Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Moldova’s claims of a Russian coup plot, New Zealand’s state of emergency, and Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation in Scotland.
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Russia Denies Moldovan Coup Claims
Russia has denied the Moldovan leadership’s allegations that the Kremlin sought to overthrow the country’s government.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu said that Russia was planning to attack government buildings, take hostages, and put the nation “at the disposal of Russia” to keep it from joining the European Union. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that it had intercepted Russian plans on the destruction of Moldova. Moldova has said that it confirmed the allegations. Moldova gained EU membership candidate status last June on the same day that Ukraine did.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Sandu’s claims were “absolutely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”
“They are built in the spirit of classical techniques that are often used by the United States, other Western countries and Ukraine,” she said. “First, accusations are made with reference to purportedly classified intelligence information that cannot be verified, and then they are used to justify their own illegal actions.”
Moldovan authorities, she said, were using “the myth about a Russian threat to distract Moldovan citizens’ attention from internal problems resulting from a disastrous social-economic course of the current administration and to step up the fight against dissent and political opponents.”
What We’re Following Today
Scotland’s Sturgeon to resign. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s popular first minister and head of the Scottish National Party, shocked colleagues and observers by announcing she will resign on Wednesday morning. Although Sturgeon remains Scotland’s most popular leader, she has suffered some setbacks in recent months, including a ruling by the U.K. supreme court derailing her plans for a new independence referendum and a controversy over a rapist being sent to a female prison after announcing she was a trans woman.
There is no obvious replacement; possible successors include her deputy, John Swinney; finance secretary Kate Forbes; health secretary Humza Yousaf; and culture and external affairs secretary Angus Robertson.
New Zealand’s “storm of the century.” A state of emergency has been declared in New Zealand over Cyclone Gabrielle. New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Hipkins, said, “Cyclone Gabrielle is the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century. The severity and the damage that we are seeing has not been experienced in a generation.”
Approximately 2,500 people have been displaced thus far. Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty called it “an unprecedented weather event.” A national state of emergency has only been declared three times in the history of New Zealand. Climate Change Minister James Shaw said of the cyclone, “This is climate change,” and lamented, “the lost decades that we spent bickering and arguing about whether climate change was real or not, whether it was caused by humans or not, whether it was bad or not, whether we should do something about it or not.”
Sen. Durbin criticizes Israel’s planned judiciary overhaul. Senator Dick Durbin, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and long-time Israel supporter, told Haaretz, “President Biden is correct in highlighting the importance of democratic checks and balances, strong institutions, and an independent judiciary in regards to the serious test currently facing Israel.”
He also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “dangerously putting his own narrow political and legal interests—and those of the troubling extremists in his coalition—ahead of the long-term interests and needs of Israel’s democracy.” Critics of the Israeli government have said that Israel’s planned judiciary overhaul would weaken the country’s judicial system, and some have suggested that Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, supports the plan as a potential route for evading justice.
Keep an Eye On
Iran’s top chess player exiled for refusing head scarf. Iran’s Sara Khadem, a 25-year-old chess star, played at an international tournament without a head scarf, demonstrating solidarity with the protest movement in her country. She now cannot return to Iran, where there are reportedly arrest papers waiting for her, and lives in southern Spain with her husband and child. Khadem noted that women at the competition in Kazakhstan in December of last year were only wearing head scarves for the cameras, and that she found this hypocritical.
She was invited to meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedró Sanchez. “It was on that day that I was issued with arrest orders at home,” she told the BBC. “So I had mixed feelings: I was appreciated in this country—and in my own country, where you have achieved lots of success, you get arrest papers.”
BBC India searched by tax officials. BBC India’s offices were searched by income tax officials weeks after the BBC aired a documentary that looked critically at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, which took place when he was chief minister of that state and which saw many people, mostly Muslims, killed. India has banned the documentary, which it has denounced as anti-Indian propaganda, though that has not stopped many, notably university students, from trying to watch it. The searches were carried out in New Delhi and Mumbai. The BBC said its employees were fully cooperating.
KC Venugopal, the general secretary of the Congress Party, the most prominent national opposition party, said that the searches “reeked of desperation” and demonstrated that the government was “scared of criticism.”
“We condemn these intimidation tactics in the harshest terms. This undemocratic and dictatorial attitude cannot go on any longer,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, Gaurav Bhatia, spokesman for the ruling BJP, called the BBC the “most corrupt organization in the world,” and said, “India is a country which gives an opportunity to every organization as long as you don’t spew venom.” Amnesty International’s India Board said authorities were trying to “harass and intimidate the BBC.”
Tuesday’s Most Read
•Russia Has Already Lost in the Long Run by Brent Peabody
•It’s High Time to Decolonize Russian Studies by Artem Shaipov and Yuliia Shaipova
•The IMF Has Too Many Economists for Its Own Good by Timothy E. Kaldas
Odds and Ends
Night lights. A small asteroid struck Earth’s atmosphere over northern France near the city of Rouen. Though only about three feet wide, it created a light show over the English Channel.