A candidate running in a local election in St. Petersburg who faced two challengers with the same name in what was an apparent attempt to confuse voters and siphon off support has lost as have the other two.

Three Boris Vishnevskys were running for seats on the St. Petersburg municipal legislature, called the Legislative Assembly.

One was lawmaker Boris Vishnevsky, leader of the Yabloko party’s local branch and an assembly member since 2016.

The other two were an official tied to the ruling United Russia party and a salesman for a car-repair company, both of whom changed their names ahead of the September 17-19 vote.

All three lost, preliminary results showed on September 20. The declared winner of the vote, Sergei Solovyov, is from the ruling United Russia party.

United Russia was the declared winner nationwide of the three-day vote to the State Duma amid allegations of widespread vote rigging, including ballot stuffing. Local elections, including in St. Petersburg, were also held.

Vishnevsky, 65, told the news website Znak.com that he was prevented earlier on September 20 from filing a formal complaint against the vote.

He said five men snatched copies of the complaints and questioned him but did not cause him any physical harm.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Poland says it has mounting evidence that Belarus, backed by Russia, is orchestrating the wave of illegal immigrants pouring across its borders and into the European Union.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters on September 20 that no one believes Minsk is acting alone in sending thousands across Belarus's borders with Poland and Lithuania in retaliation for sanctions on authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his regime following a disputed 2020 presidential election that prompted a sometimes violent crackdown on opposition politicians and independent media outlets.

"We have a lot of evidence in our hands that it is a systematic, organized action on the side of Belarusian officials and the Belarusian police," Morawiecki said.

"We're dealing with a mass organized, well-directed action from Minsk and Moscow," he added, noting that as many as 7,000 migrants -- mostly from the Middle East-- had been spotted on the border since early August.

Morawiecki's comments came a day after three migrants were found dead at the Polish-Belarus border. No cause of death has been given.

Another eight migrants were saved the same day by Polish emergency workers after they got stuck in a swamp as they tried to cross the border.

Belarus border-service officials said on September 20 that a fourth person, "a woman of non-Slavic appearance," was found dead on the Belarus side of the frontier. They did not say how she died.

Officials from Poland have said that many migrants have been picked up suffering from hypothermia and exposure from being out in the woods for long periods of time as they try to cross over into the EU.

Earlier this month, Poland imposed a 30-day state of emergency banning nonresidents including media from the border area, the first time the country has used such a measure since the fall of communism in 1989.

It has also sent thousands of soldiers to the border and started building a barbed-wire fence.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, say two police officers and at least three other people are dead after a shoot-out erupted when bailiffs arrived to enforce an eviction order on September 20.

The suspect, reportedly the occupant, in his mid-50s, was said to have opened fire on the bailiffs and other officials at around 5 p.m. local time.

Police in Almaty said the suspect has been detained and "the situation is under control."

An investigation is under way, police said.

Almaty, a former Kazakh capital, is home to about 1.8 million people.

Ukraine's government has extended the country's state of emergency until the end of the year as officials deal with a surge in coronavirus infections.

The government said on September 20 that it would announce a so-called "yellow" epidemic level from September 22, which imposes limits on the number of people who can be at public venues or attend mass events, and includes mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing.

The "yellow" level restrictions will not apply if all participants and at least 80 percent of the staff have one or two vaccine doses or a PCR or rapid antibody test no older than 72 hours.

The decision comes after the number of confirmed new cases of COVID-19 increased last week by 68 percent, while hospitalizations rose by 51 percent.

"It's true, we are seeing an increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19, but thanks to vaccination we have a margin of safety," Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said.

"The medical system is ready to respond to the new wave of infections, but the best way to save your life and health is to get vaccinated at the first opportunity available,” he added.

Ukraine has registered some 2.35 million COVID-19 cases and 54,919 related deaths since the start of the pandemic, while fewer than 5.2 million of the country's 41 million inhabitants have received two vaccine doses.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban hoped to woo Hungarian voters ahead of next year's planned elections as the EU-skeptical populist pledged billions in support for families and wage hikes in an address to parliament's opening session on September 20.

In power since 2010, a serious challenge has arisen to Orban and his nationalist Fidesz allies that could chip away at their current large majority in the legislature in the April voting.

A diverse, six-party alliance set up last year accuses Orban of overseeing a reign of rampant corruption and emergent authoritarianism.

In his speech to parliament, Orban vowed to put an additional 600 billion forints ($1.99 billion) in the hands of families early next year and to raise the country's minimum wage.

Orban has sought to spearhead criticism of the European Union, showily broadening channels with Moscow and leading the anti-immigrant populism that has taken increasing hold in some countries since the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe.

EU officials have repeatedly criticized him for perceived attacks on free media and civil society, erosions of democratic institutions, and legislation that Brussels and others say is anti-LGBT.

The anti-Orban alliance suffered a setback last weekend when its first-ever primary elections to identify a solid challenger to Orban ran into technical glitches, prompting opposition groups to extend the process to September 28.

The opposition National Primary Election Commission (OEVB) suggested state officials might have been behind the snag, although they provided no evidence, saying those in power were "scared that masses of people wanted to express their opinion."

Orban said recently that he was "prepared" for outside "interference," including from the United States, in the coming election year.

With reporting by Reuters

Frictions rose at Kosovo's border with Serbia on September 20 as Kosovar authorities deployed special police units to enforce a policy of removing Serbian license plates from vehicles entering Kosovo.

The tensions are part of a spat between the two former Yugoslav neighbors over reciprocal recognition of license plates in the context of a wider dispute over sovereignty.

