WASHINGTON -- The founder of one of Russia’s largest privately-owned banks has agreed to pay the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) more than $500 million after pleading guilty to tax fraud.

Oleg Tinkov, who was arrested in the United Kingdom in February 2020 at the behest of the United States, will be sentenced to time served at his hearing on October 29, the Justice Department said on October 1.

The Russian-born businessman renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2013, days after his TCS online bank held an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange.

Tinkov sold a part of his majority shareholder stake for more than $192 million, and his assets following the initial public offering were estimated at more than $1.1 billion, the Justice Department said.

U.S. citizens are required to pay taxes on income earned abroad as in the case of Tinkov, who returned to Russia after receiving his American passport in 1996.

Individuals with more than $2 million in assets who renounce their U.S. citizenship must pay an exit tax based on any income and capital gains they would receive if they sold their assets.

Tinkov claimed in his 2013 statement to the IRS that he did not have more than $2 million in assets.

“No one who enjoys the immense benefits of United States citizenship, as Tinkov did, may avoid the corresponding obligation to support the country he chose. Tax evaders should take notice of the long reach of U.S. law enforcement,” Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds for the Northern District of California said in the statement.

The Justice Department said the $500 million payment — which includes fines and penalties — is more than double his original tax bill.

Tinkov is one of Russia’s most successful entrepreneurs, having built and sold two businesses before launching his bank in the middle of the 2000s.

TCS is one of Russia’s fastest growing banks. Its stock price has more than tripled over the past year, giving Tinkov a net worth of nearly $8 billion, according to Forbes.

The 53-year-old was not extradited to the United States because he demonstrated to the court and the Department of Justice that he is receiving medical treatment to fight leukemia.

Kazakh civil activist Almat Zhumagulov has been released from a penal colony after completing almost four years of an eight-year prison sentence on terrorism charges that human rights watchdogs say were politically motivated.

Zhumagulov's October 1 release from the Zarechny penal colony in the Almaty region came after a Kazakh court approved his request to serve the rest of his prison term in a regime of "restricted freedom" -- a parole-like sentence -- rather than in a penitentiary.

He was detained in November 2017 and was sentenced in December 2018 by a court in Almaty on charges of "propagating terrorism" and "inciting national hatred.”

Human rights activists consider Zhumagulov a political prisoner and say that his conviction signaled the beginning of a wave of repression against alleged members of "extremist" groups, including the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement, of which Zhumagulov is a member.

DVK is led by Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former head of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank and outspoken critic of the Kazakh government. Kazakh authorities labeled DVK extremist and banned the group in March 2018.

The European Parliament has urged the Kazakh authorities to release Zhumagulov from prison.

Natural gas prices hit new records in Europe, adding yet more worries for consumers ahead of the winter heating season and putting new scrutiny on the continent’s biggest supplier, Russia.

Gas prices have been climbing higher for weeks now, with a growing chorus of domestic and industrial consumers across Europe warning of sharply higher bills that could stretch through the winter.

The November gas price for a key European benchmark hit an all-time high of 97.73 euros per megawatt hour on October 1. That’s about 400 percent higher for the year.

Analysts point to a combination of factors for the unusually high prices, including some gas shipments being diverted to Asian markets, technical repairs that have crimped shipments from Norway, and colder-than-normal temperatures at the end of last winter that drained storage tanks.

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But some experts have also pointed to Russia’s state gas giant Gazprom, which is the main supplier of gas to Europe.

Russian gas supplies via the main Yamal-Europe pipeline fell by almost 77 percent on October 1, from a day earlier, according to data from grid operator Gascade, which said the cause was Gazprom booking only one-third of its available capacity for October.

Last month, a group of European Parliament lawmakers asked the European Commission to investigate Gazprom.

The Kremlin has said that Gazprom was meeting all its contract obligations in full.

Gazprom has nearly completed a second undersea pipeline called Nord Stream 2 that will increase the amount of Russian gas that can shipped directly to Germany. German regulators are reviewing the final paperwork before giving it the green light to start operation.

The pipeline bypasses Russia’s traditional shipment route, via Ukraine. Kyiv has complained about that, while also warning that Russia might resort to using its gas supplies as a political tool, something that has happened in the past.

With reporting by Reuters and TASS

Russia has held its first royal wedding since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution toppled the Romanov monarchy, with royals from across Europe attending the lavish ceremony in the city of St. Petersburg.

Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov, 40, tied the knot with his 39-year-old Italian fiancee, Rebecca Virginia Bettarini, at St. Isaac's Cathedral in the presence of dozens of royals.

Romanov said that the couple chose the former imperial capital for the ceremony because it was the first place in Russia where the family had returned following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Among the 1,500 guests were some 50 royals from European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, and Spain.

After the wedding ceremony, which lasted for almost two hours, one-third of the guests were invited for a reception at the Russian Ethnographic Museum, which was founded by Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. He was executed along with his wife, Aleksandra, and their five children by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.

George Romanov, a descendant of Russia's former imperial family, was born in Madrid to the Prussian Prince Franz Wilhelm of Hohenzollern and Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, the self-proclaimed heir to Russia's imperial throne.

