On Healthy Living this week, what is preeclampsia and how does it affect pregnant women? Certified Nurse Midwife Alise Howe has more on this topic. Also, we delve into the right time to discuss sexual education with children, can a fetus feel his or her mother’s emotions, and a look at a new study that shows a connection between obesity and those living in rural areas for our “What’s New” segment. These answers and more this week on Healthy Living.  S1, E5

The Chinese government has detained more than a million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities for what it calls voluntary job training. But a newly revealed classified blueprint shows that the camps Beijing runs in China’s far west are instead secret centers for forced ideological and behavioral re-education.

The confidential documents, leaked to a consortium of international journalists, lay out the Chinese government’s deliberate strategy to lock up minorities, most of whom are Muslims, to rewire their thoughts and even the language they speak.

The documents stipulate watch towers, double-locked doors and blanket video surveillance “to prevent escapes.” They describe an elaborate scoring system that grades detainees on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language, memorize ideology and adhere to strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet.

They also show how Beijing is pioneering a new form of social control using data and artificial intelligence. With the help of mass surveillance technology, computers issued the names of tens of thousands of people for interrogation or detention in just one week, including university students and party officials who wouldn’t need vocational training.

Taken as a whole, the documents give the most significant description yet of how the mass detention camps work in the words of the Chinese government itself.

‘Form of cultural genocide’

Experts say they spell out a vast system that targets, surveils and grades entire ethnicities to forcibly assimilate them – especially Uighurs, a Turkic minority of about 10 million with their own language and culture.

“They confirm that this is a form of cultural genocide,” said Adrian Zenz, a leading security expert in the far western region of Xinjiang, where many Uighurs live. “It really shows that from the onset, the Chinese government had a plan.”

Zenz said the documents echo the aim of the camps as outlined in a 2017 report from a local branch of the Xinjiang Ministry of Justice: To “wash brains, cleanse hearts, support the right, remove the wrong.”

‘People’s War on Terror’

China has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, where hundreds, both Uighurs and Han Chinese, have died in terror attacks, reprisals and race riots. In 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched what he called a “People’s War on Terror” in response to terror attacks carried out by radical Uighur militants.

In late 2016, the crackdown intensified dramatically when Xi named Chen Quanguo, a hardline official transferred from Tibet, as Xinjiang’s new head. Most of the documents were issued in 2017.

“Since the measures have been taken, there’s no single terrorist incident in the past three years,” said a written response from the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom. “Xinjiang is much safer….The so-called leaked documents are fabrication and fake news.”

The statement said that religious freedom and the personal freedom of detainees was “fully respected” in Xinjiang.

The documents came from an anonymous source, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists verified them by consulting experts, cross-checking content and comparing signatures. They consist of a notice with guidelines for the camps, four bulletins on how to use technology to target people, and a court case sentencing a local Uighur party official to 10 years in prison for telling colleagues not to say dirty words, watch porn or eat without praying.

Issued to rank-and-file officials by the powerful Xinjiang Communist Party Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the documents confirm what is known about the camps from the testimony of Uighurs and Kazakhs, satellite imagery and highly restricted visits by journalists to the region.

Erzhan Qurban, a Chinese-born ethnic Kazakh, was held for nine months because he had spent time abroad in Kazakhstan. Qurban said he was locked in a cell with 10 others last year, forced to sit rigidly for hours and forbidden to pray or even talk.

“It wasn’t education, it was just punishment,” said Qurban. “I was treated like animal.”

Other detainees have said there was torture or rape at the camps.

‘Extreme surveillance’

The documents show direct links between the internment camps and the extreme digital surveillance in Xinjiang. One document states that the purpose of the surveillance is “to prevent problems before they happen.”

This is done through a system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform or IJOP, built by a state-owned military contractor. The IJOP spat out the names of people considered suspicious for behavior that includes going abroad, asking others to pray or using cell phone apps that cannot be monitored by the government. These people were then called in for questioning and funneled into different parts of the system, from house arrest to detention centers with three levels of monitoring to prison.

Forced indoctrination

Once inside, the documents show, detainees are subject to forced indoctrination.

The first item listed as part of the curriculum is ideological education. It is partly rooted in the ancient Chinese belief in transformation through education – taken before to terrifying extremes during the mass thought reform campaigns of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.

The indoctrination goes along with “manner education,” where behavior is dictated, including ensuring “timely haircuts and shaves,” “regular change of clothes” and “bathing once or twice a week.” The tone, experts say, echoes a general perception by the Han Chinese government that Uighurs are prone to violence and need to be civilized.

Mandarin is mandated. Detainees are frequently tested on Mandarin, ideology and discipline, and their scores feed into a point system tracked by computer. Detainees who do well are to be rewarded with perks like family visits and early graduation, and those who do poorly are to be sent to a stricter “management area” with longer detention times.

Students go for “vocational skills improvement” only after at least one year of learning ideology, law and Mandarin. After they leave, the documents say, every effort should be made to get them jobs. Some detainees describe being forced to sign work contracts for low pay.

Independent experts on Chinese law say the detentions are a clear violation of China’s own laws.

“They’re not even trying to justify this legally,” said Maggie Lewis, a professor of Chinese law at Seton Hall University. “This is arbitrary.”

 

It was a running joke in his AP U.S. history class at Saint Joseph High School: Would Peter Buttigieg —
the smartest kid in class, language whiz and devotee of John F. Kennedy — use his unusual last name in his eventual run for president of the United States? Or would he have a better shot of winning the voters of the future if he went by Montgomery, his middle name?

It was the late 1990s, Bill Clinton was in the White House, and a round-faced teenager in South Bend, Indiana, was viewed by many around him as an eventual successor. As early as grade school, Buttigieg exhibited an attention-grabbing combination of brains and curiosity, the sort of kid with a reputation — among kids and teachers. He would be named high school valedictorian, voted senior class president and chosen Most Likely to be U.S. President. He sat at the adults table.

Now, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg — not Montgomery — is indeed running for the highest office in the land.

It’s an audacious leap. No mayor has ever gone straight to the White House (let alone from a city of just over 100,000). No president has ever been so young (he’ll be 39 on Inauguration Day). And no commander in chief has ever been openly gay (or had a husband).

