governmental rallies are held in the armenian capital with police attempting to keep the heart. in the country continues to ferment also ahead in the program. and violence erupts in several countries around europe people fight against. un human rights. international investigation into the alleged poisoning of kremlin critic alexina. it's still waiting to be shown any actual. guilty as charged former french president nicolas sarkozy is convicted of

corruption and sentenced to a year in prison. becoming the 1st former president in the country to receive a. lie from moscow this is our team my names you know me 30 minutes of news and views. tensions are running high in armenia protests both for and against the prime minister being playing out in the nation's capital. just hours ago the pm in a cold address supporters pledged to hold early elections with more on the day's developments here. in armenia. a lot has been going on in your of on lately and the 2 major rallies that were held both by the opposition and the supporters of the prime minister they are officially over but people are still

outside on the streets and we're now let's actually follow with these supporters of the prime minister because after the rally it was over they started to march around the city they were shouting slogans in support of the prime minister 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 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 of the armenian armed forces are on a guest or on needs to wait and let me give you some back story here you see. along with other top generals he accused me called parchin and lately in a 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 recent political political crisis starts to unfold it seems like a lot lies ahead 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 let's just take you through why the. recent turmoil in the country is happening the prime minister faced calls by the country's military last week to step in following months of unrest it all stems from last year's conflict with

neighboring elser by john which resulted in a peace deal that many are medians viewed as a humiliating defeat. in turn accuse the military of an attempted coup the country's top general sparked mass rallies from both supporters and opponents of the party this week later the president stepped in at over rule the p.m.'s order to fire the armed forces chief stuff. global relations unless marco gets sitch police plus union will need to cling on to power to legal action to give him any hope of winning. but what's going on here is that after the defeat in the. lenient lation is looking for a strong leader and russia can only look strong if he stays in power otherwise he's . he's a lame duck who is weak on able to control the situation so telling him power until the elections is key to his chance of actually winning them 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 as a johnny paul says and those who feel that he's generally cost that territory to armenia because of perhaps he is pro washington or inflation because only he's watch essentially drones destroy the medium's defenses even they're 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 earlier so the question is why didn't he usual why didn't he procul the correct technology that would have. depended on media the medium's rather in the going to come out against those drones that would depend against in syria. simmering anger tightening covert restrictions has boiled over in arlington denmark thousands have taken to the streets demanding their freedoms buck.

well those protest in several e.u. countries as there is an increasing transmission breaks old great 19 hearing from the health minister has just like 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 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 50 that's meeting 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. across the book fall behind say their counterparts in the u.k. we're almost at 30 percent 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 doses haven't been used in france so much so that there are pools 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 this make the vaccine from russia there's 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 for the czech republic's 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 if at this 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. of the pandemic has left a trail of devastation in its wake over the past 12 months 2 and a half 1000000 people dead some 115000000 more infected but the spike but little is still known about the longer term effects of the virus known as long it. has been seeking answers in a special documentary series. political

show good for more than a year now humanity has been dealing with coded keach of us understands what symptoms have been identified but only now do we start to understand that there is also a long cove 8 years names way between 5 and 50 percent of people struggle with this disease for much longer than expected people who have been treated at our hospital and 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 day precisely comprehensible symptoms everything is just like in that series of. the other will 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 so 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 cut in the most severe cases of 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 tale. a young people who have never been in intensive care and moreover have not even consulted doctors about. manufactured 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 consciousness some symptoms were ending other were starting headaches and even congestion in my chest despite non damage to my launce. it was just analysts. it is if you are sick with something but what

exactly nobody can tell. it definitely hits the nervous system this is its main target then which way the. small thrombosis 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 in the visual and hearing impairment dreams become weird even hallucinogenic. cardia can be terrible and completely inexplicable even young people can have it but the even young people who do not have any hope of follow jesus 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 stay sick yes something like this. every day we see more and more patients for whom 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. this is r.t. international still ahead joe biden seems to have done a u. turn on saudi arabia going easy on the kingdom's prime friends the spike us intelligence being ordered the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi live reaction all this right up to the shorts that. join me every 1st day on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of

the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then. is you'll be a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being so. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or a make of the shallowness. a

