As international talks to revive a major nuclear agreement with world powers continued in Vienna, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said that he hoped negotiations led to a “renaissance” of the 2015 deal.
The day-old talks are U.S. President Joe Biden’s first major effort to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) since taking office on pledges to curb Iran’s nuclear program following his predecessor’s withdrawal from the agreement three years ago.
“Once again, all parties have come to the conclusion that there is no better alternative,” Rohani said in a statement on April 7, referring to the JCPOA, which was reached over hard-liners’ opposition in the Austrian capital five years ago. .”Thus, we can hope for a renaissance of the Vienna nuclear agreement.”
The U.S. and Iranian sides have publicly clashed over the order of possible concessions on U.S. sanctions and Iranian nuclear activities before a new deal can be achieved.
Rohani staked heavy political capital on the 2015 deal during his first presidential term despite resistance from hard-liners allied with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate political and religious power in Iran.
“The U.S. says it wants to return to the agreement,” Rohani said. “Fine, let’s see how serious they are.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said after the first day of talks on April 6 that Washington saw the discussions in Vienna as a “constructive” and “welcome step,” even though “we are not meeting directly with the Iranians.”
European diplomats are acting as intermediaries facilitating indirect talks between U.S. and Iranian officials, whose delegations are staying in nearby hotels.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, told state television that his talks with envoys from the remaining parties to the agreement — Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia — were “constructive.”
Russia’s Vienna-based envoy to international organizations, Mikhail Ulyanov, said the negotiators got off to a “successful” start.
Ulyanov also said two expert-level groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear issues had been tasked “to identify concrete measures to be taken by Washington and Tehran” to restore the deal.
The Russian envoy predicted in a separate tweet that it would take “some time” to restore the nuclear agreement.
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — The father of Ivan Zhdanov, the director of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been remanded in custody on a charge of abuse of office, which he and his supporters reject.
The Rostov regional court on April 7 upheld an earlier decision by a lower court in the city of Rostov-on-Don to keep 66-year-old Yury Zhdanov in pretrial detention at least until May 21.
Yury Zhdanov, who took part in the hearing via a video link from the detention center, and his lawyers requested the court transfer him to house arrest due to his age and the danger of getting infected with the coronavirus while in custody.
Zhdanov said at the hearing that many of those in his cell are sick. He said earlier that the cell he is kept in is so overcrowded that inmates have to sleep in shifts due to the limited number of beds.
Yury Zhdanov was sent to pretrial detention after police searched his home on March 26.
His son said last week that he had “no doubts that the criminal case was launched because of me and my activities.” He called his father’s arrest “absolutely a new level of villainy and turpitude from the [Russian] presidential administration.”
According to Zhdanov, before retiring last summer his father worked as an official in a remote town for several years.
Investigators now accuse Yury Zhdanov of recommending the town’s administration provide a local woman with a subsidized apartment, though it later turned out that the woman’s family had previously received housing allocations.
The apartment was later returned to municipal ownership in accordance with a court decision and no one among those who made the decision was held responsible.
Navalny’s FBK is known for publishing investigative reports about corruption among Russia’s top officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
The latest report focused on a lavish Black Sea mansion that Navalny’s team called “a palace for Putin,” capturing worldwide attention with almost 116 million views on YouTube.
The report showcases a luxurious, 100 billion ruble ($1.32 billion) estate near the popular holiday town of Gelendzhik that it said Putin effectively owns via a complex trail of companies.
The Kremlin has denied the report, saying “one or several [businessmen] directly or indirectly own” the property, adding that it “has no right to reveal the names of these owners.”
Train convoys of heavy Russian military equipment, seen on multiple videos on social media, reportedly shipping from Siberia to the border regions of Ukraine.
The Kerch Strait Bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula shut down briefly, apparently for a major shipment of weaponry.
An uptick in shelling along the line of control separating Ukrainian forces from Russia-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine. Ominous rhetoric on Russian state TV.
Is the Ukrainian-Russian “cold war” about to go “hot”?
Amid talk of war, here are six questions framing the flareup in tension between Russia and Ukraine — and some potential answers.
Ukrainian soldiers patrol along a position at the front line with Russia-backed separatists not far from Avdiyivka in the Donetsk region on April 5.
Isn’t There Already A War?
Yes. The conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region known the Donbas began seven years ago this month and despite multiple cease-fire agreements, has never really ended. More than 13,000 people have been killed since April 2014, according to the United Nations, and more than 1 million have been displaced.
Since July 2020, 45 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed and nearly 320 wounded, a Ukrainian official said last month.
Since late March, though, there’s been a noticeable uptick in Russian troop movements close to Ukraine’s borders and into Crimea, which Russia seized in March 2014.
It’s also set off alarm bells in Western capitals.
What’s With All That Equipment?
Over the past two weeks or so, there’s been a steady accumulation of photographs, video, and other data suggesting major movements of Russian armed units toward or near Ukraine’s borders and into Crimea.
That’s sent open-source researchers, journalists, and others to try to geolocate the imagery and divine the intentions of Russian military command, not to mention the Kremlin.
One prevailing theory is that this is merely a show of force aimed at spooking or intimidating Kyiv and sending a message to the West that Russia is willing to put “boots on the ground” — and a lot of them — very quickly.
“The ostentation with which the troops are being moved confirms that Russia is saber-rattling rather than contemplating a blitzkrieg,” Maksim Samorukov, a fellow with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in an opinion piece published on April 5.
Observers have also pointed out that Russia has done large troop movements in the past, in connection with regular military exercises, without invading. Some analysts say these deployments don’t seem to make sense in that context.
What Does Russia Say?
Not much, or not much that’s clear.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week turned away reporters’ questions about the troop movements, saying that there was nothing to fear and that the repositioning of armed units within Russia’s borders was a strictly domestic concern.
When it comes to Crimea, though, Kyiv and the West — and nearly all of the rest of the world, for that matter — do not accept that, because they do not accept Moscow’s claim to the Black Sea peninsula.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Southern Military District, the command unit with responsibility for areas near the border with the Donbas and the North Caucasus, announced it was conducting an annual readiness check, with several dozen related exercises being held between March 29 and April 30. (The district also technically oversees Russia’s military command for Crimea.)
A few days earlier, Russia’s defense minister added further to the fog. On March 25, Sergei Shoigu announced that a paratrooper unit based in the northwestern city of Pskov, the 56th Air Assault Brigade, would be reorganized, and redeployed to the Crimean port of Feodosia. The closure of the Kerch Strait Bridge was reported to be connected with the transport of related equipment.
A convoy of Russian military equipment is seen on the move in Crimea on March 24.
But while Russia regularly conducts large-scale, district-wide training exercises — often involving thousands of troops, and dozens of units, across wide areas — some observers have said the scale of the equipment movement seen of late is far beyond normal.
On April 6, Shoigu announced broader-scale exercises in all military districts nationwide.
Isn’t There A Cease-Fire?
The oft-violated cease-fire in eastern Ukraine stems from the Minsk accords. A two-part deal, the second was signed in February 2015 by Ukraine and Russia, along with Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was also a signatory.
There’s also the Normandy Format: a grouping made up of Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany that has been trying to end the conflict. That goal has been elusive due to factors that include Russia’s funding and support for the militants in eastern Ukraine, internal Ukrainian politics, and German and French wavering on how forcefully to confront Moscow — and how much support to give Kyiv.
In a statement issued on April 3, the German Foreign Office called for restraint in the current tension, but also used the phrasing “all sides” — which drew criticism from some officials who said it equated threatening Russian troop movements with Ukraine’s defensive posture in the Donbas. (As of April 7, there was no public evidence suggesting Ukraine is doing similar large-scale equipment movement — and unlike Russia in Crimea, any deployments it is making are inside its borders.)
The European Union, meanwhile, has spoken up in support of Ukraine. But the bloc’s lead diplomat, Josep Borrell, was humiliated when he traveled to Russia in early February in an effort to mend fences with Moscow, leading observers to conclude that the EU has little leverage with Russia in this specific context.
Moscow may be trying “to make it clear to the West that the more it backs Ukraine rhetorically, the more the potential risk that it might be forced to make good on its promises,” Mark Galeotti, an analyst and author on Russia, wrote in a column for BNE Intellinews. “This is, after all, something the Kremlin thinks Europe in particular is unwilling to do.”
What About The United States?
Observers also say the timing and scope of the Russian maneuvers suggest a challenge to the United States and in particular President Joe Biden. He’s been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters dating back to the period leading up the outbreak of war in 2014, when he was vice president.
