World

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo on Wednesday dissolved Congress and said he would rule by decree, in a move slammed as a “coup” just hours before a debate was due over his impeachment.

The former school teacher, who unexpectedly took power from Peru’s traditional political elite, has faced non-stop crises, with repeated cabinet reshuffles, multiple corruption investigations and protests since he was elected in July last year.

“This intolerable situation cannot continue,” the 53-year-old said in a televised address to the nation, wearing a blue suit and presidential sash.

He announced he was “temporarily dissolving Congress… and installing an exceptional emergency government.” 

He said he would convene a new Congress “as soon as possible to draft a new Constitution within a period of no more than nine months.”

“From this date and until the new Congress is established, the country will be governed by decree law. A national curfew is decreed as of today from 10:00pm to 4:00am.” 

Castillo also declared the “reorganization of the justice system, the judiciary powers of the public ministry, the national board of justice and the constitutional court.”

The announcement came hours before the opposition-dominated Congress was to debate its third impeachment motion against Castillo since he came to power.

“Today, there has been 20th century-style coup. It is a coup destined to fail, Peru wants to live in a democracy. This coup d’etat has no legal basis,” the president of the Constitutional Court, Francisco Morales, told the RPP radio station.

– A ‘self-coup’ –

Peru’s attorney general Patricia Benavides expressed her “emphatic rejection” of “any violation of the constitutional order,” and urged the president to “respect the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy, that has cost us so much.” 

Castillo’s announcement comes more than 30 years after then-president Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution and dissolved Congress in April 1992.

“President Pedro Castillo has carried out a coup. He has violated Article 117 of the Peruvian Constitution and has become illegal. This is a self-coup,” political analyst Augusto Alvarez told AFP. 

The opposition had sought to impeach Castillo for moral incapacity, a constitutional provision that has seen two presidents sacked since 2018.

Castillo avoided impeachment in a similar debate in March, but he has remained under fire.

He recently appointed his fifth prime minister and cabinet since his election, while thousands took to the streets in November to demand his removal from office.

Castillo is also under investigation in six corruption cases, including accusations against his family and political entourage.

“I have never stolen from my country, I am not corrupt,” he said Tuesday.

– ‘No room for a truce’ –

Castillo, 53, had been locked in a power struggle with Congress since the attorney general filed a complaint accusing Castillo of heading a criminal organization involving his family and allies that hands out public contracts in exchange for money.

While serving his five-year term that ends in 2026, Castillo cannot be criminally tried and prosecutors had called for him to be “suspended,” an unprecedented move which Congress was evaluating.

In October, Castillo requested mediation by the Organization of American States (OAS).

The body visited the country in November and called for a “100-day political truce,” which fell on deaf ears.

“There is no room for a truce, nobody wants to talk with a president like Pedro Castillo, who does not project confidence,” analyst Alvarez said earlier.

Impeachment proceedings are relatively common in Peru because its constitution allows one to be brought against a president based on the more subjective premise of political rather than legal wrongdoing.

It has created much political instability: In November 2020, Peru had three presidents within one week.

The OAS’s human rights commission last year raised concerns about the “moral incapacity” constitutional provision, saying it had been distorted due to “a lack of objective definition.” 

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday of a long military intervention in Ukraine but said Moscow would not use nuclear weapons first.

His comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said fresh Russian strikes on a market and filling station had killed six people and wounded several more in the frontline region of Donetsk.

With the one-year mark of the conflict approaching, Russian forces have missed most of their key military goals including toppling the Ukrainian government, capturing the Donbas region and annexing four territories.

Putin’s own menacing language, and the battlefield stalemate, have raised fears Russia could resort to its nuclear arsenal to achieve a military breakthrough.

On Wednesday, Putin warned that the threat of nuclear war was growing.

“Such a threat is rising. Why make a secret out of it here?” he said at a meeting of his human rights council.

He added however that Russia would use a nuclear weapon only in response to an enemy strike.

“When we are struck, we strike back,” he said, stressing that Moscow’s strategy was based on “so-called retaliatory strike” policy.

Moscow had expected fighting to last just days before Ukraine’s capitulation, but on Wednesday Putin warned results could be a long time coming.

“As for the long process of (seeing) results of the special military operation, of course, this is a lengthy process,” Putin said.

But he praised the announced annexation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia after Moscow proxies held referendums — denounced in the West as a sham — and announced their integration in September.

“New territories appeared — well, this is still a significant result for Russia and this is a serious issue,” Putin said.

The Russian leader formalised the annexation of the four southern and eastern territories — Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — at a ceremony in the Kremlin in September.

