneurial culture to support new projects.

Graham had offered me a small share of Post stock, as part of other incentives. He said it could mature into a nice bit of change, but quipped, "It won't necessarily pay for your kids' college." I understood the remark as a genial snap of the towel, and smiled. I also thought to myself, "Well, Ann and I have three young kids, and something's going to have to pay for college."

In fairness, neither Graham nor I had any reason to anticipate the dynamics that soon would alter — even distort — the economics of Washington media. At the time, after two decades at the paper, I was pretty well up in the Post's newsroom org chart and pay scale and felt I was doing fine.

But that was before the Washington media environment became immersed in an intense competition for editorial talent. And it was before the trend I described in PressThink, about journalists fashioning their own brands independent of the platform they worked for, really took hold. Now, almost every day brings new churn: A top writer for the New York Times is departing for a better offer at the Atlantic; a top writer at the Post is leaving for the Times, and another for CBS; a couple talented reporters at POLITICO are leaving for NBC.

I surely know more detail about who's getting what in Washington journalism than I am at liberty to share. I can say that it is now common for reporters with strong reputations even fairly early in their careers to be making double or more what the most senior print journalists were back in 2006.

That's a good thing, right? Journalists are finally changing the balance of power between the talent who creates the content and the employer who publishes it. Well, yes — in a limited way. The reality is that the gains are often made by people with a demonstrated talent for driving conversational buzz. Unfortunately, the compensation trend among a narrow sector of Washington journalists is not a great indicator of the broader health of journalism or the vibrancy of the institutions necessary to sustain it. Still, it's a far better landscape than existed 15 years ago.

If established institutions had it coming with their challenges a generation ago, however, I can't help but wonder: Who has it coming now?

If you consider just the startups of recent years in which POLITICO alumni have played critical roles during launch they include BuzzFeed, The Intercept, Axios, Puck, Punchbowl, Grid and Smith's still unnamed new venture. A revived media arena, in which lots of venture capital and advertising dollars are sloshing around Washington and New York, creates abundant opportunities. But it hasn't transformed the fundamental reality that staying economically healthy for the long term in the media business is very challenging work. So is illuminating the nature of government and corporate power through the kind of journalism that good economic health — and institutional power —can support.

Fifteen years at POLITICO have offered regular reminders that life tends to fluctuate like a sine wave. At the top of a sine wave people tend to assume they are uniquely smart. At the bottom they tend to assume they are uniquely unlucky.

I can wish friends at these new entrants good luck while competing vigorously against them, just as I do with friends at historic institutions like the Post and the Times.

In the end, what we wish for is not good luck for any particular organization but for the profession as a whole — and even more the audience we serve. For 15 years, those of us at POLITICO have worked hard and mostly had fun — a very good combo — trying to serve a growing audience. Let's see where the next 15 years take us.

US charges Belarus with air piracy over reporter’s arrest last year

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 12:15 AM PST

The U.S. on Thursday charged four Belarusian government officials with aircraft piracy over the diversion of a commercial airplane last May to arrest an opposition journalist.

The charges, announced by federal prosecutors in New York, recounted how the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius on May 23 last year was forced to land because of a “bomb threat” in Minsk by Belarusian traffic control authorities.

Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers warned the pilots there was a bomb threat against their aircraft and ordered it to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military sent a MiG-29 fighter jet in an attempt to encourage the pilot to comply with the orders.

The plane remained for seven hours on the tarmac, during which Roman Protasevich, the 26-year-old Belarusian political opposition activist and journalist who was on the plane, was arrested with his partner Sofia Sapega.

“Since the dawn of powered flight, countries around the world have cooperated to keep passenger airplanes safe. The defendants shattered those standards by diverting an airplane to further the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll said this fake threat would endanger flights, as “the next pilot who gets a distress call from a tower may doubt the authenticity of the emergency.”

The indictment comes a day after the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) released its report on the incident, which stressed that the threat was “deliberately false.”

Protasevich ran a messaging app that helped organize mass demonstrations against Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko faced a wave of protests against his authoritarian regime and claims of a landslide election win in 2020.

What you need to know about Italy’s presidential race

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 07:02 PM PST

What is the Quirinale?

The Quirinale palace in Rome is the seat of Italy’s president, and the name is often used to refer to the presidency in general.

What does Italy’s president do?

It is largely a ceremonial role, involving signing laws and presiding over the judiciary’s independence. But in times of crisis — which abound in Italy — the president has sweeping powers. He or she can dissolve the legislative chambers, give mandates to form a government, and appoint technical cabinets.

How is Italy's president elected?

The president is elected every seven years by a joint session of parliament plus “great electors,” or regional delegates. This time 1,009 electors will cast their vote: 951 senators and MPs, along with 58 regional delegates. Any name needs a two-thirds majority (673/1,009) in the first three rounds of voting, after which a simple majority (505/1,009) is sufficient. Ballots are secret.

