Minds

Two Nigerian student table tennis players are begging authorities in Sarajevo to return them to their home country after they were wrongly deported to Bosnia by Croatian police, who mistook them for undocumented migrants.

In an interview with the Guardian, Abia Uchenna Alexandro and Eboh Kenneth Chinedu said they were victims of injustice and that the only reason they were forcibly taken to Bosnia is that they are black.

“We told the truth and we have evidence of it,” said Chinedu via telephone from an immigration centre in east Sarajevo where the pair are detained. Uchenna and Chinedu, students at the Federal University of Technology Owerri in Nigeria, arrived in Croatia with a regular visa on 12 November, on their way to participate in the fifth World InterUniversities Championships, held this year in Pula.

The pair, both 18, left Pula for the Croatian capital, Zagreb, after the tournament and were supposed to fly to Lagos on 18 November. “The night before our departure, on the 17th, we checked out from the hostel and went for a walk in Zagreb,” said Chinedu. “Suddenly … we were stopped by the police who asked us for our identification documents. We tried to explain that our passports were in the hostel and that we had a regular visa, but they paid no attention to what we were saying.”

The officers allegedly mistook them for undocumented immigrants, put them in a van and transferred them to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina where, that day, Croatian authorities had gathered together a group of migrants who were intercepted as they were attempting to cross the country.

“There were men from Pakistan at the border,” said Chinedu. “They had been caught by the Croatians while attempting to cross the border from Bosnia. Police eventually ordered us to move through the woods. I refused and begged them one more time to check our status, but they wouldn’t listen. They kicked me in the back and told me they would shoot me if I didn’t move.”

Uchenna and Chinedu were eventually deported to Bosnia and ended up in a camp in Velika Kladuša, where thousands of migrants live in cramped tents without water or heating, and with temperatures as low as -2C.

The plight of the two students has made the news around the world and sparked a row between Croatia and Bosnia. Last weekend they were transferred to an immigration centre in east Sarajevo.

“Those people are victims of illegal acts on the Croatian side,” Dragan Mektić, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s minister of security, told al-Jazeera. “It is obvious that Croatian police forcibly displaced them.”

Police in Croatia denied any wrongdoing and raised doubts over the table tennis players’ intentions, suggesting they were lying. According to the police, another Nigerian who participated in the championship had attempted to cross the border with Slovenia from Croatia a few days before.

“Police officers have already witnessed cases of individuals who make an attempt, even abusing their participation in sports competitions in Croatia, to remain in the country or continue their journey illegally to other European countries,” Croatian police said.

“This is not true,” said Chinedu. “We were legal in Croatia. And our visa was valid until the 3 December. If we wanted to seek asylum, we could have asked for it because we had visas.”

The interior ministry in Zagreb said the men were stopped by police on 18 November, the day they were due to depart, and not the day before as the Nigerians claimed. However, the police’s version of events does not explain why the officers sent the students to Bosnia, knowing they had entered the country on a flight to Zagreb and not from Bosnia and knowing that they had a valid visa until 3 December.

In the meantime, authorities in Sarajevo are working on the case. The presence of the Nigerians in Bosnia – even if instigated by Croatian police – is technically illegal, given that their visa was valid only in Croatia, and which has now has expired.

“The case of two students from Nigeria is being handled by the ministry of security of Bosnia and Herzegovina as it is an internal issue involving illegal entrance to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the minister counsellor for the foreign affairs of Bosnia wrote in an email to the Guardian.

Dragan Mektić said: “Respecting legal procedures, we now have to take them back to Croatia. It is obvious that they have Croatian visas, that they are in Bosnia-Herzegovina illegally.”

The Nigerians said they were willing to go back to Croatia, but only on one condition: “If they take us back to Croatia, we want to have UN escorts with us. We will not go to Croatia without a UN representative. We are scared of the Croatian police after what they did to us.”

“We want to go back to Nigeria,” said Chinedu. “Please, help us, send us home immediately.”

