World
Ukraine demands Poland punish protesting farmers for dumping grain
Ukraine has called on Poland to punish those responsible for destroying 160 tonnes of Ukrainian grain in an attack at a Polish railway station.
Kyiv sent a note to Warsaw demanding that the Polish authorities find and punish the guilty, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on X on Monday.
The official said the destruction of the grain at the railway station amid protests was an act of “impunity and irresponsibility”.
“Those who have damaged Ukrainian grain must be found, neutralized, and punished. Two friendly civilized European states are interested in this,” Kubrakov wrote.
Earlier, the official had reported that 160 tonnes of grain, en route to other countries via the port of Gdansk, had been dumped at the railway station near Bydgoszcz, in eastern Poland. It was reportedly the fourth instance of Ukrainian grain being spilled by protesting Polish farmers in recent weeks.
Those who have damaged Ukrainian grain must be found, neutralized, and punished. Two friendly civilized European states are interested in this. Such planned demonstration videos and comments have similarities with the russian hybrid war.
The @minfrastucture and the @UKRinPL… pic.twitter.com/O0corRKY2T
— Oleksandr Kubrakov (@OlKubrakov) February 26, 2024
Polish farmers have been at the forefront of the widespread protests by European farmers over recent weeks. However, they have been protesting against “unfair competition” from Ukraine for over a year.
The European Union suspended import duties, quotas and trade defence measures for imports from Ukraine in June 2022, after Russia’s war closed down many of the country’s usual grain export routes. However, the flow of cheap grain from the east quickly sparked protests by farmers and truckers in neighbouring countries.
Encouraged by the former nationalist government, which ruled until last year, Poland’s farmers and truckers have blocked border crossings and motorways.
Like peers across Europe, the new government in Warsaw has been wary of confronting farmers, apparently eyeing significant public support and the risk that a strong response to the protests could prove a boon for the far right at European Parliament elections in June.
On Friday, a Ukrainian government delegation visited the border with Poland to discuss the protests.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Kyiv had developed a five-step plan “of mutual understanding” to find a compromise for both countries.
“The blockade hits the entire Polish-Ukrainian trade and the economy of our countries. Not only Ukraine is losing from it, but Polish entrepreneurs who export goods worth $12bn annually to our market are losing from it.”
The plan outlines Ukraine’s agreement with a European Commission proposal to restrict poultry, eggs and sugar exports, including an appeal to the EU to ban Russian agrarian exports.
He added that Kyiv is also ready to apply a verification mechanism to grain, corn, sunflower and rapeseed exports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that it was important for Kyiv to maintain close relations with Poland. Still, he added that his country is ready to defend businesses that had been hurt by the border blockades.
Ukrainian border service spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said on television, “Unfortunately, the blockage continues.”
“In total, 2,200 lorries are queueing on Polish territory and [Polish] farmers are letting several vehicles through per hour in both directions. More blocked are those lorries coming from Ukraine,” he said.
Burning tyres
Beyond Poland, farmers from across Europe, including France, Germany and Belgium, have been blocking roads and protesting against foreign competition, as well as environmental regulations, raised costs, and low prices for produce.
Ukraine has said blockades on its grain exports have caused severe economic losses and affected its war effort.
On Monday, tractors surrounded the EU’s headquarters in Brussels as ministers met to seek ways to streamline farming rules and red tape fuelling the protests around the bloc.
Farmers burned tyres and set off fireworks in the street. Police used water cannon to douse the flames as the ministers discussed concessions.
World
Paramount Global Set to Unveil New Leadership Structure; Anxiety Runs High on Earnings Eve
As turmoil continues to surround the future of Paramount Global, details surrounding interim leadership and its proposed Skydance deal are coming to light, multiple sources told Variety.
Sunday was a consequential day in Shari Redstone’s ongoing exclusive bargaining window with David Ellison‘s Skydance, one that would see the Hollywood scion take majority ownership of Paramount Global and its owner National Amusements Inc. Skydance offered its “best and final” offer to Redstone on Sunday, sources added.
On the eve of its quarterly earnings call, two insiders familiar with Paramount Global said the board is expected to announce a new leadership committee to replace ousted CEO Bob Bakish. Expected to be named to these leadership roles are Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins, CBS chief executive George Cheeks and MTV Entertainment Group President Chris McCarthy, the sources said.
Multiple insiders close to Paramount’s ongoing sales process said that letting Bakish go was the right move, but the new leadership structure is problematic at this fragile moment. There will not be a sole leader guiding the corporation through a potential sales process, said the insiders, and Cheeks, Robbins and McCarthy are not accustomed to collaboration across their portfolios. All details that are raising internal and external anxiety. There is, of course, Redstone — who is being closely watched by Wall Street and the media sector.
A third source familiar with the company said Redstone has been resolute in preferring the Skydance bid, which promises to keep her family media empire in tact and on track to provide future shareholder value. Or, she could appease some of her shareholders and evaluate a competing offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment — a deal that would call for major structural changes, with asset liquidation and job losses likely. And that’s if that scenario could survive inevitable regulatory scrutiny.
Heading into earnings, the company has yet to disclose whether its network carriage deal with Charter, the country’s second largest cable operator next to Comcast, has been renewed. It is set to expire April 30.
