A 32-year-old Serbian lawyer who has spent a decade helping asylum seekers and refugees fleeing hardship around the world find new lives in his Balkan country has received the UN refugee agency's prestigious award for Europe in a ceremony in Belgrade.

Nikola Kovacevic offers free legal advice and helps refugees apply for asylum and find shelter, work, and access to education and medical assistance.

The UNHCR said Kovacevic has represented nearly one-third of all of the asylum seekers granted protection in Serbia since he began refugee protection work in 2012.

“If you get this personal connection with the people who lost everything, who speak to you...[the] exchange of something, of energy, or gratitude, of this feeling of humanity, that’s an unbelievable feeling," Kovacevic told AP ahead of becoming the Balkans' first recipient of the UNHCR's regional Nansen Refugee Award.

Many have come from war zones like Syria or Afghanistan, but he credits an encounter with an Iranian family with inspiring him to enter the field.

“If we lose the fight for the legacy of the refugee convention, which was designed for us -- Europeans -- in the Second World War, what’s going to happen next?” Kovacevic said. “Because, you know, there is this old saying: ‘Everybody can come in[to] a situation to become a refugee."

He cited migrants from Iraq and Afghanistan that Belarus has been accused of "weaponizing" to manufacture a refugee crisis on its borders with EU members Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

“Today, as we speak, dozens and dozens of Afghans are stuck in a no-man’s-land between Poland and Belarus,” Kovacevic said.

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Belarus Accused Of 'Provocation' As Record Numbers Of Illegal Migrants Reach Lithuania

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A UNHCR representative in Serbia, Francesca Bonelli, said Kovacevic's efforts had contributed to improving the asylum procedure in Serbia.

Southeastern Europe has been a major transit route or destination for migrants escaping conflict, oppression, and persecution, including during the massive inflow of at least 1.3 million arrivals in 2015-16 that sparked a political backlash in some parts of Europe.

"His devotion to the refugee cause in Serbia showcases the importance of everyone’s involvement and contribution to protection of the people forced to flee their homes," Bonelli said when Kovacevic's selection for the prize was announced late last month. "Nikola’s example serves as an inspiration to all those, especially the young, who are ready to go the extra mile in providing support to refugees in need."

With reporting by AP

Three foreign employees of Bulgaria's biggest weapons maker, Arsenal, have been detained on suspicion of exporting "sensitive information" about the company's manufacturing plant.

The Bulgarian Interior Ministry said on October 7 that all three -- two Lithuanians, a man and a woman, and a Russian man -- held senior positions and handled innovative technologies at Arsenal, which makes small arms, artillery systems, gunpowder, and ammunition.

The company reported to the Interior Ministry on October 3 that "specific products" and related documents had gone missing and that the three suspects did not return to work as scheduled on September 17 after unpaid leave.

The ministry described the missing information as "extremely sensitive for the company and of interest to Bulgarian or foreign competing companies."

The suspects reentered Bulgaria from abroad on October 2 and traveled to the city of Kazanlak, where Arsenal's main plant is located, before they were detained at a southern border checkpoint with Greece on October 5, the Interior Ministry said.

All three are expected to be transferred to regional police custody in Kazanlak to face charges.

The industrial espionage accusations come five months after Bulgarian prosecutors began investigating possible Russian links to the poisoning of arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015 and deadly explosions at Bulgarian weapons depots and manufacturing plants between 2011 and 2020.

One of those deadly blasts, in 2014, struck an Arsenal weapons complex, killing one person.

In April, Czech officials disclosed suspected links between Russian military intelligence (GRU) agents and a deadly explosion at a Czech ammunition depot in 2014, sparking diplomatic expulsions and denials from Moscow.

Subsequent evidence has placed some of those GRU agents in Bulgaria around the time of some of the Bulgarian incidents.

Hungary has offered neighboring Romania help in caring for coronavirus patients as the country faces a huge surge in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of intensive-care beds that is pushing its health-care system to the brink of collapse.

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto sent a letter over the weekend offering assistance to Romania in treating COVID-19 patients, Hungary’s Foreign Ministry said.

RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage

Features and analysis, videos, and infographics explore how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the countries in our region.

“Negotiations are under way between the Romanian and Hungarian sides on the concrete form of the assistance,” the ministry said on October 7.

Romania, a country of 19 million, has the second-lowest vaccination rate in the EU, with only 34 percent of adults fully vaccinated, compared to the EU's 74 percent average.

Romanian vaccination chief Valeriu Gheorghita on October 7 likened the current virus crisis in Romania to that of Italy at the start of the pandemic.

“It is very obvious that hospitals and emergency units are assaulted, overwhelmed by patients with COVID,” Gheorghita said at a news conference, adding that the surge in hospitalizations leaves aside other health-care needs.

Daily cases have exploded over the past week, reaching record daily highs of more than 15,000 infections and hitting more than 300 deaths for the first time on October 6.

Some 1,500 COVID-19 patients are currently in intensive-care units, stretching the country’s ailing health-care system to capacity.

Romania also asked the EU for help through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. President Klaus Iohannis this week called the developments a “catastrophe.”

Hungary -- a nation of 10 million people with 66 percent of all adults fully vaccinated -- recorded 837 new COVID-19 infection cases on October 7, compared with 14,467 in Romania.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP

ORENBURG, Russia -- The number of victims who died after drinking bootleg alcohol rose to 17, officials said, as police announced the arrests of several people.