– Russian shelling on market – 

But Russian troops at no point entirely controlled any of the territories and last month were forced out from the capital of the southern Kherson region after a months-long Ukraine counter-offensive.

In September Putin announced Russia was mobilising hundreds of thousands of people to bolster Moscow’s struggling forces after a series of battlefield setbacks, particularly in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine.

On Wednesday he said half the Russians called up for military service in September had been deployed to Ukraine.

“Out of 300,000 of our mobilised fighters, our men, defenders of the fatherland, 150,000 are in the area of operations,” said Putin, adding that about 77,000 were in combat units.

Since the capture of Kherson city, fighting in Ukraine has focused on the industrial Donbas region, where Russian forces have been pushing to capture the frontline city of Bakhmut.

Zelensky — after visiting the region this week — said Wednesday that Russian forces had killed six civilians and injured several in a recent bout of shelling. 

“Terrorists attacked the peaceful city of Kurakhove,” he said in a statement on social media.

“A market, a bus station, gas stations, and residential buildings came under fire. At least six civilians were killed, five were wounded.” 

The Donetsk region has been partially controlled by Russian forces since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists wrested control of the Donbas near the Russian border and Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Gunning the engine of his ageing skiff, Oleksiy Kovbasyuk races away from Kherson towards an island in the Dnipro river, where stranded Ukrainians are desperate for help — or to escape.

Russian troops retreated from the southern city of Kherson last month to the other side of the Dnipro, but their snipers and artillery are still trained along the broad river, rendering it a new frontline.

Forty-seven-year-old Kovbasyuk’s concern is that vulnerable residents isolated on the islands between — a grey zone where Ukrainians either desperate for a ride out or for more supplies need his help.  

“Some of these people haven’t left their dacha since Kherson was liberated. They need some bread,” Kovbasyuk, wrapped in a hat and red scarf against the cold, told AFP journalists on his boat.

The crossing, with snow falling, is short but perilous.

“I got two bullet holes in my boat… right after Russian solders fled to the other side,” the construction worker said.

Russian shelling missed his boat by just meters last week at the regularly targeted industrial waterfront south of Kherson city, where his boat was stored.

– Shelling ‘every night’ –

His destination one day this week was Potemkin island — eight kilometres (five miles) long and four kilometres wide — just downstream from Kherson city.

The patch of land surrounded by icy currents has been caught up in intense shelling. Out of the several hundred small summer homes on the island, only a handful are still inhabited.

Still Kovbasyuk is set on bringing food to those who want to stay and on evacuating others to the newly-liberated right bank.

Icy winds buffet the boat and freezing water splashes over its side for 40 minutes until Kovbasyuk arrives and meets Oleksandr Sokolyk, a 64-year-old pensioner, also shuttling people to the mainland.

“Oleksiy, brother! I’m so happy to see you!” says the pensioner, hugging his friend on a pontoon next to a dacha.

The island was once an oasis of calm just a short trip away from Kherson.

But that was before the Russian invasion in February and Kherson’s easy capture by Moscow’s forces shortly after. 

Then fighting escalated in September as Ukrainian troops were clawing back territory. Now there is relentless crossfire over the river.

“The situation seems better now in Kherson. They have electricity. We haven’t had any power here for a week,” says Sokolyk.

“And we spend every night under shelling. Left to right, right to left, just flying over us”.

– ‘I was lucky’ –

Olga Shpinyova, in an elegant purple hat and winter coat is leaving the island to stay with her sister in Kherson.

“It will be better there than in my own flat in a building without water, heating or electricity,” she said, her dog Tosha and two small bags in hand.

She told AFP she had decided to leave the island after urgent pleas from her daughter and a near miss — when her home was shelled.

“I was lucky to be at my daughter’s house at the time. It saved my life. My daughter called and said ‘You have to leave!'” Shpinyova told AFP.

Authorities announced civilian evacuations by ferry between December 3 and 5 but these never materialised. 

“We can’t organise regular transport on the river. The occupiers wouldn’t let us,” the regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych told AFP.

“Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee the security of the people” crossing, he said.

On the return journey to Kherson with three people boarded, a missile fell right in front of Sokolyk’s boat.

“I have no idea where it came from,” he told AFP in shock.

Mexican lawmakers blocked divisive electoral reforms proposed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that sparked mass street protests, but advanced less radical changes on Wednesday.

The rejection by the lower house of Congress late Tuesday was a blow to Lopez Obrador, who needed support from at least two-thirds of lawmakers to change the constitution.

Instead he sought to push through watered-down reforms, including a reduction in the budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE), the independent body that organizes the country’s elections.

