President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the Ukrainian military to remain on alert despite Russia's drawdown of its troops from the country's borders, saying they could return "at any moment."

Kyiv has been battling Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014, following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

A Russian troop buildup in recent weeks near Ukraine's northern and eastern borders and in Crimea has raised concerns of a major escalation of the conflict in Kyiv and in the West.

But on April 23, Moscow announced that it had started withdrawing its armed forces.

SEE ALSO:

Russia Orders Troops Back To Permanent Bases After Drills In Annexed Crimea

"The fact the troops are withdrawing doesn't mean the army should not be ready for the possibility troops could return to our borders any moment," Zelenskiy said while visiting Ukrainian military positions near Crimea on April 27 .

In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the troop pullback had nothing to do with Western pressure, adding that Moscow will continue doing what is necessary to protect itself.

Shoigu also voiced concern about the presence of NATO forces near Russia.

"Some even warned us that our activities on our own territory will have consequences," Shoigu said on April 27. "I would like to emphasize that we don't see such warnings as acceptable and will do everything that is necessary to ensure the security of our borders."

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said this week that Washington had registered movements of some Russian troops away from Ukraine's borders, but added that it was "too soon to tell" whether Russia was pulling back all forces.

A cease-fire that took hold in July has been unravelling recently, with clashes sharply increasing between Ukrainian forces and separatists.

Around 30 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the year compared with 50 in all of last year, while the separatists have reported at least 20 military deaths.

On April 27, the Ukrainian Army reported one soldier killed and three others wounded after their vehicle hit a mine.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP

Ukraine's SBU security service says it has arrested a local resident suspected of planning a Russian-ordered cyberattack on Ukrainian state institutions.

"The attack targeted central and local governments, and the aim was to block the operation of information and critical infrastructure facilities," an SBU statement said.

STB operatives ”established that the special services of the Russian Federation acted through a resident of [the southeastern Ukrainian city of] Zaporizhzhya,” the statement said.

The SBU said the hacker was meant to send a disguised file containing spyware to Ukrainian officials.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last month, the SBU said it had prevented a large cyberattack by Russian hackers aimed at classified government data.

Ukraine has previously accused Russia of orchestrating cyberattacks as part of a "hybrid war" against Ukraine. Russia denies this.

Relations between Ukraine and Russia have been tense since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its involvement in a conflict in Ukraine's east.

Kyiv, its Western allies and NATO have accused Russia of a provocative troop buildup on Ukraine's eastern border and in Crimea.

With reporting by Reuters

The Russian Foreign Ministry has summoned the ambassadors of Slovakia and the three Baltic states on April 28, Russian news agencies said on April 27 without reporting a reason.

The prime ministers of Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary said on April 26 that they supported the Czech Republic's expulsion of Russian diplomats after Prague said it suspected two Russian spies were behind a 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot that killed two people.

On April 22, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined a fast-growing list of NATO and EU members demanding the removal of Russian diplomats for alleged spying, while Romania on April 23 announced the expulsion of one Russian diplomat, the latest European country to do so amid the diplomatic dispute between Moscow and Prague.

Based on reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

MINSK -- Belarusian authorities expect to hold a referendum early next year on the constitutional amendments promised by authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid mass protests after a presidential election last year that opposition leaders and the West say was rigged.

The chairwoman of Belarus's Central Election Commission, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, said in an interview with Russia's RIA Novosti news agency on April 27 that the referendum is likely to be held in January or February 2022 and not by the end of this year as some media reports have said.

She added that, if the referendum were to be held alongside local elections, the most likely date for the poll would be January 16.

Lukashenka's opponents have expressed doubts about the amendments, calling them a sham exercise to help him to cling to power after the opposition rejected his victory in an August 9 presidential election.

Earlier in February, at a Soviet-style "All-Belarusian People's Assembly," Lukashenka, 66, reiterated an idea he started pushing in December that the Belarusian Constitution needed unspecified amendments.

In mid-March, he signed a decree to create of a commission on constitutional amendments which will, by August 1, outline the amendments and present them to Lukashenka.

Opposition and public outrage over what they saw as a rigged vote in the presidential election has sparked continuous protests, bringing tens of thousands onto the streets with demands for Lukashenka to step down and new elections to be held.

SEE ALSO:

Belarusian Opposition Looks To Reenergize Protests Against Lukashenka

Security officials have cracked down hard on the demonstrators, arresting thousands, including dozens of journalists who covered the rallies, and pushing most of the top opposition figures out of the country.

Several protesters have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used by security officials against some of those detained.

Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994, has denied any wrongdoing with regard to the election and refuses to negotiate with the opposition on stepping down and holding new elections.

The European Union, the United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have imposed sanctions on him and several senior Belarusian officials in response to the "falsification" of the vote and the postelection crackdown.

With reporting by RIA Novosti

Ukraine has declared the Russian consul in the Black Sea port city of Odesa as 'persona non grata' after a second Ukrainian diplomat was kicked out of Russia in an ongoing diplomatic spat between the two countries.

The consul must leave the country by April 30 at the latest, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on April 27.

Amid already heightened tensions between Moscow and Kyiv, the latest diplomatic row was sparked by the arrest and subsequent expulsion of a Ukrainian consul earlier this month in St. Petersburg.

Russian authorities accused the diplomat of trying to acquire personal data from secret service agents.

In return, Kyiv expelled a Russian diplomat, prompting Moscow to respond by expelling a second Ukrainian on April 26.

