The UN envoy to the Central African Republic (C.A.R.), as well as diplomats from the United States and France, has accused the national security forces and their Russian paramilitary allies of wide-ranging human rights abuses.

Russia helps President Faustin Archange Touadera combat rebel groups in the resource-rich country's ongoing civil war, including fielding Russian mercenaries and security details for government figures.

Moscow says it has only sent unarmed "instructors" to train the C.A.R. Defense Ministry.

Envoy Mankeur Ndiaye told the UN Security Council that human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law were "attributable to the Central African armed forces, bilateral forces, and other security personnel," referring to the hundreds of Russian paramilitaries deployed in the country.

A UN report in March expressed concern about Russian paramilitaries participating in human rights abuses alongside C.A.R. government forces, and in some cases UN peacekeepers. The alleged abuses include mass summary executions, forced displacement of the civilian population, and indiscriminate targeting of civilian facilities.

Numerous witnesses and NGOs say the instructors are in fact paramilitaries from the Vagner Group, a Russian military contractor with ties to the government, who are actively participating alongside Rwandan special forces and UN peacekeepers in the fight against rebels.

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Russia has significantly increased its presence and influence in the poor but resource-rich African country, where Russian national Valery Zakharov serves as national-security adviser to President Touadera.

The C.A.R. government has granted gold- and diamond-mining permits to Russian companies suspected of having links to Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the man believed to be the head of the Vagner Group.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Mills also addressed Russia's role at the UN Security Council.

"We are troubled as well by continued reports of Central African armed forces and Russian instructors committing violations of international humanitarian law," he said. "They are operating [as a] direct extension of Russia's Ministry of Defense."

France's ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, also raised concerns.

"Some will attempt to deny the presence of the Vagner company. Therefore, who are these men involved in the fighting...and to whom do they answer for their actions?" he asked.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accused Russia of what he called a "seizure of power" in the Central African Republic in order to exploit natural resources.

"In the Central African Republic, there is a form of a seizure of power, and in particular of military power, by Russian mercenaries," he told BFM TV. "We are fighting this and it has led us to take measures to withdraw a certain number of our military personnel."

The French military earlier this month suspended financial aid and military cooperation with the Central African Republic, a former colony.

It accused the government of being "complicit" in an anti-French disinformation campaign backed by Russia.

With reporting by AFP

Outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rohani says the main issues between Tehran and world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have been resolved, although Germany and France caution that hurdles remain.

The comments, made at cabinet meeting on June 23, came as other top Iranian officials signaled progress was being made at talks under way since April in Vienna.

Rohani's chief of staff, Mahmud Vaezi, said that the United States had agreed in principle to lift more than 1,000 sanctions reimposed when former U.S. President Donald Trump exited the deal three years ago.

"An agreement has been reached to remove all insurance, oil, and shipping sanctions that were imposed," Vaezi was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.

"Right now, we're discussing which of the remaining sanctions are related to the nuclear deal and which ones relate to before 2015," he said, adding that the sides were still negotiating.

U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said on June 20 there was still "a fair distance to travel," including on sanctions and on the nuclear commitments that Iran has to make to salvage the tattered deal.

The United States is present, but not directly negotiating, mainly due to Iran's refusal to meet face-to-face. Instead, the U.S. delegation is at a nearby location in Vienna, with the other delegations and EU as go-betweens.

Vaezi said Iran will also decide whether to extend its monitoring deal with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency after its expiry on June 24.

The latest round of talks between Iran and world powers to the deal adjourned on June 20 for consultations in capitals, two days after Iran held a presidential election won by hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi.

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Raisi is due to replace Rohani in August.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who is also Tehran's lead nuclear negotiator, was quoted by state media on June 21 as saying that the parties were closer to a deal than ever.

"Negotiators decided to conclude this round, and return home not only for further consultations, but also for decision making," Araqchi said.

He said he hoped to finish the negotiations and possibly implement the deal while the current government is still in office.

Raisi said after his election victory that he backed discussions to revive the nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for commitments to limit and monitor its nuclear program.

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"We support the negotiations that guarantee our national interests...America should immediately return to the deal and fulfill its obligations under the deal," he said.

Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, prompting Iran to gradually violate it by ramping up enrichment.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is trying to restore the deal, but the sides disagree on which steps to take and in what order.

Some Iranian officials have suggested Tehran may prefer an agreement before Raisi takes office in order to avoid blame if future problems arise with the deal, which was originally negotiated by the Rohani administration only to be trashed by Trump.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all major policy and would need to sign off on any agreement to revive the nuclear deal.

Although European parties to the deal say progress has been made, they caution that the complicated and highly technical talks still face many hurdles.

"We are making progress but there are still some nuts to crack," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at a joint news conference in Berlin on June 23 alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Maas said a deal was possible even after the election of Raisi.

French Deputy Foreign Minister Franck Riester told lawmakers that "difficult decisions" needed to be made in the coming days and weeks.

The remaining parties to the deal are Iran, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany, and the European Union.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported that the authorities foiled a sabotage attempt against a building of the country's Atomic Energy Organization, although few details were provided.

With reporting by Tasnim, ISNA, and Reuters

The team for jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny says a court ruling labeling his political network as "extremist" fails to show any evidence of wrongdoing -- a sign of a "truly new level" of lawlessness in the country.

Navalny's associates on June 23 made public the court ruling and the documents used against them by prosecutors during the trial, which was held behind closed doors because some materials were considered classified.

In its June 9 ruling, the court described the group as "extremist" on the grounds that its calls for people to protest caused "damage to public order, to public security, to the interests of individuals and companies."

The court said the protests violated the rights and freedoms of citizens in Russia.

"During Putin's 20 years, we seem to have gotten used to any kind of game or lawlessness, but here we have a truly new level. And absurdity, and repression of common sense," the Navalny team said in a statement.

Russian authorities have ramped up pressure on dissent ahead of the parliamentary elections in September, with opinion polls showing support for the ruling United Russia party waning.

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The court ruling came just days after Putin endorsed a law that bars leaders and founders of organizations declared "extremist" or terrorists by Russian courts from running for elected posts for a period of five years. Other members or employees of such organizations will face a three-year ban.

The two factors together prevent people associated with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and his network of regional political offices across Russia from seeking public office. It also carries lengthy prison terms for activists who have worked with the organizations.