Regional police said on October 8 that a resident in the town of Orsk had been arrested for allegedly distilling the booze at his house, and three other men were detained for distributing the alcohol in local shops.

The regional unit of the national Investigative Committee, which said only three suspects had been arrested, said it found a significant amount of bootleg alcohol at the site where it was being produced.

The press service for the regional governor, meanwhile, said 33 cases of alcohol poisoning had been reported in total, with 17 deaths. That was up from an earlier report that said there were 14 deaths.

Poisonings involving homemade, bootleg alcohol occur regularly in Russia as people seek out cheaper options than store-bought vodka.

In December 2016, 78 people died in and around the Siberian city of Irkutsk after drinking a scented herbal bath lotion called Boyaryshnik, which contained methanol -- a highly poisonous type of industrial alcohol.

Based on reporting by Interfax

MINSK -- Belarusian authorities have launched a new criminal probe against independent news website Tut.by, amid a continuing crackdown on independent media and freedom of speech.

An unspecified number of Tut.by staff members are suspected of jointly inciting social hatred or discord, the Investigative Committee of Belarus said on October 7.

It did not provide further details.

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.

If charged and convicted, the suspects would face up to 12 years in prison.

Tut.by, once the leading independent news outlet in Belarus, was blocked by the authorities in May, and 15 of its editors and journalists were arrested on charges of tax evasion.

Eleven of them remain either in custody or under house arrest.

After the website was blocked, some of its journalists created a new information site called Zerkalo.io.

Zerkalo.io suggested that the authorities’ latest move against Tut.by journalists could be in retaliation for the creation of the new website.

Tut.by actively covered mass protests that rocked Belarus last year following the disputed results of an August presidential election that handed authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, a sixth consecutive term.

The demonstrations demanding Lukashenka's resignation were met with the heavy-handed -- and sometimes violent -- detention of tens of thousands of people.

Several demonstrators have been killed and there have been what human rights groups call credible reports of torture in the crackdown.

Much of the opposition leadership has been jailed or forced into exile.

The opposition and the West have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the country’s legitimate leader, saying the vote was rigged, and called for a new, independently monitored vote.

The authorities’ crackdown on independent journalists, the opposition, and civil society is continuing, with at least three ordinary citizens convicted on October 7 over comments they made on social media.

A court in the eastern city of Mahilyou sentenced 24-year-old Illya Dubski to five years in prison after convicting him of inciting hatred and threatening to attack law enforcement officers.

In Minsk, a court handed a two-year parole-like sentence to Mikhail Bohdan for insulting police officers online, while Valyantsina Pisaruk received a two-year parole-like sentence in the central city of Baranavichy for "insulting" a local top police official in a post.

Leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) War Veterans Association have pleaded innocent to charges of obstructing justice and intimidating witnesses at a war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

Hysni Gucati, and his deputy, Nasim Haradinaj, entered their pleas October 7 at the opening of their trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

Both men face charges for allegedly revealing information including the identity of potential witnesses at the court, which is mandated to investigate and prosecute suspects in war crimes committed during Kosovo's 1998-99 guerrilla uprising against rule from Belgrade.

Witness intimidation has been a major problem as investigators built their cases, and the court has struggled to protect people who offer to assist its investigations.

“Mr. Gucati and Mr. Haradinaj are vocal opponents of this institution, denigrating anyone who would recognize or cooperate with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, or the specialist prosecutor’s office as spies, collaborators, and traitors who betrayed their fellow countrymen,” Specialist Prosecutor Jack Smith told the judges.

The veterans’ association represents former ethnic Albanian separatists who fought Serbian troops during the Kosovo War, in which more than 10,000 were killed.

The most prominent Kosovar to be indicted to date is former President Hashim Thaci on charges of murder, torture, and persecution. He has denied the charges.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, nine years after the end of the fighting.

The United States and most of the West recognize Kosovo’s independence. Serbia does not, however, and tensions between Kosovo and Serbia persist.

A NATO-led peacekeeping mission deployed to the two countries’ shared border earlier last week amid tensions that were triggered by a dispute over vehicle license plates.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and RFE/RL’s Balkan Service

Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan said that Taliban representatives have been invited to Moscow for talks later this month on the country’s future.

Zamir Kabulov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the talks were planned for October 20 but did not provide further details.

Asked by Russian journalists whether Taliban representatives would be invited to the negotiations involving China, India, Pakistan, and Iran, Kabulov said: "Yes."

The meeting will follow a G20 summit scheduled for next week that is aimed at helping Afghanistan avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover.

Moscow hosted a conference on Afghanistan in March, which was attended by the United States and China as well as Pakistan.

The attendees released a joint statement calling on the then-warring Afghan sides to reach a peace deal. It also called on the Taliban not to launch any offensives in the spring and summer.

Since then, Taliban fighters have swept to power, taking control of the capital Kabul after the government collapsed and amid a chaotic withdrawal by U.S. forces and their allies.

Moscow has moved to engage with the Taliban but stopped short of recognition of the group, which is considered a banned terrorist organization within Russia.

Among other things, Moscow is worried about instability or violence spilling into neighboring Central Asian countries. In response, Russia staged military exercises in Tajikistan and reinforced equipment at a military base there.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax

A new opinion poll indicates that Russians' trust in President Vladimir Putin has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade.