Washington hit Russia with sanctions after the seizure of Crimea, and despite his often-conciliatory rhetoric, Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, kept those sanctions in place.
Biden’s administration has signaled a more confrontational approach: neither reset nor escalation, U.S. officials have said repeatedly since Biden took office In January. “We have asked Russia for an explanation of these provocations, but most importantly what we have signaled directly with our Ukrainian partners is a message of reassurance,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on April 5.
Ukrainian Army personnel display U.S. Javelin anti-tank missiles during a military parade marking Independence Day in Kyiv on August 24, 2018.
The new U.S. administration has hit Moscow with economic sanctions in response to the near-fatal poisoning of opposition activist Aleksei Navalny with a military-grade nerve agent and to his imprisonment when he returned to Russia from Germany three days before Biden’s inauguration. The administration has also threatened unspecified action for a massive cyberattack on U.S. government computers, which it has blamed on Russian intelligence.
On April 2, in Biden’s first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. leader pledged “unwavering” support. That call was preceded by calls between top U.S. defense and military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts.
While the EU has provided hundreds of millions of euros to help Ukraine build a more functional, and less corrupt, government, the United States has provided weaponry and training to Ukrainian forces, including anti-tank missiles, night-vision goggles, and counter-battery radars.
That effort continued on March 1, with the U.S. Defense Department announcement of another $125 million in new aid: “capabilities to enhance the lethality, command and control, and situational awareness of Ukraine’s forces through the provision of additional counter-artillery radars and tactical equipment; continued support for a satellite imagery and analysis capability; and equipment to support military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures.”
The Kremlin bitterly opposes the notion that Ukraine could someday join NATO. But while Kyiv’s membership in the alliance seems to be a distant prospect, that hasn’t stopped Zelenskiy from making public statements about it. “We are committed to reforming our army and defense sector, but reforms alone will not stop Russia,” he said on Twitter after speaking with NATO’s secretary-general. “NATO is the only way to end the war in [the] Donbas.”
What’s Russia’s Endgame?
If there is a Kremlin endgame beyond a couple of big military exercises and relocating a combat brigade, it’s certainly not clear to Washington, Kyiv, or other Western capitals.
But one other place to look for guidance is how Russia has handled other simmering conflicts in its backyard. These so-called “frozen conflicts” have persisted in several places since the Soviet collapse, including Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as Transdniester in Moldova.
In all of them, Russian forces have deployed and remained, either as peacekeepers or as fully garrisoned units, though in reality, they go in unilaterally without the blessing of the United Nations or the OSCE and end up destabilizing the status quo in favor of Moscow.
Deploying international peacekeepers to the Donbas under the aegis of the Vienna-based OSCE has been discussed in the past. Those proposals, however, have been hung up on questions including whether they would be allowed to patrol the Russian-Ukrainian border or merely the line of control in Ukraine.
Many observers say that Russia seems unlikely to risk a renewal of full-scale war or an attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory, at least for the time being. James Sherr, the former head of Chatham House’s Russia program, has suggested that putting a Russian peacekeeping force inside Ukraine may be Moscow’s desired endgame.
“A localized escalation, dramatic and devastating, leading to the deployment of Russian ‘peacekeepers’ on the current demarcation line, is probably the most realistic option,” he wrote in a commentary for the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has tested negative for the coronavirus as concerns over his health mount after he was moved to a prison sick ward with a severe cough and temperature.
“The first test showed a negative result. However, for some reason, they took a second analysis from him. We do not know that result yet,” Navalny’s lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, said on April 7.
With Navalny only months removed from a poison attack that forced doctors into putting him in a medically induced coma for weeks, his associates, including Anastasia Vasilyeva, his personal doctor and the head of the Alliance of Doctors trade union, attempted to see the Kremlin critic on April 6, only to be rebuffed by prison officials.
Police later detained Vasilyeva and at least nine other supporters gathered outside the prison.
President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic is currently incarcerated in what is known as one of Russia’s toughest penitentiaries, Correctional Colony No. 2 in Pokrov, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Navalny, 44, said in an Instagram post published by his allies on April 5 that he had a “severe cough” and a fever of 38.1 degrees Celsius, after a third prisoner in his crowded quarters had been sent to the hospital with suspected tuberculosis.
Navalny has been on hunger strike for nearly a week to protest what he says are deliberate attempts to deprive him of sleep and the failure of authorities to provide proper medical treatment for back and leg pain. His lawyers say that since entering prison last month Navalny has lost a total of 13 kilograms, including 5 kilograms over the past week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Navalny would receive the necessary medical care but no preferential treatment.
Navalny’s health condition is potentially precarious because he spent months last year recovering in Berlin from poisoning by a military-grade nerve agent while traveling in Siberia. Navalny has accused Putin of ordering security agents to assassinate him with the poison, something the Kremlin denies.
Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport in January upon his return from Germany on charges of violating his parole, sparking large-scale protests.
A Moscow court in February found him guilty of violating the terms of his parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
His suspended 3 1/2-year sentence was converted into jail time, though the court reduced that amount to 2 1/2 years for time already served in detention.
The European Union’s drug regulator will begin its investigation next week into the clinical trials in Russia of the Sputnik V vaccine and whether those tests — to ensure efficacy and safety — followed “good clinical practice,” the Financial Times reports.
The U.K.-based newspaper cited anonymous sources familiar with the European Medicines Agency (EMA)’s approval process as expressing ethical concerns over the testing of Sputnik V in preparation for its use in the fight against COVID-19 in Russia and around the world.
It quoted Kirill Dimitriyev, the head of the Kremlin’s sovereign wealth fund, which backed Sputnik V’s development, as saying “there was no pressure [on participants in testing] and Sputnik V complied with all clinical practices.”
EMA approval will hinge in part on determining whether the Russian clinical trials met so-called GCP standards, the newspaper reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin mounted an all-out race for a vaccine ahead of domestic registration of the Sputnik V vaccine in August before a third stage of clinical tests on large segments of volunteers could be completed.
It is being widely used in Russia and dozens of other countries despite early misgivings about data secrecy and reliability among medical experts.
A study published in February in The Lancet, a prestigious peer-review publication in the United Kingdom, eased some international concerns by saying Sputnik V “appears safe and effective.”
But it has received neither U.S. nor EU regulatory approval, although EU members Hungary and Slovakia have purchased it, even as the scramble for vaccinations to beat COVID-19 around the world intensifies.
The European Union’s drug regulator will begin its investigation next week into the clinical trials in Russia of the Sputnik V vaccine and whether those tests — to ensure efficacy and safety — followed “good clinical practice,” the Financial Times reports.
The U.K.-based newspaper cited anonymous sources familiar with the European Medicines Agency (EMA)’s approval process as expressing ethical concerns over the testing of Sputnik V in preparation for its use in the fight against COVID-19 in Russia and around the world.
It quoted Kirill Dimitriyev, the head of the Kremlin’s sovereign wealth fund, which backed Sputnik V’s development, as saying “there was no pressure [on participants in testing] and Sputnik V complied with all clinical practices.”
EMA approval will hinge in part on determining whether the Russian clinical trials met so-called GCP standards, the newspaper reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin mounted an all-out race for a vaccine ahead of domestic registration of the Sputnik V vaccine in August before a third stage of clinical tests on large segments of volunteers could be completed.
It is being widely used in Russia and dozens of other countries despite early misgivings about data secrecy and reliability among medical experts.
A study published in February in The Lancet, a prestigious peer-review publication in the United Kingdom, eased some international concerns by saying Sputnik V “appears safe and effective.”
But it has received neither U.S. nor EU regulatory approval, although EU members Hungary and Slovakia have purchased it, even as the scramble for vaccinations to beat COVID-19 around the world intensifies.
Vladimir Litvinenko, the rector at the St. Petersburg State Mining University who chaired the committee that awarded Russian President Vladimir Putin his doctorate in 1997, has become one of the new members of the Forbes billionaire’s list.
In its annual rating of the world’s wealthiest people, released on April 6, Forbes estimated Litvinenko’s assets at $1.5 billion.
Forbes said Litvinenko’s wealth jumped on the back of a rise in the share price of Moscow-based PhosAgro, a chemical holding company that produces fertilizers and phosphates.
The 65-year-old Litvinenko owns almost 21 percent of the company.
“The company’s share prices increased from 2,443 rubles ($31.8) per share (April 6, 2020) to 4,163 rubles ($54,2) per share (April 6, 2021),” Forbes wrote.
Litvinenko, who has been rector at the university since 1994, also led Putin’s election campaign in St. Petersburg on three different occasions.
