Russian lawmakers ask Kremlin to review nuclear doctrine

November 21, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — A group of Russian lawmakers asked the Kremlin Wednesday to review the nation's rules for the use of nuclear weapons, amid tensions with the West. Participants in the hearings organized by the upper house's defense committee suggested that the presidential Security Council should draft a new version of the nuclear doctrine.

The lawmakers said in their proposals cited by Russian news agencies that the revised doctrine should in particular spell out a response to an attack on Russia with hypersonic and other strategic non-nuclear weapons.

The current Russian military doctrine states that Russia can use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on it or its allies or an aggression involving conventional weapons that threatens "the very existence of the state."

The state RIA Novosti news agency quoted an upper house member, Franz Klintsevich, as saying that the proposal to review the nuclear doctrine had been driven by the deployment of NATO forces closer to Russia's borders. "All that is aimed at threatening Russia," he said.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting with military officials to discuss a response to the planned U.S. withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Kremlin critic, facing new charge, sounds alarm on Interpol

November 20, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian prosecutors announced new criminal charges against U.S.-born Kremlin foe Bill Browder on Monday, days before a Russian police officer could become president of Interpol in a move that some Moscow critics fear might politicize the law enforcement agency.

Browder and other opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin have complained that Russia has tried to use Interpol against them. If a Russian is elected as its new president, it could encourage Moscow to intensify attempts to hunt down its critics abroad.

The new charges leveled against Browder accuse him of forming a criminal group to embezzle funds in Russia. They also alleged that he could be behind the death of his employee, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Russian prison.

Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who alleged he had uncovered $230 million in tax fraud by Russian officials, died in 2009 while in pre-trial detention. A Russian presidential commission concluded he had been beaten and denied medical care, and two prison doctors were charged with negligence leading to his death; one was acquitted and the other went free because the statute of limitations had expired.

Browder mounted an international campaign to bring Magnitsky's killers to justice, and in 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act that imposed travel and financial sanctions on top Russian officials, including prosecutors. Several other countries have since adopted similar legislation.

Browder, who had owned a major investment fund in Russia before he was barred entry to the country, was convicted in absentia in Russia on charges of tax evasion and funneling money overseas in both 2013 and again last year, and sentenced to nine years in prison.

On Monday, Mikhail Alexandrov of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office told reporters that they have opened a criminal case into the poisoning of three people described as associates of Browder, saying it was "highly likely" that Magnitsky was poisoned as well with the same military-grade substance.

Browder has blamed Russian prison officials for Magnitsky's death and dismissed the new charges against him as a sham. He told The Associated Press that he has no relation to the three men named by the prosecutors and described the accusations of poisoning as an attempt to discredit his campaign for justice for Magnitsky.

Putin's "reaction is so absurd that it only helps our campaign and our cause," he said. The Russian prosecutors said they decided to pursue the new charges against Browder after reviewing evidence submitted by Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and members of his father's presidential campaign in 2016 and who lobbied for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. That meeting at Trump Tower occurred in June 2016 after the younger Trump was told by an intermediary that she represented the Russian government and was offering Moscow's help defeating Hillary Clinton. Emails later released by Trump Jr. show that she had been described as a "Russian government attorney."

The timing of the new charges against Browder comes as the Netherlands is preparing to host diplomats from all European Union member states to discuss a pan-EU Magnitsky Act. But the charges also come two days before Interpol's general assembly, meeting in Dubai, is expected to elect its new president, and one of the front-runners is Alexander Prokopchuk, who holds the rank of general in the Interior Ministry, which runs the police force. The officer had headed Interpol's Russian bureau before taking the job of Interpol's vice president in 2016.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Monday that the Kremlin is "rooting for the Russian candidate and we would like the Russian candidate to win this election." Interpol works as a clearinghouse for national police services that are hunting down suspects outside their borders, issuing "red notices," or alerts that identify a person wanted by another country.

While its charter explicitly proclaims its neutrality, the organization has faced criticism that governments have abused the "red notice" system to go after political enemies and dissidents. Two years ago, Interpol introduced measures aimed at strengthening the legal framework around the red notice system. As part of the changes, an international team of lawyers and experts first check a notice's compliance with Interpol rules and regulations before it goes out. Interpol also says it enhanced the work of an appeals body for those targeted with red notices.