The Levada Center survey released on October 6 found 53 percent of respondents saying they trusted Putin, down from 71 percent in September 2017.

Levada said it was the lowest recorded level of trust for the Russian leader since October 2012, when 51 percent of respondents said they trusted the president.

Trust in Putin soared in 2015, a year after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, reaching nearly 80 percent, according to Levada.

The polling echoes similar measures conducted not only by Levada, an independent pollster, but also state-funded survey companies.

Putin's approval ratings have been dragged down by a slew of unpopular measures, including sweeping pension reform in 2019, as well as stagnating standards of living, which have seen Russian household wealth drop to levels not seen since 2012.

Putin's current term as president is scheduled to end in 2024, but lawmakers, at the Kremlin's behest, passed constitutional amendments paving the way for him to stay in office if he chooses.

While Putin remains the most popular politician in Russia, trust in legislators also continues to be low.

Levada's new poll showed a decrease in trust for the lower chamber of the parliament, the State Duma -- from 33 percent in 2017 to 25 percent now.

SEE ALSO:

'A Dress Rehearsal': Russia's Marred Duma Elections Could Point The Way For 2024 Presidential Ballot

Parliamentary elections last month gave the ruling United Russia party a constitutional supermajority in the Duma, despite United Russia's abysmal ratings.

The elections were marred by lackluster turnout, accusations of fraud and vote manipulation, and a heavy-handed campaign to eliminate any viable opposition challengers.

The level of trust in political parties also went down from 19 percent in 2017 to 17 percent now, Levada's survey showed.

The poll was held on August 19-26 via face-to-face interviews with 1,619 people who were at least 18 years of age, residing in 137 villages, towns, and cities in 50 regions across the country. The overall margin of error was 3.4 percent.

Russia's last, and best-known, independent pollster, Levada was designated by authorities as a "foreign agent" in 2016 -- a move aimed at tarnishing its work.

The United States and the European Union have marked the 15th anniversary of the murder of prominent investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in central Moscow by renewing their calls for all those responsible to be brought to justice, amid an intensifying crackdown on independent media and the opposition.

Politkovskaya -- a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose reporting exposed high-level corruption in Russia and rights abuses in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya -- was shot dead in her apartment building on Putin's birthday, October 7, 2006.

The case remains unresolved, and the journalist’s former employer, independent newspaper Novaya gazeta, warned that the statute of limitations on the crime expires 15 years after the crime. And if a court does not extend it, the masterminds of the murder will go unpunished.

The paper’s editor in chief, Dmitry Muratov, told RFE/RL that he has sent an official request to the Investigative Committee asking whether the case had been dismissed. He said they replied that the investigation is “ongoing.”

Asked by reporters if the Kremlin would be in favor of extending the statute of limitations for Politkovskaya's killing, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the "inevitability of punishment" for such crimes was paramount.

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Anna Politkovskaya: A Journalist Silenced

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The European Court of Human Rights in 2018 found that the Russian state had failed in its obligation to adequately investigate the killing.

While the authorities convicted a group of individuals who carried out the contract killing, they "failed to take adequate investigatory steps to find the person or persons who had commissioned the murder," the Strasbourg-based court found.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Novaya gazeta journalist was killed “for her brave work bringing to light human rights abuses in the conflict in Chechnya and giving voice to its victims.”

Blinken urged that all of those involved in her murder be “identified and held accountable” and said that “the continued impunity for those who ordered Politkovskaya’s murder undermines freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and broader human rights in Russia.”

SEE ALSO:

Fifteen Years After Her Murder, Journalists Say Politkovskaya's Fears Have Been Realized 

The EU spokesman on foreign affairs, Peter Stano, hailed Politkovskaya for continuing her journalistic work “despite repeated intimidations, including a mock execution and poisoning attempt.”

Russia should ensure that all those behind the assassination are brought to justice "through an open and transparent judicial process" and uphold its national and international obligations to "protect human rights and democratic values," Stano said in a statement.

The spokesman noted that independent media and civil society in Russia “face unprecedented pressure from the Russian government, notably through the designation of ever more media outlets, civil society organizations, but also individual journalists and activists as 'foreign agents' or 'undesirable.'"

Blinken praised “the courage and persistence of independent Russian journalists -- many unfairly designated as “foreign agents” -- working today in the face of repression.”

The legislations on “'undesirable” individuals or groups, as well as the so-called “foreign agents” law, have been used by the Russian authorities to target independent media outlets, civil society groups, rights activists, and others.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on October 7 that NATO decided to expel eight Russians accredited to the alliance in response to a surge in Moscow's "malign activities," as the Kremlin warned the decision undermined "almost completely" any hope for improving relations.

NATO announced on October 6 that the Russian officials are to be deprived of access to the organization’s Brussels headquarters from the end of the month, saying they were undeclared members of Russia's intelligence services. NATO also halved the number of positions that Russia can accredit from 20 down to 10.

“This decision is not linked to any particular event, but we have seen over some time now an increase in Russian malign activity, and therefore we need to be vigilant,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.

Relations between the alliance and Moscow are currently at the “lowest point since the end of the Cold War…because of the Russian behavior,” he said, citing Russia’s “aggressive actions” against Ukraine and its “significant military buildup and violations of important arms control agreements.”