Marie Fredriksson, who as the singer of Roxette was one of the most recognisable voices in 1980s and 90s pop, has died aged 61 following a long illness.

Her family said in a statement to Expressen, a newspaper in her native Sweden: “It is with great sadness that we have to announce that one of our biggest and most beloved artists is gone.”

In September 2002, Fredriksson had a seizure in her bathroom and suffered a cracked skull. A subsequent MRI scan revealed she had a brain tumour, and she was given a 25% chance of survival. She survived, but had health problems as a result of radiation therapy. She was able to perform until 2016, when she announced her retirement due to the effects of her illness.

Her partner in Roxette, Per Gessle, expressed his love for Fredriksson and her family, and said: “Things will never be the same.”

The pair, who first met in the late 1970s, formed in 1986 on the suggestion of a Swedish record executive. Fredriksson had had a moderate solo career, while Gessle had found success with his band Gyllene Tider, who had broken up after renaming themselves Roxette.

The duo had hits in Sweden, but it wasn’t until an American exchange student took their second album back to Minneapolis, and handed it to a radio station, that they became a word-of-mouth success in the US. Beginning with The Look in 1989, they had four US No 1 hits: Listen to Your Heart, Joyride, and – perhaps the best known of all – power ballad It Must Have Been Love, which also reached No 3 in the UK and was included on the soundtrack to Pretty Woman.

The pair would go on to sell an estimated 75m records worldwide, and record 10 studio albums. Fredriksson also released eight solo albums, three of which topped the Swedish charts – she scored her first chart-topping solo single in 2008 with Där Du Andas. In May 2018, she released a new single, Sing Me a Song, to mark her 60th birthday.

Roxette had a hiatus while Fredriksson was treated for and recovered from her brain tumour, but reformed in 2009 after she went to see Gessle perform a solo show in Holland, and made an impromptu guest appearance. “She had no self confidence, and said she couldn’t sing any more,” Gessle told the Guardian in 2012. “But she staggered up on stage anyway – and the audience just died … people were crying to the left and right. Afterwards she was like a changed person and two weeks later she called me asking if I’d want to write another Roxette album.” They ended up releasing three more, with their final album, Good Karma, released in June 2016.

In a statement, Gessle paid further tribute to Fredriksson following her death: “Time goes by so fast. It feels like just recently when Marie and I were sitting in my little apartment in Halmstad sharing dreams. And what a fantastic dream we got to share! Thank you Marie, thank you for everything. You were a truly unique musician, a singer on a level we will hardly ever experience again. You painted my black and white songs with the most beautiful colours.”

Fredriksson is survived by her husband, music producer Mikael Bolyos, who she married in 1994, and their two children: Josefin Bolyos, 26, and Oscar Bolyos, 23.

Jean-Paul Delevoye, the French minister and High Commissioner leading the country’s pension reform, resigned on Monday from a side role as administrator of an insurance group amid talk of a conflict of interest.

Le Parisien newspaper revealed on Sunday that Delevoye worked as voluntary administrator of the Ifpass training institute in the insurance sector, a role the minister did not disclose on his mandatory ‘declaration of interest’, published on Saturday.

Critics said that despite Delevoye’s role being voluntary, the fact that he had close links to the insurance sector matters as the sector is expected to benefit from the reform, which some say will incite the French to use private insurance to compensate losses from their pensions.

Delevoye said not disclosing his role was “a mistake” and an “omission by oversight”. He added that “he hadn’t thought about it for a second” and admitted it “isn’t sensible”.

“To end all controversy, I have resigned this morning from my role as administrator of Ifpass with immediate effect”, Delevoye said on Monday in a statement. He said he had attended “only three board meetings” since he was tasked with reforming the French pensions system in 2017, the last time “in December 2018”.

He was “named administrator of Ifpass (…) by the board of IGS, a non-profit federation of independent associations”, his statement added.

Delevoye joined the French government in September and has been tasked by president Macron to oversee the controversial pensions reform, which has faced opposition in the form of street protests and strikes across the country over the last week.