Browder noted the timing of the announcement of the new charges against him and the Interpol election, tweeting: "On the eve of Interpol deciding whether a Russian official should be president of Interpol, the Russian prosecutor's office holds a huge press conference about me and how they will chase me down anywhere in the world."

At the news conference, prosecutors said they will be placing Browder on Interpol's wanted list and they expect its cooperation. Russia has previously tried to get Browder placed on the wanted list, but the body has rejected the efforts, viewing his prosecution as politically motivated. He was briefly detained in Spain in May but released after police found that the arrest warrant for him was no longer valid.

Browder said Prokopchuk's possible appointment "puts the organization in a grave danger of being fully discredited." Other Kremlin critics also have raised alarm about the possible politicization of Interpol.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has faced a flurry of detentions and criminal charges, tweeted Monday that his associates "have suffered abuse" from Interpol officials who were complying with Russian warrants to persecute Kremlin opponents.

"I don't think that a president from Russia will help to reduce such violations," he said on Twitter. Similar concerns surfaced when the previous Interpol president, Meng Hongwei, was named because he was a senior security official in the Chinese government. China has also been accused of trying to use Interpol for political ends. Meng is now detained in China as part of a sweeping purge against allegedly corrupt or disloyal officials.

Asked about the upcoming vote at Interpol in connection with the Browder case, Prosecutor General's Office spokesman Alexander Kurennoy told reporters that Moscow views the organization as "trusted partners" and expressed hope that "the procedures will be followed in a regular manner" when it submits an arrest warrant for Browder.

Hard-line Hindus pressure Modi over temple at disputed site

November 26, 2018

LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Tens of thousands of hard-line Hindus rallied Sunday to demand a Hindu temple be built on a site in northern India where hard-liners in 1992 had attacked and demolished a 16th century mosque, sparking deadly Hindu-Muslim violence.

The Hindu hard-liners are building pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to move quickly on the issue. Modi had promised to build the temple in 2014 elections that brought him to power. The next national elections are due before May.

Thousands of police and paramilitary forces were deployed in and around Ayodhya, 550 kilometers (350 miles) east of New Delhi, to prevent any attacks on Muslims, who comprise 6 percent of the town's more than 55,500 people.

The rally brought Hindu holy men and activists to the town where the Hindu god Ram was believed to have been born. The demonstrators chanted slogans demanding the building of the temple and waved a banner that said, "No more requests, now it will be battle."

"Hindus have waited for a long time. They are losing patience," Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, who heads the committee on the disputed land, told the crowd. "The time has come for the government to take a call."

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's ally in the federal government, the Shiv Sena party, asked Modi's government to bring legislation to build the temple, as India's top court is taking time to settle a land title dispute between Hindus and Muslims.

Shiv Sena's chief, Uddav Thackeray, said if construction of the temple does not start, Modi's government would not return to power. "The prime minister has to choose between the temple and the government," he told reporters.

Hindu fundamentalists with pickaxes and crowbars razed the 16th century Babri Mosque to the ground in December 1992. Hindu groups say the mosque was built after a temple dedicated to Ram was destroyed by Muslim invaders.

The destruction of the mosque sparked riots across India that left at least 2,000 people dead. Thousands more died in later violence caused by disputes over the site. The issue was also taken to court. A lower court in 2010 ruled that the disputed land should be divided into three parts — two for the Hindus and one for the Muslims. The decision was challenged in the Supreme Court, but there has not been any decision yet.

Africa and the Arab world are key to a clean-coal alliance

Tuesday
20/11/2018

JOHANNESBURG - Sharing technology on clean coal, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marek Magierowski says, “lies at the heart of our relations with India.”

He made the comment on a recent visit to New Delhi. Like many in Africa and Asia, both Poland and India get most of their electrical power from fossil fuel.

Egypt is building a clean-coal plant run with expertise from China. Iran and the United Arab Emirates are doing likewise and Japan and the United States have considered pooling research.

