Putin signs law allowing him 2 more terms as Russia's leader

April 06, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in a vote last year.

The July 1 constitutional vote included a provision that reset Putin's previous term limits, allowing him to run for president two more times. The change was rubber-stamped by the Kremlin-controlled legislature and the relevant law signed by Putin was posted Monday on an official portal of legal information.

The 68-year-old Russian president, who has been in power for more than two decades — longer than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — said he would decide later whether to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term ends.

He has argued that resetting the term count was necessary to keep his lieutenants focused on their work instead of “darting their eyes in search for possible successors.” The constitutional amendments also emphasized the primacy of Russian law over international norms, outlawed same-sex marriages and mentioned “a belief in God” as a core value. Nearly 78% of voters approved the constitutional amendments during the balloting that lasted for a week and concluded on July 1. Turnout was 68%.

Following the vote, Russian lawmakers have methodically modified the national legislation, approving the relevant laws. The opposition criticized the constitutional vote, arguing that it was tarnished by widespread reports of pressure on voters and other irregularities, as well as a lack of transparency and hurdles hindering independent monitoring.

In the months since the vote, Russia has imprisoned the country's most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, The 44-year-old Navalny was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

In February, Navalny was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated — and which the European Сourt of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful.

His team says Navalny had lost a substantial amount of weight even before he started a hunger strike Wednesday to protest authorities’ failure to provide proper treatment for his back and leg pains. Navalny complained about prison officials’ refusal to give him the proper medications and to allow his doctor to visit him. He also protested the hourly checks a guard makes on him at night, saying they amount to sleep deprivation.

In an Instagram post Monday, Navalny said that three of 15 people in his room at the penal colony were diagnosed with tuberculosis. He noted that he had a strong cough and a fever of 38.1 Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit).

Later on Monday, the newspaper Izvestia carried a statement from the state penitentiary service saying Navalny was moved to the prison colony's sanitary unit after a checkup found him having “signs of a respiratory illness, including a high fever.”

In an acerbic note, Navalny said he and other inmates studied a notice on tuberculosis prevention that underlined the importance of strengthening immunity with a balanced diet — advice that contrasted with a prison ration of “glue-like porridge and frozen potatoes.”

Putin's COVID-19 vaccination to be kept out of public eye

March 23, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will be getting his first vaccination against COVID-19 on Tuesday, but out of sight of the cameras, his spokesman said, prompting questions about whether the gesture will boost comparatively low immunization rates in Russia.

Asked whether the Kremlin will release any photos or footage of Putin getting his coronavirus vaccine shot, Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call that they would have to "take (our) word for it.”

“When it comes to getting vaccinated on camera, he has never supported that, he doesn't like that,” Peskov said. Peskov wouldn't reveal whether Putin will go to a vaccination facility or the shot will be brought to him in his office or residence, saying only that “it will done in a way that would the least affect” Putin's working schedule.

Putin announced that he would get vaccinated at a government meeting the day before. The statement came several months after widespread immunization against COVID-19 kicked off in Russia. Kremlin critics have argued that Putin's reluctance to get vaccinated was contributing to the already existing hesitancy about the vaccine.

Only 6.3 million people, or 4.3% of Russia's 146-million population, have received at least one dose of a vaccine. It lags behind a number of other countries in terms of the vaccination rate. Surveys by Russia’s top independent pollster, Levada Center, have shown that the number of Russians reluctant to get vaccinated with the domestically developed Sputnik V shot has grown in recent months — to 62% in February from 58% in December.

Pressed by reporters over whether Putin should get vaccinated on camera in order to boost slow vaccination rates, Peskov argued that Russians “will hear” about the president's vaccination and that Putin is already doing “a lot" for promoting the vaccination campaign.

“The president ... dedicates a rather significant time in his working hours to events, discussions, meetings related to vaccination, production of vaccines and so on. So the president does a lot for propaganda of the vaccines,” Peskov said.

The Kremlin spokesman refused to reveal which one of the three vaccines authorized for use in Russia Putin will receive, saying only that all three are “absolutely good, reliable, effective.” Russian authorities have given regulatory approval to three domestically developed shots — Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac. All three received the authorization before completing advanced trials experts say are necessary to ensure their safety and effectiveness in line with established scientific protocol.

However, a recent study in the British medical journal the Lancet showed that Sputnik V is 91% effective and appears to prevent inoculated individuals from becoming severely ill with COVID-19, although it’s still unclear if the vaccine can prevent the spread of the disease. No data on efficacy of the two other vaccines have been released.

Group of Seven slams Russia annexation of Crimea, 7 years on

March 18, 2021

BERLIN (AP) — The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Thursday issued a strong condemnation of what it called Russia's ongoing “occupation” of the Crimean Peninsula, seven years after Moscow annexed it from Ukraine.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. said in a joint statement that Russia’s actions continue to “undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”

“We unequivocally denounce Russia’s temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol,” the seven countries said. “Russia’s attempts to legitimize it are not, and will not, be recognized.”

They accused Russia of human rights abuses on the peninsula and called for international monitors to be given access there. Moscow has argued that Crimea was incorporated after the vast majority of local residents voted for joining Russia, even though most of the world rejected the referendum as illegitimate.

The G-7 statement also cited Russia’s role in the ongoing conflict between pro-Moscow separatists and the government in eastern Ukraine. “We call on the Russian Federation to stop fueling the conflict by providing financial and military support to the armed formations it backs in eastern Ukraine, as well as by granting Russian citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens,” they said.

The G-7 called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict that implements a series of agreements forged in Belarusian capital Minsk. Russia was suspended from the Group of Eight, as it then was, in 2014, over its actions in Ukraine.

Russia scores points with vaccine diplomacy, but snags arise

March 07, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's boast in August that it was the first country to authorize a coronavirus vaccine led to skepticism at the time because of its insufficient testing. Six months later, as demand for the Sputnik V vaccine grows, experts are raising questions again — this time, over whether Moscow can keep up with all the orders from the countries that want it.

Slovakia got 200,000 doses on March 1, even though the European Medicines Agency, the European Union's pharmaceutical regulator, only began reviewing its use on Thursday in an expedited process. The president of the hard-hit Czech Republic said he wrote directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin to get a supply. Millions of doses are expected by countries in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East in a wave of Russian vaccine diplomacy.

“Sputnik V continues to confidently conquer Europe,” anchor Olga Skabeyeva declared on the Russia-1 state TV channel. Dmitry Kiselev, the network's top pro-Kremlin anchor, heaped on the hyperbole last month, blustering: “The Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, is the best in the world.”

State TV channels have covered vaccine exports extensively, citing praise from abroad for Russia and running segments about the difficulties countries are having with Western vaccines. The early criticism of Sputnik V has been blunted by a report in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet that said large-scale testing showed it to be safe, with an efficacy rate of 91% against the virus.

That could help revamp Russia's image to one of a scientific, technological and benevolent power, especially as other countries encounter shortages of COVID-19 vaccines because richer nations are scooping up the Western-made versions or manufacturers struggle with limited production capacity.

“The fact that Russia is among five countries that were able to quickly develop a vaccine … allows Moscow to present itself as a high-tech power of knowledge rather than a petrol pump in decline,” said foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov.

Some experts say boosting the use of vaccines from China and Russia — which have not been as popular as those from the West — could offer a quicker way to increase the global supply. Others note that Russia wants to score geopolitical points.

“Putin is using (the vaccine) to bolster a very tarnished image of Russia’s scientific and technological prowess,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University professor and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “He’s using it for geostrategic purposes in areas where Russia would like to have spheres of influence.”

Whether Russia can deliver is another question. China has supplied millions of doses to other countries, but the output of Sputnik V appears for now to be far lower than the demand. “They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in terms of this vaccine actually being a viable, marketable product," said Judy Twigg, a political science professor specializing in global health at Virginia Commonwealth University. "They’ve made all of these explicit and implicit promises to people inside and outside Russia about access to this product that now is unexpectedly great. And now they’re stuck trying, scrambling, trying to figure out how to deliver on all those promises.”

Russia also must take care of its own. Authorities have announced plans to vaccinate 60% of adults, or roughly 68 million people, by the end of June. The domestic rollout in Russia has been slow, compared with other nations, with about 4 million people, or less than 3% of the population, vaccinated as of late February. Some of that could also be due to widespread reluctance among Russians to trust vaccines.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which bankrolled and markets the vaccine abroad, has not responded to a request for comment on how many doses are going to other countries. It said earlier that it has received requests for 2.4 billion doses from over 50 nations.

Airfinity, a London-based science analytics company, estimates that Russia agreed to supply about 392 million doses abroad, and there are talks with countries for at least another 356 million. Judging by production and exports so far, “Russia is very far from being able to deliver this,” said Airfinity CEO and founder Rasmus Hansen.

Russia manufactured just over 2 million doses last year amid reports of local producers having problems with buying equipment and making the second component of the two-shot vaccine. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Feb. 20 that over 10 million doses of Sputnik V have been produced.

