Archived

Poland decided to add several media and telecommunication firms to its list of strategic companies, which means their takeover will not be possible without government consent, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.

Tusk had earlier said that private broadcasters TVN, owned by U.S. company Warner Discovery, and Polsat would be added to the list, highlighting increased concern about foreign interference. Tusk cited "hybrid war" against countries in the region.

Romania's top court annulled an ongoing presidential election this month after accusations of Russian meddling, particularly on social media. Russia denies interfering in elections in foreign countries.

"We adopted a regulation... on the basis of which we added to a list of entities subject to protection... companies such as Cyfrowy Polsat, P4 - the company that operates Play, TVN, Polsat television, T-Mobile and WB Electronics," Tusk said on Wednesday after a cabinet meeting. "This list already includes previously protected companies... such as Tauron Polska, Orlen, Emitel, Grupa Azoty, Gaspol. I do not need to justify the necessity for protection against the risk of these companies, which are key to the security of the Polish state, falling into the wrong hands."

Poland's list of strategic companies included mostly energy, chemical companies until now.

Archived version

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Estonia PM Kristen Michal, who is hosting Sir Keir Starmer and eight other European leaders at a security summit in Tallinn, said that if the allies wanted to have peace, they needed to prepare for a defensive war against Russia that could begin in the next five or ten years.

“Russia has a mentality that war is something sacred, that this is a sacred war, and they are against everybody,” he said.

“They are against Europe, they are against Nato, they are against the United States. And the only way they would diverge from this path is if they were to meet something bigger or stronger on this path.”

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, defence spending across Nato as a whole has crept over 2 per cent of GDP for the first time in three decades. Twenty-three of the 32 allies have now crossed the threshold, compared with only seven before the onslaught. Poland’s budget is climbing towards 5 per cent and Estonia’s is projected to reach 3.7 per cent next year.

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Last week Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general, said the Europeans needed to get back to Cold War-era levels of military spending, when budgets were routinely well over 3 per cent, because the threat to their security was even greater today.

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Estonian officials now say they are confident that Nato will raise the bar to 2.5 or 3 per cent in the near future, not least because the alliance’s new lists of specific requirements from each national military will force the issue.

“I believe that we’ll reach the momentum and more and more countries are understanding that they need to do more,” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defence minister, told The Times. “It’s not only about the words that Trump is saying. It’s about the real needs.”

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Estonian officials argue that if Ukraine can cling on until the spring then Putin will face mounting discontent within his own regime and find it harder to persuade other power brokers that Russia can outlast its opponents.

In the long run, Michal said, Russia was “absolutely” destroying its economic future. “If one were to look at Russia’s economy like we look at other economies … Russia’s economy would be like a train wreck in slow motion,” he said. “But because the [Russian] narrative is different, the Putin regime’s only way of staying in power is to continue this kind of war because during the war [its critics] cannot ask any questions”.

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17644126

Archived version (South China Morning Post)

A Chinese professor has sparked a public backlash after he asked a visiting Kazakh diplomat how to make Chinese women “have children obediently, early and in large numbers” at a think tank event.

Wang Xianju, a professor at Renmin University and a former counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Belarus, was speaking to Erlan Qarin, the state counsellor of Kazakhstan, who visited the university in November.

Qarin had given a speech on Kazakhstan’s domestic reforms and relations between the two countries at an event hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank based at the university.

The institute published Wang’s remarks on its WeChat account in November but the article only gained online traction – and criticism – this week. It has since been deleted.

During the question-and-answer period, Wang said he was surprised to find there were many children when he visited Kazakhstan.

He said Kazakhstan apparently had effective policies encouraging births, and he wondered how that might be possible, given that Chinese women did not want to get married and have children, and would not listen to their parents or supervisors.

“I even heard that women in Kazakhstan immediately have children after they graduate college, they have children one after another,” Wang said in a now-deleted WeChat article by the think tank.

“How could they listen to you and obediently, submissively have children, have children early and have lots of children?”

Archived

A Chinese man was arrested on the territory of a German naval base, police said on Wednesday, and a public broadcaster said prosecutors were considering spying charges.

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The man was found carrying a camera at the naval base in Kiel on December 9, and that prosecutors were considering charges of taking security-endangering pictures of military installations.

"We have an open investigation into a Chinese man who was found on the territory of the marine port," said Carola Jeschke, spokesperson for Schlesweig-Holstein's criminal investigation department.