When is the election held?

The voting will begin on Monday, January 24, at 3 p.m. The aim is to conclude the election before February 3, when the mandate of the incumbent Sergio Mattarella expires. If more rounds prove necessary, he would stay on in the interim. 

Will coronavirus affect the vote?

Voting will be carried out in rounds of 50 to avoid overcrowding the chamber. By law, people who test positive for COVID-19 won't be able to vote. There are currently 29 MPs and six to eight senators in this condition, according to parliament speaker Roberto Fico, but there could be more by the time the election starts. That could impact the outcome of the vote.

MPs who aren't vaccinated will be able to vote following a negative swab. But a legal requirement to show proof of vaccination or recovery from the coronavirus to board a plane or ship is proving problematic for electors who aren't vaccinated. There are five such electors who would need to travel from Sardinia or Sicily and who may not be able to vote.

Silvio Berlusconi is a long shot for Italian president — but a likely kingmaker

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 07:01 PM PST

ROME — Silvio Berlusconi's moonshot at the Italian presidency is about to come crashing down to earth — but at least everyone’s watching.

The three-time prime minister, known for hosting Italy’s most famous sex parties since Caligula, is bidding to become the next Italian president when the incumbent Sergio Mattarella's seven-year term ends at the end of this month.

Yet his unorthodox backdoor canvassing operation, codenamed Operation Squirrel, seems to have fallen flat. His self-aggrandizing newspaper ads and attempts to lobby the lawmakers and regional delegates who vote for president have trashed the convention of reserve among presidential hopefuls and even drawn some ridicule. 

"He introduced himself as Mr. Bunga Bunga," Bianca Laura Granato, an independent senator who received a phone call from Berlusconi, said in a radio interview. Granato claimed she laughed but was not ultimately convinced.

Berlusconi, not known for his humility, has been pushing some outlandish claims about his achievements during his campaign. One full-page newspaper ad last week credited him with ending the Cold War, referring to a 2002 deal Berlusconi set up between the U.S. and Russia in Rome — more than a decade after the Cold War ended. And it boasts that he received the votes of 200 million Italians. There are about 60 million Italians in Italy.

"Most appreciated and authoritative Italian leader … capable of personal friendships with world leaders," the ad gushed. “Friend of everyone and enemy of no one." Predictably, Twitter had a field day.

While Berlusconi's achievements over a 65-year career in business and politics may be notable, few believe the 85-year-old politician can ascend to the venerable status of Italian president, an influential if often ceremonial post traditionally reserved for establishment figures with unimpeachable résumés.

But his insistence on running, and strong-arming his allies into supporting him, is blocking negotiations on an alternative candidate that could secure cross-party support. Even Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the most qualified candidate, has so far been obstructed by Berlusconi's positioning.

Yet that insistence has also raised the possibility that he could ultimately choose the winner, pivoting his supporters toward another candidate at the last minute. Essentially, it has ensured Berlusconi’s place at the center of proceedings, right where he likes it.

Comeback king

After a resounding rise to prime minister in 1994, Berlusconi dominated Italian politics for two decades. On the international stage, he was notorious for his gaffes and awkward jokes — comparing MEP Martin Schulz to a concentration camp guard, calling Barack Obama “suntanned.” In Italy, though, his everyman style had populist appeal.

After being forced out of office in 2011, at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, Berlusconi found himself entrenched in legal battles, including a trial over accusations he had sex with an underage nightclub dancer. He was banned from public office after being convicted of tax fraud.

But he remained leader of the Forza Italia party and in recent years has staged a remarkable comeback. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2019 (where he has skipped more voting sessions than any other MEP).

Giovanni Orsina, a professor of political history at Luiss University in Rome and author of a book on Berlusconi, attributed the politician’s survival to his "tenacity and vitality of persona, access to TV and money," which has enabled him to maintain a strong image, "despite all his misadventures."

Meanwhile, European leaders have increasingly shown that Berlusconi's unwaveringly pro-EU position makes him a useful ally to counter the surge of nationalist and populist sentiment in Italy and the European Parliament.

He helped vote European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen into office, and when his party entered the government of former European Central Bank President Draghi last year, his rehabilitation into the European establishment was all but complete. The presidency would be the icing on the cake.

Even Manfred Weber, leader of the European Parliament’s large, center-right political group, last week endorsed Berlusconi as "a strong leader" who "deserved the opportunity to show that he can unite."

Divisive

Berlusconi's allies insist he is well-qualified for the role.

"He has long experience in business, sport, politics and international relations, and was the longest in government of any Italian prime minister,” Senator Maurizio Gasparri, a former minister in Berlusconi's government, told POLITICO. “Whatever he has done in life, he has been the best."

