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Why does Russia want tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus?
Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he intends to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus appears to be another attempt to raise the stakes in the conflict in Ukraine.
It follows Putin's warnings that Moscow is ready to use "all available means" to fend off attacks on Russian territory, a reference to its nuclear arsenal.
A look at Putin's statement and its implications:
How did Putin explain his move?
Putin said that President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has long urged Moscow to station its nuclear weapons in his country, which has close military ties with Russia and was a staging ground for the invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia already has helped modernize Belarusian warplanes to make them capable of carrying nuclear weapons — something that Belarus' authoritarian leader has repeatedly mentioned.
In remarks broadcast Saturday, Putin said the immediate trigger for the deployment of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus was the U.K. government's decision to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium. Putin toned down his language after first falsely claiming that such rounds have nuclear components, but he insisted they pose an additional danger to the civilian population and could contaminate the environment.
Putin also said that by stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia will be doing what the United States has done for decades by putting its nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. He alleged the Russian move doesn't violate an international treaty banning the proliferation of nuclear weapons, even though Moscow has argued before that Washington has breached the pact by deploying them on the territory of its NATO allies.
Putin's move contrasted with a statement that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued after their talks in the Kremlin last week, which spoke against nuclear powers deploying atomic weapons outside their territories, in an apparent jab at the U.S.
What are tactical nuclear weapons?
Tactical nuclear weapons are intended to destroy enemy troops and weapons on the battlefield. They have a relatively short range and a much lower yield than nuclear warheads fitted to long-range strategic missiles that are capable of obliterating whole cities.
Unlike strategic weapons, which have been subject to arms control agreements between Moscow and Washington, tactical weapons never have been limited by any such pacts, and Russia hasn't released their numbers or any other specifics related to them.
The U.S. government believes Russia has about 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which include bombs that can be carried by aircraft, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery rounds.
While strategic nuclear weapons are fitted to land- or submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that are constantly ready for launch, tactical nuclear weapons are stored at a few tightly guarded storage facilities in Russia, and it takes time to deliver them to combat units.
Some Russian hawks long have urged the Kremlin to send a warning to the West by moving some tactical nuclear weapons closer to the aircraft and missiles intended to deliver them.
What exactly will Russia do?
Putin said that Russia already has helped upgrade 10 Belarusian aircraft to allow them to carry nuclear weapons and their crews will start training to use them from April 3. He noted Russia also has given Belarus the Iskander short-range missile systems that can be fitted with conventional or nuclear warheads.
He said the construction of storage facilities for nuclear weapons in Belarus will be completed by July 1. He didn't say how many nuclear weapons will be stationed there or when they will be deployed.
Putin emphasized that Russia will retain control over any nuclear weapons deployed to Belarus, just like the U.S. controls its tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of its NATO allies.
If Moscow sends nuclear weapons to Belarus, it will mark their first deployment outside Russian borders since the early 1990s. Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan inherited massive nuclear arsenals after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 but agreed to ship them to Russia in the following years.
What are the possible consequences behind Putin’s move?
With his latest statement, Putin again is dangling the nuclear threat to signal Moscow's readiness to escalate the war in Ukraine.
The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, which has a 1,084-kilometer (673-mile) border with Ukraine, would allow Russian aircraft and missiles to reach potential targets there more easily and quickly if Moscow decides to use them. It would also extend Russia's capability to target several NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe.
The move comes as Kyiv is poised for a counteroffensive to reclaim territory occupied by Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council, warned last week that attempts by Ukraine to reclaim control over the Crimean Peninsula was a threat to "the very existence of the Russian state," something that warrants a nuclear response under the country's security doctrine. Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
"Every day of supplying Western weapons to Ukraine makes the nuclear apocalypse closer," Medvedev said.
Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said that Putin's goal is to discourage Ukraine's Western allies from providing Kyiv with more weapons before any counteroffensive.