Official contacts between NATO and Russia have been limited since Moscow forcibly annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine -- a deadly war that continues to this day.

The 30-member Western alliance is also concerned over Russia's nuclear missile development, aerial intrusions into NATO airspace, and the buzzing of allied ships by Russian fighter planes.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on October 7 accused NATO of duplicity and said hopes for better relations were almost totally compromised.

"There is an obvious contradiction in the statements of NATO representatives about the desire to normalize relations with our country in real action,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

“These actions, of course, do not allow us to have any illusions about the possibility of normalizing relations, or resuming dialogue with NATO," he said. “On the contrary, these prospects are almost completely undermined.”

The main forum for dialogue between the two sides, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), is stalled, having met only sporadically since 2014.

NATO invited Russia to take part in an NCR meeting more than 18 months ago, but Stoltenberg said Moscow has declined to take up the offer.

The move, which was apparently agreed on October 5 by all 30 alliance members, is reported to have come after revelations emerged in April about suspected Russian involvement in a deadly explosion at an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic, an alliance member, in 2014.

The expulsion was the second of its sort in recent years. In 2018, seven Russian diplomats were kicked out following the poisoning of former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in England.

At the time, NATO also reduced the size of the Russian mission to 20 from 30 people.

With reporting by AP, AFP, Interfax, and TASS

KYIV -- The mayor of Odesa has been charged with illegally acquiring several plots of land in Ukraine’s largest port city, the latest in a series of criminal cases opened against him.

Hennadiy Trukhanov has been a target for years for anti-corruption activists, who say he and influential business allies have turned the Black Sea port into their own private fiefdom.

In a post to Facebook on October 6, Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova said Trukhanov and the four other men had been officially notified of the charges. She did not identify the other four individuals.

"This is a very important case for both the Odesa region and the country as a whole. Odesa has never been a simple place, and it would be naive to think that cases there are usually investigated as anywhere else," Venediktova wrote.

"The investigators managed to document the unlawful activities of a broad range of people including the mayor, an ex-chief prosecutor of the region and a businessman who...manipulated them any way he wanted, like in a puppet theater," she wrote.

Trukhanov, who remains free pending issuance of an arrest warrant, had no immediate comment on the new charges.

Elected to the post in 2014, Trukhanov has been in the center of corruption allegations for years.

Trukhanov clashed openly with the governor of the Odesa region, Mikheil Saakashvili, after the former Georgian president was appointed head of the region in May 2015.

Saakashvili accused Trukhanov of corruption and pledged to bring him to justice. But Saakashvili quit in November 2016, accusing the government of President Petro Poroshenko's government of undermining his efforts to fight corruption and carry out reforms.

In 2017, Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and deported in February 2018. One day after the deportation, Trukhanov returned to Ukraine and was detained at the Kyiv airport amid allegations of embezzlement.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said at the time that a deputy mayor and two Odesa city-council members were also suspects in the case.

Trukhanov and other suspects were later released from custody after several lawmakers vouched for them. The trial on that case has been pending since then.

In 2018, the BBC reported that a Ukrainian crime gang used offshore firms in British tax havens to secretly invest millions of pounds in London real estate. Trukhanov was one of several identified as part of the gang, according to the report.

Trukhanov was also identified as a member of an organized crime group in an Italian state police report in 1998, according to news reports.

Odesa is Ukraine's largest port, and the country's third-largest city. For years stretching back into the Soviet era, it has been known as a haven for smuggling and other criminal activities.

KYIV -- Ukrainian lawmakers have voted to remove parliament speaker Dmytro Razumkov, amid differences between him and the ruling Servant of the People party.

A total of 284 members of the Verkhovna Rada, including 215 lawmakers from the ruling party, voted to dismiss Razumkov on October 7.

Razumkov was a member the Servant of the People party until he assumed the post of parliament speaker in 2019, months after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected.

He has openly opposed the quick passing of legislation intended to limit the influence of oligarchs on politics and business.

Razumkov called for the bill to be referred to the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, a body of independent experts in the field of constitutional law, but the legislation was passed last month.

SEE ALSO:

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On October 3, Zelenskiy publicly criticized Razumkov, saying that he was "not a member of our team anymore," and the ruling party started the process to remove him from his post.

After his dismissal, Razumkov announced that he will remain in politics. He said that the ruling party cannot strip him off his parliamentary mandate, and he hinted at his possible candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

"The presidential election campaign has not started yet, right? Well, they said earlier that nobody ever became president from the post of the Verkhovna Rada's head. That obstacle was removed today. We will see what happens further," he told reporters.

Deputy parliament speaker Olena Kondratyuk told the chamber that a total of five candidates had been registered to replace Razumkov.

The Servant of the People proposed a deputy speaker, Ruslan Stefanchuk, for the post.

The other candidates are Yaroslav Zheleznyak of the Holos (Voice) party, Oleksiy Honcharenko and Yana Zinkevich of the European Solidarity party, and an independent member of the parliament, Heo Leros.

With reporting by Ukrayinska Pravda, UNIAN, and the Kyiv Post

The head of a major Ukrainian state-owned bank has said he is under investigation in connection with a confrontation with RFE/RL investigative reporters during an interview this week.

Yevhen Metsher, who stepped down temporarily as Ukreksimbank's CEO earlier this week, said he was handed the official notice on October 7.