In 2006, researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington who studied Putin’s thesis said they had found that 16 of 20 pages of the thesis’s key section had been either copied in full or with minimal changes from a textbook titled Strategic Planning And Public Policy, written by University of Pittsburgh professors David I. Cleland and William R. King in 1979 and translated into Russian in 1982.
Putin’s thesis was titled Strategic Planning Of The Reproduction Of The Mineral Resource Base Of A Region Under Conditions Of The Formation Of Market Relations.
In a 2006 interview with the magazine Vlast, Litvinenko said that he had “no doubts” that Putin wrote his thesis himself.
Litvinenko’s daughter, Olga Litvinenko, told RFE/RL in 2018 that her father wrote the thesis for Putin after he became the university’s rector with the president’s support.
Putin has never commented publicly on the allegations.
An Iranian ship long anchored off Yemen and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has reportedly been damaged by an explosion in the Red Sea.
The hard-line Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, reported late on April 6 that the vessel, a cargo-category ship identified as Iran Saviz or MV Saviz, was targeted on April 6 by a mine that was attached to it.
It said the ship “has been stationed in the Red Sea for the past few years to support Iranian commandos sent on commercial vessel [anti-piracy] escort missions.”
Earlier, Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya quoted unidentified sources as saying the vessel was attacked off the coast of Eritrea and was affiliated with the IRGC.
Iranian officials did not immediately comment on the reports, which followed a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two archenemies accused each other of responsibility.
But Iranian state television later tacitly acknowledged the incident, citing foreign media.
The New York Times cited IRGC-linked social-media accounts alleging that Israel had carried out the attack. The newspaper noted that Israel had not confirmed that information.
But it quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that Israel had informed the United States of its role after the early morning attack on April 6.
The incident comes amid years of naval skirmishes between Iranian, Israeli, and Western forces. But it also coincided with the start in Vienna hours later of tense international talks involving the United States, Iran, and other countries intended to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that Washington withdrew from nearly three years ago.
U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January with a commitment to revive that deal if Tehran returned to full compliance.
Iran has responded to the reimposition of crippling U.S. economic sanctions by gradually reducing its commitments under the accord.
Israel has been a strident critic of the JCPOA, which aimed to ease economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
“We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told party colleagues on April 6 after being picked to form a government following inconclusive elections.
The Saviz was placed back under U.S. sanctions by Donald Trump’s administration following the JCPOA withdrawal in 2018.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said it was “aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea,” adding, “We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident.”
Representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia met with Iranian officials in Vienna on April 6 in an effort to revive the deal.
Iranian and U.S. officials called the meetings “constructive.”
With reporting by The New York Times, Tasnim, AP, and Reuters
Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, a monthly RFE/RL newsletter tracking China’s resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. I’m RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here’s what I’m following this month:
Welcome To The New Era
China owned the global stage in March. The month kicked off with the annual National People’s Congress, with Beijing charting its future course, and culminated in a series of diplomatic wins and setbacks that point to China’s steady, but uneven, rise in the world.
Finding Perspective: Beijing is eager to project that it is a true global power. That was the message of the National People’s Congress, as I reported here.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials touted China’s ascent at the political gathering, setting up declared victories at home over the coronavirus and extreme poverty as a blueprint for future engagement around the world.
Across Eurasia, Chinese diplomats have already taken to promoting these narratives and Beijing’s “vaccine diplomacy” continued to make inroads, especially in developing nations. But China’s rise is also not without its growing pains.
The pandemic is forcing Beijing to adapt its flagship Belt and Road Initiative and the country found itself in a tough diplomatic dispute after tit-for-tat sanctions with the European Union and other Western nations over China’s rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Why It Matters: China is still learning how to be a world leader, but it is becoming increasingly confident in its moves.
This means that Beijing’s rivalry with the West, particularly the United States, is set to intensify, as highlighted by the fiery exchange between high-ranking U.S. and Chinese officials in Alaska.
As I discussed in an article in late March, Eurasia won’t be the focal point of superpower tensions, but it will be far from immune.
Read More
RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service reported that Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe visited Budapest on March 25 as the first stop on a tour of southeastern Europe that took place shortly after the EU imposed sanctions on Chinese officials.
Few details about Fenghe’s visits have been made public, as my colleagues at RFE/RL’s Balkan Service reported, looking at the lack of transparency during stops in Serbia and North Macedonia.
Simultaneous Western pressure on Beijing and Moscow is pushing the two countries closer together, as evidenced by a March 23 press conference where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi jointly bashed the United States.
Expert Corner: Just How Close Are Beijing And Moscow?
Readers asked: “Relations between China and Russia are about to enter a new phase, but where exactly is this relationship going?”
“Beijing and Moscow increasingly need each other, but Russia needs China more than the other way around — so in the future, China can use its growing leverage to get concessions from Russia on commercial deals or some policy issues that don’t cross the Kremlin’s red lines.” — Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center
“There are real fissures between Russia and China, but the persistence of the factors driving their partnership mean they will challenge the United States and Europe for the foreseeable future. Their alignment increases the risks that both countries pose. Together, they are a more potent force that can oppose both the United States and Europe.” — Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former senior U.S. intelligence analyst
“A full alliance between China and Russia is not coming, but both Beijing and Moscow feel united in their confrontation with the United States. Despite potential areas of limited confrontation in Central Asia or growing competition in the arms trade, the reasons to work closer and minimize tensions so far outweigh concerns for future disagreements.” — Anton Barbashin, editorial director at Riddle Russia
Do you have a question about China’s growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org or reply directly to this e-mail and I’ll get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.
Three More Stories From Eurasia
1. What’s In A Deal?
Beijing inked a long-rumored 25-year strategic pact with Iran on March 27 that could greatly expand its influence in the Middle East and set China up to reap a diplomatic boost if the nuclear deal with Tehran and Washington can be revived.
Digging Deeper: China has its sights on the future. Part of the motivation of the agreement is to reassure Iran as the Biden administration looks to rekindle nuclear talks with Tehran.
The 25-year pact itself outlines broad economic, military, and political cooperation, but there is plenty of reason to be skeptical about it, as I explored here in my article.
There have been reports of the deal being worth $400 billion, but no figure has been confirmed. A draft seen by RFE/RL doesn’t mention any amount. Future investment likely won’t be possible unless Tehran returns to the nuclear deal and sanctions placed on Iran by the Trump administration are lifted.
The View From Home: China also has a spotty track record of not following through on its deals with Iran. Moreover, the Iranian public remains highly suspicious of the agreement.
My colleague Golnaz Esfandiari looked at Tehran’s efforts to reassure the public after it signed the pact with Beijing.
2. Buyer’s Remorse
Dritan Abazovic, Montenegro’s deputy prime minister, made headlines on March 26 when he said that the EU should help the small Balkan country repay a $1.18 billion loan to the Export-Import Bank of China for the construction of a highway.
The Tightrope: Abazovic has since tried to walk back his remarks, my colleagues at RFE/RL’s Balkan Service told me, after the comments attracted international attention to the massive debt Montenegro owes to China.
The first tranche of repayment for the 2014 loan is reportedly due this year and the road is still under construction.
3. Broken But Not Dead
Government pressure in Kazakhstan has nearly silenced the guerrilla activism that turned the country into an unlikely window on China’s human rights abuses, Aigerim Toleukhanova from RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service and I reported in an article in early April.
Demonstrations against the internment of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in neighboring Xinjiang are ongoing, with a small but persistent picket outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty.
The protests, however, are a far cry from the activism in the country over the issue in 2018 and 2019, which has been effectively quelled by a Kazakh government eager to preserve ties with Beijing.
The Human Toll: Perhaps the individual toll of the camps is best exemplified by Qalida Akytkhan, a 67-year-old grandmother whose three sons are interned in camps in Xinjiang.
“At night, I take a photo of my three sons and hold it to my chest,” she said during an interview. “I can’t sleep without it. I put it next to my head on my pillow. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep until 5 a.m.”
Across The Supercontinent
Shifting Course: Ukraine plans to nationalize Motor Sich, an aerospace manufacturer that is majority-owned by Chinese companies, due to its strategic importance to national defense. My colleague Ievgen Solonyna from RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service has a good breakdown of the saga (in Ukrainian.)
Cooled Off: Despite warm public rhetoric of close ties, Beijing is keeping its distance from the embattled regime of Belarus’s Alyaksandr Lukashenka, as I focus on here in my article.
