The crew abandoned the coal carrier after it was struck by Houthi missiles, which started a fire, on June 12.
The Greek-owned Tutor, a coal carrier, has reportedly sunk in the Red Sea a week after it came under attack from Yemen’s Houthis.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), which monitors and tracks commercial shipping for owners and the military in the crucial waterway, said in an update on Tuesday that debris and oil had been sighted around the vessel’s last known location.
“The vessel is believed to have sunk in position 14″19’N 041″14’E,” UKMTO said, advising other ships to maintain caution in the area.
The Tutor was struck by missiles and an explosive-laden remote-controlled boat on June 12 off the Red Sea port of Hodeidah and had been taking on water, according to previous reports from UKMTO, the Houthis and other sources.
One crew member, believed to have been in the engine room at the time of the attacks, remains missing.
If confirmed, the Tutor would be the second ship sunk by the Houthis after the UK-owned Rubymar, which was carrying more than 41,000 tonnes of fertiliser, went down on March 2 about two weeks after being struck by Houthi missiles.
The Houthis, who are locked in a war with a Saudi Arabian-led coalition after removing Yemen’s internationally-recognised government from Sanaa in 2014, have been attacking vessels with alleged Israeli links in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023. They say the action is in solidarity with the Palestinians over Israel’s war on Gaza, in which at least 37,372 people have been killed.
Last week. the Houthis also seriously damaged the Palau-flagged Ukrainian-owned and Polish-operated Verbena, which was loaded with timbre and on its way from Malaysia to Italy.
The Verbena’s crew abandoned the ship when they were unable to contain the fire sparked by the attacks, and it is now drifting in the Gulf of Aden and vulnerable to sinking or further assaults.
Since November, the Houthis have also seized another vessel and killed three merchant sailors in separate attacks.
The attacks have disrupted global trade as ship owners reroute their vessels away from the Suez Canal to longer routes around Africa’s southern tip, adding as many as 3,500 nautical miles (6,500km) to the journey.
A post-mortem ruled out foul play in the death of Mosley, who went missing on the Greek island Symi last week.
An initial examination has determined that British television presenter Michael Mosley, whose body was found on the Greek island Symi, likely died of natural causes.
The 67-year-old’s body was found on Sunday, five days after he had gone missing while on a walk.
Mosley’s body was transferred to a state-run hospital on the nearby island of Rhodes, where an initial post-mortem examination on Monday concluded that he succumbed to natural causes.
Coroner Despina Nathena told Greece’s public channel, ERT, that Mosley’s passing did not appear to have been the result of a criminal act. Nathena could not “determine the exact cause of death” because of the delay in finding his body.
Greek police spokeswoman Konstantia Dimoglidou told the British broadcaster BBC that the initial post-mortem found no injuries on Mosley’s body that could have led to fatality.
Following a four-day search, Mosley’s body was found near the bottom of a steep slope, lying face up.
As police officers were on site, one fell on the slope and had to be carried away on a stretcher, local media reported.
Mosley’s wife said her husband took the wrong route on a hike and collapsed just short of reaching a marina in a place where his body could not easily be seen.
Symi Mayor Lefteris Papakalodoukas told ERT that the island was baking under “insufferable heat” and the area where Mosley was last sighted was “difficult because it’s very rocky”.
Mosley is best known for a string of British television programmes, including the BBC series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor and a number of documentaries about diet and exercise, including the Channel 4 show Michael Mosley: Who Made Britain Fat?.
Mosley, who studied medicine in London, also made radio appearances and was a columnist in the Daily Mail newspaper.
Michael Mosley had set off on a walk in a mountainous area in Greece on Wednesday afternoon.
A days-long search for missing British television presenter Michael Mosley has led to the recovery of a body on a Greek island, according to local authorities.
A police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency that the body was found on a rocky coast by a private boat and that formal identification was pending.
The 67-year-old went missing on the island of Symi on Wednesday afternoon after going for a walk.
His wife, Clare Bailey Mosley, who was on the island along with their four children, alerted authorities after he did not return or respond after several hours.
The AP also quoted Lefteris Papakalodoukas, the island’s mayor who was on a boat with media representatives looking for Mosley on Sunday – the fifth day of the search – as confirming the body believed to belong to Mosley was found.
