A Russian cultural group in the United States says it has shut down after some of its members were questioned by FBI agents, allegedly about potential violations of the U.S. law on foreign agents.

The closure of the Russian Community Council of the USA, announced on November 18, comes amid mounting concern over Russia’s own foreign agent law, which authorities have used to target scores of nongovernmental organizations, rights activists, media outlets, and individual journalists.

Russian officials often justify the law by drawing false comparisons to the 83-year-old U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.

In a statement, the Russian Community Council said it had decided to close “after a year of active and nationwide FBI measures directed at over 300 Russian community members.”

“We interpret the FBI’s measures towards Russian community members, especially individuals who organize Russian cultural events and openly advocate for more dialogue and people-to-people ties with Russia, as a form of pressure reminiscent of the Cold War era,” the organization said in its November 18 statement, denying it had engaged in any political activities.

The statement did not provide further details. E-mails sent to the organization’s New York-based president, and other members, were not immediately returned.

The reported closure drew sharp statements from the Foreign Ministry and the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., which alleged “deliberate repressions” against Russians in the United States.

At a briefing in Moscow on November 19., Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged that the FBI had targeted “the Russian-speaking community in the United States, threatening criminal action over the alleged non-compliance with the FARA act."

Zakharova provided no specific evidence to back up her claim.

Known in Russian as the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of the U.S., or KSORS, the group says it is a non-commercial, non-government organization aimed at “supporting organizations of Russian compatriots [and] to preserve and popularize the Russian language and cultural and historical heritage in the United States.”

The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiry from RFE/RL seeking comment.

Earlier this year, The Daily Beast reported that the organization was under FBI investigation and that "the investigation has included the questioning of dozens of people associated with the group, as well as home and office searches.” One former head of the organization told the Daily Beast that he had been removed from his position after he refused to cosign a statement supporting Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and that newer members were expected to embrace a more stridently pro-Russian position.

Тhe woman identified on the organization's website as its president, Elena Branson, gave an interview to the TV channel formerly known as Russia Today in late September, where she described an early morning FBI raid on her house a year earlier, on September 29, 2020.

She told the interviewer, Maria Butina, that the armed agents had a search warrant, and that they took iPhones, iPads, computers, documents, and tax declarations.

“The agents asked me to go out and searched the apartment for several hours. They didn't tell me what they were looking for,” she was quoted as saying.

Branson said she had been given legal documents indicating allegations of possible violations of FARA, or another criminal charge known as Section 951.

Known as "espionage-lite," Section 951 is also aimed at foreign nationals who allegedly work for a foreign government without declaring it to the U.S. government.

Most recently, the charge was used against Butina, a Russian woman who U.S. prosecutors said tried to infiltrate U.S. conservative political organizations. Butina pleaded guilty to a related conspiracy charge in late 2018, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and was deported in October 2019 after being released early.

Upon her return to Russia, Butina was hired by Russia Today, now known as RT; she recently joined Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma.

In her interview with Butina, Branson also that she had fled the United States sometime in late October 2020, just after the FBI search.

The reported closure of the organization comes as “foreign agents” laws, particularly in Russia, have been in the news of late.

Russia has stepped up enforcement of its own nine-year-old foreign agent law to target a widening net of NGOs, rights groups, civil society organizations, and journalists and media organizations.

More than 160 organizations and individuals have been designated “foreign agents” under the Russian law, a label that has onerous financial reporting requirements. For media organizations and even individual journalists, the law also requires attaching an intrusive label to text articles or broadcast stories to identify them as foreign agents.

The designation has forced some lawyers to flee Russia, as well as some journalists.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several of its affiliated publications and programs have also been designated as foreign agents.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have sought to draw parallels between the Russian law and FARA, a law in force since the 1930s, although the U.S. law does not mandate the same onerous requirements that the Russian law does. The U.S. law, for example, has no requirement that designated media outlets publish or broadcast a disclaimer.

Polish officials accused Belarus of shifting tactics to encourage migrants to cross the border into Poland, as new attempts to breach the frontier were reported.

Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on November 20 that he expected the border showdown to be long drawn out while Belarus said the situation remained "tense."

"We have to prepare for the fact that this problem will continue for months. I have no doubt that that will be the case," Blaszczak told RMF FM radio.

With thousands of people either camped out on the border and waiting elsewhere in warehouse-like conditions, the European Union has accused Belarus of fomenting the crisis by bringing in people -- mostly from the Middle East -- and directing them to the border with promises of making into the European Union.

Belarus has denied the claim, despite mounting evidence that Belarusian border guards were doing some coordination with migrants.

The new attempts occurred late on November 19 amid a drop in the number of people that have been trying to force their way into Poland.

"The foreigners were aggressive. They threw rocks and fireworks and used tear gas," a police statement said, adding that the largest group consisted of 200 foreigners.

Polish police said that during one crossing attempt near the village of Starzyna, Belarusian servicemen threw stones towards Polish border guards, policemen and soldiers, resulting in police cars being damaged.

The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka of flying in migrants and funneling them to the borders of member states Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania to retaliate for sanctions the bloc imposed over a sweeping crackdown since last year's disputed presidential election.

Speaking to the BBC on November 19, Lukashenka said it was "absolutely possible" his forces had helped people cross into the EU but denied inviting thousands of mostly Middle Eastern migrants to Belarus in order to provoke a border crisis.

Polish officials said they recorded a total of 195 attempts to cross the border illegally on November 19, down from 250 on November 18 and 501 the day before, though Warsaw warned that the migrant crisis was far from over.

