U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the media after his arrival to the White House in Washington, U.S., on January 30. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
US President Joe Biden said Monday he wouldn’t send American fighter jets to Ukraine, even as the United States ramps up military assistance in the form of artillery and tanks.
“No,” Biden said when asked by a reporter whether he would send F16 jets to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sought fighter jets to help sustain his war effort against Russia. Biden has consistently said the planes aren’t on the table, even as he has given aid in other areas.
Last week, for example, Biden announced he would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, despite top US officials saying previously the heavy-duty vehicles were a poor fit for the country’s military.
Speaking on the White House South Lawn, Biden also said he wasn’t sure whether he would visit Europe next month for the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine.
In response to a separate question, Biden said he was planning to visit Poland, but wasn’t sure when.
CNN reported last week the White House was exploring the possibility of a Biden visit to Europe to mark 12 months since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Some background: Ukrainian leaders have renewed their appeals for Western fighter jets. “I sent a wish list card to Santa Claus last year, and fighter jets also [were] including in this wish list,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told CNN last week.
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged Friday that Zelensky had asked for fighter jets. “We are constantly talking to the Ukrainians about their needs, and want to make sure that we’re doing the best we can to meet them — and if we can’t, that some of our allies and partners can,” Kirby said.
Pavel, Taiwan’s Tsai stress their shared values in call
China opposes other countries dealing with Taiwan
Beijing views Taiwan as renegade province
TAIPEI/PRAGUE, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen held a telephone call with Czech President-elect Petr Pavel on Monday, a highly unusual move given the lack of formal ties between their countries and a diplomatic coup for Taipei that is sure to infuriate China.
The two leaders stressed their countries’ shared values of freedom, democracy and human rights during their 15-minute call, their offices said, and Pavel said he hoped to meet Tsai in the future.
Most countries avoid high-level public interactions with Taiwan and its president, not wishing to provoke China, the world’s second largest economy.
Beijing views Taiwan as being part of “one China” and demands other countries recognise its sovereignty claims, which Taiwan’s democratically-elected government rejects.
In 2016, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke by telephone with Tsai shortly after winning the election, setting off a storm of protest from Beijing.
Tsai said she hoped that under Pavel’s leadership the Czech Republic would continue to cooperate with Taiwan to promote a close partnership, and that she hoped to stay in touch with him.
“Bilateral interaction between Taiwan and the Czech Republic is close and good,” her office summarised Tsai as having said.
Pavel, a former army chief and high NATO official who won the Czech presidential election on Saturday, said on Twitter that the two countries “share the values of freedom, democracy, and human rights”.
‘ONE-CHINA’ PRINCIPLE
Earlier, China’s foreign ministry had said it was “seeking verification with the Czech side” on media reports that the call was to take place.
“The Chinese side is opposed to countries with which it has diplomatic ties engaging in any form of official exchange with the Taiwan authorities. Czech President-elect Pavel during the election period openly said that the ‘one-China’ principle should be respected,” the ministry said.
Pavel will take office in early March, replacing President Milos Zeman, who is known for his pro-Beijing stance.
Zeman spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping this month and they reaffirmed their “personal friendly” relationship, according to a readout of their call from Zeman’s office.
The Czech Republic, like most countries, has no official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but the two sides have moved closer as Beijing ratchets up military threats against the island and Taipei seeks new friends in Eastern and Central Europe.
The centre-right Czech government has said it wants to deepen cooperation with democratic countries in the India-Pacific region, including Taiwan, and has also been seeking a “revision” of ties with China.
In 2020, the head of the Czech Senate visited Taiwan and declared himself to be Taiwanese in a speech at Taiwan’s parliament, channelling the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s defiance of communism in Berlin in 1963.
Reporting by Robert Muller and Jason Hovet; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee in Taipei; editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BERLIN (AP) — German police rounded up dozens of people including a self-styled prince, a retired paratrooper and a former judge Wednesday, accusing the suspects of discussing the violent overthrow of the government but leaving unclear how concrete the plans were.
A German official and a lawmaker said investigators may have detected real plotting, drunken fantasizing, or both. Regardless, Germany takes any right-wing threat seriously and thousands of police officers carried out pre-dawn raids across much of the country.
“We’re talking about a group that, according to what we know so far, planned to violently abolish our democratic state of law and an armed attack,” on the German parliament building, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.