Navalny's team said that in total, the case file included more than 20 volumes and more than 5,000 pages, many of which are just screenshots and descriptions of web pages, an indication, the team said, of how little "real evidence" there was in the case.

Navalny's team said the court ruling and "extremism" law showed how desperate the Kremlin is to hold on to power in the face of growing dissent.

"The constitution says that everyone capable and not in prison can be elected. So Putin took a pencil and added, 'Except those who support Navalny are not allowed to be elected, thank you,'" their statement says.

"An absolutely unprecedented sweep has taken place, the extent of which we have yet to realize. Literally an entire generation has been cut off from participating in politics," it adds.

The statement came the same day that the independent monitoring group Golos said legal restrictions enacted by the government had deprived at least 9 million Russians, about 8 percent of the eligible population, of their right to be elected as the September parliamentary elections near.

Navalny, Putin's most prominent domestic critic, was arrested in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin -- an accusation that Russian officials reject.

Navalny was sentenced in February to 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction widely considered politically motivated. In April, tens of thousands of people demonstrated for his release, following similar mass protests in January against his arrest.

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Navalny's foundation has relentlessly targeted senior government officials over the past decade with widely watched videos that detail allegations of corruption. His political network has been instrumental in implementing a "smart voting" strategy -- a project designed to promote candidates most likely to defeat Kremlin-linked figures.

The United States and Britain have condemned the court ruling, which has fueled greater tensions between the West and Moscow.

With reporting by Reuters and Meduza

CHEBOKSARY, Russia -- The Supreme Court of Russia's Chuvashia region has reversed the acquittal of RFE/RL correspondent Darya Komarova in a case regarding her coverage of a protest rally.

Judge Andrei Golubev on June 22 ruled that the decision of the Lenin district court to acquit Komarova must be nullified and the case sent for retrial. It is not clear why the acquittal was reversed.

Komarova said after the hearing that the judge had questions regarding the absence of the date and registration number on her assignment papers to cover the rally.

"The judge also raised the issue of the accreditation of reporters working for foreign media outlets in general," Komarova said.

Komarova, a correspondent of the Idel.Realities project of RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, was charged earlier this year with taking part in three unsanctioned rallies in Chuvashia's capital, Cheboksary -- two in January, when demonstrators protested the arrest of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny in Moscow, and one in August 2020.

The Lenin district court ruled that Komarova was not a participant in the rallies but was covering the demonstrations as a reporter.

Chuvashia's Interior Ministry appealed the acquittals, but the lower court's acquittals of Komarova regarding her coverage of the rallies on January 23 and January 31 came into force earlier and therefore only the ruling on the rally in August was taken to the Supreme Court.

"The continued legal harassment of RFE/RL journalist Darya Komarova on manufactured charges is unacceptable. The court previously acquitted Darya, agreeing that she was a properly credentialed reporter on assignment," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in reaction to the decision.

"This is just the latest indication that the Russian authorities are not serious about allowing independent journalists to do their jobs."

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A court in Kazakhstan's largest city has sentenced a protester to 15 days in jail and fined two other demonstrators who picketed the Chinese Consulate for 135 days to demand the release of relatives they say are being held "illegally" in China.

The Almaty Specialized Inter-District Court on June 22 found Baibolat Kunbolat guilty of "organizing an unsanctioned rally" and sentenced him to 15 days in jail. Kunbolat has rejected the charge, saying he was not an organizer of the picket.

Two women, Gulbaran Omirali and Altynai Arakhan, were found guilty of taking part in the same "unsanctioned rally" and fined 145,000 tenges ($340) and 87,000 tenges ($200), respectively.

The day before, two other protesters were found guilty of "violating laws on public gatherings" and fined for picketing the Chinese Consulate in Almaty.

In recent years, many similar protests have taken place in Kazakhstan, with demonstrators demanding the 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 confined to detention centers.

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China denies that the facilities are internment camps but people who have fled the province say people from the groups 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.

The jailed former executive director of the pro-democracy Open Russia movement has been fined for failing to provide details of a group he established in 2017 that was added to the "foreign agents" registry.

A court in St. Petersburg on June 23 fined Andrei Pivovarov 50,000 rubles ($685) and his organization, Open Petersburg, 150,000 rubles ($2,050).

Pivovarov was detained in late May and placed in pretrial detention for two months after he was removed from a Warsaw-bound plane in St. Petersburg.

He said earlier that in December the Justice Ministry labeled the Open Petersburg educational group that he established in 2017 as a "foreign agent."

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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, including RFE/RL.

On June 2, a court in the southern city of Krasnodar ruled that Pivovarov should be held for two months after he was accused of publishing a post on social media supporting a local election candidate last year on behalf of Open Russia, which was labeled an "undesirable" organization in 2017.

Days after Pivovarov's arrest, on June 7, the former chairman of Open Russia, Aleksandr Solovyov, left Russia for Ukraine, saying he feared for his safety.

Open Russia was financed by Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who moved to London after spending 10 years in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule.

The organization associated with Pivovarov was based in Russia and no longer legally connected with the London-based group with the same name that ended operations in 2017.

Leaders of the Russian-based Open Russia dissolved the group in late May after it was designated an "undesirable" organization in order to protect its supporters from further "harassment" by the Russian authorities.

The "undesirable organization" law, adopted in May 2015, was part of a series of regulations pushed by the Kremlin that squeezed many nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations that received funding from foreign sources -- mainly from Europe and the United States.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax

The United Kingdom has denied reports that a Russian vessel fired warning shots at a British Navy ship in the Black Sea, attributing the incident to a preannounced military exercise.

The Russian Defense Ministry on June 23 said a patrol ship fired warning shots at a British warship in response to an alleged violation of its territorial waters near Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.

The ministry said a Su-24 aircraft also dropped four bombs near the Royal Navy's HMS Defender destroyer.

But Britain denied the Defender had been fired upon or that it was in Russian waters.

"No warning shots have been fired at HMS Defender. The Royal Navy ship is conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law," the ministry said.

The ministry said it believed Russia was carrying out "gunnery exercise in the Black Sea and provided the maritime community with prior warning of their activity."

Russia's official TASS news agency reported the incident took place after the HMS Defender allegedly crossed 3 kilometers into territory in the Black Sea that Russia considers its own.