"We completely reject the unsubstantiated allegations that the declared "persona non grata" Ukrainian diplomat allegedly engaged in activities incompatible with diplomatic status. The employee of the Embassy of Ukraine in Moscow did not carry out any actions that would go beyond his diplomatic and consular functions," the Ukrainian statement said.

"If the Russian side continues to provoke against employees of diplomatic missions of Ukraine in Russia, we reserve the right to take further action in response," it added.

Tense ties since Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and Russia's backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine have been recently heightened by a buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine and military drills in the annexed region.

For years, neither Russia nor Ukraine have had ambassadors in each other's capital.

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AFP

A Russian government regulator has slapped a fine of more than $12 million on U.S. tech giant Apple for "abusing" its dominant market position by giving preference to its own applications.

"Apple was found to have abused its dominant position in the iOS distribution market through a series of sequential actions which resulted in a competitive advantage for its own products," the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) said in a statement on April 27.

"On April 26, 2021, the FAS of Russia imposed a turnover fine on Apple Inc of 906.3 million rubles ($12.1 million) for violating anti-monopoly legislation," the statement said.

FAS said the decision came after ruling in favor of a complaint brought against Apple by cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab.

Apple told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on April 27 that it "respects the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service of Russia, but does not agree with the decision" and is appealing the ruling.

The move by FAS comes after Moscow earlier this month enforced controversial legislation demanding that smartphones, tablets, and computers sold in the country come with pre-installed domestic software and apps in what was described by authorities as an effort to promote Russia's tech companies.

However, critics say the measure, which requires all devices with Internet access sold in the country to have pre-installed approved software produced by Russian firms, is the latest attempt to tighten state control over the Internet.

Failure to observe the new requirements will result in fines starting in July.

Western technology firms have been facing increasing scrutiny in Russia in recent months under the pretext of fighting extremism and protecting minors.

Twitter has been punitively slowed down over a failure to delete content authorities said is illegal, while Google, Facebook, and TikTok have all come under fire.

In 2019, Russia passed legislation on the development of a "sovereign Internet" network that would cut off the country's access to the World Wide Web, a move critics say is meant to muzzle free speech.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Prosecutors have asked the Moscow City Court to hand down prison terms ranging between 7 years and 16 years to five former police officers suspected in the illegal apprehension of investigative journalist Ivan Golunov in 2019.

One of the defendants' lawyers, Aleksei Gubkin, said on April 27 that the prosecutor in the high-profile case asked the court to sentence the former chief of the Moscow police's illegal drugs department, Igor Lyakhovets, to 16 years, his ex-subordinates Maksim Umbetbayev, Roman Feofanov, and Akbar Segaliyev to 12 years, and Denis Konovalov to 7 years in prison.

The trial is being held behind closed doors.

The five ex-police officers were arrested in late January 2020 and charged later with the abuse of service duties, the falsification of evidence, and the illegal handling of drugs.

In September, the suspects were additionally charged with "committing a crime in an organized group," which carries stricter penalties.

Golunov, 38, who works for the Latvia-based information outlet Meduza, was arrested in June 2019 in Moscow for allegedly attempting to sell illegal drugs.

He was released several days later after the charges were dropped following a public outcry.

SEE ALSO:

Kremlin Climbdown On Golunov An 'Isolated' Success For Civil Society

The case sparked an investigation into Golunov's detention and also into why he suffered bruises, cuts, a concussion, and a broken rib during the ordeal.

The police officers who detained Golunov were later fired along with their supervisor for violating the journalist's rights.

After Golunov’s release, Russian President Vladimir Putin fired Major General Yury Devyatkin, the head of the Moscow police department's drug control directorate, and Major General Andrei Puchkov, the police chief in Moscow's West administrative region, over the case.

SEE ALSO:

Putin Fires Two Moscow Police Generals Over Golunov Drug Case

Authorities announced in November 2019 that the case had been classified, a decision harshly criticized by Golunov's lawyers, who called the move an attempt to cover up the "wrongful arrest" of their client.

In a rare move, the Prosecutor's Office of Moscow's Western District apologized to Golunov in February 2020 for his illegal prosecution.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan -- An activist arrested in January in Kazakhstan’s southern city of Shymkent for alleged ties with two banned opposition groups has started a hunger strike.

Nurzhan Mukhammedov's wife, Baghila Tekebaeva, told RFE/RL that her husband started the hunger strike on April 27, demanding that the charges against him -- of being associated with the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement and the Koshe (Street) party -- be dropped.

"My husband has insisted that he has no ties with the DVK and the Koshe party. He is angry that he has been kept under arrest for four months now," Tekebaeva said.

Separately on April 27, a court in Kazakhstan's southern town of Qapshaghai rejected a request for early release filed by the activist Almat Zhumaghulov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in December 2018 after a court convicted him and two others of planning a "holy war" because they were spreading the ideas of DVK.

Several activists in the Central Asian nation have been handed prison sentences or parole-like sentences in recent years for their support or involvement in the activities of the DVK and its associate, Koshe party, as well as for taking part in unsanctioned rallies organized by the two groups.

DVK is led by Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former head of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank and an outspoken critic of the Kazakh government.

Kazakh authorities labeled the DVK extremist and banned the group in March 2018.

Human rights groups have said Kazakhstan’s law on public gatherings contradicts international standards as it requires preliminary permission from authorities to hold rallies and envisions prosecution for organizing and participating in unsanctioned rallies even though the nation’s constitution guarantees its citizens the right of free assembly.

