Category: Picks

  • “Putin’s a thief!”

    The chant rang out in cities across Russia on January 23, as crowds took to the streets from Vladivostok in the Far East to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea and were met with a forceful police crackdown as opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s showdown with the Kremlin entered a new phase.

    The last time Russia saw a day of rallies with such geographic scope was in March 2017, after Navalny released a video alleging corruption by then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. This time, an immediate catalyst appeared to be a video report targeting the wealth of President Vladimir Putin himself.

    The nationwide demonstrations were initiated by the Kremlin’s most vocal critic, who languishes in jail, and staged under the slogan “Free Navalny!” But analysts say that the “Palace for Putin” investigation has combined with anger over Navalny’s jailing in a way that may reorient the political balance in Russia going forward.

    “There are two different motives for the protesters, but they are converging,” political analyst Abbas Gallyamov told RFE/RL. “Navalny is becoming synonymous with the fight against corruption.”

    Navalny returned to Russia on January 17 after five months in Germany recovering from the effects of a nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin, apparently banking on enough popular support to help him escape a long prison sentence threatened by the authorities – and mount a robust challenge to Putin’s power.

    The following day, he was jailed for a month pending a court hearing on parole violation charges that could land him behind bars for 3 1/2 years. Before he was led away, he called on Russians to hit the streets in a huge show of solidarity.

    In the video report released the next day – which has now been seen more than 70 million times on YouTube — he told his viewers that Putin and his associates “will keep stealing more and more until they bankrupt the whole country.”

    Revealing what the investigative report says is a $1.36 billion palace on the Black Sea that ultimately belongs to Putin, Navalny said: “Russia sells huge amounts of oil, gas, metals, fertilizer, and timber — but people’s incomes keep falling and falling, because Putin has his palace.”

    Russians responded in droves on January 23, protesting in at least 60 cities and braving winter temperatures that plunged as low as minus 52 degrees Celsius in Yakutsk, Siberia. Many held placards and signs citing the “Palace For Putin” investigation and denouncing official corruption.

    Police reacted with force, wading into peaceful protests, wielding batons and shields to disperse crowds, and filling riot vans with activists — including Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who had returned with him to Moscow from Germany. By late evening in Moscow, more than 3,400 people had been detained across the country, according to the OVD-Info protest monitor group.

    Russian state TV largely ignored the protests, but pro-government online streams baselessly accused Navalny of brainwashing Russia’s youth into dissent, a line often advanced by the authorities in attempts to discredit the opposition movement.

    “It’s not their own kids that they’re bringing out,” a guest on an online chat show run by the state-owned RT channel said about Navalny and his allies. “Navalny’s kids aren’t even in Russia!”

    But evidence of mass teenage participation appeared slim. In Moscow, an estimated 40,000 people came to a protest in central Pushkin Square, with few minors visible in the crowd. A 14-year-old boy who told a reporter he had come “to have a look” was later roughly detained by police amid cries of, “He’s just a child!”

    Navalny’s call for a protest in the midst of winter and the COVID-19 pandemic was seen as a gamble and a test of his ability to mount significant support for a new push against Putin, who has been in power for two decades and last year, in a referendum lambasted by critics, secured the right to run for reelection in 2024 and again in 2030.

    It was not immediately clear whether the sizable, widespread protests would result in Navalny avoiding a lengthy prison sentence. In 2013, large rallies in his support outside the Kremlin and other Moscow landmarks were credited with getting his five-year prison sentence suspended.

    “If protests on January 23 don’t bring about an immediate result — the release of Aleksei Navalny — then such events will happen again and again,” Navalny aide Leonid Volkov told Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

    IN PHOTOS: Navalny Supporters Brave Police Crackdown To Demand His Release

    IN PHOTOS: Navalny Supporters Brave Police Crackdown To Demand His Release Photo Gallery:

    IN PHOTOS: Navalny Supporters Brave Police Crackdown To Demand His Release

    Thousands of demonstrators were braving brutally cold weather and threats of police crackdowns across Russia on January 23 to call for the release of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, a Kremlin critic jailed last week upon returning to Moscow after medical treatment in Germany for poisoning.

    The future of Russia’s embattled opposition movement also remains uncertain, but the size of the protests — even in the face of a concerted weeklong crackdown aimed at thwarting them — suggests that a substantial number of Russians may be determined to keep up the pressure.

    Tatyana Stanovaya, a political analyst, said that the Russian authorities “made two critical mistakes — Navalny’s poisoning and his arrest,” suggesting that instead of sidelining him, the Kremlin has only strengthened his base.