A recent poll by Nando Pagnoncelli for La 7 channel placed Berlusconi second in the race with the public, with 14 percent backing him as Italy's new president.

Mindful of the fact that Italy’s current coalition government includes Berlusconi’s party — other leaders like Enrico Letta of the center-left Democrats have exercised restraint in opposing Berlusconi. Letta merely called him "divisive."

Gasparri pointed out that Berlusconi had often cooperated with the left in government: "Until a few weeks ago [Berlusconi] was eulogized by the left, who kept saying how wise he has become. Now he is their enemy, a criminal."

But opponents argue that the presidency, Italy's highest office, is supposed to be the ultimate political arbiter. The president is head of the judiciary, guarantor of the constitution and appoints the prime minister — a vital task in moments of political gridlock. Berlusconi, they point out, is one of the most polarizing figures in recent Italian history and entered politics at least partly as a means to protect himself from judicial probes. Anti-Berlusconi activists have demonstrated against his desired comeback.

Fondazione Basso, a left-wing research institute, published a petition published this week signed by three former presidents of the Constitutional Court of Italy that argued Berlusconi is "the protagonist of a long conflict which has divided our country." His past criminal convictions and ongoing legal troubles are disqualifying, they added.

Berlusconi, they said, "does not have the qualities to carry out the functions of the head of state. We see his candidacy as an offense to the dignity of the republic and millions of Italian citizens."

‘Minimal’ chances

Ultimately, though, the only voters Berlusconi needs to win over are among the 1,009 parliamentarians and regional delegates who elect the president.

If he runs, Berlusconi has the support (in theory) of his allies on the right: Giorgia Meloni, who leads the Brothers of Italy, and Matteo Salvini, who helms the League. The alliance has a long-standing pact to run together in elections. But the right doesn’t have the numbers to win outright, meaning they need support from independents.

One possibility could be that Berlusconi benefits from anxiety over whether a Draghi presidency — and inevitably a new prime minister — would fracture Italy’s unwieldy coalition government, prompting early elections.

With parliament set to be downsized by one-third after the next election, many Italian lawmakers unlikely to be reselected are mindful of voting tactically to keep Draghi in place until the legislature's scheduled end in 2023.

Still, to win, Berlusconi would have to win over nearly all of the undecided independents, in addition to every single voter on the right.

Currently, the right has 452 votes on paper, short of the needed 505 for a majority. Political scientist Roberto D'Alimonte, founder of the Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali, calculated that even with no defections, Berlusconi would still need 53 of 60 possibly available independents.

That makes his chances of becoming president "minimal," D'Alimonte said.  

Vittorio Sgarbi, a former culture minister who said he has been helping Berlusconi tap supporters, appeared to land a death blow on Tuesday, saying the numbers could not be found. He declared the operation over. “Everything is at a stand-still,” he said. A representative for Berlusconi said Sgarbi had not been officially asked to canvas.

Kingmaker?

Now Berlusconi must decide: Does he bet the house, staking his reputation on possibly becoming president knowing he will almost certainly fail? Or does he withdraw and play the role of kingmaker and put forward a non-partisan candidate like Draghi?

"He can now initiate the president,” Sgarbi told POLITICO. “This is the best possible result.”

The Berlusconi representative said that the long-time Italian politician, as the best known international figure on the right, had been put forward by his allies as their candidate but was still considering whether or not to stand.

Assuming Berlusconi ultimately does step back, his influence over Salvini and Meloni could be transferrable to another candidate, according to Orsina, the historian.  

"He is in a strategic position, with important leverage, which he is exploiting for his own candidacy, but if it doesn't work, that leverage also puts him in a strong position when it comes to proposing other candidates,” he said.

Timing is now paramount, Orsina added: "The sooner he withdraws the easier it will be for the center right to maintain control. If he withdraws and proposes a strong candidate such as Draghi it will be hard to oppose him.”

It may not be the career capstone Berlusconi had hoped for, but it does leave the consummate performer, once again, in a position he can’t resist: The center of attention.

How Boris Johnson’s looseness with the truth infected the government

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 07:00 PM PST

LONDON — The person at the top sets the tone — and Boris Johnson’s loose relationship with the truth is starting to trickle down.

For weeks the U.K. government has been gripped by a scandal about whether parties were held in the prime ministerial Downing Street residence amid the pandemic, and whether Johnson knew those parties breached the lockdown rules he himself set. 

The PM and his aides insist he had no idea that rules might have been broken. It could be a resignation matter if he did.

When reports of parties first emerged, Downing Street aides sought to obfuscate with claims they did not "recognize these reports, and all COVID rules have been followed." After a video of aides joking about a get-together was leaked, Johnson continued to insist he was assured there was no party and appointed a top civil servant to investigate. 