The mayor said the deceased appeared to have fallen down a steep slope, stopping against a fence and lying face-up with a few rocks on top of it. The body had a leather bag in one hand, said Antonis Mystiloglou, a cameraman with state TV ERT, who was also on the boat.
Mosley is best known for a string of British television programmes, including the BBC series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor and a number of documentaries about diet and exercise, including the Channel 4 show Michael Mosley: Who Made Britain Fat?.
Mosley, who studied medicine in London, also made radio appearances and was a columnist in the Daily Mail newspaper.
Outside the United Kingdom, for his 2013 book The Fast Diet, which proposed the so-called “5:2 diet”, which promised to help people lose weight quickly by minimising their calorie intake two days a week.
He also lived with tapeworms in his guts for six weeks for the BBC documentary Infested! Living With Parasites.
Nine people from the United Kingdom and the European Union member states are facing deportation from Greece days after they took part in a protest in solidarity with Palestine at a Greek university.
A total of 28 people were arrested by Greek police during the protest and encampment at the Athens Law School on May 14 on charges including disturbing the peace, damaging property, trespass as well as violations of the laws on weapons and flares, all of which they deny.
Of those arrested, the nine UK and EU nationals have been designated as “unwanted aliens” and deemed a threat to public order and national security, facing deportation in an unusual move by authorities.
The group of lawyers representing the nine non-Greek protesters say they will challenge the decision to deport them at their trial in Athens set for Tuesday. In a statement, they asked whether the right of free movement of European citizens “only applies to tourists and investors and is suspended in the case of political action, especially if it concerns Palestine”.
According to them, the arrested protesters are currently being held in the Amygdaleza detention centre just outside Athens in “deplorable conditions” and with “no interpreters”.
In a statement to Al Jazeera, the nine non-Greek detainees said they found themselves suddenly at a deportation processing centre having been told they were being moved to another police station for document checks.
They called the decision to deport them “the heftiest punishment” the state could mete out “for the crime” of being inside a university, adding, “This revealingly fragile and audacious reaction of the Greek state still wanes in its outrageousness when considered in the context of the very reason the university was occupied: genocide.”
In response to the recent arrests and protests at the universities, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of the right-wing New Democracy party, which has been in power since 2019, said on the day of the arrests that the authorities would not allow universities to become sites for protest over Israel’s war on Gaza as has been seen in countries around the world.
In 2019, the Mitsotakis government removed decades-old legislation which previously barred security services from entering university campuses. That law had been established in the wake of a decision by the military dictatorship, which was in power from 1967 to 1974, to violently disband a historic student protest against the government by forcing its way through the gates of the Athens Polytechnic in 1973 with a tank. It is estimated that about 24 people died in the ensuing crackdown and the protest is often viewed as a key moment in the eventual downfall of the dictatorship in 1974.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in Jerusalem on October 23, 2023 [Handout: Dimitris Papamitsos/Greek Prime Minister’s Office via Reuters]
A ‘pivot’ to Israel
The detentions and the risk of deportation from Greece come amid a series of similar threats that pro-Palestinian student protesters have faced in other Western nations. In early May, the UK revoked the visa of Dana Abuqamar, a law student at the University of Manchester, over comments she had made at a protest rally last year, which were seen by many as celebrating the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 others were taken captive. She has said her comments were mischaracterised.
In the United States, where students at universities across the country have led encampments demanding that their schools divest from firms with ties to Israel, suspensions of protesters have left them at risk of potential deportation.
Yet, compared with the UK and the US, Greece has taken a pro-Palestinian stance, said Sotiris Roussos, professor in the political science department at the University of Peloponnese. Greece was among the last European countries to formally recognise Israel as a state, a stance stemming from the country’s reliance on Arab powers in the wake of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Roussos said.
Former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who was in power through most of the 1980s, also enjoyed a close relationship with the former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat.
However, since the 2000s, Greece has adopted a more pro-Israeli policy, Roussos says. “This strategic shift – you can describe it as a pivot – to Israel is because Greece thought that Israel, Cyprus and Greece could form an alliance in the eastern Mediterranean,” said Roussos.
Mitsotakis, who was re-elected last year, has consistently expressed his support for Israel’s right to defend itself in line with international law and met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem soon after October 7, calling him a “true friend”.
“We stand at this point where this government thinks that if it stands firmly with the Israelis and the Americans, this will increase the defensive capacity of Greece vis-a-vis Turkey,” Roussos said.