    “The results of many, many years of painstaking work by the Kremlin to push the real opposition” to the political margins “were ceremoniously buried today in a single day,” Stanovaya wrote on Telegram.

    The harsh police response and high number of arrests also point to what could be a bitter and protracted standoff if the rallies persist in the weeks ahead, especially with potentially pivotal parliamentary elections due to be held in September.

    Inside 'Putin's Palace'

    Inside 'Putin's Palace' Photo Gallery:

    Inside ‘Putin’s Palace’

    Images made by Aleksei Navalny’s anti-corruption team reveal the astonishing scale and luxury of a property on Russia’s Black Sea coast purportedly used by Vladimir Putin as his personal “palace.”

    In the meantime, Putin’s popularity has slipped amid the pandemic and anger over what many view as inadequate state support during Russia’s attendant economic crisis. The president has spent much of the time in recent months at his residence outside Moscow, making few public appearances.

    Neither has he commented publicly on Navalny’s report about the Black Sea palace, which his spokesman quickly dismissed as “lies.”

    “Navalny has taken over the initiative,” analyst Gallyamov said. “Now the state is defending itself.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Police clashed violently with protesters in Moscow on January 23, beating back crowds and detaining demonstrators. More than 2,100 people are reported to have been detained by police at rallies across Russia demanding the release of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, described as some of the biggest anti-government protests in the country in years.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian police detained Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, during a protest in Moscow on January 23. Her lawyer was not allowed to accompany her to a police van as she was taken away. Navalnaya was released after several hours in custody. Navalny called on his supporters to protest after being arrested last weekend when he returned to Moscow for the first time since being poisoned in August with a military-grade nerve agent. Navalny had been treated in Germany. Police have declared the rallies in Moscow and dozens of other cities illegal and have arrested over 1,900 people.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Thousands rallied across Russia’s regions on January 23 to demand the release of imprisoned opposition leader and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny. Navalny was jailed upon his return to Moscow last weekend after receiving medical treatment in Germany for Novichok poisoning. There were demonstrations in Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Bernaul, Perm, Tomsk, and Ufa, with scuffles with truncheon-wielding police recorded in some of the cities.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian police detained Lyubov Sobol, a close ally of Aleksei Navalny, at a rally in central Moscow calling for the release of the opposition leader and Kremlin critic. Navalny was jailed last weekend upon returning to Moscow after medical treatment in Germany for Novichok poisoning. Sobol was speaking to reporters in a crowd of people on January 23 when riot police swooped in and surrounded her. She was herded through the crowd to a waiting police van, where she was taken away. The Kremlin has said the nationwide protests are illegal. Hundreds have been detained.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Young and old came to demonstrate and rally in central Vladivostok on January 23, braving cold weather and police crackdowns to call for the release of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny. The Kremlin critic was jailed last weekend upon his return to Moscow after receiving medical treatment in Germany for Novichok poisoning. Many demonstrators were aware of a documentary produced by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation that exposed a billion-dollar palace allegedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Protesters could be seen holding screenshots from the film. Reports suggest the protests were likely to be Russia’s largest since March 2017, when coordinated anti-government demonstrations took place in 99 cities and towns across the country.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Thousands of demonstrators were braving brutally cold weather and threats of police crackdowns across Russia on January 23 to call for the release of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, a Kremlin critic jailed last weekend upon returning to Moscow after medical treatment in Germany for Novichok poisoning.

    The OVD-Info group, which monitors Russian police activity, reported at least 237 arrests across 30 cities ahead of the planned Moscow and St. Petersburg rallies — adding that authorities in Khabarovsk reportedly were beating detainees.

    Video posted on Twitter from Vladivostok showed police in riot gear charging at demonstrators and beating some with truncheons to disperse that gathering.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Armenian parliament has installed two new members at the state body that nominates, sanctions, and dismisses the South Caucasus country’s judges, amid tensions between the government and judiciary.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Just days after it was stripped of the world ice hockey championships, Belarus has lost another international sporting event it was due to host, amid a violent government crackdown on peaceful protests over a disputed presidential election last year.

    The UIPM Pentathlon and Laser Run World Championships, which were due to be held in Minsk in June, have been postponed “due to instability” in the country, the International Union of Modern Pentathlon said in a statement on January 22, adding that an announcement regarding an alternative venue would be made in the coming days.

