Ukraine’s closely watched judicial reform inched forward as the nation’s Western backers submitted lists of foreign legal experts who will help Kyiv choose and review judges.

The United States and Europe say judicial reform in Ukraine is key to taming the influence of tycoons, cutting endemic corruption, and opening the country to greater foreign investment.

Washington and Brussels have made its successful implementation a top priority in their relations with Kyiv.

In a step applauded by the West, Ukraine’s parliament in July passed bills that aim to reboot two key pillars of the nation’s judicial system: the High Council of Justice (HCJ), which nominates judges for presidential appointment, and the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), the institution empowered to select new judges.

Anti-corruption activists have said that the two bodies are compromised, having repeatedly allowed the appointment of politically controlled and dependent judges.

The new legislation calls for the creation of a six-person panel consisting of three foreigners and three Ukrainians to shortlist 32 candidates for 16 HQCJ seats. It also stipulates the creation of a six-member Ethics Council to assess the members of the HCJ.

In a statement on September 10, Ukraine’s international partners announced that they had submitted their recommended lists of foreign experts for the two panels to Kyiv.

“These nominations reflect our ongoing commitment to support key reforms aimed at strengthening the rule of law, attracting foreign investment for business and economic growth, and advancing Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” said a joint statement by Western backers, including the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.

The next step is for the panels to begin short-listing and reviewing judges. Experts say vested interests oppose judicial reform and seek to undermine it.

Ukraine has a long history of passing reforms but failing to implement them successfully.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told a conference he could not exclude the possibility of a full-scale war with Russia, even as he said he continues to seek a peace agreement with the Kremlin to end fighting in two eastern regions.

When asked on September 10 at the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit about the likelihood of a large-scale war with Russia, Zelenskiy said it would be the "worst thing" that could happen, but did not rule it out.

"There is such a possibility," he said, adding it would be the "biggest mistake" by Russia.

The Kremlin earlier this year amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border and in the occupied territory of Crimea in what the United States called an act of intimidation against Kyiv.

The military buildup came as Ukrainian forces battle Moscow-backed fighters in two eastern regions in a low-intensity war that has killed more than 13,200 since 2014.

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The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the fighting, even though there is substantial evidence of Russian fighters and arms crossing into Ukraine.

Zelenskiy said he had been seeking another meeting with Putin to resolve the fighting in the east, but that the Russian president has shown little interest. The two first met in Paris in December 2019 for peace talks.

"They do not see the point in this -- to resolve the issue and quickly end the war," Zelenskiy said. "And this is my problem...how to make them want to talk about the de-occupation of our territories in detail."

Zelenskiy, a political novice, won in a landslide in 2019 in part on a promise to end the war in the east.

In the months after taking power, Zelenskiy reached three agreements with Russia and the separatists on prisoner exchanges. However, the completion of those swaps has not led to a breakthrough in peace talks, with fighting in the east picking up in recent months.

During the YES conference, Zelenskiy reiterated his desire to have Ukraine join NATO, saying his country would be a strong addition to the military alliance.

Russia has called Ukraine's membership in NATO a "red line."

Zelenskiy raised the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine with U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this month during his first official trip to Washington.

The Biden administration has said the door is open to Ukraine to join NATO in the future, but did not give a clear path to membership.

A Bulgarian fugitive wanted in several European countries on money-laundering and drug-trafficking charges has been arrested in Kyiv after years on the run.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry confirmed on September 10 that Ukrainian authorities had captured former wrestler Evelin Banev.

Ukraine’s National Police on September 7 announced it had arrested a man wanted on an Interpol notice but did not disclose his identity.

Banev was captured in a parking lot as he walked toward his car, according to a police video posted to YouTube.

Bulgaria said it is working on extraditing Banev to Sofia.

The 56-year-old was facing trials in three countries for money laundering and drug trafficking when he was last seen in public at a hearing in the Sofia Court of Appeals in September 2015.

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Banev had been detained in Bulgaria in 2012 and handed over to Italian authorities for a trial in Milan. In Bucharest, Romanian authorities were also requesting his extradition on similar charges.

Then Italy allowed Banev to return temporarily to Sofia in 2015 in order to attend his Bulgarian trial.