There is no question that these attacks are directed by Belarusian services," Blaszczak said.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will visit Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on November 21 to discuss the crisis, a government spokesman said on November 20.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, dpa, and RFE/RL's Belarus Service

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said on November 20 they had seized a boat in the Persian Gulf for allegedly smuggling diesel.

"A foreign ship, carrying smuggled diesel was seized," Iranian media quoted Colonel Ahmad Hajian, commander of the Naval Type 412 Zulfaqar in the southern Parsian county, as saying.

"After the inspection, more than 150,000 litres of smuggled diesel were seized and the 11 foreign crew members were brought before a court," he added.

Hajian did provide the ship’s nationality or details about when it was seized. He also did not specify the nationality of the crew members.

To protect Iran's economy, Hajian said, his unit would "deal decisively" with fuel smuggling in the sea.

Iran has frequently seized boats it says are being used for smuggling fuel in the Gulf.

The hard-line Fars news agency, affiliated with the IRGC, released video footage showing speed-boats intercepting a vessel and masked armed Guards boarding it.

The incident is the latest in a series in the Persian Gulf where several ships have been attacked or seized.

With reporting by Reuters and ISNA

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed on November 20 to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to counter its “dangerous use” of suicide drones in the Middle East, a pledge coming as Washington works to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

“The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. And we remain committed to a diplomatic outcome of the nuclear issue,” Austin said in Bahrain at the annual Manama Dialogue, in remarks that appeared aimed at reassuring America's Arab allies who have expressed concern over Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program and its activities in the region.

“But if Iran isn’t willing to engage seriously, then we will look at all the options necessary to keep the United States secure," he added at the event.

Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, a series of escalating incidents have struck the region, including drone and mine attacks targeting vessels at sea.

U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the nuclear deal if Iran returns to full compliance.

Talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 agreement, which significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, are due to resume on November 29.

Austin said Washington would be coming to the indirect negotiationsin Vienna in good faith. while noting that Iran has been expanding its sensitive nuclear work.

"But Iran's actions in recent months have not been encouraging - especially because of the expansion of their nuclear program," he said.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will meet in Brussels next month to discuss border clashes and advancing diplomacy, the European Union said.

"Leaders have agreed to meet in Brussels to discuss the regional situation and ways of overcoming tensions for a prosperous and stable South Caucasus, which the EU supports,” a spokesman for Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said in a statement on November 19.

The meeting will take place on December 15 on the sidelines of the EU’s Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels.

The announcement came after Michel held phone calls with Aliyev and Pashinian.

“During the phone calls, the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders have also agreed to establish a direct communication line, at the level of respective Ministers of Defense, to serve as an incident prevention mechanism,” the EU said.

It would be third face-to-face talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan since last year’s 44-day war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed thousands before the sides agreed to a Russian-brokered cease-fire.

The two previous meetings were in Moscow with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Renewed border clashes erupted between Azerbaijan and Armenia earlier this week, in the worst fighting since last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Azerbaijan said seven of its soldiers had been killed in the November 16 fighting. Armenia said six of its soldiers were killed, 13 were captured, and the fate of another 24 servicemen is unknown.

Both sides blamed each other for starting the latest hostilities, which ended with another Russian-mediated cease-fire.

The violence renewed international calls for the two neighbors to engage in a process of delimitating and demarcating their Soviet-era border.

In last year's war, Baku gained control of parts of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as adjacent territories that had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Some 2,000 Russian troops were deployed to monitor the cease-fire.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

A new migrant center capable of registering up to 1,500 people opened in Bosnia-Herzegovina on November 19, following heavy criticism about how the Balkan country treated asylum-seekers trying to reach the European Union.

The new, organized Lipa camp, in the northwestern Krajina region, replaces a makeshift camp destroyed in a fire last December, leaving hundreds of migrants in the cold, with no facilities, heat, or food.

The container-style facility is located in a remote area where authorities last fall had forcibly moved hundreds of people from overcrowded EU-funded, UN-run camps in surrounding town centers due to the resistance of the local population.

The new reception center provides housing, food, water, sanitation, and medical care in line with international standards.

“Eleven months ago, exactly, we were standing here, (in) the same location but completely different circumstances, in the middle of a humanitarian crisis,” Johann Sattler, the EU representative in Bosnia, said at the opening ceremony. “Today we are here in this new multi-purpose reception center.”

The project was funded by the EU with the help of individual European governments. It will be run by Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner Affairs with help from the International Organization for Migration, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations.

"I think that today we can say that the institutions of the state completely control the migrant situation. Until recently, this was done by international organizations," said Bosnian Minister of Security Selmo Cikotic.

Since Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, Bosnia has become a key route for migrants seeking to reach the European Union. At first, Bosnian authorities let migrants pass onto EU member Croatia, but Croatian authorities later sealed the border and reportedly resorted to pushbacks of migrants, leaving thousands of people stuck in Bosnia.

Many of the 84,000 migrants who have entered Bosnia since 2018 have been granted asylum in EU countries or repatriated home. Fewer than 3 percent requested asylum in Bosnia.

Some 3,000 migrants and refugees are currently stuck in Bosnia, compared to over 10,000 at the start of last year.

The European Commission's latest progress report in October on reforms in Bosnia said authorities had failed to establish an adequate migration and asylum system, leading to the humanitarian crisis in December 2020.

With reporting by AP and RFE/RL's Balkan Service

BELGRADE -- Serbia and other ex-Yugoslav states should do more to fight genocide denial and hate speech if they want their societies to move forward, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, has told RFE/RL.

During a visit to Belgrade, Nderitu said that it rests with the political elites in countries that have experienced genocide to accurately assess the past and admit guilt in order to allow younger generations to look toward the future.