    The move comes days after the International Ice Hockey Federation announced on January 18 it was removing Belarus as a cohost of its World Championship later this year following pressure from sponsors, the Belarusian opposition, and many European countries.

    Belarus has witnessed nearly daily protests since last August when Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in power since 1994, was declared the winner of a presidential vote that the opposition says was rigged.

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

    UIPM President Klaus Schormann said the organization’s executive board voted to move the championships in Minsk “to a future date because of a growing concern that the present instability in the host nation could jeopardize the success of UIPM’s flagship competition.”

    Schormann also cited “a particular concern that numerous competing nations would be reluctant to travel to Belarus at this time.”

    Crisis In Belarus

    Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.

    The announcement by the Monaco-based UIPM follows pressure from the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation (BSSF), whose stated goal is to provide support to the athletes who face “repressions” for taking part in peaceful demonstrations.

    In a letter to the UIPM, the BSSF warned that a failure from the worldwide governing body to remove the competition from Belarus would be “a threat to the image and reputation” of the sport.

    The UIPM “shall not reward Lukashenka’s violent regime with hosting such major tournaments in a country where citizens are subjected to excessive violence, torture, and discrimination by the authorities and almost 200 political prisoners are being kept in jail,” the foundation wrote.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Two ethnic Kazakhs from China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang with temporary refugee status in Kazakhstan have been violently attacked in the Central Asian country.

    Bekzat Maqsutkhan of the Naghyz Atazhurt (Real Fatherland) human rights group told RFE/RL that, late on January 21, an unknown assailant attacked Qaisha Aqan near her house in Almaty, hitting her head at least twice with a heavy object before trying to suffocate her.

    “Qaisha says she lost consciousness and woke up some time later lying in the snow. She was then able to call police and an ambulance,” Maqsutkhan said.

    Lawyer Gulmira Quatbekqyzy told RFE/RL that Aqan refused to stay in hospital fearing for her safety and is currently at home.

    On the same night, another ethnic Kazakh from Xinjiang, Murager Alimuly, was knifed and severely beaten in the village of Qoyandy near Nur-Sultan, the capital.

    Alimuly told RFE/RL that two unknown men suddenly stabbed him with a knife and hit his head and back with a metal bar as he was going home.

    “The knife did not penetrate deep into my body because it hit a power-bank gadget in my pocket, which saved me,” Alimuly said.

    Police in Almaty and Nur-Sultan told RFE/RL that probes have been launched into the two attacks.

    Aqan and Alimuly are two of several ethnic Kazakhs from Xinjiang residing in Kazakhstan. They had been convicted for illegally crossing the Chinese-Kazakh border in recent years, but received temporary refugee status in Kazakhstan in October.

    They have insisted that they fled China fearing that they would be placed in so-called reeducation camps for indigenous ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

    The U.S. State Department has said that as many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang’s other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.

    China denies that the facilities are internment camps.

    Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs.

    The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • MINSK — A man has been hospitalized in grave condition after setting himself on fire in the central Independence Square in Minsk, where mass protests demanding the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka have been under way since August.

    Video of the incident on January 22 showed a man engulfed in a fiery ball rolling on the ground for several seconds, with what appears to be a gas canister nearby.

    One video that captured the incident shows police officers trying to cover him with a blanket to extinguish the fire.

    The incident took place near the building that houses the government, parliament, Minsk city administration, and the City Council.

    Minsk city administration spokeswoman Natallya Hanusevich said in a statement that the incident was being investigated.

    Crisis In Belarus

    Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.

    Interior Ministry spokeswoman Volha Chamadanava added in a statement that “at this point, it is not possible to give detailed information on the incident.”

    “The investigative group was dispatched to the site. As soon as we know all the circumstances around the incident, we will let the public know,” Chamadanava said.

    Health Ministry officials said that the man, whose identity was not disclosed, is unconscious and had burns over 50 percent of his body.

    Belarus has been gripped by a political crisis since August 9, when officials declared Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has run the country with an iron fist since 1994, the winner of a presidential election.

    Opposition figures called the vote rigged, with thousands taking to the streets to protest on an almost daily basis.

    Lukashenka’s declaration of victory has not been recognized by Western nations, many of whom have slapped him and other Belarus officials with sanctions for their violent crackdown on the dissent.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A court in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz has ordered the immediate release of well-known civil rights activist Sanavar Zakirova and changed her prison sentence to a fine in a case that she says was politically motivated.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukrainian officials say at least 15 people were killed after a blaze tore through a nursing home in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

    Nine people were rescued and were receiving treatment in hospital, the State Emergency Service said on January 21 , while Prosecutor-General Iryna Venedyktova said 11 people were injured.