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The investigation comes amid a greatly heightened focus on the security threat posed by China, whose booming car industry is an increasingly formidable competitor to Germany's economic mainstay, and which continues to cooperate with Russia even as the West seeks to isolate Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Kiel, on the Baltic Sea, is home to one of the German navy's three flotillas and the dry dock where ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems builds submarines.

In October, Germany took over command of NATO's task force in the Baltic Sea, which is criss-crossed by fuel pipelines and data cables that have repeatedly been severed since the start of Russia's invasion in February 2022.

Germany's security agencies have frequently warned of an increased threat from Chinese intelligence services.

**In 2023, Kiel scrapped plans to establish a twin-city partnership with the Chinese military port of Qingdao after researchers warned that it could serve as a cover for espionage. **

[Replaced the link with a Cloudflare-free version.]

Archived

Around 30,000 Russians of working age die annually from HIV, according to Vadim Pokrovsky, the head of Russia’s Federal Methodological Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention.

This figure continues to rise alongside increasing treatment costs for the government and a lack of early HIV testing.

Speaking to TASS, Pokrovsky revealed that the Russian government spends RUB70bn ($670mn) per year on HIV treatment. The epidemic is exacerbated by the loss of economically active individuals, which Pokrovsky highlighted as a critical economic blow.

“If each year we lose 30,000 young, able-bodied people who could work for another 20-30 years, that is an additional loss [to the economy],” he said.

Russia’s HIV epidemic, which has resulted in 1.7mn infections and nearly 500,000 deaths to date, stems primarily from gaps in early diagnosis and inconsistent treatment availability. Reports indicate that shortages of antiretroviral drugs, including the vital medication Dolutegravir, have emerged due to disrupted supply chains and procurement issues, with some supply tenders being cancelled altogether.

While heterosexual transmission is now the most common means of spreading HIV in Russia, marginalised groups such as drug users, sex workers and gay men remain disproportionately vulnerable. Reduced funding for HIV testing – currently 30% below the recommended levels – has further undermined efforts at early detection, despite calls from medical experts for regular screenings to prevent immune system deterioration.

Archived version (South China Morning Post)

A Chinese professor has sparked a public backlash after he asked a visiting Kazakh diplomat how to make Chinese women “have children obediently, early and in large numbers” at a think tank event.

Wang Xianju, a professor at Renmin University and a former counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Belarus, was speaking to Erlan Qarin, the state counsellor of Kazakhstan, who visited the university in November.

Qarin had given a speech on Kazakhstan’s domestic reforms and relations between the two countries at an event hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank based at the university.

The institute published Wang’s remarks on its WeChat account in November but the article only gained online traction – and criticism – this week. It has since been deleted.

During the question-and-answer period, Wang said he was surprised to find there were many children when he visited Kazakhstan.

He said Kazakhstan apparently had effective policies encouraging births, and he wondered how that might be possible, given that Chinese women did not want to get married and have children, and would not listen to their parents or supervisors.

“I even heard that women in Kazakhstan immediately have children after they graduate college, they have children one after another,” Wang said in a now-deleted WeChat article by the think tank.

“How could they listen to you and obediently, submissively have children, have children early and have lots of children?”

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17627707

On International Human Rights Day, a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna united Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians demanding an end to Chinese Communist Party oppression. Demonstrators called for global action against the ongoing human rights abuses and systemic oppression of marginalized communities in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On International Human Rights Day, a significant protest unfolded outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Chinese Christians united against ongoing oppression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The event, spearheaded by the Tibetan Community Organisation in Vienna, spotlighted widespread human rights abuses by the Chinese authorities.

Leading the demonstration, Tibetan diaspora members waved flags and held banners condemning the CCP's persistent violations in Tibet. They voiced concerns over issues such as the demolition of monasteries, enforced relocation of Tibetan children, and what many called cultural genocide. The protesters urged global recognition of these atrocities and pressed for international intervention to halt Chinese repressive policies.

Uyghur activists stood alongside their Tibetan peers, highlighting the severe persecution faced by Uyghurs, including mass detentions, forced labor, and the destruction of religious sites. Joined by Chinese Christians, who protested against the state's control over religious practices, they collectively demanded an end to CCP tyranny and urged the world to hold China accountable.

[Edit to include the link.]

Archive

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has already slapped a 100 per cent tariff on all Chinese electric vehicles and a 25 per cent tariff on imports of Chinese steel and aluminum products. The finance ministry has said it's exploring options to widen the duties.

