Azerbaijan has unblocked a major Armenian highway between two parts of Armenia’s southern region of Syunik after nearly two days of closure, Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said on August 27.

The NSS said both sections of the Goris-Kapan road -- Shurnukh-Karmrakar and Goris-Vorotan -- that were closed after an alleged stabbing incident since late August 25 and August 26, respectively, were now open again.

“The Goris-Kapan interstate road is open for all types of vehicles and for free movement of citizens,” the NSS said, adding that Armenia’s border troops and border guards of the Russian Federal Security Service conducted negotiations with the Azerbaijani side for the reopening of the road.

The NSS statement referred to no other details of the negotiations or any conditions on which the road section may have been reopened.

Before the road was closed, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that two Armenian soldiers attempted to stab an Azerbaijani border guard in the area.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry denied there was any incident, calling the Azerbaijani statement a “sheer lie” and “more Azerbaijani disinformation.”

The 21-kilometer section of the Goris-Kapan road became disputed after Baku regained control over much of Nagorno-Karabakh and all Armenian-controlled districts around it as a result of last year’s 44-day war.

An arrangement reached in December 2020, a month after Russia brokered a cease-fire deal to end the conflict, allowed Armenians to continue to use the stretch of the highway passing through Azerbaijani-controlled territory under the supervision of Russian border guards until Armenia builds another road for all types of transportation to connect two parts of the mountainous region.

The road is also vital for Armenian trade with Iran. The Iranian Embassy in Yerevan on August 27 told the state-run Armenpress news agency that Tehran hopes that the latest border crisis between Armenia and Azerbaijan will be resolved peacefully and will not jeopardize commercial ties in the region.

During a session of parliament earlier on August 27, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Azerbaijan of trying to discredit Armenia’s peace efforts by closing the road, but expressed hope that the situation would be resolved soon.

At the same time, he told his ministers to speed up their efforts on the renovation of alternative roads in Syunik to ensure reliable connection between communities and the regional center.

Arman Tatoyan, Armenia’s ombudsman, told the session that problems with travel in the mountainous region had seriously affected the lives of the local population, including their access to goods and medical services. He said that trade between Armenia and Iran had also been hampered by the situation.

President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that the United States is “putting diplomacy first” in efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal, but if that fails Washington is “ready to turn to other options.”

Biden made the comments as the two sat down at the White House on August 27 for their first face-to-face meeting since Bennett was sworn in as prime minister in June.

The meeting, originally scheduled for August 26, was postponed by one day as Biden focused his attention on the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 100 Afghans.

Asked what other options Biden might be mulling if diplomacy to revive the nuclear deal fails, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment.

Bennett arrived at the White House aiming to dissuade Biden from returning the United States to the deal between Iran and world powers that was brokered in 2015 and scrapped in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump.

Bennett, the right-wing leader of a highly fragmented coalition government, expressed satisfaction that he and Biden are in agreement that Iran should never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

“I was happy to hear your clear words, that Iran will never be able to have a nuclear weapon, and you emphasized that we will try the diplomatic way but that there’s other options that will work out,” Bennett said.

But the two leaders’ political positions on whether to rejuvenate the nuclear agreement likely will remain at odds.

Biden has made clear that he wants to find a way to salvage the 2015 landmark pact, but indirect talks between the United States and Iran have stalled, and Washington continues to maintain crippling sanctions on the country.

Bennett said granting Iran sanctions relief would give Iran more resources to support Israel’s enemies in the region.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from the accord, Tehran has abandoned several limitations on its nuclear enrichment.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

Bennett's Washington visit comes weeks after Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president.

Raisi, 60, a conservative cleric with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has suggested he'll engage with the United States. But he has ruled out negotiations aimed at limiting Iranian missile development and support for regional militias -- matters that the Biden administration wants to address in a new accord.

Biden and Bennett also differ over the creation of a Palestinian state, but played down the differences. Bennett opposes it and supports expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Biden supports a two-state solution and opposes expansion of settlements.