On The List: Ilhan Kyuchyuk, an ethnic Turkish Bulgarian deputy at the European Parliament, was among those targeted by Beijing in response to sanctions brought by Brussels over Xinjiang. Kyuchyuk told RFE/RL’s Bulgarian Service that he believes he was included because he helped an imprisoned ethnic Uyghur economist receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Diplomatic Booster: Budapest approved emergency use of China’s CanSino Biologics coronavirus vaccine on March 22, RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service reported.
It is the first EU country to do so. Hungary was already an outlier, granting use to Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm, despite neither being approved by Brussels.
One Thing To Watch This Month
The United Nations has begun negotiations with China for a visit “without restrictions” to Xinjiang to see how Uyghur and other Muslim minorities are being treated in the region, according to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Negotiations will likely be slow. In the meantime, expect more efforts from Beijing to try and change the global narrative around the internment camps.
If you enjoyed this briefing and don’t want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your in-box the first Wednesday of each month.
An Armenian judge has dropped a criminal case against former President Robert Kocharian and his co-defendants over a deadly crackdown on protesters more than a decade ago.
Anna Danibekian, the judge presiding over the two-year trial in Yerevan, threw out the coup charges on April 6, 11 days after the Constitutional Court found “invalid” an article of the Criminal Code under which the accused were being prosecuted.
However, Danibekian ruled that Kocharian and his former chief of staff, Armen Gevorgian, will continue to stand trial on bribery charges which they also deny.
Kocharian, who served as president from 1998 to 2008, and two retired generals, Yuri Khachaturov and Seyran Ohanian, were charged in 2018 with overthrowing the constitutional order.
The charge stemmed from clashes during postelection protests in Yerevan in 2008 during which eight demonstrators and two police officers died.
The 66-year-old ex-president has rejected the allegations against him as political retaliation by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
He was released from detention in June 2020 after paying a record $4.1 million bail.
Pashinian was one of the organizers of the 2008 protest and was ultimately jailed until being released in 2011 under a government amnesty. He came to power in 2018 after leading massive demonstrations that ousted his predecessor.
Danibekian’s decision comes as Armenia prepares for early parliamentary elections in June, triggered by opposition demands Pashinian step down over his leadership during a six-week war with Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, which ended in what many Armenians felt was a humiliating defeat.
Kocharian, a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, was one of the leaders of the region’s separatist forces and was Nagorno-Karabakh’s first de facto president between December 1994 and March 1997.
In January, Kocharian said he would participate in any early elections.
Vasfije Krasniqi-Goodman, a newly elected member of Kosovo’s parliament, has broken taboos in the country by speaking about her experience as a survivor of rape during the 1998-99 war. Despite the prevalence of such war crimes, no perpetrators have been convicted in Kosovo. In her new role as a lawmaker, Krasniqi-Goodman says she will try to act as the voice of her fellow survivors as she fights for justice.
A dispute within Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has spilled into public view with a deputy commander lashing out at an aide to the IRGC’s commander in chief who has ambitions to win the presidency in a June election.
Divisions within the IRGC over the vote became public when Yadollah Javani, an IRGC deputy commander for political affairs, gave an interview with the Fars news agency on April 3.
Javani accused Saeed Mohammad, the former commander of IRGC’s construction conglomerate Khatam al-Anbya, of “violations” and said he had been dismissed due to his pursuit of the presidency.
Mohammad has been raising his profile ahead of the June 18 vote, which could bring a hard-liner to power.
“The IRGC does not and will not support Saeed Mohammad or any other candidate in the election,” Javani told Fars.
Javani also said the IRGC opposes members of its ranks entering the election arena without going through “legal processes.”
Mohammad announced his resignation from the construction conglomerate in early March, suggesting that he could run for the presidency.
Following his resignation, he was appointed as a special adviser to IRGC Commander in Chief Mohammad Salami.
Mohammad has hit back at Javani — denying he committed any “violations” and saying that Javani is not a spokesman for the IRGC. Mohammad said Javani’s criticism was “his personal” view.
A statement from Mohammad’s office published by Iranian state media charged that Javani’s interview has created public distrust and undermines the “maximum participation” in the election that has been demanded by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
No Agreed Candidate?
Washington-based analyst Ali Afshari says the public dispute suggests the IRGC leadership has not agreed upon a single presidential candidate.
Afshari told RFE/RL that Mohammad, 53, does not appear to be the establishment’s preferred candidate — despite speculation that his profile fits Khamenei’s call for a relatively young and ideologically hard-line president.
“The attacks against Saeed Mohammad do not come only from senior IRGC officials and hard-line figures,” Afshari said. “Some in the [IRGC’s] Basij force have also launched heavy attacks against him while calling for the Guardians Council to disqualify him” from the election.
In his interview with Fars, which is affiliated with the IRGC, Javani said Khamenei’s call for a “young and Hezbollahi” government means the Iranian leader is seeking a government with “an Islamic approach.”
“Therefore, being young is a symbol of dynamism and [hard] work,” Javani said.
A day after Javani’s interview, IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif denied that there were divisions within the IRGC. Sharif said the IRGC will not “approve or destroy” any candidate.
He also would not confirm whether Mohammad had violated the IRGC’s legal procedures, saying: “An IRGC deputy perceived that a violation took place, but this may not be the IRGC’s official view.”
Saeed Mohammad (file photo)
“If [Mohammad] committed any violation, then why did an IRGC commander appoint him as his adviser,” Sharif said, referring to Salami’s decision to designate Mohammad as his special adviser.
There are reports that several former IRGC members could contest the presidency in June.
They include parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and former IRGC commander Saeed Dehghan, who serves as a military adviser to Khamenei.
Other conservatives have also signaled their intention to run for president, including the former head of the state television, Ezatollah Zarghami.
Hard-liners aim to unify power in Iran after having taken control of the parliament in 2019 elections characterized by mass disqualifications of candidates by the hard-line Guardians Council.
Turnout in that vote was the lowest in the history of the Islamic republic.
Swiss-based political analyst Mehdi Talaati said the hard-line faction of the Iranian establishment is attempting to restrict the number of candidates to create unity and raise its chances of winning the election.
“If the hard-line faction, which has several military candidates, enters the election with multiple candidates, they could be defeated by the reformists. Therefore, they’re trying to resolve this issue before the vote,” Talati said in an interview with the BBC.
The younger brother of Khamenei, a reformist cleric named Hadi Khamenei, said in an April 5 interview with Enetkhabnews that the future president could come from the Iranian establishment’s hard-line faction.
“It’s still not clear. But it is very likely that the future government will be from the [faction] that already controls everything,” he said.
Police detained the head of the Russian Alliance of Doctors, Anastasia Vasilyeva, on April 6 after she requested permission to examine Aleksei Navalny inside a prison around 100 kilometers from Moscow. The Kremlin critic has been moved to a sick ward in the facility amid reports of a possible tuberculosis outbreak there.
A Russian court has ordered a fine against the popular video-sharing application TikTok in the country’s latest major dispute with a global social platform over content allegedly related to political protests.
The Moscow court ruled on April 6 that TikTok failed to delete content that it said was related to unsanctioned demonstrations, according to local reports.
Russian critics of the Kremlin routinely use international social networks, including Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, to get around state control of the media and reach tens of millions of citizens with their anti-government messages.
Some local reports suggested the TikTok fine — 2.6 million roubles ($34,000) — pertained to alleged appeals to minors urging them to join political demonstrations.
Russian authorities this week backed off slightly from a threat to ban the Twitter social network but have punitively slowed its user connections and announced suits targeting fellow Western digital giants Google and Facebook.
TikTok is owned by China’s ByteDance and reports nearly 700 million active users worldwide.
India and Pakistan have banned TikTok in the past, citing politically contentious posts, and then-President Donald Trump sought unsuccessfully last year to ban it in the United States.
Russia’s state communications regulator said on April 5 that it wouldn’t ban Twitter amid a dispute over content related to protests but would continue to slow the U.S. social network’s speed inside the country until the middle of May.
Imprisoned Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny in January used U.S. social-media networks to organize some of the largest anti-government protests since 2011-12.
A Russian court on April 2 levied a nearly $120,000 fine against Twitter for failing to removes posts related to those protests.
The Russian regulator has also focused its complaints against Twitter over alleged failures to remove child pornography and content the overseers said encourages drug use and suicide among children.
Twitter said it has a zero-tolerance policy regarding child pornography and other content deemed harmful.
Roskomnadzor began slowing the speed of traffic on Twitter last month.
In its April 5 statement, the regulator said it would not ban Twitter yet after it claimed the platform took down 1,900 of 3,100 posts with banned content.
Russia’s efforts to tighten control of the Internet and social media date back to 2012, shortly after the largest anti-government protests in years.