Serbian authorities for years have insisted on the removal of Kosovar license plates that cross their mutual border.

Kosovar authorities had said that from September 20, they would be replacing Serbian-issued license plates on vehicles entering from that country with temporary plates.

Pristina described it as a "reciprocity" action, echoing the language of Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti since he emerged as a leading national politician in late 2019 and returning as prime minister in March.

Officers of a Kosovar special police unit were deployed along with armored vehicles to two of the border crossings, Jarinje and Brnjak, on September 20 to implement the license-plate requirement on Pristina's behalf.

They were reportedly responding to a protest by hundreds of Kosovar Serbs who drove to the border in their cars to block a border checkpoint.

Serbia refuses to recognize the 2008 declaration of sovereignty by its former province, whose independence is recognized by around 110 countries but whose presence in some international organizations is still prevented by the impasse.

The European Union is mediating years-long negotiations aimed at normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo, within which both sides have pledged to allow the mutual flow of traffic at their border.

Kosovo now says the deal has expired.

The leader of an ethnic Serb party backed by Belgrade traveled to the Jarinje crossing to demand a solution to the license-plate problem and insist on the Serb community's right to protest.

Kosovar authorities asked Serbian List leader Goran Rakic and others to disperse.

"We hear information that this is not directed against the Serbian people," Rakic said, countering, "This is directed against the Serbian people."

In Belgrade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic responded to the tensions at the Kosovar border by scheduling a crisis meeting of Serbia's national security council.

With reporting by AP

A gunman who opened fire and killed several people at a university in the Urals city of Perm is in intensive care after being wounded during his apprehension by law enforcement.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement that six people died in the attack on September 20 and another 28 injured before the gunman was shot. The committee had previously said eight people died in the shooting.

The Health Ministry said 24 people were being treated in the hospital without providing further details.

University spokesperson Natalia Pechishcheva had earlier said the shooter had been "liquidated" but later said he was in police custody.

Video showed the gunman walking along a path toward a building on campus. He then entered one of the university's buildings around 11 a.m. local time and then opened fire.

The REN TV channel published footage showing people jumping out of the windows from the second floor of one building on the campus.

The perpetrator used a gun designed to fire nonlethal rubber or plastic projectiles, the university press service said. Such weapons can be modified to fire other ammunition. The Investigative Committee referred to the weapon as a smooth-bore hunting rifle.

State news agency RIA Novosti cited local officials as saying the gunman owned the weapon legally.

The university in Perm, a city of about 1 million people some 1,200 kilometers northeast of Moscow, said on its VKontakte page that students and faculty were told to immediately close their classroom and office doors and stay put. Lessons were canceled, it added.

The university, which has 12,000 students enrolled, said about 3,000 people were on the campus at the time of the shooting.

The shooting is the second major attack by a gunman at a school in Russia in four months and underscores a rise in such attacks, which were once considered extremely rare in Russia.

Several steps have been taken to try to make schools safer around the country, adding to security measures implemented in the decade following the Beslan school siege, in which more than 330 people -- most of them children -- were killed in North Ossetia after militants took more than 1,000 hostages on the first day of school in 2004.

Still, in May, 19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviyev attacked a school in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, killing nine people -- seven students from the eighth grade and two teachers.

Galyaviyev was found to be mentally ill after a psychiatric evaluation.

The shooting prompted Russian lawmakers to tighten gun controls.

The September 20 attack has also brought back memories of a January 2018 incident when 11 children and a teacher were injured in Perm when two 16-year-olds entered a classroom and slashed them with knives.

With reporting by TASS, RBK, TV Rain, Reuters, and AP

The Kremlin-appointed governor of Khabarovsk won the election to head the Far Eastern region, more than a year after the arrest of his popular predecessor triggered protests.

Mikhail Degtyaryov received 57 percent of the vote in a whittled down field of contenders in the September 17-19 election, according to preliminary numbers from the Central Election Commission.

Large anti-government protests in the region erupted last year after the arrest in July 2020 of Governor Sergei Furgal, highlighting discontent in the Far East over what demonstrators viewed as Moscow-dominated policies that often neglect their views and interests.

Furgal is currently in pretrial detention in Moscow facing charges of attempted murder and ordering two killings in 2004 and 2005. He denies the charges.

He was elected governor of Khabarovsk in 2018 with the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in a runoff that he won against the region's longtime incumbent from the Kremlin-backed ruling United Russia party.

Degtyaryov, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, was appointed by the Kremlin to replace Furgal although he has no ties to the region. He is widely believed to be backed by the Kremlin with resources.

Only three other candidates faced off against Degtyaryov in the election, but they were widely viewed as providing nothing more than a veneer of a democratic and competitive race.

Significantly, the ruling United Russia party did not field a candidate for governor in Khabarovsk. Russia’s second-largest party, the Communists, failed to submit documents for their candidate on time and election officials refused to consider them.

The vote in Khabarovsk was held as part of national elections for the lower house of parliament, or State Duma, and that of dozens of regional governors and local legislative assemblies.

The election was marred by widespread allegations of irregularities.

Three people who were trying to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus were found dead near the border, Poland's Border Patrol said on September 19.

Another eight migrants were saved the same day by Polish emergency workers after they got stuck in a swamp as they tried to cross the border.

Seven of them were taken to the hospital, including one who was flown by helicopter.

Polish media said that one of the migrants found dead may have died from exposure to the cold.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed the three deaths, but he gave no details about the possible causes.

Polish prosecutors have opened an investigation, he said.