That's when he disappeared, apparently fleeing and going into hiding before the authorities could return him to Italy or extradite him to Romania.

He's since been sentenced in absentia by an Italian court to 20 years in prison, by a Romanian court to 10 1/2 years, and more recently by a Bulgarian court, all for money-laundering or cocaine-smuggling offenses.

More recently, Swiss prosecutors in December indicted Banev along with Credit Suisse and one of the Swiss bank's former employees for allegedly helping to launder about $39 million of drug money through the bank.

Russia's Foreign Ministry says U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan has been summoned over alleged election interference by U.S. tech giants.

The ministry said Sullivan met with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on September 10 where he was informed that Moscow has proof of violations of Russian law by U.S. tech firms ahead of elections to the State Duma later this month.

"During the conversation, it was emphasized that the Russian side possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by the American 'digital giants' in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation," the statement said, adding such interference was "unacceptable.

The state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti said Sullivan arrived and left the ministry in Moscow after 20 minutes without commenting on why he was there.

The statement did not give any specifics, but in recent months Russian authorities -- including President Vladimir Putin -- have continuously accused firms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp of failing to adhere to local laws on issues such as the storage of personal data and the removal of content deemed to be illegal.

In recent months, Moscow courts have fined Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, and TikTok millions of rubles over the issues.

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 on September 17-19 and the ruling United Party's popularity slumping.

With reporting by TASS and RIA Novosti

MOSCOW -- A court in Moscow has ordered the arrest of a man suspected of being behind a website that offered a marketplace for hiring hitmen.

The Basmanny district court on September 9 ruled that Sergei Magdanov, a 38-year-old resident of Izhevsk, a city located 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow, must stay in pretrial detention for at least two months.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement on September 9 that Magdanov was detained amid an ongoing investigation into the murder of a married couple in the Vladimir region, which borders the Moscow region.

The unidentified couple was assassinated by a hitman allegedly hired via Magdanov's website, which operated on the dark net.

According to the Investigative Committee, another hitman hired via the website was preparing to assassinate an individual in St. Petersburg.

Similar to owners of legitimate online marketplaces, the committee said Magdanov received a cut of the transactions conducted via his website.

He was paid in cryptocurrencies as well as via digital wallets registered under other people's names, the committee said.

Investigators found more than 500 payment cards and "a significant amount of cash" in his possession.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia experienced a jump in contract killings amid the turbulent transition to a market economy.

A court in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk has handed prison terms to a couple who protested the arrest of a group of activists and criticized pension reform.

Pavel Chikov of the legal defense organization Agora wrote on his Telegram channel that the Central District court in the Ural's city on September 10 sentenced Dmitry Tsibukovsky to 2 1/2 years and his wife, Anastasia Safonova, to two years in prison.

Prosecutors had sought six years in prison for each defendant.

Tsibukovsky and Safonova, who are self-declared anarchists, were initially arrested in 2018 after they placed a large banner with the words "FSB -- Main Terrorist” outside the building of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Chelyabinsk. The FSB is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

Tsibukovsky and Safonova were seeking to express solidarity with a group of activists arrested in 2017-18 for allegedly creating a terrorist group called Set (Network), with cells in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza, and Omsk, as well as in neighboring Belarus.

Last year, nine members of the group were convicted of terrorism and handed lengthy prison terms.

Amnesty International has called the terror charges "a figment of the Russian security services' imagination...fabricated in an attempt to silence these activists."

The London-based human rights watchdog maintains the case is “the latest politically motivated abuse of the justice system to target young people.”

The government’s case against Tsibukovsky and Safonova was thrown out twice after investigators failed to prove elements of a crime in the couple’s actions.

Tsibukovsky said that he and Safonov were tortured while in custody.

The couple was later charged with vandalism for graffiti that protested against unpopular pension reforms passed in 2018.

They were arrested again in April 2020 and spent four months in pretrial detention before they were transferred to house arrest.

Russia said it has completed the construction of the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline after the Biden administration agreed in May to waive congressionally mandated sanctions against the Kremlin-backed project.

Aleksei Miller, the chief executive officer of Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom, announced on September 10 that the pipeline -- consisting of two parallel lines stretching 1,230 kilometers each -- had been completed after more than a one-year delay caused by U.S. sanctions.