The mid-year fiscal update presented on Monday showed that Ottawa has decided to apply tariffs to imports of certain solar products and critical minerals from China early in the new year, with levies on semiconductors, permanent magnets, and natural graphite following in 2026.

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Trudeau's government has frequently criticized the Chinese government-funded policy of oversupply and over-capacity. He has said Canada needs to protect local jobs from cheap Chinese products finding their way into the country.

Russian Economist Konstantin Sonin explains what a recent report on the Russian economy – which argues that “Putinomics” can both keep the war going and ensure economic growth – gets wrong.

Konstantin Sonin: [...] here are a number of artificial statistical effects that create the impression that the economy as a whole is growing. The fact is that it is not growing. In fact, two processes are taking place in the economy: a decline in people’s standard of living and a decline in consumption – in both the quantity of goods consumed and the quality of goods consumed. This is how the war is being financed [...] We get a statistical illusion.

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If we take all these [official statistical] figures on faith, then we get something strange: you can take a working economy, remove a million people from the workforce – 500,000 for the war, 500,000 as emigrants – increase the costs of all transactions – because, owing to the chain of intermediaries, each transaction abroad now costs more and gets you less – and the end result is an economy producing more.

This contradicts what we know about the functioning of an economy. There is no such thing as pressing a button and producing more. Especially if your costs have increased. You can also imagine a situation where you press a button and produce more now at the expense of tomorrow, but my colleagues do not expect a downturn tomorrow.

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I do not think that the people sitting at [Russia's federal statistics agency] Rosstat are deliberately tweaking the numbers. But it would not be surprising if you, presented with the opportunity to decide, roughly speaking, how to calibrate a model, you did it in such a way that it gave you the most favorable numbers.

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If we roughly assume that inflation [which is officially at around 9 percent year on year at the moment] is actually underestimated by about half, then GDP growth disappears, as does the growth of real incomes [...] obviously does not exist. Because if this growth were real, we would have no idea where these real incomes are going, as there is no consumption growth in any data.

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Of course, the Russian economy has not collapsed, as some hotheads predicted; it has not gone away. But for each transaction, for each item, the costs have gone up. Every unit of Russian exports is sold for less than it was sold for before. Every unit of Russian imports is bought for more than it was bought for before.

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The effects we are talking about, which I believe indicate an economic deterioration, are a couple percent, single percentage points. Maybe even 10%. We have seen that GDP and other macroeconomic aggregates can halve in seven years – this was the case in the early 1990s. But did trams stop running? Did clinics stop working?

In other words, this alone does not lead to an economic collapse. [...] There is a war going on now and that it is being financed by reducing the country’s standard of living. We know from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that people can put up with a lot for a long time. Before my eyes, from the age of 10 to 18, we went from queues for quality products to queues for butter, and then to queues for eggs and bread.

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I do not think it’s possible to assist the brain drain more than it has already been assisted [...] Russia has experienced a brain drain that is unprecedented for any country in the last half century.

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Regarding capital flight, we also need to understand what it means to “encourage capital flight." [...] Dollars only make sense if our oligarch bought some goods abroad and brought them to Russia. In this case, the dollars are put to work. And what would our hypothetical oligarch invest in if he were allowed to? In the most profitable business today: circumventing sanctions. This is where the biggest margins are now. Allowing Putin’s oligarchs to invest money abroad now, allowing capital flight, would amount to subsidizing the most profitable business out there.

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If Putin today decisively carries out demilitarization and reduces spending on the security services and propaganda, then yes, he can prolong the life of his regime. But if, for example, next year he increases military spending and increases spending on the security services and propaganda, then he might bring it all down in a year.

Russian state-controlled media report about the resignation of former Deputy Prime Minister insinuates that “her resignation comes in the wake of new controversy surrounding her family’s past, particularly her grandfather’s ties to Nazi collaboration in Ukraine.”

The RT article falsely claims that “Freeland’s departure has reignited scrutiny of her family’s wartime past”.

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Russian-state or pro-Kremlin media repeatedly targets Western politicians of Ukrainian descent, distorting and weaponizing WWII-era history to brand them as “Nazis” or “Nazi collaborators.” Chrystia Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage and who has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, is a prime target.

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The exaggerated storyline of Freeland’s resignation fits into a broader trope of portraying NATO or G7 countries as facing severe internal crises. Presenting “policy disagreements” as a dramatic cabinet split underscores the narrative that Trudeau’s government is collapsing—a recurrent theme in Russian-state-backed outlets.

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[Edit typos in the title.]