Sara Nanni, a lawmaker with the Green party, part of the German government, suggested the group may not have been capable.
“More details keep coming to light that raise doubts about whether these people were even clever enough to plan and carry out such a coup,” Nanni said in a post on the social network Mastodon. “The fact is: no matter how crude their ideas are and how hopeless their plans, even the attempt is dangerous!”
Federal prosecutors said the group is alleged to have believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon ideology. ” Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.
The Reich Citizens scene has been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency since 2016. Authorities estimate that the loose-knit movement has about 21,000 adherents.
Prosecutors said the suspects also believe Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state.”
One of the alleged ringleaders arrested Wednesday is Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a 71-year-old member of the House of Reuss who continues to use the title despite Germany abolishing any formal role for royalty more than a century ago.
Federal prosecutors said Reuss, whom the group planned to install as Germany’s new leader, had contacted Russian officials with the aim of imposing a new order in the country once the German government was overthrown. There is no indication that the Russians responded positively.
Police also detained Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Alternative for Germany, which is known by its acronym AfD, has increasingly come under scrutiny by security services due to its ties with extremists.
AfD’s co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said they had only learned of the alleged coup plans through the media, and condemned them.
“We have full confidence in the authorities involved and demand a swift and comprehensive investigation,” they said in a statement.
Chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank said some 3,000 officers were involved in the raids conducted at 150 sites in 11 of Germany’s 16 states.
Officers detained 22 German citizens on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organization,” prosecutors said. Three other people, including a Russian citizen, were held on suspicion of supporting the organization, they said. An additional 27 people were under investigation.
One of those arrested was a soldier serving on the support staff for Germany’s special forces unit KSK in the southwestern town of Calw. The unit has received scrutiny over what officials called some soldiers’ far-right beliefs.
Along with detentions in Germany, prosecutors said one person was detained in the Austrian town of Kitzbuehel and another in Italy.
The latter suspect, a 64-year-old German citizen who is a former officer in the German army special forces, is accused of being part of a criminal organization that aimed to “subvert the German democratic order by any means – including criminal – and replace it with another unidentified form of state,” police said in a statement, adding that extradition proceedings were underway.
“Of course, there are many people who grandstand and tell confused tales after drinking alcohol,” German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said. “In this case, however, there were such strong suspicions that the group wanted to take violet action that the investigating judge at the Federal Supreme Court ordered the investigative measures to be taken.”
Some of the group’s members had made “concrete preparations” to storm Germany’s federal parliament with a small armed group, according to prosecutors.
Wednesday’s raids showed that “we know how to defend ourselves with full force against the enemies of democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.
“The investigation offers an insight into the depths of the terrorist threat within the Reich Citizens milieu,” Faeser said. “Only the further investigation will provide a clear picture of how far the coup plans had come.”
Officials have repeatedly warned that far-right extremists pose the biggest threat to Germany’s domestic security. This threat was highlighted by the killing of a regional politician and the deadly attack on a synagogue in 2019. A year later, far-right extremists taking part in a protest against the country’s pandemic restrictions tried and failed to storm the Bundestag building in Berlin.
Faeser announced this year that the government planned to disarm about 1,500 suspected extremists and to tighten background checks for those wanting to acquire guns as part of a broader crackdown on the far right.
German authorities on Wednesday said they had dismantled a QAnon-inspired terrorist cell on suspicion of planning to overthrow the government.
Twenty-five people were arrested in the early hours of the day, 22 of whom are suspected of conspiring to foment a coup, the federal prosecutor said. Their alleged plans included an armed storming of the federal parliament. The other three, including a Russian citizen living in Germany, are suspected of supporting the group, the prosecutor said.
More than 3,000 police officers including special forces conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria, in one of the largest operations of its kind in recent history, officials said.
“This organization has, according to our knowledge, set the goal of using violence and military means to overthrow the existing liberal democratic order in Germany,” federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters Wednesday.
The far-right group, whose suspected leaders included a former elite paratrooper commander, had been attempting to recruit police and armed-forces members, and had sought to set up terrorist cells across Germany to help it install and maintain a military government, according to the prosecutor.
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“The suspects are united in a deep rejection of the Federal Republic of Germany, which has in the course of time developed in a decision to initiate a violent coup for which they had made specific preparations,” the prosecutor said.
“The members of the organization understood that their endeavor could only be realized by using military means and violence against representatives of the state. This includes committing murders.”