Sputnik V is a viral vector vaccine, which uses a harmless virus that carries genetic material to stimulate the immune system. Producing it is a complicated process, said Elena Subbotina, a consultant with the pharma consultancy CBPartners’ Central and Eastern Europe Team. Producers can’t guarantee stable output because working with biological ingredients involves a lot of variability in terms of the quality of the finished product.

Some countries that have been offered large batches of Sputnik V have yet to approve it for use. In India, which has been pledged 125 million doses, the vaccine is undergoing studies to determine if it produces a comparable immune response. Brazil’s health ministry said it is negotiating to purchase 10 million doses, but the nation’s regulatory agency has yet to authorize its use. Nepal, which has been offered 25 million doses, also hasn’t given its approval.

Other countries have had delays in receiving Sputnik V shipments. Argentina got nearly 2.5 million doses by March 1, even though at one point the government was expecting 5 million in January and over 14 million more in February. Officials in Hungary, who agreed to buy 2 million doses over three months, said Jan. 22 they were expecting 600,000 doses in the first 30 days, but got only 325,600 by early March. Mexico signed a deal for 24 million doses and was hoping to receive 400,000 in February but got only 200,000.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund has agreements with manufacturers in countries including Brazil, South Korea and India to boost production, but there are few indications that manufacturers abroad have made any large amounts of the vaccine so far.

The Brazilian company Uniao Quimica is in the pilot testing phase, the results of which will be shared with Russia before the company can produce it for sale. Indian drugmaker Hetero Biopharma, with a deal to make 100 million doses, was to begin production at the start of 2021, but it isn’t clear if it has actually started.

South Korean company GL Rapha, which expects to make 150 million doses this year, will be manufacturing finished products by sometime in March, said company official Kim Gi-young. Russia so far hasn't faced any criticism for delaying supplies of Sputnik V to other countries, with foreign officials optimistic about the deals.

Hungary is still awaiting large shipments, but expressed optimism about receiving them. “The Russian side, with minimal delay, will meet the 600,000 doses agreed to in the first phase, and then the additional 1.4 million doses,” Hungary's State Secretary Tamas Menczer said last month. Prime Minister Viktor Orban added Friday: “The Russians are pretty much keeping their promises.”

Promising more than can be delivered appears to be a universal problem with coronavirus vaccines, and it is a real risk for Russia as well, said Theresa Fallon, director of the Brussels-based Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies.

“They have won the gold medal for creating this very effective vaccine," she said. "But the problem is, how are they going to implement it?”

Associated Press writers Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi, India; David Biller in Rio de Janeiro; Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Justin Spike and Bela Szandelszky in Budapest, Hungary; and Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.

Russians lay flowers to mark opposition leader's killing

February 27, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of people streamed to a Moscow bridge overlooking the Kremlin on Saturday to lay flowers and mark the sixth anniversary of the killing of Boris Nemtsov, a top Russian opposition figure.

Nemtsov, 55, a former deputy prime minister, was shot to death as he walked along the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge late at night on Feb. 27, 2015. Among those who attended Saturday's commemoration was Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny's detention in January upon returning to Moscow from five months of recuperating in Germany from a nerve-agent poisoning set off a wave of nationwide protests. Nemtsov was one of Russia’s most energetic and charismatic opposition figures, and his death was a blow to political opponents of President Vladimir Putin.

An officer in the security forces of Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader was sentenced to 20 years for firing the shots that killed Nemtsov. Four other men were sentenced to 11 to 19 years for involvement.

New US envoy to UN gets red carpet welcome from Russia

February 25, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Linda Thomas-Greenfield takes up her post as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday and a senior Russian diplomat said the red carpet will be rolled out and Moscow is ready to work with the Biden administration -- but “it takes two to tango.”

After being sworn in on Wednesday by Vice President Kamala Harris, Thomas-Greenfield headed to New York where she is scheduled to present her credentials to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Thursday afternoon.

She will be jumping right into her new job, tackling global peace and security issues with Russia, China and a dozen other countries because the United States takes over the rotating presidency of the powerful U.N. Security Council on Monday. And she might even decide to attend a council meeting on Friday.

“We are looking forward to interactions with her,” Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told a group of reporters Wednesday. “You can count on our most favorable attitudes and positive emotions towards her as a member of our Security Council family.”

Noting Thomas-Greenfield's decades as a U.S. diplomat, he said “it's always easier to interact with professionals." But he said America’s view that Russia is “an enemy” and a “threat” hasn’t changed under Biden, so “it’s very difficult to imagine how the interaction with us might change with such starting points of the positions of the new administration.”

Nonetheless, Polyansky said, “there are a lot of things Russia and the United States can do together” and “we will judge the new administration by what it does.” “We’re in favor of cooperation,” he said. But “it takes two to tango, and really we’re ready to dance, but we need a good and reliable partner who knows all the moves and who respects us” as a country with certain positions, “doesn’t view us as a threat” and sees “our obvious national interests in many issues.”

Thomas-Greenfield, a retired 35-year veteran of the U.S. foreign service who rose to be assistant secretary of state for Africa, resigned during the Trump administration. She will be the third African-American, and the second African-American woman, to hold the U.N. post.

Her confirmation on Tuesday was hailed by Democrats and advocates of the United Nations who had lamented former President Donald Trump’s “America First” unilateral approach to international affairs and rejoiced at President Joe Biden’s return to multilateralism.

At the Senate hearing on her nomination, Thomas-Greenfield called China “a strategic adversary” that threatens the world, and called a speech she gave in 2019 that praised China’s initiatives in Africa but made no mention of its human rights abuses a mistake.

The Senate voted 78-20 to confirm her with Republican opponents saying she was soft on China and would not stand up for U.S. principles at the U.N. Thomas-Greenfield said at the hearing that Washington will be working not only with allies “but to see where we can find common ground with the Russians and the Chinese to put more pressure on the Iranians to push them back into strict compliance” with the 2015 agreement to rein in their nuclear program. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018 and Biden has indicated the U.S. will rejoin it, though how that might happen remains a major question.

Polyansky said Russia welcomes the “”positive developments” on the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S. agreement to extend the START nuclear agreement, adding that Moscow is ready for serious and meaningful discussions “first and foremost in the area of strategic stability.”

Thomas-Greenfield stressed at the hearing that the U.S. will be reengaging internationally and promoting American values -- “support for democracy, respect for universal human rights, and the promotion of peace and security.”

Louis Charbonneau, United Nations director for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press that Thomas-Greenfield should promote human rights as “a top priority.” “She should abandon the Trump administration’s selective approach to human rights – enthusiastically condemning its enemies’ abuses while ignoring rights violations of allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“But there’s room for continuity on China and Syria," Charbonneau said. “She should make expanding the coalition of nations willing to speak out against Beijing’s human rights abuses one of her chief goals at the U.N., above trying to bring African, Asian, and Latin American states into the fold. And she should continue to push for expanded humanitarian access to all parts of Syria.”

EU to hit more Russian officials with sanctions over Navalny

February 22, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to impose new sanctions against Russian officials linked to the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and expressed concern that the government in Moscow appears to see the 27-nation bloc as an adversary.

“We reached a political agreement to impose restrictive measures against those responsible for (Navalny's) arrest and sentencing and persecution,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after chairing their meeting in Brussels. He gave no details about the sanctions, but said that he hoped they would be finalized in about a week.

Borrell suggested that those targeted wouldn't include oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, as Navalny's supporters have requested. Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested in Moscow last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Earlier this month, a court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated.

The European Court of Human Rights has also ruled that it’s unlawful. Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment have fueled a huge wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.

“There is a shared assessment in the Council that Russia is drifting towards an authoritarian state and driving away from Europe," Borrell told reporters. Given Moscow's apparent path of “confrontation and disengagement,” Borrell said the bloc will work on three tracks: pushing back when Russia infringes international law, containing it when it pressures the EU, and engaging on issues that are in Europe's interests.

So far, EU countries have been deeply divided over their approach to Moscow. Russia is the EU’s biggest natural gas supplier, and plays a key role in a series of international conflicts and key issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, and conflicts in Syria and Libya.

European heavyweight Germany has strong economic interests there, notably the NordStream 2 undersea pipeline project, and a number of countries, including France, are also reluctant to wade into any sanctions battle over Navalny.

“We need Russia to resolve many international conflicts, and so that will also be a question we must deal with: How is it possible to maintain a constructive dialogue with Russia, even though relations between the EU and Russia have certainly reached a low point?” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.

The meeting came two weeks after Borrell was publicly humiliated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a trip to the country. Russia expelled diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden, accusing them of attending a rally in support of Navalny.

Borrell found out about the move by social media. The three retaliated by each declaring a Russian diplomat “persona non grata.” Criticism of Borrell initially mounted, but Lavrov’s behavior now seems to have united the Europeans, at least publicly, in their opposition to Moscow’s attempts to further divide them.

