News
- By Aza Babayan
Armenian Leader Asks Putin For Help With POWs Held By Azerbaijan
Armenia's prime minister has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for help in releasing dozens of prisoners of war captured by Azerbaijan during last year’s brief war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Speaking on April 7 during a trip to Moscow, Nikol Pashinian also said Armenia was interested in acquiring more Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccines.
Last fall's war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was waged over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s.
The six-week war concluded with a Russian-brokered cease-fire, under which a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces.
The agreement also led to the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers along frontline areas and a land corridor connecting the disputed territory with Armenia.
More than 6,000 people died in the fighting.
The final status of Nagorno-Karabakh remains unresolved.
There are no official figures of how many Armenian POWs are being held by Azerbaijan, but the RBC news agency said there were about 140 Armenians still being held in Azerbaijan. It's unclear how many Azerbaijani POWs there are.
"I would like to note that in this context there is a very important issue that has not yet been settled," Pashinian told Putin. "This is a question of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees."
“As we have repeatedly discussed…all hostages, prisoners of war, and other detainees should be returned to their homeland, but, unfortunately, we still have detainees in Azerbaijan,” the Armenian prime minister added.
In his meeting with Putin, Pashinian said the first shipment of 15,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine was expected to arrive in Armenia on April 6, but the country needs more than 1 million doses in all.
"The first shipment was, so to speak, a symbolic shipment. We hope to acquire a large amount of the Russian vaccine, because it has proven its efficacy," he said.
Pashinian’s trip to Moscow came as Armenia prepares for early parliamentary elections in June, triggered by opposition demands the prime minister step down over his handling of the war with Azerbaijan.
With reporting by Reuters
Four Abkhazia Residents Drown In River Trying To Cross Into Tbilisi-Controlled Territory, Say Officials
Georgian rescuers have recovered the bodies of four people who drowned in the Inguri River after trying to sneak across the administrative border separating the breakaway Abkhazia region from Tbilisi-controlled territory, to avoid coronavirus quarantine rules.
The four, identified as residents of Abkhazia’s Gali district, drowned as they tried to cross into the Zugdidi region, authorities said on April 7.
Three bodies were initially recovered, while a fourth was found hours later.
Georgia’s State Security Service said the deaths "once again demonstrated the inhuman and criminal nature of the occupation [of Abkhazia], for which the Russian Federation bears full responsibility."
Since 2017, a bridge over the Inguri has been the only route for people looking to cross the administrative border with Abkhazia. That border was hardened after the brief 2008 war in which Russian forces occupied Abkhazia and another Georgian region, South Ossetia. In 2017, the number of administrative checkpoints was cut from six, to one.
Most people living in the Gali district are ethnic Georgians who maintain close contacts with the other side of the river. Many of them must regularly cross the bridge to buy groceries and receive their pensions or medical treatment.
According to the Democracy Research Institute, Abkhazia residents must quarantine for five days when crossing into Tbilisi-controlled territory as part of COVID-19 measures.
The result is some Gali district residents try to sneak in undetected.
"We call on the Georgian government to immediately lift the quarantine, which endangers the lives of people," the institute said in a statement.
After the 2008 war, Moscow recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. Only a handful of other countries, however, have followed the Kremlin's lead, which has kept Russian forces in both regions.
Georgia has reported more than 268,000 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 3,650 COVID-related deaths.
With reporting by JamNews
- By RFE/RL
Moscow Court OKs More 'Foreign Agent' Fines Against RFE/RL As Total Penalties Near $1 Million
A court in Moscow has upheld fines imposed by Russia's media-monitoring agency against RFE/RL's Russian-language services for alleged violations of the country's controversial "foreign agent" laws.
On April 7, the Tverskoi District Court upheld 5.5 million rubles ($70,700) in fines, rejecting RFE/RL's appeals against them.
In all, the Roskomnadzor state monitoring agency has filed 390 protocols against RFE/RL for failing to mark its materials distributed in Russia as the product of a Russian-government-designated "foreign agent." The court has so far upheld about 260 of the protocols with total fines approaching $1 million.
RFE/RL has not complied with the labeling requirements.
Roskomnadzor issued a statement saying RFE/RL must pay the fines within 60 days. If the company fails to pay, the agency warned it could "restrict access" to RFE/RL's websites in Russia.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said that the broadcaster was "being targeted by the Russian authorities because we continue to provide a growing audience in Russia with objective news and information at a moment when the Kremlin is trying to limit the Russian people’s access to information."
"We will not abandon our audience no matter how many illegitimate fines the Russian authorities impose on us. We will continue to fight these attacks on our journalistic independence through all possible means," he added.
RFE/RL continues to appeal the fines and has said it would do so at the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
One day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Moscow had imposed "invasive labeling requirements and fines" in order to "drive RFE/RL out of Russia."
Russia's so-called "foreign agent" legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as "foreign agents," and to submit to audits. Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media.
In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL's Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time on the list.
Earlier this year, Russian courts began imposing large fines against RFE/RL for failing to mark its articles with a government-prescribed label as required by rules adopted in October 2020.
Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration.
RFE/RL has called the fines "a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation." Human Rights Watch has described the foreign agent legislation as "restrictive" and intended "to demonize independent groups."
The fines against RFE/RL come as the Russian government is moving to strengthen the so-called foreign agent laws.
On April 7, the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed in its third reading a law about the participation of designated "foreign agents" in elections. If the measure becomes law, individuals who were affiliated with a designated "foreign agent" organization or media outlet at any point in the previous two years would have to announce that fact on their campaign materials.
In addition, "foreign agent" NGOs and media outlets would be barred from campaigning for any candidate or party or advocating any position on referendums
On April 5, President Vladimir Putin signed into law additional restrictions on nongovernmental organizations that have been listed as "foreign agents."
Under the new law, the government has the right to conduct spot audits of such organizations whenever they receive a report that the organization has participated in an event involving foreign NGOs that have been designated "undesirable" in Russia.
The new law also obligates designated "foreign agent" organizations to present the program of all activities to the government in advance and gives the Justice Ministry the power to ban any activities entirely or partially in advance. Failure to comply with the new law could result in the liquidation of the listed NGO.
The changes come as Russia prepares for national elections to the State Duma, which must be held by September 19.
Aside from RFE/RL, the only other foreign media organizations to have been designated under the foreign agent law are VOA and a small, obscure Czech web portal.
With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and Interfax
Hungary Eases COVID Restrictions Despite Death Spike
BUDAPEST -- Hungary has begun reopening shops and services on after more than one quarter of its population was inoculated with at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
However, some medical experts and medical experts urged caution after the country recorded its highest daily death toll yet from COVID-19.
