Armenia's caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has accused Azerbaijani troops of crossing the southern border and trying to stake claim to territory.

Last year the two archfoes went to war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the ensuing six-week conflict claimed thousands of lives and ended with a Moscow-brokered truce that saw Armenia ceding swaths of territory that it had controlled for decades.

Pashinian resigned last month after being subjected to huge political pressure over his handling of the conflict. He is currently staying on in a caretaker capacity, setting the stage for June 20 parliamentary elections.

Pashinian on May 13 accused Baku of new transgressions as he convened an emergency meeting of his Security Council.

He cited the "explosive situation" in Armenia's southeastern Syunik Province, where Azerbaijani troops reportedly advanced several kilometers into Armenian territory early on May 12 and refused to pull back.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said later on May 13 that Azerbaijani forces also breached two other sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

It said Armenian Army units deployed there stopped their advances and demanded that they immediately retreat to the Azerbaijani side of the border.

Pashinian claimed that a total of about 250 Azerbaijani soldiers currently remain within Armenia’s internationally recognized borders. He said that they are using “false maps” to lay claim to that territory.

"It is an encroachment on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia," Pashinian said. "This is an act of subversive infiltration."

Pashinian instructed his defense and foreign ministers to ask the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Armenia is a member, to invoke Article 2 of its founding treaty, which commits the bloc to discussing a collective response to grave security threats facing its member states.

He invoked the need for "preventing a further escalation of the situation and protecting the territorial integrity, stability, and sovereignty" of Armenia.

Azerbaijan has not commented on the accusations.

The United States -- one of the three countries in the so-called Minsk Group that leads diplomacy on Nagorno-Karabakh -- said it was "closely following" the rising tensions.

"We understand communication between the parties is ongoing and urge restraint in de-escalating the situation peacefully," State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted.

With reporting by AFP and TASS

A St. Petersburg court has upheld the legality of the Russian Justice Ministry's decision to designate feminist performance artist and activist Darya Apakhonchich a "foreign agent."

The Leninsky District Court wrote in a press statement on May 13 that Apakhonchich's lawsuit had failed to satisfy requirements for a case to be heard.

Apakhonchich was among the first individuals in Russia to be included on the Russian government's list of "media organizations fulfilling the functions of foreign agents."

First passed in 2012, Russia's "foreign agent" legislation initially targeted nongovernmental organizations accused of having received foreign funding. But it has undergone numerous modifications to include foreign media organizations as well as individuals.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the legislation -- which subjects those blacklisted to restrictions, fines, and bans -- as "restrictive" and intended "to demonize independent groups."

Apakhonchich, who is not engaged in journalism but had posted articles from "foreign agent" media including RFE/RL on social media, had appealed the designation on the basis that she had "never received money or any property from foreign sources for the creation or dissemination of statements or materials that were distributed by foreign media listed under the foreign agents law."

Apakhonchich has maintained that the label imposed upon her was politically motivated and related to her "feminist activities." Her complaint, filed on March 1, included 12 pages of alleged violations of her rights to expression and privacy.

Apakhonchich's lawyer, Aleksandr Peredruk, told MBH Media that the Justice Ministry had failed to prove that his client had received money from foreign entities or that the social-media pages in question belonged to her.

Peredruk, who works with the legal-defense organization Agora, also said that the Justice Ministry had filed to identify a link between the reception of foreign funding and the dissemination of information. Peredruk said that without such a connection "this law will be widely interpreted."

Apakhonchich was added to the "foreign agent" list along with four others on December 28, 2020. Three of the individuals -- Lyudmila Savitskaya, Sergei Markelov, and Denis Kamalyagin -- are contributors to RFE/RL's Russian Service.

On May 5, the City Court in the western city of Pskov ruled that Savitskaya's inclusion on the list was lawful.

“Lyudmila is not a 'foreign agent' -- she, and RFE/RL journalists Denis Kamalyagin and Sergei Markelov, are Russian nationals providing objective news and information to their fellow citizens," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement late on May 6.

"We call on the Russian government to stop targeting journalists and blocking the Russian people's access to information."

In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time -- the Russian-language network operated by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA -- 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. RFE/RL is appealing the fines.

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

KHABAROVSK, Russia -- A court in Siberia has sentenced an Orthodox priest to 25 days in jail for taking part in an unsanctioned rally to support jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny in April.

Journalist Tatyana Khlestunova told RFE/RL that a court in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk sentenced Andrei Vinarsky on May 13.

Vinarsky has already been sentenced twice in recent months for taking part in protests.

He was given three days and then 20 days in jail, and fined for taking part in unsanctioned rallies to support the former governor of the Khabarovsk region, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested and taken to Moscow last summer for alleged involvement in murders more than a decade ago, which he and his supporters have rejected as politically motivated.

In March, the Birobidzhan eparchy ruled to dismiss Vinarsky from the post of archpriest of the St. Nicholas church over his participation in the rallies.

Vinarsky's daughter, Tatyana Tikhonova, said on May 13 that the eparchy also ruled that her father cannot run services and preach at churches until he repents and stops taking part in unsanctioned rallies.

Furgal's arrest in July sparked months-long large-scale protests in Khabarovsk

European Union officials are calling for a stronger response by the bloc to Russian aggression toward Ukraine, warning that Moscow’s ultimate aim is to absorb parts of eastern Ukraine where a war has raged for seven years.

The warnings came in a report written by the EU’s diplomatic office that was circulated earlier this week among EU members and reviewed by RFE/RL.

Since erupting in 2014, the conflict pitting Kremlin-backed militias and Ukrainian government troops has killed more than 13,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. Fighting has ebbed and flowed, though last month tensions skyrocketed after Russia deployed more than 100,000 troops and heavy weaponry to its regions bordering Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was elected on a platform of trying to end the conflict, sought, and gained, vocal Western support in the face of Russian threats, and Moscow ultimately pulled back some of its forces.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Zelenskiy in Kyiv last week, criticized the Russian deployment.