EU members Poland and Lithuania are facing a surge in migrants crossing over from Belarus in what they say is retaliation by Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka for sanctions by the bloc.

The EU has imposed several rounds of financial penalties against Lukashenka, his inner circle, and key state-owned companies to punish the authoritarian leader for the brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

Poland and Lithuania are building razor wire fences in an attempt to curtail the influx of migrants, who are largely from the Middle East. They have also increased border patrols.

Poland said over 3,800 attempts at illegal crossings from Belarus have been foiled so far in September, over 320 on September 18 alone.

With reporting by AFP

Mali's ruling junta dismissed warnings by Western governments not to hire "mercenaries" from private Russian security firm Vagner, saying it will do as it sees fit.

France last week cautioned the West African nation against such a deal after unconfirmed reports the junta is close to hiring 1,000 paramilitaries to train its armed forces and protect officials.

Both France and Germany have said that a deal with Vagner would call into question their military commitments to the impoverished country.

"Regarding the intention ascribed to the Malian authorities to hire 'mercenaries,' the transition government led by the military invokes the exercise of its sovereignty,” Mali’s Foreign Ministry said in a September 19 statement.

Vagner is believed to be controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The group’s presence in Africa has been growing in recent years as the Kremlin seeks to expand its international influence amid a global retrenchment by Washington, analysts say.

Vagner is, or has been, present in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and reportedly a few other African nations.

The military junta took power in Mali after overthrowing President Boubacar Keita in August 2020 and promised to hold elections in February 2022, which some now question.

The rumors of Mali hiring Vagner mercenaries comes after French President Emmanuel Macron in June announced that France plans to scale back its anti-jihadist forces in the region after more than eight years.

While the junta has not commented officially on the existence of contacts with Vagner, Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga alluded to them on September 16.

"There are partners who have decided to leave Mali...there are areas that have been abandoned," he said in reference to a redeployment of French forces in the Sahel. "Shouldn't we have a plan B?"

Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop met with Russian Ambassador to Mali and Niger Igor Gromyko on September 14, according to his Twitter feed.

The north of Mali fell under jihadist control in 2012 until they were pushed out of cities by France's military intervention in 2013.

However, the poor and landlocked nation home to at least 20 ethnic groups continues to battle jihadist attacks and intercommunal violence, which often spills over to neighbouring countries.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Russia has lost a record amount of forest acreage to fire this year since accurate recording began two decades ago, Greenpeace said.

Fires have destroyed 18.13 million hectares (45 million acres) of Russian forestry so far this year through September 16, surpassing the previous record of 18.1 million recorded in 2012, the environmental organization's Moscow office said in a post, citing the nation's latest satellite monitoring data.

Russia only began using satellites to accurately monitor fires in 2001.

The forest acreage destroyed by fires this year is equivalent to the size of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.

Fires have been raging in Yakutia in Siberia, Russia’s northwestern region of Karelia, across the central Volga region and elsewhere.

The smoke from the Yakutia fires was so extensive that researchers recorded -- for the first time ever -- smoke reaching as far as the North Pole.

Global climate change is responsible for the surge in forest fires in Russia in recent years, scientists say.

Northern Siberia temperatures showed monthly averages more than 10 degrees Celsius above the average for the 29-year period from 1981–2010.

Based on reporting by TASS

KYIV -- Thousands of people including diplomats marched peacefully through the Ukrainian capital in an annual gay pride parade that spurred a smaller counterprotest.

Participants carried the rainbow-colored flag that symbolizes the gay movement, Ukrainian flags, as well as signs calling for equal rights as they walked through the center of Kyiv.

About 7,000 people took part in the September 19 demonstration, according to organizers, down from the record high of 8,000 in 2019.

The gay pride parade, launched a decade ago, was canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The parade, whose participants included staff from the U.S. and U.K. embassies, was accompanied by a strong police presence. There were no reports of any incidents.

An anti-gay protest held the same day by religious groups and nationalists attracted about 700 people, a reporter for RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service estimated.

“We salute law enforcement for ensuring participants' safety,” the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said in a tweet.

Homophobia is widespread in Ukraine, according to a survey by the sociological group "Rating" published in August, which said 47 percent of respondents had a negative view of the gay community.

Kyiv has increased support for LGBT rights since Western-backed leaders came to power in 2014.

Parliament passed legislation in 2015 to ban discrimination in the workplace, but it does not allow for same-sex marriage or adoption of children.

MOSCOW -- The Kremlin-backed ruling United Russia party attracted fewer votes than five years earlier, but maintained its constitutional majority in Russia's lower house of parliament in an election marred by growing allegations of voting irregularities and ballot tampering.

An independent monitoring agency called the three-day vote over the weekend "one of the dirtiest" elections in Russian history, while Germany on September 20 said the allegations must be taken "seriously and should be clarified" and the European Union denounced the climate of "intimidation" in the run up to the vote.

The election is widely seen as an important part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cement his grip on power ahead of a possible run in the 2024 presidential election, making control of the State Duma key.

The vote also has been marred by the lack of a significant opposition presence after authorities declared organizations linked to the imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to be “extremist,” effectively barring anyone from his network from running.

For the first time since 1993, election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were not present due to limitations imposed by Russian authorities.

With 99.9 percent of ballots counted, the Central Election Commission said early on September 20 that United Russia, which backs Putin, had won nearly 50 percent of the vote for the 225 seats apportioned among parties in the State Duma.

Its closest rival, the Communist Party, had just under 19 percent, and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party received 7.5 percent. Two other parties, A Just Russia and a newcomer party, New People, had received 7.45 percent and 5.33 percent, respectively.