With reporting by AFP and dpa

Belarus has ordered the closure of the country’s largest independent journalists' organization as a crackdown on media and civil society intensifies following last year's disputed presidential election.

The order to liquidate the Belarusian Association of Journalists came on August 27 after the Supreme Court upheld a lawsuit filed by the Justice Ministry.

The formal reason for the liquidation order is that the association did not correct alleged violations identified by the Justice Ministry during an inspection launched in June.

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.

Specifically, two of the association's six branches allegedly ended their lease contracts. The association denied this but was unable to provide supporting documents because its office was sealed after searches and confiscation of equipment in July.

The head of the association, Andrey Bastunets, said its work will go on.

“We will continue to do our job, regardless of the decision of the courts, which clumsily fulfill the political order of the authorities,” Bastunets told the Associated Press. “Expanding the space for freedom of speech has been the mission of the organization for over a quarter of a century, but now the darkest times have come in Belarus.”

The Belarusian Association of Journalists has been active since 1995 and is a member of the International Federation of Journalists. It has more than 1,300 members who work in radio and television and for various publishing companies.

Since 1997 it has monitored violations of freedom of expression and media rights. It has a network of correspondents throughout Belarus who collect information about the state of the media in their regions.

Security forces last month raided the offices and homes of several independent journalists across Belarus, including the premises of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Minsk, as part of a sweep targeting the media.

The association said last week that 33 media employees were behind bars.

The government also has blocked the websites of major independent media, such as BelaPAN, a private news agency.

Belarus also canceled accreditation for foreign news organizations after massive protests began in August 2020 following a presidential election that gave authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth term in office.

With reporting by AP

Russia's Ministry of Digital Development and Mass Communications has promised to change its controversial instruction to web designers that told them "to avoid images of non-Slavic people" in advertisements and websites for state services.

Ministry officials told RFE/RL on August 26 that a new brand book is under development, emphasizing that the instruction to graphic designers in question was created in 2015 and is outdated.

"We consider the sentences in the [current] brand book incorrect and are currently working on a new guideline. It will appear in the nearest future," the ministry official said.

The controversial instructions that were noticed by Internet users in recent days have caused heated online debate questioning the ministry's competence and stressing that Russia is a federation of many republics, including those with non-Russian or non-Slavic indigenous populations with their own languages and cultures.

Millions of Russian citizens today are natives of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the South Caucasus, the Baltics, and Moldova, the opponents of the instructions said online.

The leader of the Belarusian opposition group Malady Front (Young Front) and two of his associates have been detained in the southeastern region of Homel amid an ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy groups and activists by authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Relatives of Dzyanis Urbanovich told RFE/RL on August 27 that the trio, which also included Vital Tryhubau and Syarhey Matskoyts, was arrested a day earlier in the town of Vetsy as the men were at a coffee house.

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 relatives added that Urbanovich told them by phone that he was being detained for at least 72 hours on a charge of "taking part in mass disorder" in the city of Mazyr last August when thousands of people demonstrated across the country against the official results of a presidential election that handed victory to Lukashenka.

Tryhubau and Matskoyts are being held separately on unknown charges, Urbanovich told relatives.

The ongoing crackdown started after the August 2020 presidential election awarded Lukashenka a sixth term, sparking an unprecedented wave of protests amid allegations the vote was rigged.

Mass protests against Lukashenka were met with the heavy-handed detention of tens of thousands of people. Much of the opposition leadership has been jailed or forced into exile.

Several protesters have been killed and thousands arrested during mass demonstrations demanding Lukashenka's resignation. There have also been credible reports of torture in the crackdown.

Belarusian authorities have also shut down several nongovernmental organizations and media outlets to silence dissent.

A court in Russia's northwestern region of Pskov has ruled that the mass killings of Soviet citizens in the area during World War II were an act of genocide.

According to the court ruling on August 27, 75,000 civilians and 377,000 military personnel were killed during the war in the Pskov region, which at the time was divided between the Leningrad and Tver regions.

The court also said that the region's more than 192,000 residents were forcibly taken to Germany and the Baltic states.