"As long as there is a group of people who are influential and deny that genocide took place in Srebrenica, or that genocide took place in Rwanda, or that the Holocaust took place, it remains very difficult for a society to move forward," she said.

"They, the younger generations, should look to the future and think positively about it," Nderitu said.

Referring to a mural of Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic that has been at the center of a tug-of-war between supporters and detractors of the convicted war criminal, Ndaritu said the mural should not have been painted in the first place.

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Mladic, 79, led Bosnian Serb forces during Bosnia's 1992-95 war and was convicted by a United Nations tribunal of war crimes, including the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995.

He is serving a life sentence, and his appeal of his 2017 conviction for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes was rejected by the tribunal, based in The Hague, in June.

But many in Serbia still see Mladic as a hero of the war, and his mural, which appeared on the facade of a building in central Belgrade one month after the war crimes court confirmed his conviction, has reignited passions among supporters and enemies of the man dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia.

Since then, the mural was targeted by paint throwers several times, and each time it was quickly returned it to its original state.

"I think that this mural drew attention to Serbia, and for the wrong reasons," Nderitu said.

"Why would you want to have that mural at all? We have to go further, and deal with the question of why people want to identify with Ratko Mladic, so much so that they are ready to defend his mural."

The UN official said that the fundamental problem remained the politicians' will to tolerate genocide denial and the glorification of war criminals.

"It is necessary to deal with those narratives from the past, to fight hate speech and genocide denial.

"The basic problem is precisely this -- denying genocide and glorifying war criminals," Nderitu told RFE/RL.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said he requested military assistance during his first trip to the United States in his new capacity amid growing concern of possible Russian aggression.

Speaking to journalists at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on November 19, a day after he met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Reznikov said that Ukraine had "powerful" ground forces but needed to enhance its air and naval capacities to deter Russian threats.

Reznikov declined to name the weapons he is requesting from the United States, saying only that in order "to stop [Russian] aggression, we need to show the cost will be too high."

His trip to Washington, organized at the last minute, comes amid reports Russia has kept as many as 90,000 troops stationed near its border with Ukraine following the conclusion of military exercises, raising fears of another possible invasion.

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Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, capturing much of its naval fleet, and has been backing fighters in two of Ukraine's eastern provinces. The conflict, which continues to this day, has claimed at least 13,200 lives.

In the latest incident, Ukraine said on November 19 that one of its soldiers had been killed by Moscow-backed separatists in the east.

The United States has committed more than $2.5 billion in military aide to Ukraine since 2014, including anti-tank missiles. Total U.S. military assistance, including training, will be $400 million this year, the State Department has said.

Ukraine's military needs have shifted over the years in relation to Russia’s actions and now is primarily in air and sea capabilities, Reznikov said.

Delivering new U.S. weapons to Ukraine is likely to anger Russia, which has recently lashed out at Western assistance to the country.

Reznikov said he received a "very strong" commitment from Austin that the United States will be "shoulder to shoulder" with Ukraine.

During a joint press conference with Reznikov on November 18, Austin said the United States was "monitoring closely" Russia's military movements near the border with Ukraine and expressed "unwavering support" for the country.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs Mark Milley spoke earlier in the day with his Ukrainian counterpart, Valeriy Zalushniy, Reznikov said.

"We are going to ensure this communication on a regular basis," the Ukrainian defense minister said.

Reznikov, a 55-year-old former lawyer and deputy prime minister, was confirmed as defense minister on November 4, replacing Andriy Taran.

ASHGABAT -- Turkmen families who have relatives working abroad may have their subsidized food rations cut from next year as the country struggles with an acute shortage of foodstuffs and a spike in inflation.

Employees at several state stores selling subsidized food in the eastern region of Lebap and sources close to such stores told RFE/RL on November 19 that they had also been instructed by local authorities in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic to halt the sales of subsidized food to the families of people serving time in penitentiaries and to stateless persons residing in the country.

They added that families with a member serving in the armed forces and war veterans will be given priority for subsidized foodstuffs. In addition, families who are indebted to local utilities will be denied the right to buy food in the subsidized stores.

According to the stores' employees and sources, the instructions were given during a session of the local trade directorate on November 18.

Neither local government officials in Lebap nor the minister of trade and economic ties were available for immediate comment on the report.

Individuals working at subsidized food stores confirmed to RFE/RL that they had to cut the rations because supplies to the stores had been reduced.

Despite being home to the world's fourth-largest proven natural-gas reserves, corruption and chronic mismanagement of resources have led the country into an economic tailspin.

The situation has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which the Turkmen government officially denies.

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Turkmenistan Tightens Control Of Information As Economic Situation Worsens

RFE/RL correspondents reported on November 18 that authorities in the Keshi district in Ashgabat, the capital, announced that they were changing the allocation of subsidized food rations for 10 days, limiting the deliveries to one per dwelling instead of basing them on the number of families living in a residence.

Most private homes in the district house three or more generations, with residents living with their elderly parents and the families of their grown-up children and grandchildren.

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Subsidized Food Rations Cut In Turkmen Capital Amid Shortages, Price Hikes

Residents have complained that the subsidized food rations for 10 days include only 1 liter of sunflower or cottonseed oil, 1 kilogram of sugar, two chicken legs, and up to 15 eggs. This, they say, is barely enough for some extended families for two days, let along for five times that.

In another district in the capital, Parakhat-7, sunflower and cottonseed oil was taken off of the list of subsidized food from November 1.

Government critics and human rights groups say President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has suppressed dissent and made few changes since he came to power after the death of autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov.

Like his late predecessor, Berdymukhammedov has relied on providing people with subsidized goods and utilities to help maintain his grip on power.

The country has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who rely on subsidized food as prices at state grocery stores rise.