The revelation of Delevoye’s role in the sector led many to react.

“Mr. Delevoye can tax the whole country with his pensions reform and yet forget a part of his declaration of interest, and there’s no problem”, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing party La France Insoumise, said. The “real face of the pensions reform” is revealed through its High Commissioner, the national secretary of the French Communist party Fabien Roussel said: “everything is done to encourage future pensioners to use private insurance”.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of far-right party National Rally, said that this episode is “a new illustration” of Macron’s politics, who “does not govern in the interest of the French: he destroys our system in aid of private interests and financial powers.”

Macron’s party La Republique En Marche (LREM) supported Delevoye. “This is totally ridiculous”, the head of the LREM parliamentary majority Gilles Le Gendre said, adding that Delevoye’s role had been “entirely voluntary, which he did not exercise regularly and doesn’t exercise anymore”. “We need him”, Le Gendre added.

The civil society reacted to the news, too. The anti-corruption group Anticor commented on Delevoye’s “oversight”, saying that insurers the Commissioner worked for “do not dislike” the pensions reform:

M. Delevoyé a "oublié" de déclarer à la HATVP qu'il était administrateur du principal institut de formation des assureurs. Assureurs à qui la réforme des retraites ne déplaît pas… https://t.co/SeB8sPd3Br

— Anticor (@anticor_org) December 9, 2019

Other groups, like Attac France, a social and environmental justice group, called for Delevoye to resign not from his role as administrator in the insurance sector, but as High Commissioner of the pensions reform: “It is from his post of minister tasked with the pensions reforms that he should resign”, the group said.

L'IFPASS, dont JP Delevoye a "oublié" de déclarer qu'il est administrateur, a pour clients la plupart des sociétés françaises d'assurance.

La réforme des #Retraites est nue, seulement protégée par les LBD de la police.

Via https://t.co/Up4W0o5vUK pic.twitter.com/mkm3GmPGTb

— Attac France (@attac_fr) December 9, 2019

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time since taking office, at a summit in Paris on Monday to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine.

Convened by French President Emmanuel Macron and also attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit is the first real test for the Ukrainian leader who ran for office on a pledge to end the protracted conflict in his country.

Adding to the pressure for the comedian-turned-politician is the fact that thousands rallied on Sunday in Kyiv calling on him not to “capitulate” and grant Putin too many concessions.

More than 13,000 people have died in the five-year conflict opposing Ukrainian security forces and Russian-backed separatists, including some 3,300 civilians, according to the UN.

A ceasefire was agreed to in the Minsk Protocol signed in 2014 but has been violated with outbreaks of fighting regularly recorded near Donetsk and Luhansk.

Summit an achievement

Speaking at a joint press conference after the meeting, Macron hailed the very fact the summit was held as an achievement.

“The fact that we are side by side today in Paris is in itself an important outcome in many ways, a credible resuming that is in no way obtained in advance considering the absence of a concrete progress for several years,” he said.

Angela Merkel meanwhile said while there is a lot of work to do, there is “goodwill to resolve difficult questions”, adding she was very pleased with the meeting.

‘Something tangible’

Zelenskiy argued in a Facebook video released last week that the meeting “is already a victory for Ukraine”.

He then defended the decision to meet with Putin despite the Russian leader refusing to put the annexed peninsula of Crimea on the negotiating table by telling Ukrainian television that Russia’s release of Ukrainian sailors and vessels is “a signal that Russia is ready to talk”.

But expectations of a breakthrough are fairly low.

Analysts say that Zelenskiy in particular needs to return home with “something tangible.”

“A cease-fire and a prisoner swap should be well within reach. No party will want to walk home empty-handed, and at least officially, both Ukraine and Russia are interested in a cessation of hostilities and the return of prisoners,” Cyrus Newlin and Jeffrey Mankoff from the Center for Strategic & International Studies think tank, wrote in a note last week.

‘Strategic dialogue’

Beyond Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, one of the main areas of contention is the province of Donbas — where Donetsk and Luhansk are located — and its status.