The probe into the killings was launched after a mass grave was found a year ago near the village of Moglino, where a Nazi camp for Soviet prisoners of war was located.

Similar investigations into events that occurred in wartime more than 75 years ago have taken place in other parts of Russia as well in what officials have cast as part of an effort to establish facts and pursue justice.

But some critics say the probes are part of a continuing push by President Vladimir Putin's government to enshrine a positive narrative of the country's history, and counter what it claims are efforts abroad to equate the Soviet Union's wartime role with that of Nazi Germany.

In October 2020, a court in another Russian region, Novgorod, recognized the mass killings of Soviet citizens in the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka as an act of genocide.

The Soviet Union's death toll in World War II was the highest among all countries involved in the war.

According to official data, the Soviet Union lost some 27 million people between 1941-1945. However, some experts and historians say that the total number is actually higher.

Opposition activist and writer Islom Kholboev says Uzbek authorities have arrested one of his sons without giving a reason for his detention.

Kholboev, who lives in self-imposed exile in Turkey, told RFE/RL on August 27 that officers from the Interior Ministry's anti-terrorism unit arrested his son, Jamol Kholboev, in Tashkent last week after he arrived from Turkey to renew his passport.

Islom Kholboev said that his son was arrested unlawfully and was not allowed to see his lawyers while in custody, where he may face torture.

Interior Ministry spokesman Shokhruh Ghiyosov did not say why Kholboev was arrested, but told RFE/RL that "no laws were violated" in his apprehension. He did not elaborate.

According to the Kholboev, his son's arrest can be linked to the writer's new book issued in Turkey recently, in which he describes torture in Uzbekistan's penitentiary system and corruption among the Central Asian nation's authorities.

Jamol Kholboev's lawyer, Arslan Shaimardanov, told RFE/RL that all of his requests to meet his client and to receive court papers on his arrest have been ignored.

Kholboev emigrated to Turkey along with his extended family in 2014.

An anonymous buyer from the United States has purchased a medal from Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, the Belarusian sprinter who appealed for international help to avoid being forced home prematurely from the Tokyo Olympics by the country's authoritarian leaders.

The Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) said on its Telegram channel that a silver medal Tsimanouskaya won at the 2019 European Games attracted a "lot of interest" before selling to the unnamed buyer for $21,000 after starting the auction at $5,000.

"The medal has now been sold and paid for by a buyer from the U.S. with a very solid track record of transactions on eBay," the BSSF, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to helping opposition athletes, said.

The BSSF said Tsimanouskaya plans to use the money raised in the sale to help other athletes who find themselves suffering a similar fate to hers.

Tsimanouskaya took refuge in the Polish Embassy in Tokyo on August 2 after refusing to allow Belarusian team officials to force her onto a flight to Minsk after she criticized them. Two days later, she boarded a plane to Europe, reaching Warsaw via a stopover in Vienna.

Poland has granted the sprinter and her husband, who fled to Poland via Ukraine, humanitarian visas.

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Belarusian Olympian Tsimanouskaya Plans To Represent Poland After Defection

Tsimanouskaya's plight became a major story from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and refocused international attention on repression in Belarus since protests erupted when authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed victory in a disputed presidential election one year ago.

Several protesters have been killed and thousands arrested during mass demonstrations demanding Lukashenka's resignation. There have also been credible reports of torture during a widening security crackdown.

While Tsimanouskaya has said she has never met Lukashenka, she has also noted that "terrible" things have been happening in Belarus.

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Hope And Horror: How Belarus Has Changed Since An Election Ignited A Crisis One Year Ago

Lukashenka's son Viktar took over leadership of the Belarusian National Olympic Committee recently from his father in a move that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not recognize.

Other Belarusian athletes, including a former Olympic medalist decathlete and his wife, have reportedly fled life in Belarus since Tsimanouskaya's ordeal began and after Ukraine announced a murder investigation when an exiled Lukashenka critic was found dead in Kyiv.

Earlier in August, a coach of the Vitsyaz handball club in Minsk, Kanstantsin Yakauleu, fled for Ukraine weeks after he served 15 days in jail for taking part in an unsanctioned anti-government rally.