No casualties were reported in the incident.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it would summon the British ambassador to Moscow to protest "a crude provocation."

Moscow forcibly seized Crimea in 2014 and threw its support behind pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas, where more than 13,200 people have been killed in a conflict that continues to this day.

Russia massed troops on its border with Ukraine and in Crimea in the spring, causing consternation in Washington and European capitals about Moscow's intentions at a time of increased fighting in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv and Kremlin-backed separatists.

Russia said in April that it intended to reduce the more than 100,000 troops it had moved near the border areas, but U.S. and Ukrainian officials say Russia has left some military hardware in place.

At the time, Russia announced plans to conduct six months of naval exercises and threatened to block maritime traffic off the Crimean Peninsula, potentially preventing access to Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov, which is connected to the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait.

NATO and Ukraine condemned the threat as a violation of international maritime law and Ukraine's sovereignty.

"By international law, of course, the waters off Crimea are not Russian, as the annexation is not recognized," Mark Galeotti, a professor of Russian studies at University College London, tweeted on June 23.

"Continuing to pass those waters -- without being too provocative -- is a crucial way of reaffirming law over land and sea grab."

Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia over the seizure of Crimea, the treatment of jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny, election interference and cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure blamed on Russian hackers.

A new survey has named Turkmenistan's capital as the world's most expensive city for international employees, illustrating the stark inequalities in a Central Asian state battered by a long-running economic crisis.

Ashgabat topped a 2021 cost-of-living survey published by the consultancy firm Mercer, followed by Hong Kong, Beirut, and Tokyo.

Jean-Philippe Sarra of Mercer told the AFP news agency that "high local inflation" was behind the cost-of-living rise in the Turkmen city of about 2 million people. In last year's survey, the city ranked second.

At the bottom of the list, the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, was ranked as the least expensive city for foreign employees of the 209 cities surveyed, followed by Lusaka and Tbilisi.

Mercer analyzed data from cities across five continents to compile its annual Cost of Living Survey, measuring the comparative cost of more than 200 items such as housing, transportation, and food.

Most cities included in the top 10 are business hubs where economic growth has led to a sharp rise in the price of housing and other living costs.

Known for its autocratic government, Turkmenistan has been grappling with a long-running economic crisis that has pushed many citizens into poverty, struggling to afford food and other basics.

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The former Soviet republic is almost wholly dependent on natural-gas exports to Russia and has struggled to recover from a global slump in energy prices in 2014 that has pushed up inflation and battered the local currency, the manat.

Despite the economic woes, Turkmen authorities started a major expansion of Ashgabat last month, with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov pledging to turn the glitzy capital full of marble buildings into "one of the most prosperous cities in the world."

With reporting by AFP and the BBC

MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has sentenced a member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot to 15 days in jail on a charge of "minor hooliganism," part of a series of moves against the activists in recent days.

The court issued the ruling against Aleksandr Sofeyev on June 23. A Moscow photographer, Dmitry Vorontsov, who was detained along with Sofeyev, was also sentenced to 15 days in jail on the same charge.

The two were arrested late on June 21. Police initially filled protocols against the two accusing them of "drinking alcohol in public" after they found a bottle of wine in Sofeyev's backpack.

Sofeyev's lawyer, Marat Gilmanov, told MBKh Media that the charge was changed and all of the initial paperwork rewritten after he demanded the two men be examined by medical personnel, who found no alcohol in their blood.

The arrests came a day after three other Pussy Riot members, Lyusya Shtein, Anna Kuzminykh, and Maria Alyokhina, as well as the chief of the Moscow branch of the unregistered The Other Russia party, Olga Shalina, were detained in Moscow.

Alyokhina and Shtein were charged with disobeying police. Alyokhina was detained as she traveled to get a vaccination against COVID-19. Police said they took her into custody because of "information about her plans to perform an unsanctioned protest action on the day of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union."

It is not clear where the police got that information and the next day the charge was changed to disobeying police.

Another Pussy Riot member, Veronika Nikulshina, was sentenced on June 21 to 15 days in jail on a charge of "disobedience to police."

Pussy Riot came to prominence in 2012 when Alyokhina and the group’s another noted member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral to protest ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Their protest, the performance of a song they described as a "punk prayer," took place as Putin was campaigning for his return to the presidency.

Two were convicted on a charge of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and sentenced to two years in a penal colony.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were close to completing their sentences when they were granted amnesty in December 2013.

Two dismissed their amnesty as a propaganda stunt aimed at improving Putin's image abroad ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

With reporting by MBKh Media

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A group of activists in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, say they are creating a new civil movement -- People's Trust, which will eventually transform into a political party.

The group, led by former diplomat Qazbek Beisebaev and civil rights activist Ghabiden Zhakei, told reporters on June 23 that any Kazakh citizen is welcome to join the new movement.

"Kazakhstan has a system of irresponsible government. The state does not listen to the people. Reforms are on paper only. The budget allocates large sums of money to various dubious programs and projects," Beisebaev said, adding that the new movement has no ties with any political opposition groups, including those that have been labeled as extremist and banned in the Central Asian nation.

Two opposition political groups -- Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement and its associate Koshe (Street) party -- have been labeled as extremist and banned in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.

Zhakei did not specify when the People's Trust movement would be turned into a political party.

"It is impossible to hope that someone from outside will come and create the proper conditions for our country. We often see on social media that we would have a real political organization from the people. Our movement will be a real people's movement," Beisebaev added.

According to Kazakh legislation, a political party can be officially registered if at least 1,000 Kazakh citizens take part in its founding congress and at least 20,000 people join the party.

Many activists in Kazakhstan have complained in recent years about problems faced by those who want to register new political parties, saying that authorities intentionally create bureaucratic hurdles to such moves.

Currently, there are six officially registered political parties in Kazakhstan. They include the Nur-Otan ruling party and five other parties loyal to it.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says Hungary's new law banning the sharing of LGBT content with minors is discriminatory and the EU's executive is considering legal action because it violates the bloc's fundamental values.

"The Hungarian bill is a shame," von der Leyen said on June 23, adding that the proposed legislation "clearly discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation."

"I have instructed my responsible commissioners to write a letter to the Hungarian authorities expressing our legal concerns before the bill enters into force."