Australia and South Africa are leaders in carbon capture and a cleaner burn and Colombia, which has one of the world’s largest coal mines, is helping Latin America along the same path.

So why isn’t there a clean-coal alliance?

“We need a global sharing of research and the climate change summit in Poland next month could be where it happens,” said Samson Bada, a Nigerian engineer at Witwatersrand University (Wits) in Johannesburg.

Bada said the cost of electricity has become a political issue around the globe “and a lack of power comes up at every election right across the developing world.” Economies in Asia, Africa and the Middle East “will not stop using fossil fuel, no matter what activists in New York or London may say so the task is to make it cleaner,” Bada said.

Rosemary Falcon, a recently retired professor in charge of clean-coal research at Wits, said an “alliance is crucial and it would need to cover oil, gas and coal because all these put off smoke if you don’t use them properly and there’s an overlap in the chemistry.

“How can anyone suggest a poor country without the technology should be left to pollute the air with coal or gas when we know how to burn it cleanly? Obviously, this is something we must share with everyone.”

Falcon said the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties — COP24 — scheduled for December 3-14 in Katowice, Poland, could be the place to build “even an informal union where we can share the science.”

Falcon said coal was the cheapest and most reliable source of energy. “Sun and wind only work some of the time and there has to be a baseload, topped up with renewables,” she said.

However, she added, any association must include all continents. “People forget that Tanzania has 4 billion tonnes of coal or Colombia with its huge open-cut mines. Africa, Asia and Latin America must all be part of the mix.”

Despite its huge oil reserves, she said the Arab world relied on a mix for electricity including gas and coal. “Even so, it’s a voice that’s often left out,” Falcon said.

“I’m passionate about the environment,” said Jacob Masiala, like Bada, one of Falcon’s former students at Wits, “but those who want to see an end to fossil fuel need to spend more time on the ground in Africa.”

Masiala said he believes in climate change but laments that “it’s become an obsession for the pampered and well-off.” The priorities for poorer countries are different, he said.

“When you have no job and live in a shack without electricity and your family is always hungry, you don’t talk about climate change. You worry about the next meal, not the next 50 years,” Masiala said.

The idea of an alliance is not new. Indian Coal Minister Piyush Goyal, for instance, has been hinting at it for years. “We must share technology for clean coal because this will be the mainstay in India’s fuel mix,” he said at a meeting in Japan in 2015.

US Secretary for Energy Rick Perry spoke about it on a visit to Cape Town in 2017, saying the supply of electricity across the developing world was not just a social issue but “a matter of national security for the United States.”

Perry said that without power, poor countries were unable to industrialize, leading to “poverty and a lack of jobs that drives young people to join militia.”

It was a factor, he said, in the war on terror.

So why no treaty? Could it happen in Poland, home to one of the world’s most ambitious clean-coal programs?

The first step is money. Even an NGO would need a secretariat with an office and a media team to get the word out. Fees from members could meet the cost but someone must kick it off.

At the United States Energy Association, a grouping of public and private energy-related organisations, executive director Barry Worthington said it was also a matter of politics. “Energy is tricky,” he said.

“We’ve seen how oil has been used as a weapon in wars across the Middle East but gas is just as vital during the winter in countries like Finland or Ukraine. For now, they rely on a Russian pipeline and this is a huge factor in their relations with Moscow,” Worthington said.

Taiwan has the world’s largest clean-coal plant, he said, “so how do you put them at the same table as China?”

One could say the same about Turkey and Saudi Arabia or the United States and North Korea.

He said this made it vital to set up an alliance that was politically neutral.

“Emissions blowing south from Pakistan don’t stop when they reach the border with India. “Ideally, there must be space for everyone at the table,” Worthington said.

He said the Paris Accord on climate change might serve as a template. “Some in the room are on less than good terms but they work to a common goal,” he said. “Why can’t we do the same thing with clean coal?”

COP24 is contentious because Poland has angered the European Union by building coal-powered generators and is planning more.

Developing countries, however, may be sympathetic to the Polish view.