Zelenskiy has stressed that elections would only be held in the separatist-held province once Moscow had relinquished control of the border and withdrawn its troops.

But Russia is unlikely to do so, having advocated for the region to be granted a special status which would see it continue to exert influence in Ukrainian politics.

Zelenskiy has called on both Paris and Berlin to support his position on the different issues but the latest summit comes amidst a push by Macron to reopen “a strategic dialogue” with Russia.

“If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia,” he told the Economist magazine last month.

Zelenskiy, who used to play the Ukrainian leader in a popular television show before his election, might find a more receptive audience in Merkel.

Germany expelled two Russian diplomats last week over Moscow’s suspected involvement in the murder of a Georgian activist in Berlin.

What happened in week one?

The COP25 climate talks in Madrid may have officially opened on Monday 2 December, but they only really started on Friday evening. That was when Greta Thunberg arrived to join a 500,000-strong march through the centre of Madrid, demanding that world leaders listen.

The young activist said that she, and the millions who have marched and protested around the world in the last two years, had “achieved nothing” because greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Her stark message summed up the disjunction that scientists, campaigners and some politicians have despaired of at these talks: that the sense of urgency scientists have warned is needed, and that is felt in the outside world among those worst affected by climate breakdown, is still missing from these negotiating rooms.

Notable developments

Earlier in the week, a report on the world’s “carbon budget” revealed how far the world is from meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement. Greenhouse gas emissions rose by 0.6% last year – less than in recent years, but not enough to turn the corner. Johan Rockström, the joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: “We must bend the curve [from increasing carbon to falling emissions] in the next year.”

What governments did – or didn’t – do

Meanwhile, negotiators finally managed over the weekend to put out a text on the future of carbon markets. It is only a first step and there are still major disagreements over how carbon credits should be counted and how countries’ success in meeting previous carbon targets should be allowed to count towards their future targets.

There is still no guarantee of any resolution to the disputes over carbon markets – the so-called article 6 talks, named after the section of the Paris agreement that they are aimed at clarifying. If this issue is not resolved, this technical question will hang over next year’s talks too, getting in the way of the substantive issue: the fact that by next year at the latest, countries are supposed to realign their emissions-cutting targets with scientific advice on staying within 2C (and hopefully 1.5C) of global heating above pre-industrial levels.

Chile to Madrid

These talks were supposed to take place in Chile, but were relocated after political unrest in Santiago. There are reminders everywhere that Chile is still technically the host – in the logo and signs; in the leadership of the Chilean COP president, Carolina Schmidt, at every important meeting; the conference rooms named after Chilean landmarks, rivers and natural features; and in the protests outside the conference centre by Chilean democracy and social justice campaigners, who say they are being silenced and ignored.

Blue COP

Oceans campaigners have also struggled to be heard at these talks, which were meant to highlight the plight of the oceans and the vital but often overlooked part they play in the Earth’s climate. The key message from campaigners is that protecting marine life – stopping overfishing, stemming the plastic tide of pollution and the flow of fertilisers and chemicals that is suffocating fish – is not just vital to biodiversity, and healthy fisheries for the more than 1 billion people who depend on the oceans, but also to regulate the climate. Healthy oceans absorb carbon and provide a buffer against climate chaos, so damage to them is damage to the climate, and vice versa.

Art for climate’s sake

Campaigners took advantage of the move to Madrid by drawing some of the Spanish capital’s cultural icons into the climate fight. The Prado art gallery, in conjunction with WWF, has updated some of its most famous paintings to show how they might reflect a warming world, with Goya now depicting climate refugees and a Velázquez painting of Felipe IV showing the Spanish king up to his horse’s neck in flood water. Which makes participants wonder what other Spanish artists might have made of the talks. The tortured technicalities of article 6 would test the skills of a Picasso – though the surrealism of Dalí might be more appropriate. Melting watches could stand for how negotiating time seems to have stopped, while poles and glaciers liquefy.