TBILISI -- Popular Georgian actor Kakhi Kavsadze, who was well-known in the former Soviet Union, has died at the age of 85 of complications caused by COVID-19.

Media reports cited Kavsadze's friends as saying that the actor died on April 27 at the First University Hospital in Tbilisi.

Kavsadze was initially hospitalized with the coronavirus in late November and released in December after his health improved.

But in February, he was hospitalized again with pneumonia symptoms and had been treated in the hospital since then.

Kavsadze was a leading actor at Tbilisi's Shota Rustaveli Theater. He had played roles in many theater performances and more than 80 films since 1957.

He gained prominence across the Soviet Union after he played the role of Black Abdulla in the extremely popular movie White Sun Of The Desert in 1970.

His other notable work included roles in movies such as Melodies Of Vera Quarter, The Wishing Tree, Repentance, Lives Of Don Quixote And Sancho, and A Chef In Love.

MOSCOW -- Journalists and activists are under pressure in Moscow for being at a rally earlier this month demanding the immediate release of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

Police on April 27 detained Aleksei Korostelyov, a reporter for Dozhd television, for questioning regarding his presence at the protest.

After Korostelyov's editors arrived at the police station with documents confirming that he was covering the April 21 rally as a reporter, police released him but ordered him to come back for questioning on April 30.

Meanwhile, police visited Oleg Ovcharenko, a correspondent for the Ekho Moskvy radio station, on April 27 and ordered him to produce documents for the police proving that he was at the rally in question as a reporter.

The day before, police detained professor Aleksandr Agadzhanyan from the Russian Humanitarian University for questioning and charged him with taking part in the unsanctioned April 21 demonstration.

They also detained for questioning opposition politician Leonid Gozman, and visited the homes of several activists, including human rights defender Anna Borzenko.

Writer Dmitry Bykov said he was summoned for questioning, and police reportedly switched off electricity at the apartment of artist Daniil Dvinsky after they were unable to reach him at home.

Thousands of people participated in the April 21 rallies in Moscow and other Russian cities organized by Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) to express concerns over his deteriorating health in prison.

SEE ALSO:

Over 1,700 Navalny Supporters Detained In Protests Across Russia

The number of demonstrators arrested by police was estimated at almost 2,000 by OVD-Info group, which monitors the detention of political protesters and activists.

On April 23, Navalny stopped the three-week hunger strike that he had launched to demand proper medical treatment for acute pain in his back, legs, and arms. Doctors had urged Navalny to end the strike, fearing his life was at risk.

Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning in Siberia in August 2020.

He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has denied any role in the incident

In February, a Moscow court ruled that, while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to have been politically motivated.

Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a prison term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served in detention.

The Iranian government says an investigation has been ordered into the "conspiracy" of leaked audio in which Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are too influential in diplomacy.

President Hassan Rohani ordered the investigation to identify who leaked the "stolen" three-hour-long recording, government spokesman Ali Rabiei told reporters on April 27.

Zarif's comments in the recording have sparked harsh criticism from conservative media and politicians in the country since its publication by the London-based Iran International Persian-language satellite news channel late on April 25.

Among other things, Zarif complains about the extent of influence that late Major General Qasem Soleimani had over foreign policy, hinting that the top IRGC commander tried to spoil Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers by colluding with Russia.

Solemani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, at the time bringing the United States and Iran to the brink of war.

"This theft of documents is a conspiracy against the government, the system, the integrity of effective domestic institutions, and also against our national interests," Rabiei told reporters, adding that Rohani "has ordered the Intelligence Ministry to identify the agents of this conspiracy."

SEE ALSO:

Amid Nuclear Standoff, Who's In The Running To Take The Reins In Iran?

The day before, a Foreign Ministry spokesman described the recording as "selectively" edited and said it represented just a portion of a seven-hour interview that included "personal opinions."

Zarif did not comment on the controversy.

The leak comes ahead of a presidential election on June 18 that will see the moderate Rohani step down after two terms in office and after conservatives fared well in parliamentary elections last year.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP

A Russian court has approved a motion by prosecutors to suspend some of the activities of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and his Citizens' Rights Defense Foundation (FZPG).

"A judge of the Moscow City Court has considered the motion of the plaintiff to take interim measures of protection. The judge of the Moscow City Court has decided to use interim measures of protection in the form of prohibiting certain acts with regards to the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the Citizens' Rights Defense Foundation noncommercial organizations," the court's press office said on April 27.

According to the court, the move does not halt all activities at the two foundations. The court did not reveal the details of the restrictions, saying that the materials of the case were classified.

Lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who represents FBK and FZPG, said later in the day that the groups were temporarily banned from using media, placing materials on the Internet, taking part in elections and referendums, and carrying out some banking operations.

Pavlov added that the court's ruling will be appealed.

FBK Director Ivan Zhdanov told MBKh Media that his group had no plans to change its activities following the court decision.

"It is not a suspension of our activities, it is a ban of some certain activities. We attentively looked through [the bans] in the [prosecutor's] request. They were even written in an illiterate manner. We do not plan in any way to take those bans into consideration in carrying out our activities," Zhdanov said.

The day before, the Moscow prosecutor halted all activities of Navalny's regional offices. It petitioned the court to do the same for the FBK and FZPG, as the prosecutors didn't have the authority to do so on their own.