Putin is "using nuclear blackmail in a bid to influence the situation on the battlefield and force Western partners to reduce supplies of weapons and equipment under the threat of nuclear escalation," Zhdanov said. "The Belarusian nuclear balcony will be looming over not only Ukraine, but Europe as well, creating a constant threat, raising tensions and rattling the nerves of Ukrainians and their Western partners."
What are Ukraine and the West saying?
Ukraine has responded to Putin's move by calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. A U.N. spokesman referred questions on the issue to the Security Council, which had announced no meeting on it by Monday afternoon.
"The world must be united against someone who endangers the future of human civilization," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday that U.S. officials "haven't seen any movement of any tactical nuclear weapons or anything of that kind" since Putin's announcement on Belarus. He has said Washington has seen nothing to prompt a change in its strategic deterrent posture.
NATO rejects Putin's claim that Russia only is doing what the U.S. has done for decades, saying that Western allies act with full respect for their international commitments.
"Russia's nuclear rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible," NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said, adding that the alliance hasn't yet seen any change in Russia's nuclear posture.
Lithuania, which borders Belarus, described Putin's statement as "yet another attempt by two unpredictable dictatorial regimes to threaten their neighbors and the entire European continent," calling them "desperate moves by Putin and Lukashenko to create another wave of tension and destabilization in Europe."
Belarus' Foreign Ministry rejected Western criticism Tuesday, casting the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons as a response to "unprecedented" Western pressure and arguing that the move wouldn't contradict the international agreements because Russia will retain control of them.
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that Washington and its allies had ignored Russia's calls for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. It reaffirmed Moscow's right to take "the necessary additional steps to ensure security of Russia and its allies."
2 dead, several injured in Portugal Muslim center stabbing
Portuguese police shot and injured a man suspected of stabbing two women to death at an Ismaili Muslim center in Lisbon Tuesday, authorities said.
The women were Portuguese staff members at the center, Ismaili community leader Narzim Ahmad told Portuguese TV channel S.I.C.
Police were called to the center late Tuesday morning where they encountered a suspect "armed with a large knife," a police statement said.
Police ordered him to surrender but he advanced toward them and was "neutralized," the statement said. The suspect was taken to a Lisbon hospital where he was in police custody.
Several other people were wounded, according to the statement, but it provided no further details.
Prime Minister António Costa said police shot the suspect and told reporters the attack was "a criminal act."
"Everything points to this being an isolated incident," Costa said, without elaborating.
There was no immediate word on the identity of those killed.
Armed police from a special operations unit could be seen forming a perimeter outside the building.
Costa said police were investigating the attack and it was too soon to speculate about a motive.
The Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, generally known as the Ismailis, belong to the Shia branch of Islam. The Ismaili Muslims are a culturally diverse community living in more than 25 countries around the world.
Portugal hasn't recorded any significant terror attacks in recent decades, and religious violence is virtually unheard of.
Hungarian parliament approves Finland’s bid to join NATO
Hungary’s parliament on Monday approved Finland’s bid to join NATO, ending months of delays and bringing the Nordic country one step closer to becoming a full member of the Western military alliance.
Hungarian lawmakers voted 182 for and only six against with no abstentions. The vote came after Hungary’s government frustrated allies in NATO and the European Union by repeatedly postponing the measure for months after nearly all other members of the alliance had ratified Finland’s bid.
With Hungary’s approval, Turkey is now the only one of NATO’s 30 members not to have ratified Finland’s NATO accession.
Admitting a new country requires unanimity among all member nations.
Macron's govt ignites firestorm of anger in France with unpopular pension reforms
A big day has come for French high school student Elisa Fares. At age 17, she is taking part in her first protest.
In a country that taught the world about people power with its revolution of 1789 — and a country again seething with anger against its leaders — graduating from bystander to demonstrator is a generations-old rite of passage. Fares looks both excited and nervous as she prepares to march down Paris streets where people for centuries have similarly defied authority and declared: “Non!”
Two friends, neither older than 18 but already protest veterans whose parents took them to demonstrations when they were little, are showing Fares the ropes. They’ve readied eyedrops and gas masks in case police fire tear gas — as they have done repeatedly in recent weeks.
