Section: European Voice (EU)
Inside Trump’s ‘cyborg’ Twitter army
When Donald Trump confronted revelations that he used money from his charitable foundation to settle private legal disputes and purchase portraits of himself, a tireless army of tweeters went to work to keep the focus on Hillary Clinton’s foundation instead. Then Trump stumbled on a debate question about why he refuses to release his taxes,...
Trump’s Russian roulette
The Hillary Clinton campaign is meeting with swing-state leaders of Eastern European descent, encouraging ethnic debate watch parties and phone banks, and scheduling conference calls with Clinton allies from her State Department days as part of an aggressive effort to capitalize on Donald Trump’s embrace of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and...
Hungarian hole in the Schengen fence
When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán talks about migrants, he doesn’t usually mince words — unless, that is, they have money. Orbán has made fighting migration his signature policy stance, calling a referendum on the EU’s controversial quota scheme for the relocation of refugees and demanding “total control” over the...
Georgieva enters race to run United Nations
After an 18-month shadow campaign, European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva has succeeded in convincing her country’s prime minister, Bulgaria’s Boris Borisov, to nominate her for the post of United Nations secretary-general. Borisov told reporters Wednesday in Sofia that Georgieva’s candidacy “will be more likely...
Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB
MOSCOW — Soon after he was first appointed prime minister back in 1999, Vladimir Putin joked to an audience of top intelligence officers that a group of undercover spies, dispatched to infiltrate the government, was “successfully fulfilling its task.” It turns out Putin doesn’t do jokes. Over Putin’s years in power, not just the...
The mystery of Donald Trump’s man in Moscow
In March, in a bold “Oh yeah?” moment during an interview with the Washington Post’s editorial board, Donald Trump took the paper’s dare and revealed, then and there, his very short list of foreign policy advisers. There were just five, though he said, “I have quite a few more.” The list was a head-scratcher, a random assortment of...
Hillary Clinton’s pivot to Europe
When Hillary Clinton resigned as U.S. secretary of state in 2013, Beijing wasn’t sorry to see her go. In her four years in office, the former first lady and senator had gained a reputation in China as a source of hostility in an administration that had otherwise tried to be accommodating. In particular, Clinton rankled Beijing by rallying...
Latvian foreign minister says next US president must combat Russian aggression
NEW YORK — Regardless of who wins this November, the next U.S. president should stand united with Europe against Russian aggression, including Moscow’s interference in other countries’ elections, Latvia’s foreign minister said Monday. Edgars Rinkēvičs’ comments to POLITICO come as Americans face two stark choices in the...
Terror attacks complicate Obama’s refugee push
UNITED NATIONS — The New York-area hunt for an Afghan-born bombing suspect has cast a pall on this week’s gathering of international leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, a session U.S. President Barack Obama plans to use to rally support for helping the world’s refugees. Instead, the search Monday for 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami...
Russia’s election: Free sausages and fraud allegations
MOSCOW — Two years of economic recession, Western sanctions and wars in Ukraine and Syria haven’t shaken Vladimir Putin’s grip on power. Instead, Sunday’s election to the Russian state Duma saw the president’s United Russia party win a greater share of the vote than in 2011, with even less space in parliament for any real...