"I am ready to fully cooperate with the investigation. I am deeply confident that freedom of speech is an important element of Ukraine's development," Metsher wrote in a post to his Facebook page.

"Once more, I would like to express my sincere apologies to the journalistic community and personally to" the reporters involved.

A spokeswoman for the Kyiv regional prosecutor's office said the bank's chief spokesman had also been notified he was a suspect. According to Ukrainian law, that means the two men are officially accused of a crime.

The day before, Metsher announced that he was temporarily stepping down as CEO of the bank, which Ukraine's main export-import bank.

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Ukrainian Bank Chief Temporarily Resigns Amid Condemnation Of Assault On RFE/RL Journalists

The incident took place in Metsher's office in Kyiv on October 4 during an interview with reporters for Schemes (Skhemy), a joint investigative project run by RFE/RL and UA: Pershy television.

One reporter, Kyrylo Ovsyaniy, asked him a question about a controversial loan given to a client.

Metsher then instructed security personnel to stop the journalists and take their cameras and video materials away. Security guards forcibly seized videographer Oleksandr Mazur's two cameras and memory cards.

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Caught On Video: Ukrainian Banker Tries To Delete Recording After Assault On RFE/RL Journalists

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The journalists were allowed to leave after being ordered to delete video files from their memory cards. But Schemes' technicians later managed to retrieve video showing the entire incident.

The clip shows how Metsher instructed his spokesman and security personnel to take the cameras and memory cards. Bank personnel can be heard saying that the memory cards "must be cleaned up to zero."

Officials including the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova condemned the attack.

The country's National Police said they had opened a criminal probe.

"Journalists must be allowed to do their work without fear of physical intimidation or harassment," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement following the attack.

With reporting by Ukrayinska pravda

Belarusian authorities say scores of people have been arrested for "insulting a government official" and other charges in connection with a police shoot-out at a Minsk apartment that killed an intelligence officer and an IT worker.

The Investigative Committee said 136 people had been taken in custody as of October 6, and signaled more arrests were likely.

The arrests are the latest development surrounding the murky shooting on September 28, which resulted in the death of Andrey Zeltsar, a man working for a major U.S.-based IT company called EPAM.

SEE ALSO:

Dozens Detained In Belarus Over Social-Media Posts On Minsk Shooting

The authorities claimed that "an especially dangerous criminal" had opened fire on security officers after they showed up at his apartment looking for "individuals involved in terrorist activities." In addition to Zeltsar, Dzmitry Fedasyuk, an officer with the country's main security agency, the KGB, was also killed.

Earlier this week, Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka vowed to punish people criticizing the raid, and specifically those criticizing Fedasyuk.

Among those commenting publicly was Valer Tsapkala, an exiled, would-be presidential candidate who said Zeltsar was an example for all Belarusians of how to resist Lukashenka's government.

Lukashenka slammed people who posted comments on social media praising Zeltsar and criticizing Fedasyuk, saying, "We have all their accounts and we can see who is who."

In addition to charges of insulting a government official, those arrested face charges of "inciting social hatred," the committee said.

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.

A number of human rights organizations spoke about the raid, and about the condition in which detainees were being held.

Belarus has been roiled by unprecedented anti-government protests that erupted after a presidential election in August 2020 in which Lukashenka claimed reelection.

Opposition groups called the vote fraudulent, and many Western government have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the winner.

In response to months of street protests, the government has arrested thousands and pushed most of the top opposition figures out of the country.

Earlier this week, the Belarus's Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of the country's oldest human rights organization, the Belarusian Helsinki Committee.

A Moscow court has ordered an investigative journalist to pay 156,000 rubles ($2,155) in compensation to a Dutch blogger who he alleged had ties to Russia's military intelligence agency.

The October 6 decision by the Cheryomushkinsky district court came just days after Russian authorities said they had issued an arrest warrant for Roman Dobrokhotov on charges of illegally crossing the border into Ukraine.

Dobrokhotov is the editor-in-chief of The Insider, a Latvia-based investigative news site that the Russian authorities have designated a "foreign agent" as part of a mounting crackdown on independent news media.

SEE ALSO:

Russia Issues Arrest Warrant For Investigative Journalist

In July, just days after The Insider was labeled as a "foreign agent," Moscow police searched Dobrokhotov's apartment and that of his parents.

Dobrokhotov's passport was also confiscated, but he still managed to leave the country. 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 sued after Dobrokhotov claimed he was cooperating with Russian military intelligence to spread alternative narratives about the 2014 shootdown of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. All 298 people aboard the jet died, most of them Dutch.

Van der Werff is known for his articles rejecting international investigators' conclusions that MH17 was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine.

Investigators say Russia provided the anti-aircraft missile launcher that shot down the plane. Russia denies involvement and has put forth several other explanations.

With reporting by AP

The presidents of Ukraine, Israel, and Germany have inaugurated a memorial center for the victims of the Babyn Yar massacre in Ukraine, 80 years after the infamous mass slaughter by the Nazis.

About 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children were killed at the Babyn Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv on September 29-30, 1941, soon after the Nazis occupied the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the massacre a "black, ugly page in world history" and a "common tragedy of the Jewish and Ukrainian people."

Himself of Jewish heritage, Zelenskiy has said he had family members who perished in the Holocaust.