According to Human Rights Watch, Berdymukhammedov, "his relatives, and their associates control all aspects of public life, and the authorities encroach on private life."

Thousands of people have joined a rally in central Iranian city of Isfahan to protest against water cuts and the drying up of the river that passes through Iran's third-largest city.

Images broadcast on state television on November 19 and videos published on social networks showed farmers and others from across Isfahan Province gathered in the dried-up river bed and elsewhere in the city, chanting slogans such as "Give Zayandeh Rood River back."

First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber said that meetings were being held over the issue to try to solve the water problem in Isfahan and elsewhere.

The protest movement started in Isfahan on November 8 and a number of demonstrators set up tents in the river bed last week.

Similar protests have been held across Iran in recent years.

In July, deadly rallies broke out in the southwestern province of Khuzestan amid widespread water shortages.

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Failing Infrastructure, Low Rainfall Leave One Iranian Province Fighting For Water

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The Iran Meteorological Organization has estimated that 97 percent of the country is experiencing drought to some degree.

Mismanagement by the authorities has also been cited as a main cause for the water crisis.

A Kazakh-American law professor who has been nominated as the top U.S. banking regulator defended her qualifications at a contentious Senate hearing where some lawmakers, mostly Republicans, honed in on her Soviet upbringing.

Saule Omarova, 55, was tapped by the White House to be the next head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a position that has wide oversight of the U.S. banking system.

Born in Soviet Kazakhstan, Omarova immigrated to the United States in 1991 and later became a U.S. citizen. A lawyer by training, she also served briefly in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush, a Republican, and has testified several times in Congress on financial regulations.

Critics of her nomination have pointed to past statements she has made on social media and elsewhere calling them "radical." and "socialist."

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At the November 18 Senate hearing, Republican lawmakers grilled her on her upbringing, asking her about her time in Komsomol, the communist youth organization that millions of Soviet teenagers belonged to, often as a way of enhancing their employment and academic prospects.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey pressed Omarova on her undergraduate studies at Moscow State University, before the Soviet collapse, where she wrote a paper about Karl Marx. Another Republican senator, John Kennedy, said, "I don't know whether to call you professor or comrade."

Democrats rushed to Omarova's defense, saying some of the criticism bore the hallmarks of the Red Scare that plagued the United States after World War II.

Omarova responded to the comments by lawmakers that she is not a communist, doesn't "subscribe to that ideology," and "could not choose where I was born."

"My family suffered under the communist regime," she said. "I grew up without knowing half of my family; my grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime. That is what is seared in my mind. That's who I am. That's what I remember. I came to this country. I'm proud to be an American."

Democratic lawmakers have argued Omarova is supremely qualified for the position and accused their Republican counterparts of "character assassination."

Classmates of Omarova from her hometown of Oral in Kazakhstan recalled her drive and intelligence; she graduated from high school with an academic distinction that was only awarded to a tiny fraction of students in the Soviet Union.

"She was persistent," Vlasta Kaptelova, a childhood friend, told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. "For example, if she started to get a bad grade in physical education, she would refocus and start to do well. She was the smartest among us, but she was humble."

TBILISI -- Georgia's jailed former President Mikheil Saakashvili has been moved to a military hospital and will end a 50-day hunger strike, his lawyer and doctor said.

Saakashvili was taken from a prison clinic to a military hospital in the city of Gori on the night of November 19 amid mounting concerns about his health.

Earlier, lawyer Nika Gvaramia said the 53-year-old had agreed to stop his hunger strike if he were taken to a military hospital.

"Saakashvili has agreed to be transferred to Gori Military Hospital and will end his hunger strike as soon as he is hospitalized," Gvaramia said.

His personal doctor, Nokoloz Kipshidze, said that Saakashvili received a number of tests when he arrived at the military hospital’s intensive care unit. He said the former president’s condition is stable but serious.

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Georgia's Hunger-Striking Saakashvili Temporarily Loses Consciousness

Saakashvili had demanded to be taken to a civilian hospital, which the government refused, claiming that his supporters would storm such a facility. Instead, the government proposed that Saakashvili be moved to the military hospital in Gori, located about 70 kilometers from the capital Tbilisi.

A day earlier, Saakashvili lost consciousness and fell during a visit with his lawyer at the prison hospital where he had been transferred more than 10 days ago.

A medical panel set up by the Public Defender’s Office said this week that Saakashvili’s health condition was “critical” and recommended that he be transferred from a prison hospital to a civilian intensive care unit where he could be properly treated.

But Georgian officials called the assessment "fake" and refused to follow its recommendations.

Speaking to reporters earlier on November 19, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan called Saakashvili's condition “critical,” saying the ex-president “needs full care to respond to emergencies that more and more likely to occur if he is not in an appropriate facility."

Saakashvili, who founded the main opposition United National Movement, was arrested on October 1 when he returned after an eight-year absence to rally the opposition ahead of local elections. He then began a hunger strike.

Thousands of his supporters have been staging protests against his arrest.

Saakashvili, who was president from 2004 to 2013, was convicted in absentia in 2018 for abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the beating of an opposition member of parliament.

He currently faces three separate criminal charges related to a violent dispersal of opposition rallies in 2007, alleged embezzlement of state funds, and illegally crossing state borders when he returned to Georgia.

Saakashvili says all the charges against him are politically motivated.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and Civil.ge

UFA, Russia -- The former lawyer of a regional organization for jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny has left Russia amid an ongoing crackdown on the defunct organizations associated with the Kremlin critic that were labeled as extremist earlier this year.