Another 225 lawmakers are chosen directly by voters, and the results showed United Russia candidates leading in 198 of those races.

With United Russia securing an emphatic parliamentary majority, Putin thanked Russians for their trust.

"Special words of thanks, of course, I want to address to the citizens of Russia, to thank you for your trust, dear friends," Putin said on state-run TV on September 20.

United Russia Secretary-General Andrei Turchak said the party expected to win 120 seats from the party-list voting and 195 single-mandate races -- giving it 315 of the Duma's 450 seats and a comfortable two-thirds majority that continues to allow it to change the constitution.

"This is truly unbelievable," said a Navalny spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh. "I remember the feeling in 2011 when they stole the election. The same is happening right now."

The chairwoman of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, confirmed at a briefing that United Russia has retained the so-called constitutional majority in the parliament, or two-thirds of the 450 seats required for a party to be allowed to make changes to the country's constitution.

According to Pamfilova, candidates from three other parties each won a seat, meaning eight political parties will be represented in the State Duma. Voter turnout stood at 51.68 percent, Pamfilova said.

Allies of Navalny said the fact that an opposition Smart Voting app to counter ruling party cheating ran into troubles means the authorities were compelled to "admit defeat or to falsify, in front of everyone, absolutely brazenly."

One of Navalny’s top lieutenants, Leonid Volkov, suggested that authorities planned to manipulate online voting in favor of ruling party candidates, particularly in liberal-leaning cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

A co-chairman of the independent election-monitoring group Golos said 78,000 more electronic votes had appeared in the officials' Moscow tally than were issued, highlighting the "shame" of what he called the "shame" of "one of the dirtiest" elections in Russian history.

Golos's Roman Udot insisted that the results in Moscow -- or at least the electronic votes -- should be nullified as a result.

Some 200 Communist protesters who felt cheated gathered for a demonstration in Moscow in the evening on September 20 as police looked on.

"It's a disgrace and a real crime!" Communist candidate Valery Rashkin told the crowd, saying his party would keep protesting until what he called the falsified electronic Moscow results were overturned. Rashkin said the protesters would be back on September 25.

European Union foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano criticized the lack of international independent election monitors and "an atmosphere of intimidation of all the critical independent voices" in the run-up to the voting, which was held alongside elections for regional governors and local legislative assemblies.

The U.S. State Department said that Russia prevented citizens from exercising their civil and political rights and the United States does not recognize the results of the vote on Ukrainian territory.

"The September 17-19 Duma elections in the Russian Federation took place under conditions not conducive to free and fair proceedings," department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. "We do not recognize holding elections for the Russian Duma on sovereign Ukrainian territory and reaffirm our unwavering support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine."

Late last week, Ukrainian officials denounced Russia for also holding the parliamentary elections in Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Britain said the elections represented a serious setback for democratic freedom and were at odds with Russia's international commitments.

"The measures taken by the Russian authorities to marginalize civil society, silence independent media, and exclude genuine opposition candidates from participating in the elections undermine political plurality and are at odds with the international commitments that Russia has signed up to," Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement.

And German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin that allegations of fraud must be taken seriously and fully investigated.

"There are accusations from election observers, from Russian opposition members who speak of massive irregularities," Seibert said on September 20, adding that "these must be taken seriously and should be clarified."

Half of the Duma’s 450 seats are apportioned by party lists, while the other half are chosen in individual races. Election officials said United Russia candidates led in 194 single-seat constituencies out of 225 with a little over 72 percent of the votes counted.

United Russia, which currently holds 334 seats in the Duma, is looking to keep its supermajority in the legislature. But the party is deeply unpopular, and surveys from independent pollsters have shown its approval rating at the lowest level in the two decades since it was first established.

In the last national vote in 2016, United Russia won just over 54 percent of the vote.

Apathy also appeared to hit as Russian voters grow increasingly cynical about how free and fair elections are in the country. Turnout in the election was around 45 percent, the Central Election Commission said.

In addition to being a test for United Russia, the vote was also a major hurdle for Navalny, the jailed corruption crusader whose allies had invested heavily in their Smart Voting strategy, aimed at eroding United Russia’s stranglehold on politics.

Most of the candidates endorsed by Smart Voting were from the Communist Party -- even though it and two other parties in the Duma rarely vote against majority initiatives or those explicitly lobbied for by the Kremlin.

WATCH: How Navalny's 'Smart Voting' Works

Despite official efforts to undermine Smart Voting, initial election results suggested the initiative may have had an impact, with support for the Communists growing from 13.3 percent in the 2016 parliamentary elections.

"We forced them to either admit defeat or to falsify, in front of everyone, absolutely brazenly, without any shame. To admit moral bankruptcy," Volkov, the Navalny ally, said of the Smart Voting strategy in a live YouTube event after the voting.

In recent months, authorities have unleashed a sweeping crackdown against Navalny’s political network, with many of his allies fleeing the country, put under house arrest, or detained.

Navalny himself is in prison serving a 2 1/2-year sentence on charges his allies say were politically motivated. He was arrested in January upon returning from Germany where he had been recuperating from a nerve-agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

As the vote kicked off on September 17, however, Navalny’s Smart Voting app disappeared from the Apple and Google online stores. Telegram, a popular messaging app and a key tool for Navalny’s team to get out its messaging, also removed a Smart Voting bot. YouTube -- which is owned by Google -- also took down a video that contained the names of candidates they had endorsed. And Google also blocked access to a Navalny Google Doc, which circulated a text copy of all the Smart Voting endorsed candidates.