SEE ALSO:

Activities At Navalny Offices Suspended By Russian Court

The move is part of a broader initiative by the Moscow prosecutor's office, which seeks to have the court label the FBK, the FZPG, and Navalny's regional headquarters, as "extremist" organizations.

That proposal has been condemned by international and domestic human rights groups, who say that if the Navalny's organizations are labeled "extremist," their employees and those passing on information about them could face arrest and lengthy prison terms.

With reporting by TASS, Meduza, Mediazona, MBKh Media, and Interfax

TARAZ, Kazakhstan -- A court in Kazakhstan's southern Zhambyl region has handed down sentences to 51 defendants in a case over deadly ethnic clashes that shocked the Central Asian country in February 2020.

The court on April 27 sentenced eight defendants to prison terms of between 15 and 20 years after finding them guilty of murder and taking part in mass disorder.

Another defendant was sentenced to 11 years in prison, one to seven years in prison, and seven men were sentenced to five years in prison each. One defendant was acquitted while the remainder were handed parole-like "freedom-limitation" sentences for periods of between two and six years.

The defendants, according to their roles in the clashes between Kazakhs and Kazakh citizens from the ethnic Dungan minority -- a Muslim group of Chinese origin -- were found guilty of various crimes including murder, organizing and participating in mass disorder, illegal arms and ammunition possession, robbery, separatism, threatening the lives of military personnel, armed mass disorder, and hooliganism.

The high-profile trial started in December and was held inside a detention center in the regional capital, Taraz.

The violence in the villages of Sortobe, Masanchi, Auqatty, and Bulan-Batyr that erupted in early February 2020 following a road-rage brawl left 11 people dead and dozens injured, including 19 police officers.

SEE ALSO:

Dungans Don't Believe In 'Peaceful Future' After Deadly Ethnic Conflict In Kazakhstan

In September, seven ethnic Kazakhs were tried separately in the case and sentenced to prison terms ranging between three years and four years.

Four of them were released from prison in November after a military court in Almaty replaced their prison terms with freedom-limitation sentences.

In April 2020, an ethnic Dungan involved in the case was found guilty of hooliganism and inflicting bodily harm and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Another Dungan was handed a suspended prison sentence on the same charges.

More than 30 houses, 17 commercial buildings, and 47 vehicles were destroyed or damaged in the clashes, and more than 20,000 people, mostly Dungans, fled the villages where the violence erupted.

Many of the Dungans who fled the violence ended up in the neighboring Kyrgyz region of Chui, where the majority of Central Asia's Dungans reside.

Kazakh officials said at the time that the majority of the displaced Dungans returned to Kazakhstan several days later.

Many senior regional officials, including the Zhambyl region's governor, Asqar Myrzakhmetov, and local police chief, were fired by the central government in the aftermath of the clashes.

Dungans, also known as Hui, are Sunni Muslims who speak a dialect of Mandarin that also uses words and phrases borrowed from Arabic, Persian, and Turkic.

Their ancestors fled China in the late 19th century after the Chinese government's violent crackdown of the Dungan Revolt of 1862-77, and settled in Central Asia, then part of the Russian empire.

The total number of Dungans now living in former Soviet republics is about 120,000.

Most reside in Kyrgyzstan's northern region of Chui and Kazakhstan's neighboring region of Zhambyl.

The United Kingdom has announced its first round of sanctions under its new global anti-corruption regime, freezing assets and imposing restrictions on 14 individuals from Russia, as well as eight others from different parts of the world.

The 14 Russians were hit with sanctions for their involvement in corruption uncovered by the late Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and whistle-blower who helped reveal the theft of nearly $230 million from Russia's government through fraudulent tax refunds.

The targeted Russian nationals' assets in the United Kingdom have been frozen and they are barred from visiting the United Kingdom, according to the measures.

"As with our Global Human Rights sanctions approach, the anti-corruption sanctions are not intended to target whole countries or whole peoples, but rather to get the individuals who are responsible, and should be held responsible, for graft and the cronies who support or benefit from their corrupt acts," British Foreign Secretary Dominik Raab said in announcing the sanctions..

The sanctioned Russian citizens include Dmitry Klyuyev, identified as the owner of Universal Savings Bank in Russia.

The United Kingdom's new Magnitsky act, which is similar to a law enacted in the United States, is named after the Russian lawyer who was arrested and died in prison in Moscow in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of the massive tax fraud.

SEE ALSO:

Navalny's Prison Ordeal Revives Grim Memories Of Magnitsky's Death In 2009

In the measures announced on April 26, Britain also targeted Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, Indian-born brothers at the center of a South African corruption scandal that was one of the reasons for Jacob Zuma's resignation in February 2018.

Sanctions were also imposed on three people accused of corruption in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, including facilitating bribes to support a major drug-trafficking cartel.

Raab told British lawmakers that the sanctions would prevent the country from being used as "a haven for dirty money."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the British sanctions, saying they strengthened efforts to counter corruption globally.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

Talks aimed at bringing the United States back into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will resume in Vienna on April 27.

It will be the latest round of talks to revive the deal and to convince Tehran to end its breaches of the deal.

"Participants will continue their discussions in view of a possible return of the United States [to the accord] and on how to ensure the full and effective implementation" of it, the European Union said in a statement on April 26.

Discussions in Vienna between Iran, China, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, along with the indirect participation of the United States, are being chaired by the EU.

The parties are trying to agree on steps that would be necessary if the agreement is to be revived.