Zimbabwe has among the largest coal deposits in Africa. Tanzania has a new plant on the border with Mozambique and Kenya is building its first near Lamu on the coast. South Africa is a leading exporter and gets more than 90% of its own power from coal.

Africa is often dismissed as a bit player but, for a clean-coal alliance, it could lead the way. Asia is of the same mind. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines are growing their use of coal.

Energy ministers from the Association of South-East Asian Nations met in October in Singapore and their communique included a plan to share clean-coal technology, noting that fossil fuel will remain in play until at least 2040.

Real growth is expected in the Middle East. Egypt, Oman, Iran, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates all have clean-coal plants on the drawing board or under way.

The World Bank refuses to fund anything using oil, gas or coal but hundreds of projects across the globe have been funded by China, India or the private sector.

World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim admits he’s getting pushback. Leaders in Africa, he said, complained that the World Bank would not let them “have baseload power because we can’t use a single drop of fossil fuel for our own energy needs.”

“I can tell you, when I hear that, it’s compelling to me,” he said.

However, he and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde ruled out any change though the United States, the largest donor to the World Bank and IMF, has made clear it wants an end to the ban.

Masiala said any policy that ignored Africa was doomed. “We hold nearly one-quarter of the seats at the United Nations but millions of our people are still without electricity,” he said. “Yet there are those who seem to view themselves as our overlords.”

Bada agreed, saying: “That’s why we need an alliance of countries using fossil fuel. It would put us all on a more even footing, from big players like the United States and China, across to Africa and Latin America and, of course, the Arab world.”

Falcon says she has no doubt it will happen. “The idea of an alliance may have started with India and the United States but smaller countries are now pushing it,” she said, “and I think we could see Poland take the lead at the COP meeting in December.

“I guess there will be protesters in Katowice telling us there’s no such thing as clean coal but anyone with a brain has moved on. The focus now is on working together so coal can be part of the plan on climate change.”

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: https://middle-east-online.com/en/africa-and-arab-world-are-key-clean-coal-alliance.

Police clash with Catalan separatists in Barcelona

November 10, 2018

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Police in Barcelona have briefly clashed with Catalan separatists who are protesting a rally by Spain's national police forces in the Mediterranean city. Catalan regional police used batons to drive back a group of separatists in the city center Saturday, stopping them from advancing toward a march by an association of Spain's national police forces demanding higher pay.

In September, a similar protest by separatists of another march by the same national police association ended in clashes with regional security forces. The violent run-ins left 14 people injured and six arrests.

Spain has been mired in a political crisis since last year, when Catalonia's separatist lawmakers failed in a breakaway bid. Polls and recent elections show that the wealthy northeastern region's 7.5 million residents are roughly equally divided by the secession question.

Argentina minister says country without means to rescue sub

November 17, 2018

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Hours after announcing the discovery of an Argentine submarine lost deep in the Atlantic a year ago with 44 crew members aboard, the government said Saturday that it is unable to recover the vessel, drawing anger from missing sailors' relatives who demanded that it be raised.

Defense Minister Oscar Aguad said at a press conference that the country lacks "modern technology" capable of "verifying the seabed" to extract the ARA San Juan, which was found 907 meters (2,975 feet) deep in waters off the Valdes Peninsula in Argentine Patagonia, roughly 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the port city of Comodoro Rivadavia.

Earlier in the morning, the navy said a "positive identification" had been made by a remote-operated submersible from the American company Ocean Infinity. The company, commissioned by the Argentine government, began searching for the missing vessel Sept. 7.

It remained unclear what the next steps could be. In a statement to The Associated Press, Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett said authorities would have to determine how to advance. "We would be pleased to assist with a recovery operation but at the moment are focused on completing imaging of the debris field," he said.

Navy commander Jose Luis Villan urged "prudence," saying that a federal judge was overseeing the investigation and would be the one to decide whether it was possible to recover a part or the entirety of the ship.

Without adequate technological capabilities, however, Argentina would likely need to seek assistance from foreign countries or pay Ocean Infinity or another company, potentially complicating its recent commitment to austerity. Argentina is currently facing a currency crisis and double-digit inflation that has led the government to announce sweeping measures to balance the budget and concretize a financing deal with the International Monetary Fund.