Since then, a growing number of restrictions targeting messaging apps, websites, and social-media platforms have been introduced in Russia.
TASHKENT — Uzbekistan’s Erk (Freedom) Party, which was banned in the 1990s and its leader forced out of the country and his associates jailed, says it plans to try to field a candidate for president in the election later this year.
According to a party statement on April 5, two members of the party, Salovat Umrzoqov and Jahongir Otajonov, have officially expressed their intentions to try to become the party’s candidate for the vote.
It added that the party’s Central Committee will decide later which of the candidates will be officially nominated for the poll that is scheduled for October 24.
“The Erk democratic party, which for 30 years has been conducting its activities under pressure and persecutions since it became Uzbekistan’s first-ever independent political party to be officially registered with the Justice Ministry in 1991, has decided to nominate its candidate for the upcoming presidential election,” the party said in the online statement.
In January 2020, the Uzbek Justice Ministry refused to officially reregister the party, with Justice Minister Ruslanbek Davletov saying at the time that Erk “has remained in the past” and cannot relaunch its activities. It is highly unlikely that Erk will be allowed to officially run a candidate in the October vote.
Well-known Uzbek poet Muhammad Solih, who founded the party, was the only challenger to President Islam Karimov in the Central Asian nation’s first post-Soviet vote in 1991.
Independent observers said at the time that about 50 percent of voters supported Solih, but official results said he obtained only 12 percent of the vote.
Election officials proclaimed Karimov the winner, sparking a student demonstration that was brutally dispersed. The number of students killed in the action is still unknown. In the aftermath of the crackdown, all opposition newspapers were shut down and probes were launched against opposition leaders, who had to flee the country.
Solih fled Uzbekistan for Azerbaijan in 1993 and later settled in Turkey, where he has since resided.
Karimov died in 2016 and his successor, President Shavkat Mirziyoev, has been releasing political prisoners as part of a policy of gradually reducing authoritarian control in the county.
Mirziyoev has since positioned himself as a reformer, opening his country to its neighbors and the outside world, although many activists say the changes have not gone nearly far enough.
Although Mirziyoev has said he is not against having opposition political groups in Uzbekistan, it has been nearly impossible for genuine opposition parties to get registered since the country gained independence in late 1991.
Last week, six months ahead of the election and with physical attacks on government critics mounting, the government criminalized the “insult and slander” of the president in digital and online form.
Critics say the move is aimed at muzzling bloggers and others ahead of the election.
St. George slays a dragon on an ammunition-box panel from the front lines at Avdiyivka, Ukraine.
Klymenko says: “Most people think of this war as of something very far away. It was important for me to show people that the war is real, that this ammunition box is real, and it stored real weapons that killed real people.”
He told Reuters: “I don’t want this war to exist. And I don’t want this project to exist either.”
Russia’s Alliance of Doctors trade union has called for jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to receive “qualified treatment” after he was moved to a sick ward after complaining of a cough and temperature.
Navalny said in an Instagram post on April 5 that doctors had officially diagnosed him with a “severe cough” and a temperature of 38.1 degrees Celsius, which indicates a slight fever, after a third prisoner in his quarters had been sent to the hospital with suspected tuberculosis.
Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy head of the medical trade union, told Current Time late on April 5 that while the prison infirmary has “professional doctors,” they work in conditions where they are not provided with enough equipment to manage a patient.”
“The medical infirmary at the penitentiary is an isolation ward. They isolated [Navalny] because he showed symptoms of an infectious disease. That is good, but what he needs is not just isolation but qualified treatment,” Ryabkov said, adding that the union will hold a “humanitarian action” near the prison to support Navalny. Current Time is the Russian-language TV network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic is currently incarcerated in Correctional Colony No. 2, about 100 kilometers from Moscow, which is known as one of the toughest penitentiaries in Russia.
Navalny said his prison unit consists of 15 people, three of whom have been hospitalized with suspected tuberculosis since he arrived.
Tuberculosis is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs and is spread from person to person through tiny droplets released into the air, mainly via coughs and sneezes.
It has largely been eradicated in developed countries and a person with a healthy immune system often successfully fights it.
In his April 5 post, Navalny said his prison unit has been fed clay-like porridge and frozen potatoes. He is currently on a hunger strike to demand better conditions. Malnutrition and weight loss undermine an immune system’s ability to fight tuberculosis.
“I have a legally guaranteed right to invite a specialist doctor at my own expense. I will not give up this right as prison doctors can be trusted just as much as state TV,” the 44-year-old said in the Instagram post.
Navalny had previously complained of acute back and leg pain as well as sleep deprivation by guards.
Navalny criticized recent news reports by state-owned media that he is serving in a prison with comfortable conditions. He invited state media correspondents to come stay the night in his prison with tuberculosis-infected cellmates.
Russian police arrested Navalny in January upon his return from Germany on charges of violating his parole while abroad, sparking large-scale protests. The anti-corruption fighter had been recuperating in Berlin for several months after being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in Siberia.
Navalny has accused agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service of attempting to assassinate him with the poison.
A Moscow court in February found him guilty of violating the terms of his parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
His suspended 3 1/2-year sentence was converted into jail time, though the court reduced that amount to 2 1/2 years for time already served in detention.
Navalny’s imprisonment has caused a chorus of international criticism, with the United States and its allies demanding his unconditional release and vowing to continue to hold those responsible for his poisoning to account.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he has “significant concerns” about Russia’s military buildup near its border with Ukraine.
In a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on April 5, Johnson also voiced “unwavering support” for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Johnson’s office said.
He is the latest Western leader to speak with Zelenskiy in recent days amid reports of significant Russian troop movement near Ukraine’s border.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Zelenskiy on April 2 about the buildup in his first call with the Ukrainian leader since taking office in January.
Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in two eastern provinces has spiked in recent weeks despite a cease-fire agreement reached in the summer.
In the meantime, Russia has been moving troops toward its border with Ukraine in what Moscow says is an exercise. The United States has called it an attempt to intimidate Ukraine.
During the call with Johnson, Zelenskiy asked the United Kingdom and its allies to beef up their presence in its neighborhood, according to a readout of the conversation published by the Ukrainian president’s office.
“Russia’s recent actions pose a serious challenge to the security of Ukraine, NATO member states, and the whole of Europe,” Zelenskiy said.
He also urged Western nations to impose tougher sanctions on Russia for its destabilizing activities and invite Ukraine into NATO’s Membership Action Plan. The action plan is a NATO program of assistance designed to help countries wishing to join the alliance meet its criteria.
Russia is opposed to Ukraine joining the military alliance and recently warned NATO countries against sending troops to support Ukraine.
Ukraine has been battling the Russia-backed separatists in a low-simmering war since 2014, when protesters in Kyiv toppled Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych.
More than 13,000 people have been killed in the ensuing seven years. Russia is demanding Ukraine give the separatist-controlled regions greater autonomy, which would effectively prevent the country from joining NATO.
Ukraine has blamed the Russia-backed separatists for the recent spike in hostilities, while Moscow has pointed the finger at Kyiv.
Russia, which forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014 after long denying the presence of its troops there, has consistently denied involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions despite significant evidence to the contrary.
Some analysts have suggested that the recent actions may be Russia’s way of testing the new Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine.
Russia’s state communications regulator has backed down from banning Twitter amid a dispute over content on its platform.
However, it said on April 5 that it will continue to slow the speed of the U.S. social network inside the country until the middle of May.
Russia has been engaged in a fight with U.S. social media, including Twitter, over content it deems prohibited, such as calls to join political protests.
Russian critics of the Kremlin use social networks, including Twitter and YouTube, to get around state control of the media and reach tens of millions of citizens with their anti-government messages.
A Russian court on April 2 levied a nearly $120,000 fine against Twitter for posts related to anti-government protests in January.
The Russian regulator has also focused its complaints against Twitter over the network’s apparent failure to remove child pornography as well as content encouraging drug use and suicide among children.
Twitter said it had a zero-tolerance policy regarding child pornography and other content deemed harmful.
Roskomnadzor began slowing the speed of traffic on Twitter last month as a response to what it called Twitter’s refusal to remove content it deemed impermissible. It threatened to ban the network if it did not comply.
In its April 5 statement, the regulator said it would not ban Twitter yet after it claimed the platform took down 1,900 of 3,100 posts with banned content.
Rokomnadzor said Twitter had sped up the removal of content following a Russian request to 81 hours. However, that is still below the 24-hour time limit stated in the law.
Twitter said in a statement that it had been in contact with Roskomnazdor but did not confirm it had taken down 1,900 posts.
