Russian forces have begun their biggest military exercise in the Caucasus since the war with Georgia last year.

More than 8,000 troops are taking part in the manoeuvres near the Georgian border, which Georgia has called "a pure provocation from Russia".

Last month Nato angered Russia by staging exercises in Georgia itself.

Although Nato and Russia have just agreed to resume military ties, analysts say the latest exercises are a clear warning from Moscow to the West.

Military experts in Moscow say the message is that the Caucasus is still part of Russia’s sphere of influence, says the BBC’s correspondent in Moscow, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes.

RUSSIAN EXERCISES

• 8,500 military personnel
• 200 tanks
• 450 armoured vehicles
• 250 pieces of artillery

The war games are due to end on the day US President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow for a summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Military sources are also quoted as saying the exercises would help to "cool down the fantasies of some warmongers", in a clear reference to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, whom Moscow blames for starting last year’s war, says our correspondent.

People frightened

Tensions in the region are still high: Russia maintains heavy military presences in Georgia’s two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and has recognised them as independent.

The United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are about to pull their monitors out of Georgia because Russia has blocked any renewal of their mandates to work in the region.

Twenty OSCE military monitors, who have been conducting patrols near South Ossetia, made their last tour on Friday.

Meanwhile 130 UN observers who have been monitoring the administrative boundary between Abkhazia and Georgia will leave in the next three months.

The OSCE’s head of mission, Terje Hakkala, warns that people in the region feel vulnerable.

"The villages close to the border line are still insecure and people feel frightened. During the night there is still shooting going on, sometimes even looting going on," he told the BBC.

The International Crisis Group last week warned that the pullout by the UN and OSCE would fuel tensions.

It also pointed out that Russia had yet to honour its side of the August ceasefire agreement by withdrawing its troops back to their pre-war positions.</p

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Ukraine is opening up part of its old KGB archive, declassifying hundreds of thousands of documents spanning the entire Soviet period.

But the move to expose Soviet-era abuses is dividing Ukrainians, the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Kiev.

Deep in the bowels of Ukraine’s former KGB headquarters there is a deathly silence. Thousands of boxes, piled floor to ceiling, line the walls. Each box is carefully numbered and each one contains hundreds of documents: case notes on enemies of the former Soviet state.

Behind each number, there is a story of personal tragedy.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, the chief archivist, pulled out a brown cardboard folder stuffed full of documents: case number 4076. At the centre of the case is a letter, dated 1940 and addressed to "Comrade Stalin, the Kremlin, Moscow".

"Dear Iosif Vissarionovich," the letter starts. Nikolai Reva wanted Stalin to know the facts about the great famine of 1932-33, when millions died as a result of the Soviet policy of forced collectivisation.

Like many at the time, Mr Reva believed that Stalin was being kept in the dark, and that if only he knew what was happening, he would surely put a stop to it.

But his letter landed him in the Gulag. He was eventually rehabilitated – 25 years later.

Many met a harsher fate.

Leafing through one of many macabre photo albums, Mr Viatrovych pointed to a picture of Ivan Severin, shot in the head by the Soviet security services. Under the picture, in very neat handwriting, is written: "Liquidated, 3 April 1947".

Criminal prosecution

Mr Viatrovych and his team are helping people to find out what happened to relatives and loved ones, often decades after they disappeared.

But the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), now in charge of the files, is declassifying them selectively.

They are concentrating on older cases, like that of the "liquidated" Mr Severin, who was part of a guerrilla campaign against Soviet rule in western Ukraine after World War II.

The authorities are preparing to mount a criminal prosecution in relation to the famine, or Holodomor, as it is known in Ukraine, though it is doubtful whether there is anyone still alive to stand in the dock.

But SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko hopes this is just the beginning.

"As soon as Russia starts to open and uncover its archives, there will be more and more truth about the real history," he said. At the moment, he added, Russia is not being especially co-operative.

But there is another obstacle to complete disclosure, and that is the Ukrainian Security Service itself. They are the ones deciding which files to declassify.