    Venedyktova said a criminal investigation had been launched and the preliminary cause of the tragedy was the “careless handling of electric heating devices.”

    The emergency service said the fire broke out at around 3 p.m. on the second floor of the two-story building while there were 33 people inside.

    It published a photo of the building with bars on the windows of the first floor, while smoke billows out of broken windows on the second floor.

    With reporting by Reuters and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • After losing both arms in the recent conflict with Azerbaijan over its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, 27-year-old Armenian veteran Varazdat Saneian had to ask his brother to slip an engagement ring on his fiancee’s finger. Now, like many amputees, he faces a daunting struggle to raise the cash for artificial limbs.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, has been detained by police on a charge of calling for an unsanctioned rally in relation to a planned nationwide protest on January 23 in support of the jailed Kremlin critic.

    Sobol’s lawyer, Vladimir Voronin, tweeted on January 21 that police stopped his car and took his client to a police station to charge her there. Before that, three men had been at Sobol’s apartment and tried to hand her a written warning from the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office about the planned protest.

    Earlier in the day, a lawyer with Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund, Vladlen Los, who is Belarusian citizen, was briefly detained and informed that he must leave Russia before January 25.

    At a January 18 hearing that Navalny called a “mockery of justice,” a judge ruled to keep him incarcerated until February 15, by which time a different court is expected to decide whether to convert a suspended 3 1/2 year sentence he served in an embezzlement case, which he says is being trumped up into real jail time.

    His team subsequently called for nationwide protests on January 23.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has concluded that Russia committed rights violations — including torture and preventing people from returning to their homes — after a five-day war with Georgia in 2008, a ruling the Caucasus nation immediately hailed as a victory.

    In its verdict made on January 21, the ECHR said that about 160 Georgian civilians captured by Russian troops faced “humiliating acts which had caused them suffering and had to be regarded as inhuman and degrading treatment”, adding that Georgian prisoners had been subjected to “arbitrary detention.”

    The conflict erupted in August 2008 and ended after less than a week with Russian soldiers remaining in Georgia’s regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow then declared were independent states.

    Georgia filed a lawsuit against Russia saying it violated the European Convention on Human Rights during the war and after it.

    Russia has said it had to intervene to protect its citizens and peacekeepers from extermination by launching an operation against Georgia to bring about peace.

    According to the ruling, “there had been an administrative practice…as regards the acts of torture of which the Georgian prisoners of war had been victims.”

    The court also ruled that Russia was responsible for many Georgian nationals being prevented from returning to South Ossetia or Abkhazia after the war, and ordered Russia “to carry out an adequate and effective investigation” into such cases.

    The ECHR stated that the events during the active phase of hostilities in the war had not fallen within Russia’s jurisdiction and declared this part of Georgia’s application inadmissible, as no side enjoyed effective control over the war-affected territories.

    Despite part of the ruling going against Georgia, President Salome Zurabishvili hailed the court decision as a “victory for the whole of Georgia.”

    “The (Georgian) state is recognized as a victim of this war and it is a great achievement for our country, our society, our history and for the future,” she said.

    “It is the basis on which we must build our future and unity,” she added.

    Just a small handful of other countries have followed Russia’s lead in recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence, while Tbilisi and other countries consider the two breakaway regions to be Georgian.

    With reporting by AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • TASHKENT — Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov has replaced the leadership at a large industrial facility controlled by the clan of influential tycoon, Kazakhstan-based Uzbek-Belgian billionaire Patokh Shodiev.

    Aripov visited the Uzbekistan Metallurgic Plant in the eastern city of Bekobod on January 20, where he announced at the gathering of the facility’s administration that plant director Jahongir Mustafoev was being removed and will be replaced by Rashid Pirmatov.

    Employees of the plant who attended the gathering told RFE/RL that Aripov also removed Sergei Chaikovsky from the post of deputy director and appointed Dilshod Ahmedov in his place.

    Patokh Shodiev’s brother, Qobul Shodiev, who is the director of the SFI Management Group, which has operated the metallurgic facility since January 2017, was not present at the gathering held by Aripov.

    According to some employees, the move could be a sign that Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s government intends to remove SFI Management from the country’s metallurgical sector.

    A spokesperson for the SFI Management Group refused to comment on Aripov’s decisions, saying that the company had yet to receive any formal notification of what happened at the gathering.

