Month: April 2019

Jeremy Hunt has given the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe greater priority than his predecessor as Foreign Secretary, the imprisoned charity worker’s husband has said.

Richard Ratcliffe praised Mr Hunt for being "clear and critical" about his wife’s case, after she voluntarily returned to prison in Iran following an emotional family reunion over the weekend.

The British-Iranian mother was released from Evin prison in Tehran on Thursday and has been staying with family outside the capital.

However, the request for an extension was not granted and she was told she must return by sunset, her husband said.

Mr Ratcliffe suggested there had been a change in the relationship with Iran since Mr Hunt replaced Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary last month.

And he said he had "sensed a change in the way he has prioritised Nazanin’s case".

"I think one of my complaints with the Government was that it didn’t feel like it was sort of treating her case with the public severity that I thought it deserved," he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

"He’s been great in that sense: he’s been clear and critical and he’s said ‘listen, she’s innocent and she shouldn’t be in prison, her treatment has been appalling’, and all the things that we’ve been asking the Government to do."

Mr Ratcliffe added: "In terms of how the relationship with Iran has changed, well clearly she got out for a few days, that’s a pretty good sign and there have been some other improvements."

On Sunday, Mr Hunt said he had spoken to Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday but that it "clearly wasn’t enough".

Vowing to continue the fight, he tweeted: "Looks like Iranian legal system is impervious to the simple fact at the heart of this: an innocent woman is desperate to be reunited with her family."

Mr Ratcliffe, who told the programme he has been unable to get an Iranian visa, said his wife’s temporary release initially appeared to be a "very good sign", but said it felt "pretty cruel at the end of it".

He added: "It was a slight surprise that she was released but it felt consistent with positive noises, so it wasn’t just a bump, it was a proper brick wall yesterday that she was brought back in."

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Hampstead, north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying by Tehran’s Islamist regime.

She denies the allegation and said she was on holiday in Iran to allow her daughter to spend time with relatives there.

Her four-year-old daughter Gabriella has been staying with family since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.

Members of Aretha Franklin’s family felt the eulogy for the Queen of Soul delivered by a pastor at her funeral last week was "offensive and distasteful", they said on Monday.

Rev Jasper Williams Jr, the pastor at Salem Baptist Church in Atlanta, spent his time at the podium raising social issues he said were critical to the black community.

Williams used the "platform to push his negative agenda" which Franklin’s family "does not agree with," family members said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

"We found the comments to be offensive and distasteful," the family said. "Rev Jasper Williams spent more than 50 minutes speaking and at no time did he properly eulogize her."

Family, friends and fans of Franklin offered a rousing farewell on Friday at an eight-hour service featuring tributes from former US President Bill Clinton and civil rights leaders, as well as emotional performances by entertainers Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson and Gladys Knight.

Williams, picked because of past eulogies for family members, said in his remarks that single black mothers alone could not raise black boys to become men and that black lives would not matter "until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves."

He defended his comments at a news conference on Sunday.

"Respect for each other is the key to us changing the road we are on as a race," he said.

Franklin died at her Detroit home on Aug. 16 from pancreatic cancer. Having sung at the inaugurations of three presidents, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, she was an American institution, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then President George W. Bush in 2005.

Detroit treated Franklin’s death like that of royalty, with people filing past her body in the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History for two days to pay their respects.

There will be "no more cover ups" of sexual abuse in the Church, the Pope has vowed in a letter to all Catholics. 

In the groundbreaking document, addressed to the "people of God", Pope Francis admitted that the church had "delayed" the implementation of reforms and asked believers to "join forces in uprooting this culture of death". 

He said the church had "showed no care for the little ones" and "abandoned them". 

The Vatican said it was the first time a pope had written to all of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics about sexual abuse.

The Pope’s letter, published on Monday, responds to a report published last week by a grand jury which disclosed that more than 1,000 children had been abused by 300 Catholic priests in Pennsylvania over the past 70 years.

"Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims," he said.  

"The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced." 

The report forms part of a growing worldwide crisis surrounding sexual abuse in the church. 