Nord Stream 2 will reroute Russian natural gas exports to Germany under the Baltic Sea, circumventing Ukraine and depriving Kyiv of as much as $2 billion a year in transit fees.

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Ukraine vehemently opposes the project, which it calls a security threat.

The U.S. Congress passed sanctions in 2019 and 2020 to stop the completion of Nord Stream 2, which was initially slated for launch in 2020.

However, the Biden administration waived some of the sanctions in May in an attempt to mend relations with Germany, a key U.S. ally.

Nord Stream 2 still needs to be certified and approved for use before it can begin exporting natural gas to Germany.

Certification is expected to take up to four months but will only start once all the paperwork is completed, which entails checks by the German Economics Ministry and Gazprom.

Following Miller's announcement, Ukraine’s presidential spokesman Serhiy Nykyforov said that Kyiv will keep on opposing Nord Stream 2 "before and after its completion and even after the gas is turned on."

Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, Reuters, and AFP

MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has sentenced Maria Alyokhina, a leading member of the Pussy Riot protest group, to one year of so-called "restricted freedom," a parole-like sentence, for allegedly violating restrictive measures aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus by calling on people to protest against the detention of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

The Preobrazhensky district court handed down the sentence to Alyokhina on September 10 after finding her guilty of publicly calling for people to take part in unsanctioned rallies to support the Kremlin critic in January.

According to the court ruling, Alyokhina is not allowed to leave her home from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., attend public events, or leave Moscow without police permission.

Alyokhina was one of two Navalny supporters still facing charges for publicly calling for people to take part in the rallies.

The final person whose hearing in the case is pending is the chief of the Alliance of Doctors NGO, Anastasia Vasilyeva.

In the other cases, close associates and supporters of Navalny, including his brother Oleg, have been handed parole-like sentences restricting their freedom in recent weeks.

Media reports said that Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh and his close associate Lyubov Sobol fled Russia after they were sentenced, which had not been confirmed either by the two women or their lawyers.

Aleksei Navalny was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent that he says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has denied any role in the incident, which was the latest of numerous attacks on Navalny.

More than 10,000 people were rounded up during nationwide rallies protesting Navalny's arrest organized in more than 100 Russian towns and cities on January 23 and January 31.

On February 2, Navalny was convicted of violating the terms of his suspended sentence related to an embezzlement case that he has called politically motivated. The remainder of Navalny's suspended sentence, 2 1/2 years, was then replaced with a real prison term.

That ruling sparked new protests that were also forcibly dispersed by police.

More than 1,400 people were detained by police in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities during those demonstrations.

Russia's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by would-be State Duma candidate and businessman Dmitry Potapenko against his removal as a candidate for allegedly owning "foreign financial instruments."

The court's September 1 ruling was published on September 9 and means that Potapenko will be removed from the party list of the Russian Party of Liberty and Justice for the September 17-19 national legislative elections. Potapenko was also seeking a single-mandate seat in the Duma from a district in Moscow.

Under Russian law, candidates and Duma deputies are not allowed to own foreign financial instruments such as shares of company stock. The same provision was used to bar popular Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin in July and several candidates from the liberal Yabloko party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), A Just Russia, and the New People party. Yabloko candidate Yekaterina Kolesnikova was disqualified for owning "foreign financial instruments" worth $68.

Potapenko was accused of owning shares in several companies that are traded on foreign stock exchanges, including Russian search engine Yandex and the state-owned Russian savings bank Sberbank.

Potapenko has said he does not own any disqualifying instruments, but instead holds only depositary receipts, which are domestic financial instruments that represent shares in companies traded abroad but are considered an alternative to actual international trading.

BISHKEK -- Orozaiym Narmatova, a member of the opposition United Kyrgyzstan political party and an outspoken critic of President Sadyr Japarov, has been detained in the southern city of Osh as she tried to leave the country.

Narmatova's lawyer, Seiitbek Dovlotov, told RFE/RL that his client was arrested at the Osh airport when trying to leave for Russia on September 10.

Dovlotov said that Narmatova, who currently lives in Russia, was detained on suspicion of publicly calling for people to seize power from the government, adding that the arrest was sanctioned by a court in Bishkek, the capital.