“The French are known for fighting and we’ll fight,” says one of the friends, Coline Marionneau, also 17. “My mother goes to a lot of demonstrations ... She says if you have things to say, you should protest.”
For French President Emmanuel Macron, the look of determination on their young faces only heralds deepening crisis. His government has ignited a firestorm of anger with unpopular pension reforms that he railroaded through parliament and which, most notably, push the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.Furious not just with the prospect of working for longer but also with the way Macron imposed it, his opponents have switched to full-on disobedience mode. They’re regularly striking and demonstrating and threatening to make his second and final term as president even more difficult than his first. It, too, was rocked by months of protests — often violent — by so-called yellow vest campaigners against social injustice.
Fares, the first-time protester, said her mother had been against her taking to the streets but has now given her blessing.
“She said that if I wanted to fight, she wouldn’t stop me,” the teen says.
Critics accuse Macron of effectively ruling by decree, likening him to France’s kings of old. Their reign finished badly: In the French Revolution, King Louis XVI ended up on the guillotine. There’s no danger of that happening to Macron. But hobbled in parliament and contested on the streets piled high with reeking garbage uncollected by striking workers, he’s being given a tough lesson, again, about French people power. Freshly scrawled slogans in Paris reference 1789.
So drastically has Macron lost the initiative that he was forced to indefinitely postpone a planned state visit this week by King Charles III. Germany, not France, will now get the honor of being the first overseas ally to host Charles as monarch.
The France leg of Charles’ tour would have coincided with a new round of strikes and demonstrations planned for Tuesday that are again likely to mobilize many hundreds of thousands of protesters. Macron said the royal visit likely would have become their target, which risked creating a “detestable situation.”
Encouraged by that victory, the protest movement is plowing on and picking up new recruits, including some so young that it will be many decades before they’ll be directly impacted by the pushed-back retirement age. Their involvement is a worrisome development for Macron, because it suggests that protests are evolving, broadening from workplace and retirement concerns to a more generalized malaise with the president and his governance.
Violence is picking up, too. Police and environmental activists fought pitched battles over the weekend in rural western France, resulting in dozens of injuries. Officers fired more than 4,000 nonlethal dispersion grenades in fending off hundreds of protesters who rained down rocks, powerful fireworks and gasoline bombs on police lines.
“Anger and resentment,” says former President François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor, “are at a level that I have rarely seen.”
For Fares, whose first demonstration was a peaceful protest in Paris this weekend, the final straw was Macron’s decision to not let legislators vote on his retirement reform, because he wasn’t sure of winning a majority for it. Instead, he ordered his prime minister to skirt parliament by using a special constitutional power to ram the bill through.
It was the 11th time that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had to resort to the so-called Article 49.3 power in just 10 months — a telling sign of Macron’s fragility since he lost his parliamentary majority in an election last June.
“It’s an attack on democracy,” Fares said. “It annoyed me too much.”
Her friend Luna Dessommes, 18, added hopefully: “We have to use the movement to politicize more and more young people.”
At age 76, veteran protester Gilbert Leblanc has been through it all before. He was a yellow vest; by his count, he took part in more than 220 of their protests in Macron’s first term, rallying to the cry that the former banker was too pro-business and “the president of the rich.”
Long before that, Leblanc cut his teeth in seminal civil unrest that reshaped France in May 1968. He says that when he tells awe-struck young protesters that he was a “soixante-huitard” — a ’68 veteran — they “want to take selfies with me.”
This winter, he has kept his heating off, instead saving the money for train fares to the capital, so he can protest every weekend, he said.
“My grandfather who fought in World War I, got the war medal. He would rise from his grave if he saw me sitting at home, in my sofa, not doing anything,” Leblanc said.
“Everything we’ve obtained has been with our tears and blood.”
