European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova has urged Google, Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok to do more to tackle what she called Russia's "multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation" ahead of elections in Europe. Jourova on September 26 also singled out X, formerly known as Twitter, saying it had the largest ratio of fake news posts compared with those on the larger platforms. "The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half-truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy," Jourova said. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

Five Bulgarian nationals charged in the U.K. with spying for Russia appeared in a London court on September 26 and were remanded in custody until their next hearing in mid-October.

Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, Katrin Ivanova, 31, Ivan Stoyanov, 31, and Vanya Gaberova, 29, appeared at the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London by video from four different prisons where they are being held.

They spoke only to confirm their names and dates of birth, and did not enter pleas of apply for bail. All five were remanded in custody until their next appearance at the Central Criminal Court on October 13.

The three men and two women are accused of conspiring “to collect information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the safety and interest of the state” between August 2020 and February 2023.

Prosecutor Kathryn Selby told the Westminster Magistrates Court the suspects are thought to have been part of an organized network that carried out surveillance and hostile action on behalf of Russia against specific targets. Their surveillance activities are alleged to have been for the purpose of assisting Russia to conduct hostile action against the targets, including potential abductions.

Much of the activity took place abroad, but coordination took place in the Unite Kingdom, the prosecution said.

Selby said the “operating hub in this country [the U.K.] for the offense of espionage” was the residence of Roussev. His home address was a now-closed seaside guesthouse in Great Yarmouth.

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Roussev is alleged to have organized and managed the cell's spying operations from the United Kingdom.

The prosecution said Roussev received tasking from abroad by Jan Marsalek.

Marsalek, an Austrian national who is not charged in connection with the case, was the former chief operating officer of German payment systems provider Wirecard, which collapsed in 2020 in a fraud scandal. Marsalek, who is considered a key figure in that scandal, has been on the run since the summer of 2020. His whereabouts remain unclear.

The suspects are accused of conspiring to collect information with Marsalek and “others unknown.”

The five Bulgarian nationals, who lived in London and Norfolk, were arrested in February by the Metropolitan Police's counterterrorism officers under the Official Secrets Act.

Roussev, Dzhambazov, and Ivanova were charged in February with having false identity documents, but news about them did not emerge until August. The three are accused of possessing 34 ID documents, some of which were suspected to be false, from the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, and the Czech Republic.

Bulgarian prosecutors said in August that they were investigating the case, without adding further details.

The United Kingdom has been seeking to take tougher action on external security threats and potential spies, and in July passed a national security law aiming at overhauling its means of deterring espionage and foreign interference with new tools and criminal provisions.

At the time, the government labeled Russia as “the most acute threat” to its security.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

Four Central European countries urged the EU on September 26 to thoroughly inspect the so-called "solidarity corridors" through which Ukrainian grain passes on its way to third countries. Agricultural ministry officials from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia said part of the transported grain stays in countries such as Poland, and harms local farmers as it is much cheaper than local grain. Czech Agriculture Minister Marek Vyborny said that, to prevent grain leaks during transport, the EU could introduce refundable deposits for dealers. Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky joined the meeting via a video link.

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has released а video showing his teenage son, Adam, assaulting a man accused of burning a Koran, an assault that the Kremlin declined to condemn.

The beating, which Kadyrov praises, is the latest piece of evidence underscoring Kadyrov’s impunity as the head of Chechnya, and the Kremlin’s willingness to ignore it.

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The alleged Koran burning earlier this year sparked outrage within Chechnya, Right activists have questioned why prosecutors transferred jurisdiction in the case to Chechnya.

“He beat him properly,” Kadyrov says in the 7-second video published on his Telegram channel September 25. “

I’m proud of Adam’s actions.”

To read the original story by Caucasus.Realities, click here.

Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, has been banned from publishing a book he wrote by the Bostandyk District Court of Almaty. Mamai's wife, activist Inga Imanbay, wrote in a Facebook post that the judge -- who was asked for a clarification of the terms of the suspended six-year prison term he was handed in April on charges of organizing mass unrest, spreading false information, and insulting a government representative -- ruled that the book violated the sentence as it was a "a public political activity." To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.