Speaking at the ceremony on October 6, he recalled the thousands of children who "took their last breath here" and said it was hard to stand where "thousands of bullets knocked people down here in Babyn Yar."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog began his speech with a prayer for the victims.

"Commemoration and remembrance are vital for the whole of humanity, against evil, cruelty, and apathy," he said, while German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the fight against anti-Semitism must go on.

Zelenskiy, Herzog, and Steinmeier inaugurated a memorial center, which is still under construction. It is dedicated to the stories of Eastern European Jews who were killed and buried in mass graves during the Holocaust.

As part of the ceremony, Ukrainian authorities also unveiled an installation created by performance artist Marina Abramovic.

Located at the Babyn Yar memorial complex, the Crystal Wall of Crying -- an allusion to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem -- consists of 75 large quartz crystals embedded in a 40-meter-long wall of black anthracite.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also paid tribute to the anniversary in a video on Twitter in which he quoted from a report by a member of the Babyn Yar killing squad.

"The killers worked in shifts. Some took breaks around a bonfire to talk and drink coffee," he said. "Not everyone who was shot died immediately. Some suffocated under the weight of the bodies.

"Survivors later said that the earth around the ravine moved and moaned for days after the mass killings, as if the land itself were rebelling against what it had been asked to hold," Blinken said.

He said that the Nazis destroyed evidence in an attempt to ensure that the world would not know or remember what happened at Babyn Yar, and he said for years Soviet history omitted that the tens of thousands of people initially killed there were Jews.

In the months following the massacre, German authorities killed thousands more Jews and non-Jews at the site, including Roma, communist officials, Soviet prisoners of war, and Soviet civilians.

The Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial center on October 6 revealed 159 names of hundreds of Nazi troops who took part in the massacre.

The center said despite confessions, evidence, and testimonies submitted in the postwar years by some of the Nazi soldiers who carried out the murders, only a few of those involved ever faced justice for their crimes.

With reporting by AP and AFP

The top U.S. and Russian diplomats have discussed their shared interest in the restoration of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced his conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a visit to France on October 6.

"The United States and Russia, I think, [are] sharing an interest in seeing a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA," Blinken said in reference to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Washington pulled out of in 2018 before reimposing sanctions on Iran.

"We had an opportunity to compare notes on where we stand, and where we hope to go," Blinken said of his conversation with Lavrov.

Blinken's remarks followed Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian's suggestion during a visit to Moscow the same day that included talks with Lavrov that Tehran expected the EU-mediated talks to revive the nuclear deal to restart "soon."

Lavrov was quoted as saying that the talks on the JCPOA "should be resumed as soon as possible" and he urged Washington to return to compliance with the deal.

Lavrov urged the United States to end what he described as "illegal restrictions on Iran and all of its trading partners."

Six rounds of tough, often indirect, negotiations in Vienna were interrupted by the election in June of hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was inaugurated in early August.

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What Iranian Foreign Policy Could Look Like Under President Raisi

"We are now finalizing consultations on this matter and will soon restore our negotiations in Vienna," said Amir-Abdollahian, who has publicly noted that it took U.S. President Joe Biden's administration months to begin the talks after it took over in January on a pledge to revive the JCPOA.

The conservative Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee spokesman, Mahmud Abbaszadeh Meshkini, was quoted by Tasmin news agency as saying the talks would resume "in the coming days."

"The messages and signals from Western countries point to the start of a new cycle of talks," Meshkini said.

The financial and other sanctions slapped on Iran by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 have badly hurt Iran's economy and its currency, with conditions for many Iranians worsening considerably during the coronavirus pandemic.

Blinken was in France seeking to calm waters over a recently announced military pact to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Leaders from North Macedonia and EU member Bulgaria appear to have mapped out a possible exit from a yearlong dispute over shared culture that has stalled Macedonian hopes for progress toward accession talks with the bloc.

But without a decisive breakthrough to lift Sofia's objections to opening such negotiations, EU officials acknowledged that the failure to decide to open membership talks with Skopje was likely damaging the bloc's "credibility."

A tentative route out of the 10-month deadlock emerged on October 6 after a meeting between Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of an EU-Western Balkans summit at Brdo Castle in Slovenia.

"During the talks, mutual readiness and interest were expressed by North Macedonia and Bulgaria to continue the dialogue between the two countries with the intention of reaching a solution," Zaev said in a statement.

Sofia raised its objection to EU accession talks with North Macedonia in November 2020, accusing Macedonians of marginalizing historical, cultural, and linguistic ties and appropriating Bulgarian heritage.

Radev, who faces a reelection battle in November alongside his disunited country's third parliamentary elections this year, announced at Brdo Castle that a bilateral protocol was being drafted between Sofia and Skopje and would be presented next month.

He said a road map with specific decisions could follow that Sofia will insist on including in the framework for North Macedonia's EU membership negotiations.

Radev listed three demands from the Bulgarian side before Sofia would withdraw its objection to EU talks for Skopje: a previous insistence on the inclusion of Bulgarians as a nationality in the Macedonian Constitution; the enumeration of Macedonian Bulgarians "adequately reflected as a nationality and as a number" in the upcoming Macedonian census; and recognition by North Macedonia of "the historical truth in relations with Bulgaria."

The European Commission has repeatedly said the futures of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia lie in the 27-member bloc.