Belarusian heptathlete Yana Maksimava and her Olympic-medalist husband, Andrey Krauchanka, also announced that they have decided to stay in Germany with their child due to the ongoing crackdown in Belarus.

SOFIA -- Bulgaria's President Rumen Radev has given a third and final mandate to form a government to the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) after two other political parties gave up efforts to set up a coalition following last month's inconclusive vote.

If the third attempt to build a majority in the fractured parliament fails, as expected, Radev will have to dissolve parliament, appoint an interim government, and call new polls within two months -- the third this year.

"We know we are facing a test as a nation. We will try everything," BSP leader Kornelia Ninova said after receiving the mandate on August 27.

SEE ALSO:

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The prolonged political uncertainty could hamper the European Union's poorest member state's ability to effectively deal with a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and tap the bloc’s multibillion-euro coronavirus recovery fund.

In the July 11 elections, the BSP won 36 seats in Bulgaria's fragmented 240-member parliament -- behind the There Is Such A People (ITN) party’s 65 seats and the center-right GERB party’s 63 seats.

The GERB party of former long-serving Prime Minister Boyko Borisov returned a mandate to the president on August 20, after the antiestablishment ITN party failed to form a minority government.

Many politicians are already considering holding this year’s third parliamentary elections together with the presidential polls.

Some members of parliament have said that if a third attempt fails, as most analysts expect, general elections and the first round of a presidential vote should be held together on November 7.

An April general election also resulted in a deadlocked parliament that failed to produce a government, forcing Radev to appoint a caretaker cabinet to lead the Balkan country until the July elections were held.

The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) says it plans to hold military exercises in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan due to the ongoing situation in Afghanistan.

CSTO spokesman Vladimir Zainetdinov told the Interfax news agency on August 27 that several thousand troops will be involved in the planned Rubezh (Frontier) exercises in Kyrgyzstan, which will be conducted from September 7-9.

According to Zainetdinov, three more sets of military maneuvers will be held close to the Tajik-Afghan border in October, with a fourth scheduled for November.

CSTO members include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

Central Asians states bordering Afghanistan are concerned about security threats emanating from the war-torn country and the potential for tens of thousands of refugees to pour over the border.

The Taliban has sought to reassure neighboring countries and Russia that it poses no threat since gaining control over much of Afghanistan’s territory in recent weeks, including Kabul, the capital.

The group has pledged to rule differently than during its brutal regime of the 1990s that saw women confined to their homes, most entertainment banned, and punishments that included stonings and public executions.

But their promises are being treated with skepticism by many Afghans and governments around the world.

Zainetdinov’s statement comes as Russia and Tajikistan hold one-month joint military drills bear the Afghan border that started on August 17.

On August 10, Russia completed joint military exercises with Tajik and Uzbek troops near the border with Afghanistan, which followed smaller Russian-Uzbek maneuvers along Uzbek-Afghan border.

Russia, which has military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, has vowed to defend Moscow's allies in Central Asia against any security threat from Afghanistan.

With reporting by Interfax

In the country's biggest-ever drug bust, police in Montenegro say they have seized over 1 ton of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas.

Officers discovered the cocaine, which was divided into 1,250 packages, in Mojanovici, a village near the capital, police said on Twitter on August 27.

Montenegrin media reported that police blocked off a broad area during the search operation. Police said two people were arrested but did not provide any details.

The seizure demonstrated “power and determination” in fighting organized crime and Montenegro's reliability as an international partner, police said.

"What a feat of Montenegrin police. We are doing what we have pledged: Montenegro will not be a country of crime," Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic said in a tweet.

The small Adriatic nation of some 620,000 people needs to root out organized crime and corruption to move forward in its bid to join the European Union.

Montenegro already is a NATO member.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP

A number of leading Russian news journals and websites have joined forces to protest against the targeting by authorities of a growing number of independent media outlets and journalists under Russia’s controversial “foreign agent” law.