Pope Francis has faced criticism for the Church’s recent dealings with perpetrators of abuse. 

Last year it emerged that he had reduced sanctions against paedophile priest Mauro Inzoli, 67, a decision which was later reversed. 

In September Pope Francis said the decision had been a mistake and said he would never sign pardon for any priest who was found to have been an abuser. 

Last month, Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC and one of the US Church’s most prominent figures, stepped down as a cardinal after accusations that he abused two minors about 50 years ago and later abused adult seminarians.

In May, all 34 of Chile’s bishops offered their resignation to the pope over a widening sexual abuse crisis there. He has so far accepted five of the resignations.

Pope Francis is due to visit Ireland in a two-day stay beginning on Saturday, and it is not yet clear whether he will meet with abuse survivors in the country. 

The Vatican says it does not put the pope’s meetings with victims of sexual abuse on his schedule for trips.

The issue is expected to dominate the visit and he is likely to face protests from survivors unhappy with how the Church has reacted to widespread incidents of child sexual abuse.

His letter drew criticism from campaigners unhappy at the lack of detailed plans to tackle the problem.

Margaret McGuckin, leader of Survivors & Victims of Institutional Abuse, a charity set up to give a voice to victims of historic abuse in Northern Ireland, said: "It is a last-ditch attempt to see what he can do. It is too little too late, nothing will change."

Marie Collins, an Irish campaigner and abuse survivor who last year withdrew from the Vatican’s commission, set up by the Pope to tackle the problem, said the letter was too vague. 

"Statements from Vatican or Pope should stop telling us how terrible abuse is and how all must be held accountable. Tell us instead what you are doing to hold them accountable.  That is what we want to hear. 

"’Working on it’ is not an acceptable explanation for decades of ‘delay,’" she said on Twitter. 

Read the letter in full: 

 

LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS  TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD

 

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

1. If one member suffers…

In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).

2. … all suffer together with it

The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).

I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.

Together with those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.[1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.

It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.[3] Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.

It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).

It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.

Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice, prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ.

May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.

Vatican City, 20 August 2018

FRANCIS

Robert Mugabe has forgiven Emmerson Mnangagwa, the man who threw him out of power last year, and says that the new president is the right man to rule Zimbabwe. 

Mr Mugabe, 94, on Thursday said: "There was an election. Zanu-PF was represented by Emmerson Mnangagwa and [Nelson] Chamisa represented MDC-Alliance and results came out saying the person who won was Emmerson Mnangagwa. 

"We have accepted the result and we hope that we will continue respecting the will of the people. The gun does not and should not lead politics."

He added that he was grateful Mr Mnangagwa, 75, had hired a luxury aircraft to take his wife Grace from Singapore to Harare for the funeral of her mother, Idah Marufu, who died last week. 

His remarks were markedly different to those he made just six weeks ago, on the eve of the first election since he was ousted, when Mr Mugabe said he would vote for the opposition candidate and that he had not trusted Mr Mnangagwa since they began their political relationship more then 50 years ago. 

Africa's tarnished jewel: how four decades of Robert Mugabe left Zimbabwe's economy reeling

He also previously complained that he was short of money since the soft coup d’etat last November put him and his family under house arrest within their vast estate in Harare’s northern suburbs. 

Mr Mugabe claimed he lacked funds to repair the roof of his Chinese-style mansion and needed to move house.

Mrs Mugabe, who lead the campaign within Zanu-PF against Mr Mnangagwa to prevent him from becoming her husband’s successor, this week gushed: "He [Mnangagwa] loves us. He knows we we love him too. We pray for him because it’s God’s will that he is president. We pray that he be given the wisdom to lead the country.”

Mr Mnangagwa fled to Mozambique after he was sacked as vice president last October following months of humiliations when he was criticised at rallies by Mrs Mugabe, often when he was sitting in the front row. 

Grace Mugabe | A life in controversies

Months earlier the armed forces airlifted him to hospital in South Africa because he said he was poisoned at a rally he attended with the Mugabes. 

In June this year, a grenade exploded at a rally addressed by Mr Mnangagwa, killing two security aides and injuring Kembo Mohadi Kembo, vice president, and Oppah Muchinguru-Kashiri, a cabinet minister. 