“It was a productive discussion about how we can both work to ensure that reports of such illegal content are dealt with expeditiously,” Twitter said.
Russia’s efforts to tighten control of the Internet and social media date back to 2012, shortly after the largest anti-government protests in years.
Since then, a growing number of restrictions targeting messaging apps, websites, and social media have been introduced in Russia.
Jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny says a third prisoner in his quarters has been sent to the hospital with suspected tuberculosis since his arrival last month.
In an Instagram post on April 5, Navalny said the latest health check by prison doctors stated he has a “strong cough” and a temperature of 38.1 Celsius, which indicates a slight fever.
President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, 44, is currently incarcerated in Correctional Colony No. 2, about 100 kilometers from Moscow, which is known as one of the toughest penitentiaries in Russia.
Navalny said his prison unit consists of 15 people, three of whom have been hospitalized with suspected tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs and is spread from person to person through tiny droplets released into the air mainly via coughing and sneezing.
It has largely been eradicated in developed countries and a person with a healthy immune system often successfully fights it.
In his April 5 post, Navalny said his prison unit had been malnourished with clay-like porridge and frozen potatoes. He is currently on a hunger strike to demand better conditions.
Malnutrition and weight loss undermine an immune system’s ability to fight tuberculosis.
Navalny criticized recent news reports by state-owned media that he is serving in a prison with comfortable conditions.
He invited state media correspondents to come stay the night in his prison with tuberculosis-infected cellmates.
Russian police arrested Navalny in January upon his return from Germany on charges of violating his parole, sparking large-scale protests.
The anti-corruption fighter had been recuperating in Berlin for several months after being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.
Navalny has accused agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service of attempting to assassinate him with the poison.
A Moscow court in February found him guilty of violating the terms of his parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
His suspended 3 1/2-year sentence was converted into jail time, though the court reduced that amount to 2 1/2 years for time already served in detention.
Navalny’s imprisonment has drawn a chorus of international criticism, with the United States and its allies demanding his unconditional release and vowing to continue to hold those responsible for his poisoning to account.
Kosovo’s parliament has elected Vjosa Osmani, the candidate of the ruling Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) movement, as the country’s new president. Osmani was elected with 71 votes on April 4 after the third ballot. The 38-year-old lawyer has been rated Kosovo’s most popular politician.
Preparations are in full swing for a presidential visit in the Uzbek city of Jizzakh and its suburbs, where roads are being repaired and walls are being repainted.
The Jizzakh provincial government has ordered all neighborhood committees to prepare for a “possible” visit by President Shavkat Mirziyoev. “The governor’s office said, ‘The president can arrive at any moment, so be ready,’” one neighborhood committee member told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service on condition of anonymity.
Similar preparations for presidential visits have been under way since late March in several other provinces, with the authorities paying particular attention to renovation work in less prosperous residential neighborhoods.
The work is going on even though there have not been any imminent visits announced by Mirziyoev to Jizzakh or other regions in the days ahead.
Regional officials have been scrambling to spruce up neighborhoods after Mirziyoev made several unannounced trips to residential neighborhoods — known as “mahallas” — in recent weeks. Some trips resulted in local officials being fired over problems the president reportedly discovered during his visits.
Mirziyoev has absolute and unchecked power in Uzbekistan, controlling all spheres from politics to business. He can fire local officials or appoint new ones as he pleases.
During an unannounced visit to a working-class neighborhood in the town of Chirchiq on March 18, video posted online by the president’s office showed Mirziyoev speaking to several residents who were surprised to see him walking through the area.
Some complained about problems they have in their daily lives such as an aging central heating system, inadequate public transport, and problems with the resident-registration office.
During an official visit to Ferghana in February, Mirziyoev randomly turned his entourage to the Shodiyona mahalla in a less affluent part of the city, disappointing local officials who had elaborately prepared another area for the president to see.
His surprise visit to Shodiyona included meetings with residents there and a firsthand inspection of the area’s shoddy infrastructure and dilapidated roads. What Mirziyoev learned from that visit reportedly contributed to his decision to fire the local governor, the chief of police, and the head of the tax office.
Mirziyoev has said he wants to break from the notorious tradition of excessive preparations ahead of his official visits to regions, where host governors create a facade of prosperity to hide the reality of ordinary residents’ lives.
Extensive preparations often include refurbishing buildings where the president is scheduled to hold meetings. Trees and flowers are often planted along sidewalks, even during the middle of the winter. Local authorities also mobilize teachers, students, and others to sweep the roads where the president’s motorcade is expected to pass.
Officials fear being fired by the president if he sees the real state of affairs.
Residents of neighborhoods where a presidential visit has been announced are also told to dress appropriately and say all the right words to flatter the guest. Criticism is out of question.
Instead of trying to tackle problems and address people’s grievances, local authorities often choose the easier option of simply hiding problems.
‘I Feel Guilty’
Mirziyoev first criticized such elaborate preparations in 2018 after a 23-year-old teacher in Samarkand Province was struck and killed by a truck while cleaning a road ahead of a presidential visit.
The teacher, Diana Yenikeeva, and her colleagues had been ordered by the local government to clear rubbish alongside the highway in Samarkand’s Kattaqurghon district, where Mirziyoev’s motorcade was expected to pass.
Mirziyoev said he “felt guilty” for the death of the young teacher, who left behind a 2-year-old child. He demanded that local officials put an end to the practice of using public-sector employees as a free labor force.
Mirziyoev has also warned regional governments against trying to impress him with a Potemkin village, saying he does his homework before each trip. “I come fully informed about the situation on the ground,” Mirziyoev said during a visit to Syrdaryo Province. “But in many places, they create a false show. It makes me sick and very uncomfortable.”
Central Asian Norm
In fact, it’s a common practice across Central Asia for local authorities to try to impress a visiting president by concealing the true state of affairs.
In Tajikistan, ahead of President Emomali Rahmon’s trip to the southern city of Bokhar in March, trees alongside the roads were wrapped with locally produced silk and cotton fabrics at a cost of $4.40 a meter. The average salary of a teacher in Tajikistan is about $100 a month.
Two men known for criticizing local authorities in the town of Kulob say police keep them locked away whenever Rahmon visits to prevent them from speaking out.
A Tajik neighborhood gets the presidential pre-treatment.
State TV showed hundreds of people, including many children, claiming they were happy residents of the village and greeting the president with a red carpet ceremony, a concert, and a displays of freshly harvested fruits and vegetables.
But that turned out to be a fake show with participants bussed in from other regions.
RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service reported that as soon as Berdymukhammedov left the village, participants in the charade were sent away along with the carpets, the fruit and vegetables, and even a sign containing the name of the village.
Across Central Asia, similar performances are even put on when relatives of the president visit. In January, journalists in Uzbekistan’s southern city of Qarshi criticized what they described as a week of preparation for a one-day visit by Mirziyoev’s eldest daughter, Saida Mirziyoeva.
Words Vs Reality
Since coming to power in 2016, Mirziyoev has been credited with bringing some positive changes to an authoritarian country that had been strictly ruled for 27 years by his predecessor, Islam Karimov.
Mirziyoev freed hundreds of people who’d been jailed by Karimov’s regime on trumped-up charges of religious extremism. He also removed thousands of people from a Karimov-era blacklist of potential extremists — including journalists, opposition figures, and government critics.
However, Uzbekistan still doesn’t allow genuine political opposition and the press remains severely restricted.
On March 31, the newly established Truth And Development opposition party said its activists were attacked by unidentified people as they tried to gather signatures required for the party’s official registration by the Justice Ministry.
On March 27, Uzbek singer-turned-politician Jahongir Otajonov said he was threatened with bodily harm by three unidentified men after announcing plans to run for president in the October election.
So although the Uzbek president has said he is “tired” of false flattery, Mirziyoev has yet to tolerate genuine criticism of his administration or real political competition.
When 67-year-old pensioner Qalida Akytkhan decided to join a small protest outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty, it was three years after three of her sons were detained at a so-called “reeducation camp” in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.
Akytkhan has since become a mainstay at the pickets that, despite police intimidation, have endured outside the consulate since early February. She has joined dozens of other protesters who say their relatives are missing, jailed, or trapped in China’s ongoing crackdown.
United Nations human rights officials estimate that a million or more Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities are detained at camps in a vast Chinese internment system.
Sometimes Akytkhan travels by bus to make the 50-kilometer journey from her home to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Other times she commutes in a shared taxi to the Chinese Consulate, where a loudspeaker at the compound warns protesters they could face prosecution for violating COVID restrictions.