    Separately on January 20, an explosion killed three people at another facility operated by the SFI Management group — the Yangi Angren Thermal Power Station in the Uzbek town of Nurobod in the Tashkent region.

    Investigators are working on finding the cause of the deadly blast.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • BAKU — Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have reached a preliminary agreement on the joint exploration of a once-disputed section of an undersea hydrocarbons field in the Caspian Sea believed to hold lucrative energy reserves.

    The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said on January 21 that President Ilham Aliyev and his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, supervised the online signing of a memorandum on the mutual intention to jointly explore and develop the Dostluq (Friendship) undersea field.

    The field used to be called Kapaz by Baku and Serdar by Ashgabat.

    The undersea field was discovered by Soviet explorers in 1986. Experts estimate that the Dostluk hydrocarbons field contains natural gas and at least 50 million tons of oil.

    For many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Baku and Ashgabat were at odds over the ownership of the undersea field.

    The settlement of the issue will help pave the way for a trans-Caspian pipeline — a multibillion-dollar plan to link Turkmenistan’s giant gas fields to Europe via Azerbaijan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A pan-European human rights watchdog has expressed concern after a Russian court handed a long prison sentence for hooliganism to a university mathematics student who says he was tortured while in custody.

    “The allegations we are hearing with regard to this case are certainly of concern, and we will continue to follow its development closely,” a spokeswoman at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) told RFE/RL on January 20, two days after 25-year-old Azat Miftakhov was sentenced to six years in prison.

    “ODIHR is continually following the human rights situation in all 57 countries of the OSCE region, and frequently raises issues with individual states,” Katya Andrusz said.

    The press service of the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organization, on Janaruy 19 said the organization was following the case “closely.”

    A court in the Russian capital on January 18 found Miftakhov, a postgraduate student at Moscow State University, guilty of being involved in an arson attack on the ruling United Russia party’s office in Moscow in 2018.

    Miftakhov has denied the charges, which his lawyers say stem from his anarchist beliefs and support for political prisoners.

    A prominent Russian human rights organization, Memorial, has declared Miftakhov a political prisoner.

    The student was arrested in early 2019 and accused of helping make an improvised bomb found in the city of Balashikha near Moscow.

    He was released several days after the initial charge failed to hold, but was rearrested immediately and charged with being involved in the attack on the United Russia office in January 2018.

    The Public Monitoring Commission, a human rights group, has said that Miftakhov’s body bore the signs of torture, which the student claimed were the result of investigators unsuccessfully attempting to force him to confess to the bomb-making charge.

    Others who were detained along with Miftakhov but later released also claim to have been beaten by police.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The U.S. Justice Department has filed charges against an Iranian political scientist accused of being an agent for Iran’s government.

    The Justice Department said on January 19 that Kaveh Afrasiabi, an Iranian citizen with U.S. permanent residency, was arrested at his home in Watertown, Massachusetts the previous day on charges of “acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent” of Tehran.

    Afrasiabi is due to make an initial appearance in federal court in Boston later on January 19. If convicted on both charges, he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

    “For over a decade, Kaveh Afrasiabi pitched himself to Congress, journalists, and the American public as a neutral and objective expert on Iran,” John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.

    Demers said that Afrasiabi “was actually a secret employee of the government of Iran and the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations (IMUN) who was being paid to spread their propaganda,” he added.

    There was no immediate comment from Afrasiabi or his lawyer.

    Federal prosecutors said Afrasiabi worked to influence public opinion in the United States on behalf of Iran in news articles and during appearances with U.S. news media.

    They said he also lobbied a U.S. congressman and the State Department to adopt policies favorable to Iran, and counseled Iranian diplomats concerning U.S. foreign policy.

    Afrasiabi is said to have been paid approximately $265,000 in checks drawn from the official bank accounts of the Iranian mission to the United Nations since 2007. He also received health benefits since at least 2011.

    With reporting by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Less than two hours after Aleksei Navalny was detained at passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on January 17, the man who will hold one of the most important positions in the new White House made a statement on Twitter:

    “Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Jake Sullivan, who will become President Joe Biden’s national security adviser after the January 20 inauguration, wrote. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.”

    Sullivan’s expression of support for the Russian anti-corruption activist was followed a few hours later by a statement from the departing U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who has frequently bashed Moscow on its human rights record, arms-control violations, and other issues.