“The people who had been arrested subscribe to conspiracy myths composed of different narratives of the Reichsbürger and the QAnon ideologies,” Mr. Frank said.
QAnon is a far-right, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of outlandish and unsubstantiated beliefs. It has spread worldwide from the U.S. and has been linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The German Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, movement doesn’t recognize the authority of the postwar government. Members have printed their own passports and other documents, and set up their own schools. Some factions seek to re-establish the German Empire that was dismantled after World War I.
Outside the U.S., QAnon online channels have their largest subscriber base in Germany, according to several assessments by extremism researchers. The conspiracy has been spreading rapidly in Germany since 2020, especially in the ranks of critics of the government’s Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, according to the German domestic intelligence agency.
The agency said it considers the ideology a potential source of violence given its strongly anti-Semitic message, its legitimation of violence and its opposition to the state. In August 2020, protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions, some of them carrying “Q” banners, were blocked by police as they tried to storm the Reichstag building, home to the lower house of parliament.
There was no indication that members of the alleged cell were in contact with QAnon sympathizers in the U.S.
The people detained on Wednesday included a sergeant serving with the KSK, the special military command of Germany, and a former lawmaker, as well as several former servicemen, including two colonels, officials said.
One of the alleged ringleaders was named by the prosecutor as Heinrich XIII P. R. The website of the Der Spiegel news weekly and other German news publications identified the man as Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, a 71-year-old prince and known far-right extremist. In a conference speech posted on YouTube in 2019, Mr. Reuss espoused anti-Semitic views and conspiracies about historic events and German politics.
More than 3,000 police officers conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria.
Photo:
TILMAN BLASSHOFER/REUTERS
Calls to a number appearing on what claims to be the prince’s website went unanswered and a lawyer for him couldn’t be identified.
Another alleged conspirator was identified by the prosecutor as Birgit M.-W. Der Spiegel and other German publications said the suspect was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, 58, a judge in Berlin and a former member of parliament for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party.
A lawyer who has in the past represented Ms. Malsack-Winkemann declined to comment.
After leaving parliament, Ms. Malsack-Winkemann resumed work as a judge in March. The Berlin state government later sought to have her removed from the bench, arguing that she had promoted extremist positions online and as a lawmaker. The Berlin administrative court rejected the government’s request in October, saying that it violated the principle of an independent justice.
Ms. Malsack-Winkemann was temporarily suspended as judge on Wednesday after an intervention of the president of the Berlin Regional Court, a spokeswoman for the court wrote in an email Wednesday. The spokeswoman didn’t mention the arrest.
Mr. Frank, the prosecutor, said eight of the people arrested had been remanded into custody by a judge.
One of the suspects arrested was a former police officer who had been involved in securing Jewish sites in the German state of Lower Saxony, according to the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit.
“It now must be established that there is no security risk [for these sites],” the organization said in a tweet.
The suspected conspirators had set up several chat channels, primarily on social network Telegram, and had congregated in a property that one of them owned, officials said.
Weapons were secured during the raid and investigators are probing an alleged plan by the suspects to storm the German parliament and arrest legislators in an action that they hoped would bring about a collapse of the German government, according to the prosecutor.
It remains unclear, however, whether the group planned an imminent attack, or whether it had the capacity to pull out a coup in the 84-million-strong country. In addition to the 25 people who were taken into custody, there are another 27 suspects who haven’t been arrested, prosecutors said.
The suspects had been meeting in a format they called the council, a mock government cabinet headed by Mr. Reuss and designated ministers, which was supported by a military arm, according to prosecutors. The body was meant to govern Germany with the support of a military arm consisting of several retired officers in their 60s and one active serviceman.
“The terror organization that was unearthed today was driven by violent takeover fantasies and conspiracy ideologies, according to the current state of the investigation,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. The police raid was conducted in very dangerous circumstances but fortunately no one was injured, Ms. Faeser added.
Ms. Faeser said that it was “especially bitter” that a former legislator was implicated in the alleged conspiracy.
One of the alleged leaders had established contacts with representatives of Russia in Germany to facilitate the planned takeover, the prosecutor said, adding that there was no evidence that the Russian officials responded positively to his advances. The Russian citizen who was arrested as a helper of the group is suspected of having facilitated such contacts.
There has been no involvement by the Russian government, which only found out about the case from media reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The Russian Embassy in Berlin said it learned of the raids from the news and was unfamiliar with any Russian citizens connected. Russian diplomatic representations in Germany don’t have contact with members of terrorist organizations, the embassy said.