Fyodor Telin worked as a lawyer for Navalny's network of regional campaign groups until Navalny's team disbanded them in April after a Moscow prosecutor went to court to have them branded extremist. A court later accepted the prosecutor's appeal and labeled the national network extremist, effectively outlawing it.

Telin told RFE/RL on November 19 that he is currently in Georgia, where he "had to move" after Navalny was additionally charged in August with creating an organization that posed a threat to citizens and their rights.

"Russia's new laws [adopted this year] allow the prosecution of people retroactively, while the constitution does not allow that," Telin said, adding that after Navalny was charged investigators from Moscow arrived in the capital of Bashkortostan, Ufa, to interrogate former members of his support group in the city.

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"I understood that the Investigative Committee started applying pressure on activists to get testimony against Navalny, his associates, and groups linked to them," Telin said.

Telin said that he initially hoped the situation would change and that he could return by the New Year's holidays. However, after the arrest of the former chief of Navalny’s support group in Ufa, Lilia Chanysheva, he says he understands he will likely have to stay abroad for a longer period of time.

Chanysheva was arrested on extremism charges and placed in a detention center last week after police searched her home and the homes of other former members of Navalny's group in Ufa.

Navalny himself has been in prison since February, while several of his associates have been charged with establishing an extremist group. Many of his associates have fled the country.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is urging Turkmenistan to provide information about the whereabouts of a human rights activist who went missing in Russia last month, saying he was likely a victim of an enforced disappearance by the Turkmen security services.

“There were “many unanswered questions around [Azat] Isakov’s removal from Russia to Turkmenistan, but there is no reason to doubt that he is now in Turkmen detention, yet another victim of an enforced disappearance,” meaning that Turkmenistan’s authorities are concealing information about his detention and fate, the New York-based human rights watchdog said in a statement on November 18.

The 37-year-old Isakov, who has resided in Russia for many years, publicly criticized Turkmenistan’s “extraordinarily repressive” government in 2020 over its handling of the aftermath of a disastrous hurricane in his home region.

A Turkmen opposition activist in Moscow, Chemen Ore, raised concern about his fate in early November, saying he had gone missing on October 20 and may have been deported to Turkmenistan where he would face an arbitrary arrest and torture.

Last week, Russia's Interior Ministry denied that Isakov was deported, saying he had left Moscow for Turkmenistan on his own will.

However, HRW cited multiple sources as saying Isakov had lost his passport and had repeatedly said he had no desire to return to the Central Asian country.

The group noted that the Turkmen government “severely punishes all dissent, and there are many grim examples of people being imprisoned for daring to criticize the authorities.”

"Turkmen security services repeatedly threatened Isakov’s family, pressuring them to get him to stop his activism," it also said.

The statement cited Ore as saying she had learned through informal channels that Isakov is in the Turkmen security services’ custody but she had received no further information from these sources over the past three days.

The U.S. administration and the European Union should urge Turkmen authorities to “immediately confirm Isakov’s whereabouts and free him,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of the HRW's Europe and Central Asia Division.

Polish authorities say illegal attempts by migrants to cross into the country from Belarus continue even after Minsk cleared hundreds from camps in the area.

A spokeswoman for Poland's Border Guard said on November 19 that around 50 migrants made it through a fence and into Poland overnight despite signals of a slight easing of a weekslong crisis on the European Union's eastern border.

But the dispute appears far from resolved, with Poland accusing Belarus of trucking hundreds of migrants back to the border and again pushing them to attempt to cross illegally, which authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka admitted was "absolutely possible."

"Maybe someone helped them. I won't even look into this," Lukashenka told the BBC on November 19 in an interview at his presidential palace in Minsk.

"I think that's absolutely possible. We're Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany," he added.

The EU accuses Lukashenka of flying in migrants and funneling them to the borders of member states Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania to retaliate for sanctions the bloc imposed over a sweeping crackdown since last year's disputed presidential election.

The August 2020 vote saw the strongman claim victory despite accusations from the opposition and the West that the vote was rigged.

Lukashenka's security forces have been accused of widespread violence against demonstrators during the months of protests following his claim of victory in August 2020. Thousands were detained and opposition candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee the country after claiming victory.

Brussels has accused Minsk of an "inhuman, gangster-style approach" to the crisis at the border, where thousands of people, including women and children had been camped for days in freezing temperatures under the open sky in conditions that have caused several deaths.

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Migrants Stuck In Bitter Cold Outside Overflowing Warehouse As Belarus Moves Them From Polish Border Camps

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In the BBC interview, Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994, denied inviting the thousands of mostly Middle Eastern migrants to Belarus in order to provoke a border crisis.

"I told them I'm not going to detain migrants on the border, hold them at the border, and if they keep coming from now on I still won't stop them, because they're not coming to my country, they're going to yours," he told the BBC.

"That's what I meant. But I didn't invite them here. And to be honest, I don't want them to go through Belarus," he added.

Tsikhanouskaya's team criticized the BBC for conducting the interview with Lukashenka, which it said amounted to "giving the floor to a dictator."

In Warsaw, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told private broadcaster Polsat on November 19 that there were still attempts to cross the border after the camps were cleared the previous day, but in smaller groups than before, when hundreds would sometimes try to push through the fence at once.

Belarusian state-run media reported that around 2,000 migrants were moved into a heated logistics warehouse, where hundreds of adults and children could be seen resting on mattresses on the floor.

Some 430 Iraqi migrants on November 18 boarded an Iraqi Airways aircraft in Minsk for the journey back home, with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry saying it planned further evacuations.

In the first repatriation flight since the crisis began, the plane stopped first in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region, before flying on to Baghdad.

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However, a flight from the Belarusian capital to Baghdad planned for November 19 had disappeared from the schedule of the Minsk airport.