But people who have known Buttigieg since his Indiana boyhood say it all feels predictable.

Interviews with nearly two dozen people who knew him in his formative years paint a picture of a child with an extraordinary range of talent and ambition, cultivated by a tight-knit family able to indulge his many interests. There were clear signs of the candidate’s earnestness and intensity. Friends and family say he worked to overcome an early shyness by throwing himself into challenges. All the while he felt a bit apart.

“It was always understood,” says Patrick Bayliss, a friend from high school. “It was just kind of matter of fact that he was special and brilliant.”

Now Buttigieg’s intellect is at the core of his campaign narrative. He’s won headlines for his achievements and improbable hobbies. (Speaks Norwegian? Check. Plays the didgeridoo? Yup.) Admirers often cite his intelligence when asked about his appeal, arguing it makes up for a shortage of experience.

But as he rises in early-caucus Iowa, Buttigieg’s self-confidence is exposing him to accusations that he is pretentious and entitled. When he declared Iowa was becoming a two-person race between Elizabeth Warren and him — dismissing a former vice president and several senators — Sen. Kamala Harris called him naive. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has repeatedly argued that the young mayor is benefiting from sexism — a woman with such a short resume wouldn’t be taken seriously. On Wednesday, she pointedly noted Buttigieg is a “local official” who lost his only statewide race.

“I think experience should matter,” she said.

Buttigieg doesn’t argue much with the knocks, but he doesn’t seem bothered either, telling reporters during his New Hampshire bus trip this month: “I guess I’m comfortable doing things in a way that’s kind of out of order or unusual for my age and my experience.”
     
Before he was an accomplished pianist, a polyglot, a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar, Buttigieg was the only child of college professors growing up in a bubble of academia in the Rust Belt.

On the campaign trail, he frequently invokes the hollowed-out city of South Bend, the onetime home of the automaker Studebaker, which shut down two decades before he was born.

But Buttigieg grew up in another side of South Bend: the cluster of neighborhoods around the University of Notre Dame, home to thousands of students and professors. His parents had stable jobs at the elite Catholic school, and he was educated in private schools whiter and wealthier than the surrounding community.

His father, Joseph, was a professor of English, garnering attention for his scholarship in critical theory and civil society. Joseph earned degrees in his home country — the Mediterranean island nation of Malta — then from Heythrop College in Oxford, England, before moving to the United States to earn his doctorate. He met Buttigieg’s mother, a linguist and Army brat with roots in Indiana, when they were both on faculty at New Mexico State University.

They married and moved to South Bend in 1980. Peter was born two years later. The young family eventually settled on a tree-lined street less than two miles from campus.

Across the river and downtown, abandoned factories, boarded-up stores and empty lots plagued South Bend. Up the hill, it was just a walk to the Golden Dome, the halo at the center of campus.

Peter — the name he went by before he became known as “Mayor Pete” — was a curious and quiet toddler who learned to read at the age of 2 or 3, his mother, Anne Montgomery, said in an interview.

His parents sent him to a Montessori school, where learning is self-directed, hands-on and less structured than at a traditional grade school. But by 6th grade, his parents moved him to a more traditional private school. Buttigieg had figured out how to “game the system,” said Judith Fox, a longtime family friend, recalling the decision.

“My mind wandered a lot when I was a kid. And so, it took a nudge from them here and then just to stay on track.” Buttigieg said in an interview with AP.

The smart new kid was sometimes a target. Other kids would want to “take him down a peg,” his mother says. His unusual name drew snickers.

The experience, she believes, was a lesson in “how cruel people can be” and helped steel him to insensitive comments later. “He won them over,” his mother says, by learning to prove himself without aggravating other kids.

Buttigieg remembers a teacher explaining that a child picking on him was just trying to get attention. Something clicked, he says, and he decided the best way to deal with bullies was to get to know them. The lesson still works sometimes when he comes under criticism, he says.

“While you don’t want to reward bad behavior, you do need to make sure that people feel seen.”

In his room, young Peter kept a collection of model planes and a poster of the inside of a cockpit. He aspired to become a pilot or even an astronaut, although his poor eyesight would make that impossible. He became fascinated with the leader closely associated with the space program, JFK, and others in the Kennedy clan.

At around 11 or 12, when asked what he wanted for his birthday, Peter requested a copy of “Profiles in Courage,” Kennedy’s 1955 book on acts of political bravery by eight U.S. senators throughout history. (“I had no idea what that was,” says his friend Joe Geglio, who bought the book for his friend.)

Peter would memorize excerpts of Kennedy speeches. In high school, his close friend James Mueller remembers him reciting a favorite passage from the president’s 1962 “moon” speech: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Later, when Buttigieg decided to join the military, he would join the Navy, like JFK.

Buttigieg said the Kennedy mystique loomed large in a community as Catholic as South Bend. He was aware that the presidential campaign of Sen. Robert Kennedy, and the Kennedy tragedies, were defining experiences for his parents’ generation. Amid the culture wars of the Clinton era, he looked back nostalgically at a time when big things seemed possible.

By comparison, “we’ve been stuck and haven’t made progress on a lot of the big issues,” Mueller said of his friend’s fixation with the Kennedy era.

By the end of 8th grade, Peter was named valedictorian, which gave him a chance to deliver his own big speech. His performance — practiced and strikingly mature — is still remembered today by people who were there.

 “It wasn’t like watching an 8th grader up there,” says classmate Gavin Ferlic.

The adults left the gym commenting about his poise. It wouldn’t be the last time Buttigieg found a constituency in an older generation.

Classmate Loran Parker recalls her grandparents turned to her with what would become a familiar refrain: “Peter would make a great politician.”

Soon after, the South Bend Tribune published a profile when Buttigieg won a statewide essay contest on the importance of the law. In truth, 14-year-old Peter told the newspaper, it wasn’t the law, but aeronautics or journalism that really interested him. The article noted he had won numerous other awards and was set to perform in a statewide piano competition later in the year — he started playing at age 5 — and aspired to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to do,” he told the Tribune.

By the time he arrived at high school, Buttigieg’s reputation had preceded him. Julie Chismar, a teacher at Saint Joe, recalls a buzz among French teachers, who had heard about his language abilities.