The European Union has struggled to find a coherent approach to dealing with Russia, its largest trading partner. And its approach to Ukraine has been criticized as weak.

An EU road map that could have ultimately led to Ukrainian membership was a catalyst for the Kyiv street protests in 2013-14 that culminated in the ouster of the pro-Russian president and the outbreak of war.

The EU document reviewed by RFE/RL -- called Options Paper: EU Actions To Strengthen Ukraine’s Resilience And Respond to Possible Further Escalation -- recommends a series of steps the bloc could take, including helping Ukraine lower its energy dependence on Russia and supporting Kyiv’s efforts to “tackle hybrid threats including countering cyberthreats and disinformation.”

The paper was issued by European External Action Service, the bloc’s diplomatic office, and circulated among ambassadors of the EU’s 27 members.

The paper also warns that Moscow was ultimately seeking to absorb the parts in eastern Ukraine that are part of the historical Donbas region, saying that organizing illegitimate elections and issuing passports to locals are “aimed at de facto integration of Ukraine’s nongovernmental-controlled areas into Russia.”

The paper calls for the bloc to do more to deny recognition of Russian passports issued to residents of parts of the Donbas, as well as Crimea, the Black Sea region that was forcibly annexed by Moscow in 2014.

A 2015 peace deal known as the Minsk accords, which Kyiv and Moscow agreed to, would grant the Donbas regions substantial autonomy within Ukraine. But greater autonomy would potentially give Moscow more power over the region -- and possible veto power over Ukraine’s long-term goals of joining the EU or even NATO.

NATO membership, in particular, is seen as a critical threat by Russia.

The EU paper also calls for helping Ukraine in its coronavirus vaccination efforts, “especially of vulnerable groups in order to avoid further weakening of the country through a prolonged health and socio-economic crisis.

The paper is expected to be formalized by the External Action Service in the coming weeks, according to officials familiar with it.

Asked specifically about the paper’s assertions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on May 13: “Russia is not planning to absorb anyone and has never done so in the past.”

With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Mike Eckel

YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- A Russian court has cut the jail term of opposition politician and former Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman from nine days to one day after he appealed the ruling against him for his online posts about a January 31 rally to support jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

The Sverdlovsk regional court in Yekaterinburg made the decision on May 13, a day after the city's Oktyabr district court sentenced Roizman, who is also a former member of parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, for organizing an unsanctioned rally after he urged his nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter to take to the streets.

No reason for the decision was given.

The court on May 2 also found Roizman guilty of organizing a pro-Navalny rally in Yekaterinburg on April 21 and sentenced him to nine days in jail on that charge as well, but ruled that the punishments on both charges must be served simultaneously.

The Sverdlovsk regional court shortened both sentences to one day.

Roizman, who served as mayor of Russia's fourth-largest city from 2013 to 2018, pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying his posts were neither calls for people to attend the rally nor attempts to organize it.

Nationwide demonstrations held on January 23 and January 31 were against the arrest of Navalny, who was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack with what several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent in Siberia in August.

Russian authorities have launched a crackdown on opposition activists and independent media in the wake of the protests.

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.

Roizman, who has described himself as a friend of Navalny, resigned from his post in 2018 after authorities moved to scrap mayoral elections in the city of 1.5 million in the industrial belt of the Ural Mountains.

MINSK -- Belarusian opposition figure Maryya Kalesnikava has been charged eight months after her arrest last year for urging people to protest against a disputed presidential election that left Alyaksandr Lukashenka in power.

Kalesnikava's associates told RFE/RL on May 13 that, according to official documents, Kalesnikava was charged with conspiracy to seize power by unconstitutional means, public calls for action against national security, and creating and leading an extremist group.

If found guilty, Kalesnikava faces up to 12 years in prison.

Kalesnikava is a key member of the Coordination Council, a body set up by the political opposition to facilitate the transfer of power in Belarus following a presidential election in August that the opposition says was rigged and the West has refused to accept.

Kalesnikava, who was arrested in September, has rejected all charges against her as politically motivated.

Her arrest came amid mass demonstrations that swept across Belarus for several months after the disputed vote that gave Lukashenka a sixth consecutive term.

Lukashenka has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 people have been detained, many sentenced to lengthy prison terms, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted.

Lukashenka, who has run Belarus since 1994, and other top officials have been slapped with sanctions by the West, which refuses to recognize him as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.

A jailed Iranian women's right activist who has campaigned against the country's strict Islamic dress code has reportedly gone on a hunger strike to protest against the imprisonment of her mother.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which covers news in Iran, reported that 21-year-old Saba Kord Afshari had stopped eating since May 8.

It said that Kord Afshari, who is serving a 7 1/2-year sentence in Tehran's Qarchak prison for women, suffered stomach bleeding several times and contracted the coronavirus while in custody.

Her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, is being held in Evin prison, also in Tehran, after being handed a 31-month prison term, allegedly for speaking out about her daughter's fate.

Kord Afshari was arrested in June 2019 after she posted a video online protesting against the compulsory veiling regulation that requires Iranian women to wear a hijab covering their hair and body in public.

The activist was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison on charges that include "encouraging prostitution" and "acting against national security," but her sentence was later reduced.

Her mother was reportedly arrested last year. Her health is said to have deteriorated in prison.

The hijab became compulsory in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Many Iranian women have flouted the rule over the years and pushed the boundaries of acceptable dress. Many have publicly criticized the restrictions.

In 2018, a number of women protested the hijab rule in public by removing their head scarves in the streets and major squares of Tehran and several other cities.