A U.S. delegation is in a separate location in Vienna, enabling representatives of the other five powers to shuttle between both sides because Iran has rejected direct talks with the United States.

SEE ALSO:

Progress Made At Iran Nuclear Talks, But More 'Hard Work' Needed, EU Envoy Says

The EU said after a round of talks last week that participants "took stock of progress" made in the talks, but also said that much more work was needed.

The talks have been complicated by Iran's announcement earlier this month that it was enriching uranium to 60 percent, up from the 20 percent it had achieved previously.

The announcement came after an incident at its Natanz nuclear facility, which Tehran blamed on Israel.

SEE ALSO:

Iran Names Suspect In Natanz Centrifuge Attack

Iran has said it will not return to strict observance of the agreement unless all sanctions reimposed or added by former President Donald Trump, who withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, are rescinded first.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has said it is ready to remove "all sanctions that are inconsistent" with the deal, though it has not spelled out which measures it means.

Based on reporting by Reuters

The United States says boats from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) harassed two U.S. Coast Guard ships in the Persian Gulf early this month, in what the U.S. Navy described as the first such incident in a year.

The U.S. Navy said on April 27 that the tense, April 2 encounter resulted in no injuries or damage.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the incident, which occurred as Washington and Tehran announced they would conduct indirect negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The talks between Iran and world powers began in Vienna earlier this month and are to resume in the Austrian capital on April 27.

U.S. Navy officials said that three Iranian fast-attack craft and a support vessel known as Harth 55 swarmed two Coast Guard ships while they were patrolling international waters in the Persian Gulf.

The Harth 55 ship repeatedly crossed in front of the bows of USCGC Monomoy and USCGC Wrangell, forcing the Coast Guard vessels to come to make defensive maneuvers to avoid collision, the officials said.

"The U.S. crews issued multiple warnings via bridge-to-bridge radio, five short blasts from the ships' horns, and while the Harth 55 responded to the bridge-to-bridge radio queries, they continued the unsafe maneuvers," according to Commander Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

"After approximately three hour of the U.S. issuing warning and conducting defensive maneuvers, the [Iranian] vessels maneuvered away from the U.S. ships and opened distance between them."

The interaction marked the first "unsafe and unprofessional" incident involving Iranian warships since April 15 last year, Rebarich added.

It followed a series of incidents across the Middle East attributed to a shadow war between Iran and its foe Israel, which included attacks on cargo ships and alleged sabotage at Iran's Natanz nuclear site.

With reporting by AP and The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. State Department has said a vote by the Moldovan parliament to dismiss the head of the Constitutional Court was a "blatant attack on Moldova's democratic norms and its constitutional order."

The State Department said in a statement that parliament’s targeting of the Constitutional Court, "which only recently asserted its independence after years of state capture," was of particular concern.

It also said parliament's vote on April 23 was an attempt to replace Constitutional Court President Domnica Manole with a candidate of its own choosing.

The vote came after the court backed a call by President Maia Sandu to dissolve parliament, paving the way for early elections.

It appears likely to complicate a standoff between Sandu and a parliament still dominated by lawmakers aligned with her pro-Russian predecessor.

Sandu, who came to office in November on a pro-European Union ticket, has accused the Socialist-dominated parliament of sabotaging her reform agenda and repeatedly pushed for snap elections in order to acquire a working majority in the 101-seat legislature.

SEE ALSO:

Moldova's Top Court Rules Pro-Western President Can Dissolve Parliament

"We urge Moldova's leaders and representatives to respect the rule of law, safeguard its democratic institutions, and work together to resolve the challenges facing the country, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic," the statement said.

The EU earlier said the vote was an attack on Moldova's constitutional order.

The nonbinding vote to remove Manole must be agreed by the court itself.

Based on reporting by Reuters

Iranian health officials are warning the number of COVID-19 fatalities is expected to climb in the coming weeks as the country recorded its highest single-day death toll from the pandemic.

Health Ministry data showed the death toll from the virus increased by 496 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths from the virus to 70,070.

The country also recorded 21,026 more confirmed infections, bringing the total to over 2.4 million cases.

RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage

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

Some officials have admitted actual virus numbers are likely higher than official figures.

Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi warned that the death rate will likely increase for at least the coming two weeks.

"The bad news is that for at least the next two weeks the mortality trend will be upward," the IRNA state news agency quoted him as saying.

Iranian officials say a variant of the virus devastating India is spreading in the country, after a highly transmissible variant first found in Britain led to a spike in infections.

The spread of the virus has been exacerbated by disregard of health measures, family gatherings, and the Persian New Year holiday in March.

On April 10, Iran began a partial lockdown in the capital, Tehran, and other major cities to stem a fourth wave of infections across the country of 84 million people.

Iran's vaccine campaign started in early February but has been sluggish, with only 824,000 shots administered to date.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and IRNA

The European Union and the United States have rejected the idea of redrawing borders in the Western Balkans in response to an unofficial proposal to break up Bosnia-Herzegovina and merge Kosovo with Albania.

A document that has circulated among EU officials proposes incorporating parts of Bosnia into Serbia and Croatia to help the region's EU integration, according to Reuters, which said it had seen the document but could not verify its authenticity.

"We are absolutely not in favor of any changes in borders," European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer told a news conference.

The United States also rejected the proposal, warning that moving the borders risked exacerbating tensions in the region.