The authorities reported 311 new coronavirus-related deaths on April 7, bringing the total to more than 22,400.
The country has recorded nearly 700,000 infections since the start of the pandemic, with more than 12,000 patients still in hospital and over 1,400 of them on ventilators.
"I hope we will see a plateau in the near future, the data gives us hope...but the numbers are still very high," said Cecilia Muller, Hungary's chief medical officer.
Muller told reporters that the April 7 record daily death tally was partly due to a lag in data reported from hospitals over the Easter holidays.
Under the partial reopening on April 7, shops that had been closed since early March were allowed to open again but with limited numbers of customers. Restaurants are open for takeaway or delivery services only.
The overnight curfew in place since November now starts two hours later.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the easing of the lockdown measures on April 6, after Hungary reached 2.5 million first-dose vaccinations -- a benchmark that the government had set for when a gradual reopening could move forward.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
Bulgarian PM Seeks Coalition Government But Says Effort 'Unlikely To Succeed'
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has announced plans to seek a coalition government after his center-right party placed first in the country’s parliamentary elections, though he cautioned he was "unlikely to succeed."
Following the April 4 vote, Borisov's center-right GERB party will be the largest party in parliament but far short of a majority, with some 26.1 percent of ballots won.
Coming in second with 17.7 percent was a new, antiestablishment party formed by popular Bulgarian talk-show host Stanislav Trifonov, while the Socialist Party and the mostly ethnic Turkish-backed MRF came third and fourth, respectively.
"We are obliged to our voters, who put us first, to propose an option. From the comments that I hear, this is unlikely to succeed," Borisov told his outgoing cabinet on April 7.
The long-serving prime minister said he was ready to back Trifonov to form a government in order to avoid new elections that he said could harm Bulgaria's ability to tap EU coronavirus recovery funds, battle a surge in new infections, and restart its battered economy.
"If they need it, I am ready to have 10 deputies ready to back them,” he added.
He made the comments after two small protest parties and the Socialists rejected his offer to form a technocrat cabinet to lead the country through the coronavirus crisis until the end of the year.
Trifonov's movement has said it would not get into any governing deal with GERB or the Socialist Party, or the MRF.
Borisov said that, if rivals wanted snap elections, the best way forward was to agree on a new constitution that could address changes in the electoral system and then call a vote for a grand national assembly that should approve it.
Borisov, 61, has served as prime minister for nearly the entire period since 2009 with a brief stint out of office in 2013-14.
With reporting by Reuters
Kazakh Deputies OK First Reading Of Law Banning Foreigners From Buying, Renting Farmland
NUR-SULTAN -- The Kazakh parliament's lower chamber has approved the first reading of a bill banning the purchase and rental of farmland by foreigners in the Central Asian nation ahead of the expiration of a moratorium on land sales this summer.
Agriculture Minister Saparkhan Omarov said at a session of the Mazhilis on April 7 that current agreements on farmlands rented by some foreign companies or joint ventures with foreign capital will expire in the 2022-2025 period and will not be extended.
The move comes after President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev proposed the ban in late-February.
The five-year moratorium on selling and leasing Kazakh agricultural land to foreigners was introduced in 2016 after thousands demonstrated in unprecedented rallies across the tightly-controlled nation, protesting the government’s plan to attract foreign investment into the agriculture sector by opening up the market.
The protests stopped after the government withdrew the plan, but two men who organized the largest rally in the western city of Atyrau, Talghat Ayan and Maks Boqaev, were sentenced to five years in prison each after being found guilty of inciting social discord, knowingly spreading false information, and violating the law on public assembly.
Ayan was released on parole in April, 2018, and Boqaev was released in February this year,
Another Kazakh Activist Sentenced For Links To Banned Political Group
TALGHAR, Kazakhstan -- A court in southern Kazakhstan has handed a parole-like sentence to an activist for his links with the banned Koshe (Street) Party, one of several supporters of the opposition movement to be sentenced in recent months.
The Talghar district court in the southern Almaty region sentenced 36-year-old Erkin Sabanshiev on April 7 to one year of "freedom limitation" after finding him guilty of participating in the activities of the opposition Koshe Party, which has links with another outlawed party, the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement.
Sabanshiev was banned from using the media or the Internet to conduct political and social activities for three years.
Sabanshiev, who was arrested and charged six months ago, told RFE/RL after his sentence was pronounced that he will appeal the ruling.
Several of Sabanshiev’s supporters were not allowed to attend the hearing on April 7. One of them, Aidyn Nusipaliev, was detained by police and later in the day sentenced to 15 days in jail for "organizing an unsanctioned rally."
Several activists across the Central Asian nation have been handed "freedom limitation" sentences in recent months for their involvement in the activities of the Koshe Party and DVK, as well as for taking part in 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 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.
In Pakistan, Russia's Lavrov Pledges Bilateral Boost To Combat Terrorism
Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Islamabad on April 7 that Russia will provide unspecified military equipment to Pakistan as the two countries increase cooperation to fight terrorism.
Russia and Pakistan will also conduct joint naval and land exercises, he said.
Lavrov's two-day visit marks the first to Islamabad by a Russian foreign minister in nearly a decade and is widely regarded as part of an effort to foster deeper bilateral relations that have warmed only recently.
Lavrov's meetings with Pakistani officials followed a stop in rival neighbor India and were expected to touch on efforts to establish peace in another neighboring country, Afghanistan.
“We stand ready to strengthen the anti-terrorist potential of Pakistan, including by supplying Pakistan with special military equipment,” Lavrov said.
Moscow has recently sought to assert greater influence in conflict-torn Afghanistan as the United States and other Western powers try to extricate themselves from a two-decade war.
Russia is also helping to construct a gas pipeline between Pakistan's port city of Karachi and eastern Lahore.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad welcomes Russian expertise on rail and energy-sector modernization.
Qureshi also said Pakistan will purchase 5 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, which is being used in dozens of countries but has run into regulatory delays in the European Union.
Pakistan’s security establishment is seen as close to the Afghan Taliban, which is fighting the central government in Kabul amid stalled intra-Afghan peace talks, and is said to wield leverage to influence that militant group’s actions.
A May 1 deadline is approaching for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave Afghanistan in line with an agreement Washington signed with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar in February 2020.
Afghanistan has seen a nationwide spike in bombings, targeted killings, and violence on the battlefield as common ground evades peace negotiators in Qatar.
U.S. President Joe Biden has warned that the May withdrawal deadline will be difficult to meet, raising the prospect that the entire agreement with the Taliban will unravel.