Despite the long journey, constant surveillance by consulate guards, and a steady police presence, Akytkhan says she has no plans to stop joining the group of mostly women protesters. They gather there to demand safe passage home for their relatives — many of whom are Chinese-born ethnic Kazakhs who’ve become naturalized Kazakh citizens or permanent residents of the Central Asian country.
“I will keep going until I get even a tiny piece of information about my children,” Akytkhan tells RFE/RL. “I told these guards, ‘When it is warmer, I will come here with a blanket and will lie down.’”
Qalida Akytkhan says she will keep up her protests until she gets an answerabout her three sons.
The plight of ethnic Kazakhs and other groups interned in Xinjiang has been a source of uproar within Kazakhstan. The testimonies of former detainees, and family members like Akytkhan, fueled a guerrilla advocacy campaign that focused international attention on the issue — turning Kazakhstan into an unlikely window to document rights abuses in Xinjiang.
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Akytkhan’s perseverance and the ongoing protests outside China’s consulate showcase that activism continues in Kazakhstan over the Chinese camps. But the situation today is a far cry from the groundswell of activity around the issue in 2018 and 2019 that forced the Kazakh government to walk a tightrope between appeasing Beijing and quelling an exasperated segment of its own population.
Since then, the government has led a swift crackdown against activists working on Xinjiang issues in the country. It has shut down organizations, arrested activists, and intimidated high-profile figures into exile, leaving only a small but devoted segment for public protests.
“The Kazakh government has long been trying to balance between these two problems,” says Temur Umarov, an expert on China in Central Asia at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Xinjiang is an incredibly sensitive issue for Beijing and [the Kazakh government] knows it needs to keep ties with such an important economic, and increasingly political, partner strong,” Umarov tells RFE/RL.
Shining A Spotlight
Akytkhan, an ethnic Uyghur who married an ethnic Kazakh man, moved from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan and became a Kazakh citizen. One of her sons also moved across the border to Kazakhstan. But her other three sons, daughters-in-law, and 14 grandchildren stayed in China. All were eventually taken to the detention camps.
Now a widow, Akytkhan continues to campaign for her family. She received word from a local official in Xinjiang that her sons were transferred from the camps and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for crimes that she is not aware of.
Her daughters-in-law have since been released from the camps to take care of the children. But they remain under house arrest.
Complicated family connections across the border, like Akytkhan’s, are part of what made Kazakhstan a home for swelling activism about Xinjiang. It has been Kazakhs with relatives among Xinjiang’s ethnic Kazakh minority that have taken up the mantle.
Serikzhan Bilash
Perhaps the loudest critic on the issue was Serikzhan Bilash. His Almaty-based Atajurt Eriktileri group was on the front lines of documenting and raising awareness about the mass detentions.
The group’s volunteers, with relatives detained or missing in Xinjiang, proved to be unusually effective in spreading information about China’s rights abuses. They worked with international media and rights groups by hosting regular press conferences and posting video testimony of recently released detainees.
“Only a small percentage of the Kazakhs that have been in camps have actually shared their stories publicly,” Bilash told RFE/RL. “It’s important to keep collecting more and more firsthand facts about what is happening in Xinjiang.”
But it didn’t take long for Kazakh authorities to become nervous about Bilash and Atajurt’s activities. The group’s attempts to be officially registered with the government were repeatedly denied. That was followed by a series of fines that ultimately culminated in the dramatic March 2019 arrest of Bilash on extremism charges, a common allegation in Kazakhstan for jailing government critics.
Bilash and Atajurt helped attract international attention to the case of Sairagul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizen who crossed illegally from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan in 2018 after working at a camp. She was fleeing detention herself.
Sauytbay’s legal status in Kazakhstan was drawn out, as the government appeared to use her unresolved asylum request as a means to prevent her from speaking about her experiences as a camp worker in Xinjiang. She eventually left Kazakhstan in 2019 for Sweden, where she was granted asylum.
“The Kazakh government is more and more tied to Beijing and now the Kazakh government has lost its independence,” Bilash said. “They sold their independence to China.”
Locked Up In China: The Plight Of Xinjiang’s Muslims
Radio Free Radio/Radio Liberty is partnering with its sister organization, Radio Free Asia, to highlight the plight of Muslims living in China’s western province of Xinjiang.
Bilash eventually accepted a plea bargain that required him to end his activism and keep a distance from Atajurt.
Shortly after, a splinter group made up of some of Bliash’s disaffected former associates was officially registered as Atajurt Eriktileri. But it has not continued the tactics of the previous group to raise awareness of Chinese rights abuses — choosing instead a far less vocal approach.
Yerbol Dauletbek, head of the officially registered group, told RFE/RL the organization will continue to help those affected by the crackdown in Xinjiang. But he said many people affected are now too scared to come forward and share their ordeal.
Dauletbek said he believes ethnic Kazakhs in the camps and those calling for their release have been “quietly abandoned” by Kazakhstan’s government. The episode highlights the government’s evolving strategy to impede Xinjiang activism in the country.
“Now the government is succeeding in intimidating and scaring people from coming forward,” Bilash says. “It is a signal and a warning to scare people from their activism and make them stay silent.”
Bilash eventually left Kazakhstan for Turkey before moving on to the United States. He says he plans to continue his activism there and register a U.S.-based organization focused on Xinjiang.
The Global Stage
China’s internment-camp system has received increased scrutiny and political pressure in recent years. The U.S. State Department recently accused China of committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” against Uyghurs. The Canadian and Dutch parliaments have both declared that the situation in Xinjiang is genocide.
The Chinese state has also been accused of an array of abuses in the region under the guise of the internment system, including forced labor, sterilization, torture, and rape.
A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in September 2018.
But Beijing has also become more forceful in its pushback. Not only does China deny the genocide allegations. It says the camps are “reeducation” facilities for combating terrorism. And it has gone about intimidating and targeting those who speak out publicly about what they’ve witnessed in the camps.
Women who made allegations of rape and sexual abuse in February to the BBC were singled out by Beijing. In a series of press conference in March, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin and Xinjiang regional official Xu Guixiang held up photographs of women who gave firsthand testimony of sexual assault in camps. They insulted the women, calling them liars of “inferior character” and accusing them of adultery.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin holds up pictures of the two women during a news conference in Beijing on February 23.
The Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, Zhang Xiao, has been outspoken in pushing back against accusations that Beijing is mistreating Kazakhs. The embassy’s Instagram page has taken to posting content meant to discredit Sauytbay, accusing her of fabricating the stories about her experiences in Xinjiang.
“[China] is trying its best to change this narrative about what is going on in Xinjiang,” the Carnegie Center’s Umarov says. “But it hasn’t changed much in Central Asia. I don’t think that Beijing has a well-thought-out strategy of how to cope with this problem.”
Kazakhstan’s Tightrope
The Kazakh government has avoided criticizing China and has publicly toed Beijing’s line about the camps — eager not to anger its main investor and strategic partner in the Belt and Road Initiative.
The authorities have elected a new approach to keep Xinjiang activism at bay. Following the high-profile case of Sauytbay, the government elected to avoid drawing international attention to another case. Instead, in October 2020, it granted temporary asylum to four ethnic Kazakhs who’d illegally crossed the border from Xinjiang into Kazakhstan.
Two of those Xinjiang-born asylum seekers who received temporary asylum, Qaisha Aqan and Murager Alimuly, were attacked the same day in January. Aqan was returning home from grocery shopping near Almaty when she was attacked. Alimuly was stabbed in the capital, Nur-Sultan.
In both instances, nothing was stolen. The perpetrators have never been apprehended.
Aqan says she believes the attacks were a politically motivated warning against becoming outspoken about Xinjiang, although she is not sure who was behind the attacks. “It was not random. In one day, [Alimuly] was stabbed and I was attacked,” she told RFE/RL. “The light [on the street] was switched off for two hours. All the [security] cameras stopped working [during my attack]. What a coincidence, right?”
Bekzat Maksutkhan, an associate of Bilash’s, runs a successor group to their original organization called Naghyz Atajurt, or “Real” Atajurt. But it remains unregistered and currently does not have an office.
Maksutkhan has followed the attacks on Alimuly and Aqan, as well as the protests outside the consulate. But he says it’s difficult to keep the organization going given financial pressure and growing intimidation from Kazakh authorities.
“We’ve never interfered with the government. We don’t have any economic interests, nor do we have any political interests. We just deal with human rights issues,” Maksutkhan told RFE/RL. “But we still face a lot of pressure and police often question us.”
With few grassroots organizations left to advocate and increased scrutiny from the authorities, protesters like Akytkhan feel that demonstrating outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty is their last resort. Despite her age and health concerns that caused her to faint outside the consulate during one protest, Akytkhan says she won’t stop until she gets answers about her sons.