Any move to recuperate the vessel would also be a logistically large and challenging undertaking based on the submarine's distance from the coast, its depth, and the kind of seabed upon which it is resting.

Relatives of crew members were determined to fight for it to be quickly surfaced. Isabel Vilca, the half sister of crewman Daniel Alejandro Polo, told the AP that the discovery was just the beginning.

She said families need to recover the remains of their loved ones to know what happened and help prevent similar tragedies. "We do know they can get it out because Ocean Infinity told us they can, that they have equipment," said Luis Antonio Niz, father of crew member Luis Niz. "If they sent him off, I want them to bring him back to me."

The sub's discovery was announced just two days after families of the missing sailors held a one-year commemoration for its disappearance on Nov. 15, 2017. The San Juan was returning to its base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata when contact was lost.

On the anniversary Thursday, Argentina President Mauricio Macri said the families of the submariners should not feel alone and delivered an "absolute and non-negotiable commitment" to find "the truth."

On Saturday, Aguad said that the vessel was found to be in an area that investigators had deemed "most likely." Officials showed images of the submarine, which was located on a seabed with its hull totally deformed. Parts of its propellers were buried and debris was scattered up to 70 meters (230 feet) away.

The German-built diesel-electric TR-1700 class submarine was commissioned in the mid-1980s and was most recently refitted between 2008 and 2014. During the $12 million retrofitting, the vessel was cut in half and had its engines and batteries replaced. Experts said refits can be difficult because they involve integrating systems produced by different manufacturers, and even the tiniest mistake during the cutting phase can put the safety of the ship and crew at risk.

The navy said previously the captain reported on Nov. 15, 2017, that water entered the snorkel and caused one of the sub's batteries to short-circuit. The captain later communicated that it had been contained.

Some hours later, an explosion was detected near the time and place where the San Juan was last heard from. The navy said the blast could have been caused by a "concentration of hydrogen" triggered by the battery problem reported by the captain.

Macri promised a full investigation after the submarine was lost. Federal police raided naval bases and other buildings last January as part of the probe, soon after the government dismissed the head of the navy.

Argentina gave up hope of finding survivors after an intense search aided by 18 countries, but a few navy units have continued providing logistical support to Ocean Infinity. On Saturday, Plunkett tweeted: "Our thoughts are with the many families affected by this terrible tragedy. We sincerely hope that locating the resting place of the ARA San Juan will be of some comfort to them at what must be a profoundly difficult time."

He also said: "This was an extremely challenging project and today's successful outcome, following the earlier search operations, firmly endorses our technology." The company unsuccessfully searched for the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared in 2014 over the Indian Ocean.

Associated Press video journalist Paul Byrne contributed to this report.

Ukraine's Hungarian minority threatened by new education law

November 14, 2018

CHOP, Ukraine (AP) — The Hungarian minority in western Ukraine is feeling besieged. A new education law that could practically eliminate the use of Hungarian and other minority languages in schools after the 4th grade is just one of several issues threatening this community of 120,000 people in Transcarpathia, a Ukrainian region that in the past century has been part of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

In February, the headquarters of the minority's biggest political organization, the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association, or KMKSZ, was firebombed. More recently, mysterious billboards have appeared in the region accusing its politicians of separatism. And a dispute has erupted over the legality of the community acquiring dual Hungarian citizenship.

The incidents have left many worried that even as Ukraine strives to bring its laws and practices closer to European Union standards, its policies for minorities seem to be heading in a far more restrictive direction.

"There is a sort of purposeful policy, which besides narrowing the rights of all minorities, tries to portray the Hungarian minority as the enemy in Ukrainian public opinion," said Laszlo Brenzovics, the only ethnic Hungarian in the Ukrainian parliament. He called the separatism charges "extraordinarily absurd" and a means to distract from Ukraine's domestic problems.

Brenzovics' party, the KMKSZ, has launched its own campaign with bilingual billboards reading "Let's not allow peace to be destroyed in Transcarpathia!" "This is a peace campaign to calm the mood," said Livia Balogh, a party official in Chop, a once-booming railroad city of 9,000 people on the border with Hungary. "Hungarians here are mostly surprised and tense but also angry that the minority card is being played."