United Kyrgyzstan's leader, Adakhan Madumarov, called Narmatova’s detention "an act of blatant lawlessness," and demanded her immediate release.

The party's representative in Osh, Zamir Shamshidin, told RFE/RL that investigators have transferred Narmatova to Bishkek.

The Interior Ministry issued a statement saying that Narmatova, who is also a leader of the I Do Not Agree and I Have Rights movements, was detained for "holding frequent gatherings in Russia at which she constantly expressed unfounded criticism targeting the Kyrgyzstan’s political leadership with the aim of increasing the mood among labor migrants and people residing in Kyrgyzstan to protest."

The ministry accused Narmatova of wanting to create conditions for inciting inter-regional hatred and aiming to seize power.

Narmatova came to Kyrgyzstan several days ago to attend a funeral for one of her relatives and was trying to return to Russia on September 10.

She has been one of Japarov's most-vocal critics, chiding him for failing to follow through on the promises to increase freedoms that he made when he came to power in the wake of anti-government demonstrations after disputed parliamentary elections in October.

Russia and Belarus have launched massive joint military drills near NATO’s borders as Moscow and Minsk vowed to deepen their military ties amid persistent tensions with the West.

The Zapad-2021 weeklong military exercises kicked off on September 10 and with venues including Belarus, Western Russia, and the Baltic Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Up to 200,000 servicemen, about 80 planes and helicopters, 290 tanks, 240 artillery pieces, multiple rocket launchers, and mortars, as well as 15 ships will be involved in this year's drills, which are conducted every four years, according to Moscow.

What could be the biggest military exercises in Europe in decades have raised alarms at NATO, which says the Kremlin has refused to invite observers as it is obligated to do under an international agreement.

Russia and Belarus are formally part of a "union state" and have been in talks for years on further integration of their countries.

On the eve of the start of Zapad-2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s increasingly isolated authoritarian ruler, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, met in Moscow where they agreed to deepen the integration of their ex-Soviet countries, including in areas of defense.

Putin said Moscow would provide Minsk with around $640 million in loans by the end of next year, and that he agreed with Lukashenka on a new unified natural-gas market.

Putin, in power for more than 20 years, and Lukashenka, in power for nearly three decades, also discussed “building a single defense space,” the Russian president said.

For his part, Lukashenka told reporters there was a "breakthrough" and that 28 separate "road maps" had been agreed to after many years of negotiations.

However, the two leaders sidestepped the question of whether after more than 20 years of talks, they had finally agreed to fully create a "union state" -- a major step toward reunifying the two ex-Soviet republics' economies and political structures.

If it comes to fruition, the union state would potentially undermine Belarus’s sovereignty, something Lukashenka has strenuously resisted for years.

But the Belarusian ruler has been increasingly isolated since last year’s presidential election in which he claimed reelection to a sixth term.

The vote was condemned by Belarus’s opposition as rigged and prompted months of street protests that Belarusian security forces have harshly cracked down on.

Western nations have refused to recognize Lukashenka as a legitimate president and slapped his government with sanctions.

Meanwhile, tensions along Belarus's border with the European Union have risen in recent months with Brussels accusing Minsk of intentionally sending thousands of migrants into bloc through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Russia's relations with the West have also been tense in recent years over a host of actions by Moscow, including aggression against Ukraine, election interference, state-sponsored hacking, and human rights abuses at home.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is calling on Tajikistan to add an ailing 70-year-old journalist who has been imprisoned for six years on politically motivated charges to a list of thousands of prisoners due to be freed under a mass presidential amnesty.

Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, a member of the banned Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), “is being held in the most appalling conditions” and has “many health problems,” the Paris-based media freedom watchdog said in a statement on September 9.

According to the group, Saifullozoda contracted a serious form of COVID-19 and underwent a heart operation in June in the infirmary of the prison where he is being held.

Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said the journalist “is in danger of dying in prison.”

“Detained for purely political reasons, he risks spending another 10 years behind bars, where he is the victim of mistreatment. His release could save his life. Furthermore, he poses no danger to society or to the authorities in Tajikistan.”

Saifullozoda, the editor of the IRPT's Najot (Salvation) newspaper, was arrested in 2015 and sentenced the following year to 16 years in prison after a court found him guilty of involvement in a purported insurrection against Rahmon's government.