“We confirmed our unity as our greatest asset,” Borrell said. “At the same time, we must define a modus vivendi to avoid permanent confrontation with a neighbor who unfortunately seems to have decided to act as an adversary."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined the ministers via videoconference for part of their meeting, with talks focusing on Russia but also China. Borrell said the exchange was “very, very encouraging," and showed Washington's willingness to not only renew ties but to join in global leadership on the coronavirus, economic recovery, climate change and protecting democratic values.

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Russia steps in, trying to aid stalled Afghan peace process

February 20, 2021

ISLAMABAD (AP) — With talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban stalled and the new administration in Washington mulling its options, Russia is stepping up efforts to try and find a way forward in the peace process.

Moscow's emissaries have been making the rounds, visiting regional players and meeting officials and senior Taliban figures — even as a NATO ministerial conference this week concluded that there is no easy solution on how to end Afghanistan’s protracted war.

Zamir Kabulov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, was in Pakistan on Friday for talks with officials. Islamabad has been a key player with significant influence over the Taliban.

Also in Pakistan separately to meet with the powerful army chief was the U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie. Their agenda too was Afghanistan. While the statement following the meeting was vague, Pakistan is seen as key to getting the Taliban, whose leadership maintains homes and headquarters in Pakistan, to agree to a reduction in violence leading to an eventual cease-fire.

Washington and Kabul have been pressing for a cease-fire while the Taliban say they will negotiate it as part of peace talks with the Afghan government. Under a February 2020 deal that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban, Washington committed to a May 1 withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan — which, after 20 years, has become America’s longest conflict.

President Joe Biden is now conducting a review of that deal, though the Taliban have warned that there would be no wiggle room on the deadline, threatening to restart the war with the U.S. and NATO if it's not met.

Since the U.S.-Taliban agreement was signed, the Taliban have kept their commitment not to attack NATO and U.S. troops but are relentlessly targeting Afghan forces, which have also been conducting operations against the insurgents. The spike in violence across Afghanistan is undermining any prospects of a tangible cease-fire.

The Taliban today are the strongest they have been since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled their regime for sheltering the mastermind of 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

For its part, Russia has not forgotten its experience in Afghanistan, where at least 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in fighting that began as an effort to prop up a communist ally and soon became a grinding campaign against the U.S.-backed mujahedeen insurgency.

During his unannounced visit on Friday to Islamabad, the Russian envoy met with Pakistan's powerful army chief, as well as the foreign minister. Few details came out of Kabulov's meetings except a statement saying that Afghanistan and efforts to reach a peace deal dominated the discussions.

Russia has often waded into the diplomatic arena on Afghanistan, and last month a delegation of the Taliban visited Moscow — as they have done in the past, during critical moments for the peace process. In 2019, Moscow twice hosted meeting between the Taliban and prominent Afghan personalities — meeting that were seen as a precursor to the peace talks between the Afghan government and the insurgents that started last year in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office.

Moscow's diplomacy push comes ahead of the 32nd anniversary of the Soviet Union's pullout from Afghanistan where it fought the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who were backed by Washington and Pakistan. The co-founder of the Taliban and lead negotiator in the 2020 U.S.-Taliban deal, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, fought in the 1980s war against Soviet troops.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a statement after meeting with Kabulov that Islamabad and Moscow share a desire for “an inclusive political settlement (to) the conflict in Afghanistan .”

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that Afghanistan's foreign minister, Mohammad Haneef Atmar would be in Moscow next week. “Russia is paying special attention to the national reconciliation in Afghanistan and ending the protracted military conflict in the country,” Zakharova said.

Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Moscow court rejects opposition leader Navalny's appeal

February 20, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Saturday rejected Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s appeal against his prison sentence. Earlier this month, Navalny was sentenced by a lower court to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany.

A judge at Moscow City Court ruled Saturday that a month-and-half that Navalny spent under house arrest in early 2015 will be deducted from his prison sentence. That slightly reduced his sentence to about 2 1/2 years in prison.

The ruling came even as the country faced a top European rights court’s order to immediately free the Kremlin’s most prominent foe. Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption crusader and President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic, was arrested on Jan.17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

His sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and the European Court of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful. Navalny has asked the Moscow City Court to overturn the sentence and set him free.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Saturday considered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's appeal against his prison sentence, as the country faced a top European rights court's order to free the Kremlin's most prominent foe.

The Russian government has rebuffed the European Court of Human Rights' demand to free Navalny immediately, describing its ruling on Tuesday as unlawful and “inadmissible” meddling in Russia’s affairs.

The Moscow City Court was considering Saturday Navalny's appeal against a lower court ruling earlier this month that sentenced him to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and the European court has ruled to be unlawful.

A ruling is expected later Saturday. After that, Navalny will also face proceedings in a separate case on charges of defaming a World War II veteran. Navalny, who called the 94-year-old veteran and other people featured in a pro-Kremlin video “corrupt stooges,” “people without conscience” and “traitors,” has rejected the slander charges and described them as part of official efforts to disparage him.

Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption crusader and President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic, was arrested on Jan.17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment have fueled a huge wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.

Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest and the crackdown on demonstrations as meddling in its internal affairs. In Tuesday’s ruling, the ECHR ordered the Russian government to release Navalny, citing “the nature and extent of risk to the applicant’s life.” The Strasbourg-based court noted that Navalny has contested Russian authorities’ argument that they had taken sufficient measures to safeguard his life and well-being in custody following the nerve agent attack.

In the past, Moscow has abided by the ECHR’s rulings awarding compensations to Russian citizens who have contested verdicts in Russian courts, but it never faced a demand by the European court to set a convict free.

In a sign of its long-held annoyance with the Strasbourg court’s verdicts, Russia last year adopted a constitutional amendment declaring the priority of national legislation over international law. Russian authorities might now use that provision to reject the ECHR’s ruling.

Kremlin rebuffs European court's demand to free Navalny

February 18, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin on Thursday strongly rejected the European human rights court's order to release jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “inadmissible” meddling in Russia's affairs. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday's decision by the European Court of Human Rights, which demanded that Russia free Navalny immediately, was “unlawful" and biased.

Speaking in a conference call with reporters, Peskov denounced what he described as the Strasbourg-based court's “interference with the Russian judiciary, which we view as inadmissible.” Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and the European court has ruled to be unlawful.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the ECHR ordered the Russian government to release Navalny, citing “the nature and extent of risk to the applicant’s life.” The Strasbourg-based court noted that Navalny has contested Russian authorities’ argument that they had taken sufficient measures to safeguard his life and well-being in custody following the nerve agent attack.

In the past, Moscow has abided by the ECHR’s rulings awarding compensations to Russian citizens who have contested verdicts in Russian courts, but it never faced a demand by the European court to set a convict free.

In a reflection of its simmering irritation with the European court’s verdicts, Russia last year adopted a constitutional amendment declaring the priority of national legislation over international law. Russian authorities might now use that provision to reject the ECHR’s ruling.

Navalny’s chief strategist Leonid Volkov argued, however, that Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe obliges it to fulfill the court’s ruling. He warned on Facebook that the country risks losing its membership in the continent’s top human rights organization if it fails to abide by the order.

Asked during the conference call with reporters if Russia could leave the Council of Europe, Peskov responded that “we aren't looking for a confrontation.” But Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament who has led its delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, warned Thursday that Moscow could exit the body if it comes under pressure.

“If it contradicts our views of our sovereignty and dignity, we will make a corresponding decision and leave before they start that absolutely shameful process,” Tolstoy said in televised remarks. Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment fueled a wave of protests across Russia. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.

Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest and the crackdown on demonstrations as meddling in its internal affairs. In a sarcastic Facebook post on Thursday, Navalny said that prison authorities notified him that he was marked as a flight risk.

“I started laughing,” said Navalny who is held in the maximum-security Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow. “And then I asked them: ’Is it a joke? I already have been escorted by SWAT troops in helmets toting assault rifles, and now they probably will put me in chains.'”

Russia moves to extinguish pro-Navalny 'flashlight' protests

February 14, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — When the team of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged people to come out to their residential courtyards and shine their cellphone flashlights in a display of unity, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide demonstrations, the new protest format looked to some like a retreat.

But not to Russian authorities, who moved vigorously to extinguish the illuminated protests planned for Sunday. Officials accused Navalny’s allies of acting on NATO’s instructions. Kremlin-backed TV channels warned that flashlight rallies were part of major uprisings around the world. State news agencies cited unnamed sources saying a terrorist group was plotting attacks during unapproved mass protests.

The suppression attempts represent a change of tactics for the authorities who once tried to weaken Navalny's influence by erasing him. Kremlin-controlled TV channels used to largely ignore protests called by Navalny. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never mentioned his most prominent critic by name. State news agencies referred to the politician and anti-corruption investigator as “a blogger” in the rare stories they ran mentioning him.

“Navalny went from a person whose name is not allowed to be mentioned to the main subject of discussion” on state TV, Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny’s Foundations for Fighting Corruption, said in a YouTube video Friday.