Lopez Obrador’s so-called “Plan B,” which required approval by a simple majority of lawmakers, was passed in the Chamber of Deputies by 261 votes in favor and 216 against.

The opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party branded the changes a “betrayal of Mexico.”

The proposals must still be approved by the upper house, the Senate, where the ruling party and its allies also have a majority.

Last month, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Mexico City demanding a halt to the proposed reforms, which they see as an attack on one of the country’s most important democratic institutions.

Lopez Obrador alleges that the INE endorsed fraud when he ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2006 and 2012, before winning in 2018.

Under his initial plan, the INE would have been replaced by a new body with members chosen by voters instead of lawmakers.

The number of seats in the lower house of Congress would have been reduced from 500 to 300, and those in the Senate from 128 to 96.

New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch warned before the vote that the changes “could seriously undermine electoral authorities’ independence, putting free, fair elections at risk.”

“President Lopez Obrador’s proposed changes to the electoral system would make it much easier for whichever party holds power to co-opt the country’s electoral institutions to stay in power,” said HRW researcher Tyler Mattiace.

“Given Mexico’s long history of one-party rule maintained through questionable elections, it is extremely problematic that legislators would consider a highly regressive proposal that would weaken the independence of the elections authority.”

Lopez Obrador, who has an approval rating of nearly 60 percent but is barred by the constitution from running for a second term, insists that his reform plan sought to “strengthen democracy.”

He dismissed the opposition protest against his proposal, and two weeks later led hundreds of thousands of his supporters on a march through Mexico City in a show of political strength.

A prince, an ex-MP and former soldiers were arrested Wednesday in raids led by the German police against members of a far-right “terror group” that allegedly planned to attack parliament and overthrow the government.

The group had organised a “council” to take charge after the putsch, as well as a “military arm that would build a new German army”, chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank said at a press conference.

“Some members of the terrorist organisation also considered using force to enter the German Bundestag (parliament),” Frank said. 

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told public radio MDR he was “deeply concerned” by the alleged plot, describing it as a “new level”.

Around 3,000 officers including elite anti-terror units took part in the early morning raids and searched more than 130 properties, in what German media described as one of the country’s largest ever police actions against extremists.

The raids targeted alleged members of the “Citizens of the Reich” (Reichsbuerger) movement, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The prosecutors in Karlsruhe, southern Germany, said they had arrested 25 people, including one in Austria and another in Italy, and identified a further 27 people as suspected members or supporters of the network.

Those arrested are accused of having formed a group that “had set itself the goal of overcoming the existing state order in Germany and replacing it with their own kind of state”, they said.

“The accused are united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free, democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany,” they said.

– Prince and politician –

The suspects were aware that their plan “could only be realised by using military means and violence against state representatives”, prosecutors said.

They allegedly planned to appoint one of the arrested suspects, identified by local media as aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss, as Germany’s new leader after the coup.

Heinrich XIII had already sought to make contact with Russian officials to discuss Germany’s “new state order” after the coup, prosecutors said.

There was however “no indication that the contact persons responded positively to his request”, they said.

A Russian woman named only as Vitalia B., who was among those arrested on Wednesday, is suspected of having facilitated those contacts, prosecutors added.

Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of parliament for the far-right AfD party and Berlin judge, was also among those arrested. 

The ex-MP had been tapped by the group to take over as justice minister after the planned coup, chief prosecutor Frank said.

Other suspected members include current and former members of the German army in the “low single digits”, a spokesman for the defence ministry said at a regular press conference. 

One of those arrested was an active soldier in the KSK special forces, who worked in a “support” role, the spokesman said. 

“A former officer of the special units of the German army” was likewise held near Perugia, Italy, the local police said in a statement.

– ‘Into the abyss’ –

The Reichsbuerger movement includes far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists and gun enthusiasts who reject the legitimacy of the modern German republic.

Its followers generally believe in the continued existence of the pre-World War I German Reich, or empire, under a monarchy and several groups have declared their own states.

Long dismissed as malcontents and oddballs, the Reichsbuerger have become increasingly radicalised in recent years and are seen as a growing security threat.

The investigation gave “a look into the abyss” of far-right terror from the movement, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, the terror cell suspects believe in Reichsbuerger and QAnon conspiracy theories and are “strongly convinced” that Germany is run by a “deep state” that needs to be toppled.

As part of the preparations for the coup, members of the alleged terror cell acquired weapons, organised shooting practice and tried to recruit new followers, particularly among the military and police, according to prosecutors.

Germany considers far-right terrorism the biggest threat to its security following a spate of attacks in recent years.

In April, police foiled a plot by a far-right group to kidnap the health minister.