More than 16,000 prisoners are expected to be freed under the amnesty law adopted by parliament earlier this month and signed by President Emomali Rahmon to mark the 30th anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence on September 9.

Saifullozoda “will probably not be among those who are released,” RSF said, adding that his sentence “will probably be reduced by only four years, although he should benefit from the priority release reserved for persons over the age of 55 who are seriously ill.”

The IRPT, long an influential party with representatives in the Tajik government and parliament, was labeled an extremist and terrorist group and banned in September 2015 -- moves the party and human rights groups say were unjustified and politically motivated.

Dozens of IRPT officials and supporters have been prosecuted and many of them imprisoned, drawing further criticism of Rahmon's government from rights groups.

As a result of “increasingly repressive policies,” Tajikistan has fallen 46 places in RSF's World Press Freedom Index since 2015 and is now ranked 162nd out of 180 countries.

Russian tech company Yandex said a cyberattack on its servers this summer was the largest known distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in the history of the Internet.

In a September 9 blog post, Yandex said it had identified a powerful new botnet, a network of computers infected with malware and controlled without the owners’ knowledge, that has also carried out DDoS attacks in other countries.

A DDoS attack is a hacking attempt to disrupt the traffic of a targeted server or network by overwhelming the target with a torrent of Internet traffic.

"Our experts did manage to repel a record attack of nearly 22 million requests per second (RPS). This is the biggest known attack in the history of the Internet," Yandex said in a statement.

The attack began in August and reached a record peak on September 5.

“But this is just one of many attacks aimed not only at Yandex, but also at many other companies in the world. The attacks have been going on for several weeks, their scale is unprecedented, and their source is a new botnet about which little is known so far,” the company said.

U.S. cybersecurity firm Cloudflare, which is widely used by businesses and other organizations, said in August the largest DDoS attack it was aware of reached 17.2 million RPS earlier this year. That attack was said to be three times larger than previously known ones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he and his Belarusian counterpart, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, have agreed on a new unified gas market, and he praised Belarus, saying the situation there was "stabilized” after months of turmoil.

Putin spoke at a joint news conference, alongside Lukashenka, on September 9, after more than three hours of talks in Moscow.

Lukashenka's trip to Moscow came amid heightened speculation that he and Putin would finalize a decades-old plan to fully establish a "Union State" that would closely integrate the two countries.

It was unclear if that had happened, however, earlier, Lukashenka signaled that a final signing of 28 so-called road maps, which would finalize the countries' integration, would be signed on October 28.

Lukashenka, meanwhile, said his talks with Putin were honest and constructive.

Putin's praise for Belarusian stability comes after months of unprecedented political turmoil in Belarus, sparked by the August 2020 presidential election that Lukashenka claimed victory in.

Belarus's opposition considered the election rigged, and that kicked off months of street protests and mass demonstrations that were met with a brutal police crackdown.

News reports say German prosecutors have opened a formal investigation into a series of cyberattacks that have targeted German politicians -- attacks that the Foreign Ministry has blamed on Russia.

A spokesman for Germany's federal prosecutors told reporters on September 9 that the investigation had been opened "on suspicion of espionage."

The probe comes as the election campaign to choose a new German government heads into the homestretch. The parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 26, and none of the major parties have a decisive lead in the polls.

State security agencies have notified parliament at least three times this year about cyberattacks on lawmakers by foreign intelligence services.

On September 6, the Foreign Ministry said the government had "reliable information" that the attacks could be attributed to actors in Russia, "specifically to the Russian military intelligence service" known as the GRU.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse said that a hacker outfit called Ghostwriter has been “combining conventional cyberattacks with disinformation and influence operations.”

She said the ministry had lodged a formal complaint with Russian authorities.

Germany has repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks in the past.

The highest-profile incident was a 2015 cyberattack that paralyzed the computer network of the lower house of parliament. German authorities blamed Russian military intelligence.

Germany's concerns about Russian interference have included scrutiny of the Russian state-funded broadcaster RT, whose online-only German-language service has emphasized divisive issues such as migration and coronavirus restrictions.

Based on reporting by AFP, dpa, and AP

Moldovan authorities have announced new national lockdown restrictions as the country faces a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases.