The flurry of weekend activity is sure to weigh heavy on Paramount Global’s share price on Monday, and change the economics of any potential sale. Paramount Global is scheduled to report first quarter 2024 results tomorrow after market close. The earnings call with analysts — sans Bakish but possibly with the new leadership team — is set to start at 4:30 p.m. ET.
World
Lawmakers call for release of Putin’s ‘political prisoner number one'
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers marked the two-year anniversary of Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza’s imprisonment by calling for his immediate release.
Kara-Murza, who lives in solitary confinement in a Siberian maximum-security prison, was sentenced to 25 years last April for treason and other related charges as Russian authorities continue their crackdown on domestic dissent.
The Moscow City Court claimed Kara-Murza was guilty of “high treason“ for “disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces” when he delivered a speech to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2022 that criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
His sentence is the longest term handed down to a political prisoner in the post-Soviet era.
Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., co-led a group of 80 bipartisan lawmakers urging the Biden administration to declare the Russian dissident as “unlawfully and wrongfully detained.”
Fox News Digital obtained a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Cardin and other lawmakers demanding Kara-Murza’s release and the aforementioned designation.
“There is little time left to end the ongoing and unjust detention of U.S. Legal Permanent Resident and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza,” the letter read in part. “Mr. Kara-Murza’s family has grave concerns that he may not survive much longer. His situation is even more perilous following the killing of Alexei Navalny. Mr. Kara-Murza is the most prominent imprisoned democracy activist still alive in Russia.”
The State Department referred Fox News Digital to spokesperson Matthew Miller’s remarks on Kara-Murza’s two-year imprisonment anniversary but did not provide specifics when asked about efforts to give the Russian opposition leader the designation sought by U.S. lawmakers.
“The Department of State continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful. When making assessments, the Department conducts a legal, fact-based review that looks into the totality of the circumstances for each case individually,” a spokesperson said.
Russian human rights lawyer and the Center for European Policy Analysis’ Democracy Fellow Grigory Vaypan told Fox News Digital that Kara-Murza is now Russia’s “prisoner number one.”
AMERICAN BALLERINA WITH DUAL CITIZENSHIP ARRESTED IN RUSSIA, FACING LIFE IN PRISON FOR DONATING $51 TO UKRAINE
“He’s definitely political prisoner number one on Putin’s list, and his life is certainly in danger now that we see with the murder of Navalny that Putin’s regime demonstrates to the world that it’s willing to kill political prisoners in Russia,” Vaypan said.
He added that Kara-Murza, who was reportedly poisoned twice in 2015 and 2017 by agents of the Russian state, is essentially on “Putin’s death row.”
“His health is deteriorating. He has never fully recovered from the effects of those two poisonings. Now, he is not only in prison, he’s on solitary confinement, which is basically indefinite. He can be in his tiny prison cell for many months, and with the effects of those two poisonings, his health is getting worse,” Vaypan explained. “This is why it would be fair to say that he’s essentially on Putin’s death row now.”
Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group, counts roughly 700 political prisoners in Russia today.
Political prisoners are further isolated and punished in an effort to prevent them from continuing to speak out against the Russian authorities. They can be put into solitary confinement, deprived of food, mail, phone calls with relatives or family visits.
RUSSIAN POET SENTENCED TO 7 YEARS IN PRISON FOR RECITING VERSES AGAINST WAR IN UKRAINE
“There’s a wide array of those measures that the Russian prison authorities can resort to. And we’re increasingly seeing that, especially after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion [of] Ukraine, we’ve seen more people jailed for exercising their right to free speech,” Vaypan told Fox News Digital. “And we’ve seen an increasing number of people being further harassed and pressured even while in prison.”
Kara-Murza’s wife, Evgenia, reflected on the deaths of other Russian opposition figures like Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov at the hands of the Putin regime.
“[They] target the most courageous, the most principled, those Russians who risk not only their freedom but very often their lives to show you that Russia can be different,” she said at an event on Capitol Hill.
“As my husband put it, and I quote, ‘It is my hope that when people in the free world today think and speak about Russia, they will remember not only the war criminals who are sitting in the Kremlin but also those who are standing up to them because we are Russians too.’”
World
At least four dead in US after dozens of tornadoes rip through Oklahoma
Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently struck by debris.
At least four people were killed and dozens more injured after multiple tornadoes wreaked havoc in the central state of Oklahoma in the United States.
The tornadoes caused extensive damage in the town of Sulphur, home to about 5,000 people, flattened buildings, threw vehicles into the air and ripped the roofs from houses.
“You just can’t believe the destruction,” Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said during a visit to the hard-hit town on Sunday afternoon. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”
A four-month-old baby was among the dead, Hughes County Emergency Management Director Mike Dockrey told Oklahoma television station KOCO.
Stitt said about 30 people were injured, including some who were in a bar when the tornado struck.
Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently cut or struck by debris, and more than 20,000 residents were still without electricity on Sunday evening.
Stitt issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties due to the severe weather, while in a call with the Oklahoma governor, President Joe Biden offered the federal government’s full support with recovery efforts, the White House said in a statement.
The National Weather Service (NWS) reported that 38 possible tornadoes hit the area and that the worst of the storms rolled through Central Oklahoma on Saturday into early Sunday morning, spreading into northwest Texas, western Missouri and Kansas.
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