She is the granddaughter of Grand Duke Kirill, a cousin of Nicholas II who fled Russia during the revolution.

With reporting by Fontanka.ru and AFP

MOSCOW -- Russia’s main domestic security service has published a 60-point list of non-secret topics that could result in people or organizations being designated as “foreign agents” if they cover or write about them.

The Federal Security Service document, dated September 28 but published on October 1, is the latest in a widening net of restrictions under a 9-year-old law that has been used to target independent media outlets, civil society groups, rights activists, and others.

The list includes broad topics such as collecting information about “the development of military-political circumstances” and “the location, numbers, and armaments” of military forces.

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It also includes military purchases and contracts, imports of dual-use products, investigations of crimes in the military, and “problems, including financial and economic ones, constraining the development" of the Roskosmos space agency.

Collecting information on the characteristics of weapons and military technology and “information about compliance with the law and the moral-psychological climate inside the armed forces” were other topics included on the list.

Russia’s so-called “foreign agent” legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly.

It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that are deemed by the government to engage in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.

Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media.

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Under amendments adopted at the end of 2020, any individual -- whether a Russian citizen or a foreigner -- who is collecting information on any topic on the Federal Security Service list must voluntarily file with the Justice Ministry a request to be designated as a “foreign agent” or face criminal prosecution.

In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL, on the list.

At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on its “foreign agents” media list and to impose restrictions on them. Several RFE/RL journalists have since been added to the list.

On September 29, the Russian government added several organizations and 22 individuals to its various “foreign agent” lists.

As of October 1, 72 organizations and individuals have been included on the Justice Ministry’s media list alone.

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The 2020 amendments also include the creation of another register of “foreign agent” individuals who do not qualify as “foreign-funded media.” No one has yet been named to that list.

News of the list reverberated among journalists and experts who write about subjects like Russia’s military or its space program.

Marc Bennetts, the Moscow correspondent for The Times and the Sunday Times newspapers in the U.K., said that a Russian military expert had refused to be interviewed by him recently for fear of being labeled a foreign agent.

“I thought he was being somewhat over-cautious -- I was wrong,” Bennetts wrote in a post to Twitter.

The laws have been broadly criticized within Russia and abroad as an unjustified assault on independent media and civil society.

“Groups including Russia’s most prominent human rights organizations have been struggling for years to fight off illegitimate state interference, and this bill will make the fight even harder,” Hugh Williamson of Human Rights Watch said shortly before the December 2020 amendments were adopted. “The Russian government should halt its efforts to stifle independent groups and comply with its obligations under international law.”

The number of coronavirus fatalities hit a record for the fourth straight day in Russia, with confirmed cases continuing to surge as well, prompting the Kremlin to voice concern.

On October 1, the government's coronavirus task force reported 887 deaths for the previous 24 hours, Russia's highest daily number since the start of the pandemic. The previous record, from a day earlier, stood at 867.

The number of new confirmed cases for the past 24 hours reached 24,522 new confirmed cases -- the highest since late July, the task force said.

“The dynamic is bad,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 1. "It elicits concern."

However, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who heads the task force, said the government did not plan to impose a new lockdown.

Russia, the world's fifth worst-hit country with more than 7 million people infected, has had only one nationwide lockdown, at the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of last year.

The country’s authorities have shunned imposing tough restrictions ever since, although the country has seen cases spike since last month as vaccinations stall.

Despite Russia rolling out the world's first COVID vaccine in August 2020, polls show Russians are skeptical of getting vaccinated, with a majority saying they do not plan to get inoculated.

Just over one-quarter of the population had been fully vaccinated as of September 28, according to the Gogov website, which tallies COVID data from the regions.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

MINSK -- Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has vowed to punish those who have criticized a security officer that authorities say was killed in a shoot-out on September 28 during a raid on a private apartment in Minsk.

The officer of the Committee of State Security (KGB), identified as Dzmitry Fedasyuk, was buried on October 1.

Belarusian authorities claimed earlier that “an especially dangerous criminal” opened fire on security officers after they showed up at his apartment late on September 28 looking for “individuals involved in terrorist activities,” killing Fedasyuk.

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The resident of the apartment, who was later identified as Andrey Zeltsar, an employee of the U.S.-based EPAM Systems IT company, was killed in the ensuing shoot-out with officers, authorities claimed.

Lukashenka said on October 1 that "it is too late" for those who praised Zeltsar and criticized both Fedasyuk and the government to remove their posts from social networks, as "we have all their accounts and we can see who is who."

Exiled would-be presidential candidate Valer Tsapkala earlier wrote on social networks that Zeltsar was an example for all Belarusians of how to resist Lukashenka’s oppressive regime.

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"Akrestsina is vacant," Lukashenka said, referring to Minsk's notorious Akrestsina detention center, many inmates of which said they were tortured there. "And rascals like Tsapkala think that we will be unable to get them, but they are mistaken. We will not forgive this guy's death."

Meanwhile, the Minsk-based Vyasna (Spring) human rights center said on October 1 that almost 90 people have been detained in Minsk and several other cities after the incident.