Later this month, Taliban and Afghan government representatives are expected to gather for a U.S.-backed international conference in Turkey meant to give new impetus to peace talks.
With reporting by AP and dpa
- By RFE/RL
On Day 2 Of Vienna Talks, Iran's Rohani Argues For 'Renaissance' Of Nuclear Deal
As international talks to revive a major nuclear agreement with world powers continued in Vienna, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said that he hoped negotiations led to a "renaissance" of the 2015 deal.
The day-old talks are U.S. President Joe Biden's first major effort to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) since taking office on pledges to curb Iran's nuclear program following his predecessor's withdrawal from the agreement three years ago.
"Once again, all parties have come to the conclusion that there is no better alternative," Rohani said in a statement on April 7, referring to the JCPOA, which was reached over hard-liners' opposition in the Austrian capital five years ago. ."Thus, we can hope for a renaissance of the Vienna nuclear agreement."
The U.S. and Iranian sides have publicly clashed over the order of possible concessions on U.S. sanctions and Iranian nuclear activities before a new deal can be achieved.
Rohani staked heavy political capital on the 2015 deal during his first presidential term despite resistance from hard-liners allied with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate political and religious power in Iran.
"The U.S. says it wants to return to the agreement," Rohani said. "Fine, let's see how serious they are."
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said after the first day of talks on April 6 that Washington saw the discussions in Vienna as a "constructive" and "welcome step," even though "we are not meeting directly with the Iranians."
European diplomats are acting as intermediaries facilitating indirect talks between U.S. and Iranian officials, whose delegations are staying in nearby hotels.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, told state television that his talks with envoys from the remaining parties to the agreement -- Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia -- were "constructive."
Russia's Vienna-based envoy to international organizations, Mikhail Ulyanov, said the negotiators got off to a "successful" start.
Ulyanov also said two expert-level groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear issues had been tasked "to identify concrete measures to be taken by Washington and Tehran" to restore the deal.
The Russian envoy predicted in a separate tweet that it would take "some time" to restore the nuclear agreement.
With reporting by dpa
Father Of Navalny Associate Remanded In Custody; Son Calls Charge 'A New Level Of Villainy'
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- The father of Ivan Zhdanov, the director of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been remanded in custody on a charge of abuse of office, which he and his supporters reject.
The Rostov regional court on April 7 upheld an earlier decision by a lower court in the city of Rostov-on-Don to keep 66-year-old Yury Zhdanov in pretrial detention at least until May 21.
Yury Zhdanov, who took part in the hearing via a video link from the detention center, and his lawyers requested the court transfer him to house arrest due to his age and the danger of getting infected with the coronavirus while in custody.
Zhdanov said at the hearing that many of those in his cell are sick. He said earlier that the cell he is kept in is so overcrowded that inmates have to sleep in shifts due to the limited number of beds.
Yury Zhdanov was sent to pretrial detention after police searched his home on March 26.
His son said last week that he had "no doubts that the criminal case was launched because of me and my activities." He called his father's arrest "absolutely a new level of villainy and turpitude from the [Russian] presidential administration."
According to Zhdanov, before retiring last summer his father worked as an official in a remote town for several years.
Investigators now accuse Yury Zhdanov of recommending the town’s administration provide a local woman with a subsidized apartment, though it later turned out that the woman's family had previously received housing allocations.
The apartment was later returned to municipal ownership in accordance with a court decision and no one among those who made the decision was held responsible.
Navalny's FBK is known for publishing investigative reports about corruption among Russia's top officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
The latest report focused on a lavish Black Sea mansion that Navalny's team called "a palace for Putin," capturing worldwide attention with almost 116 million views on YouTube.
The report showcases a luxurious, 100 billion ruble ($1.32 billion) estate near the popular holiday town of Gelendzhik that it said Putin effectively owns via a complex trail of companies.
The Kremlin has denied the report, saying "one or several [businessmen] directly or indirectly own" the property, adding that it "has no right to reveal the names of these owners."
Iran Posts Second Consecutive Daily Record For New COVID-19 Cases Amid Holiday Surge
Iran has set a new daily record for new coronavirus infections amid a surge of cases following the Norouz holiday.
The Health Ministry said on April 7 that in the previous 24 hours, 20,954 new cases had been reported, breaking the record set a day earlier of 17,430 infections.
RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage
Features and analysis, videos, and infographics explore how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the countries in our region.
Deputy Health Minister Iraj Haririchi said on state television that some members of the country’s coronavirus task force were to blame for the surge by “preventing us from using the golden opportunity of [the holiday] to extinguish the flames of the coronavirus.”
Last year, the two-week Persian New Year celebration was a muted affair after officials enacted tight restrictions on gatherings and the movement of people around the country.
Haririchi said similar measures weren’t enacted this year because of some officials, whom he did not name. Instead, millions of Iranians hit vacation hotspots across the country to celebrate the holiday, despite health guidelines warning them not to.
“Travel should have been stopped,” he said.
Iran has struggled for months to curb the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the Middle East.
Official figures on April 7 put the total number of cases in the country at 1,984,348, with the death toll at 63,699.
Some critics say they believe the government has suppressed reporting and that the actual numbers are much higher.
- By RFE/RL
Navalny Tests Negative For COVID, Losing Weight From Hunger Strike, Says Lawyer
Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny is losing about 1 kilogram a day, his lawyer said, as he continues his hunger strike amid growing concerns about his overall health after he reported a severe cough and high temperature.
Vadim Kobzev, a member of Navalny's legal team, said in a post to Twitter on April 7 that his temperature remained elevated but down slightly from the previous day.
"Aleksei walks by himself. Feels pain when walking. A very disturbing factor is that the disease is clearly progressing in terms of loss of sensitivity in the legs, palms, and hands," he wrote in a separate tweet.
Earlier, Olga Mikhailova, another member of Navalny's legal team, said he had had an initial test for exposure to coronavirus and that had come back negative. She said they were waiting results of a second.
The White House said that it was "disturbed" by reports that Navalny's condition is deteriorating and urged Russian authorities to ensure his health and safety.
Navalny is only months removed from a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia last summer. He was imprisoned after returning to Russia in January following his recuperation in Germany. He is now being held in what is known as one of Russia's toughest penitentiaries, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Navalny announced his hunger strike last week to protest what he has called deliberate attempts to deprive him of sleep and the failure of authorities to provide proper medical treatment for his back and leg pains. Since entering prison last month he has lost a total of 13 kilograms, his lawyers have said.