In a text published online on August 27 and addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, the group of independent media – including Forbes, Novaya gazeta, Dozhd, and Meduza – issued six demands, including the rescinding of a law labeling certain independent media and journalists as “foreign agents.”

The law is set up to target media, NGOs, and individuals that receive funding from outside of Russia.

On August 20, TV Dozhd, an independent news channel, and Vazhniye Istoriye, an investigative news site, were added to the list.

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However, Dozhd, which says its advertisers are wholly Russian, not foreign, was targeted because it printed, or broadcast, material from other designated foreign agents, according to Meduza, a Latvian-based news site that has also been designated a foreign agent.

To date, 43 entities and individuals have been designated as foreign agents in Russia, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several of its Russian-language news sites, including its flagship Russian-language television channel, Current Time.

The Russian law, first passed in 2012 and amended several times since, now requires designated media to label all of their content with an intrusive disclaimer. Some media have complied, even amid fears that the labels would scare off advertisers. At least one designated Russian news outlet has closed. Meduza has resorted to crowdfunding to continue operating.

RFE/RL has not labeled its content, resulting in the Justice Ministry imposing tens of millions of dollars in fines. RFE/RL has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and has also moved to shift some of its employees and operations out of Moscow to Kyiv and elsewhere.

RFE/RL President Jamie Fly has said that Russia was attempting to fine RFE/RL's Moscow bureau out of existence.

BISHKEK -- Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has signed into law a series of changes to the country’s electoral laws that include a reduction in the number of parliamentarians, the president’s press service announced on August 27.

The changes were included in a nationwide referendum on constitutional amendments that were approved in April.

As a result of the changes to the electoral laws, the number of members in parliament -- the Jogorku Kenesh, or Supreme Council -- will be reduced from 120 to 90 seats. Of these, 54 seats will be elected through national party lists and the remaining 36 will be decided in individual district races.

The April 11 referendum came three months after Japarov was elected president following a tumultuous period that saw the ouster of the previous government amid protests over October parliamentary elections and months of political wrangling over the country's future.

Japarov proposed drafting a new constitution in November 2020 as he emerged from the turmoil as acting president in the wake of the resignation of then-President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.

He easily won the presidential election in January, while a referendum held in tandem saw voters opt for a presidential system that was the centerpiece of the proposed constitutional amendments.

Some in the former Soviet republic have criticized Japarov, saying the new constitution was being rushed through to create an authoritarian system while concentrating too much power in the hands of the president.

Japarov was among several prominent politicians freed from prison by protesters during the October unrest. He had been serving a 10-year prison sentence for hostage-taking during a protest against a mining operation in northeast Kyrgyzstan in October 2013.

He maintains the charges against him were politically motivated.

Bulgaria announced on August 26 that it will bolster its border with Greece and Turkey with between 400 and 700 soldiers amid growing concern in Europe over an influx of migrants from Afghanistan.

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan has stoked fears of a repeat of Europe's 2015 migration crisis, when more than 1 million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East arrived in the bloc. Many migrants crossed from Turkey and took the so-called Balkan route to wealthier EU countries.

"The pressure on the Bulgarian border is increasing, which requires the government to act, and it is doing just that," Defense Minister Georgi Panayotov said.

The soldiers would be available to help police and gendarmes with "constructing barriers and surveillance,” he added.

The Interior Ministry has said there is “increased migratory pressure” in recent weeks on the border with Turkey and Greece.

In a sign of Europe's concerns about Afghan migrants, the Slovenian presidency of the EU announced that an emergency meeting of the bloc’s interior ministers will be held Brussels on August 31.

Greece and non-EU member Turkey are also concerned about a new migration wave to Europe and have begun to coordinate a response.

Turkey hosts nearly 4 million Syrian refugees and 300,000 Afghans, in addition to migrants and refugees from other parts of the world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on August 19 that Turkey has no responsibility to be "Europe's refugee warehouse."

Greece became a front-line state during the European migration crisis, although arrivals from Turkey have dropped since 2016 when the EU reached a deal with Ankara to stem the flow in exchange for billions of dollars of financial support.