Peter had begun to learn French in Montessori and before he got to high school was well on his way to fluency. He also took up Spanish and on his own started learning to read Korean from a friend, Judy Kim. (His campaign does not list Korean as among the seven languages he speaks other than English.)

It’s difficult to find someone to utter a harsh word about young Buttigieg. He wasn’t a jock or the most popular kid, but he wasn’t an outcast. Classmates described him as thoughtful, with a dry wit. If a kid in middle school or high school can respect a fellow kid, they respected him. He didn’t show off his intelligence or raise his hand to answer every question. He held back.

Occasionally, there were signs of the reserve and stiffness that sometimes gets mocked today. When he first met Peter, Mueller, his close high school friend, would tease him good-naturedly — just like he did with his brothers. Peter, who had no siblings, did not appreciate it.
 
“He likes to make the joke that when he first met me, he didn’t like me very much,”‘ Mueller says.

The introvert pushed himself beyond his comfort zone. He joined drama his senior year and performed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He learned the didgeridoo and played the several-foot-long Australian wind instrument onstage.

In Peter’s basement after school, he and his friends would watch “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” play old school Nintendo games or have Nerf battles, then go outside to play football or soccer. As they got older, his friends would play music together: He learned guitar and bass, and especially liked playing Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix songs, using his wah-wah pedal.

He’d go to parties and even have a drink or two, Mueller said. (When he saw his friend smoke pot, during a visit home from college, Mueller ribbed him: “Are you ever going to run for office someday?”)

Peter moved between groups of friends, but hung out mostly with a group of other smart kids. He dated a couple of girls in high school. Friends said he never seemed to have the usual teen angst about relationships.

Looking back, he says now he always felt different.

“Even though I wasn’t out, and in many ways was not really out to myself, I felt that kind of tension,” Buttigieg said on his campaign bus. “It wasn’t only from being gay, I mean, also just being culturally a little different. Just because I was the son of a Mediterranean immigrant, an academic family, that some people thought was weird, because I had a name that was easy to make fun of and hard to pronounce.”

Several people close to Buttigieg say they never knew he was gay until he came out in his 30s, after he returned from his military tour in Afghanistan. He said at a CNN town hall in October that he was well into his 20s before he acknowledged it to himself.

Even his mother says she had no suspicions before he came out to her and his father in 2015, not long before he made it public in an op-ed in the local newspaper.

 “I wonder if I was blind,” his mother told the AP. “He was a private person about personal matters, so I did not inquire or ask. Offered all kinds of opportunities. But no.”

At home, friends who grew up with Buttigieg remember his parents as warm and supportive of whatever Peter wanted to pursue, his house inhabited by an affectionate rescue dog named Olivia, the walls lined with books, art and his mother’s photography, a piano filling the front room.

He and his mom would joke together. He and his dad would obsess — and commiserate — over Notre Dame football. Politics and current events were “in the air” at his house, he says. His father would come home from work, pour himself a drink and open The New York Times. They’d watch the evening news together. Friends and colleagues from the university would come to dinner, and young Peter would join in the conversation.

 “I felt like, we spoke as adults from a relatively early age,” he says of his parents. “I was a kind of serious-minded kid, and they took me seriously.”

Still, his family wasn’t politically connected, and he never met any elected officials when he was a kid.

“It took me a while to just feel like it was something I could be part of,” he told the AP. “But it always seemed like something that was the thing that mattered most: what was going on in the world, war and peace and elections, and all of that stuff.”

Later in high school, Buttigieg began to focus more sharply on politics. He joined the Philosophy Club, a way of thinking that suited him, his teacher Patrick McCurry says.

“He was already thinking about the world and systemic problems.”

In the spring of 2000, his senior year, he won the Profiles in Courage essay contest, sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation. His subject was then-U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, now a senator and one of his rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

He praised Sanders’ political courage in calling himself a “socialist” and for representing Kennedy’s ideal of “compromises of issues, not of principles.” He also wrote that Sanders’ conviction and energy could bring people together in a political climate in which cynicism reigned.

 “I have heard that no sensible young person today would want to give his or her life to public service,” Buttigieg wrote. “I can personally assure you this is untrue.”

He pursued another path traveled by JFK: Harvard.

A schoolmate, Ian Seniff, remembers Buttigieg telling Mrs. Chismar his acceptance news in a hallway at Saint Joe. He compares the look on Peter’s face to the moment Spider-Man is anointed an Avenger in the movie “Avengers: Infinity War.”

 “There’s this look of, ‘This is what I’ve wanted. I’ve accomplished this,’” Seniff said. “And then an instant later, just having this solemn look of, `OK, now there’s this added level of responsibility, and it’s time to get ready for work.’”

Those who have known Buttigieg from childhood say they recognize the same things during this presidential run that have driven him all his life.

He says he wants to do big things, to make an impact. Asked what’s driving that, he becomes quiet and circumspect.

“I don’t know, I just do,” he said. “I mean, you only get one turn at life, right? And I think it’s really important that you do as much with it as you can.”

When pressed, he continued:

“Where is it going to matter that it was me and not somebody else doing something? And am I making the best use of limited time? And I think I always felt that way.”

At an arena in Des Moines, Iowa, this month, his supporters chanted his name and hoisted signs reading “BOOT-EDGE-EDGE,” the slogan he uses to help people pronounce it. He kicked off his speech by invoking the memory of another “young man with a funny name,” Barack Obama.

In his high school history class, when his teacher or other kids would advise him to use his middle name to run for president, his friend Judy Kim recalls that Peter would listen and even welcome their advice.

His last name was too difficult to pronounce. It looked strange when written out. It wasn’t distinguished like other American presidents.

He’d hear them out, then stand by his position. Peter was proud of his Maltese heritage and proud of his last name.

When he ran, he would tell them, it would be as Buttigieg.   

The top U.N. humanitarian official says Sudan has a historic opportunity to overcome years of bloody conflict and instability, but needs urgent international assistance.

Mark Lowcock, the U.N. under-secretary general and emergency relief coordinator, spoke during his first visit to Sudan since a joint military-civilian government was formed. It replaced former President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the military in April amid mass protests.

Lowcock told The Associated Press on Saturday he’s “hopeful that further progress can be made on peace” with rebels in the country’s restive southern provinces, where fighting has displaced 1.9 million people.