What to expect in week two

Youth has taken over for the start of the second week, with activists making their presence felt at the conference centre on Monday, fresh from the weekend’s marches and protests.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, environment ministers and finance ministers will arrive to give directions for their officials, meaning the “high-level segment” of the talks can start and with it the actual decision-making needed to give these talks a concrete outcome, in the form of resolutions on key issues.

The EU is also expected to galvanise the talks with its green new deal proposals from the European commission on Wednesday. In normal circumstances the UK, as the host of next year’s COP, which marks the deadline for countries to update their Paris commitments, would be expected to play a key role here. But the its delegation has been hobbled by the general election, which means officials and the next COP president, the former UK climate minister Claire Perry O’Neill, are in purdah and cannot speak on the record. Perhaps by Friday, when the UK’s votes have been counted, there may be some much-needed clarity.

The international energy treaty that threatens Labour’s energy nationalisation plans may also risk undermining the EU’s green new deal, according to Friends of the Earth.

The environmental organisation is calling for parts of the energy charter treaty (ECT) to be scrapped to prevent fossil fuel companies from using the multilateral agreement to take governments to court over green policies.

The group has warned that unless the ECT undergoes a fundamental overhaul in talks this week, it risks undermining the European green new deal, which is to be unveiled on Wednesday by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European commission.

The ECT was set up after the end of the cold war to protect western energy companies as they started to invest in former Soviet states. However, energy companies are increasingly using the treaty to challenge governments’ new climate policies.

The ECT would also threaten a Labour government’s plans to nationalise large parts of the energy industry that are owned by foreign companies covered by the treaty. City lawyers have said Labour’s plan to pay a discount to nationalise foreign-owned energy networks and the big six energy suppliers would run the risk of a legal battle in European tribunals.

Paul de Clerck, the economic justice coordinator at Friends of the Earth Europe, said the treaty was outdated and “a boon to dirty fossil fuel companies”.

“As soon as people hear about this obscure pact undermining the public interest and the fight against climate change, they will be outraged. Either the EU and member states fundamentally revise it, or pull out,” he said.

Friends of the Earth Europe is one of 260 civil society organisations and trade unions that have warned the ECT is incompatible with climate action because it contains measures to protect energy investments even where they contradict climate goals.

The environmental groups say the treaty is being used by large fossil fuel companies to to take national governments to court over decisions to phase out dirty energy.

The German government became embroiled in a legal battle with the Swedish utility company Vattenfall over Berlin’s decision to halt nuclear power generation in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. The Dutch government may also be taken to court by the German fossil fuel company Uniper if it moves ahead with plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2030.

Freek Bersch, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth Netherlands, said the ECT has already played a part in slowing down the Dutch coal phase-out because of “fear of high claims, like from Uniper”.

A spokesman for Labour said last month that the party has consulted “with a number of lawyers” about the ECT and it was confident that the party would “deliver the changes that the electorate wants”.

Germany’s Social Democrats have confirmed two relatively unknown leftwingers as the new leaders of the party at the start of a three-day conference that will focus on its future in Angela Merkel’s grand coalition.

Saskia Esken, a digital policy expert, and Norbert Walter-Borjans, a former state finance minister, were confirmed as the first SPD leadership pairing in the party’s 156-year history in a verification vote on Friday. The conference, entitled New Era, also resurrected the party’s traditional symbol of a red rose.

The pair used their maiden speeches to pledge an intense dialogue with the Christian Democrats and their sister Christian Social Union party over the future of the coalition. They have called for improvements on welfare and environmental policies, as well as an end to the government’s commitment to stick to a balanced budget – the “black zero”.

But they strikingly rowed back from demanding a renegotiation of the coalition agreement with Merkel’s conservatives, or the withdrawal of the SPD from the government, despite having campaigned forcefully on that issue.

“It is time for an about-turn,” said Esken, calling for an end to the neoliberal labour policies introduced by the former leader Gerhard Schröder, the unpopularity of which many members cite as the reason for a dramatic erosion in the party’s support in recent years.