Turkey and Greece have recently hardened their borders due to concern about Afghan migrants.

With reporting by AFP

NUR-SULTAN -- Thirteen people were killed and nearly 100 injured in a series of blasts triggered by a fire at an arms depot on a military base in southern Kazakhstan, prompting the country’s defense minister to offer his resignation.

The country's emergencies ministry said that a 13th body was recovered at the site on August 28 but had not been identified.

A ministry spokesman said on August 28 that at least three people remain missing and a search for them continues.

Spokesman Talghat Uali said the dead include employees of the military unit of the Emergency Situations Ministry, military personnel, and an official from the military prosecutor's office.

The blast injured 98 people -- about half of them are employees of the Emergency Situations Ministry.

An RFE/RL correspondent reports from the site that one victim was a firefighter, Eldos Sandybaev.

Defense Minister Nurlan Ermekbaev told a press briefing earlier in the day that it was unclear what caused the fire on August 26 at the military facility in the province of Zhambyl, where engineering explosives were stored. He added that arson or sabotage could not be ruled out.

Ermekbaev said that more than 500 tons of explosives had been stored at the depot. The explosives had come from a facility in the town of Arys after a similar 2019 explosion there that killed four people, damaged thousands of houses, and forced the evacuation of 40,000 residents.

Separately, Ermekbayev told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that he was ready to offer his resignation after the accident, but that any final decision on his future in the post would be made by the country’s leadership, a reference to President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev.

Authorities evacuated hundreds of people from three villages located less than a kilometer from the ammunition depot to the regional capital, Taraz, and closed the main road linking the province to the Central Asian nation's largest city, Almaty.

An official in Zhambyl Province said the situation had stabilized and evacuees could return to their homes.

Also closed was a key Central Asian rail network in the area that links Almaty to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, and the Uzbek town of Termiz, which is a main regional gateway to Afghanistan.

Hundreds of military personnel, police officers, and medics were mobilized to help the rescue efforts.

A video shared on the Telegram messaging app that could not be verified showed a column of smoke billowing from a fire before a powerful explosion sent a ball of flame into the sky.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Ethnic Armenian separatists controlling parts of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh have detained an Azerbaijani soldier, whom Baku says escaped from a psychiatric clinic.

The de facto prosecutor's office in the breakaway region said on August 26 that an Azerbaijani soldier identified as Camil Babayev was detained in an apartment in the city of Martakert.

Babayev was charged with espionage, illegal border crossing, and threatening to kill residents of the apartment he was detained in.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said a probe had been launched against Babayev after he allegedly left a psychiatric clinic in the Azerbaijani city of Ganca without permission.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the territory came under the control of ethnic Armenians during a 1992-94 war.

Azerbaijani forces regained control of parts of the territory and surrounding districts previously held by the separatists as a result of a 44-day war last autumn that ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire agreement signed between Yerevan and Baku.

Based on reporting by Armenpress, Interfax, and TASS

Poland has accused the Belarusian authorities of not allowing humanitarian assistance to be delivered to a group of about 30 migrants stranded on the border between the two countries.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on August 26 that Poland has dispatched humanitarian aid by road that Belarus has so far refused to accept.

"We are appealing again. We are trying to ensure that we receive their consent," Morawiecki said, insisting that the migrants were on the Belarusian side of the border.

Polish and Belarusian border guards have been keeping the group of migrants, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq, trapped in a small area on the border, as both countries avoid responsibility for them.

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In recent months, thousands of migrants, many from Iraq and Afghanistan, have illegally crossed from Belarus into Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland.

Belarusian authorities have allegedly funneled migrants across the EU border, which Minsk has denied, in what EU officials called a "hybrid attack" on the bloc in retaliation for sanctions over authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s crackdown on the country's pro-democracy movement following a disputed presidential election in August 2020.

On August 26, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Gniezno, Wojciech Polak, appealed to Poland’s politicians to work together to find a solution, saying: "No human being, regardless of religious affiliation and origin, should be an instrument in a political fight."