But he warned that Sudan faces stiff challenges, including economic collapse, malnutrition and disease.

He appealed to the international community to “provide more help faster” to support the new government’s efforts to rebuild.

 

Uruguay will have to wait a few more days to find out who will emerge as the winner of Sunday’s presidential election.

“There was never such a tight ballot,” Jose Arocena, head of the country’s Electoral Court said.  

With almost all of the ballots counted, the conservative National Party’s Luis Lacalle Pou, who is 46, has about 30,000 more votes than ruling leftist Broad Front’s Daniel Martinez, who is 62.    

Opinion polls since October’s first round had indicated that Pou would comfortably win the run off.  

Uruguayan presidents are not allowed to serve consecutive terms, but Broad Front has been at the helm of the country since 2005.

Outgoing president Tabare Vazquez said Uruguay will not fall victim to the turmoil some South American countries are experiencing.  He predicted a smooth transfer of power.  

“The people of Uruguay can rest assured that we are going to achieve this,” Vazquez said.

Despite the polls predicting that the center-right Pou would win, Jenny Pribble, an associate professor of political science at the University of Richmond in the United States, said Broad Front remains popular.  “Their signature policy initiatives – public health expansion, the creation of a national care system, marriage equality and the legalization of abortion and cannabis – advanced citizen rights and have earned the party a strong following.”  

A slowing economy, rising unemployment and crime were the major issues of concern to voters.

Results are not expected until the end of the week.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, some 800,000 people – primarily ethnic Tutsis – died at the hands of ethnic Hutus. Blood flowed throughout the central African country – though less so in one remote northern town. VOA’s Edward Rwema reports.

Tel Aviv is expelling a top Human Rights Watch official because of allegations he supports the boycott of Israel, a movement activists use to protest the treatment of the Palestinians.

Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the government’s order that Omar Shakir, the HRW’s director of Israel and Palestine, has to leave the country Monday.

Israel has denied entry to others who it says support the boycott, including United Nations diplomats. But this is the first time someone inside the country has been ordered to leave.

“The court has now put the veneer of legality on the Netanyahu government’s assault on human rights advocacy and that’s a dangerous precedent that will affect many other people,” Shakir said. “Not just human rights advocates, but ordinary students that study at Israeli universities, spouses of Israelis who engage in mainstream criticism and advocacy.”

He said Israel can apply the same logic of criticizing the boycott to those who call the West Bank an occupied territory and believe Jewish settlements are illegal, including the International Criminal Court, Shakir said.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said he thinks this is the first time a democracy has thrown a researcher out of the country.

“I think it demonstrates the increasingly constrained nature of Israeli democracy,” Roth said, noting that the only other countries that have expelled HRW staffers include Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

Shakir said Human Rights Watch does not have an official position on the boycott and he has never spoken out in favor of it as an HRW representative. But he said HRW believes in the right to free speech, including the right to speak in favor of a boycott.

Israeli authorities have cited what they say are pro-boycott comments made by Shakir before he joined HRW.

Advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are pushing for an overall economic boycott of Israel, saying a boycott of South Africa in the 1980s pressured that government to scrap its racist apartheid system.

Boycott supporters deny Israel’s allegation that they are anti-Semitic.

Israel passed a law in 2017 subjecting anyone who speaks out for the boycott to deportation.

(Editor’s note: These are the final segments in our series “Climbing the Hill,” in which we followed two new members of Congress. Democrat Katie Porter was featured Sunday. )
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. — First-term Republican House member Pete Stauber of Minnesota wears his religion on his sleeve.

He begins every morning in Washington by attending Mass at a Catholic church near the U.S. Capitol. And, recently, he met a tour of 30 students and a priest from Minnesota on the steps of the Capitol, where they finished their prayer for the nation by making the sign of the cross.

“You just said the Lord’s Prayer on the steps of the greatest country in the world, at our Capitol,” the amiable Stauber explained in a brief lesson in religious freedom. “Isn’t that that awesome?”

Stauber, a former professional hockey player and retired police lieutenant, is not shy about showing his religion in a secular nation riven by partisanship and a historic impeachment inquiry targeting a Republican president.

Stauber is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and vigorously opposes the Democrats’ move toward impeachment. But he is also a firm believer in bipartisanship, and in less than a year has succeeded in passing two bills in the House with both Democratic and Republican support.

“I’ve always been really successful being a member of a team and and being inclusive, having that voice for all,” he said.

Stauber arrived in Washington less than a year ago after winning election in the traditionally Democratic 8th congressional district in northern Minnesota. Stauber became only the second Republican in 71 years to represent the district, which includes the Iron Range mining region. The victory gave him an element of political celebrity in the Republican Party.

Playing for the minors

When he ran for the House seat, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, an exciting time for a fledgling Republican candidate.

But Democrats came storming back in the 2018 midterm election, regaining control of the House and consigning the Republicans to a vastly diminished minority role. But Stauber said he wasn’t fazed by the turn of events, and points to his sponsorship this year of 10 bills, including the two that were passed in the House.

“Being in the minority, two bills is pretty good and we are not done yet,” he said.

A onetime member of the Detroit Red Wings professional hockey team, Stauber said he wishes his fellow legislators would put aside partisan labels.

To explain, he used a quote from the hockey coach of the 1980 gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team.

“Herb Brooks says the [team’s] name on the front of the jersey means more than the [player’s] name on the back,” Stauber said. “If we all went into the House of Representatives with ‘USA’ on our sweater, we could move mountains.”

Dawn to dark

Part of what he learned in this first year is that the pace at the Capitol is nonstop. Rookie members of Congress get a taste of this during orientation, shortly after their November election. But nothing can prepare them for the real thing.

VOA joined Stauber for a full day in Washington in late October from sunup to sundown, to see what’s involved.

Stauber rises before 6 a.m. and never gets home before dark. “Home” in Washington is a townhouse he shares with three other congressmen. His wife, Jodi Stauber, remains in Minnesota, where she takes care of their four children, including a teenager with special needs.

Every morning, Stauber texts his children so they are greeted with a message from their father when they awaken. Later in the morning, while he is returning calls to his constituents, he steals a few minutes to call his wife.