When it then emerged that the top civil servant in question, Simon Case, also attended parties — reports that had been outright denied by his department — he too was forced to stand down from the probe.

Some Whitehall insiders fear Johnson — who began his career fabricating newspaper quotes and was previously sacked from a frontbench role for lying about an affair — is having a corrosive effect on the whole machine.

A serving senior civil servant, when asked about officials defending lies, said: “Under this government it’s gotten much, much worse." The person insisted some departments are less honest than others, and that some in Johnson’s team had been “throwing the civil service code to the wind.”

That code, treated as Whitehall’s bible, states that officials must act with integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. But all of that becomes much more difficult when the person at the top of the chain appears to adhere to different rules — or none at all. 

Alexandra Hall Hall, who after decades in government quit a senior U.K. diplomatic post in December 2019 with a blast at Johnson’s Brexit policy, said it was “inevitable” the prime minister’s relationship with the truth “will have infected the rest of the system.”

A siege mentality can set in when the government is under extreme fire. Officials, meant to stay far from the political fray, can end up parroting the claims that come from the top, genuinely unaware of whether they are conduits for lies or the truth.

"We've all let standards slip a little bit," the serving official said. But they added: “I think the blatant lies do come from the political side more than us."

‘Close to the wind'

Others are quick to defend civil servants while arguing that an unreliable political team at the top can make things more difficult.

They say the ongoing scandals, kept alive through obfuscation, are a distraction for decision-makers who should be focused on improving things for the public.

“If the prime minister has lied, the main effect of that is to put other ministers and officials in a very difficult position," said a former senior official. But they said: "I don’t think it automatically infects the whole government machine and turns the machine into a machine of lies.”

Civil servants will need to work out how to avoid repeating outright lies, while also making sure not to disown the PM, the person explained. It’s a subtle dance.

Some get into scrapes while battling what’s seen as a wider looseness with the truth from Downing Street. Johnson’s top standards adviser had to revisit an investigation about how a refurbishment of the prime minister’s flat was paid for after text messages later emerged that Johnson claimed not to have remembered.

Some see a wider trend toward politicizing the impartial civil service. They point to former MPs and allies (and even lovers) handed official jobs at public expense. Such appointments risk eroding trust in the whole government operation.

"The machine has been subverted," the former official said.

But fears about the politicization of the civil service are nothing new, with governments of all stripes accused of the same for decades. For example, there was concern when former Prime Minister Tony Blair handed his top media adviser Alastair Campbell the power to direct civil servants.

“I don’t think that in terms of the bleeding into Whitehall that it’s necessarily far worse than previous governments," said Alex Thomas, an expert at the Institute for Government and a former senior civil servant himself.

Indeed, a former political adviser who served under Johnson said civil servants felt Downing Street was “prone to flying close to the wind,” but that "people would say exactly the same thing about No. 10 under Blair. People have always taken what comes out of No. 10 with a pinch.”

The same person noted, however, that even if government officials are honest, a view among journalists and the public of the opposite is just as harmful, since the British system is based on trust: “If a perception has taken hold that the truth doesn’t matter and lying is an everyday occurrence, then that is damaging to the perception.”

To some of Johnson’s critics, it has become gospel that he isn’t straight with the public. A viral social media video challenging a host of his claims has racked up more than 40 million views and is emblematic of the critique — often bundled up with general opposition to Brexit.

That perception matters abroad too, said Hall Hall, the former diplomat: “If our government acquires a reputation for lying to our own people, our allies will also start to question how much they can trust what we are saying. So the ramifications go far beyond the immediate issue of lying.”

But some of those who’ve worked with him view Johnson very differently and see him as an antidote to typical political spin.

Another former Johnson colleague told POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast last year that the debate over the prime minister’s own truth-telling was “too nuanced for our increasingly rabid age,” and that some of his detractors were by now unwilling to have their minds changed.

“As I see it, he is more authentic and profoundly honest about who he is, what he isn't and what he wants to do than almost any other politician,” the ex-colleague said. “But like all of them, he has said things that turn out not to have been 100 percent accurate and his critics will never see beyond that.”

Press team pressure

There is a particular concern in Whitehall about civil servants who have to deal directly with the press as scandals rumble on. Journalists are sure government spokespeople, who are meant to be impartial, have been part of the problem when it comes to being straight about the parties. But there have been other scrapes too.

For example, political journalist Anna Mikhailova took aim at civil service press officers in the trade department after she was fed a claim that later turned out to be untrue. She said some impartial officials were starting to “use their position to obfuscate and mislead.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "All civil servants carry out their role in line with the civil service code."