    But the speed with which a top official of the incoming Biden administration offered a public statement on Navalny, who was detained and jailed after returning to Russia for the first time since being hospitalized for exposure to a powerful nerve agent from the Novichok group, was itself unusual.

    Moreover, Sullivan hadn’t even formally started his job yet.

    Incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan was quick to comment on Navalny's arrest.

    Incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan was quick to comment on Navalny’s arrest.

    Add to that the fact that the Biden administration has already pledged to take a different course from the departing administration, where President Donald Trump’s conciliatory remarks often clashed with otherwise tough talk and punitive sanctions from other U.S. government agencies and officials, including Pompeo.

    “The incoming Biden administration has long made it clear that it would pay more attention to human rights than Trump has. So the Biden team was ready for” Navalny’s arrest, Thomas Graham, the top Russia official in the White House under President George W. Bush, said.

    “We can expect more criticism of Russia’s human rights record, but that will come with an offer for serious dialogue on strategic stability, as part of a policy that will likely be billed as ‘principled pragmatism’ with Moscow,” he told RFE/RL by e-mail.

    During a hastily organized hearing at a suburban Moscow police station the morning after his detention, Navalny was ordered held for 30 days pending a court ruling on whether he violated terms of his parole while he was recuperating in Germany. The parole condition related to an earlier conviction on financial fraud charges he contends were fabricated.

    Ever defiant, Navalny has called on his supporters to take to the streets in protest.

    Lone Voices: Russians Hold Single-Person Protests After Navalny's Arrest

    Lone Voices: Russians Hold Single-Person Protests After Navalny's Arrest Photo Gallery:

    Lone Voices: Russians Hold Single-Person Protests After Navalny’s Arrest

    Single-person protests — the largest allowed by law in Russia — decried the arrest of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny. Navalny has been placed in a cell in Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina detention center after a judge at a hastily arranged hearing ruled to keep the Kremlin critic in custody for 30 days following his dramatic airport arrest upon his arrival from Germany. He arrived late on January 17 from Berlin, where he had been recovering from a poison attack in August that Navalny says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Even before Navalny’s detention, Biden’s advisers had suggested the case might be a priority. In September, in the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign, after Germany confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok-like substance while traveling in Siberia, Biden himself bashed Moscow, calling the poisoning “outrageous” and “brazen.” Trump, meanwhile, dismissed the German conclusions.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials have long displayed open disdain for U.S. statements on Russian policies, domestic or foreign; the case of Navalny, whose name Putin refuses to utter, is no exception.

    That stance will likely harden further, something that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested in remarks on January 18 as Navalny was facing the makeshift hearing.

    “Putin’s playing a game of chicken right now with the new Biden administration. In many ways, they are walking into their first major foreign-policy crisis,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said in a radio interview. “And he’s waiting to see, do they just put in a few sanctions and then move on to other things, or do they do something radically different?”

    Past Is Future?

    Among the administration officials whose portfolios will include Russia policy are several veterans of the President Barack Obama’s administration, when the White House took a more openly confrontational approach toward Moscow.

    That includes the nominee for the director of the CIA, William Burns, who served as ambassador to Russia in 2005-08 and as the No. 2 official at the State Department in 2011-14, under Obama.

    And the person nominated to be undersecretary of state for political affairs, a post Burns has also held, was Victoria Nuland, whose Russia and Ukraine work during the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Kyiv irked the Kremlin.

    “The United States can seize the moment of renewal at home and stagnation in Russia to stretch out a hand again. Putin may not want or be able to take it. But the Russian people should know that Washington and its allies are giving him and Russia a choice,” Nuland wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs in June.

    Then-Assistant Secretary Of State For European And Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland speaks to the media during a press conference in Kyiv in April 2016.

    Then-Assistant Secretary Of State For European And Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland speaks to the media during a press conference in Kyiv in April 2016.

    A spokesman for the Biden administration’s transition team told RFE/RL that Sullivan’s tweet was the only statement the incoming team would be making for now.

    Pavel Koshkin, a senior research fellow with the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, predicted the Biden administration would be tougher and more intransigent toward Moscow, but also try to find ways to improve relations. “However, it will be extremely difficult, because today Russia is seen as a hostile nation and a troublemaker rather than as a friend or a problem-solver,” he said in an analysis published last month by the Washington-based Wilson Center.

    “Specifically, Washington will still view Russia as one of the key, though irresponsible, stakeholders in the international arena, including in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This means that the United States will try to hold Russia accountable for its foreign and domestic policy,” he wrote.