However, despite Greece’s current political stance, there appears to be growing support for the Palestinian cause, particularly among Greek youth. “You can sense that there is an increase of sympathy for the Palestinians and the Palestinian state,” Roussos said.
Since October 7, there have been protests on the streets of Athens and other parts of Greece in support of Palestine. On May 17, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and the general secretary of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, said in a statement that the administrative detention and deportation of the nine non-Greek citizens was “unprecedented” and demanded their release.
The Greek police had not responded to a request for comment by Al Jazeera at the time of publication.
Athens, Greece – Nine Egyptian men accused of criminal responsibility in the Pylos shipwreck that led to the deaths of more than 550 people on June 14, 2023, will go on trial in Greece on Tuesday.
The accused are alleged to be members of a criminal organisation, facilitating illegal entry into Greece and intentionally causing the shipwreck.
But they have all stated they were not smugglers or responsible for the shipwreck, claiming instead to be simply trying to reach Europe like the others on board.
Organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called the trial proceedings rushed and improper.
“The Pylos 9 defendants were unjustly arrested and charged with smuggling offences based on limited and questionable evidence,” Marion Bouchetel, a member of Legal Centre Lesvos, which is defending the accused, told Al Jazeera.
The group has called the trial an instance of the “systematic criminalisation of migrants in Greece”.
If the nine men are convicted, they face several life sentences.
The shipwreck
The Adriana fishing trawler, which was crammed with as many as 750 people, mostly from Egypt, Pakistan, Syria, and Palestine, set sail from Libya on June 9, 2023.
Four days later, passengers started sending out distress calls that the boat had stopped moving. The Greek coastguard, notified by NGOs, the Italian coastguard, and Europe’s border agency Frontex of the location of the ship, reached Adriana late on June 14 night.
In the first hours of June 15, the Adriana capsized.
Survivor testimonies allege that the Hellenic coastguard attempted to tow the boat, causing it to flip over, and that it did not sufficiently act to save the lives of those in the water.
The Hellenic coastguard has denied both of these allegations.
There were 104 survivors.
An undated handout photo provided by the Hellenic coastguard shows refugees crammed on board a boat during a rescue operation, before their boat capsized on the open sea, off Greece, June 14, 2023 [File: Hellenic Coast Guard/Handout via Reuters]
“Our argument, following the testimonies of the survivors, is that these nine people are not responsible for the sinking at the very least. The coastguard is responsible for the sinking,” said Stefanos Levidis, one of the lead researchers in an investigation into the shipwreck, who will testify as an expert witness for the defence.
Levidis’s group, Forensis, which cross-referenced testimonies from 26 survivors with videos and photographs of the ship, vessel tracking and flight path data, satellite imagery, as well as the logs and testimonies of the captain of the coastguard vessel – concluded that the coastguard was responsible for the sinking as it did not properly mobilise other nearby ships, towed the Adriana, retreated causing waves, and then left those who had been thrown overboard as the ship capsized alone at sea for at least 20 minutes.
A joint Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report, based on testimonies from representatives of the Hellenic coastguard, the Greek police, and nongovernmental organisations, similarly concluded that the coastguard did not respond to distress calls properly and that allegations about its role in the sinking merited a full investigation.
An investigation in Greece’s naval court into the Hellenic coastguard’s role in the shipwreck has yet to be concluded. The defence team has not been given access to the evidence collected.
The Hellenic coastguard has repeatedly stated that those on board refused assistance before the boat capsized, denying any responsibility for the sinking as it maintains it fulfilled its life-saving duties.
Beyond this, Levidis noted that there are questions about the evidence collected by the Hellenic coastguard after the sinking.
“The process of evidence collection coming from the authorities was lacking, at the very least, if not tampered with,” he said.
The Hellenic coastguard ship PPLS920 was not transmitting data regarding its movements that day.
The optical and thermal cameras on board the ship did not record anything “even though it’s a state-of-the-art, brand-new, very expensive vessel”, said Levidis.
The phones of the survivors that were confiscated after the sinking were lost. They were later found inexplicably more than a month later on a different Hellenic coastguard vessel on the Greek island of Kythira, but were ultimately not examined.