European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova urged Alphabet's Google, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and TikTok on September 26 to do more to tackle what she called Russia's "multimillion euro weapon of mass manipulation" ahead of elections in Europe. Concerns have mounted in recent months about a spate of disinformation related to parliamentary elections in Slovakia on September 30 and Poland next month as well as European Parliament elections next year. The companies and other online platforms have submitted data on their activity in the last six months to fight fake news as part of the EU code of practice on disinformation. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

Kosovar authorities have released a video they said implicates a top ethnic Serb businessman in an attack on an Orthodox monastery that left four people dead, including a police officer.

In a statement accompanying the video published on Facebook, Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said that among the heavily armed men shown in the video, which he said was shot on September 24, apparently by drone, was Milan Radoicic, a construction tycoon who is also a top official of the political party Serb List.

The party is the main ethnic Serb political party in Kosovo, funded mainly by Belgrade.

It wasn’t immediately possible to verify Radiocic’s identity in the video.

Radiocic was hit with sanctions by the United States and Britain in 2021 for allegedly being part of an organized crime group in the Balkans.

In the September 24 attack, around 30 people dressed in military-like uniforms stormed the Serbian Orthodox complex in Banjska, sparking a gunbattle with Kosovar police.

Three attackers were killed, along with a Kosovar police officer. Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, declared a day of mourning for the slain officer.

• RFE/RL

Kosovar police displayed weapons, vehicles, ammunition, and other items confiscated during searches in a northern, ethnic Serb-dominated district where an attack on an Orthodox monastery left four people dead, including a police officer.

The attack, and the murkiness of its circumstances -- no group has come forward to claim responsibility -- comes as tensions continue to mount in the ethnic-Serb-dominated district of Kosovo.

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, and squabbling and conflicts erupt frequently over things like license plate registrations and municipal elections.

Some observers speculated the attack might have been a false-flag operation, aimed at generating outrage in Serbia.

Kosovar police searched homes and buildings in the village of Banjska, where the monastery is located, and roads remained blocked by police on September 26 as they searched for more participants in the attack.

A total of eight people have been arrested so far, according to Veton Elshani, a top regional police official, and access to the village remains blocked.

"The police still haven't finished their work. They don't know when will it happen, maybe today during the day,” he told RFE/RL.

Among those arrested, four had radio communications equipment, police said, and a “significant amount” of weapons, ammunition, and other equipment was also found.

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Serb List, the main political party representing Serbs in Kosovo, on September 27 declared a three-day mourning period to mark the "killing of our fellow citizens in the tragic events in the Banjska village."

At least six of the suspected attackers who escaped are now in Serbia receiving treatment at a hospital there, Svecla told reporters, and he demanded Serbia hand them over to Kosovar authorities.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has denied that Belgrade was involved in the incident.

He also repeated that Serbia would “never” recognize Kosovo’s independence, "neither formally nor informally.”

The United States' top diplomat called on both Kosovo and Serbia to avoid worsening tensions.

"We call on the governments of Kosovo and Serbia to refrain from any actions or rhetoric which could further inflame tensions and to immediately work in coordination with international partners to de-escalate the situation," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Western officials are mediating talks between Serbia and Kosovo as part of a decade-long diplomatic push toward formalized relations and repairing some of the wounds from internecine wars in the 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

In May and June, Kurti ignored outside warnings and tried to forcibly install four mayors in mostly Serbian northern municipalities following boycotted by-elections to fill posts vacated by protesting Serbs.

The resulting tensions erupted in violence that injured dozens of NATO-led peacekeepers and some ethnic Serb protesters.

With reporting by AFP

A Ukrainian captain of a cruise liner was sentenced to five and a half years in prison in Hungary for his role in a 2019 accident in which his boat hit and sank a smaller boat on the River Danube, killing 25 South Korean tourists and two crew. In the worst disaster on the Danube in more than half a century, the smaller boat called the Mermaid, which had 35 people on board, sank after being hit under a bridge in Budapest during heavy rain. The Mermaid's captain and a crew member also died and one Korean is still unaccounted for. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

Polish experts have confirmed that a missile which killed two people at a grain facility in November was fired by Ukraine, the Rzeczpospolita daily reported, citing sources. The explosion of the missile in NATO-member Poland fueled fears that the war in Ukraine could spiral into a wider conflict by triggering the alliance's mutual defense clause, but at the time Warsaw and NATO said that they believed that it was a Ukrainian projectile that had strayed off course. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Rzeczpospolita that Poland had established that the missile that landed in the village of Przewodow was an S 300 5-W-55 air-defense missile. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

More than 13,000 people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh have arrived in Armenia, officials said, amid a massive exodus that followed an Azerbaijani offensive that gave Baku complete control of the mountainous region.

Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, meanwhile, said that at least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 others injured by an explosion at a gas station as people seeking to flee to Armenia lined up for fuel.

The unexplained blast outside the regional capital Stepanakert occurred on September 25 amid the increasingly chaotic exodus of people from the exclave, which was under the control of ethnic Armenians until last week.

Baku has pledged equal treatment for mainly ethnic Armenian residents, but the Yerevan has warned of possible “ethnic cleansing.”

Thousands of people clogged treacherous mountainous roads heading west from the region into Armenia itself, and Armenia’s government said on September 26 that more than 13,000 people had entered the country already.

Traffic was at a standstill again on September 26 as hundreds of cars and trucks jammed the main road through the so-called Lachin Corridor, and people overwhelmed the Armenian border town of Goris.

Prior to last week, Nagorno-Karabakh’s population was estimated to be about 120,000 people, who are overwhelmingly ethnic Armenians.

Adding to humanitarian concerns, Nagorno-Karabakh authorities said 13 more bodies were found at the scene of the fuel station blast that occurred as residents were lining up to fuel their cars in order to leave the region.

Seven more people had died of injuries, and 290 were hospitalized and “dozens of patients remain in critical condition,” officials said.

Protests are continuing in Yerevan over the government’s reaction to the crisis.

Demonstrators have been blocking the streets since the early hours of September 26, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reported, and the Interior Ministry said that more than 50 protesters had been detained.

Meanwhile, the United States, which has played a diminished diplomatic role in the region in recent years, called on Azerbaijan to maintain the cease-fire and “take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Speaking to reporters in Yerevan, Samantha Power, the top official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Baku's use of force was unacceptable, and she called on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to protect ethnic Armenians’ rights.

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She said it was "absolutely critical" that independent monitors and aid organizations be given access to people in Karabakh, and she later announced a $11.5-million package of humanitarian aid for Armenia.

In Brussels, envoys from Baku and Yerevan met with European Council diplomats in the first such encounter since Azerbaijan's recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh following a nine-month blockade of the region that Armenian officials said had deprived the enclave's residents of food, medicine, and other essentials.

The EU stressed in a statement the need for transparency and access for international humanitarian and human rights groups and for more detail on Baku’s vision for Karabakh Armenians’ future in Azerbaijan.

During the meeting Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to Aliyev, outlined Azerbaijan’s plans to provide humanitarian assistance and security to the local population. The EU is also providing assistance to Karabakh Armenians, the statement said.

The meeting also discussed a possible meeting of Nagorno-Karabakh stakeholders on October 5 in Granada.

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"The participants took note of the shared interest of Armenia and Azerbaijan to make use of the possible meeting in Granada to continue their normalization efforts," the statement said.

Armenian representative Armen Grigorian and Hajiyev "engaged in talks on possible concrete steps to advance the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process in the upcoming possible meeting, such as those with regard to border delimitation, security, connectivity, humanitarian issues, and the broader peace treaty," the statement said.

The statement added that the EU believes that the meeting should be used by both Yerevan and Baku to reiterate publicly their commitment to each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in line with previous agreements.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last three decades over the region, which had been a majority ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized border of Azerbaijan since the Soviet collapse.

The region initially came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During a war in 2020, however, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.

That fighting ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Those peacekeepers did little, however, to prevent the advances by Azerbaijani forces.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Armenian and Azerbaijani services, AP, AFP and Reuters.

Anastasia Yemelyanova, a noted anti-war feminist activist from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been found dead in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum, her friend Anastasia Polozkova said late on September 24. According to Polozkova, Turkish police detained Yemelyanova's boyfriend from Syria, Nizar, as a suspect. Yemelyanova, who recently moved to Turkey, went missing on September 20. She was known for her activities that defended women's rights and looked to stop domestic violence. She also protested against Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.