The controversial legislation that critics have slammed as an attack on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people has encountered criticism across Europe following its approval by Hungary’s parliament last week.

The proposed legal changes ban the "display and promotion of homosexuality" among under-18s. The ban applies to discussions and the dissemination of information in schools that is deemed by authorities to promote homosexuality and gender change. The ban also applies to advertising by banning ads deemed to target people under 18 years of age if they are seen as showing solidarity with gay people.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said von der Leyen's remarks about the law were "shameful" and based on falsehoods.

"The recently adopted Hungarian bill protects the rights of children, guarantees the rights of parents, and does not apply to the sexual-orientation rights of those over 18 years of age, so it does not contain any discriminatory elements," the conservative leader said in a statement.

During a meeting in Luxembourg on June 22, 13 EU member states condemned Hungary for the legal amendment, with some calling on the European Commission to take Budapest to the bloc's top court.

Facing an expected tight election race next year, Orban has sharpened his conservative bona fides in recent months by protecting what he says are traditional Christian values from Western liberalism to bolster support from his base.

The moves in Hungary, as well as measures in Poland to overhaul its judiciary that have raised questions in Brussels over democratic values, are expected to feature prominently in an EU summit on June 24-25.

The Hungarian bill has also triggered a row in Hungary and Germany over rainbow lights during the Euro 2020 tournament.

UEFA has rejected a request by local politicians for Munich’s soccer stadium to be lit up in rainbow colors for the match between the two countries on June 23 in protest of the Hungarian legislation.

Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter has announced he plans to put up rainbow-colored flags at the city’s town hall and illuminate a huge wind turbine located close to the Allianz Arena and other locations.

Some German stadiums are also set to be illuminated in rainbow colors during the match.

In response to what he called the "provocative news" in Munich, Gabor Kubatov, who is a deputy head of Orban's ruling Fidesz party and president of Hungary's biggest club Ferencvaros, called on Hungarian clubs to illuminate their stadiums in national colors.

"Let's color all the stadia in red-white-green! Homeland above all!" Kubatov wrote on Facebook.

Other clubs joining the call included MTK in Budapest and DVSC in the eastern city of Debrecen, both of whose management are linked to Fidesz politicians, according to AFP.

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AFP

Congressional lawmakers are ratcheting up the pressure on the White House, demanding more be done to force the extradition of a powerful Ukrainian tycoon from Austria to the United States.

In a letter released by a bipartisan group of House of Representatives lawmakers on June 22, they also suggested that Austria's judiciary had been corrupted by Dmytro Firtash, one of Ukraine's wealthiest businessmen.

The demand was the latest development in the long-running and politically charged case involving Firtash, who made a fortune in the murky industry of natural-gas trade between Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s and 2000s.

He was charged by U.S. prosecutors with participating in a bribery conspiracy in 2013, and has been fighting U.S. demands for his extradition from Austria, where he now lives.

In the letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Attorney General Merrick Garland, the lawmakers -- Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Mike Quigley and Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick and Andy Harris -- said Austria appeared to be dragging its feet on the U.S. request, and suggested Firtash had corrupted Austria's judiciary.

"We are concerned that Mr. Firtash has used his considerable wealth and malign influence to subvert that country’s legal system to evade extradition and the rule of law," the letter said.

Christina Salzborn, a spokeswoman for the Austrian regional court that is considering the extradition request, told RFE/RL that the slow pace of the proceedings was due in part to a change in the judge overseeing the case.

Firtash was still required to check in with the court regularly, she said, though he was not required to wear any sort of electronic monitoring device.

Asked to comment on the suggestion that the Austrian judiciary had been corrupted by Firtash, she replied: "It's absurd, absolutely absurd. There's no kind of corruption whatsoever. There are a lot of documents, a lot of data, a lot of lawyers involved."

One of Firtash's lead U.S. lawyers, Lanny Davis, criticized the lawmakers' letter, saying it was "100 percent wrong."

"There is not one fact of evidence whatsoever that Dmytro Firtash has been responsible for any corruption either in Ukraine or in Austria," he told RFE/RL.

He said the fact that the Austrian court had rejected the extradition was "embarrassing" to the United States. He also asserted that Firtash's arrest in 2015 was due to political interference on behalf of a top State Department official who oversaw Ukraine policy at the time, Victoria Nuland.

"Since when does the State Department tell a country like Austria to arrest somebody? Nuland had it out for [Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych, and she blamed it on Firtash," he said.

Yanukovych fled Ukraine in March 2014 after months of street protests culminated in violent clashes in Kyiv. Firtash was arrested about two weeks later in Vienna.

The State Department did not respond to an inquiry from RFE/RL seeking comment on the assertion. Nuland is now the undersecretary of state for political affairs.

In a letter provided to RFE/RL, Otto Dietrich, the Austrian lawyer handling the extradition fight in Vienna, said Firtash's original extradition hearing in 2015 was "the only due process that has yet occurred...over all these years of unsubstantiated and false accusations."

"To suggest corruption in Austrian courts, therefore, is not only factually inaccurate -- it is an insult to our judicial system," he wrote.

Firtash was indicted by the United States in June 2013, accused of conspiring with five other people in 2006-10 to pay at least $18.5 million in bribes to Indian officials to acquire a titanium mine in India. The Ukrainian tycoon allegedly intended to sell part of the output to U.S. aerospace giant Boeing.

Austria's Supreme Court in June 2019 upheld Firtash's extradition but a lower court stayed the decision to give Firtash a chance to submit new evidence that could open the door to a retrial.

The hearing to determine whether Firtash can get a new trial has been delayed due to a change of judge and the coronavirus pandemic.

Firtash, who has denied reports of ties to organized crime groups in Russia and elsewhere, built his fortune on deals with Kremlin-controlled natural gas company Gazprom. The tycoon imported Russian energy at below-market prices, earning billions of dollars as he resold it to Ukraine at significantly higher prices, according to a Reuters investigation.

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Firtash was one of several powerful Ukrainian tycoons who used his wealth to back Yanukovych’s 2010 presidential bid.

More recently, he's been linked to alleged efforts by Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, to find and publicize information in Ukraine aimed at damaging Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020.

Firtash, for his part, has accused the United States of targeting him in an attempt to influence Ukrainian politics.

The lawmakers' letter comes as the Biden administration makes fighting corruption a key pillar of its foreign policy, especially with respect to Ukraine.