Many of Mr Mugabe’s supporters encouraged voters to support the opposition MDC Alliance and Mr Chamisa at elections on July 30. The elections went off peacefully but the army opened fire at an anti-Mnangagwa demonstration the next day and killed six people. 

Now Mr Mugabe, who was in power for 38 years, says that Mr Mnangagwa won the elections and the results were confirmed by the constitutional court two weeks ago. 

Mr Mnangagwa appointed his cabinet Friday and included Olympic star, Kirsty Coventry, a white swimmer, as his sports minister, while ignoring most of those previously favoured by Mr Mugabe. 

One of the leading guides in south-east Asia has said it will conduct no more research in Myanmar (Burma) in the wake of the imprisonment of two Reuters reporters investigating the persecution of Rohingya muslims.

Stuart McDonald, founder of independent guide Travelfish, said that he had suspended coverage of the country after news emerged last year of the “genocide” taking place in the Rakhine state, and that the “farce” trial of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, both jailed for seven years for violating a state secrets act, has reinforced his decision. He said all revenue from hotel bookings in Myanmar made through the Travelfish website would be donated to the families of the journalists.

“When Burma experienced its democratic gains five years ago there was considerable optimism where the country would head, but those hopes were buried in the ashes of the genocide in the west of the country,” said McDonald.

“At that time, Travelfish suspended our research to the country, as we felt that the popular support in much of the country for what was happening in Rakhine made travel there, for us, unconscionable. That the government has now elected to imprison those responsible for raising international awareness of what was actually happening has sadly only reinforced our belief that our decision was the best approach.”

McDonald said Travelfish would consider updating its information should the situation in Myanmar change.

The country – and its Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader, Aung San Suu Kyi – have been subjected to international condemnation for imprisoning the two journalists, who were collecting evidence about the murders of 10 Rohingya men by the army last September. The persecution of the Islamic minority in the west of the country has been denounced as “a textbook example ethnic cleansing” by the UN, while Suu Kyi has been criticised for her failure to speak out against the violence that has affected nearly a million people.

The controversy, however, has done little to encourage other operators to boycott the country, with Travelfish in the minority for its decision to halt coverage.

Liddy Pleasants, the managing director of Stubborn Mule Travel, said she does not agree with a travel boycott.

“I do understand the reasons for the boycott, but I personally strongly feel that any action that encourages isolationism is counter-productive and runs the risk of further entrenching the current political environment,” she said. “My view is that tourism brings with it an exposure to an international viewpoint that in this situation can only be a good thing. In a country with very little internal (impartial) news about what is happening to the Rohingya, I feel that the presence of tourists and the discussions that this might engender is a good thing.

“More generally, I also feel that tourism brings much needed income to rural communities and that again the removal of this income can exacerbate problems within the country as a whole.”

She said that, as UK travellers are only a small percentage of the arrivals into Myanmar, a boycott by Britons would have minimal impact.

Justin Francis, CEO of Responsible Travel, said though the tour operator was appalled by what is happening in the country, that does not mean that a tourism boycott is the correct response.

“Many are calling for a second tourism boycott of Myanmar [the first was in response to the authoritarian junta rule before Suu Kyi’s release from prison], but at Responsible Travel, we do not believe that this will have the desired impact at all,” the tour operator says on its website.

“Given the recent tourism boom, there are now many Burmese people working in tourism, and withdrawing now would harm these local businesses. Rather than impacting the government, jobs and livelihoods would be lost, and it’s the citizens – the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with the crisis in Rakhine – who would suffer.

“This is a political crisis, and it needs a political solution; a tourism boycott will not make any difference to the corrupt leadership.”

Gill Charlton, Telegraph Travel Myanmar’s expert, said last year that she believed tourists should continue to visit the country.

“It’s important to keep the fledgling tourist industry alive as so many small poor communities rely on it,” she said. “Staying away isn’t going to change the government’s treatment of the Rohingya community as tourism from Britain and other Western countries is a very small part of their revenue.”