Polish officials insist that the migrants will not be allowed into Poland, saying it would encourage further illegal migration and would play into the Belarusian government’s hands.

Based on reporting by AFP and dpa

The Moscow City Court has refused to consider a request filed by former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was convicted in Russia on espionage charges that he denies, to transfer him home to serve the remainder of his sentence there.

Whelan's lawyers, Olga Karlova and Vladimir Zherebenkov, said on August 26 that the court informed them that their client’s request must be heard by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Mordovia, where Whelan is currently serving his term.

Whelan was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison in May 2020 following a trial that was condemned by the United States as a "mockery of justice."

A holder of U.S., Canadian, British, and Irish passports, Whelan has rejected the espionage charges and has accused his prison guards of mistreatment.

The United States has criticized the Russian authorities for their "shameful treatment" of Whelan.

Whelan was head of global security at a U.S. auto-parts supplier when he was arrested. He and his relatives insist he visited Russia to attend a wedding.

He is one of several Americans to face trial in Russia in recent years on charges that their families, supporters, and in some cases the U.S. government, have said are trumped up.

Another former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, is serving a nine-year prison term in Mordovia as well. He was sentenced in July 2020 on charges of assaulting two Russian police officers.

The U.S. government and Reed deny the allegations and questioned the fairness of his judicial proceedings.

Reports have surfaced several times of a possible swap involving Whelan, Reed, and two Russians -- arms dealer Viktor Bout and drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko -- who are serving lengthy sentences in U.S. prisons.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov said on August 25 that Washington's unspecified "unconstructive" position makes a prisoner swap unlikely.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax

SOFIA -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev says he will give a third and last mandate to form a government to the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) after two other political parties gave up efforts to set up a coalition following last month's inconclusive vote.

If a third attempt to build a majority in the fractured parliament fails -- as expected -- Radev will have to dissolve parliament, appoint an interim government, and call new polls within two months -- the third this year.

The prolonged political uncertainty could hamper the European Union's poorest member state's ability to effectively deal with a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and tap the bloc’s multibillion-euro coronavirus recovery fund.

In the July 11 elections, the BSP won 36 seats in Bulgaria's fragmented 240-member parliament -- behind the There Is Such A People (ITN) party’s 65 seats and the center-right GERB party’s 63 seats.

The GERB party of former long-serving premier Boyko Borisov returned a mandate to the president on August 20, after the antiestablishment ITN party failed to form a minority government.

Radev now has to ask a third party of his choosing to try to form a cabinet, but analysts say the chances anyone will be able to build a majority in parliament are very small.

Many politicians are already considering holding this year’s third parliamentary elections together with the presidential polls.

The dates have not been set yet, but many members of parliament suggest holding the general elections and the first round of the presidential vote on November 7, with a second round of voting for president on November 14.

April general elections also resulted in a deadlocked parliament that failed to produce a government, forcing Radev to appoint a caretaker cabinet to lead the Balkan country until the July elections were held.

A court in Moscow has fined Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp for failing to localize the storage of personal data of its users amid a government campaign to gain more control over the Internet in Russia.

Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, said on August 26 that a magistrate court in Moscow fined WhatsApp 4 million rubles ($54,150), Facebook 15 million rubles ($203,000) and Twitter 17 million rubles ($230,000) for failing to abide by a law that requires the local storage of user data.

President Vladimir Putin has accused social media platforms and other tech giants of flouting the country's Internet laws, including a push seeking to force foreign firms to open offices in Russia.

In recent months, Moscow courts have fined Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, and TikTok over the personal data issue, as well as for refusing to delete contents deemed to have been banned by Russian laws.

Many critics say the push has nothing to do with "Internet integrity" and instead have accused the authorities of trying to quell dissent with parliamentary elections looming in September and the ruling United Russia party's popularity slumping.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- An ethnic Kazakh man from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang has received a certificate confirming his Kazakh citizenship after serving 16 years in Chinese custody.

The Almaty regional migration service handed the citizenship certificate to 58-year-old Raqyzhan Zeinolla on August 25, his wife Farida Qabylbek told RFE/RL.