The White House has already imposed sanctions on a host of politicians and businessmen around the world since taking power in January, including Ihor Kolomoyskiy, another top Ukrainian tycoon.

However, the administration has also suggested Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was not doing enough to fight corruption.

In April, a top U.S. State Department official, George Kent, expressed frustration that Ukraine had not done more; and he singled out Firtash, highlighting his much-maligned gas-import business.

Last week, Ukraine's Security and Defense Council imposed financial penalties on Firtash, claiming he sold titanium to Russia for use by its defense industry. The tycoon denies the allegations.

Zelenskiy has yet to sign the measure into law.

Zelenskiy's relations with the Trump administration have been troubled; in an infamous phone call in July 2019 with Zelenskiy, Trump appeared to condition military aid on Zelenskiy's opening investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had business dealings in Ukraine.

That phone call led to Trump's first impeachment by Congress in January 2020. The Senate ultimately acquitted him.

Since Biden took office in January, Zelenskiy has been trying to mend fences with, and seek greater support from, Washington, particularly for Ukraine's ongoing war with Kremlin-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskiy recently secured an invitation to visit the White House, in what would be a major victory for the Ukrainian leader; he's scheduled to travel to Washington sometime this summer.

The independent monitoring group Golos says legal restrictions enacted by the government have deprived at least 9 million Russians, about 8 percent of the eligible population, of their right to be elected as September parliamentary elections near.

In an analysis of the impact of a series of recent legal amendments, which it says are harsher than those in place in the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1991, the group said it is impossible to calculate the exact number of citizens who have now been deprived of their passive suffrage.

However, it added in the June 22 report, research conducted on the data available from state agencies shows that the total number of citizens who are prohibited by the state from running in elections is at least 9 million, and "most likely, significantly more."

"The entry into force of the new 'anti-extremist' amendments and the recognition by extremist organizations of the structures of Aleksei Navalny's supporters lead to the fact that several hundred thousand more politically active citizens may be under attack in the near future," it said in reference to a bill President Vladimir Putin signed into law on June 4 that bans supporters and members of organizations deemed by authorities as "extremist" from being elected to any public post.

Five days later, the political network built by Navalny, Putin's most-vocal critic, was deemed "extremist" by a Moscow court.

Many in Russia warned the law was an attempt to make it impossible for anyone connected with Navalny to gain public office.

Golos said that the electoral legislation in place in 2021 "returned to the early Soviet models," when the defeat of political opponents was used to consolidate the power of the Bolsheviks.

"The tradition of disenfranchising its political opponents in Russia has deep historical roots," Golos said in the report.

"The latest waves of attacks on the right of citizens to be elected, as in Soviet times, are obviously politically motivated," it said, adding that "in the event of a complete defeat" of the opposition, it's possible these new rules will be removed, just as in previous times.

While Russian authorities have been ramping up pressure on dissent ahead of the September elections, public opinion polls have shown that support for Putin's United Russia party is at the lowest level ever.

Navalny's regional headquarters has been instrumental in implementing a so-called Smart Voting strategy -- a project designed to promote candidates who are most likely to defeat those from United Russia.

Navalny is currently serving a prison sentence on embezzlement charges that he says were trumped up because of his political activity and criticism of Putin.

Golos said that the roughly 6 million dual nationals and those with foreign residence permits are the largest disenfranchised group of voters, while another 1.1 million people convicted of theft and more than 300,000 convicted of drug offenses have also been denied their right to seek office.

The monitoring group emphasizes that since late May, several high-profile officials have lost their right to seek office after they were convicted on questionable charges. These include Moscow municipal lawmaker Yulia Galyamina, an opposition activist in the Arkhangelsk region Andrei Borovikov, a former lawmaker in the Vologda region Yevgeny Domozhirov, the leader of the For New Socialism movement Nikolai Platoshkin, Communist Yury Yukhnevich, and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, Anton Mirbaldayev.

According to Golos, about 100 more noted politicians may lose their right to seek election in the coming months.

“The real goal of the latest amendments is not to protect the sovereignty of the people as a source of power, but to limit them as much as possible, to filter out candidates who are not acceptable to the current government,” Golos said.

Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya says Belarus’s forced diversion of a passenger flight to Minsk last month was “a mistake” that has galvanized the West against authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Tsikhanouskaya told AP in an interview published on June 23 that “this hijacking touched all the European leaders because their citizens were on this flight.”

Lukashenka’s regime “never crossed this red line before, of interfering in a European area,” she said.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

“The regime is so frightened by the unity of Belarusians, by the unity of the European Union, the U.S.A., about this situation in Belarus that they stopped to think strategically. They started to think emotionally,” she added.

Lukashenka's regime has been under international pressure since it launched a brutal crackdown on the political opposition and the independent media in the wake of a disputed election in August 2020.

The protesters have said that election was rigged, insisting that Tsikhanouskaya won the poll.

The crisis hit a new level on May 23 when Belarusian authorities scrambled a military jet to escort an Athens-Vilnius Ryanair flight to land in Minsk in what many countries regarded as a "state hijacking." After the plane, which was diverted just before it left Belarusian airspace, landed, law enforcement immediately arrested opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich and his Russian girlfriend.

In response, the European Union, the United States, Britain, and Canada have slapped sanctions on Belarus that included asset freezes and visa bans imposed against dozens of officials, lawmakers, and ministers from Lukashenka's administration and his family members, as well as Belarusian entities.

EU foreign ministers also agreed to sanction key sectors of the Belarusian economy and major revenue sources for the regime, including potash fertilizer exports, the tobacco industry, petroleum, and petrochemical products.

European states have also banned Belarusian carriers from overflying their airspaces and from accessing their airports.

“This crisis is deepening,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

Lukashenka told a June 22 commemoration event marking the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R. that the latest sanctions, announced on June 21, were part of an ongoing "hybrid war" against his country.

• Amos Chapple

Nazi Germany led the largest-ever ground invasion force in an attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 that unleashed a brutal conflict that cost the lives of millions of people.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry said the sanctions would negatively impact the interests of citizens and warned that it would be forced to take reciprocal measures. It did not specify what measures could be taken.

The EU, the United States, and other countries have refused to recognize the official results of the election and do not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader.