The Foreign Office still advises against all but essential travel to the Rakhine state, where much of the violence has taken place, but much of the country is safe to visit.

The FCO warned travellers in August to be vigilant around the first anniversary of the Rakhine attacks.

Pope Francis has summoned senior Catholic bishops from around the world to the Vatican to discuss the protection of minors, in his latest attempt to come to grips with a spreading sexual abuse crisis.

The heads of the national Catholic bishops’ conferences will meet with Francis from February 21-24 next year, a Vatican spokeswoman said.

The announcement came at the end of a three-day meeting of the "C-9", a group of nine cardinals from around the world who members meet about four times a year to advise the pope.

The spokeswoman said the sexual abuse crisis was a main topic at the meeting, which six of the members attended.

The Catholic Church is facing sexual abuse scandals in the United States, Chile, Australia and Germany, among others.

Der Spiegel magazine reported on Wednesday that a study commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference had revealed that 1,670 clerics and priests had sexually abused 3,677 minors, mostly males, in Germany over a 70-year period.

In the United States, a Grand Jury has found that 301 priests in the state of Pennsylvania sexually abused minors over a similar period.

Francis meets on Thursday with US Church leaders to discuss that report as well as a scandal involving a former American cardinal and demands from an Italian archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò, that the pontiff step down over that case.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US bishops’ conference, asked for the meeting after Viganò last month accused the pope of knowing for years about sexual misconduct by former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick and doing nothing about it..

Viganò said he had told Francis soon after the pontiff’s election in 2013 that McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington D.C., had engaged in sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians.

McCarrick resigned in July over separate allegations – which US Church officials said were "credible and substantiated" – that he had abused a 16-year-old boy almost 50 years ago.

McCarrick, whom the pope ordered to live a life of seclusion and penitence, has said he has "absolutely no recollection" of such an incident. He has not commented on the allegations of misconduct with the adult seminarians.

Hours after Viganò’s statement was published, Francis told reporters that he would "not say a word" about it because it "speaks for itself". However, the Vatican is now preparing a response.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who succeeded McCarrick as archbishop of Washington D.C., told priests on Tuesday that he would travel to Rome to discuss his future with the pope.

Wuerl, 77, who was bishop of Pittsburgh between 1988 and 2006, has been under scrutiny over his handling of sexual abuse cases during the period addressed by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury.

Wuerl has defended his overall record in Pittsburgh, but has also been accused of knowing about sexual misconduct by McCarrick, which he denies.

Russia began its largest war games since the Cold War on Tuesday, drilling hundreds of thousands of troops alongside forces from its growing ally China. 

With 300,000 soldiers, 36,000 vehicles, 1,000 aircraft and 80 ships, the Vostok exercises in eastern Russia will be even bigger than the USSR’s 1981 Zapad training, according to defence ministry claims. They will last a week and take place across nine training grounds as well as in the Sea of Japan and near the Bering Strait.

Defence ministry video showed tanks and missile launchers streaming across dusty fields, rocket launchers and artillery loading onto ships and marines landing on the Arctic coast under the cover of attack helicopters.

As their forces began the movements, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping baked crepes, filled them with caviar and washed them down with vodka shots at the eastern economic forum in Vladivostok. 

The manoeuvres are a triumphant moment for Mr Putin, who has made the military modernisation a top priority following post-Soviet stagnation and highlighted fantastic-sounding new nuclear weapons in his state-of-the-nation speech in March.

A US spy plane reported over the Sea of Japan hinted at the unease of Western countries with Russia’s biggest-ever exercises.

Coming a week before a summit between the leaders of North and South Korea, the war games will reiterate Moscow’s bid to become a major military and diplomatic player in the region.

Analysts have speculated the exercises are in part to train a response to a potential nuclear conflict on the Korean peninsula, and ballistic missile units are among those involved.

Besides a display of Russia’s fighting power, Vostok is a promotion of its warming ties with eastern neighbour and former foe China.

During their meeting, Mr Putin praised the trust between the two countries, while Mr Xi said their cooperation was taking on “greater and greater importance” in an oblique reference to tensions with the United States.