Pevchikh credited Navalny’s latest expose for the sudden surge in attention. His foundation's two-hour-long video alleging that a lavish palace on Black Sea was built for Putin through elaborate corruption has been watched over 111 million times on YouTube since it was posted on Jan. 19.

The video went up two days after Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. The Russian government denies involvement and has said it has no evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

While the high-profile arrest and the subsequent expose were a double blow to authorities, political analyst and former Kremlin speech writer Abbas Gallyamov says that keeping Navalny and his activity off the airwaves to deprive him of additional publicity no longer makes sense.

“The fact that this strategy has changed suggests that the pro-government television audience is somehow receiving information about Navalny’s activities through other channels, recognizes him, is interested in his work, and in this sense, keeping the silence doesn’t make any sense,” Gallyamov said.

The weekend protests in scores of cities last month over Navalny’s detention represented the largest outpouring of popular discontent in years and appeared to have rattled the Kremlin. Police reportedly arrested about 10,000 people, and many demonstrators were beaten, while state media sought to downplay the scale of the protests.

TV channels aired footage of empty squares in cities where protests were announced and claimed that few people showed up. Some reports portrayed police as polite and restrained, claiming officers had helped people with disabilities cross busy streets, handed out face masks to demonstrators and offered them hot tea.

Once the protests died down and Navalny ally Leonid Volkov announced a pause until the spring, Kremlin-backed media reported that grassroots flash mobs titled “Putin is our president” started sweeping the country. State news channel Rossiya 24 broadcast videos from different cities of people dancing to patriotic songs and waving Russian flags, describing them as a genuine expression of support for Putin.

Several independent online outlets reported that instructions to record videos in support of Putin came from the Kremlin and the governing United Russia party, and that people featured in some of the recordings were invited to shoots under false pretenses.

The Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the pro-Putin videos. After Navalny's team posted its video involving the palace allegedly built for Putin, state channel Rossiya aired its own expose of Navalny. Anchor Dmitry Kiselev said that while working on the investigation in Germany, Navalny lived “in the luxury he so much despises.”

The reporter sent to chronicle the allegedly luxurious lifestyle the politician maintained while abroad filmed inside a house Navalny rented but failed to capture any high-end items in the two-story building, which featured several bedrooms and a small swimming pool.

She pointed to “two sofas, a TV, fresh fruit on the table” in the living room and “a kitchen with a coffee machine,” and described a bedroom as “luxurious” even though it didn’t look much different from a room in a business hotel.

In recent days, official media coverage has focused on plans for this weekend's flashlights-in-courtyards protest. Reports extensively quoted Navalny ally Volkov’s social media post announcing the event and accused him of acting on instructions from his Western handlers, pointing to an online conference with European officials he took part in the day before.

The political talk show “60 Minutes" devoted nearly a half-hour to the topic, calling the flashlight rally an idea from a handbook on revolutions. It aired footage of protesters shining flashlights during the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, mass rallies in Belarus last summer and other uprisings around the world.

On Thursday, state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti reported, citing anonymous sources, that a terrorist group from Syria was training insurgents for possible terrorist attacks in Russian cities “at locations of mass rallies.”

The reports didn’t refer to any specific protests. Neither did public warnings against “unauthorized public events” the Prosecutor General’s office and Russia’s Interior Ministry issued Thursday, although the ministry mentioned events "planned for the nearest time.”

“The Kremlin is awfully scared of the flashlight action,” because such a peaceful, light-hearted event would allow the opposition to build a rapport with new supporters who are not ready to be more visible and involved in the protests, Volkov said in a YouTube video.

He suggested that the heavy-handed response to the announcement actually helped dispel skepticism about the courtyard demonstrations. “I saw many posts on social media (saying) ‘When Navalny’s headquarters announced the flashlight rally, I thought what nonsense… But when I saw the Kremlin’s reaction, I realized they were right to come up with it.’”

Russia equipping Syria air base to receive nuclear bombers

February 12, 2021

Russia has been developing the Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia in western Syria in preparation for it to receive strategic nuclear bombers as part of plans to strengthen the Russian presence in the country, Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported.

The paper said Russia is modernizing the Hmeimim Air Base by rebuilding the runway to receive long-range strategic aircrafts capable of carrying nuclear weapons, adding that the strategic bombers would be able, if necessary, to strike "Syrian terrorists" and support the Russian-Mediterranean squadron.

The paper quoted American analyst Joseph Trevithick as saying that Russia is making the runway longer which will allow it to swing the geopolitical balance in the Middle East in its favour.

"The Hmeimim base is an important tool for the Russian presence in Syria, and it is more correct to say here that Russia is trying to expand its geopolitical and military influence to include the entire Mediterranean," Trevithick said, pointing out that, "Russian bombers equipped with winged missiles, launched from the Hmeimim air base, would be able to endanger targets in Europe and strike at the enemy's navy in the event of a conflict."

According to the American analyst, these aircrafts will also be able to respond more effectively to crises and unexpected situations in the Middle East and North Africa.

Last year, Syrian authorities agreed to give Russia additional land and coastal waters in order to expand its military air base at Hmeimim, Reuters reported at the time.

The agreement, signed by representatives of the two countries on 21 July and which became effective on 30 July, concerns an area of land and sea near the Latakia province where the air base is located.

Russia has supported the incumbent Bashar Al-Assad government of Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011. In September 2015, it entered into direct military involvement in the civil war and shifted the balances, allowing the regime to recoup some of its losses.

Source: Middle East Monitor.

Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210212-russia-equipping-syria-air-base-to-receive-nuclear-bombers/.

NATO weighs Afghan lessons of waging major ops abroad

October 21, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO defense ministers are weighing Thursday what lessons to draw from the almost two-decade-long military mission in Afghanistan, including whether the world’s biggest security organization should even undertake major operations outside Europe and North America.

Ahead of the meeting at the U.S.-led military alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the way the organization’s biggest-ever operation ended shows that the challenges of such endeavors should not be underestimated.

“It highlights the challenges and the risks to engage in big missions and operations outside NATO territory,” Stoltenberg told reporters. At the same time, he said, “the lesson cannot be that we will never engage.”

“We should not draw the wrong conclusion on Afghanistan and think that NATO allies and NATO should never again engage in military operations to fight extremism, or terrorism,” he said. NATO took the lead on international security efforts in Afghanistan in 2003 but ended combat operations in 2014 to focus on training local security forces. It helped build up an Afghan army of some 300,000 troops, but that force withered in just days in August in the face of a Taliban offensive.

More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the Afghan capital Kabul during the frenzied final days of a U.S. airlift after President Joe Biden said American troops would leave. Thousands of Afghans remained, desperate to escape the uncertainty of Taliban rule.

Stoltenberg suggested that part of the problem for NATO might have been that its role became more demanding as the major international effort to rebuild Afghanistan developed, shifting the organization away from its original task of destroying the al-Qaida network.

“We started with a very limited, narrow, military mission, fighting terrorism, degrading al-Qaida,” Stoltenberg said. But NATO then became “only one of many players or actors,” including the EU and United Nations, in a broader “nation building effort,” he said.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said it was important to learn “that purely military aims alone are not sufficient” when the ultimate goal is to foster democracy and stabilize a country wracked by decades of conflict.

“If you are pursuing longer-term political aims with this, possibly you need even more patience than 20 years, and above all … you have to describe the aims in very concrete and realistic terms, because otherwise you get what we saw in Afghanistan -- that we achieved our military aims over 20 years but nation-building ultimately failed in the long term,” she told reporters.

The actual job of identifying lessons is being handled by NATO’s 30 deputy national envoys, under the lead of Assistant Secretary General for Operations John Manza. Manza was to submit his initial findings in a report to the ministers. A final report is due to be debated by NATO foreign ministers in early December.

Explaining the process to lawmakers earlier this month, Manza said that it’s important to have a “wide-eyed discussion” about hot-spot countries before NATO deploys troops there, and to establish whether those countries constitute a vital interest for the alliance, or just a peripheral one.

“From what I can see there was no such discussion at NATO headquarters about the level of interest in Afghanistan. I would argue that Afghanistan isn’t and never was in the vital interest of the United States or any of our allies,” he said.

Manza noted that the mission was initially small and focused on anti-terror work in Kabul, but that as it began to expand to a country-wide counter-insurgency operation — climbing up to around 140,000 NATO troops — “our level of investment began to exceed our interests.”

“We didn’t see how difficult that was going to make it to get out because the sum costs became the strategy; the strategic driver if you’re not careful,” he said. Other problems were that important military reports meant for civilian decision-makers were “delayed and watered down” by committees, while international Provincial Reconstruction Teams meant to foster economic growth in Afghanistan’s regions became a kind of local government.

The enforcement of a U.N. women in security initiative aimed at ensuring that 8% of Afghan security personnel were female may have actually put them at risk because there was no infrastructure within the armed forces to protect them.

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Scientists urge UK to prep rapid return of COVID measures

October 22, 2021

LONDON (AP) — The British government’s scientific advisers urged the government on Friday to ensure coronavirus restrictions can be introduced rapidly, as the rate of new infections continues to grow.