quarter of an hour into the program welcome back the u.s. president is being accused of failing to deliver on his promise to take a tough line with saudi arabia the spice american intelligence concluding that the saudi crown prince muster minded the gruesome murder of journalist jamal khashoggi washington has failed to sanction him and continues to ship arms to the kingdom let's go live now. for more take us through the biden ministrations handling of the saudis to date then indeed well viewers may recall how joe biden promised to hold saudi arabia

accountable and come down hard on them for the killing of jamal khashoggi killing that was carried out in a rather brutal manner this is what joe biden said. i said it at the time because she was in fact murdered and dismembered and i believe in the order of the crown prince and i would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them we were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are now these words came before joe biden became president but it seems things have certainly changed since he's taken office as far as arms sales to saudi arabia are concerned joe biden intends to continue selling defensive weapons to saudi arabia now it's not quite clear exactly what exactly constitutes a defensive weapon as the war saudi arabia is involved in is taking place not in

saudi arabia itself but rather in yemen furthermore when it comes to the issue of punishing the crown prince even though the f.b.i. and american intelligence agencies have come forward and said they are very sure that mohamed bin solomon the crown prince was directly responsible for the killing at this point diplomacy is the key word that has been you know being used by the biden ministration take a listen of course we reserve the right to take any action at a time and manner of our choosing i will note steve that historically the united states through democratic and republican presidents has not typically sanctioned government leaders of countries where we have diplomatic relations now what's interesting is that media outlets and voices that are generally very supportive of joe biden's actions are starting to criticize him over this take a listen to that leaders around the war. to crush dissent really don't see any

material punishment coming out of sanctioning 76 people who are not the crown prince. normally the goal of diplomacy is to make everyone happy but it seems like this is a situation where nobody is happy we've got a situation where biden supporters are certainly not happy with his moves are furthermore our we've got visa restrictions for some saudi individuals and that didn't satisfy the democrats the saudis are denying everything regarding the killing of jamal khashoggi they say it's time to move forward biden's own supporters are unhappy this is the biden style of diplomacy in our new administration. thanks very much for bringing us through our u.s. correspondent ben let's delve deeper into this with foreign 'd policy analyst robert naiman roberts at life on the program why do you think joe biden held back from punishing the crown prince is he too big to punish.

well too big so far in terms of u.s. policy in the middle east saudi arabia has for decades been keep hiller of u.s. policy in the middle east as the people in charge of u.s. policy understand it and the u.s. as promised by news promised to the war in yemen they want the saudi cooperation with it's. tremendous. challenge to change u.s. policy in the middle east when saudi arabia is the key pillar of u.s. policy so this this shift. in b.s. is disappointing but perhaps not that shocking and what's more troubling to me is that we haven't really seen the shift that we wanted to see and u.s.

policy with respect to yemen they did announce the end of u.s. military participation as you noted they do overturn a trump administration's designation who chooses a terrorist organization but they have not restored u.s. seed to all parts of yemen so they haven't even overturned the trump policy there e.d. percentage of the population lives and who to control territory the people are cut off from u.s. aid and that sets a standard for other governments there was a un conference that a disappointing response on the u.n. appeal but on top of that u.s. diplomacy i'm yemen hasn't really shifted they're still the framework of of politically and diplomatically supporting the saudi war goals even if they're not directly participating militarily and it wasn't the goal simply to

get the u.s. government to wash its hands the goal is to end the war you could hardly think though unless he does in the next number of days a better time for joe biden to actually make his point as regards the crying prince he accuse trump many times of not being tough enough on the saudis and 29 he said he's going to make the saudis into the pariah state that they are now you've got the u.s. intelligence coming out and saying that the crime prince what happened the killing christology without his implicit thumbs up so how is he any tougher is he a hypocrite in this case. well. sure i mean i guess i'm jaded enough the context of u.s. politics the charge of apocrypha the weak one see it all the time he's definitely behaving differently from what he promised not 100 percent differently perhaps because there has been some shift but this is definitely not the poor that was

promised but the story is not over yet because congress has a say in this and much of the criticism that's coming out of biden now both on response you know then why was this report released because congress. passed a law saying that this report had to be released promised congress that he would release the report in comply with the law so congress has a say here sanctions on him b.s. as a sink see in. pressuring biden further to the yemen war we know that there are tremendous institutional pressures from the foreign policy establishment the arms industry the israel lobby to keep the status quo so it's up to congress to keep the pressure from the other side to force a change in u.s. policy robert thanks very much for your time today and give us the take robert naiman foreign policy from the u.s.