I put it to Mr Nalyvaichenko that the SBU is, after all, a successor to the KGB. He came out on the defensive.

"First and most important for me – we are not a successor to the KGB. That’s according to the law," he said.

Could he state categorically that no-one working for the SBU today had formerly worked for the KGB

He could not, admitting that 20% of his employees were former KGB officers. Some analysts in Ukraine believe that is a conservative figure.

It seems unlikely that SBU officers who worked for the Soviet KGB in the 1970s and 80s will be enthusiastic about declassifying documents that could incriminate them. Even if, as Mr Nalyvaichenko pointed out, the SBU is trying to recruit younger staff.

‘Not worth it’

But not all young Ukrainians have an exclusively negative view of their 20th-Century history.

"To start a process of lustration after 18 years of independence would lead society to the brink of civil war"

Dmytro Tabachnyk
Historian and opposition MP

In Kiev, there is a vast monument to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany: a sprawling bronze relief of soldiers bearing guns and bayonets.

"We love our history," said Svitlana, a young schoolteacher from the southern city of Odessa, on an outing with her class.

She was not keen for the children in her charge to be forced to examine the darker chapters of Soviet history.

"The past is the past," she said. "The history of the famine, the killings, all the things Stalin did. I don’t think we should bring them up. There’s enough violence today as it is. If we start blaming each other… It’s just not worth it."

‘Witch hunt’

The idea of airing the past as part of a healing process, and excluding members of the former regime from positions of authority – a process known as "lustration" – is being actively promoted by some in the Ukrainian administration.

But it is highly controversial. Dmytro Tabachnyk, a historian and opposition lawmaker, thinks the notion is absurd.

"It’s a witch hunt," he said. "To start a process of lustration after 18 years of independence would lead society to the brink of civil war."

In a forest just outside Kiev, the tree trunks are tied with thousands of white scarves.

The scarves are embroidered in the traditional Ukrainian way, with red-and-black geometric patterns, and each one symbolically represents a life lost to Soviet oppression.

Under Stalin, the Soviet secret police would bury executed political prisoners at Bykivnia. No-one knows exactly how many bodies lie buried in this wood, but some estimates put the figure at more than 200,000.

But, says Nico Lange, the German director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Kiev, Ukrainians must stop blaming the Russians for their past, and start looking inward.

"Ukrainians have a tendency to perceive themselves as only victims of those historical processes," he says.

"But coming to terms with the past really starts when you start uncovering also your own involvement: the oppressions by your own state, the offenders who are from your own people. If you do this work, this very painful work, the truth will finally set you free. And you will not invite new dictators to oppress you again."

The Germans have experience of confronting their own past, both following World War II, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But it will take a lot of united political will for such a process to get under way in Ukraine.

And it may be that, for the moment, there are still too many people alive and in positions of power, who were involved with the Soviet regime in one way or another.</p

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Spain has the highest proportion of immigrants of any EU country – most are from Latin America and Eastern Europe. But as boom turns to bust, Spain is rethinking its open-door policy, as the BBC’s European Affairs correspondent Oana Lungescu reports.

With its soaring roof and light-filled spaces, Madrid’s Barajas airport is a sign of the good times Spain has enjoyed.

But spend some time in the departure lounge and you can see the signs of the economic downturn.

There is raw emotion at the departure gates. Airlines say 25,000 Latin Americans have bought one-way tickets home.

I met Pilar, from Ecuador, just after she had waved farewell to her sister.

"A lot of my friends and relatives have gone back," she says.

"It’s better to be in Ecuador with your loved ones and enough to eat, than here without work."

In the past decade, five million foreign workers have arrived in Spain – making up 10% of the population.

But with unemployment reaching almost 17%, immigrants are now among the first to lose their jobs.

The Spanish government is encouraging them to go back home by offering jobless Latin Americans money in exchange for a promise not to return to Spain for at least three years.

It may sound attractive, but Pilar says not many are interested.