About 50 websites run by Navalny have also been blocked, including the one dedicated to Smart Voting.

Long Lines

The vote, which is being held alongside elections for regional governors and local legislative assemblies, took place amid widespread reports of irregularities.

Gennady Zyuganov, who heads the Communist Party, alleged widespread violations and called on election officials to respond to reports of “a number of absolutely egregious facts,” including ballot-box stuffing.

RIA Novosti reported that the Moscow mayor's office had refused a request from the Communist Party to hold rallies on September 20, 21, and 25 to protest the results, citing safety measures over the coronavirus pandemic.

Across the country, there were reports of ballot-box stuffing and “carousel voting” -- where voters are bused into multiple polling stations as an organized group.

Voters interviewed in one Moscow district expressed skepticism toward both the election results and the opposition's chances of influencing them through Smart Voting.

"You can see what's happening with our elections. I don't trust them," said Tatiana Bochkova, a journalist who voted in Moscow's 208th district for Sergei Mitrokhin, a politician for the liberal Yabloko party whom she had backed in previous elections.

"I didn't use Smart Voting, because I don't believe it can really work," Bochkova told RFE/RL.

Sergei Ross, a lawyer who has previously defended opposition activists, said he had followed the recommendation of Smart Voting and chosen Mitrokhin.

He said he doesn't trust the elections but believes that vote-rigging will not be as widespread in Moscow as in other parts of the country.

"The opposition now has more tools at its disposal, like Smart Voting," he said. "But the state does, too, and it's using them against the press and independent journalists."

Vadim, a 63-year-old theater historian at a Moscow academy, said he had voted for the newly created political party, New People, because of its promise to introduce fresh faces into politics.

He broadly trusts the elections because the low turnout makes it harder for authorities to falsify them, he said. He did not agree with critics who said New People was one of several parties launched in cooperation with the Kremlin to create the illusion of real competition.

"We all know officials steal and don't represent the interests of the people. But I think we must vote anyway, to express our position," Vadim said.

In the central Volga region of Chuvashia, the local Communist Party accused a precinct boss of trying to eat part of an official election tally sheet, in a bid to cover a fraudulent tally.

In the North Caucasus, where voter fraud and irregularities are commonplace, four separate precincts in the Daghestan and Ingushetia regions reported 100 percent turnout -- in one case, just a few hours into the first day of voting.

Ballot-Stuffing Allegations

Authorities said they spread the election over three days to prevent crowding because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, however, say the longer period offers ample opportunities for manipulation and engineering a desired outcome.

In St. Petersburg, an independent election-monitoring group reported that a candidate from the opposition Yabloko party was beaten by police officers at one polling station on September 19 after he claimed that piles of unused ballots had disappeared.

A video shared by activists appeared to show at least three officers manhandling Nikita Sorokin, who is running for the local legislative assembly. Several other monitors are also seen being forcibly removed from the site.

Golos earlier reported some 2,000 procedural violations as well as lax measures for guarding ballots at polling stations, people voting multiple times, as well as dozens of reported incidents of ballot stuffing.

With reporting by RFE/RL correspondents in Moscow, Current Time, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service, Meduza, AP, and Reuters

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian athletes that they must continue to refrain from playing competitive sports against Israelis, even if they are disciplined by international bodies for it.

"Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal," Khamenei told a reception for Iran's medalists from the Tokyo Games on September 18.

“The genocidal, illegal Zionist regime attempts to gain some legitimacy by appearing in international athletic competitions. The world’s arrogant powers and their cohorts [the West] assist and support them in this,” he added.

In Tokyo, Iran won seven Olympic medals, three of them gold, as well as 24 Paralympic medals.

Iran does not recognize the state of Israel and its athletes often forfeit matches or don’t participate when they could face an Israeli opponent.

In response, some international sporting bodies have taken disciplinary action against Iranian sports for discriminatory conduct.

In one of the more prominent cases, the International Judo Federation (IJF) this year imposed a four-year ban on Iran from the sport because Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei left the Iranian team in August 2019, claiming he was ordered to throw matches rather than risk facing an Israeli opponent.

Mollaei fled to Germany in 2019 and competed for Mongolia in the Tokyo Olympics, winning a silver medal for his adopted country.

Khamenei also promised to support Iranian or Muslim athletes that are disciplined by international bodies for boycotting athletic competitions with Israelis.

Khamenei instructed "the sports and foreign ministries, as well as the judiciary, to deploy their legal resources to support athletes from this and other Muslim countries, like the Algerian who was recently disciplined."

He was referring to Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine, who withdrew from the Tokyo Games after the draw set him on course for a possible match-up against an Israeli opponent. He was then suspended from the international competition.

With reporting by AFP

A multiday primary election to find a candidate to challenge Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban got under way on September 18 but was suspended due to a system crash.

Organizers blamed the early interruption of voting on a suspected cyberattack and said balloting would resume on September 20.

"In addition to the masses of voters seeking change, someone else was interested in the primary: a mass load of [messages of] unknown origin hit the background system of the primary election," the national primary election committee said in a statement.

The primaries are the first to seek a challenger to Orban and are taking place after a six-party alliance of leftist, liberal, and formerly far-right parties united under the common goal of pushing Orban out in elections next year.

They accuse Orban, who has clashed with Brussels over migration and rule-of-law issues, of corruption and creeping authoritarianism and hope the primary system brought in under Orban in 2012 will be their path to defeating his Fidesz party.

Antal Csardi, a candidate for the green LMP party, said the primary elections are "an innovation that was forced on us" by the election system, and are the only hope of seeing an anti-Fidesz candidate win.