Thomas, from the Institute for Government, said departmental press officers were feeling the pressure. “Some of the strains around ethics and standards that this administration has found itself in has put a particular strain on the civil service, and particularly some of those that have to present information," he explained. 

“Of course, you’re in the bunker together and you want to do your best,” he added. “But one of the reassurances that the public should have about ethics and standards in government is that civil servants will act within the law and within the standards that are set in the civil service code."

Officials should feel able to push back against a minister who wants to be loose with the truth, Thomas said — but that can be tough, and depends on the characters involved: "The tone that leaders set clearly shapes what is considered to be acceptable or not acceptable."

The situation has already led to finger-pointing about the perceived obsequiousness of the current Cabinet, many of whom are staunch Johnson allies.

One former minister said the civil service had "held the line as best they can" but that lies had "bled across" the top ministerial ranks. "It’s almost like the truth has lost its value as a commodity," the person said. “If you’re a stickler for the truth or integrity, you’re a bit of an outlier now."

The former minister argued that nothing will change while the top ranks of ministers keep their powder dry. "All the secretaries of state want to impress him," they said of Johnson. "And if you’re going to impress an individual who totally devalues the truth then you’re going to take part in that process as well."

Downing Street did not respond by publication time.

Jack Blanchard contributed reporting.

Sun, sea, sex and scandal on Europe’s party island

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 07:00 PM PST

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.

Do you have to wear a face mask at a foam party? Asking for a politician.

Europe’s party island, Ibiza (apologies to the runner-up, the Isle of Man), is back in the news because yet another politician couldn’t resist its charms, sunshine and buy one, get one free offers on flaming sambucas.

Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French education minister, unveiled his pandemic plan for schools from a college in Villefranche-sur-Mer. No, wait, that’s not right. From his office? Wrong again. It was from — and you’re ahead of me here — Ibiza.

Blanquer was "working remotely with his team," government spokesman Gabriel Attal said and was on the island "for four days in a private capacity." A quick Google search reveals there isn’t a nightclub called Private Capacity in Ibiza although there is one called Privilege.

Ibiza has form when it comes to political impropriety, of course, having lent its name to the scandal that brought down the first, but not the last, Sebastian Kurz-led government in Austria.

Ibiza-gate, you’ll doubtless recall, involved Heinz-Christian Strache, the far-right leader of Kurz’s junior coalition partner, trying to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman he believed to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch. To be fair to Strache, let those of us who haven’t tried to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman we believed to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch cast the first stone.

The next political scandal to involve Ibiza is hard to predict. Who am I kidding, of course it isn’t. If we wait three, maybe four days, footage of Boris Johnson, his wife, his entire Cabinet and a Tory-supporting pop star — Gary Barlow? — in Ibiza will surely surface and Johnson will claim he didn’t realize that a foam party was an actual party and not a work event.

Deputy heads will doubtless soon roll in the U.K. as Johnson tries to deflect the blame for all that partying onto others as part of what the prime minister has dubbed Operation Save Big Dog. It’s an apt nickname for Johnson as he isn’t allowed on the furniture in Downing Street in case he soils himself.

But it isn’t the best nickname for a British prime minister, as that’s either “The turf macaroni” — nickname of Augustus FitzRoy, PM from 1768 to 1770 — or “God’s only mistake” — nickname of William Gladstone, PM on four occasions between 1868 and 1894.

Another ex-PM, David Cameron — whose best nickname is “Hameron” because of claims that as a student he put his genitals inside the mouth of a dead pig — was criticized back in 2013 for taking a holiday in, you guessed it, Ibiza.

CAPTION COMPETITION

“The German government’s ‘bring your grandad to work day’ initiative was only a partial success.”

Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter @pdallisonesque

Last week we gave you this photo:

Thanks for all the entries. Here's the best from our postbag (there's no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).

"That’s the last time I’m photographed with a koala," by Rory Watson.

Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.

UK Labour says Boris Johnson ‘incapable of leading’ in Ukraine crisis

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 07:00 PM PST

LONDON — Boris Johnson is incapable of providing leadership during "the most serious security crisis since the Cold War" as Russian troops amass on the border with Ukraine, according to the U.K.'s opposition Labour Party.

In an interview with POLITICO following a visit to Kyiv, Labour's Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey took aim at the embattled U.K. prime minister as Johnson fights anger in his own party over claims of lockdown-breaching parties in government.

Healey said it was an "embarrassment" that "with Europe facing the most serious security crisis since the Cold War, Britain has a non-functioning prime minister."

And he accused Johnson of "ducking and diving to try to deal with the mess that he’s created around Downing Street parties" while being "incapable of playing the statesman role and offering the British leadership that’s required."

Healey, whose party was accused of taking a softer line against the Kremlin under its previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, insisted Labour now wants to work with the government over Ukraine to maintain a "unity of Western purpose and commitment so that there will be massive consequences for Putin if he does invade Ukraine again."