“At night, I take a photo of my three sons and hold it to my chest,” she says. “I can’t sleep without it. I put it next to my head on my pillow. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep until 5 a.m.”
ASHGABAT — Turkmenistan’s already battered currency slid sharply, as black market rates reached 40 manats to the U.S. dollar, down nearly 50 percent since January.
The manat has been under pressure for months now, a slide blamed in part on a decrease in remittances sent by Turkmen migrant workers from Turkey to their families.
In mid-January, the manat was trading on the black market for around 27 or 28 to the dollar.
In recent weeks, however, the currency has slid further, and on April 3, RFE/RL correspondents in the capital Ashgabat reported that the manat had reached 38 to the dollar by midday, and 40 by day’s end.
The decline has been blamed by experts in part on the recent opening of the Turkmen-Iranian border, which was closed last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Turkmen government has denied the existence of COVID-19 in the country, despite substantial evidence otherwise.
The central bank established an official rate of 3.5 manats per dollar in 2015 and has not changed it since. All currency exchange in cash has been banned since January 2016.
Turkmenistan’s tightly controlled economy has been struggling for some time, with government revenues depleted partly due to unsuccessful energy deals and low global prices for natural gas.
The Central Asian country sits on some of the world’s largest proven reserves of gas.
The currency crunch began in March 2020, when the government tightened control over foreign currency after China, the main buyer of Turkmen gas, slashed imports and global energy prices plunged.
At the time, the central bank ordered banks to pay salaries of employees of foreign companies, organizations, and entities operating in the country, only in manats.
Last month, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov demanded that officials ensure “strict control over the implementation of regulations when converting manat funds into foreign currency at the official rate.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejects any “step-by-step” lifting of sanctions imposed against it, the state-funded Press TV quoted the ministry’s spokesman as saying on April 3.
“The definitive policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the lifting of all U.S. sanctions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in an interview with Press TV.
U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter said on April 2 that talks next week in Vienna on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal will focus on “the nuclear steps that Iran would need to take in order to return to compliance” with that agreement.
The United States unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear agreement in 2018 under former President Donald Trump, who reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.
Iran reacted by gradually reducing its commitments under the deal, including with a higher uranium enrichment.
U.S. President Joe Biden has signaled his readiness to revive the accord but his administration says Iran must first return to its nuclear commitments.
The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said on April 2 that Tehran is optimistic about the course of the negotiations in Vienna on April 6 during which Tehran and Washington will negotiate indirectly.
“We are about to get out of the impasse,” Salehi said in a conversation on the social-media app Clubhouse.
Earlier, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the resumption of negotiations, scheduled in Vienna, “a healthy step forward.”
But Price added, “These remain early days, and we don’t anticipate an immediate breakthrough as there will be difficult discussions ahead.”
Price said next week’s talks will be structured around working groups that the European Union was forming with the remaining participants in the accord, including Iran.
The United States, like Iran, said it did not anticipate direct talks between the two nations now. Price said the United States remains open to that idea.
“This is a first step,” Biden Iran envoy Rob Malley said on Twitter on April 2. He said diplomats were now “on the right path.”
A Russian defense industry executive and alleged intelligence officer has been added to the FBI’s most-wanted list for his alleged involvement in the theft of trade secrets from a U.S. aviation company.
The FBI said on April 2 on Twitter it is seeking the arrest of Aleksandr Korshunov, 58, saying he is suspected of conspiring to steal trade secrets from the company to benefit Russia.
Korshunov worked for Russian state-owned aviation company United Engine Corporation (UEC), while also serving as an intelligence officer with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the FBI said.
UEC appointed Korshunov in 2009 as its director of marketing and sales, the U.S. law enforcement agency said in a statement accompanying the tweet that includes a photo of Korshunov.
Korshunov’s job was to encourage Western aviation companies to work with UEC to advance Russia’s aviation technology, the FBI said.
“It is alleged that, between 2013 and 2018, Korshunov conspired and attempted to steal trade secrets from an American aviation company, the FBI said. “He hired engineers employed by a subsidiary of a large United States aviation company to consult on the redesign of the Russian PD-14 aero engine.”
Korshunov was able to acquire the company’s confidential, protected, and unique engineering patterns, plans, and procedures “for the benefit of Russia,” the FBI said.
Korshunov has been sought by the FBI since August 2019, when he was indicted by the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was arrested later that month in Italy at the request of the United States.
But his lawyer told TASS that he returned to Moscow in the summer of 2020 “accompanied by Russian law enforcement under arrest.”
Russian authorities said Korshunov was wanted in Russia to face charges of embezzlement and fraud, TASS said.
He was extradited to Russia “under the decision of the Italian Justice Ministry and in accordance with the relevant request,” which Italy’s judiciary had approved before the U.S. sought extradition, the report said.
The original U.S. complaint accused Korshunov and Maurizio Bianchi, the former director of an Italian division of General Electric (GE) Aviation, of hiring former GE employees to prepare a technical report on jet engine accessories using the U.S. company’s intellectual property.
GE Aviation is one of the world’s largest suppliers of civilian and military aircraft engines and has a factory in Cincinnati. It completed the acquisition of an Italian manufacturer of aviation components in 2013.
The Russian Embassy in Washington said its diplomats protested Korshunov’s detention after it was announced in 2019, calling it “illegitimate.”
PRISTINA — The opposition in Kosovo has accused Prime Minister Albin Kurti of trying to stoke instability and provoke snap elections by submitting a surprise bill ahead of a presidential vote.
Kurti’s party Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) on April 2 proposed fast-tracking a law through parliament that would allow Kosovars residing abroad to vote at embassies, potentially strengthening the party’s power in future elections.
The bill angered opposition lawmakers who had been expecting to vote for a new president. They narrowly defeated the fast-track proposal by just four votes, but did not get around to voting for a president.
If parliament does not elect a president by April 5, snap parliamentary elections will automatically be called, potentially opening the door for Kurti to increase his hold over the government.
Vetevendosje, a leftist-nationalist party, won 58 out of 120 seats in February’s elections, just three short of the majority needed to rule without a coalition.
Vetevendosje formed a ruling coalition with nine parliamentarians representing non-Serb ethnic minorities.
Easing the ability for Kosovars abroad to vote would benefit Vetevendosje, which won 75 percent of the ballots cast by the diaspora in the February elections.
Kosovars living abroad can only vote by mail, but the process has had complications, reducing actual participation, analysts say.
During past elections, many Kosovars living abroad failed to receive their mail-in ballots. Others received them too late to vote while some mailed-in ballots got lost, the analysts say.
Kosovars abroad accounted for 7 percent of the February vote.
Lumir Abdixhiku, the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the former ruling party, lashed out at Kurti for the last-minute election bill.
“Kurti either does not want to resolve this issue [of the presidency] or wants to create political instability to hide his inability to solve major problems,” Abdixhiku told reporters.
LDK had been expected to back Vetevendosje’s presidential choice, but that is now uncertain, raising the specter of a snap election.
The number of Russians who have died from the coronavirus has surpassed 225,000, the nation’s statistics agency reported on April 2.
The data published by Rosstat covers the 11-month period from April 2020 through February 2021.
The figure puts Russia third globally for the most coronavirus-related deaths after the United States and Brazil, which have reported 553,000 and 325,000 fatalities, respectively, from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The Rosstat death toll is more than double the widely reported fatality figure provided by the Russian government’s coronavirus task force and which is used by John Hopkins. That figure, which now stands at 99,000, does not take into account deaths that are determined at a later date following an autopsy to have been coronavirus-related.
The Rosstat data released on April 2 shows that 29,493 more Russians died in February compared with the same month last year, a possible reflection of the monthly coronavirus death toll.
February had one more calendar day last year compared with this year.
Russia is one of the few countries that has developed a vaccination proven to be highly effective at preventing the coronavirus, putting it in a good position to slow its own death toll.
However, many of its citizens have been hesitant to receive a shot of the home-grown Sputnik V vaccine.
As of last week, less than 5 percent of the Russian population had been vaccinated.
Some have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the vaccine’s slow acceptance inside the country.
The Kremlin said Putin received his vaccination on March 23, months after the start of the rollout and behind closed doors.
Global coronavirus statistics are murky and some countries, such as China and Iran, are believed to be underreporting deaths.
China, where the coronavirus pandemic originated, has officially reported less than 5,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
News agencies last year reported that crematories in some cities in China, the world’s largest country by population, were so busy due to the pandemic that they were operating around the clock.