"Recent unwarranted speculation about changing borders in the Balkans along ethnic lines risks fostering instability in the region and evokes memories of past tensions," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

In an interview last week with a U.S. think tank, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic referred to a document proposing "the unification of Kosovo and Albania" and "joining a larger part of the [Bosnian] Republika Srpska territory with Serbia.”

Vucic dismissed the idea, saying his government was "not interested in creating any kind of Greater Serbia."

SEE ALSO:

Germany Urges Serbia, Kosovo To Work Harder To Normalize Ties

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas last week also rejected the proposal, saying the idea had been "put back into a drawer."

The discussion has alarmed Bosnia, which sees it as a threat to its territorial unity two decades after ethnic conflicts led to war in the region.

Two former Yugoslav republics, Croatia and Slovenia, have joined the EU. Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo hope to accede. The EU says they must first settle conflicts and advance democratic reforms.

SEE ALSO:

Slovenia Raises Uncomfortable Questions With Talk Of Bosnia's 'Dissolution'

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said separately on April 26 after talks with Vucic in Brussels that the EU wants to "continue to see positive developments in rule of law" in Serbia as part of accession talks.

The two discussed Belgrade's talks with Kosovo, whose independence is not recognized by Serbia and several EU countries.

Von der Leyen said the bloc would support the construction of a railway between Belgrade and North Macedonia, which saw its hopes to formally start membership negotiations dashed last year after a veto from Bulgaria.

The leaders of North Macedonia and Kosovo are also due in Brussels this week.

With reporting by Reuters

Belarusian authorities have enforced tight security measures in Minsk to prevent an opposition rally marking the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Military and police forces flooded the center of the Belarusian capital on April 26, blocking central avenues to thwart the march. Police arrested about 20 people, according to the Vyasna human rights group.

The actions were part of an ongoing brutal crackdown on protests that began after a disputed reelection in August that gave strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth term, a vote that the opposition says was rigged.

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.

Lukashenka's clampdown has included thousands of detentions. Some of the protesters detained have reported beatings and other rights abuses. Some 350 political prisoners remain behind bars, according to Vyasna.

The clampdown has also included a massive security presence to dissuade protests and restrictions on journalists trying to report about the movement to oust Lukashenka.

Earlier on April 26, several dozen women dressed in black and carrying black umbrellas staged a demonstration on the outskirts of the capital. There were no detentions at that demonstration, although it was not authorized.

The women tied long yellow-and-black ribbons on their wrists and wore face masks with the yellow-and-black symbol for nuclear power. They marched in the Malinauka district, an area nicknamed Chernobyl because people who left areas of Belarus affected by radiation from the accident were given apartments there.

The Belarusian opposition has accused the authorities of concealing the true scope of the Chernobyl disaster, which contaminated large areas in Belarus.

An explosion and fire caused by a reactor meltdown at the Chernobyl power plant located 110 kilometers north of Kyiv on April 26, 1986 sent radiation across much of Europe.

In years past, the opposition in Belarus marked the anniversary with marches, reflecting the damage the country has suffered, including a suspected increase in the rate of cancer.

Lukashenka marked the anniversary this year by taking part in a requiem rally in the town of Bragin, southeast of Minsk.

SEE ALSO:

Belarusian Opposition Leader Tsikhanouskaya's Memories Of Ireland, As A 'Child Of Chernobyl'

Opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who left Belarus after the election for security reasons, spent April 26 meeting with ambassadors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

"We discussed the effective use of the OSCE mechanisms for new free & fair elections in Belarus and the solidarity of the global community with Belarusians," Tsikhanouskaya said on Twitter.

With reporting by AP

The Brazilian federal health regulator has rejected importing Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine after technical staff pointed to "inherent risks" and said there was a lack of information guaranteeing its safety, quality, and effectiveness.

The regulator, known as Anvisa, voted unanimously on April 26 not to approve the Russian vaccine, which has been requested by state governors battling a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.

"We will never allow millions of Brazilians to be exposed to products without due verification of quality, safety, and efficacy," Anvisa President Antonio Barra Torres said.

SEE ALSO:

Good Science, Bad Marketing? Russia's Sputnik Vaccine Is Plagued By Controversy, Missteps

Ana Carolina Moreira Marino Araujo, general manager for health monitoring, said that taking into account all the documentation presented, data acquired at in-person inspections, and information from other regulators, "inherent risks" were too great.

Asked to comment on the Brazilian decision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 27 that Russia was ready to send all necessary data to Brazil.

"Contacts will continue, if certain data is missing, it will be provided, there should not be any doubt here," Peskov told reporters.

The Sputnik V shot has been approved in several countries around the world. Developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute, the vaccine overcame initial international skepticism after peer-reviewed results published in the medical journal The Lancet showed it to be safe and 91.6 percent effective against COVID-19.

Sputnik V is a vector vaccine based on the human adenovirus, which causes the common cold.

A crucial issue for Anvisa was the presence of the adenovirus in the vaccine and concerns that it could reproduce. Anvisa's medicines and biological products manager Gustavo Mendes called this a "serious" defect.

SEE ALSO:

Sputnik V: The Story Of Russia's Controversial COVID-19 Vaccine

Brazil's vaccination program has been hampered by delays and difficulty in purchasing vaccines as the number of new COVID-19 infections daily push the national health system to the brink of collapse.

Brazil has registered 14.4 million confirmed cases and almost 400,000 deaths from COVID-19, the second-highest globally after the United States.

So far 27.3 million people in Brazil, about 13 percent of the population, have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to Health Ministry data.