According to Vyasna, the arrests were connected to comments on social media about the incident. It said those arrested face charges of insulting government officials and inciting social hatred, which carry sentences of up to 12 years in prison.

Belarus was engulfed by protests last year after a presidential election in August -- which the opposition and the West say was rigged -- gave Lukashenka a sixth consecutive term.

In response, the government has cracked down hard on the pro-democracy movement, arresting thousands of people and pushing most of the top opposition figures out of the country.

On October 1, the Supreme Court of Belarus ordered the liquidation of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the oldest human rights organization in Belarus.

According to Vyasna, in the last three months 130 nongovernmental organizations have been forcibly closed.

Russia has urged Tajikistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to take “mutually acceptable measures” to resolve tensions along the Tajik-Afghan border amid reports of an increased military buildup on both sides.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has refused to recognize the Taliban-led government and condemned the militant group for alleged human rights abuses in the Panjshir Valley, which was the last pocket of resistance to the group.

The Taliban has accused Dushanbe of meddling in Afghanistan's internal affairs.

Ethnic Tajiks make up more than one-quarter of Afghanistan's 38 million people, but the Taliban is predominately Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in the war-torn country.

Last week, Rahmon reiterated his previous calls for the Taliban to form an inclusive government in Afghanistan with the participation of all political and ethnic groups in order to allay tensions.

Russia is "concerned about the growing tension in Tajik-Afghan relations against the background of the mutually acrimonious statements by the leaders of both countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksei Zaitsev told reporters in Moscow on October 1.

Zaitsev said the Taliban has revealed that tens of thousands of fighters have been deployed in the northeastern province of Takhar, which borders Tajikistan.

Russia's RIA Novosti news agency cited Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi as denying the movement was building up its forces at the Tajik border.

Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to the comments.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid last week said that members of the Taliban's special forces unit had been deployed to Takhar to beef up security in the region.

Mujahid added that Taliban fighters took over an airport in the neighboring Afghan province of Kunduz, which also borders Tajikistan.

During the Taliban’s lightning military offensive in July, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin expressed concern as the militants seized large swaths of territory near the border with the Central Asian nation.

Tajikistan that month also urged the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization's member states to help strengthen security along the Tajik-Afghan border.

Since then, the alliance has staged military drills in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Russia and Uzbekistan, which also borders Afghanistan, have also held joint exercises near the Uzbek-Afghan border.

With reporting by TASS, Interfax, RIA Novosti, and Reuters

Ukraine said that Gazprom had suspended the transit of natural gas to Hungary, days after the Russian state-controlled gas giant signed a long-term contract with Budapest.

The move, announced October 1 by Ukraine’s gas pipeline operator, was expected to add to jitters about Russian gas supplies in Europe, which is already grappling with record high prices for gas.

Gazprom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suspension of flows to Hungary via Ukraine does not affect other gas transiting Ukraine to European customers. And Hungary will receive Russian gas via other routes, including TurkStream, a pipeline crossing under the Black Sea.

But it cuts into the revenues Ukraine receives from transit fees, and it complicates Ukraine’s ability to reimport gas from Hungary, which just days earlier signed a long-term supply deal with Gazprom.

"The monopolization of gas routes by Gazprom, which we are now observing, raises the question of the fundamental principles of the functioning of the EU gas markets -- competition and transparency," Serhiy Makogon, the head of the Ukrainian Gas Transmission System operator, said in a statement.

Ukraine’s pipeline network has long been the dominant route for Russia to export its gas to Europe. But that has shifted in recent years as new undersea pipelines have come online.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will add to Russia’s ability to ship gas directly to Germany when it comes online sometime next year. But Ukraine, along with the United States and some other countries, have warned that Nord Stream 2 will only tighten the grip that Gazprom has on European gas markets.

Compounding those fears are record high gas prices, which are being registered in Europe and elsewhere just as the continent gears up for the winter heating season. Some European lawmakers have accused Gazprom of using its dominant market power to push prices higher.

Under the deal with Hungary that takes effect October 1, Gazprom will ship 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Hungary annually, via Serbia and via Austria.

Kyiv’s criticism of the Hungary gas deal adds to ill-will between the two countries; the two have been at odds in recent years over the use of the Hungarian language in Ukrainian schools.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban dismissed Ukraine's criticism of the gas agreement.

"We need gas. This is the reality. You need to agree with the Russians," Orban told public radio.

With reporting by Reuters, TASS

NUR-SULTAN -- Kazakh police detained eight protesters, mostly women, demanding the release of relatives they say are being illegally held in China.

The October 1 protests were the latest in a series of demonstrations in Kazakhstan linked to the massive detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other ethnic groups in the neighboring Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Demonstrators have demanded Kazakh authorities do more to protect ethnic Kazakhs who have been caught up in the Chinese sweep. Kazakhstan’s government, however, has been wary of angering Beijing, which is a major investor in Kazakhstan and throughout Central Asia.

One of the protesters in the Kazakh capital on October 1 was wheelchair-user Khalida Aqytkhan, 65, who fell to the ground as police were forcing her into a vehicle.