The European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal by Minsk, under which EU countries would take in 2,000 migrants now in Belarus, and 5,000 others would be sent back home. The United States accused Minsk of using the migrants as "pawns in its efforts to be disruptive."

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, BBC, and RFE/RL's Belarus Service

Armenia says six of its soldiers were killed in renewed border clashes with Azerbaijan earlier this week -- the worst fighting since the two South Caucasus nations fought a 44-day war over Nagorno-Karabakh a year ago.

Azerbaijan has said seven of its soldiers were killed and 10 others wounded in the November 16 fighting, for which the sides blamed each other.

In a statement on November 19, the Armenian Defense Ministry gave the names of five servicemen who died in the clashes, including one officer. It said the identity of another dead soldier had yet to be established.

The ministry earlier reported the death of one soldier and said that communication with 24 other servicemen had been lost, while 13 others were taken prisoner by Azerbaijani forces.

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Armenia, Azerbaijan Report Casualties After Renewed Fighting On Border

“Intensive work with the mediation and participation of the Russian side is under way to repatriate soldiers who were taken prisoner or went missing as a result of the fighting,” the ministry said on November 19, adding that the situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border remained “relatively stable” through the morning.

After the November 16 clashes, Yerevan and Baku agreed to halt hostilities at their border. The violence renewed international calls for the two neighbors to engage in a process of delimitating and demarcating their Soviet-era border.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on November 18 that a Russian proposal on the “preparatory stage” of the border delimitation and demarcation process was acceptable to Yerevan.

The situation along the border has been tense since the Armenia-Azerbaijan war in September and November 2020 in which at least 6,500 people were killed.

The conflict ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire that granted Baku control of parts of the region as well as adjacent territories occupied by Armenians. Some 2,000 Russian troops were deployed in the area as part of the truce accord.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

KYIV -- A U.S. citizen has been arrested in Ukraine for allegedly planning to kill the country's minister for agrarian policies and food, Roman Leshchenko, in August.

Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy told reporters in Kyiv on November 18 that the suspect and his alleged accomplice, a Ukrainian woman, had been apprehended a day earlier.

According to Monastyrskiy, the main suspect, a U.S. citizen, whose identity has not been disclosed, is suspected of using the unidentified Ukrainian woman to find a hit man to kill Leshchenko, who allegedly had refused to pay back an unspecified amount of money he had owed the main suspect since 2018.

Monastyrskiy added that the suspects first ordered the contract killing of another alleged debtor and unknowingly contacted undercover police agents, who faked the killing and presented photos of it to the U.S. citizen and his alleged accomplice.

After that, Monastyrskiy said, the duo asked the undercover agents to kill Leshchenko.

Leshchenko said on November 18 that the situation stems from a 2017 "corporate conflict" when he led the State Registry of Property. He and his family were then provided security after they received threats from unknown persons.

Leshchenko took over the Ministry for Agrarian Policies and Food in December last year.

Amnesty International is calling on the Iranian authorities to immediately release prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, who it said is at imminent risk of receiving 80 lashes following her arrest earlier this week.

The London-based human rights watchdog said on November 18 that Mohammadi was arbitrary arrested in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, two days earlier while attending a memorial for a man killed by Iranian security forces during nationwide protests in November 2019.

“To arrest a human rights defender for calling for truth and justice on the two-year anniversary of the November 2019 protests, where hundreds of men, women and children were killed by Iranian security forces, is a callous act,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.

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Mohammadi is the vice president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran and has worked with the Campaign for Step-by-Step Abolition of the Death Penalty.

Following the November 2019 protests, she vocally supported family members seeking truth and justice for the death of their loved ones.

In May, a Tehran court sentenced the activist to 2 1/2 years in prison, 80 lashes, and two separate fines on charges that include “spreading propaganda against the system.”

Four months later, Mohammadi did not respond to a summons to begin serving her prison sentence, and she was arbitrarily arrested on November 16 by Intelligence Ministry agents who brutally beat her, according to her husband.

The following day, Mohammadi told her family she was in Tehran’s Evin prison and that she was to serve a 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

In 2016, Mohammadi was sentenced to 16 years in prison on charges that Amnesty International said were solely related to her freedom of expression and assembly.

After she was released from prison in October 2020, the Iranian authorities repeatedly subjected her to “harassment, torture, and other ill-treatment,” according to Amnesty International.

The group says it has documented 324 cases of men, women, and children killed by Iran’s security forces during their crackdown on protests that erupted across Iran between November 15-19, 2019, after the government announced a significant rise in the price of fuel.

However, it says it believes the real death toll is higher.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on the European Union to press Central Asian governments to end rights violations and engage in meaningful reform at a time when the crisis in Afghanistan is high on the agenda following the Taliban takeover of the war-torn country in mid-August.

The New York-based human rights watchdog issued the call ahead of a November 22 EU-Central Asia meeting in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, where EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is set to meet with the foreign ministers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

“Some Central Asian countries are playing an important part in the global response to the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan, but domestic human rights concerns are also central,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW, said in a statement.

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The Afghan crisis “poses new challenges in the region, and respect for human rights and the rule of law must be key ingredients in dealing [with] these issues.”

The EU adopted a new strategy for Central Asia in 2019 setting objectives for human rights protection in the region.

However, issues regarding security and migration have dominated public engagement by the EU and some European governments with Central Asia in recent months, HRW said.

This comes at a time when promises of reforms have stalled or backtracked in countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, while Tajikistan and Turkmenistan’s repressive human rights records have continued to worsen, according to the group.

In Tajikistan, HRW said, the authorities “harass and imprison” government critics, as well as foreign-based dissidents and their family members within the country. Access to critical websites remain blocked, while human rights groups “routinely face harassment.”