The rest of the day is a whirlwind, spent in congressional committee hearings, staff meetings, on the House floor trying to line up support for his bills, at Republican Party headquarters making fundraising calls, and in unnamed rooms attending classified briefings.

There is also plenty of time set aside for meeting with visiting constituents to discuss their local concerns. And then he’s back on the House floor for votes and corralling support for legislation he favors.

After his work is completed at the Capitol and in his office in the nearby House Cannon Office Building, Stauber has evening ceremonies and events to attend. Throughout it all, Stauber offers a smile and a handshake to all he meets.

“I absolutely love it,” he explained. “I have a passion to serve. When you really love what you are doing, it’s not work. It’s a passion.”

Disappointments

It hasn’t all been rosy. The first bill Stauber sponsored hasn’t made it to the House floor for a vote.

The proposed legislation would codify a federal land swap for a copper mine in Minnesota’s Iron Range. He’s a firm supporter of expanding the mining of iron ore and precious metals, which would mean more jobs and income for his northern district, rather than have the country rely on foreign entities for the minerals.

“Of course I’m disappointed, but that’s part of the process,” Stauber said, adding he is taking the stalling of the bill in stride. “I think in the end, northern Minnesota, we will be mining copper and nickel very soon.”

When asked what he has learned in this past year that he would like to pass on to the next class of first-year representatives, he quickly replied, “In this country, no matter what we are going through, she’s still worth fighting for.”

Chaos with impeachment

The country has been going through a lot since Stauber first arrived in the capital.

As soon as his new class of U.S. Representatives was sworn in, they had to deal with a monthlong government shutdown. And now, the impeachment inquiry.

Can someone tell Jodi that I caught a ride home today? pic.twitter.com/IlxaeAlsFX

— Pete Stauber (@PeteStauber) October 11, 2019

Stauber said he is grateful to President Trump, who campaigned for Stauber prior to his election. Stauber recently pinned a photo to his campaign twitter account of him riding on Air Force One last month when Trump visited Minnesota.

He says he spent the entire time in disbelief, pinching himself while the President and he “talked about economic drivers for the state of Minnesota.”

Report Card

Stauber has so far received mixed grades from the few U.S. public interest groups that have issued “report cards” for members of Congress. For Stauber, it mainly runs along party lines. Heritage Action for America rates him 85% on backing their conservative stances on issues.
 
Freedom Works, which ranks members on 33 key votes dealing with free-market economic issues that most Republicans hold dear, only gives him a 49 on a 100-point scale.

Progressive Punch compares the votes from a control group made up of 33 of the staunchest progressive legislators, typically Democrats. On that basis, the group gave Stauber an “F” — a failing grade.

Reelection

The two-year terms in the House pass by quickly, unlike in the Senate, where members are elected to six-year terms. Long before the end of the first year of their terms, House members must begin concentrating on reelection. Stauber said a former colleague called to congratulate him a few days after the 2018 election and said, “Welcome to your reelection.”

“It’s almost perpetual, so it is unfortunate,” he said.

He said he will never take any competitor for granted. Two Democrats have filed the necessary papers to run against him, but neither has raised any money for their campaigns. Stauber reported raising $871,188 in third-quarter fundraising to the Federal Election Commission.

Trump won Stauber’s district by 15 points in 2016, while Stauber won in 2018 by only 5%.

But analysts like Matthew Krayton, who owns Publitics, a political consulting firm, said the impeachment inquiry is the wild card in predicting the outcome of 2020 elections. Publitics specializes in Democratic candidates and has no connection to the 8th district race in Minnesota.

If he were consulting Stauber, Krayton said he would suggest Stauber focus on “bread-and-butter” local constituent issues, “without getting too bogged down in the national climate.”

Nearly a year ago, VOA first met with two newly elected US Representatives for a project entitled, “Climbing the Hill.”  Through the lives of California Democrat Katie Porter and Minnesota Republican Pete Stauber we hope to show you what it’s like to be a new representative at the US Capitol.  In our final installment, we look at the challenges a representative faces during a typical day.  VOA’s Carolyn Presutti started the day at 6:30am with Representative Pete Stauber, who’s already been awake for a half hour.

Supporters of the Hezbollah and Amal movements attacked Lebanese anti-government protesters in Beirut on Monday, with army reinforcements intervening to diffuse tensions.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, men on foot and scooters arrived at a roadblock set up by anti-graft protesters across a key street in the capital, local television showed.

They shouted insults and chanted in support of the chiefs of the Shi’ite movements Hezbollah and Amal, before briefly breaking through and attacking some demonstrators.

Those at the roadblock chanted “peaceful, peaceful”, as the security forces and army reinforcements deployed in a thick line between both sides in the early hours of Monday morning.

The counter-protesters also headed to a main nerve center of protests nearby and destroyed tents there, a local television channel said.

The tensions came after a peaceful day of demonstrations, more than a month into a spontaneous nationwide street movement against the political elite.

On Saturday, Lebanese security forces briefly detained five youths, including three minors, for allegedly pulling down a sign for President Michel Aoun’s political party in the town of Hammana east of Beirut, sparking outrage on social media.

Security forces released them after midnight, the Committee of Lawyers for the Defense of Protesters said.

The army said two of the children were 15 years old and the third was 12.

“Down with the regime that arrests children,” a Twitter user said.

“When a 12-year-old child manages to shake the state’s throne, you know the state is corrupt,” another wrote.

During the first month of demonstrations, security forces arrested 300 people including 12 minors who were released within 24 to 48 hours, according to the lawyers’ committee.

But 11 people — including two minors — remain in detention accused of attacking a hotel in the southern city of Tyre during the first week of the uprising.

The demonstrators managed to bring down the government less than two weeks into the protests, but it remains in a caretaker capacity and no new cabinet has since been formed.

Late Sunday, protesters blocked major roads in several parts of the country and called for a general strike the following day in protest at the lack of progress in forming a fresh government.

Earlier, hundreds had gathered in protest centers in Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and in Tyre.

In Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, hundreds of women and men demanded their rights, some waving the national red and white flag or chanting “Revolution, Revolution!”

Lebanon’s protests have brought together people of all ages from across the political spectrum, tired of what they describe as sectarian politics three decades after a civil war.