"There’s too much bureaucracy. They want to be able to return," she explains.

‘Crisis in Romania’

Spain’s authorities confirm that only around 4,000 Latin Americans have taken up the offer.

But now a similar plan is being considered for more than 70,000 unemployed Romanians.

"What Spain is trying to do is to take Romanian unemployed out of the Spanish statistics and move them over to the Romanian statistics"

Gheorghe Gainar
President of Alcala’s Romanian cultural association

For the first time, an EU country is actively trying to persuade EU citizens from other member-states to leave.

I took a train to Alcala de Henares, a medieval city not far from Madrid. It is the birthplace of the writer Cervantes, and is also famous for its cathedral and other historic buildings.

But there is another reason the name of the city is widely known in Spain.

One in 10 people here are from Romania.

Alcala has the biggest Romanian community in Spain, complete with several shops, bars and transport businesses.

In the window of a grocery, the Romanian and Spanish flags are proudly on display, next to a poster advertising the recent European election – in which several Romanians ran on the lists of mainstream Spanish parties.

Inside, the shelves are stacked with Romanian produce, including typical cheese made from sheep’s milk, and spicy salami. Every transaction is conducted in Romanian.

At the Hispanic-Romanian centre round the corner, the Spanish language class is well attended, and the students have no plans to go back to Romania.

"Not in the near future," one woman says.

"There’s a crisis in Romania too. If we get jobs there, we’ll go back, but as it is, we won’t." Several people nod their heads vigorously in agreement.

‘Big mistake’

One of the main reasons Romanians were keen to join the EU in 2007 was freedom of movement.

Under EU rules, workers from member countries can travel freely across the continent in search of jobs. It is estimated that more than two million Romanians have travelled to Spain and Italy, whose languages are – like Romanian – rooted in Latin.

But some are starting to head back.

Didi Subtirel, a broad-shouldered man in a flowery shirt, told me he could not find work in construction any more, and had problems paying his rent.

He came to Spain six years ago after losing his job as a metalworker in central Romania. He saved enough money to build a house in his hometown in Romania, and bring over two of his four sons.

But now Didi is desperate to go back to his wife – and bitterly regrets coming to Spain.

"It was the biggest mistake I have made in my life," he says.

"The most stupid decision possible. If I manage to get some work, I think I’ll be home in Romania by Christmas, so I can slaughter the pig and look after my family. That’s my hope, God willing."

"We’re not trying to shift the statistics so that Spain’s employment rate looks better or to get rid of anyone"

Javier Orduna
Senior government official

Spain’s tide of migrants may be reversing, but it is a trickle rather than a flood.

In a bar next to a church where an Eastern Orthodox mass is held every Sunday, Gheorghe Gainar, the president of the local Romanian cultural association in Alcala, said many were embarrassed to speak about going back because they thought of it as an admission of failure.

But familiar faces are disappearing.

"We don’t see them any more," Mr Gainar explains.

"After mass on Sunday, we usually come to this bar, so we notice if somebody’s missing. When I ask where they are, people say they had to leave because they had no more work."

But Mr Gainar is dismissive about the Spanish scheme to offer Romanians money to return.

"What Spain is trying to do is to take Romanian unemployed out of the Spanish statistics and move them over to the Romanian statistics.

"But the Spanish unemployment benefits are higher than a Romanian salary, so it’s better for them to stay here in Spain than go home to Romania."

At the Spanish ministry for labour and immigration, the director general, Javier Orduna, is considering various options, including financial contributions from the EU and Romania.

He agrees that unless they are offered help, Romanians simply will not go back. But he denies that the planned return scheme is just an attempt to massage the figures.

"Of course the crisis affects all of Europe, Romania too," he says.

"But the Romanian unemployment rate is only 5.5%, while in Spain it’s nearly 17%.

"We’re not trying to shift the statistics so that Spain’s employment rate looks better or to get rid of anyone, we’re just trying to reorganise the labour market."