Before the diversion of the Ryanair flight, they had already imposed sanctions against the 66-year-old autocrat, whom some describe as Europe's last dictator.

Tsikhanouskaya ran in last year’s election in place of her husband, video blogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski, who was arrested in May 2020 after expressing his willingness to challenge Lukashenka.

After the vote, the 38-year-old political novice was forced to flee Belarus over safety concerns. She currently lives in neighboring Lithuania with her children, working to rally Western countries against Lukashenka.

The trial of Tsikhanouski and other opposition figures and political prisoners is set to begin in the southeastern city of Homel on June 24 on charges widely considered to be trumped-up.

If found guilty, Tsikhanouski faces up to 15 years in prison.

The others accused in the case include popular blogger and RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik, as well as Mikalay Statkevich, Uladzimer Tsyhanovich, Artsyom Sakau, and Dzmitry Papou.

“The trial will be closed. The trial will not be in court, it will be right in the prison. Lawyers will not have an opportunity to tell us what is going on,” Tsikhanouskaya told AP.

“We understand that the trial will not be lawful, will not be honest, will not be fair. In reality, judges can write any number of years in prison.”

The opposition leader said she expected the trial to last a month or two.

According to Tsikhanouskaya, if the authorities really cared about people “they would start a dialogue with Belarusians, they would release political prisoners, and solve this crisis in a civilized way."

"I imagine new elections this fall. This is our aim.”

With reporting by AP and AFP

MOSCOW -- A court in Moscow has sentenced a man and a woman to two years in prison each for attacking police during an unsanctioned rally in January to support jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

The Telegram channel of Moscow courts announced the sentencing of Aleksandr Glushkov and Olga Bendas by the Tver district court late on June 21.

OVD-Info, a group that monitors arrests and convictions of activists, said that Glushkov pleaded guilty, while Bendas rejected the charge and refused to make a deal with investigators.

Investigators said that Bendas hit a police officer several times and took the baton that the officer had dropped, while Glushkov punched another police officer several times during the unsanctioned rally on January 23 on Moscow’s central Pushkin square.

Several people have been handed prison terms or suspended sentences in recent weeks for attacking police during the nationwide demonstrations held in January against Navalny's arrest.

Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack by 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.

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 time he had been held in detention.

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

With reporting by OVD-Info

The United States has seized more than three dozen Iranian state-linked news website domains it accused of spreading disinformation.

U.S. authorities have seized 33 websites used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU) and three websites operated by the Iran-backed Kataib Hizballah militia, the Justice Department said in a statement on June 22.

Tehran called the move "not constructive" for ongoing talks on bringing Washington back into the 2025 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last year designated IRTVU for being owned or controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) elite Quds Force, the Justice Department said.

The designation was in response to the Iranian regime targeting the U.S. electoral process "with brazen attempts to sow discord" among voters by spreading disinformation online.

OFAC’s announcement in October 2020 said components of the government of Iran, including IRTVU, disguise themselves as news organizations or media outlets and target the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations.

The Justice Department said the 33 domains targeted by the seizure on June 22 are owned by a U.S. company and IRTVU did not obtain a license from OFAC prior to using the domain names, a violation of U.S. sanctions.

Kataib Hizballah, an Iran-aligned Iraqi militia group, has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. When OFAC added Kataib Hizballah to its sanctions list in July 2009, it said the IRGC provides lethal support to it and other Iraqi Shi'a militia groups that target and kill coalition and Iraqi Security Forces.

It also violated U.S. sanctions by failing to obtain licenses from OFAC for its websites.

The Iranian state-linked websites that abruptly went offline include state television's English-language Press TV, the Yemeni Huthi rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel, and Iranian state television’s Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam.

The notices that appeared at the websites said they were seized “as part of law enforcement action” by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement, which is part of the U.S. Commerce Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Several of the sites were back online within hours using new domain addresses, and the semiofficial Iranian news agency YJC said the U.S. move "demonstrates that calls for freedom of speech are lies."

It is not the first time that the U.S. has seized domain names of sites it accuses of spreading disinformation around the world.

Last October, U.S. prosecutors seized a network of web domains they said were used in a campaign by the IRGC.

The U.S. Justice Department said then that it had taken control of 92 domains used by the IRGC to pose as independent media outlets targeting audiences in the United States, Europe, Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

"We are using all international and legal means to...condemn...this mistaken policy of the United States," Mahmud Vaezi, the director of the Iranian president's office, told reporters on June 23.

"It appears not constructive when talks for a deal on the nuclear issue are under way."

The recent takedowns come as world powers negotiate the restoration of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and after the election victory Ebrahim Raisi. The hard-line conservative, who won nearly 62 percent of the vote in the June 18 election, will take office in early August.

Raisi said on June 21 that he backs discussions to revive the deal regulating its nuclear sector but draws the line at holding direct talks with U.S. President Joe Biden.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has said the rapid expansion of the COVID-19 vaccination program will be among his government's top priorities in order to get the country's economy moving again.

"The quickest general vaccination…will be among our immediate programs from the first day of the government," Raisi said in nationally televised live remarks from the northeastern city of Mashhad on June 22.

Raisi said the program will use both domestically and foreign-produced vaccines "so that people will feel at ease and the economy will flourish."

Iran is producing three vaccines domestically, including Russia’s Sputnik V and a new vaccine being developed jointly with Cuba.

SEE ALSO:

Iran Approves Emergency Use Of Domestic COVID Vaccine

Additionally, this week Iranians began receiving shots of the COVIran Barakat vaccine, which was developed by an Iranian state corporation. Iranian state media said more than one million doses of Barakat have already been produced.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 82,000 people in Iran, with over 3 million infected, according to official figures widely seen as understating the toll.

The government of outgoing President Hassan Rohani has been criticized for being slow to roll out vaccines and has said its efforts were hampered by purchasing difficulties caused by U.S. sanctions.

Raisi, who was elected president on June 19, will take office in August.

Based on reporting by Reuters and Press TV

MOSCOW -- A Moscow district court has postponed until June 25 the hearing of a suit by imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny asking the court to rescind a decision by prison officials designating him as a "flight risk."

The Preobrazhensky District Court on June 22 granted a request by Navalny’s lawyers for additional time to study some case materials. Navalny participated in the hearing by videolink from prison in the Vladimir region.