Authorities later announced the arrest of 29 women over their involvement in the protest actions.

A Kyiv court on May 13 placed under house arrest Kremlin-friendly tycoon and politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who along with another pro-Russian lawmaker is under suspicion of treason.

The Pechera district court rejected prosecutors' request for pretrial detention for Medvedchuk, and instead ordered house arrest. Prosecutors had also asked the judges to set bail at more than 300 million hryvnyas ($10.8 million).

"We will continue to fight," Medvedchuk said after the judge announced the decision.

The lawmaker said he needed to make sure that the case against him was not "biased and politically motivated."

Medvedchuk, who has a close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was officially notified earlier this week of a treason investigation including him after the Security Service (SBU) searched his home and office in Kyiv.

Medvedchuk and his pro-Russian Opposition Platform -- For Life party have both made statements rejecting the charge and calling it politically motivated.

In February, Ukraine's National Security Council announced sanctions against Medvedchuk, his wife, Oksana Marchenko, and several other individuals and entities.

The sanctions froze the couple's assets for three years and prevented them from doing business in the country.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government in February also placed sanctions on three television stations believed to be owned by Medvedchuk. The move came shortly after talks between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Medvedchuk is the head of the political council of Opposition Platform -- For Life, which is the largest opposition group in parliament. He is one of the party's 44 deputies in the 450-seat legislature.

His relationship with Putin runs so deep that the Russian leader is godfather to Medvedchuk's daughter.

Medvedchuk was hit with sanctions by the United States in 2014 for undermining democracy in Ukraine.

The sanctions were tied to an investigation into exports of coal to Russia from a separatist-held region in eastern Ukraine.

Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the Kremlin-backed separatists who control parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions has killed more than 13,000 people since April 2014.

Russia occupied Crimea in March 2014 and instigated separatist clashes in Ukraine's east after anti-government protests toppled the Russian-friendly former president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, Ukrayinska Pravda, and UNIAN

TASHKENT -- Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has pardoned 100 inmates on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr Islamic holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Reports by state media say that according to a decree signed by Mirziyoev on May 12, three inmates were completely released from prison and 43 were released on parole, while 10 convicts had their sentences replaced with more lenient ones.

In addition, the prison terms of 44 inmates were shortened.

Those pardoned include 12 foreigners, four men above the age of 60, six women, and 52 people convicted for taking part in the activities of banned groups.

Eid al-Fitr, which is celebrated after the end of Ramadan, the month during which Muslims do not eat or drink during the daytime, is one of the most important holidays in the Islamic world.

Uzbek authorities said earlier that the holiday will be celebrated for four days this year.

State media reported that Mirziyoev held phone talks with his Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik counterparts to exchange holiday greetings.

The Ramadan fast is intended to bring the faithful closer to God and to remind them of the suffering of those less fortunate.

There are some 1.8 billion Muslims, making up almost one-quarter of the world's population.

Read in Uzbek

KAZAN, Russia -- Five children and four adults wounded in a deadly attack on a school in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan this week have been transferred to hospitals in Moscow as President Vladimir Putin pledged tighter gun controls for a nation "shaken" by the tragedy.

A spokeswoman for Tatarstan's president, Lidia Galimova, said on May 13 that lives of the 14 children injured in the shooting are out of danger and they were being treated in Kazan following the attack two days earlier.

Ilnaz Galyaviyev, 19, appeared in court on May 12 on suspicion of setting off an explosion in the school before opening fire on students as they scurried to flee the building, some jumping from third-floor windows to escape the carnage.

At the arraignment, investigators said Galyaviyev, who was dressed in black, detonated a handmade explosive device at the entrance to an elementary class in Kazan's School No. 175 that did not hurt anyone. He then fired 17 shots from a firearm that killed seven students, a teacher, and a school employee.

Galyaviyev pleaded guilty to the charge of murder of two or more persons by methods dangerous for public. If found guilty he could face life in prison.

Putin said at a meeting with government officials via video link on May 13 that all those affected by “this barbaric crime” would “receive all the necessary support and assistance."

"The tragedy has definitely shaken all of us. In these difficult days, all in Russia have been and remain with the residents of Kazan, with Tatarstan.... Again, I express my deepest condolences to relatives of the deceased, to the families that lost...their children, grandchildren, their loved ones," Putin said.

Questions have arisen over Galyaviyev's mental health as the authorities try to find a motive for the mass shooting.

Galyaviyev said that he had no medical condition, but the Investigative Committee said on May 12 that although he had not been treated or registered at a psychiatric institution, he was diagnosed in 2020 with a brain disorder disease known as encephalopathy.

The Investigative Committee, which handles investigations into serious crimes, added that Galyaviev's relatives had noticed him behaving aggressively and having a short temper this year, noting that he had repeatedly sought medical treatment for severe headaches.

The deadliest school attack in post-Soviet Russia aside from the infamous 2004 Beslan siege, which left hundreds dead, has stunned the country.

The head of Russia's Muslim-majority region of Tatarstan, where Kazan is the main city, has called the attack a national tragedy.

The Kremlin has called for tighter gun controls in a country that already has strict restrictions on civilian firearm ownership.

However, some categories of gun are available for purchase for hunting, self-defense, or sport, once would-be owners have passed tests and met other requirements.

Putin said on May 13 that in order to prevent attacks like the one in Kazan, authorities need to “seriously raise the requirements for civilian gun owners and tighten control over civilian gun circulation.”

“Decisions here need to be well-founded and definitely tough,” he said, adding that officials granting gun-ownership permits need to be held accountable for their actions as well.

The nine victims of the attack were buried at various locations in Tatarstan on May 12.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to stop its imprisonment and harassment of Kurdish journalists amid what human rights groups have denounced as a crackdown on members of the minority group.