The new restrictions, to take effect September 10, will include a ban on non-vaccinated people visiting bars, restaurants, and cultural events.

The restriction will be in place until at least October 31.

Existing restrictions include the requirement for people to wear masks in public places and for bars and restaurants to close at 11 p.m.

The country currently has registered a cumulative total of 272,325 cases with 6,466 deaths as of Sept 8.

Vaccination efforts meanwhile have gone slowly; only about 25 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

With reporting by Reuters

Smoke alarms have sounded on a Russian module at the International Space Station, and some of the crew reported smelling something that resembled burnt plastic, officials say.

The September 9 incident did not appear to be serious, but it was the latest possible mishap to rattle nerves aboard the orbiting station over the past several weeks.

The Russian space agency Roskosmos said the smoke alarms sounded on the Zvezda module and occurred as the station's batteries were being recharged.

In audio heard on a broadcast from NASA's TV feed of the station, a French astronaut can be heard reporting the smell of burning plastic.

According to Roskosmos, the crew activated air filters and returned to their "night rest" once the air quality was back to normal.

The agency said a previously scheduled space walk would continue as normal later on September 9.

That space walk is due to be performed by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, to continue integrating another Russian-built module, the Nauka science lab.

The Nauka docked with the space station in July, but shortly after docking, the module's thrusters unexpectedly turned on, sending the station briefly spinning out of position.

Russian space officials have blamed the issue on a software failure.

Meanwhile, an anonymous Russian space official last month was quoted by the TASS news agency as making a somewhat lurid allegation regarding a mysterious incident on the station in 2018. In the incident, one, or several, manmade holes were found in another Russian-built module.

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The anonymous space official suggested that a NASA astronaut had experienced a medical problem involving blood flow that "could have provoked an acute psychological crisis," which, in turn, might have led her to seek a way to return to Earth before the mission was over.

The suggestion prompted strong pushback from NASA officials in Washington.

With reporting by AP

A Russian court has ordered a Belarusian man extradited to Minsk, where he faces charges of participating in protests against Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Vadzim Duboyski's sister told RFE/RL that the Belgorod regional court on September 9 rejected his appeal against the extradition order by the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office.

According to Duboyski's sister, his defense lawyer plans to appeal the decision to a higher court in Moscow.

The lawyer will also ask the European Court of Human Rights to block the extradition, on the grounds that he will face torture if he is sent to Belarus, she said.

Duboyski, a 31-year-old guitar player of a hardcore punk group, was arrested in the western Belarusian city of Brest in August 2020 amid unprecedented mass demonstrations demanding Lukashenka's resignation.

The protests erupted after a presidential election that Lukashenka claimed he won, but many in Belarus have said was rigged.

Duboyski and several other activists were held in a garage area in Brest for three days, during which he and others were viciously beaten and later forced to sign a paper saying that they did not have any complaints, according to relatives.

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Physicians who examined him later confirmed that he was beaten while in police custody.

He was released after a week, on condition that he not leave Brest, but he fled to Russia in mid-October.

Russian border guards detained him in Belgorod in April this year for allegedly crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border illegally.

He may face up to eight years in prison if convicted in Belarus.

Mass protests against Lukashenka were met with a brutal crackdown, and the 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.

TASHKENT -- Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has accepted the nomination from the pro-government Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan to be its candidate and seek a second term in office in next month's election.

When accepting the nomination at the party's congress in Tashkent on September 9, Mirziyoev vowed to implement more reforms after receiving sharp criticism from activists who say he failed to make deep changes in the country in his first term, which was notable for its crackdown on dissent in Central Asia's most-populous nation of 35 million.

Mirziyoev, who is expected to easily win the October 24 election over four other men widely seen as token candidates, promised that if he wins a second five-year term he will work on making high-speed Internet accessible in every home, more than double per capita income to $4,000 from $1,700, and help ensure the personal protection of journalists.

The Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan was used by Mirziyoev's predecessor, Islam Karimov, to get reelected many times during his tenure, which lasted from before the collapse of the Soviet Union until his death in 2016.

Since taking over the country, Mirziyoev has tried to position himself as a reformer by releasing political prisoners and opening his country to its neighbors and beyond. His critics say, however, he has failed on many fronts.