Navalny is asking the court to invalidate the flight-risk designation imposed by officials at the Moscow remand prison where he was being held early this year during his trial on charges of violating the terms of his suspended sentence. In February, Navalny was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on the charges, which he says were trumped up to block his political activity.

Earlier, Navalny filed a similar suit against the Vladimir-region prison where he is serving his sentence, but that case was rejected.

Because of the flight-risk designation, guards must ascertain each hour during the night that Navalny is in his cell.

During the earlier trial, Navalny argued that the hourly checks "effectively amount to torture."

"I just want them to stop coming to me and waking me up at night," he told the court.

Navalny was arrested in Moscow on January 17 upon his return from Germany, where he underwent months of medical treatment to recover from an August nerve-agent poisoning that he and his supporters say was ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

With reporting by TASS

Russian President Vladimir Putin has marked the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R. by hailing the sacrifices made by the Soviets during the war while claiming that European security has been "dramatically degraded" amid "escalating tensions."

Russia's relations with the West have been at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War after Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014.

Russia, the successor state of the U.S.S.R., has also been anxious about NATO's expansion eastward after the collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, considering it a threat to its security.

"The day of June 22 continues to raise indignation and sorrow in the hearts of all generations, causing pain for the destroyed fates of millions of people, because what they went through in those terrible years was literally imprinted in our memories," Putin said after laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin wall.

Despite having signed a nonaggression pact with Moscow, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

• Amos Chapple

Nazi Germany led the largest-ever ground invasion force in an attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 that unleashed a brutal conflict that cost the lives of millions of people.

Over the next four years, the U.S.S.R., in alliance with the Western powers, managed to repel the Germans and eventually emerge victorious in World War II despite losing 27 million people during the whole conflict.

"Russia supports the idea of reviving a full-fledged partnership with Europe... The whole system of European security has dramatically degraded. Tension is being escalated, the risks of a new arms race are becoming real," Putin said.

Putin also reiterated his previous statements, saying that his country "will never allow the distortion of the truth" about the World War II.

In recent years, Putin frequently accused European countries of what he called the diminishing of the role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany and the stressing of atrocities committed by Soviet forces, like the mass murder of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in 1940 or the mass rapes of German women.

In an article published on June 22 in the German weekly Die Zeit, Putin emphasized that "despite attempts to rewrite the pages of the past that are being made today, the truth is that Soviet soldiers came to Germany not to take revenge on the Germans, but with a noble and great mission of liberation."

Western historians say the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany facilitated the outbreak of World War II, which Russian officials vehemently disagree with.

In 2019, the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression agreement known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact whose secret protocol allowed the division of Central and Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

After the Nazis triggered World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939, the Soviets occupied the eastern part of the country, eventually massacring more than 20,000 Polish officers that they had taken prisoner at Katyn.

The Nazis ultimately betrayed the pact with their surprise invasion of the Soviet Union 80 years ago.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Putin on June 22 to "express empathy with the unmeasurable woes and suffering brought by the war that was launched by the Nazi regime," the Kremlin said.

"Both parties underlined the importance of preserving the historic memory of those tragic events" and noted that "overcoming mutual enmity and reconciliation of the Russian and German peoples had key importance for the destinies of postwar Europe," the Kremlin added.

"It was emphasized that preserving security on the continent now is also possible only through joint efforts."

With reporting by AP, TASS, and Interfax

The U.S. Justice Department has charged five individuals, including a Russian citizen, with conspiring to illegally export defense articles to Russia in violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

In its June 21 statement, the department said that Elena Shifrin, 59, of Mundelein, Illinois, and Vladimir Pridacha, 55, of Volo, Illinois, were arrested last week for their roles in a nearly four-year scheme in which the defendants purchased dozens of thermal imaging scopes and night-vision goggles, most of which cost between $5,000 and $10,000 and are controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, from sellers across the United States.

"The other three defendants named in the indictment are: Boris Polosin, 45, of Russia; Vladimir Gohman, 52, of Israel; and Igor Panchernikov, 39, an Israeli national who, during much of the scheme, resided in Corona, California," the statement says.

The five, who did not have export licenses, are suspected of obtaining many of the items in question using aliases, mailing the items to co-conspirators in Russia along with non-export-control items, using aliases and false addresses to conceal their activities.

According to the statement, the suspects also falsely stated on export declarations that the contents of their exports were non-export-controlled items with values of less than $2,500.

The suspects face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.

The indictment also accuses the five suspects of conspiring to smuggle thermal imaging devices from the United States and file false export information to conceal their activities, which carries a statutory maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Russia to pay almost two million euros ($2.4 million) to the relatives of 11 people who went missing in Chechnya in 2005 during a special operation by the Vostok (East) military unit.

The ECHR ruled on June 22 that Russia violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to life, when, according to witnesses, the military unit in question killed an elderly man in the town of Borozdinovskaya in Chechnya in October 2005 and abducted 11 local residents, mainly ethnic Avars, whose whereabouts have been unknown since then.

The majority of the Vostok unit's members were ethnic Chechens.

Commanders of the Vostok unit have rejected all the accusations, while Russia has investigated the situation separately.

In October 2005, a commander of the unit, Mukhadi Aziyev, was handed a suspended sentence after a court found him guilty of abuse of power.

Kremlin critics say Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned a blind eye to the alleged abuses and violations of the Russian Constitution by Chechnya's authoritarian ruler Ramzan Kadyrov because he relies on the former rebel commander to control separatist sentiment and violence in Chechnya, the site of two devastating post-Soviet wars and an Islamist insurgency that spread to other mostly Muslim regions in the North Caucasus.

Rights groups say Kadyrov uses repressive measures and has created a climate of impunity for security forces in the region.

They allege he is ultimately responsible for the violence and intimidation of political opponents by Chechen authorities, including kidnappings, forced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

ECHR rulings are binding on members, including Russia, which ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998, and is one of 47 member states in the Council of Europe, which monitors compliance with the convention.

But Russia has often taken issue with rulings against it, and in 2015 adopted a law allowing it to overrule judgements from the ECHR.

The government of Russia's Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk has lifted the state of emergency in the Arctic city of Norilsk that was imposed in late May last year following a massive diesel spill.

The regional government's press service said on June 22 that the decision was made after "three major phases on the localization and liquidation of the spill were completed."