There are more than 20,000 adherents of the Reichsbürger movement in Germany, including 2,100 potentially violent supporters, according to the latest annual report of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
Several police officers and members of the armed forces have in the past been arrested in raids connected to the Reichsbürger and similar groups. While members of such groups from the ranks the armed forces and security and law-enforcement agencies constitute a small minority, the presence of rogue networks within the security establishment is an acutely sensitive matter because of Germany’s Nazi past.
The group that was foiled Wednesday had been set up around November 2021, driven by a belief that Germany is governed by a so-called “deep state” and would soon be freed by a so-called “alliance,” an alleged secret society of officials and military officers from various countries including the U.S. and Russia, the prosecutor said.
The group is suspected of having planned armed attacks on government institutions, said Germany’s justice minister, Marco Buschmann.
“Democracy is defending itself,” Mr. Buschmann tweeted Wednesday.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
German police arrested 25 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the state in raids across the country early Wednesday.
Authorities accused most of those arrested of being part of a “terrorist organization,” according to the public prosecutor’s statement, while the remaining three — including a Russian national — were detained on suspicion of being supporters.
“It’s suspected that an armed attack was planned against constitutional bodies,” Justice Minister Marco Buschmann tweeted.
Germany disbands elite military unit after reports of right-wing extremism
The raids targeted another 27 individuals on suspicion of being members or having supported the organization, but were not arrested.The raids took place in 11 of Germany’s 16 states and marked one of the largest such anti-terrorism operations ever carried out in the country, according to the German press.
A Wednesday statement from the federal public prosecutor said the members of the group, which was founded in November 2021, subscribed to a range of conspiracy theories including QAnon and the right-wing extremist Reichsbürger movement, which denies the existence of the modern German state.“The accused are united by a deep rejection of state institutions,” it said.
The group was prepared to use violence and accepted that deaths would happen, the statement added. Its central “council” was headed by an individual named as Heinrich XIII P.R., who had reached out to Russian representatives inside Germany — although the prosecutor said there were no indications so far of a positive response to his overtures. German news media identified the individual as Prince Heinrich XIII, 71, a descendant of the House of Reuss, a royal dynasty from the German state of Thuringia.
“Since November 2021, the members of the ‘Council’ have regularly met in secret to plan the intended takeover of power in Germany and the establishment of their own state structures,” the statement said. It added that they had created a structure similar to a government cabinet, with departments for justice, foreign affairs and health.
The council also had a military arm, which would have been involved in the armed takeover of the state. This body included former members of Germany’s armed forces, and recruitment efforts were targeted toward members of the military and police, the prosecutor said.
The barracks of a unit of Germany’s Special Forces Command, known as the KSK, was among the locations raided, Der Spiegel magazine reported. The German Defense Ministry disbanded one unit of the elite counterterrorism force in 2020 and announced a restructuring due to suspected extreme right-wing ties of its members.
According to Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper, one of the defendants posted on Telegram shortly before the raids that public prosecutors, judges and health authorities would “soon find themselves in the dock at Nuremberg 2.0,” in reference to the trials of Nazi war criminals held after World War II.
The suspects will appear in court on Wednesday and Thursday.
PHOENIX — The attorney for the U.S. House is urging the Supreme Court to reject a last-ditch effort by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to shield her phone records from the committee looking at the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
In a filing late Friday, Douglas Letter said Kelli Ward was involved in activities, not only around the time of the 2020 election but for months after, that led to the riot. And that, he told the justices, gives the panel the legal responsibility and the right to find out with whom she was communicating.
“Dr. Ward aided a coup attempt,” Letter said.
“She tried to stop the vote count in Maricopa County, tried to arrange contact between President (Donald) Trump and a top county official, promoted inaccurate allegations of election interference by Dominion Voting Systems, and served as a fake elector as part of Trump’s scheme to overturn the election on Jan. 6 by sending Congress spurious electoral slates in contravention of the actual electoral outcome in several states,” he wrote.
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Letter also said the court should reject arguments by Ward that what is formally known as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, will use the information to contact every person who communicated with her during and after the election.
“The Select Committee has no interest in contacting persons simply because they communicated with Dr. Ward during that period,” he said. And Letter noted that the subpoena seeks only the phone numbers of those people called and texted by Ward between Nov. 1, 2020 through Jan. 31, 2021, and those who called and texted her in the same period, along with the length of any phone calls — but not the content of any communications.