In a statement late on May 12, the New York-based media-freedom watchdog cited news reports and sources familiar with the cases as saying that Iranian authorities had arrested at least eight Kurdish journalists since May 2020.

Three of them -- Navid Seyed-Mohammadi, Jafar Osafi, and Nasrullah Lashani -- remain in detention.

"Iranian authorities' targeting of Kurdish journalists adds a dimension of ethnic discrimination to the country's already dire campaign to imprison members of the press," CPJ Middle East and North Africa researcher Justin Shilad said.

"Authorities should drop all vague, trumped-up charges filed against Iranian-Kurdish journalists, and release all jailed journalists immediately," he added.

A lawyer representing several of the jailed journalists told CPJ that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was "very sensitive about Kurdish journalists and the topics they write about, especially if they write about unity of Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds, and other regional issues of Kurds."

The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said that the authorities were "sensitive every time Kurdish journalists travel to Kurdish areas of Iraq such as Irbil. They closely monitor all movements across the border and any journalists' assembly."

CPJ's call comes three months after 36 civil society and human rights organizations denounced "an ongoing wave of arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, and enforced disappearances by the Iranian authorities" targeting Iran's "disadvantaged" Kurdish minority.

The groups said that at least 96 members of the community had been arrested since the beginning of the year, including civil society activists, environmentalists, writers, university students, and "individuals with no known history of activism."

Seyed-Mohammadi, a reporter for the state-run Islamic Republic Radio and Television broadcaster, was arrested by IRGC intelligence agents in the city of Piranshahr, West Azerbaijan Province, in May 2020 after returning from a trip to northern Iraq, CPJ quoted a person familiar with the case as saying.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that the journalist was charged with “espionage for hostile states” and sentenced in August to seven years in prison.

In June, the IRGC arrested Osafi, who ran the Telegram channel QandA, searched his house in the city of Bukan, West Azerbaijan, and confiscated electronic devices, according to the Iran-focused press-freedom group JournalismIsNotACrime.

He was transferred to a prison in the city of Urmia, where he remains, according to the exile-led Human Rights Organization in Iran.

CPJ could not determine whether the arrest and imprisonment of Seyed-Mohammadi and Osafi were direct retribution for their reporting.

In June 2020, IRGC agents also arrested Lashani, an independent Kurdish political reporter and commentator, after he returned from northern Iraq, the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency quoted his lawyer as saying.

He was first held at Tehran's Evin prison before being moved to a jail in Karaj Province, according to the report.

Lashani's lawyer said the detention related to charges relating to his writing and crossing the Iraqi border.

At least five other Iranian-Kurdish journalists served jail terms in 2020 and 2021 but have since been released, according to the CPJ.

Four leading human rights groups have criticized the authoritarian leadership of Turkmenistan for "threatening" the relatives of dissidents living abroad.

In a joint statement on May 13, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR), International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), and Amnesty International said that in early May, Turkmen security officials questioned and threatened a 14-year-old boy in retaliation for the outspoken views of his uncle, Rozybai Jumamuradov, a former correspondent of RFE/RL in Turkmenistan who currently resides in Turkey.

The human rights watchdogs urged the Turkmen authorities to immediately end their harassment of relatives of dissidents based abroad and uphold freedom of expression and respect for basic rights within the country.

Government critics and human rights groups have long accused President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of suppressing dissent and making few changes in the restrictive country since he came to power after the death of autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.

Jumamuradov told TIHR that on May 4 the security services in Turkmenistan's eastern Lebap region summoned his nephew, cursed and shouted at him, and threatened to imprison him and his parents because of their contacts with Jumamuradov.

They also brought the boy's mother to the police station and interrogated and intimidated her in the presence of her son before releasing them.

This followed earlier acts of intimidation targeting Jumamuradov's family.

On April 26, national security officials summoned and questioned the boy's father.

Prior to this, on March 21, unidentified people called the boy's family and threatened to kill them unless they ceased communicating with Jumamuradov.

Jumamuradov, who had to flee Turkmenistan in 2009 after the authorities learned about his work for RFE/RL, is an outspoken critic of the government.

Another Turkmen activist and former journalist, Devlet Bayhan, who is based in Germany and runs a video blog critical of the authorities, told TIHR that national security officials had visited and threatened his relatives in the city of Mary several times since late March.

Bayhan said that two of his relatives were fired from their jobs in early April in retaliation for his activism. Officials warned one of his family members, whose son is currently serving in the army, that he might not return alive unless Bayhan ceased his activities.

In the past year, human rights organizations have documented a series of other cases involving pressure on the relatives of activists who are based abroad.

"Turkmenistan's international partners should speak up in support of Turkmen activists whose relatives have faced retaliation. They should insist that the authorities end this abuse and instead focus on the serious problems that activists are bringing to light," HRW deputy Europe and Central Asia director Rachel Denber said.

The leader of the Democratic Choice of Turkmenistan movement, Murad Gurbanov, who resides abroad, told RFE/RL earlier this week that exiled opposition groups had sent a letter to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to visit Ashgabat later this year, to raise the issue of pressure imposed by Turkish immigration officials on Turkmen activists residing in Turkey.

"Turkmen authorities use Turkish immigration service to impose pressure on Turkmen nationals residing in Turkey. Turkish immigration officials demand from Turkmen nationals to stop opposition activities and protests against Turkmen government, threatening them with deportations," Gurbanov said.

He added that his organization also urged Erdogan, during his talks with Berdymukhammedov, to raise the issue of the renewal of expired national passports of Turkmen citizens living in Turkey.

Like his late predecessor, Berdymukhammedov, who has carefully constructed a personality cult to himself in the country, has relied on subsidized prices for basic goods and utilities to help maintain his grip on power.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Turkmen Service

NUR-SULTAN -- Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has signed into law a long-debated and sensitive bill that bans selling and leasing agricultural land to foreigners in the oil-rich Central Asian state.