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EU Leaders Reaffirm Western Balkans' 'European Perspective,' Give No Timeline For Accessions

But divisions among EU states about taking in new members and the slow pace of reform in the six hopefuls has put enlargement on ice for years.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged at Brdo on October 6 that the blocked accession talks of North Macedonia and nearby Albania were damaging the EU's credibility in the Western Balkans.

NATO has expelled eight members of Russia's mission to the alliance after they were revealed to belong to Moscow's intelligence services and cut the mission's size in half, a NATO official told RFE/RL.

The official said that the alliance had "strengthened our deterrence and defense in response to Russia's aggressive actions," but was still willing to engage in dialogue.

"We can confirm that we have withdrawn the accreditation of eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, who were undeclared Russian intelligence officers," the official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, told RFE/RL.

"We can also confirm that we have reduced the number of positions which the Russian Federation can accredit to NATO [from 20] to 10.

"NATO's policy towards Russia remains consistent. We have strengthened our deterrence and defense in response to Russia's aggressive actions, while at the same time we remain open for a meaningful dialogue," the official said.

Relations between NATO and Russia have been tense recently and official contacts have been limited since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

The 30-member Western alliance is also concerned over Russia's nuclear missile development, aerial intrusions into NATO airspace, and the buzzing of allied ships by Russian fighter planes.

The main forum for dialogue between the two sides, the NATO-Russia Council, is stalled.

"NATO proposed to hold another meeting of the NATO-Russia Council over 18 months ago, and that proposal stands. The ball is in Russia's court," the official said.

There was no immediate official reaction from Moscow, but a senior Russian lawmaker, Leon Slutsky, told Interfax that Moscow will retaliate against NATO's decision.

Slutsky, head of the lower house of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted as saying that Russia would retaliate, "and not necessarily in a symmetrical way."

NATO's move was the second time the alliance has taken action against Russia on such a scale, after it expelled seven Russian diplomats from the mission following the 2018 poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.

Those expulsions were part of mass ejections of Russian intelligence officers across allied countries.

At the time, NATO also reduced the size of the Russian mission to 20 from 30 people.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia nearly died after being exposed to what British authorities later concluded was Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent. A British woman who accidentally came into contact with the substance died.

The latest move, which was apparently agreed on October 5 by all 30 alliance members, is reported to have come after revelations emerged in April about suspected Russian involvement in a deadly explosion at an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic in 2014.

With reporting by Rikard Jozwiak, Reuters, Sky News, TASS, and Interfax

MOSCOW -- A Russian nongovernmental organization that has defended the rights of conscripts in the Russian Army for more than two decades says it has ceased its activities because it faces possible persecution from the authorities.

Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg made the announcement on October 5, citing "serious restrictions" imposed by Russia's main domestic security service on the group’s activities.

The move comes days after the Federal Security Service (FSB) published a 60-point list of nonsecret topics that could result in people or organizations being designated as "foreign agents" if they cover or write about them, and face criminal prosecution.

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Russia's FSB Unveils Broad List Of Topics That Could Result In 'Foreign Agent' Label

The document is the latest in a widening net of restrictions under a nine-year-old law that has been used to target independent media outlets, civil society groups, rights activists, and others.

Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg was established in the 1990s.

"We clearly understand that at this moment neither the state nor society needs our work,” the NGO said in its statement.

"The state has chosen a different path of development, and society has found itself frightened and has to comply" with new realities.

The FSB list, dated September 28, includes broad topics, such as collecting information about "the moral-psychological climate inside the armed forces, investigations of crimes in the military, as well as "the location, numbers, and armaments" of military forces, military purchases, and contracts.

Russia reported 929 new COVID-19 deaths on October 6 -- the highest single-day death toll since the pandemic began -- amid the country's low vaccination rate and the authorities' reluctance to impose tough restrictions to control the spread of the disease.

The new deaths bring Russia's total fatalities from the coronavirus to more than 212,000 -- the highest tally in Europe -- and it is widely assumed that the country’s death toll is being underreported.

Russia has officially recorded more than 7.6 million coronavirus infections, making it the world's fifth worst-hit country.

The country has seen cases climb since August, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.

Several Russia-made vaccines have been available for months, but authorities have struggled to encourage its vaccine-skeptic population to get inoculated.

According to the Gogov website, which tallies Covid-19 data from the regions, less than 30 percent of Russia's 146 million population had been fully vaccinated as of October 6.

Despite the surge in coronavirus infections and deaths, officials have not put major restrictions in place.

And Kremlin spokesman Dmity Peskov said on October 6 that lockdowns would be "an absolutely undesirable scenario for any region."

The previous day, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the city was "far from peak numbers" and that the growing infections are largely linked to high detection rates.

Two thirds of Moscow's hospital beds for coronavirus patients are currently occupied, he said.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on Ukraine’s government to evacuate Ukrainian passport-holders from Afghanistan as soon as flights from Kabul resume.

In a statement on October 5, the New York-based human rights watchdog noted that Kyiv rescued almost 250 Ukrainians, Afghans, and citizens of other countries, some of whom have sought asylum in Ukraine, following the Taliban takeover of the country in August.

However, it added that dozens of Ukrainian citizens, mostly Afghans with Ukrainian passports, and their relatives remain stranded in the capital.