Ukraine's military claimed that nearly three dozen officers with Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, including its top commander, were killed in a missile attack on the fleet headquarters last week.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

The claim could not be immediately confirmed, and Russia released markedly lower casualty figures from the September 22 attack in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

But the strike itself on the naval headquarters was the latest in a series of increasingly audacious attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russian ships and Black Sea facilities -- attacks that Western experts say may have drastically curtailed Russia’s naval operations in the region.

In a statement issued on September 25, Ukraine’s special operations forces cited “new information about the losses of the enemy as a result of the special operation,” claiming that 34 officers, including the fleet commander, were killed when cruise missiles -- believed to be either British or French -- hit the Sevastopol building. At least 105 others were wounded, it said.

The Ukrainian statement did not name the naval commander in its statement. The current top officer in the Black Sea Fleet is Admiral Viktor Sokolov.

Asked by reporters on September 26 about the Ukrainian claim, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no comment. And a video released later by state news agency RIA Novosti showed a meeting of top Russian military officials, and RIA said Sokolov was in attendance.

The September 22 attack, which was caught on bystanders’ video and satellite imagery, came on the heels of a missile strike nine days earlier that hit Sevastopol’s main naval shipyard. Two ships -- a landing vessel and a diesel submarine -- that were undergoing repairs in a dry dock facility were believed to be severely damaged, if not destroyed. The dry dock facility may have also been damaged, which would limit Russia’s ability to maintain and repair its naval ships.

Dozens of Russian naval personnel were killed in the attack, Ukrainian officials have said, a claim that has also not been confirmed.

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Russia's Navy Has A Dry Dock Problem. Again.

Ukraine, whose own Black Sea Fleet was either sunk or scuttled in the weeks after Russia’s February 2022 invasion, has carried out other significant attacks on Russian ships.

In April 2022, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, was hit and sunk west of Crimea, south of the port of Odesa. Ukrainian officials later said modified Neptune anti-ship missiles had been used in the attack.

It was a major embarrassment for the Russian Navy, and estimates of the death toll among sailors ranged from a couple of dozen to hundreds. Russia's Defense Ministry has said one sailor died and 27 were missing, figures that many experts concluded were implausible.

Also on September 25, Ukraine’s president said that the country had received its first shipment of U.S.-made Abrams tanks, a powerful weapon that commanders hope will bolster its ongoing counteroffensive.

“Good news from [Defense] Minister [Rustem] Umerov. Abrams are already in Ukraine and are getting ready to strengthen our brigades. I am grateful to the allies for implementing agreements on this,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram on September 25.

There was no independent confirmation that the tanks had arrived.

The United States has said 31 battle tanks in total would be sent to Ukraine. Washington has said it would also send depleted uranium ammunition for the Abrams tanks to use. Ukraine has said it needs tanks to strengthen its brigades amid a slow-moving counteroffensive that started in July.

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Heavy Metal: The Radioactive Ammunition Headed For Ukraine

Russia has stepped up its aerial bombardments of Ukrainian sites, targeting in particular Ukraine's grain-exporting infrastructure in the southern Odesa and Mykolayiv regions. Ukraine has resumed exporting grain despite Russia’s pulling out of a United Nations-brokered deal allowing safe grain shipments in July.

An overnight air strike on another port facility in Izmayil injured two people and damaged infrastructure, the region’s governor said in a post to Telegram on September 26. Ukraine’s military reported shooting down 26 of 38 Iranian-made attack drones it said were launched by Russia.

A day earlier, Russian missiles and drones hit Odesa’s port area, and grain storage facilities suffered “significant damage.”

For its part, Ukraine has stepped up its own aerial attacks, not only on Sevastopol, but also the Belbek airfield north of the city.

And Ukraine has apparently targeted locations in Russia itself. The governor of the Belgorod region said air defenses had shot down seven Ukrainian drones in a “massive attack” on September 25. No injuries were reported.

With reporting by Current Time, AFP, and Reuters.

A powerful explosion on September 25 is feared to have resulted in mass casualties at a fuel warehouse near the Stepanakert-Askeran Highway in the mostly ethnic-Armenian breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan is in the process of taking full control of after a lightening military offensive. Separatist authorities in the region said many burn victims have been taken to hospitals for treatment. Details remain scarce in the incident. Rescue teams are at the site, officials said. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, click here.