Is Michelangelo’s David 'porn'? Come and see, Italian museum tells Florida parents
The Florence museum housing Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece the David on Sunday invited parents and students from a Florida charter school to visit after complaints about a lesson featuring the statue forced the principal to resign.
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella also tweeted an invitation for the principal to visit so he can personally honor her. Confusing art with pornography was “ridiculous,” Nardella said.
The board of the Tallahassee Classical School pressured Principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign last week after an image of the David was shown to a sixth-grade art class. The school has a policy requiring parents to be notified in advance about “controversial” topics being taught.
The incredulous Italian response highlighted how the U.S. culture wars are often perceived in Europe, where despite a rise in right-wing sentiment and governance, the Renaissance and its masterpieces, even its naked ones, are generally free of controversy. Sunday’s front page of the Italian daily publication Corriere della Sera featured a cartoon by its leading satirist depicting David with his genitals covered by an image of Uncle Sam and the word “Shame.”
Carrasquilla believes the board targeted her after three parents complained about a lesson including a photo of the David, a 5-meter tall (17 foot) nude marble sculpture dating from 1504. The work, reflecting the height of the Italian Renaissance, depicts the Biblical David going to fight Goliath armed only with his faith in God.
Carrasquilla has said two parents complained because they weren’t notified in advance that a nude would be shown, while a third called the iconic statue pornographic.
Carrasquilla said in a phone interview Sunday that she is “very honored” by the invitations to Italy and she may accept.
“I am totally, like, wow,” Carasquilla said. “I’ve been to Florence before and have seen the David up close and in person, but I would love to go and be a guest of the mayor.”
Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the David resides, expressed astonishment at the controversy.
“To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art,” Hollberg said in a telephone interview.
She invited the principal, school board, parents and student body to view the “purity” of the statue.
Tallahassee Classical is a charter school. While it is taxpayer-funded and tuition-free, it operates almost entirely independently of the local school district and is sought out by parents seeking an alternative to the public school curriculum.
About 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend the three-year-old institution, which is now on its third principal. It follows a curriculum designed by Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan frequently consulted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on educational issues.
Barney Bishop, chairman of Tallahassee Classical’s school board, has told reporters that while the photo of the statue played a part in Carrasquilla’s ouster, it wasn’t the only factor. He has declined to elaborate, while defending the decision.
“Parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture,” Bishop said in an interview with Slate online magazine.
Several parents and teachers plan to protest Carrasquilla’s exit at Monday night’s school board meeting, but Carrasquilla said she isn’t sure she would take the job back even if it were offered.
“There’s been such controversy and such upheaval,” she said. “I would really have to consider, ‘Is this truly what is best?’”
Marla Stone, head of humanities studies at the American Academy in Rome, said the Florida incident was another episode in escalating U.S. culture wars and questioned how the statue could be considered so controversial as to warrant a prior warning.
“What we have here is a moral crusade against the body, sexuality, and gender expression and an ignorance of history,” Stone said in an email. “The incident is about fear, fear of beauty, of difference, and of the possibilities embedded in art.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted the David between 1501-1504 after being commissioned by the Cathedral of Florence. The statue is the showpiece of the Accademia, and helps draw 1.7 million visitors each year to the museum.
“It is incredibly sought-after by Americans who want to do selfies and enjoy the beauty of this statue,” Director Hollberg said.
The museum, like many in Europe, is free for student groups. There was no indication that any trip would be subsidized by the city or museum.
Germany, EU reach agreement in combustion engine row
Germany and the European Union announced Saturday that they have reached an agreement in their dispute over the future of cars with combustion engines, allowing the registration of new vehicles with such engines even after 2035 provided they use climate-neutral fuel only.
EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans tweeted that “we have found an agreement with Germany on the future use of e-fuels in cars.”
German Transport Minister Volker Wissing tweeted that the way had been cleared for vehicles with internal combustion engines that only use climate-neutral fuels to be newly registered even after 2035.
“We secure opportunities for Europe by preserving important options for climate-neutral and affordable mobility," Wissing wrote.