Britain has recorded an average of 47,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day in the past week, up 18% from the week before, according to figures released on Friday. There was an average of 135 deaths a day, a 16% rise from the previous week. Britain has recorded more than 139,000 coronavirus deaths during the pandemic, the highest toll in Europe after Russia.

Many scientists are urging the government to reintroduce some of the measures that it lifted three months ago when more than a year of restrictions ended, including mandatory mask-wearing indoors, social distancing and work-from-home advice.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, a body of scientists that advises the government, says “policy work on the potential reintroduction of measures should be undertaken now so that it can be ready for rapid deployment,” according to minutes of a meeting held last week.

The group said that of all the measures the government is considering, the “re-introduction of working from home guidance is likely to have the greatest individual impact on transmission.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government says it may reimpose some restrictions as part of a fall and winter “Plan B” — but not yet.

Britain is relying almost exclusively on vaccines to keep the virus at bay during the fall and winter months, when respiratory viruses circulate most widely. Almost 80% of people 12 and over in the U.K. have received two vaccine doses and millions are being offered a booster shot, including everyone over 50.

Scientific modelers in the advisory group said a big spike in hospitalizations like the one seen last winter was increasingly unlikely, and that booster vaccines could keep the spread of the virus “at levels similar to or lower than currently observed.” But they said there could still be thousands more coronavirus deaths in the coming months.

The prime minister, who visited a vaccination center in London on Friday, said the current infection level was “not outside the parameters of what was predicted." Johnson urged people to take “commonsensical” precautions such as wearing a mask, and to get a booster shot as soon as they were eligible — six months after the second dose.

Though some have suggested a new lockdown may be needed if cases continue to rise, Johnson dismissed the idea. “At the moment that we see absolutely nothing to indicate that that’s on the cards at all,” he said.

Belarus scraps short-lived mask mandates amid virus surge

October 22, 2021

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarusian authorities on Friday horrified doctors by abolishing mask mandates, less than two weeks after their introduction for the first time during the pandemic and a day after the country registered a record number of new coronavirus infections.

The decision came after Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed the measures as unnecessary during a meeting with officials earlier this week. “It’s just over the top to send police to track down those who aren’t wearing masks,” Lukashenko said. “We aren’t the West.”

The mask mandates were introduced on Oct. 9 amid a new wave of contagion. Belarusians had been required to wear medical masks in all indoor public areas, including public transport and stores. On Thursday, the country officially reported 2,097 new confirmed infections, the highest number so far. Many have criticized the official figures as an undercount.

Dr. Nikita Solovei, a leading Belarusian infectious disease expert in the capital, Minsk, sharply criticized the decision to abolish mask mandates. He described it as “madness” amid soaring contagion, and warned that “officials will bear responsibility for that before law and the Belarusian people in the near future.”

“Clinics and hospitals in all regions of the country have been overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and suffered shortages of oxygen and medicines,” he wrote on Facebook. When the pandemic struck, Lukashenko had dismissed concern over the coronavirus as “psychosis” and refused to impose any restrictions. The country was the only one in Europe to keep holding professional soccer games with fans in the stands while the outbreak was in full swing.

The 67-year-old former state farm director advised Belarusians to “kill the virus with vodka,” go to saunas and work in the fields to avoid infection. “Tractors will cure everybody!” he proclaimed. His cavalier attitude to the coronavirus amid soaring contagion and deaths angered many Belarusians and contributed to the public outrage over Lukashenko's re-election to sixth term in an August 2020 vote — which the opposition and the West have rejected as a sham.

Belarusian authorities responded to months of massive protests with a ferocious crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police — a repression that triggered bruising Western sanctions.

While announcing the abolition of the short-lived mask mandates, Lukashenko, who has run the ex-Soviet nation of 9.3 million for more than 27 years with an iron hand, earning the nickname of “Europe's last dictator” in the West, added a touch of sardonic humor, saying: “This is the advantage of a dictatorship — whoosh, and a wrong decision is no longer valid.”

Lukashenko's statement came even as daily infections have topped 2,000 in recent days, prompting Belarusian authorities to halt other medical services to allow hospitals to concentrate on treating COVID-19 patients.

Lukashenko offered his own advice to medical workers to avoid hospitals from being overwhelmed, suggesting they should discharge patients more quickly. “You shouldn't keep people who don't need long hospitalization for 7-10 days,” he said. “If you see that a patient is getting better and no longer needs intravenous injections and other things, just send him home.”

In a further bizarre twist, Lukashenko said Belarus has seen a reduction in the number of cancer patients during the pandemic and speculated that COVID-19 could be a “remedy from oncological diseases.”

He added that doctors first thought the drop in cancer patients was linked to fewer people turning for medical assistance during the pandemic, but claimed that the explanation wasn't sufficient. He didn't provide any facts to support the strange claim, which has caused a barrage of critical comments.

Andrei Tkachev, the coordinator of Belarus' Medical Solidarity Foundation — an association of volunteers and doctors that helps medical workers who faced reprisals from the regime — rejected Lukashenko's assertions as absurd. He also denounced the authorities' decision to abolish mask mandates.

“Lukashenko's claims about the alleged link between COVID-19 and oncology, his statements on the abolition of the mask mandates and reduction of hospital terms cause laughter and tears at the same time,” Tkachev told the AP in a telephone interview. “Doctors understand the absurdity of those claims, but they are afraid to speak out against them for fear of finding themselves behind bars.”

He said that many medical workers who were critical of the authorities have been fired, raising the strain on the nation's health care system. “The authorities’ careless attitude encourages citizens’ carelessness and exacerbates the catastrophic situation, the scale of which can only be guessed,” said Tkachev, who is currently out of Belarus.

Belarusian authorities have registered a total of more than 580,000 infections and 4,482 deaths. Only about 20% of the population have been vaccinated, with Russian and Chinese vaccines. The authorities have stopped reporting daily deaths, and Tkachev and others rejected government coronavirus statistics.

“Official statistics can’t be trusted, it’s falsified,” Tkachev said. “Overcrowded hospitals are a testimony of that. Real numbers are several times higher.” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition challenger in the August 2020 election, who was forced to move to neighboring Lithuania after the vote under official pressure, also dismissed the official numbers.

“People don’t believe the government and official statistics and they see huge lines at (clinics) and hospitals,” Tsikhanouskaya said during an online conference. “Belarus faces the worst wave of the coronavirus, and it’s not ready for that.”

Romania revives restrictions as hospitals struggle, jabs lag

October 22, 2021

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Doctor Petruta Filip is working 100-hour weeks at a Bucharest hospital which, like hospitals throughout Romania, is struggling under an onslaught of COVID-19 patients in a country with worryingly low vaccination rates.

The European Union country of around 19 million has only 35% of its adults fully inoculated against COVID-19 compared to an EU average of 74%, and is the second-least vaccinated nation in the 27-nation bloc in front of Bulgaria. That's crippling Romania's creaking health care system, which is also facing record-high death and infection numbers.

In an attempt Friday to curb the deadly surge and relieve pressure on hospitals, authorities approved tighter restrictions set to take effect on Monday. Vaccination certificates will be required for many day-to-day activities, such as going to the gym, the cinema, or a shopping mall.

For everyone, there will be a 10 p.m. curfew, shops will be shuttered at 9 p.m., bars and clubs will close for 30 days, and schools will close for an additional week over half-term starting Monday. Masks will be mandatory for everyone in public.

“I would bring people (who don’t believe in the virus or vaccines) here for a day, and maybe they’ll change their opinion,” Filip told The Associated Press Friday. She works at the capital's Bucharest University Emergency Hospital in a COVID-19 ward packed with patients receiving oxygen treatment.

Romania on Tuesday registered record highs of nearly 19,000 infections and 574 deaths. More than 1,800 coronavirus patients are currently receiving intensive care treatment. Data from Romania's health authorities indicate that more than 90% of those dying of COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

“All the stories on TV are about morgues filled with dead people and relatives crying outside," said Filip, on a day that Romania registered 16,110 new COVID-19 infections and 448 deaths. It was a week in which dark scenes emerged of ambulances queued for hours outside hospitals waiting for beds to be made available. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called it a “national drama of terrible proportions” and said there has been a “lack of concrete action” by authorities on preparing for the latest surge.

“A real catastrophe has been triggered in Romania and unfortunately until people convince themselves to get vaccinated, measures are needed,” he said Wednesday. Earlier this month, Romanian doctors issued an open letter to Romanians titled “a cry of despair” to highlight the plight they face and urged people to get vaccinated.

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Romania, which now has one of the worst COVID-19 death rates in the EU, prompted the World Health Organization to send a senior expert, Dr. Heather Papowitz, to assist in strengthening its pandemic response.

Papowitz attended on Friday the opening of a three-day round-the-clock vaccination ‘marathon’ in Bucharest, which authorities hope will stimulate jab uptake. In the first eight hours more than 13,000 people received a vaccine, authorities said.