The most recent wave of protests began September 20 when demonstrators traveled to Nur-Sultan from the country’s commercial capital, Almaty, where groups had rallied for months in front of the Chinese Consulate there.

As many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers in the western Chinese region, according to the U.S. State Department.

China denies that the facilities are internment camps but people who have fled the province say that thousands are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of facilities known officially as reeducation camps.

After Kazakhstan gained independence following the Soviet collapse in 1991, many ethnic Kazakhs from Xinjiang and elsewhere resettled in Kazakhstan, as part of a state program.

Many obtained permanent residence or citizenship but continue to visit Xinjiang either to see relatives or for bureaucratic reasons. Some have reported facing pressure from Chinese authorities or even arrests and imprisonment

Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs. The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans.

China's largest ethnicity, the Han, is the second-largest ethnic group in Xinjiang.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service

A Kazakh court ordered the release of a dissident poet who has been in prison for 14 years and recently hospitalized for unspecified health problems.

The order freeing Aron Atabek, 68, was issued by the Pavlodar City Court on October 1.

After his release, Atabek flew to Almaty where dozens of supporters gathered to greet him at the airport. His daughter told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that the poet was in poor health.

Atabek, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2007 after being convicted of helping organize protests that resulted in the death of a police officer, is said to be suffering from heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis.

Yelena Semyonova, a rights activist, said on September 28 that Atabek had been hospitalized several days earlier.

Atabek has maintained his innocence ever since his arrest in 2006.

In 2012, he rejected a government pardon offer that would have required him to admit guilt.

For years, Kazakh and international rights organizations have demanded the government release the poet.

Rights groups say he has been tortured in prison, with guards intentionally splashing water with high concentrations of chlorine on the floor of his cell to damage his health.

Last month, a photograph taken by activists who visited him in prison appeared to show Atabek exhausted and in poor health. The photograph caused a public outcry.

In December 2012, Atabek was transferred to solitary confinement after he wrote an article critical of then-President Nursultan Nazarbaev and his government, and the article was published online.

In 2014, his relatives accused prison guards of breaking his leg, which authorities denied.

The Romanian government says seven people have been killed in a fire at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients -- the third deadly hospital blaze in the country in less than a year.

The fire broke out early on October 1 at the intensive care unit at the Hospital for Infectious Disease in the port city of Constanta, officials said.

There was initial confusion about the number of victims, with local authorities reporting nine dead among the 10 patients in the unit treating serious COVID-19 cases.

• RFE/RL

A fire at a Romanian hospital treating COVID-19 patients has killed seven people, the country's interior minister said. The blaze broke out early October 1 at the intensive care unit at the Hospital for Infectious Diseases, in the port city of Constanta, the Emergency Situations Directorate said in a statement.

However, prosecutors investigating the fire later said only seven people had been killed, Interior Minister Lucian Bode told a news conference.

Firefighters extinguished the fire after an hour, with help from additional teams brought in from nearby regions.

Patients and staff at the facility were evacuated, authorities said. Bode said that 125 patients were in the hospital at the time of the fire.

WATCH: With Only One-Third Of Adults Vaccinated, Romania Fears COVID-19 Surge

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Romania has been marred by several deadly hospital blazes in recent years, including during the pandemic.

Five patients died in January in a fire in the COVID-19 ward of a Bucharest hospital, two months after another blaze killed 15 patients in the intensive care unit of a COVID-19 hospital in Piatra Neamt in northeastern Romania.

Romania is suffering a new wave of COVID-19 infections, as the vaccination rate for its population is second-lowest in the European Union.

The government has struggled to boost the number of intensive care beds and direct more resources for treatments and medication. As of October 1, there were only six intensive care unit beds available in the whole country, health officials said.

Authorities reported 10,887 new infections and 169 deaths on October 1, a day after more than 12,000 cases were registered -- a record since the start of the pandemic that so far has infected 1,244,555 people. A total of 37,210 people have died so far.

Complicating matters is political infighting which has put the government on the brink of collapse.

Prime Minister Florin Citu, whose government is facing a no-confidence vote on October 5 brought forward by the leftist opposition, blamed the latest incident on the neglected health-care system of the former communist country.

"It is unacceptable for this kind of thing to happen, for these kinds of tragedies to happen in Romanian hospitals. This is the reality that we have been trying to change starting from this year, after the 20 to 30 years during which nothing had been done for the health-care system in Romania."

President Klaus Iohannis said in a statement that he was "horrified" by the incident.

"The Romanian state failed its basic mission of protecting its citizens," he said.

With reporting by hotnews.ro, digi24.ro, and g4media.ro

Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka rejected any suggestion that he should apologize for the harsh police crackdown and sweeping arrests that targeted protesters in the wake of last year’s disputed election.

In an interview broadcast September 30 on CNN, Lukashenka dismissed media and rights groups’ criticism about widespread human rights abuses in Belarus.

"No, I wouldn't like to use this opportunity [to apologize]. If I would, I would do it via Belarusian media. They are quite good, I hear.... And, in principle, I have nothing to apologize for," Lukashenka said.