"Work continues on processing the contaminated soil and sorbent agents and the restoration of lands and water bodies in the area," the statement said.

In May 2020, more than 21,000 tons of diesel leaked into the environment from a tank of a thermal power plant that belongs to a subsidiary of Russian metallurgical giant Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), owned by Russia's richest man, Vladimir Potanin.

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Melting Down: Climate Change May Prove A Major Problem For Russia's Arctic Infrastructure

The spill sparked an outcry and led to Norilsk Mayor Rinat Akhmetchin being fired and sentenced to six months of correctional work for negligence in October.

In the wake of the disaster, President Vladimir Putin ordered a state of emergency after the extent of the spill became known.

In March this year, Nornickel said it had fully paid off more than 146 billion rubles (almost $2 billion) in damages for the spill.

SEE ALSO:

Russian Metallurgical Giant Ordered To Pay Record $1.9 Billion For Devastating Fuel Spill

Also in March, the chief of Russia's Federal Penitentiary System (FSIN), Aleksandr Kalashnikov, said convicts may be used to help clean the contaminated zone near Norilsk.

The use of inmate labor in major state projects used to be a regular practice in the former Soviet Union.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax

The European Union says seven non-aligned European states have agreed to deny permission to any aircraft operated by Belarusian air carriers to land in, take off from, or overfly their territories following Minsk's forced diversion of a passenger flight last month that allowed for the arrest of a dissident journalist.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on June 21 that four EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans -- Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia -- along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway will "align themselves" with a June 4 decision by the 27-member states to strengthen the bloc's existing restrictive measures against Belarus by introducing a ban on Belarusian carriers from overflying EU airspaces and from accessing to EU airports.

"They will ensure that their national policies conform to this Council Decision. The European Union takes note of this commitment and welcomes it," Borrell said.

On May 23, Belarusian authorities scrambled a military jet to direct a Ryanair flight over its airspace to land in Minsk in what many countries regard as a "state hijacking." After the plane landed, law enforcement immediately arrested opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich and his Russian girlfriend.

Borrell’s announcement came on the same day as the EU, the United States, Britain, and Canada slapped a fresh round of coordinated sanctions on Belarus in response to the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka's mounting repression against the political opposition and the free media.

SEE ALSO:

Western Allies Slap Fresh Sanctions On Belarus

The sanctions included asset freezes and visa bans imposed against dozens of officials, lawmakers, and ministers from Lukashenka's administration and his family members, as well as Belarusian entities.

EU foreign ministers agreed to sanction key sectors of the Belarusian economy and major revenue sources for the regime: potash fertilizer exports, the tobacco industry, petroleum, and petrochemical products.

Minsk said on June 22 that the sanctions would negatively impact the interests of Belarusian citizens and warned that it would be forced to take reciprocal measures.

The EU "continues purposeful destructive actions against the population in order, allegedly, to 'dry up the regime financially.' In fact, this borders on a declaration of economic war," the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said.

Borrell has said that the economic sanctions should be confirmed after a summit of the bloc's leaders in Brussels later this week.

Previous rounds of Western sanctions also hit individual institutions and Lukashenka's inner circle over the brutal crackdown on the opposition by the Belarusian authorities in the wake of a disputed election last August.

The EU, the United States, and other countries refuse to recognize the official results of last summer’s election and do not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarusian Service

DUSHANBE -- An imam at a Dushanbe mosque, who was arrested in April on extremism charges after he called a late Islamic cleric "one of the great leaders of the country," has been released from custody.

A police official in the city of Vahdat near Dushanbe told RFE/RL on June 21 that Abdulhaq Obidov (aka Makhsumi Abdulhaq) had been released. Two men arrested along with the cleric, Aziz Turkov and Ahmadkhoja Tabarov, were also let go.

According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to journalists, Obidov was relieved of his imam duties. It was not clear whether the charges against Obidov were dropped.

Tajik authorities said in April that Obidov was arrested on suspicion of being a follower of the Salafi branch of Islam that is labeled as extremist and banned in the Central Asian nation.

Media reports at the time said that Obidov was detained several days after delivering a speech at the burial ceremony of a well-known Islamic cleric, Domullo Hikmatullo Tojikobodi. During the speech, he called Tojikobodi a great leader of Tajikistan, which some authorities considered to be a direct questioning of the official title of authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon, who, in accordance with a 2016 law, is officially known as the Leader of the Nation.

The State Committee on Religious Issues, Traditions, and Rites rejected the media reports at the time, saying that Obidov's arrest had nothing to do with his speech at the funeral and called on media "to stay away from distributing rumors."

Rahmon, who has ruled Tajikistan since 1992, also enjoys special powers following a May 2016 referendum, including the right to seek as many terms in office as he wants.

Rahmon has been criticized by international human rights groups for years over his disregard for religious freedoms, civil society, and political pluralism in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.

MINSK -- The prosecution has asked a Belarusian court to sentence Viktar Babaryka, a former Belarusian banker whose bid to challenge authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka in last year’s disputed election was halted by his arrest, to 15 years in prison on corruption charges he says are politically motivated.

Prosecutor Syarhey Hirhel on June 22 asked the court to convict Babaryka on charges of bribe taking and money laundering.

Hirhel also asked Judge Ihar Lyubavitski to sentence seven co-defendants in the case to prison terms between three years and six years.

Babaryka, a former senior manager at the Russian-owned Belgazprombank, was arrested in June 2020 after he announced his intention to run for president.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

Three days before the arrest, Belarusian authorities took control of the bank and detained several top executives on charges of tax evasion and money laundering.

Babaryka has rejected the charges saying they were invented by authorities because of his political activities.

The trial is being held in the premises of the Moscow district court in Minsk by judges from the country's Supreme Court, a move that has been criticized by Babaryka and his defense team, who said that would deny them any chance of appeal in case of a guilty verdict.

Lukashenka was declared the victor of the August 2020 election, triggering protests by tens of thousands of Belarusians who say the vote was rigged. The demonstrations lasted for months as Belarusians demanded Lukashenka, in power since 1994, step down.

Security officials have cracked down hard on the demonstrators, arresting thousands and pushing most leading opposition figures out of the country.

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

Lukashenka denies voter fraud and has refused to negotiate with the opposition led by Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who supporters say actually won the August election.

The European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka, 66, as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and postelection crackdown.