Navalny "continues his hunger strike. HIs weight is steadily dropping by 1 kg per day. All that the administration of the colony is currently doing is trying to dissuade him from the hunger strike," Kobzev tweeted, adding that the Kremlin foe remained in the medical unit of the colony.
His temperature "is constantly being measured," the lawyer said, adding: "Yesterday it was 38.4 [degrees Celsius], the day before yesterday it was 39, and today it is about 37.2."
Meanwhile, the White House reiterated that it considers Navalny's imprisonment "politically motivated and a gross injustice," and urged Russian authorities to "take all necessary actions to ensure his safety."
"So long as he is in prison, the Russian government is responsible for his health and well being," press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
A day earlier, on April 6, Anastasia Vasilyeva, his personal doctor, was rebuffed by prison officials in her efforts to see Navalny, and she was later detained outside the prison, along with at least nine other supporters.
Vasilyeva is also the outspoken head of the Alliance of Doctors union, and has been vocally critical of the Kremlin's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two of those detained along with Vasilyeva -- Artyom Boriskin, and his press secretary Valeria Merkulova -- remain in custody, charged with violating the law regulating gatherings near penitentiaries, according to a Navalny ally, Sergei Ukhov.
Boriskin and Merkulova will remain in custody until a court decides on their pretrial restrictions, Ukhov said.
Two days earlier, Navalny's allies said in a post published to his Instagram account that he had a "severe cough" and fever of 38.1 degrees Celsius, after a third prisoner in his crowded quarters had been sent to the hospital with suspected tuberculosis.
Navalny's health condition is potentially precarious because of his exposure to a military grade nerve-agent last August. He has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering security agents to assassinate him, something the Kremlin denies.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Navalny would receive the necessary medical care but no preferential treatment.
A lawyer who has gained widespread popularity for his investigations into official corruption and his slashing wit, Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport in January on charges of violating his parole, sparking large-scale protests.
A Moscow court found him guilty of violating the terms of his parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated, and his suspended sentenced was converted to jail time.
With reporting by TASS. Reuters, AFP, and Idel.Realities
- By RFE/RL
Report: EU Drug Regulator To Probe Russian Clinical Trials Of Sputnik Vaccine
The European Union's drug regulator will investigate Russia's clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine and whether those tests followed "good clinical practices," the Financial Times reported.
The U.K.-based paper on April 7 cited anonymous sources familiar with the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) approval process as saying there were ethical concerns over how Sputnik V was tested before it was released for general use.
Approval of the vaccine for the European Union will hinge in part on determining whether the Russian clinical trials met so-called GCP standards, the paper reported.
Sputnik V, which has been backed by the Russian sovereign wealth fund known as RDIF, has been dogged by controversy after it was approved for use in Russia in August 2020 despite not undergoing full Phase III testing procedures that are used for all vaccines, including other COVID-19 vaccines.
According to a study published in February in The Lancet, a prestigious peer-review publication in the U.K., the vaccine is as effective as other major vaccines being used around the world.
Hours after the Financial Times report, the Twitter handle for Sputnik V, controlled by RDIF, called the report "fake" and "incorrect."
"Sputnik V team is going through a regular rolling review of EMA, in which good clinical practice is a part of the standard procedure for all vaccines," the tweet said.
The newspaper, meanwhile, quoted RDIF head Kirill Dimitriev as saying: "there was no pressure [on participants in testing] and Sputnik V complied with all clinical practices."
It is being used in Russia and dozens of other countries have granted emergency use despite the early misgivings.
But it has yet to receive EU regulatory approval, although EU members Hungary and Slovakia have purchased it, and begun rolling out its use.
U.S. regulators have also not approved it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the announcements last August touting its approval. However, when he himself finally received a COVID-19 vaccine last month, neither Putin, nor the Kremlin, revealed what exact vaccine he had received.
- By Current Time
Putin's Doctoral Thesis Director Makes Forbes' Billionaires List
Vladimir Litvinenko, the rector at the St. Petersburg State Mining University who chaired the committee that awarded Russian President Vladimir Putin his doctorate in 1997, has become one of the new members of the Forbes billionaire's list.
In its annual rating of the world’s wealthiest people, released on April 6, Forbes estimated Litvinenko's assets at $1.5 billion.
Forbes said Litvinenko's wealth jumped on the back of a rise in the share price of Moscow-based PhosAgro, a chemical holding company that produces fertilizers and phosphates.
The 65-year-old Litvinenko owns almost 21 percent of the company.
"The company's share prices increased from 2,443 rubles ($31.8) per share (April 6, 2020) to 4,163 rubles ($54,2) per share (April 6, 2021)," Forbes wrote.
Litvinenko, who has been rector at the university since 1994, also led Putin's election campaign in St. Petersburg on three different occasions.
In 2006, researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington who studied Putin's thesis said they had found that 16 of 20 pages of the thesis's key section had been either copied in full or with minimal changes from a textbook titled Strategic Planning And Public Policy, written by University of Pittsburgh professors David I. Cleland and William R. King in 1979 and translated into Russian in 1982.
Putin's thesis was titled Strategic Planning Of The Reproduction Of The Mineral Resource Base Of A Region Under Conditions Of The Formation Of Market Relations.
In a 2006 interview with the magazine Vlast, Litvinenko said that he had "no doubts" that Putin wrote his thesis himself.
Litvinenko’s daughter, Olga Litvinenko, told RFE/RL in 2018 that her father wrote the thesis for Putin after he became the university's rector with the support of Putin, who was at the St. Petersburg mayor's office at the time.
Putin has never commented publicly on the allegations.
Former Regional Governor Furgal Tests Positive For Coronavirus In Moscow Detention Center
MOSCOW -- The jailed former governor of Russia's Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk Krai, Sergei Furgal, whose arrest in July sparked unprecedented protests, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Furgal's lawyer, Mikhail Karapetyan, said on April 7 that his client was tested the previous day in Moscow’s Lefortovo detention center, where he is currently held after being charged in 2020 with being involved in several murders that took place more than 10 years ago.
He and his supporters reject the charges, calling the case politically motivated. He was dismissed from the post after his arrest.
"The defense team is very much concerned about the illness because, as Furgal himself has said, he has problems with his lungs and fears that the illness may cause complications," Karapetyan said, adding that his client is currently in a two-week quarantine and therefore will be unable to meet with his lawyers.
According to Karapetyan, a motion has been filed demanding investigators allow Furgal to be released from pretrial detention due to the illness.
The 51-year-old Furgal was elected in 2018 in a runoff that he won handily against the region’s longtime incumbent from the ruling United Russia party.
His arrest on July 9 sparked mass protests in Khabarovsk and several other towns and cities in the region by his supporters that until recently were held on an almost daily basis.