“It's really exciting that we see so many people here," Papowitz told a press conference. “We've heard that a lot of people are getting vaccinated, that more are getting vaccinated.” For 51-year-old Emilia, who got inoculated at the vaccination marathon in Bucharest Friday, the population was not well-informed about vaccines — for which she blames the authorities.

“There was a great deal of ignorance, people were not well informed,” she said. Vaccination uptake in Romania has risen since the end of September, from around just 10,000 doses a day to a record high Friday of 128,000. But the WHO estimates that, at the current rate, it could take Romania nearly three years to pass the key 70% threshold of vaccination coverage.

“Romania has failed at vaccinating its population,” Dr. Marius-Ionut Ungureanu, director of the Center for Health Workforce Research and Policy at Babes-Bolyai University, told the AP. Ungureanu says that, while the new restrictions starting Monday are “vital” the response by the authorities during this latest deadly wave is “too little, too late.”

“The vaccination campaign, almost flawlessly organized and coordinated from a logistical perspective, has failed from a communication standpoint,” he said.

Stephen McGrath in Bucharest contributed to this story.

As virus cases rise, so do pleas for Russians to get vaccine

October 22, 2021

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia (AP) — As she stood in the courtyard of the morgue holding the body of her grandmother who died of COVID-19, Ramilya Shigalturina had a message for anyone still resisting vaccinations.

“I'm begging all Russians: Please get vaccinated, because it's really dreadful and dangerous,” said the resident of Nizhny Novgorod, the country's fifth-largest city. Shigalturina said her 83-year-old grandmother “died right away after catching it. She wasn't vaccinated.”

When Russia last year became the first country to launch a coronavirus vaccine, called Sputnik V, it was hailed as a matter of national pride and a sign of its scientific know-how. But since the free immunization program began in December 2020, only about a third of the country's 146 million people have gotten fully vaccinated.

The low vaccine acceptance is of increasing concern as Russia suffers a sharp rise in cases, setting records for infections and deaths nearly every day this month. On Friday, the national coronavirus task force reported 1,064 deaths and more than 37,000 new infections over the past 24 hours, another pandemic high.

“I can't understand what's going on,” President Vladimir Putin said, a rare admission of bewilderment from the steely leader. “We have a reliable and efficient vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications and death.”

At Nizhny Novgorod's Infectious Hospital No. 23, where the seriously ill patients lie in wards with little space between their beds, Dr. Natalia Soloshenko is battered by the onslaught. “I can tell you that out of every 50 admitted, only one or two of them are vaccinated," the chief doctor told The Associated Press. “The whole ICU is full of highly critical patients; all of those patients are unvaccinated.”

“To be honest, we're not even outraged anymore; we just feel sorry for these people,” she said. Nina Pugacheva is still in the hospital, but is one of the lucky ones — she is recovering. “Tell everyone to get vaccinated,” she said.

Soloshenko said widespread misinformation appears to be driving the vaccine hesitancy. “It's a very sensitive issue, a burning issue for all health care workers. We read what's on social media and see the most negative information coming from the citizens of our country regarding vaccination,” she said.

Many Russians are suspicious of vaccines as a whole because of a distrust of authorities dating to the Soviet era. With Sputnik V, there was widespread concern that it was approved for use before the completion of full clinical trials.

Some critics also have blamed conflicting signals from authorities. While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media often criticized Western-made shots, a message that many saw as feeding doubts about vaccines in general.

The vaccination rate in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, is 44% higher than the national average, but it is seeing a high death rate. The coronavirus task force reported 40 new deaths in the past day — about twice the death rate recorded in Moscow.

As deaths spiked, regional Gov. Gleb Nikitin said new measures would be taken to curb the spread of the infections, but they haven't been announced yet. Putin on Wednesday ordered Russians to stay away from work from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, a period that includes a four-day national holiday.

Moscow and St. Petersburg, the two most populous Russian cities and the country's key political, business and cultural centers, have gone further, announcing new restrictions following months of inaction.

In Moscow, gyms, cinemas, entertainment venues and most stores are to be closed from Oct. 28 to Nov. 7; and restaurants will be open only for takeout or delivery. The authorities in St. Petersburg on Monday introduced digital codes for proving vaccination that must be shown beginning Nov. 1 to enter conferences and sports events. Starting on Nov. 15, those codes will be required at movies, theaters, museums and gyms, and on Dec. 1 they will be mandatory at restaurants, cafes and some stores.

A similar code system was tried in Moscow over the summer but was abandoned after a few weeks amid complaints from restaurant owners about tanking revenue.

Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed.

Moscow closing schools, many businesses as virus deaths soar

October 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Restaurants, movie theaters and many retail stores in Moscow will be closed for 11 days starting Oct. 28, along with other new restrictions, officials said Thursday, as Russia recorded the highest numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths since the pandemic began.

The government coronavirus task force reported 36,339 new infections and 1,036 deaths in the past 24 hours. That brought Russia’s death toll to 227,389, by far the highest in Europe. President Vladimir Putin has voiced consternation about Russians' hesitancy to get vaccinated and urged them to get the shots, but firmly ruled out making them mandatory.

He responded to the rising infections and deaths by ordering Russians to stay off work from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, when the country already is observing a four-day national holiday, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin followed up by introducing new restrictions in the capital, starting even earlier.

Gyms, cinemas and other entertainment venues, as well as most stores will close in Moscow from Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, along with kindergartens and schools. Restaurants and cafes will only be open for takeout or delivery orders during that period. Food stores and pharmacies can stay open.

Access to museums, theaters, concert halls and other venues will be limited to those holding digital codes on their smartphones to prove vaccination or past illness, a practice that will remain in place even after Nov. 7.

Most state organizations and private businesses, except for those operating key infrastructure and a few others, will halt work in the 11-day period, Sobyanin added. Earlier this week, he said unvaccinated people over 60 will be required to stay home except for brief walks and open-air exercise. He also told businesses to keep at least a third of their employees working remotely for three months starting Oct. 25.

“The situation in Moscow is developing according to the worst-case scenario,” Sobyanin wrote on his blog, adding that the number of infections in the capital is nearing all-time highs. Russia’s daily infections have been surging for weeks and mortality numbers topped 1,000 for the first time last weekend amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to tighten restrictions. Only about 45 million Russians — roughly a third of its nearly 146 million people — are fully vaccinated.

Russia was the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, launching Sputnik V in August 2020, and has plentiful supplies. But citizens have been reluctant to get it. Putin, who was vaccinated with Sputnik V earlier this year, said Wednesday he was bewildered by that hesitancy, even among his close friends, who told him they would get the shot after he did, but then kept delaying it.

Speaking Thursday at a panel with foreign policy experts, Putin said that “there are just two options for everyone — to get sick, or receive a vaccine. And there is no way to walk between the raindrops.”

Asked if Russia could make vaccines mandatory, Putin said he believes they should remain voluntary. “I believe we mustn't force it but persuade people and prove to them that vaccination is better than illness,” he said. “We must try to increase people's trust in the government's actions. We need to be more convincing and prove it by example. I hope we will succeed.”

Some critics have blamed the slow pace of vaccination on conflicting signals from authorities. While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media often criticized Western-made shots, a message that many saw as feeding doubts about vaccines in general.

Russia is still waiting for the World Health Organization to approve Sputnik V. On Thursday, WHO formally restarted the process to approve the vaccine for emergency use — a process that had been put on hold for months because of legal procedures to secure the agreement of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolls the vaccine to WHO rules and procedures.

Dr. Mariangela Simao, a WHO assistant director-general for medical products, didn’t specify when a possible approval would come for an emergency use listing for Sputnik V. She said WHO expects to receive in the next two weeks additional data on the vaccine, such as technical and clinical data, manufacturing practices and quality management systems.

Russian authorities believe the order to keep people off work should help limit the spread of the virus by keeping them out of offices and off public transportation, where mask mandates have been widely ignored. The government also urged local authorities to tighten their own restrictions during the period.

In some regions where the situation is even more threatening, Putin said the nonworking period could start as early as Saturday and be extended past Nov. 7. After imposing a nationwide lockdown early in the pandemic, the government has balked at them since then, for fear of hurting the economy and sapping Putin’s popularity. Authorities have instead allowed regional authorities to decide on local restrictions.

Many of Russia’s 85 regions already have restricted attendance at large public events and introduced the digital codes for access to restaurants, theaters and other venues. Some have made vaccinations compulsory for certain public servants and people over 60.

But Moscow had avoided such restrictions until now, and crowds have flocked to its restaurants, movie theaters, nightclubs and karaoke bars. Authorities have avoided restrictive measures until now, partly because the capital's health care system has more resources than other regions.

But Sobyanin said tougher measures are now inevitable. “The experience shows that nonworking days are the most effective way to reduce contagion and deaths,” he said.

Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

French vaccine rollout slowed by focus on elderly, red tape

January 09, 2021

PARIS (AP) — The few hours it took to give the first coronavirus vaccine shots to 14 residents of the John XXIII nursing home — named after a pope and not far from the birthplace in eastern France of vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur — took weeks of preparation.

The home's director, Samuel Robbe, first had to chew his way through a dense 61-page vaccination protocol, one of several hefty guides from the French government that exhaustively detail how to proceed, down to the number of times (10) that each flask of vaccine should be turned upside down to mix its contents.

“Delicately,” the booklet stipulates. “Do not shake." As France tries to figure out why its vaccination campaign launched so slowly, the answer lies partly in forests of red tape and the decision to prioritize vulnerable older people in nursing homes. They are perhaps the toughest group to start with, because of the need for informed consent and difficulties explaining the complex science of fast-tracked vaccines.

Claude Fouet, still full of vim and good humor at age 89 but with memory problems, was among the first in his Paris care home to agree to a vaccination. But in conversation, it quickly becomes apparent that his understanding of the pandemic is spotty. Eve Guillaume, the home's director, had to remind Fouet that in April he survived his own brush with the virus that has killed more than 66,000 people in France.

“I was in hospital,” Fouet slowly recalled, “with a dead person next to me.” Guillaume says that getting consent from her 64 residents — or their guardians and families when they are not fit enough to agree themselves — is proving to be the most labor-intensive part of her preparations to start inoculations later this month. Some families have said no, and some want to wait a few months to see how vaccinations unfold before deciding.

“You can’t count on medicalized care homes to go quickly,” she says. “It means, each time, starting a conversation with families, talking with guardians, taking collegial steps to reach the right decision. And that takes time.”

At the John XXIII home, between the fortified town of Besancon and Pasteur's birthplace in Dole, Robbe has had a similar experience. After the European Union green-lighted use of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine in December, Robbe says it took two weeks to put together all the pieces to this week vaccinate 14 residents, just a fraction of his total of more than 100.

Getting consent was the biggest hurdle for a doctor and a psychologist who went from room to room to discuss vaccinations, he says. The families of residents were given a week over the December holidays to approve or refuse, a decision that had to be unanimous from immediate family members.

When one woman's daughter said yes but her son said no, a shot wasn't given because “they can turn against us and say, ‘I never agreed to that,’” Robbe explained. “No consensus, we don't vaccinate.” Only by cutting corners and perfunctorily getting residents to agree could the process go quicker, he says.

“My friends are saying, ‘What is this circus? The Germans have already vaccinated 80,000 people and we’ve vaccinated no one,'" he says. "But we don’t share the same histories. When you propose a vaccine to Germans, they all want to get inoculated. In France, there is a lot of reticence about the history of vaccinations. People are more skeptical. They need to understand. They need explications and to be reassured.”

France prioritized nursing homes because they have seen nearly one-third of its deaths. But its first vaccination on Dec. 27, of a 78-year-old woman in a long-term care facility, quickly proved to have been only the symbolic launch of a rollout that the government never intended to get properly underway before this week.

Only on Monday, as scheduled, did authorities launch an online platform where health workers must log all vaccinations and show that those inoculated got an obligatory consultation with a doctor, adding to the red tape.

In some countries that are moving faster than France, the bureaucracy is leaner. In Britain, where nearly 1.5 million have been inoculated and plans are to offer jabs to all nursing home residents by the end of January, those capable of consenting need only sign a one-page form that gives basic information about the benefits and possible side effects.

No doctor interviews are needed in Spain. It started vaccinating the same day as France but administered 82,000 doses in the first nine days, whereas France managed just a couple of thousand. Germany, like France, also mandates a meeting with a doctor and is prioritizing shots for care home residents, but it is getting to them quicker, using mobile teams. At its current rate of nearly 30,000 vaccinations per day, Germany would need at least six years to inoculate its 69 million adults. But while the German government is facing criticism for the perceived slow rollout, France made an even more leisurely start, at least in numerical terms, but has pledged to reach 1 million people by the end of January.

Other countries have racked up bigger numbers by offering shots to broader cross-sections of people who are easier to reach and can get themselves to appointments. The large majority of the more than 400,000 doses administered in Italy have gone to health-care workers.

Lucile Grillon, who manages three nursing homes in eastern France, says the many hours invested to prepare vaccinations for 50 residents and staff who got jabs on Friday was time well spent. She worked through the holidays to get ready.

“We can’t wait until we have the doses in our fridge to realize that we’re not ready to vaccinate and then have to throw doses away and say, ‘Rats! I didn’t think of that,’” she adds. “The doses are too precious.”

“It takes us two months to prepare for flu shots. Here, we have been asked to set records, to vaccinate against COVID in under 15 days," she says. “I don’t see how we could have gone any quicker.”

Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.

France's go-slow coronavirus vaccination strategy backfires

January 04, 2021

PARIS (AP) — France’s cautious approach to rolling out a coronavirus vaccination program appears to have backfired, leaving barely 500 people inoculated in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Amid public outcry, the health minister vowed Monday to step up the pace, and made a belated public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers a “chance” for France and the world to vanquish a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people. President Emmanuel Macron was holding a special meeting with top government officials Monday to address the vaccine strategy and other virus developments.

The slow rollout of the vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech was blamed on mismanagement, staffing shortages during holiday vacations and a complex French consent policy designed to accommodate unusually broad vaccine skepticism among the French public.

Doctors, mayors and opposition politicians pleaded Monday for speedier access to vaccines. “It’s a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, where infections are surging and some hospitals are over capacity.

“Getting vaccinated is becoming more complicated than buying a car,” he said on France-2 television. In France, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Health Ministry. Health Minister Olivier Veran promised that by the end of Monday, “several thousand” people will have been vaccinated, with the tempo picking up through the week — but that still leaves France well behind its neighbors.

Germany’s first-week total surpassed 200,000 and Italy’s was over 100,000 — and even those countries are under fire for being too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

The U.S. and China, meanwhile, have vaccinated millions. Britain on Monday became the first nation in the world to start giving people shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the U.K. now has two approved vaccines to use.

France started its vaccination campaign on Dec. 27 in nursing homes, because so many elderly people have died with the virus. But facing fears that people with cognitive problems would be vaccinated against their will, the government devised a time-consuming screening process before the vaccines can be ordered and administered.

Macron's government is also keen not to appear that it is forcing vaccines on anyone. Though France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries — over 65,000 — polls suggest the French are unusually wary of vaccines. They remember past French drug scandals, worry about how quickly these new vaccines were developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits they bring to big pharmaceutical companies.

But many other French people are eager to vaccinated and have been frustrated by the surprisingly slow rollout. “We are doing anything we can to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Frederic Leyret, director of the St. Vincent Hospital in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, whose geriatric rehabilitation facility started vaccinations Monday.

He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, which he sums up as: “Go get vaccinated, but we will go slowly because it could be dangerous.” Now that millions of people in multiple countries are getting injected, he said attitudes are starting to shift. The French government adjusted its policies over the weekend to allow immediate vaccinations for medical workers over 50, alongside nursing home residents. Vaccines will gradually be made available to others.

On Monday, French authorities reported 378 new deaths from the virus and said numbers of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in intensive care units — more than 2,600 people — remained stable. Similar troubles have surfaced around Europe.

Spain saw vaccinations move slowly over the New Year holiday, blamed on shortages of medical personnel and of freezers for the vaccine, after a batch of them were caught in a bottleneck of trucks trying to enter the European mainland from Britain.

Spain has received in total 718,535 vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, but had only administered 82,334 by Monday, Health Minister Salvador Illa said. He added authorities that are confident that vaccination levels will reach “cruising speed” by next week, once the holiday period is over.

In Germany, where nearly 265,000 coronavirus vaccinations had been reported by Monday, impatience is growing with what is seen as a slow start. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert promised that “some things can and will improve.”

Amid the criticism, a European Commission spokesman defended the European Union’s collective vaccine strategy, saying Monday that the main problem is a shortage of production capacity. The European Medicines Agency, the medical regulator for the 27-nation bloc, was meeting Monday to discuss approval of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, Aritz Parra in Madrid, and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

'New start:' Medics juggle surgery backlogs and virus fight

December 08, 2020

PARIS (AP) — Chatting before they go under the knife, the two women picture their lives after surgery. Caroline Erganian hopes to be rid of her pain. Lolita Andela imagines being able to be active with her kids.

After multiple false dawns, they scarcely dare believe that their Paris hospital, no longer monopolized by COVID-19 patients, is once again able to perform their stomach surgeries to treat obesity. When the pandemic was burning through France's health system, the women's operations were repeatedly pushed back. But after months of waiting, their turn has now come.

Lying on a gurney, ready to be wheeled into the operating room, Erganian, a retired secretary, tells the surgeon: “I’m doing this surgery to have a better life. So I'm enthusiastic, not a bit scared."