He said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss — who have made punchy interventions this week on the threat to Ukraine — were both doing their jobs, but contrasted that with the prime minister.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: "The prime minister has been deeply engaged on this issue throughout, and was one of the first world leaders to raise concerns about Russian hostilities in a speech at Mansion House in November, along with Nord Stream 2.”

They described Johnson as having “a close personal relationship” with Ukrainian President Zelensky and noted he had spoken to U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and others about this issue “on numerous occasions.”

Johnson chaired a “lengthy discussion” on Ukraine at Cabinet this week, the spokesperson added.

‘Special responsibility’

Labour backed the military assistance announced this week by Wallace. The U.K. is supplying short-range anti-tank missiles for self-defence and a small team of British troops to provide training.

Fears are growing of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as troops gather in tens of thousands near the border and diplomatic efforts fail to shift the dial. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Germany Thursday in a show of solidarity with NATO allies following ultimately unproductive talks in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna earlier this month.

Russia's Vladimir Putin, who insists he is not planning to invade, has made a series of demands of the West, insisting Ukraine should never be allowed to join NATO and that it abandons military activity in Eastern Europe.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Johnson spoke about the need to stand “squarely” behind the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine and warned if Russia were to make any incursion into Ukraine of any scale that would be “a disaster.”

Healey, whose trip to Kyiv last week saw him meet Ukrainian ministers and diplomats, said Britain has "a special responsibility" to stand up for Ukraine as one of the guarantors with Russia and the U.S. of the 1994 Budapest agreement, which gave Ukraine its sovereignty and territorial borders. 

Taking aim at the Kremlin, he said Russia's "continuous aggression has been counterproductive for Putin and driven Ukraine much more strongly in the direction of democracy, towards EU membership and towards NATO membership." 

Labour’s shift

The shadow defence secretary, who also served in Corbyn's shadow Cabinet as housing spokesman, also sought to address the Labour Party's shift on defense since Keir Starmer became leader. 

He said Labour would not be able to win an election "if we can’t rebuild some of the trust and confidence that Labour in government would be strong enough to defend the country."

Asked whether his party could turn the page on what some in Labour and government ranks saw as equivocation over Russia's actions after the Salisbury attack, Healey responded: "If people saw that in Labour before 2019 they don’t see it now. They can’t see it now."

While he stressed the importance of standing with the government over Ukraine, the shadow spokesperson also took issue with wider British defense priorities. 

"We’ve become much more interested in using our military where the business opportunities may lie in the Indo-Pacific than where there are the greatest threats to us and our allies," he claimed. "The government must rethink that priority that they set out in their integrated review. And I think Ukraine tells us that that was a misjudgment."

Downing Street has been approached for comment.

UK consumer group: Tinder’s pricing algorithm discriminates against gay users and over-30s

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 04:01 PM PST

Online dating is tough — and potentially costly, depending on your age or sexual orientation.

Gay and lesbian people, as well as people over the age of 30, have to cough up significantly more to use the premium features of dating app Tinder, according to a study by British consumer group Which?

Tinder, which has surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, charges for additional functionality, such as giving users an unlimited number of likes, or letting them match with people located in other countries.  

The consumer group used almost 200 mystery shoppers to create profiles on the dating app. On average, gay and lesbian users were asked to pay over 10 percent more than bisexual users, and over 8 percent more than heterosexual users for the premium service. Younger gay and lesbian users aged between 18 and 29 paid 37 percent more than their heterosexual peers and 30 percent more than bisexual users. 

Older users were also asked to pay more. Users aged 30 to 49 paid 48 percent more than younger users, while those over 50 faced a 46-percent-higher bill. 

The study did not find price differences between genders or users living in rural or urban locations. 

"In the U.K. it’s illegal to charge someone of one sexual preference different amounts to someone with a different sexual preference. We were very surprised to find that it does suggest possible discrimination and a potential breach of U.K. law by Tinder," said Katie Alpin, head of strategic insight at Which?

The findings of Which? "show a clear pattern and the effects are big enough to make real-world differences to consumers using the app," Alpin continued. 

Opaque algorithms

Which? accuses Tinder of using opaque and unpredictable algorithms, and not letting users provide explicit consent to their data being processed in this way.

The consumer group has filed a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to investigate further.

"Organisations must use personal data lawfully, fairly and transparently. That means organisations must only use people's data in ways they would reasonably expect, and be clear with people about why they need their personal data and what they will do with it," a spokesperson for the ICO said in a statement. The authority has said it has received Which?'s report and will "assess the information provided."

A spokesperson for Tinder said Which?'s claims that the company's pricing structure discriminates by sexual orientation are “categorically untrue.”