Lukashenka has been isolated and shunned by much of the international community after he claimed reelection victory in August 2020, sparking months of unprecedented protests from Belarusians.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

The demonstrations drew a brutal police crackdown, with thousands jailed, and widespread reports of police torture.

Amid the isolation, Lukashenka has pulled closer to Russia, seeking loans and military support from President Vladimir Putin.

Asked about reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about police abuse and torture, Lukashenka claimed that Belarus does not have "a single detention center...like Guantanamo, or those bases that the United States and [the United Kingdom] created in Eastern Europe."

"As for our own detention centers, where we keep those accused or those under investigation, they are no worse than in Britain or the United States. I can guarantee you that," Lukashenka said.

Many from Belarus’s opposition have been arrested or forced to leave the country.

While Lukashenka speaks regularly to Belarusian state media, he rarely gives interviews to independent, or foreign media.

CNN said the full interview with Lukashenka would be broadcast on October 1.

Lukashenka's press service, meanwhile, issued another part of the interview on Telegram in which Lukashenka discussed further integration of Belarus and Russia as part of a long-stalled project called the Union State.

Lukashenka dismissed the suggestion that Belarus would be uniting with Russia as “absolute nonsense” and "a fiction of, as we say here, the collective West."

"We, along with Putin, the leadership of Russia and Belarus in general, are smart enough to create, in the framework of two independent, sovereign states, such a union that will be stronger than any unitary formation," Lukashenka said.

With reporting by CNN

Georgian authorities have announced the arrest of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, hours after he said he had returned from exile on the eve of local elections regarded as critical to the South Caucasus country's political makeup.

Saakashvili was held by law enforcement officers and taken to a penitentiary, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili said on October 1, about 18 hours after Saakashvili announced he had returned to Georgia following an eight-year absence.

Details of the arrest were not immediately clear, but the Interior Ministry said the former president had been taken to Rustavi Penitentiary No. 12, about a 30-minute drive south of the capital, Tbilisi. The ministry distributed a video showing police officers taking a smiling Saakashvili in handcuffs out a car and leading him into a building.

Public ombudswoman Nino Lomjaria said she met with Saakashvili in the penitentiary. Lomjaria quoted him as saying he was arrested earlier in the day in the capital, Tbilisi, and that he didn't resist police. Saakashvili also said he was launching a hunger strike.

In an earlier Facebook video, Saakashvili said he was in the Black Sea city of Batumi, Georgia's second-largest city.

Saakashvili, who was convicted of crimes in absentia in 2018 and has lived in Ukraine in recent years, announced plans earlier this week to fly home for the October 2 balloting for mayors and local assemblies, despite facing prison, claiming he wanted to help "save the country" amid a protracted political crisis.

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The polls are seen as a vote of confidence in the government in Tbilisi and could trigger snap elections next year.

Initially, the government denied he had entered the country but then Gharibashvili told a brief news conference, "I want to inform the public that the third president of Georgia, wanted person Mikheil Saakashvili, has been detained. He has been transferred to the penitentiary."

Calling the 53-year-old ex-president a "criminal," the prime minister said Georgian law enforcement officials "had prior information about the movements of Saakashvili, starting from Ukraine, toward Georgia."

"Relevant agencies worked in coordination and chose the time and place that would have minimal chance of external interference," he added.

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Gharibashvili did not provide details about the circumstances surrounding Saakashvili's arrest.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has summoned the Georgian ambassador in Kyiv "to receive official information on the grounds and circumstances of such detention," a ministry spokesman told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is concerned about the arrest and the "tone" of statements coming from Georgia, a spokesman wrote on Facebook.

Saakashvili has been a Ukrainian citizen since 2015 and heads the executive committee of Ukraine's National Reform Council, which was created the previous year to carry out strategic planning and coordinate reforms.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili thanked law enforcement agencies for Saakashvili's arrest, accusing him of trying to destabilize the country.

Zurabishvili also said she would "never" pardon Saakashvili, who was sentenced in absentia to a total of nine years in prison after being found guilty of abusing his authority in two separate cases.

He was convicted of trying to cover up evidence related to the 2005 beating of an opposition lawmaker and about the killing of a Georgian banker.

The ex-president considers the charges against him to be politically motivated.

Saakashvili's whereabouts remained unknown for hours after he said in a video posted on Facebook on the morning of October 2 that he was in Batumi:

The authorities later said there was no record of Saakashvili crossing the border, and the ruling Georgian Dream party accused him of faking his return amid a protracted political crisis.

Earlier this week, Saakashvili said on his Facebook page that "the fate of Georgia is being decided. Georgia's survival is at stake, and that's why I took a ticket on the evening of October 2 so I can be with you and protect your [political] will with you, so I can take part in saving Georgia."

He also posted a photo of his purported plane ticket.

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service quoted sources at Kyiv's Boryspil international airport as saying that Saakashvili "did not leave Ukraine" via the airport.

Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Aleksandr Darakhvelidze said the ex-president "did not cross the Georgian border," according to RFE/RL's Ekho Kavkaza.