An initial proposal by European Union member countries on new carbon dioxide emission standards for cars had been postponed amid opposition from Germany. The EU had wanted to ban the sale of all new cars with combustion engines from 2035.
Germany had demanded an exemption for cars that burn e-fuels, arguing that they are carbon neutral when produced using renewable energy and carbon captured from the air so they wouldn’t spew further climate-changing emissions into the atmosphere.
Wissing said they had agreed on concrete procedural steps and that a specific timetable has been made binding. “We want the process to be completed by fall 2024,” he added.
Timmermans also wrote that “we will work now on getting the CO2-standards for cars regulation adopted as soon as possible.”
The issue has driven an ideological wedge within the German government between Wissing’s libertarian Free Democratic Party, or FDP, and the environmentalist Green party, which had backed a complete ban on combustion engines.
Germany’s main opposition party, the center-right Union bloc, also opposed an EU-wide ban on combustion engine vehicles, warning that it would harm the country’s prized auto industry.
Critics say battery-electric technology is a better fit for passenger cars and precious synthetic fuels should be used only where no other option is feasible, such as in aviation.
The transport policy spokesman for the FDP in the European Parliament, Jan-Christoph Oetjen, called the agreement a great success, German news agency dpa reported.
“The nonsensical blanket ban on the internal combustion engine is thus off the table,” he said.
“We are keeping a cutting-edge technology and important jobs on the continent," Oetjen added.
Germany's Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, a member of the Greens, said it was good that an agreement had been reached. A further impasse would have severely damaged both confidence in the European Union's procedures and Germany’s reliability in terms of European policy, she said, according to dpa.
Lemke added that it was important that the automotive industry now has clarity regarding the switch to electromobility.
E-fuels will play an important role, “especially for those sectors that cannot easily switch to efficient electric motors,” Lemke said.
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of the CAR Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, Germany, said the permission for e-fuels does not mean a significant change for the overall transformation to electric cars.
Still, he called the late agreement between Germany and the EU “the end of a sad episode.”
“The EU’s credibility has been severely damaged,” he added.
Russian strikes in Ukraine kill 10 civilians, wound 20 more
Russian long-range strikes killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 20 others in several areas of Ukraine on Friday, Ukraine’s presidential office said, as a senior Moscow official warned that the Kremlin's forces were prepared for an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
Five people died in Kostiantynivka, a town in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk province, when a Russian missile hit an aid station. Ukrainian authorities last year established hundreds of so-called “points of invincibility,” where residents hard-pressed by the war could warm up, charge their cellphones and get snacks.
Local prosecutors said the Russians attacked Kostyantynivka with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. The civilians who died were refugees, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Also Read: Ukraine using Soviet-era helicopters to pummel Russia from afar
As the mostly artillery war of the recent winter months stretched into its second spring, Russian forces also used air-launched missiles, exploding drones and gliding bombs in their attacks on several regions early Friday, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said.
Two civilians were killed and nine were wounded in the Sumy province town of Bilopillia by a nighttime rocket and artillery barrage and air strikes, the administration of the northeast region said.
In the southern Kherson region, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Thursday, Russian shelling killed one person in the main city, also called Kherson, and killed another person and wounded four others in the town of Bilozerka.
On Wednesday, a Russian drone attack struck a high school and dormitories south of Kyiv, killing at least nine people.
Kyiv’s forces are poised to use the improved spring weather and the arrival of modern weapons supplied by its Western allies, including tanks, to launch a counteroffensive aimed at dislodging Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine.
But Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, said the Russian military was ready to repel a counterattack.
“Our General Staff is assessing all that,” Medvedev said.
He also said that a Ukrainian attempt to seize Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, could trigger a nuclear response from Moscow.
“An attempt to split part of the state away means an encroachment at the very existence of the state,” he said. “Quite obviously, it warrants the use of any weapons. I hope our ‘friends’ across the ocean realize that.”
Though known for his bombastic pronouncements, Medvedev’s warning stems from the Russian security doctrine envisaging the use of nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or an attack with conventional weapons that threatens “the very existence of the Russian state.”