The protests highlighted growing discontent in the Far East over what demonstrators see as Moscow-dominated policies that often disregard their views and interests.
With reporting by TASS
Mine Blast Damages Iranian Ship In Red Sea Linked To IRGC
An Iranian ship long anchored off Yemen and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has reportedly been damaged by an explosion in the Red Sea.
The hard-line Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, reported late on April 6 that the vessel, a cargo-category ship identified as Iran Saviz or MV Saviz, was targeted on April 6 by a mine that was attached to it.
It said the ship “has been stationed in the Red Sea for the past few years to support Iranian commandos sent on commercial vessel [anti-piracy] escort missions."
A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry on April 7 confirmed what it called an "attack" on the Saviz.
"The explosion occurred on Tuesday morning near the Djibouti coast and caused minor damage with no casualties. The vessel was a civilian ship stationed there to secure the region against pirates," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
He added that the incident is "under investigation."
Earlier, Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya quoted unidentified sources as saying the vessel was attacked off the coast of Eritrea and was affiliated with the IRGC.
Iranian officials did not immediately comment on the reports, which followed a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two archenemies accused each other of responsibility.
But Iranian state television later tacitly acknowledged the incident, citing foreign media.
The New York Times cited IRGC-linked social-media accounts alleging that Israel had carried out the attack. The newspaper noted that Israel had not confirmed that information.
But it quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that Israel had informed the United States of its role after the early morning attack on April 6.
The incident comes amid years of naval skirmishes between Iranian, Israeli, and Western forces. But it also coincided with the start in Vienna hours later of tense international talks involving the United States, Iran, and other countries intended to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that Washington withdrew from nearly three years ago.
U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January with a commitment to revive that deal if Tehran returned to full compliance.
Iran has responded to the reimposition of crippling U.S. economic sanctions by gradually reducing its commitments under the accord.
Israel has been a strident critic of the JCPOA, which aimed to ease economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
"We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told party colleagues on April 6 after being picked to form a government following inconclusive elections.
The Saviz was placed back under U.S. sanctions by Donald Trump's administration following the JCPOA withdrawal in 2018.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said it was “aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea," adding, “We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident."
Representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia met with Iranian officials in Vienna on April 6 in an effort to revive the deal.
Iranian and U.S. officials called the meetings "constructive."
With reporting by The New York Times, Tasnim, AP, and Reuters
Facebook Says It Removed Accounts Tied To Exile Group Opposed To Iranian Government
Facebook says it has removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to an Iranian exile group that posted content critical of Iran's government.
The accounts were supportive of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic, Facebook said on April 6.
Facebook determined that the more than 300 accounts, pages, and groups on Facebook and Instagram it had removed were being run from a single location in Albania by a group of individuals working on behalf of MEK.
The network of fake accounts was most active in 2017 and again in late 2020, the company said.
The National Council for Resistance in Iran, an umbrella group that includes MEK, said that no accounts affiliated with it or MEK have been removed.
The United States considered the MEK a terrorist group until 2012. Its designation was removed following a lobbying campaign and pledges to end its violent militancy.
While not successful in building significant audiences, Facebook said the operation appeared to be a “tightly organized troll farm” in which people were paid to post content that was often misinformation to social media.
Among the clues that led to the conclusion was that the activity seemed to follow the European workday. The number of posts, for example, began picking up after 9 a.m. and slowed around lunch time.
“Even trolls need to eat,” said Ben Nimmo, who leads Facebook's global threat intelligence operation, told reporters on a conference call.
Facebook also noted that some of the fake accounts used photos of Iranian celebrities or deceased dissidents. A small number of the Instagram accounts appear to have used profile pictures that were computer generated.
Facebook said it has disrupted seven operations since 2019 that used such photos and it will continue to refine its enforcement.
“We know that influence operations will keep evolving in response to our enforcement, and new deceptive behaviors will emerge,” it said.
With reporting by AP
- By RFE/RL
U.S. Secretary Of State Expresses Concern Over Russian Attempts To Restrict RFE/RL
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed his support for U.S. international media amid concerns over Russian efforts to shut down and muzzle RFE/RL under its controversial “foreign agent” law.
Blinken met on April 6 with the acting head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kelu Chao, “to discuss the vital role that free and independent media play in the preservation and promotion of democratic principles worldwide,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor has hit RFE/RL’s Russian-language services with fines of nearly $1 million in recent months for around 400 violations related to failure to comply with burdensome restrictions of the “foreign agent” law.
Blinken tweeted afterward that the two "discussed our shared concern over Russia's efforts to close Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and silence this valued source of independent reporting." He called the meeting "insightful."
Chao said she was encouraged by Blinken’s concern about Russia's excessive labeling requirements and exorbitant fines targeting RFE/RL.
“The secretary agreed that the Russian government’s efforts to silence independent journalism only harm the citizens it is meant to serve,” she said, according to a USAGM statement.
USAGM networks include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), the Voice of America (VOA), the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB).
"The editorially independent reporting of these networks is particularly important in countries with repressive media environments, including where independent journalism is censored or freedom of expression is restricted or punished," Price said.
Blinken expressed his strong support for all of USAGM’s global networks during the meeting, the USAGM statement said.
First passed in 2012 and expanded several times since, the “foreign agent” law gives authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as “foreign agents.”
In 2017, Russian regulators put RFE/RL's Russian Service on the list, along with RFE/RL's regional Russian-language news services and Current Time, the network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America. The law also puts RFE/RL journalists at risk for criminal prosecution.
Among other things, the law requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.” The announcement must be twice as large as the font size used for the headline of the article. For video materials, the text must occupy at least 20 percent of the screen and be shown for at least 15 seconds.
Russian regulators have singled out RFE/RL, whose editorial independence is also enshrined in U.S. law, over other foreign news operations in Russia.
An independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL has not complied with the "foreign agent" law.
“Given that USAGM’s legislatively mandated firewall prohibits its networks from accepting editorial direction from the U.S. government, RFE/RL and VOA refuse to label their content in such a wholly inaccurate manner,” the USAGM statement said.
The mounting fines could potentially force the company to shutter its presence within Russia.
The only other news organizations to be hit with the “foreign agent” designation and ordered to label their content, but not yet fined, are VOA and a small Czech outlet called Medium-Orient -- neither of which currently have a physical presence in the country.
Press watchdogs have said the effort appears aimed at closing down all of RFE/RL’s operations in Russia, which currently reach nearly 6.7 million people a week.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said Russia should repeal the foreign agent law and “ensure that the country’s regulator is not used to censure journalists and harass and threaten media organizations.”