Ukraine's military on September 25 said the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet was killed along with 33 other naval officers in Ukraine's September 22 attack on the fleet headquarters in Russian-annexed Crimea city of Sevastopol. The statement didn't mention the commander's name, but Admiral Viktor Sokolov was appointed to the post in August 2022. It said more than 100 were injured. Russian authorities gave vastly lower casualty figures and said one person had gone missing after the attack. Some 62 Russian naval personnel were killed in a September 13 attack on a Sevastopol shipyard that also damaged a submarine and a landing craft carrier, Kyiv said. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on September 25 slammed remarks by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that were critical of Moscow, saying they "include unacceptable outbursts addressed against Russia and can spark nothing but rejection" and calling them a "big mistake."

Pashinian had said in a televised address that Yerevan's involvement in "the external security systems" -- referring to Armenia’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) -- "are not effective" for Armenia's interests.

Pashinian and many Armenians blame Russia -- which traditionally has served as Armenia's protector in the region -- for failing to use its peacekeeping force to protect ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan’s mostly Armenian-populated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

"Multiple cases of terror against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, illegal blocking of the Lachin Corridor, and Azerbaijan's September 19 attack against Nagorno-Karabakh have raised serious questions about goals and motives of the Russian Federation’s peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh," Pashinian said.

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Roads Clogged As Ethnic Armenians Flee Nagorno-Karabakh; Mass Casualties Reported In Fuel Depot Blast

He warned that Baku and Russian peacekeepers will be fully responsible if "ethnic cleansing" follows Baku's final victory over the separatist forces in the breakaway region.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry in a statement rejected Pashinian’s remarks, calling them "an attempt to evade responsibility for failures in domestic and foreign policies" and blaming Armenian leadership of "steps to give Armenia's development a new, Western direction."

"The leadership in Yerevan is making a big mistake by deliberately trying to destroy Armenia's multifaceted and centuries-old ties with Russia, and by holding the country hostage to the geopolitical games of the West," the ministry said.

The statement also said all allegations that ongoing protests in Yerevan demanding Pashinian's resignation have links to Russia "have nothing to do with the reality."

Yerevan said on September 25 that more than 6,000 ethnic Armenians had left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia after Baku asserted control over the region last week following what Baku called "anti-terrorist measures of local character."

The military operation was halted on September 20 after Nagorno-Karabakh's separatist leadership accepted a cease-fire proposal by the Russian peacekeeping mission.

Pakistani journalist Imran Riaz Khan has been freed after four months of captivity and was reunited with his family, friend and fellow journalist Hamid Mir said on September 25, confirming earlier police reports. It remains unclear who had abducted Khan. Critics say security agencies had held Khan, who had publicly supported jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan (no relation). Riaz Khan was arrested at an airport in Punjab Province in May as he tried to leave Pakistan. Police say he was later released, but relatives said they were unable to find him and feared he had been abducted. Journalists are often targeted by Pakistan's security services, according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, click here.

Pakistan's former prime minister, Imran Khan, was moved to a prison with better facilities near the national capital, Islamabad, after a court order, his lawyer said on September 25. His legal team and party had been pleading with several courts to issue orders for Khan to be shifted to Adyala Jail in garrison city of Rawalpindi, which they argued was more appropriate for a former premier. Khan has been detained in a low-key, colonial era prison in northwestern Attock district, that lacked facilities. The former premier has been in jail since August after being convicted on corruption charges. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

The Russian Interior Ministry added the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Piotr Hofmanski, to its wanted list for unspecified reasons on September 25. Earlier this year, the ministry added ICC judges Tomoko Akane and Rosario Salvatore Aitala, as well as ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, after they issued arrest warrants in March for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's children's commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for being responsible for the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia since Moscow launched its invasion -- a war crime under international legislation. Russia retaliated by opening criminal cases against the ICC officials. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

A court in the city of Vitsebsk in Belarus's northeast has sentenced freelance video-journalist Vyachaslau Lazarau and his wife, Tatsyana Pytsko, to five years and three years in prison, respectively, on extremism charges as authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues to clamp down on independent media and free speech.

Judge Yauhen Burunou of the Vitsebsk regional court pronounced the sentences on September 25 after finding Lazarau and Pytsko guilty of cooperating with an extremist group. The charges against the couple stemmed from their cooperation with the Poland-based Belsat television channel that was labeled as extremist and banned in the country in November 2021.