this hour. human rights officials out the united nations are demanding an international investigation into the alleged poisoning of kremlin critic alexina volley ball concluding at the same time that russia was responsible something moscow has repeatedly denied our europe correspondent peter all over was at the u.n. conference in geneva. this report by the united nations special ramp on to put forward a number of conclaves about what happened to alexina vile me last summer from the investigation that they carried out the un special operators say that 5 laboratories of unequivocal improvement in their eyes that missing a volley was poisoned with a novel talking nerve agent of a type that was only available in the russian federation and could only have been administered by somebody with expert abilities namely a state actor russia denies any involvement in his poisoning this report wasn't

just a look at what had happened to mr novelli that would also serve as a tacit statement of support for the opposition figure as a politician and as a man something i question the un weapons has upon when put alongside statements that have been made by. 'd amnesty international have said that they will no longer consider alexina vilely 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 of us into the worst us and there is no excuse no justification. for the violations that mr neville only has suffered is his language that is used in the past it's all just a final this support that really are giving him is because it's like right tonight was being violated we've also had reaction to this report from the russian foreign

ministry spokeswoman who said that she hoped the u.n. would put pressure on to release documents moscow says it still hasn't been given despite requesting them from germany we hope that after the call of the special rep ters beilin will stop hiding secret material from the international community and stop editing at the formulas of the discovery steps. says from the reports perhaps today's statements by the special that protests will encourage our partners to end their disapprobation campaign and start join us which should be carried out transparently and legally last week the e.u. high representative for foreign affairs announced that there would be further sanctions against individuals in russia in relation to the elect saying of on the case we yet to find out exactly what those sanctions will entail and who exactly will be targeted but we have heard from the deputy foreign minister in russia who said that he's not expecting too much from these sanctions 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 he no way meets the interests of the european countries themselves like saying of ali took ill on a flight from siberia to moscow last summer his plane out to make an emergency landing in the city of he was eventually airlifted to berlin where he received intensive medical treatment and was subsequently diagnosed as having been poisoned with a novacek nerve agent russia denies any involvement in his poisoning but it's a case that continues to put increasing strain on russia's relations with the european union and the wider world. of a story getting a lot of people talking today the former french president nicolas sarkozy has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to a year in prison he's the 1st former president of the country ever to have been given a term circles his lawyers say they will lodge an appeal and he can also be asked

to serve the sentence on r t france's mood reports from the press corps. the 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 a suspended. will lead friends from 2007 to 2012 had to deny any wrongdoing he said he was the victim of a witch hunt by financial prosecutors. and his lawyer were found guilty of seeking to bribe judge as you bear for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader hadn't received in the suit payments from. cool as u.b.s. was also found guilty according to the judge the former president was said to have forged a corruption fact 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 a dog and with prosecutors accusing him of using secret telephone lines to cover up his attempts to and full trade the courts is expected to appeal against the conviction it's not over for and he could as he will have to face later in a few weeks another trial with charges of illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign. journalist political commentator always a military believes that the spike the sentencing the mater is far from over. the 1st president to be condemned to jail this is a condition that he could have nation that he's already going to feel so i don't think he's jailed yet. but certainly it's the see also has the interesting although that may mean 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 well during his life will hold in appeal but it still isn't it's a strong setback to something that in some jurisdictions would have been thrown out of school because it was based on the almost continuous hour phone tapped in by magistrates without a specific mandate on the specific object which in french or is illegal so it's a really interesting case and that really demonstrates that french justice has become quite as has become quite politicized in recent. yeah that is the case will be closely following here in r.t. if you'd like to delve deeper into the art or indeed any of us our stories can i recommend our website has a solid starting fresh up it's a lively debate always to be found there stay close to say this article to.

i magine are towns any watching another log del additional going underground as the united states assumes the presidency of the u.n. security council but how will the usa use its role to advance the nato military alliance allegations against nato nations are rife in a new documentary speaking truth to power charting the rise of platinum selling artists tankian of system of a down he joins me now from los angeles so welcome to this lockdown edition of going underground to tell me about.