Instead, Letter said the data will be merged with similar phone records the committee already has obtained to essentially build a road map of who was communicating with whom.
“The interest is in information regarding persons who had key ties to the unprecedented effort to overturn the presidential election,” he said. And that, said Letter, includes individuals outside of Arizona.
“The Select Committee has reason to believe Dr. Ward communicated with such people, and learning more about such conversations will help the Select Committee understand the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6 attack,’’ the specific charge of the panel,” he said. “These records will shed light on how Dr. Ward contributed to the multi-party effort to interfere with the peaceful transition of power and the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Ward has said the alternate slate of electors prepared to cast the state’s 11 electoral votes for Trump, despite the official tally showing Joe Biden had won Arizona, was not an illegal effort to mislead Congress. Instead, she has argued it was a bid to have Republican electors in place should courts or Congress reject the official slate.
But Letter said all that was part of a larger plan, hatched by Trump and his allies, to get Congress — or at least Vice President Mike Pence who was presiding over the Senate on Jan. 6 — to ignore the legal returns.
And all that, Letter told the justices, were part of the ways Ward “sought to overturn the presidential election, culminating in participation in a fake elector scheme that — regardless of whether she intended it — helped lay the groundwork for the Jan.6 attack on the Capitol.”
Ward’s petition to the Supreme Court is her last chance to keep the information confidential or delay release beyond Jan. 3 when the committee will cease to exist. Both a trial judge in Arizona and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have rebuffed her request to keep T-Mobile, her phone provider, from complying with the subpoena.
Ward, however has picked up support from an unusual coalition of groups who are telling the justices that they should block the committee from accessing her phone records.
In a legal brief filed also Friday, Attorney William Olson said it appears the committee has started from the position that what occurred in 2020 was the “most secure election in history.” What the panel is trying to do, he said is undermine those who believe otherwise.
But it’s more than that.
“The committee has pointedly refused to consider any evidence that does not support its preconceived notions,” said Olson.
“The committee has refused to consider any of the credible evidence demonstrating that election laws were broken in swing states and behest of courts and election officials in support of the prevailing candidate,” he continued. “The committee has no interest in whether those election violations may have changed the outcome of the election, or at least created a very reasonable belief on the part of supporters of the losing candidate that the outcome was corrupted.”
In fact, Olson claims the “indisputable historical record proves that numerous state election officials in swing states defined state election laws relating to absentee balloting, likely leading to an inaccurate vote count.
“The committee has insisted that those who question the 2020 election are lying,” he told the court.
Some of those Olson represents are clearly in the camp of those who believe the election was stolen from Trump. That includes the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund which is financing Expose the Steal.
But others come at the issue from a different perspective about protecting constitutional rights of free speech and association.
All that goes to what Olson said would be the effects of the justices upholding the subpoena.
“The individuals whose telephone communications with Dr. Ward would be made available to the committee would immediately feel the chilling effect of the subpoena,” he said. “They will be reluctant to continue communicating with Dr. Ward and with others who share Dr. Ward’s political positions.”
And Olson told the justices that if they allow the panel to get the phone records and the list of those who were in contact with Ward it will have broader effects on nonprofits involved in political issues.
“Efforts by government officials to learn the identity of those engaged Americans with different views strike at the heart of such nonprofit organizations,” he wrote. “Such intrusive government tactics are designed to, and do, discourage donors from giving to nonprofits, impair efforts to recruit and retain members, and cause those who work in association with nonprofits on their programs to rethink their involvement.”
And Olson said there are the indicators that the committee “is working in league with the Department of Justice to develop criminal cases.” Using congressional subpoenas, he said deprives those who get them the protections they would be entitled under criminal law.
Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia or email azcapmedia@gmail.com.
DAKAR, Oct 3 (Reuters) – As a heavily armed convoy drove through a cheering crowd in Burkina Faso’s capital on Sunday morning, the boyish face of the country’s latest military ruler, Captain Ibrahim Traore, emerged from the turret of an armoured personnel carrier.
Sporting fatigues and a red beret, the 34-year-old smiled and raised his thumb as onlookers welcomed him, some by waving Russian flags.
Traore, a relatively low-ranking officer who days earlier was running an artillery regiment in a small northern town, has been catapulted onto the world stage since he and a group of soldiers overthrew President Paul-Henri Damiba in a Sept. 30 coup.