No-one knows how many Romanians have gone home. Some who did leave are now back in Spain, or return every three months to collect unemployment benefits. In Alcala, more seem to be planning to stay than to leave.

And, in a Europe without borders, there is little the Spanish government can do to send them packing.

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Russia and Nato have agreed to resume co-operation on security issues, after nearly a year of difficult relations.

The deal came at a meeting in Greece of foreign ministers from the two sides.

Ties deteriorated sharply in 2008 after Russia’s brief conflict with Georgia. Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said differences over the issue remained.

But he said Nato and Russia would nonetheless resume co-operation on issues such as Afghanistan, drug trafficking and piracy.

"We have restarted our relations at a political level, we also agreed to restart the military-to-military contacts which had been frozen since last August," the Nato secretary-general told a news conference in Corfu.

Fundamental differences still remained on Georgia, he said, but the two sides agreed "not to let disagreements bring the whole train to a halt".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the agreement "to a certain extent a positive development".

But he said Nato had to accept Russia’s recognition of the independence of Georgia’s separatist regions.

"All have to accept the new realities and [that] the decisions taken by Russia after the conflict are irreversible," he said.

Russia and Georgia fought a short war in August 2008. Georgia tried to retake its breakaway region of South Ossetia by force after a series of lower-level clashes with Russian-backed rebels.

Russia launched a counter-attack and the Georgian troops were ejected from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second breakaway region, days later.

Moscow has backed both regions’ declarations of independence.

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A breakaway group of Roman Catholic traditionalists has ordained three men as priests, defying the Vatican.

The Society of St Pius X (SSPX), which split from the Vatican in 1970, argues that ordinations are necessary as the Church is facing a decline in clergy.

In January this year, Pope Benedict XVI revoked the 21-year excommunication of four bishops in the Swiss-based group.

But the Vatican said the society still had no status in the Church and any ordinations would be illegitimate.

Despite the warning from Rome, the SSPX went ahead on Saturday with the ordination of three men from Poland, Switzerland and Sweden at a ceremony held in Latin in Zaitzkofen in Germany.

The SSPX is also planning to ordain priests and deacons in Switzerland and the US.

Controversial bishop

The Pope’s decision to lift the excommunications was an attempt to prevent a wider rift with the traditionalists of the SSPX, says BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.

But it provoked an angry reaction as one of the bishops, British-born Richard Williamson, had cast doubt on the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The Diocese of Regensburg in Germany, where Saturday’s ordinations took place, also said the Pope’s actions did not constitute permission to create new clergy.

But the SSPX said it had not been told to stop ordinations. The sect’s spokesman in Germany, Father Andreas Steiner, said ordinations were justified given the "terrible emergency" faced by the Roman Catholic Church as its clergy and congregations declined.

"The Church is bleeding to death," he said.

SSPX was founded by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, in 1970 as a protest against the Second Vatican Council’s reforms on religious freedom and pluralism.

It says it has almost 500 priests as members and is active in more than 60 countries.

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The Brazilian military says it has ended its search for bodies from the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic almost a month ago.

Fifty-one bodies have been recovered since the plane went down on 1 June. A total of 228 people were on board.

A Brazilian spokesman said the recovery of any more of the bodies was "impossible".

But a French-led search for the plane’s black boxes – which will emit signals until at least 2 July – will continue.

The cause of the accident has not yet been established. The Airbus 330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it plunged into the sea.

See a map of the plane’s route

"It has been nine days since we have located bodies," Brazilian air force spokesman Lt Col Henry Munhoz told journalists.

Searchers had concluded that "it is impossible to recover more dead bodies or remains in the search area", he said.

Several French vessels, including a nuclear submarine, will continue to listen out for signals from the plane’s flight recorders. They emit audio signals for at least 30 days after a crash.

The crash was the worst in Air France’s history.

There has been speculation that faulty data on the old-style speed sensors may have been the cause, but French investigators have warned against drawing early conclusions.

An initial report by France’s Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) is to be released on 2 July.

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