he. is convicted of corruption and. becoming the 1st president in the country to receive a. kremlin

critic. still waiting to be shown. the world. the team and myself you know hello and welcome to the program. we start this hour with the growing unrest in armenia where 2. way protests both for and against the prime minister are playing out in the capital you're a phone with police attempting to keep the crowd it's a park just stars ago the pm the call addressed supporters pledged to hold early elections. on the program. or arties constantine. we're hearing quite. a tense situation there's talk of early elections break down

the main developments for us. yeah laws been going on in your of on lately and the 2 major rallies that were held both by the opposition and the supporters of a prime minister they are officially over but people are still outside on this reason we're now let's actually follow with the supporters of the prime minister because after the rally was over they started to march around the city they were shouting slogans in support of the prime minister and at the top of the of this procession there was several people who were holding a big armenian flag there were no major clashes reported that was one of the greatest concerns of that day the police they blocked off the cordon off the area and they didn't let this procession to go to the national parliament that's where

the a position. is held in its own rally and of course there were greatest concerns that this will end up in clashes but so far like i said no major skirmishes were reported now let me tell you that. he used his rally to make several major political statements and now instruments and for example he said that he offered to hold a referendum a constitutional referendum to amend the constitution and change the country's political system and to give more power to the president and another another take away from his speech was that he said that he still insists that the head of the general staff if they are meeting armed forces on a guest for a needs to quit and let me give you some back story here you see on a guest. along with other top generals he accused me called lately in basically being incompetent and of poor handling of the last war with his service john and he

called for the rest of nation of the prime minister and so for that he was accused of staging a military coup and that's when the ricin crisis the. and political political crisis starts to unfold so as for now i can tell you that the rally is still going on only i can tell you that they're pretty much go into and then but it seems like a lot lies a had in front of the country in terms of political changes and in terms of you know over common in general the. major political crisis of the last couple of years ok giving us a sense of what's happening right now in europe. off live in the armenian little. well to discuss the situation further i'm delighted to welcome to the program international affairs commentator marc rich marco always good to see you the prime minister there under huge pressure to resign we've seen today protesters storming

government buildings what's your take is his new pledge of early elections going to come the situation. well i think what's going on here is that after the defeats in the garden a kind of back. population is looking for a strong leader and pressure can only look strong if he stays in power otherwise he . appears a lame duck who is weak unable to control the situation so it's playing in power until the elections is key to his chance of actually winning them so he's happy to go even into early elections so long as he's the incumbent prime minister at the time that they're being held with all the advantages to his profile and to the understanding of liberty armenians if these in that role as i say if he wins the election he can then he will then have outflanked to the military on the other side of this equation because he will then be viewed as representing the popular will that's all about winning the elections and winning the elections all about staying

in power until they are right and that's what this takes all that's why the opposition wants her out they want him to look like a lame duck and he wants to look like a man very much in control how would he do in an election are his days numbered anyway do you think. i think the population is probably a little bit divided between the kind of pragmatists who feel that he could have done much better against the bijani forces and those who feel that he's generally cost that territory to armenia because of perhaps he is a pro washington or inflation because only he's watch the century turkish drones destroy the armenians defenses in the going to cut back but i was saying to look if drones would be shot down extremely successfully in syria i would live by the same kind of russian technology that he tried to blame only oh so the question is why didn't he use will why didn't he procure all the correct technology that would have

. depended on media mediums rather in the going to come out against those drones that would defend against in syria so it may be a political decision not to use them not even to buy them has cost the armenians the military leverage that they could have had otherwise so the question is is he responsible for such a political failure and if so should he come to the cabin and i think a lot of the population feel that he's actually today has legs in part to the comprehensiveness of the defeat is the he will take a different view to his supporters as well yet what you're just going through we've been looking marco at pictures on the screen frustration that's been bubbling away for quite a while now really and it's coming to the fore without in mind are we beyond talks diplomacy or could. do you think he could still look to cut a deal with the opposition here. i don't think so i think they see