In Turkmenistan, one of the world’s most repressive and closed countries, dozens of people remain victims of enforced disappearances, and no independent civil-society groups or media are allowed to operate. As the authorities continue to claim that the country is COVID free, they retaliate against people who openly demand access to information about the pandemic.

Kazakhstan, whose president -- Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev – is set to visit Brussels on November 25-26, has adopted new laws on peaceful assembly and trade unions. But peaceful protesters and supporters of banned opposition movements are still being detained, fined, and prosecuted, while independent trade unions are facing “serious obstacles” to register and operate, HRW said.

There have been a number of “problematic” legislative actions by Kyrgyzstan’s caretaker parliament, including a law imposing “unnecessary financial reporting requirements on nongovernmental groups and another overly broad bill penalizing ‘false’ information,” HRW said. Several provisions of the country’s constitutional reform also contradict international human rights norms, the group said.

In Uzbekistan, the reelection of President Shavkat Mirziyoev to a second term, with no real opposition candidates allowed to run, coincided with “clear setbacks” on the country’s human rights record, the group said.

Authorities harassed political opposition figures ahead of the presidential election and targeted outspoken and critical bloggers, as independent human rights groups continued to be denied registration.

Two Russian Nobel Peace Prize winners have issued a joint appeal for authorities to drop a bid to close one of Russia's most venerated human rights groups -- Memorial.

In a joint statement on November 18, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and the editor in chief of the Novaya gazeta newspaper, Dmitry Muratov, said attempts to close Memorial have “caused anxiety and concern in the country, which we share.”

Moscow prosecutors this month asked a city court to order the Memorial human rights center's closure, while Russian federal prosecutors want the Supreme Court to order a shutdown of International Memorial.

Memorial was launched shortly before the Soviet collapse in part to document Soviet repression. In the decades since, it has produced hallmark indicators of the rights situation and documented historical and ongoing injustices.

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'Destroying Our Memory': Russia's Embattled Civil Society Rallies To Oppose Memorial Shutdown

“The long-term activities of Memorial have always been aimed at restoring historical justice, preserving the memory of hundreds of thousands of those killed and injured during the years of repression, and preventing this from happening now and in the future. The continuation of this work meets the interests of society and the Russian state,” Gorbachev and Muratov said.

“We urge the Attorney General's Office to withdraw the claim from court and settle the claims out of court,” they added.

The attempt to close the organizations relates to alleged violations of the country’s "foreign agent" legislation.

SEE ALSO:

Outrage, Dismay As Russia Moves To Shut Down Its Oldest Human Rights Group

Memorial is among several news outlets and rights organizations to have been labeled "foreign agents" in what is seen as a historic crackdown on civil society and critics of the government.

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.

The move to close down Memorial has sparked widespread condemnation at home and abroad.

Jailed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been on a hunger strike for seven weeks, temporarily lost consciousness, his lawyer said.

Lawyer Beka Basilaia said he was visiting Saakashvili at a prison hospital on November 18 when he fell unconscious and collapsed.

The Penitentiary Service later issued a statement saying Saakashvili was in stable condition.

A day earlier, a medical panel set up by the Public Defender’s Office said that Saakashvili’s health condition was “critical” and recommended he be transferred from a prison hospital to a civilian intensive care unit where he can be properly treated.

The panel said the former president was suffering from kidney and neurological problems. It said his condition was likely to worsen in the “near future,” including the potential for heart failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.

SEE ALSO:

Ukrainian Ombudswoman Not Allowed To See Saakashvili

The government has refused to transfer Saakashvili from the prison hospital, saying that he is receiving sufficient treatment and that his protesting supporters would storm a civilian hospital.

The U.S. State Department said it was closely following Saakashvili’s situation.

“We commend the oversight work of the Georgian Public Defender in establishing an independent medical team to evaluate Mr. Saakashvili’s health and to review the state of medical facilities at the prison hospital,” spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on November 18. “We urge the government of Georgia to treat Mr. Saakashvili fairly and with dignity, as well as to heed the Public Defender’s recommendations about appropriate treatment."

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Saakashvili was arrested on October 1 when he returned after an eight-year absence to rally the opposition ahead of local elections. He then began a hunger strike.

Saakashvili, who was president from 2004 to 2013, was convicted in absentia in 2018 for abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the beating of an opposition member of parliament.

He says the charges against him are politically motivated. Thousands of his supporters have been protesting his arrest since early October.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Georgian Service and Civil.ge

France and Germany have accused Moscow of violating diplomatic protocol by publishing confidential correspondence related to efforts to resolve the conflict in parts of eastern Ukraine.

"We consider this approach to be contrary to diplomatic rules and customs," French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said on November 18.

Germany's Foreign Ministry issued a similar statement.

Moscow published its correspondence with the so-called Normandy Format group -- which includes Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany -- one day earlier in what the Russian Foreign Ministry said was an effort to show that Moscow's positions had been misrepresented.

After Paris accused Russia of refusing to participate in a ministerial-level meeting of the Normandy Format countries and denied that the group had failed to respond to Moscow's proposals regarding the Ukraine conflict, Moscow published 28 pages of confidential correspondence that it claimed showed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said in advance that he could not participate in the proposed November 11 meeting.

After Moscow published the documents, Kyiv accused Russia of trying to undermine the Normandy process.

One of the released documents was a November 4 letter from the German and French foreign ministers taking exception to Moscow's characterization of the war between Russia-backed separatists and Kyiv as an "internal Ukrainian conflict."

Legendre said the publication of the documents showed that Moscow was trying to obstruct the process by insisting on numerous preconditions that the other parties could not accept.