The phones of the coastguard crew were confiscated two months after the incident, and there are several inconsistencies in the bridge logs of the PPLS920 and the captain’s testimony.
“There’s a real risk that these nine survivors could be found guilty on the basis of incomplete and questionable evidence given that the official investigation into the role of the coastguard has not yet been completed,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Credible and meaningful accountability for one of the worst shipwrecks in the Mediterranean needs to include a determination of any liabilities of Greek authorities.”
The case file
The prosecution charges are based largely on testimonies taken from nine survivors.
According to the defence lawyers, these testimonies appear to be “widely copy-pasted from each other”.
“These testimonies not only largely resemble each other but were also taken in questionable circumstances, while the survivors were detained in a warehouse in Kalamata, immediately following their rescue from the deadly shipwreck. All these elements raise serious concern about their reliability and even authenticity,” said Bouchetel of Lesvos Legal Centre.
The Legal Centre Lesvos argues the investigation should have also included communications from the Hellenic coastguard boat, data from nearby planes, and the examination of the mobile phones which the coastguard confiscated from the survivors.
The defence’s request for further evidence to be included in the case was rejected by the interrogator judge, and the case file was closed after six months.
“Despite the mounting evidence of Greece’s responsibility in this tragedy, blame was immediately put on the survivors themselves,” said Bouchetel.
“This reversal of situation is typical of the troubling criminalisation pattern happening in Greece: migrants are unjustly convicted of smuggling offences, often based on limited and questionable evidence, in order to cover up state crimes, violence, and non-rescue by the border authorities.”
Athens, Greece – On the evening of April 1, a Monday, 28-year-old Kyriaki Griva’s ex-partner stabbed her to death outside a police station in northern Athens.
She was the fifth woman to be killed by an ex or partner this year in Greece.
Griva had just left her local police station, which she visited in fear of her former boyfriend, who had been loitering near her house.
She had previously filed formal complaints against him but on this occasion, declined to do so. While her reasoning is not clear, victims of domestic violence often choose not to make formal complaints because they are terrified of repercussions, worry the process may be triggering and have little faith in agencies that are meant to provide security.
Griva requested a police escort back home that night. She was directed to a police hotline, which she called. An operator reportedly told her that “patrol cars are not a taxi service”.
Griva was then killed shortly afterwards in the vicinity of Agioi Anargyroi station.
The 39-year-old suspect was imprisoned awaiting trial; he is reportedly being monitored in a psychiatric ward.
In response to the murder, the Minister for Civil Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis promised an in-depth investigation and expressed support for including the term femicide within the Greek penal code – a point campaigners have long pushed for – although he added that this would ultimately be up to the Ministry of Justice.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rebutted criticism of his police minister saying, “the fault cannot always lie at the top when something goes wrong in the state”, but acknowledged that the government needed to do more.
Meanwhile, lawyers representing Griva’s family have since called for the officers who spoke to Griva that day to be investigated for potential negligence and manslaughter.
A woman holds a sign saying ‘We are not all here, the murdered are missing’ during protests against femicides in Athens [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Charities and families of victims have long accused Greek authorities of not taking domestic violence seriously enough.
In December 2023, the same month a woman was shot dead on the island of Salamina by her partner at her mother’s house having reported him to the police, a Greek artist’s work alluding to femicide was removed from the Greek consulate in New York.
A government spokesperson said Georgia Lale’s “Neighbourhood Guilt”, which depicted the Greek flag made with pink bedsheets, was taken down because the consulate space should remain neutral and “there are some things that are sacred above all, one of them is our flag”.
Lale said in response that they were “saddened” that their work was misinterpreted.
“Victims of femicide are heroes of the fight for freedom and life in Greece and internationally,” they said.
Katerina Kotti, the mother of Dora, sits in the living room of the family’s house in Rhodes [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Katerina Kotti, the mother of 31-year-old Dora Zacharia, who was killed by her partner on the island of Rhodes in September, 2021, told Al Jazeera that she felt “rage, anger and disappointment” at the news of each new femicide.
Zacharia was killed outside her parents’ home.
“This cannot happen again, how often will this keep happening?” Kotti asked. “My soul bleeds that another girl who was full of dreams, in love with life, was lost, another family have lost the ground under their feet and will have to struggle to put the pieces back together, this is very hard to do, they will never get over the loss of their child.”