According to the law, foreigners, stateless individuals, foreign companies, Kazakh companies with foreign ownership, international organizations, and scientific groups that have the involvement of foreign countries cannot own or lease agricultural land in Kazakhstan.

The bill was proposed by Toqaev in February as a five-year moratorium on selling and leasing Kazakh agricultural land to foreigners introduced in 2016 amid mass protests was expected to expire later in summer.

The moratorium was announced after thousands demonstrated in unprecedented rallies across the tightly controlled country, 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,

New mass protests erupted across Kazakhstan in March and April this year after a clause was introduced to the bill that would allow foreigners and foreign companies to lease Kazakh forests for up to 25 years.

Lawmakers removed the clause on May 5.

Read in Kazakh

The U.S. State Department has accused China of committing "genocide" against Muslim Uyghurs and other religious minorities in an annual report that also labeled Iran and Russia among the world's worst offenders of religious freedom.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the release of the State Department's annual International Religious Freedom Report on May 12 to name and shame the most egregious violators of religious freedom, which he defined as a universal human right.

"Religious freedom can't be fully realized unless other human rights are respected, and when governments violate their people's right to believe and worship freely, it jeopardizes all the others," Blinken said.

Blinken pointed out on abuses of religious freedom in Iran, Burma (Myanmar), Russia, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, all of which were identified in the report as top offenders.

"In Russia, authorities continue to harass, detain, and seize property of Jehovah's Witnesses as well as members of Muslim minority groups on the pretense of alleged extremism," Blinken said.

The report itself says Russia continues to investigate, detain, imprison, torture, and physically abuse persons or seize their property because of their religious faith.

On Iran, the report lists a litany of restrictions and punishments related to religious freedom, including on followers of the official Shi'ite Muslim faith.

"Iran continues to intimidate, harass, and arrest members of minority faith groups, including Baha'i, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sunni and Sufi Muslims," Blinken said.

In reviewing the contents of the report, Blinken highlighted rising anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred around the world as serious problems, including in the United States and Europe.

China's 'Crimes Against Humanity'

The Trump administration in January said that China's policies in Xinjiang constituted crimes against humanity and genocide, a position to which Blinken reiterated the Biden administration agrees.

"China broadly criminalizes religious expression and continues to commit crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups," Blinken said.

The State Department has said that as many as 2 million Uyghurs and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.

Beijing has rejected the allegations and has characterized the camps as vocational training centers to teach Chinese language, job skills, and the law in order to support economic development and combat extremism.

Daniel Nadel, a senior official in the State Department's Office of International Freedom, said the situation in Xinjiang amounted to an effort by the Chinese government "to essentially turn the entire region into an open-air prison."

Describing a trove of evidence revealing forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, forced population control, and other abuses in Xinjiang, Nadal said China was trying to "erase a people, a history, a culture from the Earth."

Meanwhile, human rights groups and Western countries accused China of massive crimes in Xinjiang and demanded unimpeded access for UN experts at a May 12 virtual meeting.

Organizers said there were 152 participants in the event, including 51 countries, which was denounced by Beijing as an "anti-China" event.

British UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward called the situation in Xinjiang "one of the worst human rights crises of our time."

German UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen urged China to "tear down the detention camps" and "grant unimpeded access" to the UN high commissioner for human rights.

A Chinese diplomat countered, "The truth is, it's not about human rights in Xinjiang, it's about using Xinjiang as a political tool to contain China."

With reporting by AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden won’t waver in responding to aggression from Moscow in the United States or elsewhere.

"Secretary Blinken reiterated President Biden’s resolve to protect U.S. citizens and act firmly in defense of U.S. interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said, adding that Blinken made the point in a telephone call with Lavrov on May 12.

The call comes amid ongoing tensions between Washington and Moscow over a number of issues, including Russia’s troop buildup in and around Ukraine, allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections and the recent cyberattack blamed on a Russia-linked criminal network on a key U.S. oil pipeline.

Blinken and Lavrov are set to meet in person for the first time next week on the sidelines of the Arctic summit in Reykjavik.

The two will discuss "key issues of mutual relations and the international agenda" during their meeting, planned for May 20, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on May 12.

The U.S. State Department also confirmed the date.

Whether the two will discuss a possible meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden is unclear.

Biden had suggested the two meet in a third country, but Putin has so far not responded publicly.

The meeting marks the end of Iceland's two-year chairmanship of the Arctic cooperation forum, which then passes on to Russia for the next two years.

Alongside Russia and the United States, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Norway, and Sweden are also members of the council.

With reporting by dpa, AP, and Reuters

KEMEROVO, Russia -- The prosecutor in the high-profile case of a deadly mall fire in 2018 in Siberia has asked a court to sentence eight defendants to prison terms between five years and 14 1/2 years.

Prosecutor Aleksandr Korobeinikov asked the Zavodskoi district court in the city of Kemerovo on May 12 to hand the longest sentence to Yulia Bogdanova, former director of a company that owned the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall in the city, where a fire killed 60 people, including 37 children, in March 2018.

The prosecutor also asked the court to sentence former mall manager Nadezhda Suddenok and the mall's former technical director, Georgy Sobolev, to 14 years and 13 years in prison, respectively.

Korobeinikov asked that Igor Polozinenko, the chief of a company that installed a fire alarm system in the mall, and his assistant, Aleksandr Nikitin, get 6 years and 8 months and 5 1/2 years in prison, respectively.

The prosecutor asked the court to sentence Andrey Bursin and Sergei Genin, the individuals who led firefighting operations at the blaze, to six and five years in prison, respectively.