    Trust But Verify

    As U.S.-Russian relations have continued to spiral downwards, and the Trump administration added yet more layers of sanctions on Russian individuals and companies, there’s been building pressure among Russia and foreign-policy experts in Washington to try and find some way to engage with Moscow.

    The easiest and most immediate way is likely to be extending New START, the last major arms-control agreement capping the two countries’ nuclear arsenals, multiple experts have said. The treaty expires 16 days after Biden is inaugurated unless it is extended by mutual agreement.

    While the Trump administration, which pulled the United States out of two arms treaties involving Moscow, has given mixed signals about how it wanted to deal with New START’s expiration, the Biden administration has signaled it was open to an immediate short-term extension. The Kremlin has said similar things.

    “We will have to look at extending that treaty in the interest of the United States,” Sullivan told CNN on January 3.

    Another urgent issue the Biden administration will grapple with is the massive recent hacking of U.S. federal agencies. Initial U.S. intelligence reports have pointed to Russian intelligence as the culprit. And the war in Ukraine, pitting Russian-backed militants against Ukrainian government forces, is nearing its eighth year.

    William Burns attends a media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019.

    William Burns attends a media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019.

    Observers say a key question is whether the Kremlin, and the Biden White House, will compartmentalize subjects — Navalny’s arrest, for example — from another.

    “The Biden administration can do both things at the same time, as long as it approaches both issues with care and direction. The Russians are not going to reject renewal of New START or the launching of serious, sustained talks on strategic stability simply because of human rights criticism,” Graham told RFE/RL.

    However, the Navalny case has greater importance also because of the use of Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent that is now prohibited under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which Russia is a signatory to. Reporting by RFE/RL and other news organizations have pointed to the possibility that Russia has a secret, undeclared chemical-weapons program.

    “Navalny’s poisoning will be, at least for the Americans, a matter relevant to strategic stability, because it gets at the issue of Moscow’s commitment to honor the treaties that it signs,” Graham said. “That said, excessive, gratuitous criticism of Russia’s human rights record will poison the atmosphere for any other conversations.”

    Still another signal that the Biden administration is moving to embrace a more pragmatic approach appeared in a paper published by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security on January 14.

    The paper argued that Washington should focus on how Russia and China are increasingly aligned, particularly in their disdain for U.S. foreign policy, and that U.S. policy makers should, among other things, try to drive a wedge between them.

    Six days earlier, its lead co-author, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, was announced by Biden’s team as the incoming Russia officer for the White House National Security Council, which is to be headed by Sullivan. Previously, she was a top Russia officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration.

    “The United States should seek to change Russia’s calculus such that Moscow views some cooperation with the United States and Europe as possible and preferable to its growing subservience to China,” she wrote. “The United States should monitor and plan for, create headwinds to, and — where possible — pull at the seams in Russia-China relations.”

    Kendall-Taylor did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Anti-Corruption Foundation of Aleksei Navalny issued a fresh investigation on January 19, shining a spotlight on a Black Sea mansion allegedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The International Testing Agency (ITA) has suspended three weightlifters from Kazakhstan, Romania, and Thailand for violating anti-doping rules.

    In a statement dated January 18, the ITA said that it had suspended Nizhat Rakhimov from Kazakhstan and Dumitru Captari from Romania, the first two weightlifters ever to be charged with a doping offence that involved allegedly swapping urine samples provided for tests.

    The decision was made after the ITA received a case file from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) following WADA’s Intelligence & Investigations report on the International Weightlifting Federation.

    Rakhimov, 27, was a gold medalist at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

    Captari, 31, had already been suspended for two years for a doping violation in January 2018.

    The alleged offences took place “over a period of time in 2016” according to the ITA.

    The ITA also suspended Thai weightlifter Rattikan (Siripuch) Gulnoi for the use of a prohibited substance throughout her career.

    “Given the sensitivity of the current investigations, the ITA will not comment further during the ongoing proceedings and will issue regular status updates,” the statement says.

    The ITA is an independent nonprofit organization that implements anti-doping programs for international sports federations, major event organizers, or any other anti-doping organization requiring support.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CHITA, Russia — Prosecutors have asked a military court in Siberia to sentence Private Ramil Shamsutdinov to 25 years in prison for killing eight fellow servicemen in a rampage he says was brought on by the hazing he suffered while being initiated into the army.