For example, Mirziyoev has said he is not against having opposition political groups in Uzbekistan, yet it has been impossible for independent candidates to register their candidacies for the presidential election.

Hungary's Justice Minister has called European Union authorities “arrogant” after its executive arm asked the EU's top court to impose financial penalties on Poland in a long-running dispute over judicial reforms that has helped strain relations between the bloc and Warsaw over the rule of law.

The Hungarian government condemned the “malicious attacks by Brussels," Justice Minister Judit Varga said on her Facebook page late on September 8, two days after the European Commission, which acts as the guardian of the bloc's treaties, asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to impose financial penalties on Poland over a controversial judges’ chamber.

The EU’s executive arm said on September 7 it made the request because Poland had not taken “the necessary measures to comply fully” with an earlier ECJ judgment concerning the chamber, which is devoted to disciplining judges.

The Polish government said three weeks ago it would dismantle the chamber, even though it meant backing off of one of its judiciary reforms that had helped create a major riff with the EU.

Established in 2018, the chamber is able to dismiss any judge or prosecutor. In July, the ECJ ruled that the controversial chamber may be used “to exert political control over judicial decisions or to exert pressure on judges.”

The European Commission argued it was forced to take action now as there were signs the ECJ's concerns were already proving to be true.

In her Facebook post, Varga charged that ignoring the Polish government’s promise was a "scandalous and arrogant" step by the commission, which she accused of "meddling in the judiciary and law-making process of a sovereign member state in an unprecedented manner."

Both Hungary and Poland are locked in a series of conflicts with Brussels over issues such as the rule of law, press freedoms, and LGBT rights.

TBILISI -- Police in Tbilisi have detained a suspect in the murder of an Australian woman, Shanae Brooke Edwards, who went missing earlier this summer before her body was found in the Georgian capital.

Georgia's Interior Ministry said on September 8 that a 33-year-old resident of Tbilisi had been detained as a suspect in the case, adding that the decision to arrest the man was made as result of studies performed on DNA samples taken from the crime scene.

Local media identified the man as Rafael Mursakulov, a Georgian citizen.

Mursakulov's lawyer, Sofio Goglichidze, told RFE/RL on September 9 that she will have details on the case after she meets with her client as soon as he is transferred from police detention to a pretrial detention center.

Edwards, a 31-year-old English teacher, disappeared on July 30. After her friends raised concerns about her whereabouts, police started a search and found her body with signs of violence in Tbilisi's Mtatsminda park the next day.

The deputy chief of the Tbilisi city police, Kakha Muradashvili, told reporters on September 8 that a possible murder weapon, a knife, was found near the body.

The killing of the Australian woman caused a public outcry in the South Caucasus state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would give hundreds of millions of dollars in additional loans to Minsk, and that he and his visiting Belarusian counterpart had agreed on a new unified natural-gas market.

But speaking to reporters after more than three hours of meetings in Moscow on September 9, Putin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka sidestepped the question of whether after more than 20 years of talks, they had finally agreed to fully create a "union state" -- a major step toward reunifying the two ex-Soviet republics' economies and political structures.

For his part, Lukashenka told reporters there was a "breakthrough" and that 28 separate "road maps" had been agreed to, after many years of negotiations.

But he said the overall package for the confederation might be adopted only by the end of October: "this will be a breakthrough, a breakthrough in many spheres."

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In the run-up to Lukashenka's trip to Moscow, there was heightened speculation that the decades-old plan for a union state would finally come to fruition.

Last month, Belarus's ambassador in Russia said that all of the 28 road maps to finalize the agreement first agreed to in the late 1990s were ready and could be finalized at the Lukashenka-Putin summit.

Putin praised Belarus, saying the situation there had "stabilized" after months of political turmoil. He said Russia would provide Belarus with around $640 million in loans by the end of next year.

He said restrictions on air travel between Russia and Belarus would also be lifted, and that natural-gas prices for exports to Belarus would remain at 2021 levels -- a significant benefit for Minsk as current-year gas prices have spiked sharply.

Lukashenka praised Putin, in characteristically warm terms, but he also said the question of agreeing on a common currency with Russia was not on the agenda.

If it comes to fruition, the union state would potentially undermine Belarus’s sovereignty, something Lukashenka has strenuously resisted for years.