On April 27 in Geneva, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said the UN health agency was still discussing the Russian-developed vaccine and had yet to set a date to evaluate the shot's clinical data for a possible emergency-use listing.

"On Sputnik, we are still waiting, we are still in the back-and-forth stage. So we don't have a review meeting scheduled yet," Margaret Harris told a news briefing.

The vaccine is also being reviewed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Despite the lack of approval by Europe's medicines regulator, EU member Hungary has begun using it as part of its vaccine rollout.

Slovakia has also ordered doses but on April 7 the Slovak State Institute for Drug Control said that there were lingering questions about the efficacy and risks of the Russian vaccine due mainly to inadequate data from the producer, and that was preventing rollout of the vaccine across the country.

The institute said a day later that the Sputnik V doses it was examining were not the same as those being reviewed by the EMA, or apparently those that were reviewed by The Lancet.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and TASS

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 26 denounced U.S. President Joe Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide, saying the move would have a “destructive impact” on relations between the two countries.

In a televised address following a cabinet meeting, Erdogan told Biden to first “look in the mirror” before blaming the Turkish nation for committing genocide, pointing to the deaths of millions of Native Americans.

“You cannot get up and put the genocide label on the Turkish nation,” Erdogan said in his first major remarks on the issue.

Biden on April 24 became the first U.S. president to use the word genocide in a formal statement to describe the World War I-era massacre and deportation of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. The date commemorates the anniversary of when on April 24, 1915, thousands of Armenian intellectuals suspected of hostility toward Ottoman rule were rounded up in Istanbul.

Previous U.S. administrations have avoided using the term genocide for decades in order not to provoke Turkey, a NATO ally and important regional power.

But Biden felt an opportunity to make an "historical acknowledgement of what took place in 1915" based on a "deep respect for the importance of universal human rights," U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy said in an interview with RFE/RL's Armenian Service on April 26.

SEE ALSO:

'Terrible Vengeance': The History Of Turkish Atrocities Against Armenians And Why Biden Has Called Them Genocide

Describing Biden’s position as “unfounded and contrary to facts,” Erdogan repeated the Turkish position that the issue should be left to historians and not politicians. For years, Turkey has said it will open its archives to a joint history commission to address the issue.

"We believe that these comments were included in the declaration following pressure from radical Armenian groups and anti-Turkish circles. But this situation does not reduce the destructive impact of these comments,” Erdogan said.

He added that he will meet with Biden during a NATO summit in June to discuss “opening a new door” on relations.

“Now we need to look at how we will take steps toward the future. Otherwise, there will be no other choice but to put into effect the policies required by the new low to which our relations have sunk,” he said.

Tense U.S.-Turkish Relations

Biden's statement came at a time of already tense relations between Turkey and the United States over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system, U.S. ties with Kurdish forces in Syria that Turkey considers linked to its own Kurdish militants, and a host of other matters.

Erdogan also criticized the United States for having failed to find a solution in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh -- where the United States, Russia, and France were mediators -- and said Washington had stood by as massacres unfolded.

“Unfortunately, more than 1 million Azeri brothers were forced from Karabakh. All of Karabakh was burned and destroyed,” he said, referring to displacement that occurred nearly three decades ago.

Turkey backed Azerbaijan in the conflict last year, in which Azerbaijan took back swathes of lands in the Nagorno-Karabakh region it had lost to ethnic Armenian forces in the early 1990s.

Weaving through Turkey’s view of history, Erdogan went on to describe numerous “Armenian lies” and criticize the West for “double standards.”

During and immediately after World War I, Armenians and many historians say as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed, in what Armenians call "The Great Crime." Armenians have documented mass murder, banditry, raping of women, pillaging of property, and other atrocities.

As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey objects to the use of the word genocide and says that hundreds of thousands of Muslims also died in Anatolia at the time due to combat, starvation, cold, and disease.

The official Turkish position is that Armenian revolutionaries constituted a fifth column allied with Russia during World War I, and that the mass deportation and accompanying Armenian deaths were not premeditated or intentional. Turkey puts the number of Armenian dead at a couple of hundred thousand.

“You can find mass graves of Turks who were murdered in our country, but nowhere you can find an Armenian mass grave,” Erdogan claimed.

“A million Turks and Kurds are said to have been massacred by Armenian gangs. April 24 is the day when the leaders of Armenian gangs were arrested [in Istanbul]. In fact, nothing in the sense of human tragedy has happened on this day,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan also said that as many as 10 million ethnic Turks and Muslims were killed or expelled from the Balkans and Caucasus in the final decades and years of the Ottoman Empire due to Western-backed ethnic nationalism and Russian expansion.

“Half of our nation has its origins in being exiled,” he said. “As Turkey, we never seek to exploit our own pain.”

With reporting by AP, TRT Haber, Anadolu Ajansi, and Yeni Safak

MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has increased from one minute to two hours the time allowed outside each day for three of the four editors of the student magazine Doxa, who are accused of "engaging minors in actions that might be dangerous" over a video related to unsanctioned rallies protesting opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's incarceration.

The Moscow City Court on April 26 upheld a lower court's decision to impose pretrial restrictions for Armen Aramyan, Vladimir Metyolkin, and Natalya Tyshkevich, but mitigated the restrictions, ruling that the trio is allowed outside for two hours daily from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

A decision on the appeal of the fourth editor in the case, Alla Gutnikova, is expected to be made by the court on April 28.