All of the defendants were charged with violating fire safety rules and negligence that led to human loss of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With reporting by Meduza

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is currently being held in a prison in The Hague for war crimes and genocide, will serve the remainder of his sentence in Britain.

Karadzic, 75, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2016 after being convicted of genocide for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces.

In 2019, UN judges at The Hague extended the prison term to a life sentence.

"Radovan Karadzic is one of the few people to have been found guilty of genocide. He was responsible for the massacre of men, women, and children at the Srebrenica genocide and helped prosecute the siege of Sarajevo with its remorseless attacks on civilians," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced on May 12.

He also said Britain "should take pride" in the country's support for the 30-year effort to bring the former Bosnian Serb political leader to justice.

Karadzic was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the almost four-year-long siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb forces and for overseeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove Croats and Muslims out of Serb-claimed areas of Bosnia.

Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, were among the last suspects put on trial by the UN tribunal in The Hague for the civil war.

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade on July 18, 2008, after spending more than a decade in hiding. He was handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and after his conviction he was held at court's detention center in The Hague.

On June 8, UN judges will rule on Mladic's appeal against his genocide conviction.

Mladic was sentenced to life in prison in 2017 for the Srebrenica massacre and for war crimes and crimes against humanity in general during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- Russian opposition politician and former mayor of the Urals city of Yekaterinburg Yevgeny Roizman has been sentenced to nine days in jail for his online posts about a January 31 rally to support jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

On May 12, the Oktyabr (October) district court in Yekaterinburg found Roizman, who is also a former parliamentary deputy, guilty of organizing an unsanctioned rally.

Roizman pleaded not guilty, saying his posts were neither calls for people to attend the rall, nor an attempt to organize it.

Nationwide demonstrations held on January 23 and January 31 were against the arrest of Navalny, who was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack with what several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent in Siberia in August.

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

The rallies were met with a harsh response from authorities, with many of those taking part either receiving fines and short jail terms and some facing several years in prison.

Russia has also ramped up pressure on domestic and foreign social networks, accusing them of refusing to delete opposition content.

Moscow’s Tagansky district court fined Telegram five million rubles ($67,000) on May 12 for not removing calls "inciting minors" to join protests, TASS reported.

Moscow has repeatedly fined foreign Internet companies, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, for failing to comply with Russian legislation.

Roizman wrote on social networks on the eve of the January 31 rally that "It is necessary to come out on the 31st. I will," and "They are bastards, let's come out."

He also wrote wryly: "They are doing everything to make as many people as possible come out. It is important not to impede this move by the morons."

Prosecutors said at the hearing that since Roizman's posts "included the date and the site" of the rally, he can be considered an organizer of an unsanctioned public event. The posts, however, did not list any specific site for a demonstration, he countered.

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 consideredto have been politically motivated.

Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he would serve 2 1/2 years in prison given the amount of time he had been held in detention.

With reporting by Znak, Meduza, AFP, and TASS

SOFIA -- Bulgarian caretaker Prime Mnister Stefan Yanev has officially taken office, saying the main priority of his government will be to uphold the rule of law and ensure the fairness of the upcoming snap parliamentary elections.

"Honest and responsible work by the government can at least partially restore the lost trust in state institutions," Yanev said during his inauguration ceremony on May 12.

It will be "absolutely uncompromising" against any attempted vote violations, Yanev said.

“Integrity, transparency, professionalism," will be the motto of his cabinet, he added.

On May 11, President Rumen Radev appointed Yanev, a close ally, to lead the caretaker government until a cabinet is formed following early elections set for July 11.

The move came after an inconclusive poll last month resulted in a fragmented parliament that failed to produce a government.

Yanev, 61, was the president’s defense and security advise before his appointment. The retired brigadier general also served as a deputy prime minister and defense minister in a caretaker government Radev appointed in 2017.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Radev said that "declaring war on vote-buying" and "bringing order to the chaos of vaccinations” are among the tasks of new government.

Yanev's appointment as caretaker prime minister came after three failed attempts by the country’s main parties to form a government following polls on April 4.

The center-right GERB party of outgoing, three-time Prime Minister Boyko Borisov came first in the elections, but garnered only 26 percent of the vote amid frustration over endemic corruption and poverty.

The new antiestablishment party, There Is Such A People (TSN), led by television personality Slavi Trifonov, was second with 18 percent, while two other antiestablishment parties made inroads.

The Socialists came in third place in the last election.

Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest member, ranks as the bloc's most corrupt state, according to the watchdog Transparency International.

It has been criticized by Brussels for failing to overhaul its judiciary and tackle widespread corruption.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The parliament in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s predominantly Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, has rejected a request from the country’s international overseer to revoke awards recognizing convicted war criminals.

Lawmakers at the entity's National Assembly voted on May 11 to endorse conclusions rejecting the request by High Representative Valentin Inzko. Two opposition parties abstained from voting.

In his first reaction to the move, Inzko called nationalist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik "a coward" and said he would notify the European Union of the lawmakers’ decision.

In February, Inzko sent a letter to the National Assembly of Republika Srpska requesting the annulment within three months of decorations issued to people convicted of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

Those awarded included Radovan Karadzic, Momcilo Krajisnik, and Biljana Plavsic, whose actions “shocked the world…and caused unimaginable human suffering,” Inzko wrote.

Dodik is the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency. The ruling majority in parliament is led by his Alliance of the Independent Social Democrats (SNSD).

More than 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian conflict that ended in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995 that divided Bosnia into two entities -- the Muslim and Croat federation and Republika Srpska -- held together by joint central institutions.

Karadzic, Krajisnik, and Plavsic have been convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Karadzic, the wartime president of Republika Srpska, was sentenced to life in prison by the court in The Hague in 2019 for his role in the 1995 mass killings at Srebrenica that the tribunal ruled was genocide and persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia.

Dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, he was also found guilty of terrorizing the Sarajevo population by shelling and sniping, and of taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Plavsic, Karadzic's successor as president, was sentenced to 11 years in 2003 for committing war crimes. She was released in 2009 after serving two-thirds of her sentence.

Krajisnik, who was parliamentary speaker during the war, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2009 on charges of persecuting and forcibly expelling non-Serbs, and crimes against humanity. He was released in 2013 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, and died at the age of 75 in Republika Srpska.

Tajik officials say mudslides triggered by heavy rains have killed nine people in the west of the country.

The Committee for Emergency Situations said in a statement on May 12 that the mudslides killed eight residents of the Khatlon region's city of Kulob, as well as in the districts of Shamsiddin Shohin, Vakhsh, and Kushoniyon.

It said one person also died in the city of Hisor, about 15 kilometers west of the capital, Dushanbe.

The mudslides hit the area on May 11, damaging many homes, bridges, and other infrastructure, as well as public administration buildings, according to the statement.

It warned that more rains are expected in the region on May 14, and asked residents not to drive vehicles on mountainous roads.

Some residents of the affected towns and villages in Khatlon region complained to RFE/RL that the authorities failed to provide them with shelters and other assistance.

Mountains cover 93 percent of Tajikistan's territory, and mudslides and avalanches kill dozens of people every year.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, have detained at least nine protesters who have been picketing the Chinese consulate for 93 days to demand the release of relatives they say are being "illegally" held in China.

Two of the protesters, Baibolat Kunbolat and Tursungul Nuraqai, were released several hours after they were detained late on May 11. The whereabouts of the others is unknown.

Kunbolat told RFE/RL on May 12 that he and other protesters, mainly women, were detained after they rallied in front of the Chinese Consulate and then moved to picket a Chinese bank and a Chinese gasoline station in Almaty.

According to Kunbolat, police held him for several hours and interrogated him over his role in the ongoing protests.

"I did not sign a protocol and did not write down any testimony. They let me go after 9:00 p.m. but ordered me to come back for questioning the next day," Kunbolat said.

In recent years, many similar protests have taken place in Kazakhstan, with demonstrators demanding Kazakh authorities officially intervene in the situation faced by ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang.

The U.S. State Department has said that as many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.

China denies that the facilities are internment camps but people who have fled the province say that thousands of ethnic Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslims in Xinjiang are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of facilities known officially as reeducation camps.

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

A group of lawmakers in the Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, have introduced a bill that would ban lawyers from recording meetings with their convicted clients inside penitentiaries, a move that has sparked sharp criticism from rights activists as a way of muzzling prisoners such as opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

Civil society advocates say the initiative is linked to ongoing online statements by Kremlin-critic Navalny, a growing number of political prisoners, and a number of other high-profile cases of torture in Russian penitentiaries that came to the attention of the public via video recordings made in prisons.

The bill, which was placed on the State Duma's website and registered for debate on May 6, would ban attorneys from bringing "any communication devices" into penitentiaries.

Such a move would fly in the face of a recent Supreme Court statement saying that lawyers have a right to enter prisons and jails with all types of mobile communication, emphasizing that attempts by the wardens at some penitentiaries to implement such a ban at their facilities were illegal.

Several attorneys who talked to RFE/RL on the issue said that the bill would also violate the rights of inmates and eliminate the last tool inmates have to use to document violations of their rights such as torture.

Maksim Olenichev of the Team 29 group of attorneys told RFE/RL that written complaints about torture in Russian prisons have never been enough to bring such cases to trial, meaning photos and videos are crucial to helping successfully defend inmates' rights.

"We think the main reason the bill was introduced is the appearance of multiple instances of proof of violence [against inmates] in prison in various regions. Yaroslavl, Karelia, Priangarye, [incidents] which came to public knowledge and had probes launched, were only because of photos and video recordings made by lawyers.... The bill would also stop the statements Navalny has been making from prison," Olenichev said.

Lawyer Dmitry Dmitriyev from the Siberian city of Irkutsk told RFE/RL that many penitentiaries have not been allowing lawyers to have mobile phones or cameras when visiting their clients in prisons and jails for years, but some lawyers fought against such bans citing the current law which allows them to bring devices inside penitentiaries.

"Only well-known lawyers have managed to make penitentiary administrations follow the law and had mobile phones with them when meeting with their clients. Such lawyers were mainly those whose clients were involved in high-profile cases, such as Navalny’s case, because their words were cited [by media] and the public reacted to them. Because of that, the opposition politician has been able to communicate with people even from his cell. Each word Navalny sent from behind bars has been discussed even more actively. I think this bill was hastily proposed for debate to stop that," Dmitriyev said.

The head of the Gulagu.net human rights project, Vladimir Osechkin, told RFE/RL that his sources in the State Duma told him that the main goal of the bill was to prevent the flow of information about torture in prisons and stop Navalny's online statements from prison.

"According to the sources, the authors of the bill have tried to push the draft law for several months, and only now did it get a "green light" from the presidential administration and made its way to the State Duma. And this comes at a time when statements about torture in Russian prisons have become systemic, when a new case of torture becomes public each week. And Navalny keeps on irritating [the authorities] with his statements from behind bars," Osechkin said.

Former Iranian hard-line President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has registered his candidacy for a third term in office in next month’s election.

State television reported on May 12 that Ahmadinejad marched with supporters to the Interior Ministry, where he filled out the required registration forms.

Considered an ultraconservative in the past, the 64-year-old ex-Tehran mayor has been more critical of the establishment in recent years.

He was barred from running at the last presidential election in 2017.