In the latest show of unity, a festive mood had reigned Sunday afternoon as Lebanese came together in public spaces across the country on the second day of the weekend.

North of the capital women prepared traditional salads to share, while a group of men danced on a beach south of the city, state television footage showed.

The Free Patriotic Movement party that Aoun founded is now led by his son-in-law, outgoing foreign minister Gibran Bassil, one of the most reviled figures in the protests.

Hezbollah is the only party not to have disarmed after the 1975-1990 civil war and plays a key role in Lebanese politics.

 

The U.S. House of Representatives will continue preparing its report this week in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, as Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff says he won’t rule out the possibility of more hearings. This comes as another Democrat joins the field of candidates running for the presidency. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.

An exit poll published in Romania on Sunday after the close of voting stations shows incumbent Klaus Iohannis easily winning a second term in the country’s presidential election.

Iohannis, a conservative, was facing Social Democratic Party leader Viorica Dancila, a former prime minister, in the runoff vote.

An exit poll by the IRES independent think tank showed Iohannis getting 67.1 % of the votes, with 32.9% for Dancila. In the first round two weeks ago, Iohannis won 37.8% and Dancila 22.2%. The exit poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. Official preliminary results were expected late Sunday.

Iohannis has vowed to continue his efforts to fight corruption and strengthen the rule of law in this country of around 19.4 million people.

“Romanian won! Modern, European, normal Romania won today,” Iohannis said at the headquarters of the National Liberal Party after the release of the exit poll. “Romanians were the day’s heroes. They went to vote in impressive numbers and this is the most important gain of this day.”

“I receive this victory with joy, thankfulness, modesty and with faith in Romania,” said the 60-year-old former mayor of the city of Sibiu, a member of Romania’s ethnic German minority who was a high school physics teacher before entering politics.

For her part, speaking after casting her ballot in the morning, Dancila had promised “more involvement, work and commitment to the Romanian people.”

Dancila’s government was ousted on Oct. 10 after losing a confidence vote in parliament. It had been embroiled by allegations of corruption and criticized by the European Union for judicial reforms seen as compromising the rule of law and the independence of judges.

Earlier this month, lawmakers backed a minority government led by Prime Minister Ludovic Orban of the National Liberal Party, formerly headed by Iohannis.

Iohannis has clashed often with Dancila and her party over the judiciary reforms and other legislation. Opponents and critics worried about the dilution of anti-corruption laws which in the past few years led to the indictment of dozens of Cabinet members, lawmakers and even a Romanian member of the European Parliament.

Public outrage has also resulted in frequent, massive anti-corruption protests in Bucharest and other cities.

With their shared ideological roots and values, Iohannis and Orban would be expected to work together to boost the anti-graft measures.

Though lacking an executive role, Romania’s president has significant decision-making powers, including on matters of national security and foreign policy. Elected for a five-year term, the president can also reject party nominees for prime minister and government nominees for judicial appointments.

Romania, a member of the EU since 2007, is plagued by widespread poverty with over 25% of its population living on less than $5.50 a day, according to a World Bank study last year. Recent figures pointed to slowing economic growth, though the annual rate of 3% percent achieved in the third quarter of the year was still among the fastest in Europe.

Iohannis rejected Dancila’s offers to hold debates ahead of the runoff vote, but earlier this week he took questions from analysts and journalists at a Bucharest university.

Romanians living abroad, estimated to number around 4 million, started casting their votes on Friday at hundreds of polling stations, including in Italy, Britain, France, Australia and the U.S. Romanians abroad also have the option of mailing in their ballots.

 

A few dozen people demonstrated Sunday near the U.S. Embassy outside Beirut against what they called America’s intervention in Lebanon’s affairs.

Lebanese troops and riot police employed tight security measures around noon Sunday near the embassy northeast of the city. The protesters later dispersed without any reports of violence.

Protesters have been holding demonstrations in Lebanon since Oct. 17, demanding an end to widespread corruption and mismanagement by the political class that has ruled the country for three decades.

The protests have since snowballed into calls for the entire political elite to step aside.

The protesters blasted recent comments by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, in which he said that “the demonstrations and the reactions to them by Lebanese leaders and institutions fortunately coincide with U.S. interests.”

 

Emergency officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo say at least 18 passengers and crew members died when an airplane crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday.  

The Dornier-228 aircraft, operated by local company Busy Bee, crashed into a residential area near Goma airport.

The flight was headed to Beni, 350 kilometers north of Goma.

It was not immediately clear if people on the ground were killed or injured in the incident.

 

 

A French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Gulf waters that will be operational soon, France’s defense minister said on Sunday.

France is the main proponent of a plan to build a European-led maritime force to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after tanker attacks earlier this year that Washington blamed on Iran.

Tehran has denied being behind the attacks on tankers and other vessels in major global shipping lanes off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in May and which increased tensions between the United States, Iran and Gulf Arab states.

“This morning we formalized that the command post will be based on Emirati territory,” Defense Minister Florence Parly told reporters at a French naval base in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

The command center will host around a dozen officials representing the countries involved, she said. In a speech to French military personnel, she said the next time she visited the base she hoped the mission would be operational and thanked the UAE for supporting it.

The UAE has tempered its reaction to the attacks and has called for de-escalation and dialogue with Iran.
On Saturday, Parly said the initiative could start early next year and around 10 European and non-European governments would join, pending parliamentary approval.

First announced in July, the plan is independent of a U.S-led maritime initiative which some European countries feared would make U.S.-Iranian tensions worse.

Parly said the two missions would coordinate in order to ensure safety of navigation in an already tense area.

“We hope … to contribute to a navigation that is as safe as possible in a zone which we know is disputed and where there has already been a certain number of serious incidents,” she said. She also condemned Iran’s latest violations of a 2015 nuclear deal.

On Saturday, Parly said Paris was sending Saudi Arabia defense equipment to confront low-altitude attacks after Riyadh requested help following a September assault on the kingdom’s oil facilities which Washington and Riyadh have also blamed on Iran. Tehran has denied involvement.

“We have not had an equivalent request from the UAE,” she said on Sunday.
 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will promise to bring his Brexit deal back to parliament before Christmas when he launches his manifesto Sunday, the cornerstone of his pitch to voters to “get Brexit done.”