"We got connected with the Ukrainian side. I can say precisely and for sure that Mikheil Saakashvili did not leave Ukrainian territory," Darakhvelidze said.

Gharibashvili had said the police would arrest Saakashvili as soon as he stepped on Georgian soil.

Parliament speaker Mamuka Mdinaradze, a member of Georgian Dream, called Saakashvili a "fraud."

"All the video footage circulated by Saakashvili from nighttime Batumi is fake and the latest clowning around," said Givi Mikanadze, another top party official.

Ukrainian member of parliament Yelyzaveta Yasko took to Facebook to urge Ukrainian authorities to "protect" Saakashvili.

The 30-year-old Yasko also posted a video of Saakashvili and herself, in which he announces their relationship.

"Today Lisa Yasko and I are together, we have our joint family, we want everyone to understand our story and wish us happiness," he said in the clip, which Yasko said was recorded before he departed for Georgia.

Tensions have been high in Georgia between the ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition, which Saakashvili supports, since parliamentary elections last year that the opposition said were rigged.

International observers said at the time that the election had been competitive and that fundamental freedoms had generally been respected.

Before it annulled a political deal with the opposition brokered by the European Union, Georgian Dream agreed to call early parliamentary elections if it failed to secure at least 43 percent of the vote in the local polls.

Saakashvili served as president of Georgia from January 2004 to November 2013, when he was voted out of office.

In recent years, he has held several top government positions in Ukraine, and was briefly the governor of the Black Sea region of Odesa.

With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

The United States and Russia have agreed to press ahead with arms control and related strategic security talks aimed at easing tensions between the world's largest nuclear weapons powers.

Meeting in Geneva on September 30, senior U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed to set up two working groups to pursue potential accords related to nuclear weapons and other global threats, according to a joint statement issued after the talks.

The two working groups are to convene ahead of a third plenary meeting. No dates were announced for those gathering.

U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, whose countries possess 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, agreed at a summit in Geneva in June to launch a bilateral dialogue on strategic stability to "lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures," and officials from both sides met in the Swiss city the following month.

It was the first time in nearly a year that the sides had held such talks amid frictions over arms control and a range of other issues.

According to the joint statement issued after the September 30 meeting, the delegations headed by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov held "intensive and substantive" negotiations.

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters that the discussion “was very interactive and broad-based, and we think we were able to cover a variety of issues.”

"I think this was a good building-on of the meeting that we had in July and both delegations really engaging in a detailed and dynamic exchange," according to the official, who declined to provide specifics.

The rivals have been looking at specific issues such as how to move beyond the New START treaty, a cornerstone of global arms control, that Biden and Putin have agreed to extend until 2026.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

The head of the European Union’s executive branch sought to reassure the six Western Balkan countries of their future membership in the bloc as she visited Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina on September 30.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attended the inauguration of a railway link in Serbia and a bridge in neighboring Bosnia as part of a six-nation regional tour ahead of an EU-Western Balkans summit on October 6.

Von der Leyen made the stopovers two days after Reuters reported that the 27 member states have so far been unable to agree a declaration reaffirming their pledge of future EU membership for Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.

And according to an internal EU document seen by RFE/RL and dated September 27, alleged abuse by Albania, Serbia, and other non-EU European countries has prompted some European Union members to raise the possibility of canceling the visa-free travel regime to the bloc.

Among the abuses cited are unlawful residency and unfounded asylum claims.

Speaking at the opening of the Svilaj Bridge connecting northern Bosnia and Croatia, von der Leyen spoke about the important symbol of the project.

“Building bridges between people, countries, and cultures, that is so crucial for our common future. Because Bosnia and Herzegovina, and all the Western Balkans, belong in the European Union. It is in our common interest, but I also believe, it is our destiny,” she said.

Von der Leyen said the EU had invested 25 million euros ($29 million) in the bridge over the Sava River. The ceremony was also attended by the chairman of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers, Zoran Tegeltija, as well as Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

Attending the official launch of the works to modernize a railway section between Nis and Brestovac in Serbia later in the day, von der Leyen said she was “a strong advocate for bringing Serbia into the European Union," according to an EU transcript of the speech.

"We support Serbia's ambition to open as soon as possible new accession clusters," she said, referring to negotiating chapters, while also acknowledging that EU states had the final word in allowing Belgrade to move forward.

Standing alongside von der Leyen, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic promised reform and to help improve ties with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

The six Western Balkan states are at different stages on the EU membership path.

Montenegro and Serbia are the most advanced, having opened accession negotiations and chapters.

After a veto by EU-member Bulgaria, membership negotiations for Albania and North Macedonia have been postponed despite the two states having fulfilled all criteria.

Bosnia and Kosovo are potential candidate countries.

With reporting by Reuters

Former Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan has been arrested in connection with an investigation into supplies of allegedly faulty ammunition provided to the country’s armed forces.

The National Security Service (NSS) on September 30 confirmed the arrest, which occurred late the previous day.

The NSS statement also said that arms dealer Davit Galstian was also arrested, and both men are accused of defrauding the state of nearly 2.3 billion drams ($4.7 million).