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Little is known about Traore and his colleagues, who since Friday have delivered statements on national television brandishing guns, ammunition belts and masks.
They face gigantic challenges to alleviate hardship in one of the world’s poorest countries where drought, food shortages and creaking health and education systems provide daily challenges for millions.
Yet the initial focus has been conflict and politics.
In an interview with Radio France International on Monday, Traore, a career soldier who has fought on the front lines against Islamist militants in the north, insisted he would not be in charge for long.
A national conference will appoint a new interim ruler by the end of the year. That leader, who could be civilian or military, will honour an agreement with West Africa’s regional bloc and oversee a return to civilian rule by 2024, he said.
“We did not come to continue, we did not come for a particular purpose,” he said. “All that matters when the level of security returns is the fight, it’s development.”
Still, an early picture has emerged of what Traore’s junta intends to do with its time in power.
Their moves, which may include army reform and ties to new international partners such as Russia, could alter politics in West Africa and change how Burkina Faso fights an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced millions to flee.
Army officers initially supported Damiba when he took power in his own coup in January, promising to defeat the Islamists. But they quickly lost patience. Damiba refused to reform the army, Traore’s junta said. Attacks worsened. Just last week, at least 11 soldiers were killed in an attack in the north.
Meanwhile, Russia has expressed support for the coup just as regional neighbours and western powers condemned it.
“I salute and support Captain Ibrahim Traore,” read a statement from Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of private military company Wagner Group, which has operations across Africa, including in Burkina Faso’s neighbour Mali.
TIES WITH RUSSIA?
Ties with Russia would put a further strain on relations with former colonial power France, which has provided military support in recent years but has become the target of pro-Russian protests. Its embassy in Ouagadougou was attacked in the aftermath of Friday’s coup. read more
Wagner’s entry into Mali last year spelled the end to France’s decade-long mission to contain Islamists linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State who have since spread into Burkina Faso.
Wagner and the Malian army have since been accused by rights groups and witnesses of widespread abuses, including the killing of hundreds of civilians in the town of Moura in March.
Burkina Faso’s new leaders on Saturday stoked anti-French rioting when they said in a statement on television that France had sheltered Damiba at a military base and that he was planning a counter-offensive.
The French foreign ministry denied the base had hosted Damiba.
Traore is on a crash course in diplomacy. He downplayed the link between Damiba and France, and called an end to the protests. About ties with Russia, he was vague.
“There are many partners. France is a partner. There is no particular target,” he told RFI.
Meanwhile, he must juggle everyday problems. On Sunday, he arrived in military fatigues to a meeting with ministerial officials which was streamed online.
Can the junta guarantee the safety of schools that reopen this week, they asked their new leader. What is being done about a tender for a railway link to Ghana?
Traore, who had to consult with advisers, did not have all the answers.
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Reporting by Edward McAllister; additional reporting by Bate Felix and Alessandra Prentice, Editing by William Maclean
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Burkina Faso military leader Paul-Henri Damiba has been deposed in the country’s second coup in a year, as army Captain Ibrahim Traore took charge, dissolving the transitional government and suspending the constitution.
Traore said on Friday evening that a group of officers had decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening armed uprising in the country. The captain was previously head of special forces unit “Cobra” in the northern region of Kaya.
“We have decided to take our responsibilities, driven by a single ideal: the restoration of security and integrity of our territory,” announced soldiers on state television and radio.
It is the second takeover in eight months for the West African state. Damiba took power in a coup in January that overthrew former President Roch Kabore, also due in part to frustration over the worsening insecurity.
Burkina Faso has been struggling to contain rebel groups, including some associated with al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Reporting from Dakar, Senegal, Al Jazeera correspondent Nicolas Haque said with 40 percent of Burkina Faso out of the control of the state, there is growing frustration over security in the country.
Haque said the leaders of the last coup also had promised to deal with the armed groups. “There’s a feeling – when I speak to people who are on the streets of Ouagadougou – of deja vu,” he said.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) strongly condemned the coup on Friday, saying that it came at an “inopportune” time when progress was being made towards a return to constitutional order.
“ECOWAS reaffirms its unequivocal opposition to any seizure or maintenance of power by unconstitutional means,” the regional bloc said in a statement shared on social media.
Curfew imposed, borders shut
On Friday, Traore announced that borders were closed indefinitely and that all political and civil society activities were suspended. A curfew from 9pm to 5am was also announced.