Voters face a stark choice at the country’s Dec. 12 election: opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist vision, including widespread nationalization and free public services, or Johnson’s drive to deliver Brexit within months and build a “dynamic market economy.”

Opinion polls show Johnson’s Conservative Party commands a sizeable lead over the Labour Party, although large numbers of undecided voters means the outcome is not certain.

“My early Christmas present to the nation will be to bring the Brexit bill back before the festive break, and get parliament working for the people,” Johnson will say, according to excerpts of his speech that he will make at an event in the West Midlands region of England.

Contrasting with Labour

Contrasting with Labour’s unabashed tax-and-spend approach, Johnson’s manifesto, titled “Get Brexit Done, Unleash Britain’s Potential,” will pledge to freeze income tax, value-added sales tax and social security payments.

Johnson will also announce a 3 billion pounds ($3.85 billion) National Skills Fund to retrain workers and an extra 2 billion pounds to fill pot-holes in roads. He will also pledge to maintain the regulatory cap on energy bills.

Labour spokesman Andrew Gwynne said Johnson’s plans were “pathetic.”

“This is a no hope manifesto, from a party that has nothing to offer the country, after spending 10 years cutting our public services,” Gwynne said.

Think tanks like the Institute for Fiscal Studies have raised questions about the credibility of plans to fund investment from both the Conservatives and Labour.

Tired of voting

Held after three years of negotiations to leave the European Union, the December election for the first time will show how far Brexit has torn traditional political allegiances apart and will test an electorate increasingly tired of voting.

Amid a heated campaign in which the Conservatives have been criticized for disseminating misleading social media posts, Johnson, 55, will say he will “turn the page from the dither, delay and division” of recent years.

Labour has said it will negotiate a better Brexit deal with the EU within six months that it will put to the people in a new referendum — one which will also offer the choice of remaining in the bloc.

Corbyn has said he would remain neutral in such a vote.

“We now know the country can be carbon (neutral) by 2050 and Corbyn neutral by 2020, as the leader of the opposition has decided to duck the biggest issue facing our country today,” Johnson will say.

Hong Kongers voted in record numbers Sunday in a local election that is widely seen as a de facto referendum on recent pro-democracy protests.

Voters formed long lines that snaked around city blocks outside polling stations across the territory, many waiting more than an hour to vote in local elections that are usually viewed as relatively inconsequential.

District Council members who are being elected by Hong Kong voters have no power to pass legislation. But the election is the first chance for Hong Kongers to vote since a wave of anti-government protests erupted in June, creating bitter divides in Hong Kong society.

A record 4.1 million Hong Kongers registered to vote, and it appears a record number will turn out. By midday Sunday, the number of voters had surpassed that of the previous District Council election in 2015, according to government figures. By 3:30 p.m., nearly 2 million had cast their ballots.

“This amount of people I’ve never seen. There are so many people,” said Felix, who works in the real estate industry and voted in the central business district.

Mr. Ma, a voter in the South Horizons West constituency, said he sees the election as a continuation of the protest movement.

“It’s a way to show whether the Hong Kong people support democratic or conservative pro-establishment candidates. Many would like to have a change. So this election is very important,” he said.

“The district councils have been dominated by the pro-establishment for years. We want to have more democrats to be elected to the district councils,” said Ms. Kwok, another voter.

The territory is on edge following intense clashes between police and groups of mostly student protesters, though the violence has subsided in the past few days.

Police promised a heavy security presence at voting locations. But outside many polling stations, there was no visible police presence. At others, teams of riot police stood by in nearby vans.

Sending a message

Hong Kongers are choosing more than 400 members of 18 district councils scattered across the tiny territory. The district councils essentially serve as advisory bodies for local decisions such as building roads or schools.

“I think the political message is more important than anything else,” Ma Ngok, a political scientist and professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said. “If the democrats really score a landslide victory, it will show very clearly that the public is in support of the movement.”

Hong Kong has seen five months of pro-democracy protests. The protests initially took the form of massive demonstrations against a reviled extradition bill, which could have resulted in Hong Kongers being tried in China’s politicized court system.

The protests have escalated in recent weeks, with smaller groups of hard-core protesters destroying public infrastructure, defacing symbols of state power and clashing with police. Protesters defend the moves as an appropriate reaction to police violence and the government’s refusal to meet their demands.

Despite the protester violence, polls suggest the movement still enjoys widespread public support. Meanwhile, the approval of Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly chief executive, Carrie Lam, has fallen to a record low of about 20%.

Quasi-democratic system

Under Hong Kong’s quasi-democratic system, district councils have little power. But the vote could affect how the territory’s more influential Legislative Council and chief executive are selected in the future.

“That’s a big deal,” said Emily Lau, a former Legislative Council member and prominent member of the pro-democracy camp. “Because of this constitutional linkage, it makes the significance of the district council much bigger than its powers show you.”

The pro-democracy camp has tried to use the protests as a mobilizing force ahead of the vote, and is fielding an unprecedented number of candidates.

But they have a lot of ground to make up. Pro-government forces make up the majority in all 18 district councils, with the so-called “pan-democrats” taking up only about 25% of the overall seats, Ma said.

Hong Kong has seen a major surge in voter registrations, particularly among young people. Nearly 386,000 people have registered to vote in the past year — the most since at least 2003 — according to the South China Morning Post.

Many Hong Kongers are concerned about what they see as an erosion of the “one country, two systems” policy that Beijing has used to govern Hong Kong since it was returned by Britain in 1997.

Romanians went to the polls Sunday for a presidential election runoff expected to reelect centrist president Klaus Iohannis, who has pledged to restart a judicial reform slowed by successive Social Democrat (PSD) governments.

While there have been no recent opinion polls, local bookmakers make Iohannis the short-odds favorite to beat former PSD prime minister Viorica Dancila comfortably in Sunday’s runoff.

Under a succession of PSD governments, Romania rolled back anti-corruption measures and weakened the independence of the courts. Along with ex-communist peers Poland and Hungary, it has been heavily criticized by Brussels for its actions.

Protector of rule of law

However, the 60-year-old Iohannis has been credited by Western allies and the European Union with trying to protect the rule of law, in particular by challenging attempts to limit judges’ independence.