At the same time, the Belarusian leader has been increasingly isolated since last year’s presidential election in which he claimed reelection to a sixth term.

The vote was condemned by Belarus’s opposition as rigged and prompted months of street protests that Belarusian security forces have harshly cracked down on.

Earlier, in initial remarks with Putin ahead of their talks, Lukashenka said that Russians and Belarusians were one people.

“We move, like all civilized countries, only together, only in a union; native states, close peoples, practically one people, both Russians and Belarusians come from the same roots,” Lukashenka 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.

Western governments have refused to recognize Lukashenka as a legitimate president and slapped his government with sanctions over the ongoing crackdown on the opposition, independent media, human rights groups, and civil society.

On the eve of Lukashenka's Moscow visit, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said Russian Sukhoi fighter jets had arrived in Belarus to help patrol its borders as part of a new joint military effort.

The ministry did not say how many jets arrived or give further details on their participation in monitoring the borders.

Tensions along Belarus's border with the European Union have risen in recent months with Brussels accusing Minsk of intentionally sending thousands of migrants into the bloc through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

The announcement of the border reinforcements came before thousands of Belarusian and Russian troops are set to kick off their joint Zapad-2021 military exercises.

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Russia To Show Off Military Might, Grip On Belarus During Zapad-2021 Exercises

The drills, which are conducted every two years on Russian and Belarusian territories, have raised concerns among NATO members in the past.

Up to 200,000 servicemen, about 80 planes and helicopters, 290 tanks, 240 artillery pieces, multiple rocket launchers, and mortars, as well as 15 ships will be involved this year's weeklong exercises, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Earlier this month, Lukashenka said Russia would soon deliver a huge military hardware consignment to Belarus, including aircraft, helicopters, and air-defense systems.

A Ukrainian national has been extradited to the United States, where he faces charges of hacking and stealing computer passwords, the U.S. Justice Department said on September 8.

Glib Ivanov-Tolpintsev, 28, is suspected of hacking into tens of thousands of computers to steal passwords that he later sold to criminals on the dark web.

The Ukrainian national was arrested in Poland in October 2020 and transferred to the United States under an extradition treaty between the two countries.

He faces charges of conspiracy, trafficking in unauthorized access devices, and trafficking in computer passwords that could land him in prison for up to 17 years.

According to the indictment, Ivanov-Tolpintsev operated a botnet, a network of computers infected with malware and controlled without the owners’ knowledge.

“He used the botnet to conduct brute-force attacks designed to decrypt numerous computer login credentials simultaneously,” the Justice Department said.

During his activities, Ivanov-Tolpintsev claimed the botnet was capable of decrypting the passwords of at least 2,000 computers every week.

Once the login credentials were sold on a dark web website, the passwords were used to conduct illegal activity, including tax fraud and ransomware attacks, according to the indictment.

SKOPJE -- North Macedonia’s authorities say a fire that ripped a makeshift coronavirus treatment center has left at least 14 people dead.

The fire broke out following an explosion in a modular unit used to treat COVID-19 patients in the northwestern city of Tetovo late on September 8 before being put out by firefighters.

"A huge tragedy has occurred in the Tetovo COVID-19 center," Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said on Twitter.

"An explosion caused a fire. The fire was extinguished, but many lives were lost," he added.

Firefighters put out the blaze after a couple of hours while oxygen cylinders used to treat hospitalized coronavirus patients exploded, Tetovo deputy fire chief Saso Trajcevski said.

The Public Prosecutor's Office later said in a statement that "prosecutors have ordered autopsies to identify the bodies of the 14 people who died in the fire and we are looking into whether there are others dead."

"Some of the dead will need DNA analysis to determine their identities. According to initial information, there are no medical staff among the deceased."

The cause of the explosion is being investigated.

It is unclear how many patients were in the hospital when the fire broke out around 9 p.m.

An unspecified number of injured were transferred to a hospital in the capital, Skopje.

With less than one-third of North Macedonia's 2 million inhabitants fully vaccinated, the country has seen a significant spike in coronavirus infections and deaths since early August, prompting the government to reimpose restrictions on access to cafes, restaurants, and public events.

North Macedonia has recorded more than 6,100 fatalities due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.