Today, Russia's Belgorod region is attacked, a Belarusian dissident is pardoned, Bulgaria's political deadlock finally ends, fake military images cause chaos in the US, and Erdogan gets a key endorsement. From TLDR News, this is your daily briefing for Tuesday, the 23rd of May, 2023. In a dramatic story from Russia and Ukraine, pro-Ukraine fighters have burst across the border into Russia's Belgorod region, claiming to liberate the territory. It sounds like a pretty wild story, and there were plenty of claims and counterclaims going around.
So what exactly is going on? On Monday, the governor of Russia's Belgorod region said a Ukrainian sabotage group had crossed the border into the Belgorod region, adding that eight people had been injured and that fighting had damaged three houses and an administrative building, and that the situation was extremely tense. Belgorod's governor said a counter-terrorist operation was underway, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said work was underway to squeeze Ukrainian saboteurs from Russian territory and to destroy the saboteurs group. An advisor to President Zelensky has denied that Ukraine is involved, and instead suggested that an armed guerrilla movement had emerged in opposition to a totalitarian country.
According to Ukraine, the incursion was carried out by Russian citizens from two armed Russian opposition groups, called the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps. The latter group is led by Denis Nikitin, a Russian far-right extremist who opposes the Putin regime. The group has posted multiple videos claiming to be from Russia's territory, including one of their fighters operating an armoured vehicle. Meanwhile, the Liberty of Russia Legion said on Twitter that it had completely liberated the village of Koznika, which is right by the border with Ukraine.
Ukrainians on social media have made references to the Belgorod People's Republic, a slight tongue-in-cheek reference to eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed groups opposed to the Russian government declared the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Now, it's important to note that the size and location of the territory in question is tiny, and hardly any distance from the border with Ukraine. But this incident, as well as other recent incursions into Russian territory, is a pretty major headache for Russian authorities. Not only does it divert attention and resources away from the main theatre of war, it also brings home the reality of war to Russians in Russia, who, compared to Ukrainians in Ukraine, have largely been shielded from what's going on.
There's a lot more to say about this, so we've got a full video coming out on Wednesday over on the TLDR EU channel. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine, or just search for us on your podcast app to listen along. Back in May 2021, Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian dissident blogger, was on board a Ryanair flight going from Greece to Lithuania when the flight was grounded as it was over Belarus because of, it was claimed, a bomb threat. Many Western nations were suspicious of this claim, believing that Belarus had grounded the plane in order to arrest the dissident.
An investigation by Polish officials claimed that the incident was an act of state terrorism designed specifically to detain Protasevich. Following Protasevich's arrest, videos were released of Protasevich personally apologising to Belarusian President Lukashenko for his anti-government activism. His family have argued that these videos were only recorded as a result of abuse, torture and threats he was subject to in prison. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled opposition leader who claimed that she was the true winner of the 2020 election, subsequently called for Protasevich's release.
Today, it's been announced that Protasevich has received a presidential pardon and has avoided more than a decade behind bars. So, that's what's been happening in Belarus today. But let's move and have a look at what's been going on in Bulgaria. Bulgaria's two years of political deadlock may finally be coming to a conclusion after the country's two largest parties agreed to form a grand coalition government with rotating prime ministers.
Bulgaria has held five consecutive parliamentary elections since April 2021 and for much of that time has been led by a caretaker government, which has hampered progress. A budget bill for 2023 still hasn't been approved, the target date for adopting the EU has been delayed and the country's ability to access EU recovery funds has been frustrated. But the new agreement will see the centre-right GERB party and the reformist anti-corruption alliance led by We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria form a coalition government, which will last for the next year and a half. For the first nine months, the country's prime minister will be Nikolai Denkov, a former education minister from We Continue the Change.
Then GERB's choice, former EU commissioner Maria Gabriel, will lead the country for the following nine months. The formation of a coalition between the two opposing alliances will be quite a turn of events, particularly as the We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria Alliance had previously consistently said they would not go into government with GERB. Incoming Prime Minister Denkov said his alliance will propose a government that can implement a constitutional reform, fulfill all the requirements related to the country's full membership in the EU and implement comprehensive judicial reform. If you want more content like this from TLDR, make sure you check out Nebula, where each week we release a roundup of what's been happening in Westminster in our series This Week in Parliament.
On Monday, a number of verified Twitter accounts tweeted an image claiming to show an explosion near the Pentagon. Local officials claimed that no explosion had taken place, with the fire departments in Virginia tweeting that they were aware of a social media report circulating online about an explosion near the Pentagon. There is no explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon reservation, and there is no immediate danger or hazard to the public. One of the accounts even claimed to be associated with Bloomberg News, which they were not.
As a result of this, it was subsequently suspended from Twitter. This didn't prevent the impact from this fake image, though. Remarkably, following this bit of false news, the US stock market took a bit of a dip, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by 80 points. This whole story highlights the issues with Elon Musk's decision to fundamentally change the verifying blue tick system on Twitter.
Previously, only notable figures were able to get one. Whereas now, it can simply be purchased by anyone. We have an update now on the Turkish election, of which the runoff round is just days away. President Erdogan's campaign has been given a perhaps insurmountable boost after Sinan Ogan, the candidate that placed third in the first round, endorsed Erdogan for re-election.
In the first round, Erdogan received around 49.5% of the vote, giving him around a five-point lead over his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The ultranationalist Sinan Ogan, meanwhile, won around 5%. So if we assume that a sizable number of his supporters follow his lead and vote for Erdogan, it would put the incumbent president in an unbeatable position. This comes despite Kilicdaroglu significantly hardening his rhetoric towards refugees in a bid to appeal to anti-immigrant sentiments in the country.
We'll end the main section with some uplifting news from North Carolina, where a man is planning to use his $100,000 lottery prize to build classrooms in his hometown back in Mali. 39-year-old Solomane Sane, who is a dance instructor, says he grew up in a tough way and that many children in his native country don't even have a desk to sit at and have to walk miles and miles to go to school. As well as building classrooms, he wants to use his winnings to fund a dance centre for children. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over.
That's because I sit down with Zach and discuss the latest news on the US debt ceiling in the extended ad-free edition of The Daily Briefing, only on Nebula. That's the streaming service we're building with a bunch of our creator friends, many of whom you're likely to be already watching. That means that by signing up, you not only get an extended ad-free daily briefing every single day, you also get to watch exclusive and ad-free videos from the best educational creators on YouTube. That's things like RealLifeLore's incredible Modern Conflicts, which breaks down contemporary disputes around the world, Neo's Underexposure, which beautifully dives into complex and shadowy topics you've always wanted to know more about, or Extremities from Wendover Productions, which uncovers some of the world's most remote places.
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