Amnesty International has said Russia’s foreign agent law “further erodes freedom of expression and association” in that country.
- By RFE/RL
Governments In Europe, Central Asia Used Pandemic To Clamp Down On Human Rights, Amnesty Says
Amnesty International says some measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic have aggravated existing patterns of abuses and inequalities in Europe and Central Asia, where a number of governments used the crisis “as a smokescreen for power grabs, clampdowns on freedoms, and a pretext to ignore human rights obligations.”
Government responses to COVID-19 “exposed the human cost of social exclusion, inequality, and state overreach,” the London-based watchdog said in its annual report released on April 7.
According to the report -- titled The State of the World's Human Rights -- close to half of all countries in the region have imposed states of emergency related to COVID-19, with governments restricting rights such as freedom of movement, expression, and peaceful assembly.
In Russia and in “much” of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, violations of the right to a fair trial remained “widespread.”
The enforcement of lockdowns and other public health measures “disproportionately” hit marginalized individuals and groups who were targeted with violence, identity checks, quarantines, and fines.
Roma and people on the move, including refugees and asylum seekers, were placed under discriminatory “forced quarantines” in Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia.
Law enforcement officials unlawfully used force along with other violations in Belgium, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Romania, and Spain.
In Azerbaijan, arrests on politically motivated charges intensified “under the pretext” of containing the pandemic.
In countries where freedoms were already severely circumscribed, last year saw further restrictions.
Russian authorities “moved beyond organizations, stigmatizing individuals also as ‘foreign agents’ and clamped down further on single-person pickets.”
Meanwhile, authorities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan adopted or proposed new restrictive laws on assembly.
Belarusian police responded to mass protests triggered by allegations of election fraud with “massive and unprecedented violence, torture, and other ill-treatment.”
“Independent voices were brutally suppressed as arbitrary arrests, politically motivated prosecutions, and other reprisals escalated against opposition candidates and their supporters, political and civil society activists, and independent media,” the report said.
Subscribe To RFE/RL's Watchdog Report
RFE/RL's Watchdog report is a curated digest of human rights, media freedom, and democracy developments from our vast broadcast region. It arrives in your in-box every Thursday. Subscribe here.
Across the region, governments in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan “misused existing and new legislation to curtail freedom of expression.”
Governments also took insufficient measures to protect journalists and whistle-blowers, including health workers, and sometimes targeted those who criticized government responses to the pandemic. This was the case in Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, medical workers “did not dare speak out against already egregious freedom-of-expression restrictions.”
Erosion Of Judicial Independence
Amnesty International said that governments in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere continued to take steps in 2020 that eroded the independence of the judiciary. This included disciplining judges or interfering with their appointments for demonstrating independence, criticizing the authorities, or passing judgments that went against the wishes of the government.
In Russia and in “much” of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, violations of the right to a fair trial remained “widespread” and the authorities cited the pandemic to deny detainees' meetings with lawyers and prohibit public observation of trials.
In Belarus, “all semblance of adherence to the right to a fair trial and accountability was eroded.”
“Not only were killings and torture of peaceful protesters not investigated, but authorities made every effort to halt or obstruct attempts by victims of violations to file complaints against perpetrators,” the report said.
Human Rights In Conflict Zones
According to Amnesty International, conflicts in countries that made up the former Soviet Union continued to “hold back” human development and regional cooperation.
In Georgia, Russia, and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia continued to restrict freedom of movement with the rest of the county, including through the further installation of physical barriers.
The de facto authorities in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region introduced restrictions on travel from government-controlled territory, which affected medical provisions to the local population.
And in eastern Ukraine, both Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists also imposed restrictions on travel across the contact line, with scores of people suffering lack of access to health care, pensions, and workplaces.
Last fall’s armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan resulted in more than 5,000 deaths and saw all sides using cluster munitions banned under international humanitarian law, as well as heavy explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated civilian areas.
Both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces also “committed war crimes including extrajudicial execution, torture of captives, and desecration of corpses of opposing forces.”
Shrinking Of Human Rights Defenders' Space
Amnesty International’s report said some governments in Europe and Central Asia further limited the space for human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through “restrictive laws and policies, and stigmatizing rhetoric.”
This “thinned the ranks of civil society through financial attrition, as funding streams from individuals, foundations, businesses, and governments dried up as a consequence of COVID-19-related economic hardship.”
The Kazakh and Russian governments continued moves to silence NGOs through smear campaigns.
Authorities in Kazakhstan threatened over a dozen human rights NGOs with suspension based on alleged reporting violations around foreign income.
Peaceful protesters, human rights defenders, and civic and political activists in Russia faced arrests and prosecution.
In Kyrgyzstan, proposed amendments to NGO legislation created “onerous” financial reporting requirements, while “restrictive new NGO legislation was mooted” in Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, and Serbia.
Armenia's Ex-President Kocharian Cleared Of Coup Charges
An Armenian judge has dropped a criminal case against former President Robert Kocharian and his co-defendants over a deadly crackdown on protesters more than a decade ago.
Anna Danibekian, the judge presiding over the two-year trial in Yerevan, threw out the coup charges on April 6, 11 days after the Constitutional Court found “invalid” an article of the Criminal Code under which the accused were being prosecuted.
However, Danibekian ruled that Kocharian and his former chief of staff, Armen Gevorgian, will continue to stand trial on bribery charges which they also deny.
Kocharian, who served as president from 1998 to 2008, and two retired generals, Yuri Khachaturov and Seyran Ohanian, were charged in 2018 with overthrowing the constitutional order.
The charge stemmed from clashes during postelection protests in Yerevan in 2008 during which eight demonstrators and two police officers died.
The 66-year-old ex-president has rejected the allegations against him as political retaliation by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
He was released from detention in June 2020 after paying a record $4.1 million bail.
Pashinian was one of the organizers of the 2008 protest and was ultimately jailed until being released in 2011 under a government amnesty. He came to power in 2018 after leading massive demonstrations that ousted his predecessor.
Danibekian’s decision comes as Armenia prepares for early parliamentary elections in June, triggered by opposition demands Pashinian step down over his leadership during a six-week war with Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, which ended in what many Armenians felt was a humiliating defeat.
Kocharian, a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, was one of the leaders of the region's separatist forces and was Nagorno-Karabakh’s first de facto president between December 1994 and March 1997.
In January, Kocharian said he would participate in any early elections.