Lazarau and his wife were arrested in February. Belarusian human rights organizations have recognized the couple as political prisoners.

Also on September 25, the Minsk-based Vyasna (Spring) human rights group said a court in the western city of Brest handed 20-year-old activist Vadzim Smaleuski a two-year parole-like sentence after finding him guilty of insulting Lukashenka in an online post.

In a separate statement, Vyasna said it learned that a court in the western city of Baranavichy has sentenced activist Svyatlana Bakanava, 36, to one year in prison after finding her guilty of insulting Lukashenka on the Internet.

Many journalists, rights activists, and representatives of democratic institutions have been jailed in Belarus since the August 2020 presidential election that opposition politicians, ordinary Belarusians, and Western governments said was rigged.

Thousands have been detained during countrywide protests over the results and there have been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment by security forces. Several people have died during the crackdown.

Lukashenka has refused to negotiate with the opposition and many of its leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country.

The United States, the European Union, and several other countries have refused to acknowledge Lukashenka as the winner of the vote and imposed several rounds of sanctions on him and his regime, citing election fraud and the crackdown.

A leading ideologue of economic reforms during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s, former Russian Economy Minister Yevgeny Yasin died at the age of 89 in Moscow on September 25. Ukraine-born Yasin was an economy professor at Moscow State University before he was asked to lead a unit at the state commission on economic reforms at the Soviet government in 1989. In 1991, he joined the Scientific Industrial Union, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union turned into the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Yasin served as Russia's economy minister in 1994-97. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Russia has significantly increased construction at a remote Arctic island location where Soviet nuclear tests were conducted, new satellite imagery shows, suggesting Moscow may be intending to resume tests.

Annotated images obtained by the Middlebury Institute for International Studies and shared with RFE/RL showed a number of new facilities and construction equipment on Novaya Zemlya, an island archipelago located in the northern Barents Sea.

The images were released as part of a report examining the uptick in construction at nuclear test sites not only in Russia, but also in the United States and China. Details of the report were published earlier by CNN.

A comparison of imagery taken in July 2021 and in June 2023, showed large trucks, shipping containers, construction cranes, and building supplies at a settlement in Novaya Zemlya called Severny, according to the analysis by the Middlebury Institute, located in Monterey, California.

The activity appears to be aimed at least two new buildings, including what will be the location's largest.

Such a pace of construction at the site has not been seen "since the end of nuclear testing in the 1990s," the institute said, and may indicate Russia plans to expand personnel there or operate it year-round.

The archipelago was used by the Soviets for years of Cold War nuclear testing, including the detonation of the most powerful device ever constructed, the Tsar Bomba, in 1961. A 2004 research paper estimated 224 nuclear detonations on the islands until 1990, when Moscow conducted its last.

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Russia and the United States later announced a moratorium on all nuclear tests, and both signed the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban. However, the treaty has not come into effect, since the minimum number of countries required to ratify it has not been reached. Russia ratified the treaty in 2000; the United States has yet to do so.

Novaya Zemlya has been the focus of new, heightened attention from analysts and open-source researchers in recent years, in particular after a 2019 incident in the White Sea, where, according to U.S. officials, a nuclear-powered missile called the Burevestnik exploded accidentally, spewing radiation over long distances, including a nearby Russian city.

In the months after the blast, satellite imagery and other data -- including warnings issued to airlines about airspace closure in the Barents Sea -- suggested Russia might be seeking to move testing of the Burevestnik missile to another location on Novaya Zemlya, a site called Pankovo.

Within the past month, meanwhile, other researchers have detected new activity at the suspected Pankovo test site, along with airspace and maritime warnings. Open-source researchers Bellingcat released a new image of the site dated September 20.

Hints that Russia might be preparing to resume nuclear testing come as other nuclear powers, including the United States and China, have also signaled intentions, overtly or covertly, to do the same.

In 2019, under the administration of then-President Donald Trump, some U.S. officials reportedly pushed to resume full testing. The official U.S. policy statement on the subject -- the Nuclear Posture Review -- ultimately stated that the United States would not seek to ratify the test-ban treaty, and it would "remain ready to resume nuclear testing if necessary to meet severe technological or geopolitical challenges."