She called on Russia to return to the talks as soon as possible.

For his part, Lavrov said in Moscow that when the prospect of a ministerial meeting was discussed, the French and German sides "were making arrogant, not very appropriate, and not very ethical statements."

At least 13,200 people have been killed in fighting in parts of eastern Ukraine between the central government and separatist formations that have been provided military, political, and economic assistance by Moscow.

Russia denies any involvement in the conflict, which broke out in the spring of 2014, shortly after Russia forcibly annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea region of Crimea, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.

With reporting by Reuters and TASS

The United States says it has sanctioned six Iranian individuals and one entity for attempting to influence last year's U.S. presidential election and charged two of the individuals with election interference.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced the sanctions in a statement on November 18, saying that it has identified "attempted cyber-enabled intrusions by state-sponsored actors, including Iranian actors who sought to sow discord and undermine voters’ faith in the U.S. electoral process."

The sanctions came as a result of the collective efforts of the Treasury Department, the State Department, and the FBI, the statement said.

Suspicions about election interference first surfaced weeks ahead of voting day, when law enforcement and intelligence officials alleged that both Russia and Iran were attempting to interfere in the election and had gained access to some U.S. voter-registration data.

The November 18 statement said that in the three months ahead of the poll, the state-sponsored cyberactors, who obtained or attempted to obtain U.S. voter information from U.S. state election websites, were responsible for an online operation "to intimidate and influence American voters, and to undermine voter confidence and sow discord, in connection with the 2020 U.S. presidential election."

They spread disinformation on social media and sent threatening e-mails as well as distributed a fake video "in an attempt to undermine faith in the election by implying that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots."

The Treasury Department said it had sanctioned Iranian cybercompany Emennet Pasargad for its leading role in the attempts to influence the election process. Emennet had already been sanctioned in 2019 when it had a different name, for aiding Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Electronic Warfare and Cyberdefense Organization (IRGC-EWCD).

Also sanctioned were Emennet manager Mohammad Bagher Shirinkar and Emennet employees Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, who "executed cyber-enabled operations as part of the campaign to influence the election."

Three members of Emennet's board -- Mostafa Sarmadi, Seyyed Mehdi Hashemi Toghroljerdi, and Hosein Akbari Nodeh -- have also been placed on the sanctions list.

The sanctioned actors' property and interests in property under U.S. jurisdiction have been blocked and U.S. persons have been prohibited from engaging in transactions with them or otherwise risk being subjected to sanctions themselves.

Two of the individuals subjected to the sanctions -- Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27 -- were also indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges that they obtained confidential U.S. voting information from at least one state election website.

The defendants are not in custody and are believed to still be in Iran, but officials hope the indictment and accompanying sanctions will restrict their ability to travel.

The State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for information on or about the activities of the two.

The indictment, filed in federal court in Manhattan and unsealed on November 18, says the two obtained access to a U.S. company's computer network in a plot to disseminate false claims about the election, but their plot was foiled with the help of the FBI and the company, which the indictment did not identify by name.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the United States, the European Union, and NATO over their stance on the situation in the territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine and other issues, but said his country is ready "for contacts and a dialogue."

In a wide-ranging speech to Foreign Ministry officials in Moscow on November 18, Putin said that his talks with the U.S. President Joe Biden on June 16 had "eventually tapped some opportunities for a dialogue and for the gradual leveling and correction of relations."

"Joint activities [with Washington] on strategic stability and information security have started," Putin said, adding, though, that "on many issues our interests, estimations, position differ dramatically."

The Russian president's remarks come at a time of elevated tensions between Moscow and the West, particularly since Moscow's 2014 forcible annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and its support for separatist formations in parts of eastern Ukraine.

Western assessments that Moscow interfered in elections, used chemical weapons to carry out attacks against Kremlin critics in the United Kingdom, provided the anti-aircraft system that was used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, and has been involved in cyberattacks against NATO countries have also tested relations.

In his speech, Putin repeated charges that the Ukrainian government has refused to hold direct negotiations with Russia-backed separatists who have controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known jointly as the Donbas, since April 2014.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of violating the Minsk agreements meant to put an end to the conflict that has killed more than 13,200 people since April 2014.

Despite compelling evidence that Moscow has provided military, economic, and political support to the separatists, Russia claims it is not involved in the Ukraine war. Ukraine and NATO have claimed in recent weeks that Russia has been massing military forces near the border between the two countries.

"It must be taken into consideration that the Western partners are aggravating the situation [in the Donbas] by supplying Kyiv with modern lethal weapons and holding provocative military maneuvers in the Black Sea and other regions close to our borders," Putin said, stressing that Moscow will "adequately" respond to what he described as NATO's attempts to extend its military infrastructure to countries close to Russia.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of undermining the Minsk agreements by refusing to help Ukraine establish control over all its international borders.

Ukraine and the United States have held major military drills in the Black Sea in recent months. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on November 15 that such exercises in the Black Sea region are "defensive and transparent."

In September, the Kremlin warned that if NATO expanded its military infrastructure in Ukraine, it would amount to overstepping a red line.

"We're constantly voicing our concerns about this, talking about red lines, but we understand our partners -- how shall I put it mildly --have a very superficial attitude to all our warnings and talk of red lines," Putin said.

Putin also claimed that Western strategic bombers carrying "very serious weapons" were flying within 20 kilometers of Russia's borders.

His comments came in the wake of numerous close encounters between Russian and NATO military aircraft in recent years.

Putin also said that opportunities for talks with the European Union are "withering" because of sanctions imposed on Russia over the Crimea annexation and its involvement in the Donbas conflict.

With reporting by Reuters and TASS