Medvedev also said that Western experts operating weapons, such as the U.S.-made Patriot air defense missile systems supplied to Ukraine, would be legitimate targets for the Russian military. Ukrainian soldiers have received training in the U.S., although Russian officials have frequently claimed that foreign instructors are present in Ukraine.
“If Patriot or other weapons are delivered to the territory of Ukraine along with foreign experts, they certainly make legitimate targets, which must be destroyed,” Medvedev told reporters in video clips he posted on his messaging app channel. “They are combatants, they are the enemies of our state and they must be destroyed.”
“They must understand that as soon as an American or a Polish soldier shows up there, he must be killed,” he added.
The Kremlin’s goal is to “create a sanitary cordon” of up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) around Russian-held areas so short- and mid-range weapons can't strike them, according to Medvedev.
Moscow may even set its sights on grabbing a bigger chunk of Ukrainian territory, stretching all the way to the border with Poland, he said.
Ukraine using Soviet-era helicopters to pummel Russia from afar
Skimming the treetops, three Soviet-era attack helicopters bank and swoop down on a field after an early-morning mission to the front lines in the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Each day, they might fly three or four sorties, says the commander, whose two-crew Mi-24 helicopter, built about 40 years ago, is older than he is.
“We are carrying out combat tasks to destroy enemy vehicles, enemy personnel, we are working with pitch-up attacks from a distance from where the enemy can’t get us with their air defense system,” said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity for operational security reasons, in line with military regulations.
The conflict in Ukraine is largely an artillery war, with territory being fought for inch by inch under a barrage of shells and missiles. But Ukraine’s aviation capabilities play a significant role in the fight, the pilot said.
“The importance of the helicopters is huge,” said the commander, who is part of Ukraine’s 12th Army Aviation Brigade.Footage from a camera attached to the helicopter during a recent combat mission shows it flying over fields pockmarked with craters from artillery bombing, and firing missiles at Russian trenches that cut through the landscape.
“We are shooting from the big distance and hit the target clearly, like there’s a cross on the target and (the missiles) go by themselves where they should go,” the commander said.
He would, however, like to fly a newer model.
“We need to master something new, something from abroad,” the commander said. “It has better characteristics. You can maneuver more on it, there are more rockets on it and the weapons are more powerful. We can do more tasks with better quality and with less risk for us.”
Several countries, including the United States and Britain, have pledged to send, or have already sent, helicopters to Ukraine as part of military aid since the start of the war sparked by Russia’s invasion in Feb 2022.
Serbia: 9 migrants found among aluminum rolls in truck
Serbia's customs authorities said Friday they discovered nine migrants hiding among aluminum rolls in a truck headed to Poland from Greece.
Customs officers on Serbia's border with North Macedonia spotted the migrants on Wednesday during a scan that showed human silhouettes in the back of the truck, a statement said.
The migrants were young men from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria, the statement added.
Serbia lies at the heart of the so-called Balkan land route that refugees and migrants use to try to reach Western Europe and start new lives there.
Migrants go from Turkey to Greece or Bulgaria, then to North Macedonia and Serbia. From Serbia they move on toward European Union member states Hungary, Croatia or Romania, or they go to Bosnia first and then on to Croatia.
Thousands of people fleeing violence or poverty pass through the Balkan region every year. They often face dangers in the hands of people-smugglers who help them cross borders undetected.
Violent French pension protests erupt as 1M demonstrate
More than 1 million people demonstrated across France on Thursday against unpopular pension reforms, and violence erupted in some places as unions called for new nationwide strikes and protests next week, coinciding with King Charles III's planned visit to France.
The Interior Ministry said the march in Paris — marred by violence, as were numerous marches elsewhere — drew 119,000 people, which was a record for the capital during the pension protests. Polls say most French oppose President Emmanuel Macron's bill to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, which he says is necessary to keep the system afloat.