Walter-Borjans, who has been likened to Robin Hood for his battle against tax evasion, said it was time to loosen the German attachment to balancing the budget in order to invest in Germany’s ailing infrastructure, from schools and universities to its digital future, as well as clawing back control from financial markets. “It’s not democracy that should bow to the markets, rather the markets that should bow to democracy,” he said to warm applause.

Olaf Scholz, the finance minister, who lost out to Esken and Walter-Borjans in the leadership race, having been widely expected to win it along with his partner, Klara Geywitz, congratulated the couple, and said the party had no choice but to stick together if it hoped to claw back some of the many millions of voters the SPD had lost, mainly to the Green party and the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland over the past few years.

“A strong SPD is important because a society without us would be very different,” he said. “But we will only manage this if we stick together … and if we ensure we have a plan how to make it work.”

He said the party needed to recognise its achievements in government, including the introduction of a minimum wage and basic pension, which is in the process of passing through parliament.

The duo, nicknamed “Eskabo” by their supporters, have set themselves the ambitious task of increasing the SPD’s voter support twofold, from the current record low of 15%, within the next year.

Their threat to pull the SPD out of the government prematurely – new elections are not due until 2021 – caused Berlin’s political class to hold its breath over the past week, with political observers at home and abroad braced for an earlier than anticipated departure of Merkel, who has said she will not stand again.

Her conservative alliance has vehemently opposed the SPD’s idea of renegotiating the coalition agreement, which took six months to reach.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, faces a major test at a high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin in Paris as he pursues a campaign promise to negotiate an end to the war in south-east Ukraine despite vocal opposition at home.

Zelenskiy and his Russian counterpart will meet at the Élysée Palace on Monday alongside European leaders for their first face-to-face talks since the comedian-turned-president took office in May.

The meeting, mediated by the leaders of France and Germany, aims to revive efforts to resolve Kyiv’s five-year conflict with Russian-backed separatists who have held a broad swath of south-eastern Ukraine since 2014. The conflict has left more than 13,000 people dead and displaced millions. The two countries’ heads of state have not met since 2016.

Meanwhile, there are concerns about wavering resolve among Ukraine’s allies to check Russian aggression, including Donald Trump’s seemingly inexorable attraction to Putin and remarks by Emmanuel Macron that Russiais not a common enemy of Nato.

Zelenskiy, who won a landslide election victory in April, has promised Ukrainians that he would not appease Putin when the two men meet, but reiterated that the only way to end the war was through direct negotiations with Moscow.

“People say what kind of a dialogue can there be between Zelenskiy and Putin?” Zelenskiy said in a public address filmed as he walked briskly on a treadmill last week. “You know, it’s possible without this dialogue, but it’s like running on a treadmill … you’re losing calories, but you’re stuck in the same place.”

Activists who protested in Ukraine’s 2014 EuroMaidan revolution have urged Zelenskiy not to sacrifice the country’s interests “at gunpoint”. Several thousand people rallied on Sunday in Kyiv to demand that the president defend the country’s interests. At the rally in Independence Square, demonstrators held banners reading “No compromises!” and “No surrender!”

“Among some Ukrainians, there is suspicion and concern about the negotiations,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst. They are worried that “Zelenskiy doesn’t make excessive concessions to Putin. That Putin doesn’t trick him. Fears that are linked to the inexperience of the new president.”

Central to the talks are the intricacies of the Minsk agreement, a 13-point peace plan negotiated in 2015 that stipulates the return of the border with Russia to Ukrainian control, the holding of elections in separatist-held regions and the disarmament and evacuation of Russian forces in south-east Ukraine.

But the sequencing of those steps has remained contentious, and a recent agreement to hold elections in south-east Ukraine that would then be verified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sparked an opposition backlash under the slogan: “No capitulation!”