- By RFE/RL
Hertha Berlin Sacks Hungarian Goalkeeping Coach Over Same-Sex Marriage, Immigration Comments
German soccer club Hertha Berlin has fired its goalkeeping coach for his comments about same-sex couples adopting children, immigration, and what he called intolerance of conservative opinions.
The Bundesliga club said on April 6 that the remarks Zsolt Petry made in the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet do not reflect the team’s values of diversity and tolerance.
Hertha Berlin said that during Petry’s six years with the club he was always open, tolerant, and helpful.
“He never acted in a homophobic or xenophobic way," said CEO Carsten Schmidt in a statement. "Even taking into account the finer details regarding the translation of his remarks, and the fact that several of Zsolt’s remarks from the interview were left out of the publication without consultation, we ultimately concluded that the remarks on the whole do not comply with Hertha BSC’s values.”
In a statement on the club website, the former Hungary goalkeeper, 54, denied he was homophobic or xenophobic and said he regretted his comments about immigration policy.
In the interview published on April 5, Petry suggested Hungarian goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi, who plays for Hertha’s league rival Leipzig, should focus on football instead of getting involved in divisive social issues about same-sex marriage and defending LGBT rights.
He also criticized the narrowing of freedom of speech and liberal intolerance of conservative opinions.
In December 2020, Gulacsi joined a campaign denouncing a constitutional change led by conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban that effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children.
“As an athlete, I would focus on football in his place and not formulate any position on public, social-policy issues,” Petry said.
“The majority of Hungarian society does not agree with Peter Gulacsi's liberal opinion on rainbow families,” Petry said, adding that while many at home criticized the goalkeeper, “he cannot and should not be condemned just because he spoke his opinion.”
“Yet I do not know what might have caused Peter to stand up for people with homosexual, transvestite, and other gender identities. I sure wouldn’t have stirred up the tempers in his place,” he said.
In another part of the interview, Petry criticized Europe’s migration policies, describing Europe as a Christian continent and immigration policy as a “manifestation of moral decline.”
“I am reluctant to watch the moral degradation sweeping across the continent. Liberals are exaggerating their counteropinions: if you don’t consider migration to be good because a terrible number of criminals have swept Europe, you’re already being cooked for being racist. This is not allowed, the opinion of the other person is less often tolerated, especially if the person represents a conservative position,” he said.
In recent years Orban, has propagated his increasingly conservative ideology, deploying strong language against immigrants and Muslims who he says could upend European culture.
Jailed Crimean Journalist Tells Court He Was Tortured, Coerced To 'Confess' On Russian TV
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- An RFE/RL freelance correspondent arrested in Ukraine's Russia-annexed Crimea has told a court he was tortured with electric shocks, beaten, and threatened with death unless he "confessed" to spying on behalf of Ukraine.
Vladyslav Yesypenko's lawyer on April 6 said his client testified during a closed-door court hearing that the torture lasted two days after his arrest in March on what the defense calls false charges.
"[Yesypenko] told the court that he was tortured in a basement, most likely somewhere in the area of Balaklava, from the moment of his detention until his transfer to the detention center in Simferopol," lawyer Aleksei Ladin said after the hearing.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said that the broadcaster is “outraged” to learn what Yesypenko said during his testimony, saying the journalist “must be set free now, and allowed to rejoin his family in Ukraine immediately.”
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has said Yesypenko, a freelance contributor to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, was suspected of collecting information for Ukrainian intelligence, and claimed that an object "looking like an explosive device" was found in his automobile during his apprehension.
The journalist was charged with “making firearms,” which is punishable by up to six years in prison.
"They tortured him with electric shocks and by beating his legs, his genital area, his body. They beat him to obtain confessions and forced him to incriminate himself.... He said they connected some electric contacts to his ear lobes and his head and then switched on electricity that created excruciating pain. When he was more or less getting used to that pain, they continued increasing the power of the electric current," Ladin said.
Ladin asserted that "all of this had a single goal: self-incrimination."
The lawyer also said that his client testified that he was threatened with death, which would be presented to the public as suicide while he was alone in his cell.
Ladin said that a televised interview, in which Yesypenko "confessed" to spying for Ukraine, was staged, with his client saying he was given a written text to read aloud and then answered questions that people in charge of his detention asked.
The interview was broadcast on March 18, eight days after Yesypenko, who has Ukrainian and Russian dual nationality, was arrested in Ukraine's Russia-annexed Crimea region.
According to Ladin, Yesypenko also said at the trial that he has serious problems with his kidneys and needs medicine for the ailment.
Rights Groups Concerned
Human rights groups have expressed concerns regarding Yesypenko's treatment in custody and his televised "confessions," demanding his immediate release.
Fly has questioned the circumstances under which Yesypenko made his confession, saying it appeared "to be forced and made without access to legal counsel."
"The Russian authorities have similarly smeared RFE/RL Ukrainian Service contributors with false charges in the past. Vladislav is a freelance contributor with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, not a spy, and he should be released," he said.
Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service has described the arrest as "a convenient attempt to distract the attention of the population away from the numerous internal problems of the peninsula" ahead of the seventh anniversary of its forcible annexation, which was marked on March 18.
The U.S. State Department called Yesypenko's arrest "another attempt to repress those who speak the truth about Russia's aggression in Ukraine."
Graty, a Ukrainian media outlet specializing in police and judicial abuses, quoted a source at Yesypenko's place of detention as admitting that torture has been involved in the case, while the lawyer chosen by the journalist’s family has not been allowed to see him, according to the Crimean Human Rights Group (CHRG).
This suggests that the authorities are trying to cover up evidence that Yesypenko has been "subjected to illegal methods of investigation, including physical and psychological violence," the CHRG said.
Yesypenko was detained on March 10 along with a resident of the Crimean city of Alushta, Yelizaveta Pavlenko, after the two had taken part in an event marking the 207th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian poet and thinker Taras Shevchenko the previous day.
Pavlenko was later released.
Russia forcibly seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, sending in troops and staging a referendum denounced as illegitimate by at least 100 countries after Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted amid a wave of public protests.
Rights groups say that since then Russia has moved aggressively to prosecute Ukrainian activists and anyone who questions the annexation.
Moscow also backs separatists in a war against Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 13,200 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Serbian President Opts For Chinese Vaccine In TV Event For Skeptical Public
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has been vaccinated with the Chinese-developed Sinopharm vaccine in a televised event aimed at encouraging skeptical Serbians to get an injection against COVID-19.
While Belgrade's procurement of vaccines has been widely lauded abroad, anti-vaccine sentiment in the country has so far left millions of doses arriving in that Balkan state unspoken for, despite a fresh wave of coronavirus infections.
RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage
Features and analysis, videos, and infographics explore how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the countries in our region.