"Many people who made it onto Ukraine’s evacuation list traveled long distances with their families to be closer to the Kabul airport, where they have been waiting for evacuation and other assistance from the Ukrainian government, while fearing for their lives," HRW said.

The United States and its allies evacuated more than 120,000 of their citizens and at-risk Afghans after the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul in mid-August.

Thousands more people want to leave the war-torn country.

Some foreign airlines, including Pakistan International Airlines and Iran’s Mahan Air, have operated flights to and from Kabul since the Taliban takeover.

According to HRW, some Afghans with Ukrainian passports were in Afghanistan visiting their relatives when Taliban took control of most of the country.

It cited some of the Afghans with Ukrainian citizenship as saying that they have been unable to get any information or support from the Ukrainian authorities.

Officials at Ukraine's Foreign Ministry "have made contradictory statements about further evacuations, while Ukrainian embassies in Pakistan and Tajikistan, tasked with assisting evacuations and issuing visas, have so far been unresponsive to pleas for visas or information," according to the statement.

"Once flights resume, the Ukrainian government should step up efforts to provide nationals and Afghans at risk with evacuation, protection, and assistance, including prioritizing visas for their families or giving them the opportunity to seek asylum. Their lives may depend on it," it concluded.

MINSK-- A Belarusian court has sentenced a senior official at the Justice Ministry to two years in prison for taking part in an unsanctioned mass protest last year against official election results that handed authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth consecutive term.

Minsk’s Frunze district court on October 5 found Alyaksey Syankou, who held the rank of colonel, guilty of "taking part in public events that blatantly violated the social order and led to the disruption of transportation" in the center of the capital in August 2020.

Judge Natallya Buhuk sentenced him the same day.

Syankou, 43, was arrested in early July and fired from his job at the Investigative Committee, where he had held various positions since 2012.

He has maintained his innocence.

Belarus was engulfed by protests last year after the August 9 presidential election, which the opposition and the West say was rigged.

The mass protests demanding Lukashenka's resignation were met with the the heavy-handed -- and sometimes violent -- detention of tens of thousands of people.

Several demonstrators have been killed and there have been what human rights groups call credible reports of torture in the crackdown.

Much of the opposition leadership has been jailed or forced into exile.

During his trial, Syankou told the court that he was at the August rally to take pictures, and that he did not take part in the clashes between riot police and protesters that day.

He said he was accompanied by his younger brother Yury Syankou, who was arrested in April and later sentenced to three years in prison on similar charges and for inciting social discord via social networks.

The younger Syankou headed the financial department of Minsk’s Lenin district.

An opposition activist in Siberia says he has left Russia to avoid possible detention amid an ongoing crackdown on people and organizations linked to jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

Lev Gyammer, the former coordinator of the Protesting Kuzbass opposition movement in the city of Novokuznetsk, wrote on the VKontakte social network on October 5 that he is now "safe" in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.

Gyammer wrote that he had decided to flee Russia because he could face charges of creating an extremist group.

Many opposition activists and politicians have left Russia in recent years amid an increasing crackdown on opposition groups and independent media across Russia.

Before working as a coordinator for Protesting Kuzbass in Novokuznetsk, Gyammer lived for several years in Moscow where he worked for groups linked to the now jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and several other organizations were labeled as extremist and banned in Russia earlier this year.

Navalny, who has been incarcerated since February, and several of his associates who are currently living abroad have been charged with creating an extremist group.

In his post, Gyammer said that the Investigative Committee last week released a statement saying that a new criminal probe had been launched into "the creation of 'an extremist community.'"

The investigation "targets all people who set up FBK and Navalny's teams between 2014-2021," he wrote, adding that many activists will most likely be persecuted as part of the new probe.

"It is painful. Russia is my home. My friends and my family are in that country. My mom was buried in that country. Starting today, I am living in Tbilisi," his post also reads.

The open-expression advocacy group PEN America has honored three imprisoned Iranian writers during its annual gala in New York, and awarded them with the 2021 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

Keyvan Bajan, Baktash Abtin, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi are "celebrated writers who have been imprisoned by the Iranian authorities for their writing, their defense of free expression, and their peaceful opposition to state censorship," PEN America said on October 5.

The group's chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, noted that the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award is conferred on writers "whose courage prompts us to renew our collective vow to defend free societies."

Bajan, Abtin, and Khandan Mahabadi are serving prison sentences ranging from 3 to 6 years over their involvement with the Iranian Writers Association, whose members have been summoned, threatened, and jailed by the Iranian authorities.

International human rights groups and media-freedom watchdogs have condemned the prison sentences handed to the trio and called for their release.

Nearly 370 artists and intellectuals across the world have signed a letter recently addressed to Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, calling for the trio’s release.

"These three writers…have fruitfully contributed to Iran’s rich literary history, writing books, poetry and short stories, and editing multi-volume encyclopedias of Iranian fiction and oral histories of great writers," the letter reads.

"Despite the risks, Abtin, Bajan, and Khandan Mahabadi have nevertheless carried on the legacies of late Iranian poets, intellectuals, and dissidents by organizing memorials, literary events, newsletters, and other publications -- activities that, to the judiciary, amount to serious crimes."

Signatories of the letter include Nobel Prize-winning writers J.M. Coetzee of South Africa, Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini, and Turkey's Orhan Pamuk, as well as Hollywood star Meryl Streep.

With reporting by AFP