a chance it all people going this is a place where they go all out of the military and also because essentially pushing them to be like in the military as kind of organs of the opposition he's been saying you purge the military afterwards all the opposition figures so in a sense there's a natural alliance between the opposition and the military to get rid of him and to put the blame on him all the fiasco and going to come back so really there's no advantage the opposition coming to a deal with it which would keep him off officially alive would be the probably the best chance to get rid of him and install them souls in his place fast moving developments in europe on the situation we're going to be following very closely marco thank you as always for coming on your program and sharing your thoughts international affairs commentator marco guess h. . ok to another of our headline stories today the former french president nicolas sarkozy has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to a year in jail he is the 1st former president of the country ever to have been

given a geo term sarkozy's lawyers say they will lodge an appeal r.t. france correspondent mona al gore reports from outside the court. a former french president nicolas sarkozy has been found guilty of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling he has been sentenced to 3 years in jail with 2 years suspended and you could have led friends from 2007 to 2012 had deny any wrongdoing he said he was the victim of a witch hunt by financial prosecutors the end his lawyer were found guilty of seeking to bribe judge as you bear for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had never received and this is payments from. as u.b.s. was also found guilty according to the judge the former president was said to have forged a corruption facts with the 2 man judges also said there was

a serious evidence of collaboration between the 3 men to break the law and have access to confidential information the state's case was based on wire tapes of conversations between. with prosecutors accusing him of using secret telephone lines to cover up his attempts to and filtrate the courts as he is expected to appeal against the conviction he becomes the 1st former president to appear in a court on criminal charges and it's not over for an equal as he will have to face later in a few weeks another trial with charges of illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign. journalists and political commentary elizabethtown would say believes that the spike the sentencing the matter is far from over. he's the 1st president to be condemned to jail this is a condition that he could have nation that he's already going to elt so i don't think he's jailed yet. but certainly it's the e.c.u.

also has the interesting although having been the 1st president of france to be the object of 17 different court cases 16 of which were dismissed without merit and he expects that his appeal sort of will do his luck will hold and appeal but it still isn't it's a strong setback to something that in some jurisdictions would have been thrown out of court because it was based on the almost continuous hour phone tapped in by magistrates without a specific mandate of the specific object which in french all is illegal so it's a really interesting case and that really demonstrates that french justice will be dumped as has become quite politicized in recent. simmering anger tightening covert restrictions has boiled over in ireland denmark thousands taking to the streets demanding their freedoms back.

well those protests in several e.u. countries come as there is an increasing transmission breaks over 19 here in fronts the health minister has described the situation as. the epidemic here with tens of thousands of new cases being registered every day now as a result of that over the weekend several times in france went into new weekend lockdowns and it does look as if that is going to be expanded to other across the

country here in paris the various discussing a mini 3 week lockdown it seems to many that the policy that's been in place for several months now is more working but that's not the case according to the country's director general of health the situation is obviously very tense the government has taken strong braking measures particularly with the curfew the latter works very well well the e.u. of course is still having problems with its vaccine rollout it's been slow from the start only around 8 percent of adults have beem lated across the book fall behind say they're coming to parts in the u.k. we're almost 30 percent in the there are still questions particularly over the astra zeneca vaccine the efficacy of which older people have been questions not just by phones but also by germany and as a result of thoughts many people are refusing in those countries that have not particular vaccine. so much so that something to suggest up to 85 percent in

germany have been used and possibly around 90 percent of those haven't been used in france so much so that there are calls now to give those extra time since teen younger individuals who might accept that fact see. we cannot afford the vaccine sitting around and not being used because some of those entitled to it rejected well as the e.u. is struggling to get the doses of the vaccines that people actually want to take some countries are now taking matters into their own hands let's take the czech republic for example which is declared a new nationwide state of emergency as the number of cases why is there so much so that they've decided that they might reach out and obtain the vaccine from russia there is a huge interest in the russian vaccine we cannot wait for the european medicines agencies approval the state institute for drug control must examine the

documentation and if they approve it the health ministry has to issue an exemption well the czech republic is not the only country that is already doing that hungry has been inoculated people with the sputnik the vaccine for the last month said to happen efficacy rate of around 92 percent but it hasn't yet been given regulatory approval he in europe but it seems as the vaccine continues to hold across the bloc countries now are deciding to make their own way. un human rights are demanding an international investigation into the alleged poisoning of kremlin critic alexina valmy while concluding at the same time russia was responsible something moscow has repeatedly denied let's go live now it peter all over in geneva right now peter tell us britain 1st not situation what the un ruppert tours have to say on this. well this report from the