Of Griva’s killing outside a police station, she said: “Of course, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions or generalise but the authorities should pay more attention and evaluate each case more meticulously.”
Kotti said that boys especially should be taught from a young age that “they’re not entitled to anyone and that no means no, no one belongs to anyone else”.
Protests and vigils have sprung up across Greece in recent weeks, with some carrying protest banners written with the alleged words of the police officer before Griva was murdered: “The patrol car is not a taxi.”
There has also been an uptick in reporting of domestic violence cases – and arrests.
Anna Vouyioukas, a social scientist, gender equality expert and advocacy officer at Diotima, a centre for gender rights and equality in Greece, told Al Jazeera that it was “obvious that femicides may be the result of institutional violence as the state does not provide guarantees to women, and does not create conditions of safety in the community, at home, at work, in the public space and not even in the close vicinity of a police station”.
Vouyioukas said despite a spike in domestic violence cases as shown in the police’s own data, “gender-based crimes are not taken seriously by law enforcement authorities, at least not in all cases”.
She said that from 2020 to 2021, the number of women domestic violence victims increased by almost 73 percent, and from 2021 to 2022 there was a rise of 37 percent.
Vouyioukas urged Greece to adopt a legal recognition of femicide in the penal code, which she said would “make the phenomenon visible and give prominence to its social and gender dimension”.
“It is a crime committed on the basis of gender discrimination and unequal power relations,” she said, as she also called for further support for survivors and more training for police officers.
Kotti is part of a group of grieving families that have lost female relatives to domestic violence.
They would like to see life sentences for convicts that offer no prospect of release.
“We should tell it as it is,” she said. “Those who have had a life sentence are the women themselves and then the families who are forced to live in their absence.”
A framed photo of Dora next to a vigil lamp, a traditional Greek memorial practice for the dead [Anna Pantelia/Al Jazeera]
Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis discusses Greece’s close ties with Israel, peace efforts in the Middle East.
Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis emphasises his country’s robust defence ties with Israel amid its war on Gaza. He asserts now is not the time to revisit their largest defence deal, including a $1.6bn contract for Greek air force training.
Gerapetritis highlights Greece’s peace efforts in the Middle East and stresses the importance of high defence spending due to geopolitical dynamics and Greece’s extensive Mediterranean coastline.
The Greek foreign minister, Giorgos Gerapetritis, talks to Al Jazeera.
Athens turned orange as winds deposited sand from North Africa on the Greek capital.
Skies over southern Greece turned an orange hue on Tuesday as dust clouds blown across the Mediterranean Sea engulfed the Acropolis and other Athens landmarks.
Strong winds carried the dust from the Sahara Desert, giving the atmosphere of the capital a Martian-like filter amid the last hours of daylight.
The skies were predicted to clear on Wednesday as winds shift and move the dust, with temperatures dipping.
On Tuesday, the daily high in parts of the southern island of Crete topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), more than 20C (36F) higher than temperatures registered across northern Greece.
The winds over recent days have also fanned unseasonal wildfires in the south.
The fire service reported on Tuesday that a total of 25 wildfires had broken out across the country in the past 24 hours.
Three people were arrested on the Aegean Sea resort island of Paros on suspicion of accidentally starting a scrub blaze, it said. No significant damage or injuries were reported, and the fire was quickly contained.
Greece suffers devastating, and often deadly, forest blazes every summer. Last year, the country recorded the European Union’s largest wildfire in more than two decades.
Persistent drought, combined with high spring temperatures, has raised fears of a particularly challenging period for firefighters in the coming months.
Athens, Greece – It was April 2022 when Homayoun Sabetara finally told his daughters he was in a Greek jail cell.
Sabetara, an Iranian national, had been arrested in August 2021 in Thessaloniki after driving a vehicle across the Turkish-Greek border.
Sabetara says he was coerced into driving it into Greece and transporting the seven other people found inside. In September 2022, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for smuggling in a trial that campaigners have said was unfair and Sabetara did not fully understand.
His daughter Mahtab Sabetara is now focussed on raising awareness for an appeal trial that starts on Monday in Thessaloniki and calling attention to the plight of other asylum seekers apparently in the same position.
“I found it quite shocking to go through this myself and figure out that this is the destiny of many people who are now in prison because of the same allegations,” Mahtab Sabetara told Al Jazeera over the phone from Germany, where she lives.