In remarks at the Chatham House thinktank in London last week, Andriy Yermak, a key adviser to Zelenskiy, sought to reduce concerns about the talks, saying Ukraine would present a new framework for representing the Donbass region and consider additional powers to local councils but would not agree to a federalised Ukraine.

Their plan B, he said, could require walling off Ukraine from Russia in the manner of Israel. “If we don’t see readiness from Russia to implement the Minsk agreement or to move towards a peaceful solution with a clear-cut timeframe, well in this case we’ll be building a wall, and life will continue,” he said.

Analysts and politicians have played down expectations that the talks could provide a breakthrough in the conflict, saying the most that can be hoped for is a de-escalation of tensions.

Russia believes time is on its side and can withstand any international pressure on Putin to make concessions.

“After the exchange of prisoners in September, the Kremlin was not interested in a Normandy format summit, and tried to break off the talks,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst and the head of the R.Politik analysis firm. Russia wants to avoid renegotiating the peace plan, which it views as favourable, Stanovaya added.

Although both sides have publicly voiced support for the Minsk agreements, there are questions of whether the framework is politically viable.

“Minsk cannot be implemented,” Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote recently, noting opposition inside Ukraine. “The most that can be achieved – not in Paris, but eventually – is a more durable ceasefire, a full exchange of prisoners, and some easing of humanitarian/economic contacts across the frontline in Donbass.”

For Putin, Trenin noted, the optics of the summit may be their most important aspect.

“It appears that what Putin can get out of Paris is Europeans’ conclusion that he is willing to deal with Zelenskiy on the practical issues,” he said, including a new deal for transit of natural gas.

The talks will be the first opportunity for Putin, a former intelligence officer, and Zelenskiy, a successful television mogul and comedian, to size one another up.

Putin may welcome Zelenskiy’s interest in reaching a settlement, said Stanovaya, but regards Ukraine’s president as a political novice and “not as a real leader comparable to himself”.

Zelenskiy has proven an able and optimistic politician, manufacturing a landslide election victory and a parliamentary majority, and navigating a gauntlet of domestic and international pressure since his inauguration in May.

“Zelenskiy has very complicated motivations for the meeting,” said Fesenko. “But I would say he is counting on his good fortune. He believes that he will be able to influence Putin.”

Nobel literature laureate Peter Handke brushed off questions about his support for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milošević at a press conference on Friday, telling gathered journalists that it was not the moment to answer “ignorant” queries.

The Austrian author’s Nobel prize win in October has been widely criticised by writers and politicians over his stance on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. A petition signed by almost 60,000 people is calling on the Nobel committee to revoke the award from the “apologist for the ‘butcher of Balkans’ Slobodan Milošević”. Handke spoke at Milošević’s funeral in 2006, calling him “a rather tragic man”.

The petition is due to be delivered by protesters on 10 December in Stockholm, when Handke is scheduled to receive his SEK9m (£743,000) prize.

After an awkward moment during which the room was induced to sing Happy Birthday to the author, Handke was asked at the press conference about the polarised response to his win. He responded: “This is a very long story. To tell this story here, I think it’s not the moment.”

Asked about the planned protests next week, Handke reminisced about a visit to Norway in 2014, when he won the Ibsen award. “There were a lot of protests when I went to the National Theatre of Oslo. A lot of shouting of ‘fascist, fascist’. I wanted to talk to these ladies and gentlemen but they didn’t want to talk to me,” he said. In his speech accepting that prize, he told his critics: “Go to hell, where you already are.”

Handke was asked by Peter Maass, a journalist at the Intercept, if he would say that the Srebrenica massacre, where almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed, had happened. Handke responded by talking about a letter he had been sent by an anonymous critic which he said was sent with a piece of toilet paper, “which had a calligraphy of shit”. After finishing, he told Maass: “I prefer toilet paper, an anonymous letter with toilet paper inside, to your empty and ignorant questions.”