In a blog post, Tinder called Which?'s research "deeply flawed" and criticized the study's methodology. The company also said it offers discounts for users aged 28 and younger.

Tinder has faced fire from consumer groups before. In 2019 it settled a class-action lawsuit in California for charging users aged 30 and over double the standard premium fee. The company pledged to stop the pricing practice in California, but not elsewhere. In 2020, Australian consumer group Choice found that over-30s were charged more than double that of younger users. 

"We need firms to face up to the fact that if you’re using complicated pricing algorithms, you need to be ready to defend those. The important thing is that we have a system where firms can be held accountable when their pricing practices result in unfairness and potentially unlawful practices," Alpin said. 

Alpin said Which? is also concerned about similar practices that are happening in the insurance market. 

"These kinds of pricing practices are potentially going to be a bigger issue going forward as more and more companies choose to use complicated forms of personalized pricing," she continued. 

This article is part of POLITICO's premium Tech policy coverage: Pro Technology. Our expert journalism and suite of policy intelligence tools allow you to seamlessly search, track and understand the developments and stakeholders shaping EU Tech policy and driving decisions impacting your industry. Email pro@politico.eu with the code 'TECH' for a complimentary trial.

UK warns Russia that Ukraine invasion would lead to ‘quagmire’

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 02:33 PM PST

LONDON — Ukraine could descend into a "quagmire" like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan unless Moscow abandons plans for a military incursion there, Britain's foreign secretary is set to warn.

In a speech in Australia Friday, Liz Truss will call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in "meaningful discussions" and "desist and step back from Ukraine before he makes a massive strategic mistake," according to extracts released in advance by her office.

As many as 100,000 Russian troops remain at the Ukrainian border, despite warnings from U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders of serious consequences in the event of an invasion. Moscow has also begun moving troops to Belarus, Ukraine's northern neighbor, for joint military exercises.

In a sign of the increasing sense of urgency among Western nations, the U.K. is supplying Ukraine with anti-tank weapons, and the U.S. has given the go-ahead for three NATO allies — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania — to rush anti-armor missiles and other U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine.

In her speech, Britain's foreign secretary will argue that the "Kremlin has not learned the lessons of history" and warned that a Russian incursion would drag Moscow into a prolonged conflict akin to the Soviet war waged in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

"Invasion will only lead to a terrible quagmire and loss of life, as we know from the Soviet-Afghan war and conflict in Chechnya," she said.

Truss is visiting Australia to forge closer defense, diplomatic, technology and economic links with a view to help Britain counter Russia and China, two countries "emboldened in a way we haven't seen since the Cold War," she said.

"Threats to freedom, democracy and the rule of law are not just regional — they're global. And so we must respond together," Truss is expected to tell the Lowy Institute in Sydney. "We need to work with partners like Australia, Israel, India, Japan, Indonesia and more. By building closer ties with our friends and drawing other countries closer to the orbit of free-market democracies, will ultimately make us all safer and freer in the years to come."

Despite Biden and Macron, Western allies remain united against Russia

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 02:00 PM PST

Western officials spun into overdrive on Thursday to contain any damage caused by Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron.

The U.S. president's stray remark suggesting NATO powers might tolerate a "minor incursion" by Russia into Ukraine came the same day as the French president’s assertion that Europeans should negotiate their own version of a new security order with Moscow.

The mistimed misstatements, if that's what they were, by the commanders-in-chief of two of NATO's major nuclear powers set off tremors in capitals from Kyiv to Ottawa, but in the end seemed only to reinforce Western unity in pushing back against Russia. It suggests that perhaps it was the Kremlin that should have been most alarmed.

Among the presidents' main defenders was the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who used a brief appearance with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly in Brussels to insist that everything was under control and that neither Biden nor Macron had said anything remotely out of step — an outlandish claim but one that he made without blushing.

"Nothing new, but important," Borrell said of Biden's comment. "Certainly there is a big threat on the Ukrainian border," he continued, adding: "We are working together with the allies in order to be ready to implement an answer, which will be very costly for Russia if there is any kind of aggression against Ukraine. So, the wording of President Biden was exactly in the same direction in which we have been working."

That wasn't quite the way Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saw things in Kyiv. "We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations," Zelenskiy tweeted. "Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones." Then he added a bit of embellishment of his own: "I say this as the President of a great power."

As for Macron, Borrell noted that he had been present in Strasbourg when the French president delivered a speech in which he seemed to suggest that Europeans should cut their own path toward a security deal in Russia. But Borrell said nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he said, Macron had not said anything new or unusual at all.

"About President Macron, I was there, and I think it's also an important statement but it’s part of what we have been saying since the beginning," Borrell said, "that the Europeans have to be presenting their view on this issue, that nothing can be agreed about European security or the security in Europe without the participation of the Europeans."