“Faced with the deteriorating situation, we tried several times to get Damiba to refocus the transition on the security question,” said the statement signed by Traore and read out by another officer on television, flanked by a group of soldiers in military fatigues and heavy armour.
The statement said Damiba had rejected proposals by the officers to reorganise the army and instead continued with the military structure that had led to the fall of the previous government.
“Damiba’s actions gradually convinced us that his ambitions were diverting away from what we set out to do. We decided this day to remove Damiba,” the statement said.
National stakeholders will be invited soon to adopt a new transitional charter and designate a new civilian or military president, it said.
The Burkina Faso government had said earlier on Friday that an “internal crisis” within the army was behind troop deployments in key areas of the capital, adding that negotiations were under way after shots rang out before dawn.
The state television was cut for several hours, broadcasting just a blank screen with the message “no video signal”.
Damiba’s fate remains unknown.
Though the deposed leader had promised to make security his priority when he took charge on January 24, violent attacks have increased since March.
In the north and east, towns have been blockaded by rebel fighters who have blown up bridges and attacked supply convoys.
Thousands have died and about two million have been displaced by the fighting since 2015 when the unrest spread to Burkina Faso, which has since become the epicentre of the violence across the Sahel.
In September, a particularly bloody month, Damiba sacked his defence minister and assumed the role himself.
With much of the Sahel region battling growing unrest, the violence has prompted a series of coups in Mali, Guinea and Chad since 2020.
The United Nations had voiced concern and appealed for calm.
“Burkina Faso needs peace, it needs stability, and it needs unity in order to fight terrorist groups and criminal networks operating in parts of the country,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Attacks have increased since mid-March, despite the military government’s pledge to make security its top priority.
Constantin Gouvy, Burkina Faso researcher at the Clingendael Institute, told The Associated Press that Friday night’s events “follow escalating tensions within the ruling MPSR junta and the wider army about strategic and operational decisions to tackle spiralling insecurity”.
“Members of the MPSR increasingly felt Damiba was isolating himself and casting aside those who helped him seize power,” Gouvy said.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — More than a dozen soldiers seized control of Burkina Faso’s state television late Friday, declaring that the country’s coup leader-turned-president, Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, had been overthrown after only nine months in power.
A statement read by a junta spokesman said Capt. Ibrahim Traore is the new military leader of Burkina Faso, a volatile West African country that is battling a mounting Islamic insurgency.
Burkina Faso’s new military leaders said the country’s borders had been closed and a curfew would be in effect from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. The transitional government and national assembly were ordered dissolved.
Damiba and his allies overthrew the democratically elected president, coming to power with promises of make the country more secure. However, violence has continued unabated and frustration with his leadership has grown in recent months.
“Faced by the continually worsening security situation, we the officers and junior officers of the national armed forces were motivated to take action with the desire to protect the security and integrity of our country,” said the statement read by the junta spokesman, Capt. Kiswendsida Farouk Azaria Sorgho.
The soldiers promised the international community they would respect their commitments and urged Burkinabes “to go about their business in peace.”
“A meeting will be convened to adopt a new transitional constitution charter and to select a new Burkina Faso president be it civilian or military,” Sorgho added.
Damiba had just returned from addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York as Burkina Faso’s head of state. Tensions, though, had been mounting for months. In his speech, Damiba defended his January coup as “an issue of survival for our nation,” even if it was ”perhaps reprehensible” to the international community.
Constantin Gouvy, Burkina Faso researcher at Clingendael, said Friday night’s events “follow escalating tensions within the ruling MPSR junta and the wider army about strategic and operational decisions to tackle spiraling insecurity.”
“Members of the MPSR increasingly felt Damiba was isolating himself and casting aside those who helped him seize power,” Gouvy told The Associated Press.
Gunfire had erupted in the capital, Ouagadougou, early Friday and hours passed without any public appearance by Damiba. Late in the afternoon, his spokesman posted a statement on the presidency’s Facebook page saying that “negotiations are underway to bring back calm and serenity.”
Friday’s developments felt all too familiar in West Africa, where a coup in Mali in August 2020 set off a series of military power grabs in the region. Mali also saw a second coup nine months after the August 2020 overthrow of its president, when the junta’s leader sidelined his civilian transition counterparts and put himself alone in charge.