Building on the strong turnout, unions swiftly called for new protests and strikes on Tuesday when the British king is scheduled to visit Bordeaux on the second day of his trip to France. The heavy wooden door of the elegant Bordeaux City Hall was set afire and quickly destroyed Thursday evening by a members of an unauthorized demonstration, the Sud Ouest newspaper said.
Nationwide, more than a million people joined protest marches held in cities and towns around the country Thursday, the ministry said.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, visiting police headquarters Thursday night as fires still burned in some Paris neighborhoods, gave assurance that security “poses no problem” and the British monarch will be “welcomed and welcomed well.”
He said there was “enormous degrading” of public buildings and commerce Thursday, “far more important than in precedent demonstrations.”
“There are troublemakers, often extreme left, who want to take down the state and kill police and ultimately take over the institutions,” the minister said.
The demonstrations were held a day after Macron further angered his critics by standing strong on the retirement bill that his government forced through parliament without a vote.
“While the (president) tries to turn the page, this social and union movement ... confirms the determination of the world of workers and youth to obtain the withdrawal of the reform,” the eight unions organizing protests said in a statement. It called for localized action this weekend and new nationwide strikes and protests Tuesday.
Strikes upended travel as protesters blockaded train stations, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, refineries and ports.
In Paris, street battles between police and black-clad, masked groups who attacked at least two fast food restaurants, a supermarket and a bank reflected intensifying violence and drew attention away from the tens of thousands of peaceful marchers.
Police, pelted by Molotov cocktails, objects and fireworks, charged multiple times and used tear gas to disperse rioters. A haze of tear gas fumes covered part of the Place de l'Opera, where demonstrators converged at the march's end. Darmanin said radicals numbered some 1,500.
Read more: Nearly 1 million French march in 4th day of pension protests
Violence marred other marches, notably in the western cities of Nantes, Rennes and Lorient — where an administrative building was attacked and the courtyard of the police station was set afire and its windows broken — and in Lyon, in the southeast.
Thursday's nationwide protests were the ninth union-organized demonstrations since January, when opponents still hoped that parliament would reject Macron's measure to raise the retirement age. But the government forced it through using a special constitutional measure.
In an interview Wednesday, Macron refused to budge from his position that a new law is necessary to keep retirement coffers funded. Opponents proposed other solutions, including higher taxes on the wealthy or companies, which Macron says would hurt the economy. He insisted the government’s bill to raise the retirement age must be implemented by the end of the year.
The Constitutional Council must now approve the measure.
“We are trying to say before the law is enacted ... that we have to find a way out and we continue to say that the way out is the withdrawal of the law," the chief of the moderate CFDT trade union, Laurent Berger, told The Associated Press.
High-speed and regional trains, the Paris metro and public transportation systems in other major cities were disrupted. About 30% of flights at Paris Orly Airport were canceled.
The Eiffel Tower and the Versailles Palace, where the British monarch is to dine with Macron, were closed Thursday due to the strikes.
Violence, a recurring issue at protests, has intensified in recent days. Darmanin said that 12,000 security forces were in the French streets Thursday, with 5,000 in Paris,
The Education Ministry said in a statement that about 24% of teachers walked off the job in primary and middle schools on Thursday, and 15% in high schools.
At Paris' Gare de Lyon train station, several hundred strikers walked on railway tracks to prevent trains from moving, brandishing flares and chanting “and we will go, and we will go until withdrawal" and “Macron, go away.”
Read more: Anger spreads in France over Macron's retirement bill push
"This year perhaps maybe our holidays won’t be so great," said Maxime Monin, 46, who stressed that employees like himself, who work in public transport, are not paid on strike days. "But I think it’s worth the sacrifice.”
In the northern suburbs of Paris, several dozen union members blocked a bus depot in Pantin, preventing about 200 vehicles from getting out during rush hour.
Nadia Belhoum, a 48-year-old bus driver participating in the action, criticized Macron’s decision to force the higher retirement age through.
“The president of the Republic ... is not a king, and he should listen to his people," she said.