special raw pointers wasn't just a look at what happened in their eyes to alexei novell me in the summer of 2020 on that flight from thomas can siberia over to to moscow where he had to make an emergency landing in the siberian city of armed sky after suffering an apparent poisoning this report was also essentially a tacit approval of alexina vonnie the politician the man i asked the special upon ters how they could square that support alongside the derogatory remarks made by mist in the vile me concerning migrants and ethnic minorities in russia honesty international said that they will no longer consider alexina volley a prisoner of conscience after it became clear that he advocated violence and discrimination against ethnic minorities and migrants in russia human rights belong

to all of us the best to pass into the worst us and there is no excuse no justification for the violations that mr neville only has suffered for it is his language that is used in the past it's all just a final this support that really are getting him is because he's like right tonight was being violated. of the russian foreign ministry spokeswoman has reacted to the report saying that she hopes that the un special rapporteur ters will ask to deliver materials that russia has asked from germany. we hope that after the call of the special rep ters belin will stop hiding secret material from the international community and stop editing at the formulas of the discovered substances from the reports perhaps today statements by the special rep tests will encourage our partners to end their dissent from ation campaign and start join work

which should be carried out transparently and legally. well last week the e.u. high representative for foreign affairs said that the european union would be putting in place more sanctions against russian individuals that would be targeted that they say were involved in imprisoning alexei no farley we heard from the deputy foreign minister in russia who says that they're not expecting much to come from these sanctions that they'll only serve to further deteriorate the bilateral relationship between russia and the e.u. . this is not a surprise for us the continues to move in an absolutely normal legal way this is an absolutely dead end path which destructively effects bilateral relations and a no way meets the interests of the european countries themselves. or we should hear more about those sanctions this week that's what we're expecting as soon as we do it soon as we find out more about that of course i'll be bringing it to you here

on r.t. our europe correspondent peter all of her live in geneva vess our peter thank you. for more than a year since it 1st started to take really a crippling hold on the world that poland demick has left a trail of devastation this week 2 and a half 1000000 people are dead around the 115000000 her been infected but despite that little is actually know about the longer term effects of the virus known as long cold that are to talk ourselves scheme has been sinking l. cers in a special covert documentary series. well this will show good for more than a year now humanity has been dealing with cove it keeps us understands what symptoms have been identified but only now do we start to understand that there is also a long covert use names way between 5 and 50 percent of people struggle with this disease for much longer than expected people have been treated at our hospital they

are coming back and these situations are becoming even more common than simple i got sick this is very worrying. just like how same date precisely comprehensible symptoms everything is just like in that serious of. the other one i thought that i was cured and everything would return to normal but unfortunately this was not the case i started choking felt bad and had to call a doctor again and i realized that i couldn't walk more than 100 to 150 meters i was getting tired immediately and i would get a burning feeling in my chest it would be logical if complications off the coast but it could in the most severe cases have patients who lie like this in intensive

care on ventilators but in fact this is not the case the majority of people with the so-called covert tail along a young people who have never been in intensive care and moreover have not even consulted doctors about. i did not have any fever a cough at all. then i start to cough up blood and i got a very severe pain in my leg some of the countries some symptoms were ending other was starting headaches and even congestion in my chest just by the non damage to my launce. it was just an less. it is if you are sick with something but of what exactly nominee can. definitely hits the nervous system this is its main target then which way the. small from both these occur in the vessels of the brain little haemorrhages all this becomes evident via very different symptoms sometimes rather obvious and sometimes not

a headache is something understandable and this is not due to intoxication but due to covert micro bleeding and swelling. massive weakness is also what everyone describes and what is completely unusual for other diseases visual and hearing impairment dreams become weird even hallucinogenic and techie cardia can be terrible and completely inexplicable even young people can have it. even young people who do not have any heart pathologies they go through an e.c.g. an echo the doctors find nothing. all this made us realize that this is damage to the central nervous system so the brain sends you some kind of a signal by stay sick yes something like this. every day we see more and more patients for whom kovi did not end with them leaving the hospital sometimes the consequences last for months and how long it will last is completely incomprehensible the most important thing here is not to miss the moment and see