“I thought it would be, of course, a good thing to do for my father, so that we can raise awareness for his trial but at the same time to shed light on some other cases which are not very well known.”
Mahtab Sabetara said she hopes to push for a larger political change.
“It’s not just an isolated thing. It’s a systematic problem which affects many people and which is directly related to Europe’s migration policies,” she said.
“I always make this example: When the war in Ukraine started and people in Germany, for example, went to the Polish borders and took some people in their cars, those people were never called smugglers. The point was that these people were doing a moral thing.”
She added that in her view, “most of the people who are being called smugglers are actually people on the move themselves, and in many cases, the fact is that they didn’t have any other choice.”
Mahtab Sabetara said that since her father’s arrest, he has struggled to fully understand what is happening to him and why he is in jail.
“He fled Iran at a moment where he did not have any other alternatives. He never thought that this would be the outcome.”
The European Commission has made tackling smuggling one of its top priorities and in 2023 proposed legislation that it said would go after the people smugglers.
“We are stepping up the fight against migrant smuggling and protecting the people from falling into the hands of criminals,” European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said in November. “We are going after the smugglers, not the smuggled.”
Rights campaigners, however, have long argued that innocent people invariably get caught up in this crackdown, pointing to cases across Europe in which refugees and migrants have faced significant jail time for being found at the wheel of a boat or a car after being forced into the position.
Dimitris Choulis from the Human Rights Legal Project, a legal aid organisation, will be one of the lawyers representing Homayoun Sabetara in court.
“The first hope is to have a fair trial, a trial where all the procedural laws will be respected, and secondly is for Homayoun to go out of prison and be reunited with his family,” he told Al Jazeera.
Choulis, who is based on the Greek island of Samos, one of the main sea arrival points for refugees and migrants in Greece, said he has seen several cases of asylum seekers being wrongly accused of smuggling.
“The exceptional thing in this case is that Homayoun’s two family members have found the tools and the strength to fight injustice,” he said.
“It’s very important to understand that all these people have names and have families – to understand that they are not just statistics.”
A 2023 report by Borderline Europe, an NGO, noted that people convicted of smuggling form the second largest group in Greek prisons, of whom about 90 percent are foreign nationals.
It said being the only person in a group who spoke English is sometimes the reason people found themselves charged.
Erik Marquardt, a member of the European Parliament for the Greens/European Free Alliance who commissioned the report, alleged in a statement sent to Al Jazeera that the Greek government is “knowingly misusing laws” designed to combat trafficking to “persecute and punish those who flee to its shores in search of protection”.
“This dangerous strategy of deterrence is not about punishing criminals, it’s about criminalising migration. The Greek government puts people in prisons whose only crime is to seek asylum in Europe and in doing so, it is attacking its own rule of law and endangering its democracy,” he said.
Greek ministers have consistently defended a “strict but fair” migration policy and spoken of the importance of tackling people smuggling and smuggling networks to protect Greece’s borders.
At the time of publishing, Greek authorities had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Mahtab Sabetara, meanwhile, continues to campaign for her father’s acquittal, recalling a man full of humour who she used to play chess with.
“He’s a very positive person,” she said. “Or he used to be a very positive person.”
Athens, Greece – For General Ben Hodges, who once commanded NATO forces in Europe, the worst-case scenario for Ukraine is for Western powers to “keep doing what we’re doing, exactly right now”.
He told Al Jazeera in an interview on the sidelines of the recent Delphi Economic Conference in Greece that a paralysed US Congress, over-cautious White House administration and fearful allies in Europe constitute a Russian marketing success.
Take the German refusal to send Ukraine 500km-range (310-mile) Taurus missiles.
“That is 99 percent because [Olaf Scholz] is convinced that if [Donald] Trump is [US] president, then he will withdraw the nuclear shield from Europe and turn his back on NATO,” said Hodges, referring to the former US Republican leader who is running again this year.
“Germany then, unlike France and the UK if it ended up in a conflict with Russia over Taurus, would be without a nuclear deterrent.”
Or take the administration of US President Joe Biden, which Hodges described as “unduly scared”.
(Al Jazeera)
“They think that if Ukraine liberates Crimea, that will lead to the collapse of the regime [of Russian president Vladimir Putin], or that Putin will think he has no choice but to use a nuclear weapon to prevent that from happening,” said Hodges. “I think those are two false, unfounded fears. I hope it does lead to the collapse of the Putin regime. It’s not something we should fear. It’s something we should plan.”