"The opposition can only compete with Fidesz if they are in a single bloc,” Csardi told AFP. “We've learned that the hard way."

The primaries allow opposition voters to select single candidates to take on both Orban as well as Fidesz rivals in each of Hungary's 106 electoral districts.

More than 250 candidates are standing in the primaries, which are scheduled to run through September 26. Voting is taking place online and in-person. If necessary, a runoff for the prime minister candidate will be held from October 4-10.

Based on reporting by AFP

Kazakh police have detained at least six activists during a protest organized by the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan in the southeastern city of Almaty.

Dozens of protesters participated in the rally, chanting for Nursultan Nazarbaev, the former authoritarian president who is still considered to rule the country from behind the scenes, to “go away.”

The demonstrators demanded the release of political prisoners, condemned the government's plan to use a Russian company to digitalize some state systems, and expressed solidarity with oppressed Muslim minorities in China's northwestern Xinjiang region.

The Democratic Party was legally registered by the Justice Ministry in December 2020, but the group was unable to hold a Congress in February because party activists had been arrested and detained.

Kazakh law requires that a party's founding congress be attended by at least 1,000 people.

Kazakhstan has been run along authoritarian lines by Nazarbaev and his successor, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

During their rule many opposition figures have been jailed or forced to flee the country.

Popular messaging app Telegram has suspended all chat bots used in the Russian elections campaign, in another blow to jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative after Apple and Google removed the election-guide app from their stores.

Russians headed to the polls for the second of three days of voting on September 18, in a parliamentary vote that the ruling Kremlin-backed United Russia party is expected to win following a clampdown by authorities on dissent that eliminated vocal Kremlin critics from the ballot and crushed independent media.

Navalny's team promoted Smart Voting as a way for voters opposed to President Vladimir Putin to identify candidates who have the best chance to defeat candidates from the ruling pro-Kremlin United Russia party -- even if that alternative candidate comes from one of the other main established political parties.

The team created a Smart Voting chat bot on Telegram, which became one of its main electoral tools.

But Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced late on September 17 that the service would abide by Russia’s “election silence,” a law practiced in other countries that prohibits campaigning during the elections.

“We consider this practice legitimate…and we plan to limit the functioning of bots associated with election campaigns,” said the Russian founder of one of the world’s most popular messaging apps.

As the vote kicked off on September 17, the Smart Voting app disappeared from the Apple and Google online stores in what Navalny associates slammed as censorship and the tech giants bowing to Kremlin pressure.

Durov also said he was following Apple and Google, which "dictate the rules of the game to developers like us."

"The blocking of applications by Apple and Google creates a dangerous precedent that will affect freedom of speech in Russia and around the world," he added.

Durov said Telegram, like other mobile apps, relies on Apple's and Google’s ecosystems and support to function. He said the two tech giants this year already demanded Telegram remove information to comply with laws in other countries

The U.S. tech companies “threatened to exclude Telegram from the catalogs of Google Play and App store applications” if it didn’t comply, Durov said.

“Now, judging by their blocking of the Smart Voting application, this practice has spread to Russia. Changes in Apple's and Google's policy will inevitably affect Telegram, as they, as the creators of the two major mobile operating systems, are at the top of the information distribution food chain and can dictate the rules of the game to developers like us,” he said.

"This is sad but expected: I have written more than once that the Apple and Google oligopoly is a threat to free speech," he added.

There was no immediate comment from Apple or Google.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Google and Apple were merely conforming with "the letter and spirit" of Russian law by removing the app.

Russians are voting September 17-19 for the lower house of parliament, or State Duma, as well as local polls in dozens of regions, including regional assembly and gubernatorial elections.

In recent months, authorities have unleashed a sweeping crackdown against Navalny’s allies and engaged in a massive effort to suppress Smart Voting.

About 50 websites run by Navalny’s team have been blocked and dozens of regional offices have been closed after authorities labelled his political network and anti-corruption foundation an “extremist organization,” which barred the politician's allies from participating in elections.

Russian authorities had repeatedly threatened Google and Apple with fines if they didn’t block the app -- officials even tried to throttle secondary servers, and Internet traffic routers to try to hamper access to the software.

On the eve of the elections, regulators also temporarily blocked the Google Docs app as Navalny’s team released its slate of Smart Voting endorsements.

With reporting by TASS and AFP

Allegations of widespread election fraud marred the first two days of Russia’s three-day election as jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Smart Voting bot disappeared from the popular messaging app Telegram following similar moves by Apple and Google.

The ruling Kremlin-backed United Russia party is expected to win the September 17-19 parliamentary vote, following a clampdown by authorities on dissent that eliminated vocal Kremlin critics from the ballot and crushed independent media.

On the first day of voting alone, the Golos independent election-monitoring group recorded some 2,000 procedural violations indicating votes were being bought. It also reported violations including vote-buying and lax measures for guarding ballots at polling stations.

According to Golos, mass arrivals of people in uniform at polling stations were widespread, suggesting that the government was mobilizing state employees to ensure a victory for the ruling party.

WATCH: How Navalny's 'Smart Voting' Works

There were also reports of people voting multiple times, as well as dozens of reported incidents of ballot stuffing.

The head of Russia's Communist Party also alleged on September 18 widespread violations in the election. Gennady Zyuganov said the Central Elections Commission (CEC) must respond to reports of “a number of absolutely egregious facts,” including ballot-stuffing in several regions.

