=Ukraine says it has uncovered major arms corruption
By George Wright BBC News 28th January 2024, 12:51 EST
Ukraine's security service says it has uncovered corruption in an arms purchase by the military worth about $40m (£31m).
The SBU said five senior people in the defence ministry and at an arms supplier were being investigated.
It said the defence officials signed a contract for 100,000 mortar shells in August 2022.
Payment was made in advance, with some funds transferred abroad, but no arms were ever provided.
Corruption has been a major stumbling block in Ukraine's bid to join the European Union.
The SBU said an investigation had "exposed" officials of the ministry of defence and managers of arms supplier Lviv Arsenal, "who stole nearly 1.5 billion hryvnias in the purchase of shells".
"According to the investigation, former and current high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defence and heads of affiliated companies are involved in the embezzlement," it said.
The SBU said that despite the contract for the shells having being agreed six months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, "not a single artillery shell" was ever sent.
One of the suspects was detained while attempting to leave Ukraine and is currently in custody, the SBU said.
Ukraine's prosecutor general says the stolen funds have been seized and will be returned to the defence budget.
Ukraine's hopes of rebuilding rely on fighting corruption
Issues surrounding corruption have dogged Ukraine for years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cited the fight against corruption as one of his main priorities when he came to power in 2019.
The latest allegations come as Republicans in the United States push back on President Joe Biden's efforts to send more aid to Ukraine.
In August, President Zelensky fired all the officials in charge of military recruitment to end a system in which some people were being allowed to escape conscription.
Ukraine was ranked 116th out of 180 countries in a 2022 corruption perceptions index by campaigning and research organisation Transparency International.
But anti-corruption efforts are beginning to make a difference. It is one of only 10 countries steadily climbing Transparency International's ranking, rising 28 places in a decade.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68120973
Farmers In France, Belgium, Step Up Their Protest Campaigns
By AFP - Agence France Presse January 28, 2024
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal promised to do more to meet the demands of angry farmers, as the government mobilised 15,000 police and gendarmes to handle a threatened "siege" of Paris from Monday.
Farm workers in neighbouring Belgium, meanwhile, stepped up their own campaign of direct action, using tractors to block a key motorway junction.
France's two main farming unions, the FNSEA and the Jeunes Agricultueurs (Young Farmers) announced late on Saturday that their members would "start a siege of the capital for an undetermined period".
Attal, during a visit to a farm in the west of the country on Sunday, tried once again to calm the growing anger of the country's farmers, after a first round of concessions announced on Friday failed to defuse the crisis.
"I want us to clarify things and see what extra measures we can take" to meet farmers' complaints that they face unfair competition, he said.
Attal agreed it was not right that French farmers were forbidden from using certain products that neighbouring countries, such as Italy, still had the right to use. One complaint by farmers is that the country's tight environmental rules prevent them from using products still legal elsewhere.
Farmers are also angry about falling wages, low pensions and the mountains of red tape they have to deal with.
Acknowledging that his first package of concessions had not met all of their demands, Attal said: "I am determined to move forward, move forward resolutely, move forward quickly."
FNSEA leader Arnaud Rousseau has made it clear his members expected much more from the government.
"What we need are decisions that we think are going to change the software," he told farmers as he visited a group blocking the A16 motorway north of Paris.
Although some roadblocks were lifted over the weekend, many roads across France were still barred on Sunday.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, announcing the massive mobilisation to meet the farmers protests around Paris, said French President Emmanuel Macron wanted both Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport to the north and Orly to the south of the capital kept open.
France's paramilitary gendarmes have already deployed armoured vehicles outside the Rungis international wholesale food market south of Paris to prevent any incursions there.
Police and gendarmes are also under orders to prevent any incursion into Paris itself, said Darmanin.
He repeated a call for police and gendarmes to act with "moderation", saying they should not move in on road blocks except to make them safe.
Further south, officials in the city of Lyon said they were expecting farmers to stage go-slow protests and motorway roadblocks.
In neighbouring Belgium, farmers on Sunday blocked a major motorway as part of their campaign of direct action for better conditions.
Dozens of tractors drove at a crawl through a key interchange, halting traffic on the E42 motorway just north of Namur in the south of the country.
Farmers protesting outside a football stadium, delayed a Belgian top flight match between FC Genk and Sint-Truiden by 30 minutes.
In recent weeks, farmers protests have also mushroomed in Germany, Poland, Romania, and the Netherlands, as the EU scrambles to address concerns ahead of elections this year amid a rise in far-right support.
https://www.barrons.com/news/farmers-in-france-belgium-step-up-their-protest-campaigns-4a51d437