Handke’s lack of straight answers is unlikely to put the controversy to rest, with the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy also under fire over their choice. Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, has told critics that “the ambition is to celebrate his extraordinary literary work, not the person. But earlier this week, two members of the external committee set up to oversee reforms in the controversy-prone Swedish Academy resigned, with one, journalist Gun-Britt Sundström, blaming her departure on Handke’s victory.

“The choice of 2019 laureate was not just a choice about a body of work, it has also been interpreted, both inside the academy and outside, as a defence of the stance that literature is above ‘politics’,” she told Dagens Nyheter. “That is not my ideology.”

Earlier on Friday, Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said he would not attend the ceremonies because to celebrated Handke’s win “would be gross hypocrisy on my part”.

Jonas Eklöf, editor in chief of Swedish books magazine Vi Läser, was at the press conference. He said that the feeling among Swedish journalists covering the Nobel “has been fatigue, exhaustion and … ‘Not again!’ A feeling that little has to do with literature right now.”

“There is still a lot of turbulence within the academy, with new boycotts and two out of five members leaving the Nobel committee in only the last week,” said Eklöf. “About today, what can I say: it was strange – especially the birthday song to Handke – and a little bit awkward, but not as uncomfortable as one might have expected. Feeling right now: just want to go home and have a glass of wine and read Flights.”

Flights is a novel by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel prize for literature. Her win was announced on the same day as Handke’s, due to the postponement of last year’s prize. She is using her winnings to fund a foundation to support the work of writers and translators which will help “describe the reality in which xenophobic and nationalist sentiments are growing dangerously quickly”.

Michael Gove has said allowing EU citizens to vote in another Brexit referendum would represent “an assault” on democracy.

The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was speaking on Friday morning after Boris Johnson wrote to Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of seeking to “fiddle” a second referendum vote in favour of remain by proposing to enfranchise 2 million EU nationals, in effect undermining the outcome of the 2016 vote.

Although Gove praised the contribution of EU nationals to the UK, he said allowing them to vote in referendums would go against the principle of democratic fairness.

“It is the case that EU nationals don’t vote, have never voted in general elections, and therefore don’t vote, have never voted in referendums like the Brexit referendum – and, therefore, we just think it would be unfair,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“It’s a bit like a rugby league final, 13 players on either side. If one team suddenly said we’re going to play rugby union instead and bring two extra players on to the field, that simply wouldn’t be fair.”

The interviewer said EU nationals were in fact allowed to vote in local authority, mayoral and European parliament elections. Gove said he understood Labour’s argument but it would be a fundamental “assault on the basic democratic principle”.

He added: “What makes it worse, I think, to fair-minded observers is the idea that the referendum next time round, if the Labour party were to come into power, would be run according to different rules, and rules that every objective observer says would be more likely to favour remain.”

Asked why Corbyn, a longtime Eurosceptic, would seek to effectively prevent the UK from leaving the EU, Gove said the majority of the parliamentary Labour party and the shadow cabinet was in favour of remaining.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, said she believed it was right that people who had lived in the UK for much of their lives and had children at British schools should be allowed to vote in a potential future Brexit referendum.

“Under a Labour government, we’ve stated that any EU national who is living here at the time we exit the European Union will be guaranteed the right to stay here as a citizen,” she told the Today programme.

“I think it’s fair to ensure those people have the opportunity to vote over their future. It’s not just about the future of people who were born here, it’s about the future of people who contribute to our economy and have done for a very long time.”

Labour pledged in its manifesto to extend voting rights to all UK residents and lower the voting age to 16, in what the party said would be “the largest extension of the franchise in generations”.

Speaking to Sky earlier on Friday, Long-Bailey claimed the extension of the franchise would not “skew” the outcome of the referendum, and defended the principle of a second EU vote.

“After three years of drama and chaos, we’re still in a state of affairs where we don’t have a credible Brexit deal to put before parliament, let alone the people,” she said.

“The reason we’ve called for that second referendum is to give people the opportunity to decide on whether a credible Labour deal is what they voted for and, if not, they can vote to remain.

“It’s not right to have a system that denies [EU nationals] the vote. It’s important to let them participate in their future.”