Ella Pamfilova, head of the CEC, said 6,203 ballots had been held invalid in five entities of the Russian Federation because of irregularities, including ballot-box stuffing in the Bryansk region, poor quality of ballots in Mordovia, and incorrect registrations in Moscow.

A “really shocking number” of videos showing ballot stuffing have surfaced, political analyst Andras Toth-Czifra tweeted, adding: “And this was the first day of the election, and online rigging is not even visible (but based on past experiences, very likely).”

Media in St. Petersburg reported on suspected cases of “carousel voting,” in which voters cast ballots at several different polling stations, while the news website Znak said a resident of the Moscow region was offering 1,000 rubles ($15) to people who voted for United Russia.

In Kirov, election organizers were visiting elderly people who couldn't leave their homes to go to polling stations, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service reported.

A woman in her late 80s identified as Valentina T. said she would probably vote for United Russia after the organizers suggested she do so, saying, “I don’t know anyone else.”

Overall turnout at polling stations was 31.5 percent as of 8 p.m. Moscow time on September 18, the press service of the CEC reported.

All 450 seats in the lower house of parliament, or State Duma, are up for grabs in the vote, which is being held alongside local polls in dozens of regions, including regional assembly and gubernatorial elections. Preliminary results are expected shortly after polls close on September 19.

The election has been marred by efforts to suppress Navalny’s Smart Voting -- a tool promoted by the opposition as a way for voters opposed to President Vladimir Putin to identify candidates who have the best chance to defeat a United Russia candidate.

In recent months, authorities have unleashed a sweeping crackdown against Navalny’s allies.

As the vote kicked off on September 17, Navalny’s election-guide app disappeared from the Apple and Google online stores in what his associates slammed as censorship and bowing to pressure, and Telegram removed the Smart Voting bot after the company announced it would "limit the functioning of bots associated with election campaigns."

Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced late on September 17 that removing election-related bots was related to Russia's ban on campaigning during voting.

"We consider this practice legitimate and urge Telegram users to respect it," said the Russian founder of one of the world’s most popular messaging apps.

But he added that "the blocking of applications by Apple and Google creates a dangerous precedent that will affect freedom of speech in Russia and around the world."

After Telegram removed the Smart Voting bot, a Twitter account associated with Navalny posted links to Google Docs with recommended candidates, saying they were their last "remaining" tools, according to AFP.

Ivan Zhdanov, one of several lawyers working with Navalny, tweeted that Navalny’s team is considering suing Apple and Google for removing Smart Voting from their platforms in Russia.

According to media reports, Google's and Apple's decision was taken under pressure from Russian authorities, including threats of serious criminal charges and arrest of local staff.

Mobilization Of Voters

Meanwhile, Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chairman of Golos, told Current Time that it appears state employees were coerced into voting while they were at work, even if that meant not casting a ballot where they were registered.

“We understand that when such a mobilization takes place, it is a mobilization among those groups of voters who, in the opinion of the authorities, are most loyal to them,” he said.

Election officials said the vote needed to be spread over three days as a health precaution due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although crowded polls seemed to suggest that may not be a high concern.

Opposition activists and some liberal lawmakers said extending the vote is intended to allow the Kremlin to manipulate turnout and possibly engineer a desired outcome.

Aside from the decision to hold voting over three days, the Central Election Commission has made other tweaks to voting rules, such as sharply limiting international observers, limiting live-stream camera feeds from polling stations, and pushing for people in some regions to vote online.

Russians can vote online in seven Russian regions this year, with critics saying such voting may be subject to manipulation.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in August it would not send elections observers for the first time in nearly three decades due to "major limitations" imposed by Russian authorities.

Waning Popularity

United Russia holds a supermajority in the chamber, but its popularity is currently the lowest in the nearly two decades it has been in existence.

Even the state-run pollster VTsIOM found United Russia’s support hovering around 29 percent.

By contrast, Putin, who is not a party member, retains an approval rating of around 60 percent and has no genuine political rival.

WATCH: Do Russians Have Real Choices In The Parliamentary Elections? Voters Tell Us

However, his popularity has slipped in recent years, driven down partly due to sweeping pension reforms passed after his reelection in 2018, and perceptions that high-level corruption among government insiders is rampant and unchecked.

Wages have stagnated for a wide swath of the population, as the economy struggles with Western economic sanctions, higher taxes, mounting inflation, and fallout from the pandemic.

Russians have also been frustrated by the cycles of restrictions and conflicting public health guidance regarding coronavirus.

The country is going through a third wave of infections and deaths; nearly 1.6 million cases have been reported since the pandemic began; nearly 28,100 deaths have been reported. The real number of infections and deaths is believed to be higher.

The country’s vaccination effort is flagging badly, with many people deeply skeptical, despite Russia approving Sputnik V, the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine last summer.

Besides United Russia, three other parties currently have seats in the Duma, plus two seats held by lawmakers from two obscure parties.

The strongest is the Communist Party, which retains a strong following among older Russians. The two others are the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, headed by the flamboyant Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and A Just Russia, which this year merged with another relatively unknown party headed by a popular nationalist writer.

All three parties are nominally in opposition to United Russia, but in reality, they rarely vote against majority initiatives or those explicitly lobbied for by the Kremlin.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov on September 18 called on the authorities to respond to reports of “a number of absolutely egregious facts,” including ballot-stuffing in several regions.

He said the party, which is expected to pick up the biggest share of any seats lost by United Russia, had tallied at least 44 incidents of voting violations.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

Lawyers for Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev say he will appeal a decision by Swiss prosecutors to close his case against a top art dealer he accused of swindling him out of more than $1 billion.