The NSS also said that other, unnamed serving and retired military officers were being investigated in connection with the case.

Tonoyan served as defense minister from 2018 until 2020, and he was sacked just days after a Russia-brokered agreement ended six weeks of fighting between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over that country’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Galstian owns several firms that have supplied weapons and ammunition to the armed forces for many years.

The Nagorno-Karabakh war ended with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire in November 2020, which among other things led to Baku retaking control of parts of the region and neighboring districts that had been under Armenian control for nearly three decades.

MOSCOW -- A migrant rights defender from Uzbekistan who is being held at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport while facing deportation to Tashkent, where she says she may face torture, has applied for asylum in Ukraine.

Aleksandr Kim, an aide to Valentina Chupik, told RFE/RL on September 30 that the rights defender's representatives had filed applications on Chupik's behalf asking for asylum with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and the Ukrainian Embassy and the consulate-general in Moscow.

There was no official confirmation on that from Ukrainian authorities.

According to Kim, officials from Uzbekistan's Consulate visited Chupik in the immigration detention center at the airport on September 30 and took her picture for documents to bring her to Uzbekistan.

Chupik has said that she might be jailed, tortured, and even killed while in custody if she is deported back to her homeland.

Chupik, an Uzbek citizen who runs a migrant center in Moscow, said earlier that she was detained at the Sheremetyevo airport on September 25 after she returned to Moscow from Armenia.

According to her, officers of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) informed her that she has been deprived of her refugee status since September 17 and banned from entering Russia for 30 years. The move was made, the officers told her, because she presented either false information or forged documents to Russian authorities when she applied for refugee status in 2006, which Chupik called "an absolute nonsense."

Chupik fled Uzbekistan in 2006 after local authorities imposed pressure on her, trying to take control over her human rights organization there. She has lived in Moscow since then, providing legal defense and assistance to migrant workers from Central Asia.

The Committee for the Prevention of Torture has asked the European Court of Human Rights to prevent Chupik's possible deportation to Uzbekistan.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Athletics have agreed to open formal proceedings against two Belarusian team officials who tried to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya on a flight home from the Tokyo Olympics after she criticized them on social media.

In a joint statement issued on September 30, the IOC and World Athletics said the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) will conduct the proceedings into Belarusian team officials Artur Shimak and Yury Maisevich were involved in taking Tsimanouskaya to the Tokyo airport, where she sought help because she said she feared for her safety if she returned to Minsk.

"The AIU will publish the outcome of its investigation when this has been finalized," the statement said.

The AIU is an independent body created by World Athletics to manage all integrity issues, both doping-related and non-doping-related, for the sport.

Tsimanouskaya took refuge in the Polish Embassy in Tokyo on August 2 after refusing to allow Belarusian team officials to force her onto the flight. Two days later she boarded a plane to Europe, reaching Warsaw via a stopover in Vienna.

Shimak and Maisevich continued to have contact with Belarusian team members in Tokyo for four more days after the airport incident, until the IOC withdrew their Olympic credentials.

Belarus has been gripped by a sweeping and sometimes violent crackdown on anti-government dissent following mass protests that erupted last year over a disputed presidential election in August 2020.

Authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed a sixth term after the vote, which is widely viewed as having been rigged in his favor.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Serbia and Kosovo have reached an agreement during European Union-mediated talks in Brussels to end a tense standoff at their mutual border that was triggered 10 days ago by a dispute over vehicle registration plates.

Two border crossings between Serbia and Kosovo have been blocked by local Serbs since Kosovar authorities on September 20 required all drivers from Serbia entering Kosovo to use temporary printed license plates that are valid for 60 days.

• RFE/RL

Two crossings on Kosovo's border with Serbia have been blocked by local Serbs since Kosovar authorities on September 20 required all drivers from Serbia entering Kosovo to use temporary printed registration details that are valid for 60 days.

The Kosovar government said the move was in retaliation for measures in force in Serbia against drivers from Kosovo since 2008, when the country declared independence from Belgrade.

Serbia does not recognize its former province's independence and therefore its right to take official actions such as registering cars.

Kosovo's government has deployed special police forces to the Jarinje and Brnjak border crossings to impose the new rule, while Serbian military jets and helicopters have been flying close to the border in an apparent show of force.

European Union envoy Miroslav Lajcak posted on Twitter a picture of the agreement reached between the two sides on September 30 following what he called two days of “intense negotiations” in the Belgian capital.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he was “personally very satisfied,” while Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti said: "Now begins the era when Serbia is starting to get used to reciprocity."

EU and U.S. officials also welcomed the compromise, and called for dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade to continue to normalize their relations.

According to the agreement posted by Lajcak on Twitter, three main points have been agreed by the two sides:

-- Special police units located at the joint border crossings in Jarinje and Brnjak will remove barricades and leave on October 2, while members of the NATO-led KFOR stabilization force will deploy at the two crossings before the start of the withdrawal of the police and the removal of barricades, remaining there for two weeks to ensure security;

-- From October 4, a sticker will replace the removal of the license plates of cars registered in Kosovo and Serbia as a temporary measure until a permanent solution is identified;

-- On October 21, Kosovar and Serbian officials will form a working group chaired by the EU and start working toward a permanent solution that will be presented within six months to the high-level format of the Serbia-Kosovo Dialogue.