“I will vote for a president to represent us, one that is respected both at home and abroad. This is the one we need,” said retired army staff Ioan Banu, while heading to a Bucharest college to cast his ballot, after polls opened at 0500 GMT.

The president’s powers are mostly limited to nominating a prime minister on the basis of who can command a majority, challenging laws in the Constitutional Court, and appointing some chief prosecutors.

If elected again, Iohannis will have a chance to install anti-graft and anti-mafia prosecutors who are serious about tackling endemic corruption with the backing of Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, who became head of a liberal minority government by winning a parliamentary vote of confidence three weeks ago.

Getting back to normal

Teacher Andreea Mihai, 50, said that if Iohannis wins Sunday, “things should slowly return to normality. Both Orban and Iohannis will work together in the same direction.”

Dancila’s PSD had increased the burden of proof in corruption cases, reorganized panels of judges and set up a special unit to investigate magistrates for potential abuses, a move widely seen as an instrument of political coercion.
Romania’s judicial reforms have been monitored by Brussels since it joined the EU in 2007; in October, Brussels said the reforms were going backward.

Iohannis, a soft-spoken ethnic German and former mayor of Sibiu, became president in 2014.

He helped to secure a popular approval in a referendum last May that called for the government to be banned from altering legislation by emergency decree, and advocated a ban on amnesties and pardons for graft-related crimes.

Ukrainian officials are warily watching the U.S. impeachment inquiry as they prepare for a crucial four-way negotiation with Russia, France and Germany next month.

The meeting of the so-called Normandy Contact Group, set for Dec. 9 in Paris, is aimed at easing the conflict in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed separatists. More than 13,000 people have died in the fighting, which began in April 2014.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has outlined four issues he wants to raise at the meeting — an exchange of prisoners, a ceasefire, a restoration of Ukraine’s control over the Ukraine-Russia border, and holding local elections in rebel-held territories. Ukraine and the separatists have already withdrawn their forces at three sites in Donbas as a precondition for the meeting.

Analysts contacted by Voice of America’s Ukrainian Service say the novice leader who came to power promising to bring peace to his country will be hard-pressed to emerge with a deal that doesn’t leave the nation weaker than it is now.

Trump ‘doesn’t care’ about Ukraine

The impeachment probe undermines Ukraine’s position because it exposes Trump’s lack of commitment to defending Ukraine, said Mark Simakovsky, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Atlantic Council. U.S. diplomat Gordon Sondland has been quoted in testimony to the inquiry saying that Trump “doesn’t care” about Ukraine.

“I think the casualty of this relationship between Trump and Zelenskiy will be that there’ll always be questions about how far the United States and this president are willing to go to support Ukraine,” Simakovsky said.

The analyst noted that several U.S. officials with leading roles on Ukraine policy have provided testimony that is embarrassing to the administration and are no doubt being “looked at skeptically” by the president. That will make it hard for them to “have the confidence of the White House” as they seek to implement U.S. policy.

David Kramer, a former high-ranking State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said the Republican-led defense of the president in the impeachment probe has hurt Ukraine even further.

“The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee continue to peddle disproven conspiracy theories that paint a very negative picture of Ukraine,” he said.

Kramer added that Kyiv will “be under greater pressure from France and Germany to resolve the conflict” in eastern Ukraine, and that the recent resignation of U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker has made the United States less effective in the region.

“So, should [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy try to make the best of a bad situation with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or hold out until all Russian forces leave Ukrainian territory? Cutting deals with Putin is likely to be a riskier proposition,” he said.

Simakovsky agreed that France and Germany appear to be looking for an excuse to ease sanctions on Russia.

“The challenge I think is Ukrainian people being convinced and frustrated with the lack of support from the West. If they are going to be left alone, then they need to accelerate the path toward peace because they have to make some sort of [accommodation] with Russia,” Simakovsly said.

A win for Russia

Nataliya Bugayova, a Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, said Russia is taking advantage of the West’s eagerness to see the war ended.

“Russia is exploiting the narrative of both urgency to deliver on peace internally in Ukraine and in Europe,” she said. “Russia is also attempting to use the upcoming Normandy talks to cast itself as a mediator in the conflict where it is a belligerent.”

Russia has made no meaningful concessions leading to the summit, Bugayova added.

“There is no indication of Russia’s intent to give up control of its forces in Ukraine. In fact, we have seen Russia’s efforts to further integrate its proxies over the past few months,” she said.

Michael Carpenter, managing director at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and a former high-ranking Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said there is a risk that the Paris meeting will allow Russia to transfer some responsibility for the conflict to its separatist proxies.

The details of any agreement reached in Paris on elections and a special status for the disputed regions will have to be worked out by a Trilateral Contact Group, which is comprised of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Representatives of the self-proclaimed Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics will also be involved.

Carpenter said Russia has similarly manipulated an international forum on Georgia, allowing it to “normalize” its relations with that country without making any meaningful progress on the status of the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“If the same thing happens in Ukraine, it will set the stage for an unwinnable negotiation with Russia’s proxies that lasts years or even decades,” he said.

Elections a sticking point

The proposal for local elections in eastern Ukraine will be a major sticking point in the Paris talks. Zelenskiy has said elections will be held only after Ukraine regains control over the disputed territory and its border with Russia.

There is little chance that Moscow will agree to that, but Bugayova said Zelenskiy cannot afford to give in on the point.

“If elections take place under Russia’s influence, whether it’s direct military pressure or the absolute information control that Russia has over the territories, that means that the proxies and somewhat intervention will be legitimized,” she said.

“The biggest risk … is that if Russian proxies are legitimized, there is no going back. This is a non-reversible process that can open opportunities for Russia to regain control over Ukraine’s decision-making in the long term.”

Kramer is also dubious about possibility of holding successful elections in the east.

“How can one conduct an election when more than 1.5 million have been displaced, when Ukraine doesn’t control the territory, and when Russian forces continue to occupy the territory?” he asked.

A former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, said he is skeptical that the Paris talks will produce any settlement that leads to a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty.

“For more than five years, the Kremlin has used a simmering conflict in Donbas to put pressure on Kyiv. The big question is whether Mr. Putin is ready now to change course and seek a mutually acceptable settlement of the conflict that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine.”