Although China has previously joined Russia for drills like naval games in the Baltic Sea last year, this is the first time it will participate in Moscow’s annual strategic exercises, which train far-flung forces for large-scale conflict.

Thirty Chinese jets and helicopters and 3,200 troops have been deployed to the Tsugol training grounds east of Lake Baikal. 

Russia has said it will train methods developed during its Syria intervention, giving Chinese forces, which haven’t fought in a war since 1979, a glimpse of real combat skills. 

The manoeuvres are being seen as a warning to Washington not to further strain relations with Russia or provoke it militarily. 

“It’s clear that such efforts can be directed at only one country, and that’s United States, because they’re so massive,” said Vasily Kashin, an expert in Russia-China relations at the Higher School of Economics. “At this moment Russia and China both see the United States as the main potential military adversary.”

In light of Donald Trump’s trade war with China and successive waves of US sanctions against Russia, America is now the main political adversary for both countries as well.

Future of Europe – defence

They have frequently voted together against US resolutions in the United Nations security council in recent years, and Russia has increasingly sought Chinese credit and investment after being cut off from US financing.

Having overtaken Saudi Arabia as China’s largest oil supplier in 2016, Russia is building the Power of Siberia pipeline in hopes of beginning gas deliveries there by the end of next year. 

In some ways, Mr Putin’s pivot east at the expense of the United States looks like a final reversal of Richard Nixon’s 1972 rapprochement with China, which was meant to unsettle the USSR.

The Kremlin’s spokesman said last month the manoeuvres showed the “expansion of cooperation in all spheres between two allies”. 

While the term may be overstated given Moscow and Beijing’s stated aversion to binding alliances, the quickening development of relations could eventually lead to a formal agreement, according to Mr Kashin.

“Every year steps are taken, and that will continue until it reaches its logical conclusion, probably some military pact that has obligations in case war arises,” he said. 

But independent defence analyst Alexander Golts argued that China’s invitation to participate was mainly to allay concerns that these enormous Cold War-style exercises on its border would otherwise raise.  

“These manoeuvres aren’t just unprecedented for Russia. No one is doing exercises of this size today,” he said.

The expensive military training comes at the same time as an unpopular reform that will raise the pension age to just a year below average life expectancy for Russian men. More than 1,000 people were arrested protesting the reform in cities around Russia on Sunday.

But the Kremlin’s spokesman said last month defence spending was “justified, necessary and has no alternative” given the international threats faced by Russia.

A popular Ugandan musician turned opposition politician arrived in the United States on Saturday to seek medical treatment for what he said were injuries suffered during torture by authorities in his country.

Bobi Wine – whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi – posted a photograph of himself in an airport corridor, sitting in a wheelchair and holding crutches, though it wasn’t clear which city he was in.

He was elected to parliament last year and has built a large following among young people excited by his scathing attacks on President Yoweri Museveni.

Protests erupted in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on Friday when police detained the pop star at the airport as he tried to leave the country.

"Safely arrived in the US where I’ll be receiving specialised treatment following the brutal torture at the hands of SFC soldiers," he wrote on Saturday, referring to Uganda’s Special Forces Command.

"I will soon tell you what exactly happened to me since 13th August and what is next," he said, referring to the day he was detained after being accused by authorities of throwing stones at a presidential convoy. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

He has previously said he was beaten up and tortured while in detention.

Ugandan authorities initially dismissed the allegations that Mr Kyagulanyi was beaten up in detention as "rubbish" and "fake news." But late on Friday a police spokesman said there would be an investigation into those allegations.

Mr Kyagulanyi, who has emerged as a formidable threat to the president who has been in power for 32 years, was charged with treason over his alleged role in the stoning of Mr Museveni’s convoy.

Mr Museveni has won praise in the West for his opposition to militant Islam in the region, but many Ugandans regard the 73-year-old as out of touch with his people, nearly 80 percent of whom are under the age of 30.

He has been in power since 1986 and has repeatedly been accused by his opponents of rights abuses and the widespread use of security forces to suppress opposition to his rule. He denies charges that his government is involved in rights violations.