Borrell continued: "And President Macron didn’t say that the Europeans were going to present their own proposals to the Russians. He said that together with the allies, the Europeans have to have in mind, what do they understand as the security order in Europe. And on that, I completely agree with President Macron."

Not everyone agreed with Borrell's assessment, however.

Even some European officials who said they agreed with Macron's ultimate goal for Europe to develop its own vision for a new security order acknowledged that the French president's remarks were badly timed and suggested cracks in Western unity — fissures that they insisted do not in fact exist.

“It's all about timing," a senior EU diplomat said. "As a medium-term goal, it is certainly right that the EU should decide a common position on what security architecture we want. But this does not change the current reality on the ground.

“Such a discussion would take a lot of time," the senior EU diplomat added. "While the talks right now are focusing on preventing Russia from a possibly imminent military aggression against Ukraine. Given the situation, it is not surprising that right now many EU countries from Eastern Europe are primarily looking to NATO and at the transatlantic alliance with the U.S. to defuse the crisis.”

Asked how much trouble Macron's call for a joint European proposal caused, another senior European diplomat replied: "Trouble for whom? Those EU states who are members of NATO have their platform for discussions with Russia. All EU countries are represented in OSCE [the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]. And by the way, do we have the content for such a proposal? So certainly his call raised many questions. But the real trouble is somewhere else: at the Ukrainian borders." 

Macron, in his speech at the European Parliament, had said: "The next few weeks must lead us to finalize a European proposal building a new security and stability order, we must build it among Europeans, then share it with our allies in NATO and then submit it to negotiation with Russia."

An adviser to Macron insisted that the French leader had not suggested Europe should somehow go its own way, or to distract from the ongoing diplomatic cooperation to respond to Russia.  

“This is not about establishing a parallel track between Europeans and Russians," the adviser said. "It’s about consolidating the European position and including our demands in each track, dealing with each issue in the appropriate format: Normandy Format for Ukraine, arms control through NATO and OSCE. On the Helsinki Accords, yes there will come a time where it will be necessary for a dialogue on a high political level and indeed it could be an EU-Russia dialogue.”

The adviser added, “It would be crazy not to start a dialogue between the Europeans and Russia [in due time].”

Other European diplomats praised Macron on his substance if not his timing.

"As a Greek official, I can tell you we are supporting President Macron’s ideas for strategic autonomy," said Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, Greek alternate minister of foreign affairs. "Further enhancement of the EU's role in world affairs and European security in particular falls in our vision for EU." 

Focus on sanctions

For all the spinning and fretting, the diplomatic heavy-lifting — developing a package of sanctions that the West would impose on Moscow in the event of a new attack — continued apace.  

Officials said diplomats were consulting on a daily basis as the U.S. and NATO prepared to respond in writing to Russia's demands for security guarantees, many of which they have already dismissed as "non-starters."

A Central European defense official said: "There is a solid consensus between allies, particularly when it comes to Russia's demands." 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Berlin, and they also held a broader meeting that included French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and U.K. Minister of State for the Middle East North Africa and North America James Cleverly — a format now being called the "Transatlantic Quad" to differentiate it from another group the U.S. forms with India, Japan and Australia.

Blinken, in a speech in Berlin hosted by a consortium of research organizations, disputed Moscow's claims that its massive troop build-up on the Ukrainian border was necessary because its security has been put at risk.  

“So far our readiness to engage in good faith has been rebuffed because in truth, this crisis is not primarily about weapons or military bases," Blinken said. “It’s about the sovereignty and self-determination of Ukraine and all states, and at its core, it’s about Russia’s rejection of a post-Cold War Europe that is whole, free and at peace.”

Blinken is due to meet in Geneva on Friday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

The continued frenzy of diplomatic activity illustrated just how effectively Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized command of the global geopolitical stage.

In Berlin, Baerbock welcomed Blinken noting that he had just come from Ukraine, where she visited on Monday, and she pointed out that Blinken would see Lavrov on Friday, noting that she had met him in Moscow on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Biden rowed back his comments about a minor incursion, saying: “Any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion."

In the end, it was Joly, the Canadian foreign minister, who perhaps summed up reality most succinctly.

"Russia is already in Ukraine," she said, standing alongside Borrell. "We are talking about a real threat of a further invasion of Ukraine. So, in that sense, like my colleague just mentioned, a threat is a threat and we are very, very much concerned about this further invasion of Ukraine."

Jakob Hanke Vela, Matthew Karnitschnig, and Hans von der Burchard contributed reporting.
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

BREAKING: North Carolina automotive group acquires 7 Upstate dealerships

Breaking news from GSA Business Report Click here to view this message in a browser window. ...