“A new start,” replies the surgeon, Lara Ribeiro Parenti, thrilled to be back at work with her scalpel. “This is what we know best and what we enjoy doing. It’s a renewal, a new start, for us, too.” For these women, yes. But many thousands of others in France and other European countries hardest-hit by the pandemic are still waiting for medical procedures that could change their lives and improve their health, but which were deemed nonessential when the virus ripped through hospitals.

To prevent the collapse of public health systems, their decks were cleared. People who had been scheduled for joint replacements to free them from pain, for cataract removals to defog their sight, for cancer checks, and myriad other life-improving and even potentially life-saving procedures, were told to stay home as staving off COVID-19 took priority.

At the Bichat Hospital in Paris, one of the French capital’s largest with 900 beds, wards fell silent as resources were poured into critical care units in the basement. But doctors are now better able to treat virus patients and better equipped for the double challenge of fighting COVID-19 while also doing other medicine. With France’s most recent virus spike now stabilized, Bichat is using the lull to tackle the backlog of surgeries. An Associated Press team spent two days this month with its staff, seeing how they are recovering from virus surges that left more than 55,600 dead in France.

Bichat was the first hospital outside Asia to report a COVID-19 death, back in February, and was turned upside down when the pandemic struck with full force in March. Makeshift plastic screens were erected to stop contamination spreading, held up with duct tape and bits of wood. Operating rooms and a recovery room the size of a tennis court were among spaces hastily converted for floods of sick people, who were plugged into ventilators, one next to the other.

“It was cataclysmic," recalls Simon Msika, the head of digestive surgery whose unit was among those that emptied. “The basement was teeming with people.” When President Emmanuel Macron declared that France was at war with the virus and put the country into lockdown in March, Erganian and Andela both immediately understood that their surgeries wouldn't happen as planned.

“It was a hammer blow for the family, because we were ready," says Andela, who is the carer for a man with disabilities. Admissions for COVID-19 aside, hospitalizations across France plunged, with 2 million fewer hospital stays from March to July compared to the same period of 2019, the French Hospitals Federation says. Cataract surgeries stopped almost entirely for eight weeks, and colonoscopies used to spot cancers plummeted by 87%. There were half as many kidney transplants from March to September, according to the federation. Its statisticians estimate that the number of patients waiting for postponed procedures has swelled by hundreds of thousands.

Neighboring Spain was battling long waiting lists for non-urgent surgeries even before the virus caused more than 45,600 deaths there. Public health data shows that in the first half of 2020, surgeries plunged by more than a third year-on-year. The average waiting time has grown from 115 days to 170. At the end of June, 691,508 people were registered as waiting for non-urgent procedures — 20,000 more than a year earlier.

In Portugal, almost 100,000 surgeries had been postponed by October. And the association of hospital surgeons in Italy says more than 600,000 operations have been canceled there, 50,000 of them for cancer. By June, the association was already warning that more than 13 months would be needed to clear the backlog.

Delays are more than mere inconveniences for patients. Erganian weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds) before surgery; Andela was 133 kilos (293 pounds). Both were terrified of becoming infected by the virus, acutely aware that obesity puts them at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. Other than for work and groceries, Andela says she barely left the house. Erganian says she lived in “monstrous fear.”

Both gained additional kilos in lockdown. Andela wept when her nutritionist weighed her. “I have three kids. I dream of doing lots of things with them that I cannot do now: rollerblading, scootering, hoverboarding, going to the swimming pool without having to hide,” the 33-year-old said the afternoon before her gastric bypass surgery.

Erganian, 58, hopes to shed more than a third of her weight as a result of having a large part of her stomach cut out and be free of knee and back pain — and of her cane. She prayed in the final weeks that her phone wouldn’t ring with news of another delay.

“In a European country as developed as France, I find it abnormal that surgeries that should have been done couldn’t be carried out because of COVID,” she says. “We should not be choosing between one sick person and another.”

The pandemic hit with such force initially that hospitals in many countries barely coped, but that is changing. During France's second lockdown from Oct. 30, surgeons at Bichat performed many more operations than during the first shutdown. All 22 of the hospital's operating rooms were functioning again this month.

The operating room schedule that Aurelie Gouel manages was largely filled with gaping holes in March but is now a tightly packed puzzle of colored blocks, each representing a surgery. She likens the task of fitting in as many operations as possible to the computer game Tetris.

Gouel calculates that the pandemic has so far forced the postponement of more than 600 surgeries at Bichat. Even with operating rooms again going full tilt, she can't see how the hospital will catch up.

“There will always be other patients who take priority," she says. "It is going to be complicated for a long time.”

Associated Press writers Aritz Parra in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Frances d'Emilio in Rome contributed.

Belgium braces for another surge in COVID-19 cases

October 21, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium's government warned Thursday that the country could well be on the cusp of another major surge in COVID-19 cases despite its high vaccination rate. Though the government recently relaxed the mandatory use of facemasks, it is again starting to encourage the population to use them to counter a rise in cases reminiscent of the first three surges of the past 1 1/2 years.

“We are clearly in a fourth wave,” Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told the VRT network. “We will see a major increase in infections and, unfortunately, hospital admissions.” The government has this month loosened some restrictions, including allowing for more indoor events and dropping requirements for customers to wear masks in bars.

Belgium, a nation of 11 million, again has over 3,000 infections a day, an increase of 50% compared to the week earlier. Hospital admissions are at 80 a day now, an increase of over 40%. Even if the total numbers are still manageable, there are worries about the curve spiking again, even though 85 percent of the adult population is vaccinated.

Moscow to shut shops, schools as COVID-19 deaths soar

October 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Authorities in Moscow on Thursday announced plans to shut restaurants, cinemas and non-food stores and introduce other restrictions later this month, as Russia registered the highest daily numbers of new coronavirus infections and deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The government coronavirus task force reported 36,339 new confirmed infections and 1,036 deaths in the past 24 hours. That brought Russia’s death toll to 227,389, by far the highest in Europe. President Vladimir Putin has voiced consternation about vaccine hesitancy and sought to urge more to come forward for jabs.

Putin on Wednesday responded to rising contagion and deaths by ordering Russians to stay off work from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin followed up Thursday by introducing a slew of restrictions in the capital.

All non-food stores, gyms, cinemas and other entertainment venues in the Russian capital will be shut from Oct. 28 to Nov. 7. Restaurants and cafes will only be allowed to deliver takeaway orders, and schools and kindergartens will also be closed during that period.

Access to museums, theaters, concert halls and other venues will be limited to holders of digital codes proving vaccination or past illness, a practice that will also remain in place after Nov. 7 per the Cabinet's advice.

Most state organizations and private businesses except for those operating key infrastructure and a few others will halt work in the 11-day period, the mayor added. Earlier this week, Sobyanin said unvaccinated people over 60 will be required to stay home except for brief walks and open-air exercise. He also told businesses to keep at least a third of their employees working remotely for three months starting Oct. 25.

“The situation in Moscow is developing according to the worst-case scenario,” Sobyanin wrote on his blog, adding that the number of infections in the capital is nearing all-time highs. Russia’s daily infections have been surging for weeks and coronavirus mortality numbers topped 1,000 for the first time over the weekend amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to tighten restrictions. Only about 45 million Russians — roughly a third of its nearly 146 million people — are fully vaccinated.

Putin strongly urged Russians to get vaccinated, saying “why wait for the illness and its grave consequences?" The Russian leader, who got the domestically developed Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year, said he was bewildered by vaccine hesitancy, even among his close friends, who told him they would get the shot after he does and then kept delaying it.

“I can’t understand what’s going on,” Putin said Wednesday. “We have a reliable and efficient vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications and death.” Russia became the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine in August 2020 and has plentiful supplies. But citizens have been hesitant to take up the jabs, and some have blamed the skepticism on conflicting signals from authorities.

While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media often criticized Western-made shots, a message that many saw as feeding doubts about vaccines in general. The nonworking period, which includes a two-day state holiday, should help limit the spread by keeping people out of offices and off crowded public transportation. The government also urged local authorities to restrict access to restaurants, theaters and other entertainment venues during the period.

Putin said that in some regions where the situation is the most threatening, the nonworking period could start as early as Saturday and be extended past Nov. 7. The Kremlin has ruled out a nationwide lockdown like the one early in the pandemic that dealt a heavy blow to the economy and sapped Putin’s popularity. Authorities have instead allowed regional authorities to decide on local restrictions.

Many of Russia’s 85 regions already have restricted attendance at large public events and introduced digital codes proving vaccination or past illness for access to restaurants, theaters and other venues. Some have made vaccinations compulsory for certain public servants and people over 60.

But Moscow had avoided restrictions until now, with restaurants and movie theaters brimming with people, crowds swarming nightclubs and karaoke bars, and commuters widely ignoring mask mandates on public transportation even as ICUs have been filling quickly.

Authorities in the capital have avoided restrictive measures until now partly because Moscow's health care system has more resources compared to other regions. But Sobyanin said that tougher measures are now inevitable amid soaring infections and deaths.

“The experience shows that nonworking days are the most effective way to reduce contagion and deaths,” he said.