On the streets of Ouagadougou, some people already were showing support Friday for the change in leadership even before the putschists took to the state airwaves.
Francois Beogo, a political activist from the Movement for the Refounding of Burkina Faso, said Damiba “has showed his limits.”
“People were expecting a real change,” he said of the January coup d’etat.
Some demonstrators voiced support for Russian involvement in order to stem the violence, and shouted slogans against France, Burkina Faso’s former colonizer. In neighboring Mali, the junta invited Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to help secure the country, though their deployment has drawn international criticism.
Many in Burkina Faso initially supported the military takeover last January, frustrated with the previous government’s inability to stem Islamic extremist violence that has killed thousands and displaced at least 2 million.
Yet the violence has failed to wane in the months since Damiba took over. Earlier this month, he also took on the position of defense minister after dismissing a brigadier general from the post.
“It’s hard for the Burkinabe junta to claim that it has delivered on its promise of improving the security situation, which was its pretext for the January coup,” said Eric Humphery-Smith, senior Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.
Earlier this week, at least 11 soldiers were killed and 50 civilians went missing after a supply convoy was attacked by gunmen in Gaskinde commune in Soum province in the Sahel. That attack was “a low point” for Damiba’s government and “likely played a role in inspiring what we’ve seen so far today,” added Humphery-Smith.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday that nearly one-fifth of Burkina Faso’s population “urgently needs humanitarian aid.”
“Burkina Faso needs peace, it needs stability, and it needs unity in order to fight terrorist groups and criminal networks operating in parts of the country,” Dujarric said.
Chrysogone Zougmore, president of the Burkina Faso Movement for Human Rights, called Friday’s developments “very regrettable,” saying the instability would not help in the fight against the Islamic extremist violence.
“How can we hope to unite people and the army if the latter is characterized by such serious divisions?” Zougmore said. “It is time for these reactionary and political military factions to stop leading Burkina Faso adrift.”
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Mednick reported from Barcelona. Associated Press writers Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
OUAGADOUGOU, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Burkina Faso’s military leader said he was in talks to restore calm on Friday after gunfire and a blast in the capital raised fears of a second coup in eight months.
Soldiers and military vehicles took to the deserted streets of Ouagadougou after dawn on Friday, cutting off access to administrative buildings.
By mid-morning, the city, usually buzzing with motorbikes and cars, was quiet. Schools, businesses and banks were shut. State television stopped broadcasting.
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It was not clear if the gunfire near a military base and the explosion were part of a coup attempt, but security sources say there has been frustration within the military at a lack of progress in combating Islamist militants.
Damiba, who took power in a coup in January, urged calm in a statement. Certain members of the armed forces overcome by “moods swings” had created a “confused situation,” he said.
His whereabouts are unknown.
The latest unrest bore the hallmarks of other power grabs that have swept across West and Central Africa over the past two years, undoing years of democratic progress.
The coups have been driven in part by violence committed by Islamist groups who have taken over large areas of northern Burkina Faso and parts of neighbouring Mali and Niger.
Civilian populations have cheered military juntas in the hope that they would be more successful at containing the insurgents than their democratically-elected predecessors.
“If successful, it would mark the sixth unconstitutional takeover in the Sahel in the past two years,” said Eric Humphery-Smith, Senior Africa Analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.
“If it isn’t, it’s still a damning indictment for the state of democracy in the region.”
As well as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Guinea have all seen coups since 2020.
INSECURITY
Damiba’s takeover was largely celebrated by Burkinabe fed up with the inability of former President Roch Kabore’s government to rein in militants linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Burkina Faso has become the epicentre of the violence that began in neighbouring Mali in 2012 and has spread across the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert.
The militants have killed thousands of people in Burkina Faso in recent years.
Damiba had pledged to restore security but attacks have worsened. The army is in disarray and frustrated, security sources say.
Militants have blockaded areas of the north, leaving communities stranded. Government convoys and air drops deliver essential goods to trapped civilians.
This week, unknown assailants killed 11 soldiers in an attack on a convoy taking supplies to a town in northern Burkina Faso. Fifty civilians are missing. read more
Many cities and towns not under siege have seen their populations swell as people flee violence in the countryside.
Protests against the military took place across Burkina Faso this week to demand the government do more to improve the security situation. Much of the country has become ungovernable since 2018.
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Writing by Edward McAllister, Bate Felix and Sofia Christensen, Editing by Angus MacSwan, William Maclean and Toby Chopra
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