Archive

The Russian disinformation network Matryoshka has launched a new campaign aimed at convincing social media users that scholars and professors from top global universities are calling for the West to lift sanctions against Russia. In the videos, well-known academics can purportedly be heard urging Ukraine to surrender “historically Russian lands” — and even portraying Volodymyr Zelensky as a vampire. The campaign spreads this disinformation by cloning the voices of real professors using artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

The campaign was uncovered by the Bot Blocker project (which goes by the @antibot4navalny handle on X). The videos all follow a similar structure: a speaker introduces themselves, often citing an affiliation with renowned institutions like Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, or the University of Bristol. The footage then transitions to segments without the speaker on screen — while their voice supposedly continues. During these moments, the voice promotes claims that Europe is suffering under anti-Russian sanctions, that the West must stop providing Ukraine with weapons and financial aid, that Zelensky is sending Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths, and that Ukraine must cede its territories to Russia.

Investigations by The Insider and Bot Blocker confirmed that the opening sections, in which the speakers appear and introduce themselves in person, were taken from real videos. The other portions, however, were artificially generated using AI, which effectively cloned the academics’ voices.

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In [one] video, [Historian and University of Bristol Professor Ronald] Hutton begins by discussing the study of folklore. However, the footage then shifts to a portrait of Volodymyr Zelensky as a cloned version of Hutton's voice claims that the Ukrainian president is a vampire feeding on the lives of his citizens sent to fight in the war with Russia. The original video, from which the introductory segment was taken, genuinely focuses on folklore and vampires — but makes no reference to Zelensky or Ukraine. The Insider and Bot Blocker have identified other original recordings that were manipulated for similar fake videos.

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The creators of these fake videos have used the voices and images of real academics from institutions including Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Bristol, the University of Cumbria, and Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies). They also manipulated footage from events like the Bank of America Chicago Marathon.

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The disinformation campaign known as Matryoshka began no later than September 2023, as first reported by Bot Blocker. Initially, the campaign organizers posted messages on Twitter (now X) addressed to Western media, urging them to “verify information” that proved to be fabricated materials containing anti-Ukrainian propaganda created by the organizers themselves. These posts were then widely shared by stolen accounts, allowing the content to spread rapidly across the platform.

The bots operate in a coordinated manner. One account might share a photo of supposed graffiti in Los Angeles depicting President Zelensky as a beggar, while another account calls on journalists to confirm whether the image is real or fake. In most cases, the bots spread defamatory videos targeting Ukrainians, often overlaid with logos of credible media outlets to lend an appearance of authenticity.

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Archived

Layoffs of IT specialists in Russia have accelerated as 2024 draws to a close. According to reporting by The Bell in its subscribers-exclusive newsletter, the cutbacks have hit both tech firms and the IT divisions of companies in other industries. However, Russia’s wartime political posture has made it difficult to speak openly about economic setbacks, and businesses have labored to conceal or deny mounting troubles with IT personnel. Meduza summarizes The Bell’s report.

Multiple IT recruitment specialists told The Bell that businesses have tried to conceal information about the layoffs or denied outright that cutbacks are happening at all. One source explained that layoffs have been “quietly underway” all year, but the rate intensified in recent months. “No one is ready to make this public. They say, ‘Sure, we let some people go, sure, it was the whole department, sure, it was the entire project, but it’s not layoffs, come on,’” the source said. Another IT recruiter told The Bell that layoffs have become routine. “Entire teams are coming to us,” he explained.

The Bell reported layoffs at the social media conglomerate VK and the telecom giant MTS, though both companies deny it. The Bell’s sources also mentioned cutbacks to IT workers at the development group Samolet. (Samolet says it merely “streamlined” its IT department to eliminate redundant functions when creating a new division called Samolet Technologies.) Sberbank is also rolling back investments in testing and evaluation, reportedly by cutting contracts with outsourced IT product developers.

Additionally, the founder and former CEO of MyOffice (which designs office software intended to replace Microsoft Office products in Russia) revealed earlier this month that executives had laid off its entire senior management (who were appointed only two years earlier when Kaspersky Lab gained control over the company). The IT Workers Union has reported cutbacks at other firms, as well.

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“The economy is screwed,” the source said. “IT specialists were supposedly in high demand, there was a labor shortage, and so on. But the market has no money for growth, and marketing instruments have failed. Sure, companies need marketers and IT specialists, but there’s no money [to pay them]. However, they’re hiding all this because, in Russia, the economy can’t possibly be screwed.”

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