That certain Western leaders believe Russia’s nuclear threats are likely to produce a split in the Western alliance, with less cautious leaders providing more extreme or provocative forms of help to Ukraine, said Hodges.
“I think there is a very real possibility that certain European countries will insert themselves,” he said. “I can imagine Poland, even France, some others, in some way saying, ‘We can’t afford not to do it’.”
French President Emmanuel Macron caused Russia to renew its nuclear threats after he suggested last month that NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine should not be ruled out.
Macron’s generals and foreign policy wonks later finessed that message, suggesting NATO troops could only ever play a supporting role, and not participate in active combat.
Russian forces ‘do not have the capability’
Hodges was deeply sceptical about how well Russia has succeeded in conventional warfare.
Since the fall of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s east on February 17, its forces have “oozed” forward, swallowing several villages, as Ukrainian forces have performed tactical retreats.
“Here we are in April, and [the Russians] are oozing out. Why is that? I think it’s because that’s the best the Russians can do. They do not have the capability to knock Ukraine out of the war.”
Russia, he said, lacked the ability to equip large armoured formations that could move rapidly, with supporting artillery, engineers and logistics.
“I don’t think it exists. That’s why I feel fairly confident that the mission for [Ukrainian] general Oleksandr Syrskyi for the next several months is to stabilise this as much as he can to buy time for Ukraine to grow the size of the army, to rebuild the defence industry of Ukraine, as well as give us time to find more ammunition for them. I think of 2024 as a year of industrial competition. So the army has got to buy time.”
Ben Hodges, pictured recently in Athens [John Psaropoulos/Al Jazeera]
On the day Hodges spoke to Al Jazeera, Ukraine’s parliament passed a new mobilisation law that aimed to raise about 300,000 new troops and bring the standing army to 1.2 million.
Contrary to the punitive measures for avoiding the draft that had circulated, Ukraine doubled down on incentives in the new law, such as free downpayments and lower mortgage rates for front-line soldiers, and a payout of $400,000 if they are killed.
In what may be groundbreaking practice for a European army, Ukraine is also offering incentives for battlefield successes.
“If you damage a Russian weapon you can get from 12,000 hryvnias ($300) to 900,000 hryvnias ($22,700) depending on the weapon and whether you destroyed or took it,” Ukrainian parliamentarian Yulia Klymenko told Al Jazeera.
“For example, if you get a Russian tank, you get [almost] a million hryvnias. And we have enough tractors to steal things.”
In the early days of the war, images of Ukrainian soldiers towing Russian tanks that had run out of fuel using farming tractors were shared widely on social media. These were reconditioned to fight for Ukraine.
Hodges wants Ukraine’s Western allies to closely participate in Ukraine’s bravery and innovative spirit, rather than merely cheerleading it.
The attitude he suggests is simply for allies to adopt Ukraine’s strategic objective – restoring the 1991 borders.
“Nobody believes” the US president any more when he often encourages Ukraine with phrases such as “We’re with you for as long as it takes”, said Hodges.
“‘We’re going to do what it takes’. That’s a statement of a strategic aim that then allows the development of a policy.”
That policy should include giving Ukraine immediately any available old inventory and diverting some new weapons under construction for export.
For instance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently said Ukraine needs 25 Patriot launchers to cover air defence gaps across the entire country.
“The Swiss are the next in line to buy 12 different [Patriot] launchers. The president can say to Raytheon, ‘I’ll protect you in terms of liability, we’ll work with the Swiss, tell them to stand fast, prioritise to Ukraine’,” suggested Hodges.
Russia appears to have done something similar with India, holding back two S-400 air defence systems it was to deliver to New Delhi this year.
Restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders would include winning back Crimea, the territory Putin annexed in February 2014. “Whoever controls Crimea wins,” said Hodges.
“From here the Russians … can control any part of southern or eastern Ukraine.”
Russia has demonstrated this repeatedly, launching missile and drone attacks on Odesa, Kherson and Zaporizhia from airfields in Crimea.
Hodges clearly believes this war is winnable.
He summed up his attitude: “Stop coming up with excuses, and stop our self-deterrence and hesitating.”
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