On April 14, the Basmanny district court in the Russian capital ordered the four editors not to leave their homes between midnight and 11:59 p.m. for two months, giving them only one minute to be outside each day.

The four were detained for questioning at the Investigation Committee after their homes and the magazine's offices were searched over the video, which the magazine posted online in January.

The video questioned teachers' moves to warn students about possible repercussions they could face for participating in unsanctioned rallies on January 23 and January 31 in protest of Navalny's arrest.

Doxa editors say the video was deleted from the magazine’s website following a demand from Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove it.

More than 10,000 supporters of Navalny were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies. Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms. At least 90 were charged with criminal offenses and several have been fired by their employers.

Human rights groups have called on Moscow repeatedly to stop targeting journalists because they are covering the protests or express solidarity with protesters since both are protected under the right to freedom of expression.

"Instead of targeting journalists, the authorities should hold accountable police who attack journalists and interfere with their work," Human Rights Watch said in a statement on February 3.

Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning, which several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent, in Siberia in August 2020.

Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.

In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated. Navalny's 3 1/2 year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given the amount of time he had been held in detention.

The Czech government on April 26 reiterated that evidence linking Russian GRU military intelligence to arms depot explosions in 2014 is “very convincing,” after President Milos Zeman cast doubt over allegations that have sparked a deep diplomatic rift with Russia.

Zeman, who is known for being sympathetic toward Moscow, said during a televised address to the nation on April 25 that there are two theories about what caused the explosion of a munitions depot near the eastern Czech town of Vrbetice in 2014.

He said that one version of events is that Russian intelligence was involved in the deadly explosion.

The other version, he said, was that the blast was caused by inexpert handling of ammunition.

"I take both lines [of investigation] seriously and I wish that they are thoroughly investigated," Zeman said.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis on April 17 announced that investigators from the Czech intelligence and security services had provided "unequivocal evidence" that there was "reasonable suspicion regarding a role of members of Russian military intelligence GRU's unit 29155 in the explosion of the munition depot in Vrbetice in 2014."

In response, the Czech government announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats it considered to be spies, setting off a string of tit-for-tat moves between Prague and Moscow.

GRU Involvement

Citing the report by the Czech Security Information Service, Zeman said that there was "neither proof nor evidence" that the two Russian GRU agents being sought regarding possible involvement in the explosion were at the arms depot.

"I hope that we will determine the truth and find out whether this suspicion [of Russian intelligence involvement] is justified," Zeman said. "If that is the case -- although I support fair relations with all important countries -- the Russian Federation would have to pay the price of this presumed terrorist act."

In response to Zeman’s comments, Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hamacek, who is also the interior minister, said information from intelligence, police, and investigators on the 2014 blasts was strong.

"As the Czech Republic we reacted very hard, so it is apparent the evidence was very convincing," Hamacek said at a April 26 news conference.

"As far as I know, only one line of investigation exists on the Vrbetice case and that is the one connected with movements of those members of the [GRU] unit 29155," Hamacek said.

"The president's speech was such that everybody found something in it to please them including the Russian Federation, unfortunately," he added.

Zeman, whose powers as president are largely ceremonial, has often expressed pro-Russian views and is seen as being friendly toward Moscow.

The explosion on October 16, 2014 in Vrbetice set off 50 tons of stored ammunition, killing two people. Two months later, another blast of 13 tons of ammunition occurred at the same site.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident, which has triggered anti-Russia protests in the Czech Republic.

More protests are planned for April 29 in Prague and other cities, this time also taking aim at Zeman for his position on Russia.

Czech media has reported that the ammunition and weaponry destroyed in the first Vrbetice blast was intended for Ukrainian forces fighting against Russia-backed separatist troops in eastern Ukraine.

The two Russian intelligence officers sought in relation to the explosion are the same GRU officers accused of a nerve-agent poisoning in England in 2018 that targeted former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

With reporting by Reuters

BISHKEK -- Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry has summoned the Tajik ambassador and handed him a note protesting the detainment of two Kyrgyz men by Tajik authorities near a disputed segment of the border between the two countries.

The ministry said on April 26 that Deputy Foreign Minister Nurlan Niyazaliev met with Tajik Ambassador Nazirmad Alizoda to express his concerns over the detainment of the two residents of Kyrgyzstan’s southern Batken region.

"The Kyrgyz side has called upon the Tajik side to undertake immediate measures to find out all of the circumstances of the incident, hold all individuals responsible for the situation accountable, and inform the Kyrgyz side about the results," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement added that Bishkek is ready to cooperate with Dushanbe in efforts to "form conditions in the areas close to the border to secure peace, safety, a friendly neighborhood, and stability."

The two Kyrgyz nationals disappeared in the Batken region's Leilek district on April 24 while constructing a house close to a disputed segment of border.

It later turned out that the missing men had been detained by Tajik law enforcement.

On April 25, the men were released and handed to Kyrgyzstan.

Earlier in April, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said during his visit to Tajikistan's Vorukh exclave within Kyrgyzstan that agreements on almost half of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border have been reached during more than 100 rounds of negotiations between Dushanbe and Bishkek since work on border delimitation started in 2002.

Many border areas in Central Asia's former Soviet republics have been disputed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The situation is particularly complicated near the numerous exclaves in the volatile Ferghana Valley, where the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan meet.

In recent years there have been numerous incidents along the border which in some cases involved deadly gunfire.