a doctor in time. or let's move the program on but on a similar topic the use of. israel to make sure people are self isolating when they arrive in the country well it's not getting the warmest of reactions from his release policy their correspondent has been reporting from the launch of the initiative. as you can see i'm standing just outside the building in front of the arrivals hall and the security here at ben gurion international airport just outside tel aviv is not letting the media into the building the people you see behind me are journalists and ironic ironically the reason given by the security is that they don't want the media to make this into more of a story than it is and it's it is to jase that the israeli authorities know just how controversial this program that they introducing this often is now the 1st flight will be a flight from frankfurt where passengers will be given the choice to either

quarantine at an army hotel and to mention that they have been horrific stories coming out of these hotels we've heard of the alleged rape of a 13 year old girl that there's not enough food that there's not enough accommodation all people will be given the choice to quarantine at home until now the israeli police know that a lot of people have been breaking that home quarantine so what they're introducing today and what is so controversial is this bracelet that people will be os to put onto their ankle onto the wrist and it will connect with a cell phone and they'll be a sticker on the wall of the person's home and the minute they leave their home and alert will be given and ultimately the police will be notified that the person has broken home quarantine now the company that designed the technology has said that it's completely safe that there is no privacy laws being breached that they not according information they not taking pictures they say it's comfortable it's easy to wear but certainly as you mentioned it is causing a lot of controversy here in israel and raising eyebrows the rabbis in the country

say that it will not be able to be implemented over the weekend because it breaks it and just ordinary people who don't observe it have also questioned the holy just to missy of the program asking travelers to choose between military force quarantine motel and an electronic bracelet i don't even know where to start with this it is a nightmare happening in warp speed and trialed in israel before its glow. will debut these are launches pilot program to track returning passengers using electronic bracelets and the knesset passed a law allowing disclosing identities of unvaccinated to authorities watch how the pandemic continues to erode any semblance of civil rights since january the country has been in a lockdown or a pole and all borders have been closed and essentially what this has meant is that israelis who are board cannot enter the country the question of course is being awesome what will happen to stranded israelis come the 23rd of march and the

elections and there's no definitive answers being given on that as of yet the independent watchdog the israeli democracy institute has said that it is increasingly walid about the direction in which this country is headed the concern is that they rose in of the rights affected is not proportionate but rather extreme even in view of the current health challenge they stream changes in policy from one of a food open air port to complete closure without warning cation unaware citizens who traveled abroad lawfully with the full expectational that they would be able to return and without given them a chance to prepare accordingly creates intolerable human situations now the plan the program does see a 100 kids being used but this will eventually be extended to a 1000 at the same time and that of course depends on legislation at the same time we are hearing from the health ministry saying that it is investigating the whole issue and it hasn't ruled out returning to the previous mode of checking people's

cell phones and to to determine the movements and see whether or not they tossing on the coronavirus just today a few hours ago the high court of his werewolves that they need to be severely limits put on the internal security the shin bet in terms of using this method so certainly with this is a developing story and we are seeing more noise rabies raised concerns as to how the. is purporting to be stuck on a 5 at the same time seems to be typing more and more human rights and that certainly is the criticism. it just to paul is peace the israeli government tells already passed the law giving authorities access to the personal data of vaccinated people it's expected to remain in force for some 3 months officials insist it's only meant to encourage vaccination particularly among orthodox communities where. take has been slow and claim information will be used for any other purpose we've

got reaction to that from people in tel aviv. but i'm concerned that the government wants to share private medical information with institutes that are not relevant i see it as a major violation of civil rights i definitely all about it to let this information out in a lot of as an incentive to people to get vaccines and as. taking us one step closer to normal life it's very simple you know very fire people because of intake you have vaccinated and the door listings and basically the corner office and when we let them do it their way they doing you doing it strikes by size of it under the weight of lines you would drop in the streets and then and demonstrate how really had that there won't be discrimination between people who've had the vaccine in people who haven't everybody should do it and then everything will be open to everybody ok just approaching half past 8 in the evening here in moscow in this the 1st day of march i'll be back at the top of the hour with all the news

this monday i hope you'll join me then. well the pandemic no certainly no borders and islam to nationalities. has emerged we told them with the we don't look back seeing the whole world needs to be. judged as coming crisis so. we can do better we should know better. everyone is contributing each your own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created with the response has been so many good

people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together. how low in welcoming cross-talk we're all things are considered i'm peter labelle on the campaign trail joe biden said nothing would fundamentally changed he was right washington is again illegally bombing syria and why trump ism will not go away any time.