In his tweet, Lajcak thanked the Kosovar and Serbian chief negotiators, Besnik Bislimi and Petar Petkovic, for "their readiness to negotiate and agree for the good of the people."

The EU diplomatic service welcomed the outcome of the negotiations in Brussels, and urged both parties to “constructively engage in the Dialogue in order to make swift progress on comprehensive normalisation of their relations.”

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen -- who was visiting Serbia when the deal was struck -- described the agreement as a "very positive development.”

“It is good for the whole region. Now the dialogue must continue," she wrote in a tweet.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar, who oversees the Western Balkans, also applauded the agreement but underlined that there is "still an awful lot on the agenda" between two sides that needs to be addressed.

"I think we can make enormous strides in helping the Balkans get over a very difficult period during the ‘90s and hopefully, eventually become more integrated with the European Union," he said on a briefing call with reporters.

MOSCOW -- Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has said an arrest warrant has been issued for prominent investigative journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, chief editor of the investigative website The Insider, which was recently added to the country's controversial registry of "foreign agents."

According to the FSB’s September 30 statement, Dobrokhotov is accused of illegally crossing the border into Ukraine in August “bypassing the established checkpoints.” The statement added that Dobrokhotov faces criminal prosecution and up to two years in prison.

Earlier in the day, The Insider reported that FSB officers searched Dobrokhotov’s Moscow apartment and that of his parents, which is located next door.

Dobrokhotov's lawyer, Yulia Kuznetsova, told The Insider that the searches were conducted as part of an investigation into "illegal border crossing."

Dobrokhotov tweeted that the officers confiscated his parents' computers and telephones and were going to take them in for questioning with regard to the case.

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Russian Investigative Journalist's Home Raided After Website Labeled As 'Foreign Agent'

In July, just days after The Insider website was labeled a "foreign agent," police searched the apartments of Dobrokhotov and his parents.

Dobrokhotov's passport was confiscated by police, but he still managed to leave the country and is currently abroad. His wife and children remain in Moscow.

Police said at the time that the searches were part of an investigation that had been launched at the request of Dutch journalist Max van der Werff, who accused The Insider of libel.

Van der Werff's lawyer, Stalina Gurevich, said at the time that her client was suing Dobrokhotov, accusing him of falsely reporting that the Dutch journalist had links to Russia's GRU military-intelligence agency.

Van der Werff is known for articles rejecting international investigators' conclusions that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in 2014 by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

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The Insider is an investigative website registered in Latvia and well-known for its cooperation with the Bellingcat group, with which it has conducted a series of high-profile investigations, including reports about the Russian secret services' activities abroad and last year's poisoning with a nerve agent of Russian opposition leader and outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.

Russia's so-called "foreign agent" legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly.

It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance, and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as "foreign agents," and to submit to audits. Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media, including RFE/RL's Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time.

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The Russian state media monitor Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration.

The agency has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL's services. When they go through the court system, the total fines levied could reach nearly $1 million.

RFE/RL has called the fines "a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation," while the U.S. State Department has described them as "intolerable."

Human Rights Watch has described the "foreign agent" legislation as "restrictive" and intended "to demonize independent groups."

With reporting by Insider and Dozhd

KEMEROVO, Russia -- A court in Siberia has found a group of eight people guilty of negligence in a 2018 fire in the city of Kemerovo that killed 60 people, including 37 children.

The Zavodskoi district court on September 30 found the former director of a company that owned the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall, Yulia Bogdanova; former mall manager Nadezhda Suddenok; the mall's former technical director, Georgy Sobolev; and the mall's former security officer, Sergei Antyushin guilty of providing unsafe services that led to the deaths to customers.

In addition, it also found the chief of a company that installed the fire-alarm system in the mall, Igor Polozinenko; his assistant, Aleksandr Nikitin; and firefighters Andrei Bursin and Sergei Genin guilty of negligence in the blaze.

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Kemerovo Mall Fire Victims Remembered A Year After Deadly Blaze In Siberia

The court started pronouncing the verdicts and sentences on September 30, The process can take several days to finish.

In May, a prosecutor asked the court to sentence the eight defendants to prison terms of between five years and 14 1/2 years.

Bogdanova and Sobolev pleaded partially guilty, while the others pleaded not guilty.

The 2018 fire was one of the deadliest in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It was the last in a long series of disasters caused or exacerbated by the corrosively deadly effects of negligence, carelessness, corruption, corner-cutting, and crumbling infrastructure.

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Residents, relatives of the victims, and Russians nationwide blamed corruption and government negligence for the high number of casualties.

Days after the fire, investigators said that blocked fire exits, an alarm system that was turned off, and "glaring violations" of safety rules before the blaze started led to the high death toll.

A total of 16 people, including leaders of the regional Emergency Situations Ministry and officials who had approved the mall's operations, have been charged with crimes that investigators said led to or aggravated the tragedy.