Qabylbek said her husband was happy to get the certificate but cannot talk to journalists as he signed a gag order while in custody in China saying that he will not talk to the press about his incarceration there.

Zeinolla moved to Kazakhstan via the Central Asian nation's special program to relocate ethnic Kazakhs to the country in the late 1990s. In 2003, he applied for Kazakh citizenship and a year later he was informed that it had been granted.

However, before receiving his citizenship certificate, Zeinolla decided to visit relatives in his native Xinjiang. He was arrested there on espionage charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

After serving his full sentence, Zeinolla was re-arrested in 2018 and sent to a "political reeducation camp" for 18 months amid a crackdown by Beijing on the mostly Muslim indigenous population of Xinjiang.

He finally returned to to Kazakhstan in April.

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A 'Brief Trip' That Lasted 17 Years: Kazakh Reunites With Family After Finally Being Freed In Xinjiang

Qabylbek, along with dozens of people, rallied near the Chinese Consulate in Almaty for many months before her husband was allowed to return to Kazakhstan.

In recent years, many similar protests have taken place in Kazakhstan with demonstrators demanding that 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 people from the groups are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of facilities officially referred to 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.

TBILISI -- A court in Georgia has sent to pretrial detention five people from the South Caucasus nation's northeastern Pankisi Gorge region who are being held on terrorism charges.

At a hearing behind closed doors on August 26, the Tbilisi City Court ruled that Magomed Machalikashvili, Yusuf Tsatiashvili, Gamza Bagakashvili, Ramaz Kavtarashvili, and Ramaz Margoshvili must remain in pretrial detention for at least two months.

The five men, all ethnic Chechens, were detained two days earlier and charged with being involved in the activities of the Islamic State terrorist organization.

All of the men have rejected the charges.

Before the hearing, Georgia's State Security Service published videos showing the suspects taking an oath to an unidentified "Amir of Georgia" and Islamic State. Audio also was published, which the State Security Service claims reveals the suspects discussing plans to conduct a terrorist act in the country.

Georgia's Pankisi Gorge region borders Russia's volatile region of Chechnya and is home to Muslims with ethnic ties to Chechens.

Uzbekistan's Supreme Court has exonerated 115 people convicted in the 1920s and 1930s by the Soviet regime for taking part in the Basmachi (Raiders) movement, which fiercely fought against Russian and Soviet forces.

The Supreme Court announced its decision to exonerate the men, many of whom were sentenced to death and others sent to prison for many years, on August 25.

According to the statement, the exonerated people had been recognized as victims of Soviet repressions by a special commission established in accordance with a 2020 order by President Shavkat Mirziyoev. The case materials revealed that the men were sentenced by troikas of the Soviet OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), the predecessor to the Soviet KGB.

The victims' cases were officially accepted by the Supreme Court for review in February.

The Basmachi movement, which emerged during World War I in Central Asia, was eradicated by the Soviets by the late 1920s.

However, clashes between Soviet armed forces and remaining Basmachi rebels along the border with Afghanistan continued until the early 1930s.

The Russian LGBT Network says Daghestan native Ibragim Selimkhanov was abducted earlier this year in Moscow and forcibly brought to the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, where authorities pressed him for information on gay people in the region.

The group said on August 25 that four Chechen-speaking men abducted Selimkhanov in mid-May in the Russian capital and brought him by plane to the Chechen capital, Grozny, where he was questioned regarding the Russian LGBT Network's associates who assist gays in the North Caucasus.

Days after that, Chechen authorities handed Selimkhanov to his mother, who resides in Grozny. Selimkhanov was under permanent surveillance after that but managed to leave the region for Moscow, where he filed a complaint with police asking to find his abductors and bring them to justice.

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'Something Inside Me Died': An Ethnic Chechen Says He Was Tortured In Antigay 'Purge'

Rights groups have accused predominantly Muslim Chechnya of targeting sexual minorities, including the use of abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

Chechen authorities have rejected the accusations.

With reporting by Mediazona