During his two terms in office, between 2005 to 2013, he pushed Iran into open confrontation with the West over its nuclear program, and his disputed 2009 reelection sparked the biggest mass protests in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran on May 11 opened registration for potential candidates in the June 18 presidential election amid continued high tensions with the West and uncertainty over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

After the five-day registration process, entrants will be screened for their qualifications by the Guardians Council, a hard-line constitutional watchdog that has in the past disqualified many moderate would-be candidates.

The Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad has previously been banned from running for the presidency by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2017, although then, he registered anyway. The Guardians Council ultimately disqualified him then.

The council is to announce a final list of candidates by May 27, triggering a 20-day campaign season ahead of the vote.

President Hassan Rohani, a relative moderate whose government is taking part in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, cannot seek reelection after having served two consecutive four-year terms.

With the poll just a month away, no immediate favorite has emerged among the many rumored candidates, but many view the hard-liners as ascendant.

Turnout could be hit by rising discontent over steep rises in consumer prices and high unemployment as the Iranian economy has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and U.S. economic sanctions reimposed after Washington in 2018 pulled out of the nuclear accord, which lifted international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Iran responded to the U.S. moves by stepping up its violations of the accord by enriching uranium to a greater purity, stockpiling more than allowed, and introducing more advanced centrifuges.

Several rounds of talks with world powers in Vienna on reviving the nuclear accord have yet to make major progress.

Iranian hard-liners took control of parliament last year in polls that saw 42.5 percent turnout, the lowest turnout since the 1979 revolution that brought a clerical regime to power.

Ahmadinejad’s political style, which included threats against Israel, denial of the Holocaust, and claims that Iran had no homosexuals, contributed to marginalize Iran on the international stage.

At home, he drew support from the countryside for his populist cash handouts and home-building programs, but even some of his conservative allies had abandoned him toward the end of his time at the presidency.

After leaving office in 2013, Ahmadinejad sought to reinvigorate his political fortunes in public and on social media.

In 2017, Ahmadinejad accused the hard-line judiciary of "dictatorship" and said that it is more powerful than the supreme leader, who has final say on all state matters in Iran.

With reporting by AP and dpa

KAZAN, Russia -- Nine victims from an attack on a school in the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan have been buried as investigators search for answers as to why a teenager went on a deadly shooting spree.

The victims were buried on May 12 in cemeteries in Kazan and several other districts in Tatarstan in accordance with Islamic traditions as the republic holds a day of mourning following the tragedy a day earlier that also injured more than 20 people, most of whom were students at School No. 175.

Four boys and three girls, all eighth-graders, died in the attack, as well as a teacher and another school employee.

Around 100 people, some of them wearing face masks because of the COVID-19 pandemic, gathered at a traditional Muslim funeral for Elvira Ignatieva, an English teacher who was among the victims.

"My niece was like a shining star: she took off, lit up, and faded away," her aunt Anna Ignatieva told AFP, crying and wearing a black scarf.

"She was protecting her children ... She was protecting (them) and didn't hide away," Talgat Gumerov, a Kazan resident told Reuters.

Amir Shaikhutdinov, a 14-year-old student killed in the attack, was also buried.

“Thanks to all of you and from the town for all of the support…Without it I would not have been able to cope,” his father, Fanil Shaikhutdinov, said in comments reported by RFE/RL.

A 19-year-old man, identified by local media as Ilnaz Galyaviyev, was arrested on suspicion of setting off an explosion in the school before opening fire on students as they scurried to flee the building, some jumping from third-floor windows to escape the carnage.

According to Interfax, Galyaviyev was enrolled at a nearby business school, the Tatarstan University of Management, but was expelled one month ago for poor academic performance.

The Russia-born founder of encrypted messenger Telegram, Pavel Durov, said on May 12 that his team had "acted quickly" to block Galyaviyev's account, one hour after receiving initial complaints over his channel.

Durov said Galyaviyev announced his plans in a private Telegram channel, where he was the only member, just minutes before the attack.

"Fifteen minutes before the attack, the shooter made the channel public, apparently intending to leave it as a death note," Durov said.

The region's commissioner for children’s rights, Irina Volynets, was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying on May 12 that the motive for the attack is still not known.

"He did not come into the spotlight of any law enforcement agency: his family [was not monitored] as a dysfunctional family, the shooter himself [had] no police record and was not registered with the commission on juvenile affairs," Volynets said.

"One thing is clear -- the family evoked no suspicions in anyone. At his place of study, he was described as an even-tempered, polite, and neatly dressed young man, an ordinary student.... Rumors that he committed this crime out of revenge, to punish someone...appear groundless because he came to this school four years after graduation," she added.

Within hours of the incident, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow, about 700 kilometers west of Kazan, that President Vladimir Putin had immediately ordered the head of the Russian National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, "to hammer out new regulations on the types of weapons which are designated for civilian use, and which weapons may be in the possession of citizens, including the types of small arms the gunman used in this shooting."

The school, located on Dzhaudat Faizi Street, has more than 1,000 students.

The alleged gunman was issued a permit for a Hatsan Escort PS shotgun on April 28, Aleksandr Khinshtein, a lawmaker in the lower house of parliament, wrote on social media. Khinstein also said that the school had no security aside from a panic button.

Despite being on the rise, attacks at schools in Russia and other former Soviet republics remain uncommon and the shooting sent shockwaves across the country.

Tatarstan's Deputy Prime Minister Leila Fazleyeva told reporters that in all 23 people were injured in the shooting spree.

Mikhail Pospelov, a doctor at the Children's Hospital in Kazan, said on May 12 that 20 of the injured people are children, of whom six, including one in an "extremely serious" condition, are currently being treated in an intensive care unit.

Pospelov also said that surgeries had been performed on all of the children. The injuries treated included gunshot wounds and fractured bones suffered as the students jumped out of the school’s windows while being hit by bullets shot by the attacker.

Five children will be transported to hospitals in Moscow for treatment, he added.