“I received the vaccine, and I feel great,” Vucic, 51, said via Instagram. “Thank you our great health workers. Thank you our Chinese brothers.”
Vucic has publicly chided the European Union over its approach to the pandemic, despite tens of millions of dollars in emergency health-care assistance to non-member Serbia.
He has also aggressively touted cooperation with Beijing and Moscow as his administration was arranging major shipments of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and two Chinese vaccines, Sinopharm and Sinovac.
Serbia has also acquired supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines.
With more than 1.5 million Serbians already having gotten at least one injection, it is among Europe's leaders among national vaccine rollouts. But dogged resistance and mistrust have left the sign-up for vaccines stalled despite Serbia's population of nearly 7 million people continuing to suffer heavily, along with other Balkan states.
Last month, Serbian officials opened their vaccination effort to foreigners who wanted to come and get vaccinated there.
With reporting by AP and The Washington Post
- By RFE/RL
Russia Fines TikTok In Latest Challenge To Global Social Media Over Protests
A Russian court has ordered a fine against the popular video-sharing application TikTok in the country's latest major dispute with a global social platform over content allegedly related to political protests.
The Moscow court ruled on April 6 that TikTok failed to delete content that it said was related to unsanctioned demonstrations, according to local reports.
Russian critics of the Kremlin routinely use international social networks, including Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, to get around state control of the media and reach tens of millions of citizens with their anti-government messages.
Some local reports suggested the TikTok fine -- 2.6 million roubles ($34,000) -- pertained to alleged appeals to minors urging them to join political demonstrations.
Russian authorities this week backed off slightly from a threat to ban the Twitter social network but have punitively slowed its user connections and announced suits targeting fellow Western digital giants Google and Facebook.
TikTok is owned by China's ByteDance and reports nearly 700 million active users worldwide.
India and Pakistan have banned TikTok in the past, citing politically contentious posts, and then-President Donald Trump sought unsuccessfully last year to ban it in the United States.
Russia’s state communications regulator said on April 5 that it wouldn't ban Twitter amid a dispute over content related to protests but would continue to slow the U.S. social network's speed inside the country until the middle of May.
Imprisoned Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny in January used U.S. social-media networks to organize some of the largest anti-government protests since 2011-12.
A Russian court on April 2 levied a nearly $120,000 fine against Twitter for failing to removes posts related to those protests.
The Russian regulator has also focused its complaints against Twitter over alleged failures to remove child pornography and content the overseers said encourages drug use and suicide among children.
Twitter said it has a zero-tolerance policy regarding child pornography and other content deemed harmful.
Roskomnadzor began slowing the speed of traffic on Twitter last month.
In its April 5 statement, the regulator said it would not ban Twitter yet after it claimed the platform took down 1,900 of 3,100 posts with banned content.
Russia’s efforts to tighten control of the Internet and social media date back to 2012, shortly after the largest anti-government protests in years.
Since then, a growing number of restrictions targeting messaging apps, websites, and social-media platforms have been introduced in Russia.
With reporting by Reuters and AFP
Erk, Uzbekistan's First Opposition Party, Says It Will Attempt To Field A Presidential Candidate
TASHKENT -- Uzbekistan's Erk (Freedom) Party, which was banned in the 1990s and its leader forced out of the country and his associates jailed, says it plans to try to field a candidate for president in the election later this year.
According to a party statement on April 5, two members of the party, Salovat Umrzoqov and Jahongir Otajonov, have officially expressed their intentions to try to become the party's candidate for the vote.
It added that the party's Central Committee will decide later which of the candidates will be officially nominated for the poll that is scheduled for October 24.
"The Erk democratic party, which for 30 years has been conducting its activities under pressure and persecutions since it became Uzbekistan's first-ever independent political party to be officially registered with the Justice Ministry in 1991, has decided to nominate its candidate for the upcoming presidential election," the party said in the online statement.
In January 2020, the Uzbek Justice Ministry refused to officially reregister the party, with Justice Minister Ruslanbek Davletov saying at the time that Erk "has remained in the past" and cannot relaunch its activities. It is highly unlikely that Erk will be allowed to officially run a candidate in the October vote.
Well-known Uzbek poet Muhammad Solih, who founded the party, was the only challenger to President Islam Karimov in the Central Asian nation's first post-Soviet vote in 1991.
Independent observers said at the time that about 50 percent of voters supported Solih, but official results said he obtained only 12 percent of the vote.
Election officials proclaimed Karimov the winner, sparking a student demonstration that was brutally dispersed. The number of students killed in the action is still unknown. In the aftermath of the crackdown, all opposition newspapers were shut down and probes were launched against opposition leaders, who had to flee the country.
Solih fled Uzbekistan for Azerbaijan in 1993 and later settled in Turkey, where he has since resided.
Karimov died in 2016 and his successor, President Shavkat Mirziyoev, has been releasing political prisoners as part of a policy of gradually reducing authoritarian control in the county.
Mirziyoev has since positioned himself as a reformer, opening his country to its neighbors and the outside world, although many activists say the changes have not gone nearly far enough.
Although Mirziyoev has said he is not against having opposition political groups in Uzbekistan, it has been nearly impossible for genuine opposition parties to get registered since the country gained independence in late 1991.
Last week, six months ahead of the election and with physical attacks on government critics mounting, the government criminalized the "insult and slander" of the president in digital and online form.
Critics say the move is aimed at muzzling bloggers and others ahead of the election.
RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.
If you are in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine and hold a Russian passport or are a stateless person residing permanently in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine, please note that you could face fines or imprisonment for sharing, liking, commenting on, or saving our content, or for contacting us.
To find out more, click here.
Editors' Picks
Top Trending
Kremlin Silent About Evidence That Moscow Attack Suspects Were Abused
2Then-And-Now Images Suggest Severe Abuse Of Moscow Terror Suspects
3Russia Says 4 Foreign Suspects Detained As Death Toll From Concert Attack Reaches 133
4Interview: Putin, The Terror Attack, And The Threat Whose Name He 'Dare Not Speak'
5Exclusive: Who Are The Suspects In The Moscow Concert Attack? Here's What Their Relatives Say.
6The Russian Military Base In Armenia At The Eye Of A Geopolitical Storm
7Ukraine Says It Destroyed 2 Russian Ships, Comms Center
8Anti-Migrant Sentiment Rises In Russia As 4 Tajiks Charged In Moscow Attack
9Suspects In Russian Concert Attack Sent To Pretrial Detention
10An Unlikely Armenian-Azerbaijani Love Story Ends In Russian Terror Attack
Subscribe