With a presidential election expected in March, Ukraine is also facing an ongoing armed conflict on its eastern borders with Russian-backed separatists. Officials say the new language rules in education, to be implemented over several years, serve a unifying purpose.

"Education is the fundament to social cohesion, which is also the fundament of security in the country," said Anna Novosad, a senior official at Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science. She attributed Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 partly to the disintegration and linguistic isolation of the local, mainly Russian-speaking population from the rest of Ukraine.

"This is something that we would like not to repeat in the western part of our country," Novosad said. Vasyl Filipchuk, a Ukrainian diplomat and chair of the board of the International Center For Policy Studies in the capital Kiev, said the anti-Hungarian campaign was being used to distract voters.

"It's artificial, manipulative technology" to overshadow the real problems of the people — corruption, lack of jobs and lack of economic prospects, Filipchuk said, adding that the use of patriotic, nationalistic rhetoric is "very dangerous."

Some of the issues have triggered a diplomatic dispute between Ukraine and Hungary, with Hungary blocking Ukraine's talks on integration with the European Union and NATO until the language stipulations in the education law are revised. In early October, Ukraine expelled a Hungarian consul after a secret video surfaced of Ukrainian Hungarians taking the oath of Hungarian citizenship. In response, Hungary expelled a Ukrainian consul.

Almost all members of Ukraine's Hungarian minority live in Transcarpathia — called Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukrainian and Karpatalja in Hungarian. The last census, from 2001, counted 151,000 Hungarians, but unofficial estimates now see around 120,000.

Scores have emigrated to Hungary and western Europe, driven in part by Ukraine's economic crisis and facilitated by the possibility of acquiring dual Hungarian citizenship, which comes with a European Union passport.

It's a community that is still strongly tied to Hungary — everyone seems to set their watches to Hungary's time zone, an hour behind Ukraine's. Jozsef Kantor, principal of a high school with some 700 students in Velyka Dobron, a village near Chop with a majority Hungarian population, acknowledged that a more modern education law was needed. Still, he lamented the "much harsher and unfavorable education law" now proposed.

At Kantor's school, which is undergoing renovations paid mostly by subsidies from the Hungarian government, Ukrainian language and literature are the only classes not taught in Hungarian. National authorities seem open to developing Ukrainian language textbooks which would take into account the fact that many Hungarian children enter school without speaking much, if any, Ukrainian.

Many of the school's graduates are taking advantage of having an EU passport to get their higher education in Hungary or elsewhere abroad. "What affects us negatively is that many of them don't come back," Kantor said. "Ultimately, if this continues for 20 or 30 years, there's a risk that the intellectual class among Hungarians in Transcarpathia will shrink significantly."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has made a name for himself in Europe through his unrelenting anti-immigration and nationalist policies, has made supporting the estimated 2.2 million Hungarians living in neighboring countries — lands that Hungary lost after World War I and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — a key objective.

Subsidies totaling some $60.1 million have been given to institutions, businesses and families abroad since 2017, and Brenzovics, the lawmaker, said the payments have helped establish 3,000 new businesses.

Officials have simplified steps for Hungarians abroad to acquire dual Hungarian citizenship. An initial goal of adding 1 million dual citizens — on top of Hungary's population of some 10 million — was achieved nearly a year ago.

Orban's efforts have created a political windfall. In April's elections, over 95 percent of voters casting ballots by mail — mostly from neighboring countries — backed Orban's coalition led by his Fidesz party, helping him to a third consecutive term.

In Chop, teacher Zsuzsanna Dzjapko, a Hungarian whose husband's family is Russian-Ukrainian, has accepted the fact that the best educational prospects for their 11-year-old daughter Rebeka — who speaks all three languages and is a talented singer and musician — are across the border.

"I don't have hopes that she'll come back, because as a Hungarian folk singer in this country, she wouldn't have much of a future," Dzjapko said in a small apartment shared by three generations. "We hope the times will change, the winds will change and the laws will change, as well."