Middlebury researchers contrasted the imagery at Novaya Zemlya with imagery from a U.S. test site in Nevada, where, they said, U.S. officials have conducted mining operations to add more than 1,000 square feet of underground laboratory space. That could be an indication the United States intends to conduct new subcritical nuclear experiments -- tests that are allowed under the test-ban treaty.

China has also expanded construction in recent years at Lop Nor, a known nuclear testing site in the western Xinjiang Province, Middlebury researchers found.

"A resumption of nuclear explosive testing by the three big nuclear powers would allow all three to resume development of new nuclear weapons and accelerate the arms race among the three," they said.

Bulgaria's center-right GERB party on September 25 nominated journalist and political novice Anton Hekimyan as its candidate for a mayoral election in the capital, Sofia, next month that pits two factions in the country's governing coalition against each other.

Speculation has been mounting in recent months over who would be tabbed as GERB’s candidate for Sofia mayor, after the current mayor -- GERB’s Yordanka Fandakova -- said she would not run for another term in the October 29 elections.

GERB leader and former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov had refused to announce the name of the candidate, saying only that the decision would be “nonstandard.”

GERB has dominated the political scene in Sofia since 2005, when Borisov was elected mayor. But the party now faces a stiff challenge from entrepreneur Vassil Terziev, nominated by the parties We Continue The Change, Democratic Bulgaria, and Save Sofia.

GERB, We Continue The Change, and Democratic Bulgaria all support the current government in Bulgaria, without having signed a formal coalition agreement.

The surprise nomination of Hekimyan, who was head of the news division of the leading Bulgarian broadcaster bTV before quitting just two days ago, also has sparked questions about the party’s possible interference in editorial decisions during the time he was head of the outlet’s News, Current Affairs, and Sports division.

But the 39-year-old media personality said the question of whether he subordinated bTV’s editorial policy to GERB was “insulting.”

“Even as a question, it's insulting. Throughout my journey, I have stood firmly behind the principles of journalism,” Hekimyan said.

bTV said in a statement that it was taking the situation "very seriously,” and would ensure measures are implemented to “protect its name and reputation” during the upcoming election campaign.

bTV is a leading broadcaster in Bulgaria, owned by PPF Group, the company of Czech businessman Petr Kellner, who died in 2021.

Hekimyan was appointed head of bTV’s news division in December 2020, months after PPF Group acquired the outlet. Earlier, he had worked as TV host and reporter for bTV.

When he left his post two days before announcing he would be running for mayor of Sofia, Hekyiman said he would continue in a “different professional direction” but gave no further details.

On September 25, he said he met with Borisov last week when he received the invitation to run for mayor on the GERB ticket.

“I have received assurances that I will be able to make my own decisions. We have discussed a team, strategy, people with whom we will work together to make Sofia look even better,” he said.

The director of the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has been found dead in a suburb, local media reports said on September 25. Aleksandr Nikanorov went missing on September 21. Police and volunteers have searched for him since then. The 40-year-old Nikanorov's colleagues said earlier that he left home without his phone and ID documents. Several reports said earlier that a suicide note had been found in his apartment, but that has yet to be officially confirmed. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.

Police in Russia's southwestern Astrakhan region have started a new investigation accusing a shelter of animal cruelty after dozens of mutilated dead dogs were found near and in the facility last year. In February, police launched a probe into alleged financial fraud by the shelter's owners after some 60 dogs were found dead and mutilated in December but registered as alive in the shelter's documents. The shelter, owned by the wife of former Astrakhan municipal lawmaker Andrei Nevlyudov, has received significant amounts of money from the city to catch stray dogs and provide them with medical assistance. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Idel.Realities click here.

Police in the Kazakh capital, Astana, detained RFE/RL correspondent Sania Toiken and held her at a police station for two hours without any explanation on September 25. Toiken was detained while preparing a video report from the INNOPROM.QAZAQSTAN economic exhibition attended by Prime Minister Alikhan Smaiylov and his counterparts -- Raman Halouchanka of Belarus, Akylbek Japarov of Kyrgyzstan, and Mikhail Mishustin of Russia. Police detained Toiken after two officers told her not to record the exhibition with her camera. However, no charges were filed against Toiken and no explanation for her detention was given. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.