The lawyers said in a statement that the decision on September 17 of the Public Prosecutor's Office to close the case was “one-sided” and will be appealed to Geneva's Criminal Court.

"It is essential that this case, the most serious the art world has ever known, be duly considered and finally judged on its merits," lawyers Marc Henzelin and Sandrine Giroud said in the statement.

Rybolovlev, president of the AS Monaco football club, accused Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier of inflating prices on 38 works he acquired from 2003 to 2014.

The office of Geneva's top prosecutor said last January that it planned to drop Rybolovlev’s case against Bouvier.

Since 2015, Rybolovlev has filed other cases against Bouvier in other countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, and Monaco.

"Today marks the end of a six-year nightmare," said Bouvier said in a statement. "Truth prevailed,” he added, calling it “a complete victory."

Bouvier, who consistently denied wrongdoing, had to stop almost all his art dealing activities to defend himself against the attacks and has suffered “immense damages,” the statement said.

The Russian businessman accuses Bouvier of having conned him out of $1.1 billion by inflating the price of the works of art he sold to Rybolovlev after he commissioned Bouvier to help build up an art collection.

Rybolovlev was himself charged with bribery and influence peddling in Monaco. Those charges have implicated several former ministers, forcing one, the justice minister, to retire over claims he accepted bribes.

Based on reporting by AFP

One of the most outspoken supporters of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says she is "disappointed" with the Kremlin critic’s exiled associates and has broken ties with them as the country heads to polling stations for elections.

Anastasia Vasilyeva, the chief of the Physicians' Alliance NGO, accused Navalny's now-defunct Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) of leaving her and her team without any support after "using" them, saying that Navalny's associates Leonid Volkov, Ivan Zhdanov, and Maria Pevchikh, who currently live outside of Russia, "are ruining everything that we once created."

"I’m very disappointed. The foundation’s managers are now destroying what all of us worked so hard to create," she wrote in a Facebook post late on September 16.

"Now [Navalny's associates] are in Europe and a certain someone (Navalny) finds himself in prison. See the difference? Anyone who believed in him is now at risk of criminal prosecution. And when they lock these people up, no one will remember them," she added while not elaborating on what was being destroyed.

Vasilyeva's posting sparked a heated reaction online, with many believing that she was forced to make the statement on the eve of parliamentary elections as the Kremlin-backed ruling party, which has seen its support slump, aims to retain power.

Vasilyeva, who famously played her piano while police recently ransacked her apartment during a crackdown over the past year against Navalny and his allies, has been under increasing pressure from authorities.

WATCH: Navalny Supporter Defiantly Plays Piano As Russian Police Raid Her Home

In March, the Physicians' Alliance was placed on the state's controversial "foreign agents" list, which has been used to stymie monitoring groups and the media, to disqualify prominent opposition candidates, to drive opposition leaders to flee the country, and to restrict access to volunteers and fundraising for any person or group placed on it.

On September 1, Moscow police detained her and took her to a court hearing to face charges of allegedly violating restrictive measures aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.

The hearing appears to never have taken place even though several of Navalny’s associates and supporters who were part of the case faced the court and were handed parole-like sentences on charges for publicly calling for people to take part in unsanctioned rallies to support the Kremlin critic in January.

Some compared Vasilyeva's situation with that of Belarusian blogger Raman Pratasevich, once a critic of his country's strongman leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his crackdown on the opposition.

Pratasevich was arrested along with his girlfriend in Minsk on May 23 after Belarusian authorities forced their Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in the Belarusian capital. He later changed his public stance and views on the political situation in Belarus, a move many opposition leaders say appeared to be made under duress.

The beginning of the year marked Navalny's return to Russia following treatment in Germany for a nerve-agent poisoning he claims was carried out by Russian security agents at Putin's behest.

Navalny was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on a parole violation charge that he denounces as absurd.

Thousands of Russians were detained during nationwide protests calling for his release and later the FBK and his network of regional offices were shut down as "extremist" organizations.

MINSK -- The Belarusian Prosecutor-General's Office says it has suspended an investigation into the death of Raman Bandarenka, the anti-government protester whose killing in November 2020 intensified unprecedented protests demanding the resignation of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka following a disputed election.

The Prosecutor-General's Office said in a statement on September 17 that the probe was suspended because a suspect had yet to be identified in the case, adding that the case had not been closed and the probe can resume if information on a suspect arises.

The 31-year-old Bandarenka died in hospital on November 12 after he was reportedly beaten by masked security forces.

Bandarenka's last known written words, "I'm going out," have turned into one of the slogans of the protests against Lukashenka that have been held across the country since the presidential poll in August last year that the opposition says was rigged.

It remains unclear who exactly killed the activist, but videos recorded the incident from a distance, and many in Belarus believe the former chief of the country's national ice hockey federation, Dzmitry Baskau, martial arts champion Dzmitry Shakuta, and Lukashenka's spokeswoman Natallya Eismant were present. None have been officially questioned in the case.

Bandarenka's sister Volha Kucharenka told RFE/RL that her family was shocked because nobody informed them about the decision to suspend the probe.

"We learned about it from the Internet.... It took a lot for us to make it possible to launch the investigation....There were many witnesses who saw what happened and there were so many video recordings taken at the site at that moment from different angles. But they were reluctant to start the investigation and only did so three months later," Kucharenka said, adding that she believes there's reason to believe that the investigators did not want to find the perpetrator to start with.

Several protesters have been killed and thousands of people arrested since authorities declared Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, the landslide winner of the vote.

There have also been credible reports of torture during a widening security crackdown.

Most of the country's opposition leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country.