    The Second Eastern Military District Court resumed the hearing into the high-profile case on January 19, where Shamsutdinov’s defense team reiterated that Shamsutdinov had gone on a shooting spree in October 2019, killing eight — including two high-ranking officers — in the town of Gorny in the Zabaikalye region after being tortured and beaten by other soldiers and officers during his induction into service.

    On December 28, a jury found Shamsutdinov guilty of murder and attempted murder, but decided that he deserves leniency, which according to Russian law means that he may be sentenced to a maximum of 13 years and four months in prison.

    The court’s officials told RFE/RL that Shamsutdinov’s sentence will be announced on January 21.

    The case shocked many in Russia and attracted the attention of rights activists after Shamsutdinov claimed that he committed the act while suffering a nervous breakdown caused by what he had endured.

    The Defense Ministry accepted at the time that Shamsutdinov “had a conflict” with one of the officers he killed. In March, Private Ruslan Mukhatov was found guilty of bullying Shamsutdinov and was handed a suspended two-year prison term.

    Deadly shootings at Russia’s military units as the result of widespread hazing have been a focus of human rights organizations for years.

    In November, a soldier at a military air base in the country’s western region of Voronezh shot an officer and two soldiers dead.

    In recent years, photos and video footage have been posted online by members of the Russian military that show the severe bullying of young recruits as they are inducted into the army.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A police officer in the Russian city of Samara has been placed under house arrest on suspicion of leaking data that may have helped the Bellingcat investigative group identify the alleged poisoners of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, the RBC business daily reports, citing its sources.

    Police officer Kirill Chuprov was detained in December and charged with abuse of power, according to an RBC report from January 19.

    Chuprov, who may face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, is accused of leaking confidential information from a database containing information about the movement of people across Russia to a third party, according to the RBC source, who is said to be close to the investigation, said.

    The leaked data was later used by investigative journalists who studied flights taken by agents of Russian’s Federal Security Service (FSB) who allegedly secretly followed Navalny for several years before he was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in Siberia in August last year.

    Bellingcat, a British-based open-source investigative group, and Russian media outlet The Insider published the investigation in December in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN.

    Citing “voluminous evidence in the form of telecoms and travel data,” the investigation, showed the August 2020 poisoning of the Kremlin critic appeared to have been in the works since at least early 2017.

    The European Union and Britain have imposed asset freezes and travel bans against six senior Russian officials believed to be responsible for the Navalny poisoning, as well as one entity involved in the program that has produced a group of military-grade nerve agents known as Novichok.

    Navalny, who was transported from Siberia to Germany for treatment after the incident, returned to Moscow on January 17. He was immediately arrested and sent to a pretrial detention center.

    On February 2, a court is expected to decide whether to convert into jail time a suspended 3 1/2 year sentence, which Navalny served in an embezzlement case that he says was trumped up.

    With reporting by RBC and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Belarus has blasted the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) for its decision to move the this year’s World Championships from Minsk due to safety and security concerns amid a violent government crackdown on protests over a disputed presidential election last year.

    The government’s organizing committee on January 19 called the IIHF’s decision, which is a blow to strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka, “unreasonable,” while the head of the Belarus Ice Hockey Federation Dzmitry Baskau said it was “deplorable” that the Zurich-based governing body changed its mind on holding the tournament this spring in the capital.

    “[The IIHF’s] decision creates a precedent where sports tournaments that are supposed to unite countries and peoples, promote peace and unity in the spirit of the Olympic principles, can turn into a tool of discord and pressure to please the interests of politicians,” the Belarusian committee’s statement said.

    The IIHF’s announcement on January 18 came amid mounting pressure from European countries and sponsors for Belarus to be stripped of its role as co-host of the tournament in May-June with Latvia because of the postelection crackdown.

    Lukashenka has faced ongoing protests since a disputed August 9 presidential election, which the opposition says was rigged, handed him a sixth presidential term.

    The European Union and the United States have declined to recognize Lukashenka’s reelection and have imposed sanctions in connection with the crackdown on protesters.

    Several prominent Belarusian athletes have been handed jail terms of 10 to 15 days for their open support of the ongoing protests, demanding Lukashenka’s resignation.

    Nearly 350 Belarusian athletes and other members of the sports community threw down the gauntlet to Lukashenka by signing an open letter calling for the presidential election to be annulled and for all “political prisoners” and those detained during mass demonstrations that followed to be released.

    “It is a very regrettable thing to have to remove the Minsk/Riga co-hosting bid,” IIHF President Rene Fasel said in the announcement of the decision.

    “During this process, we had tried to promote that the World Championship could be used as a tool for reconciliation to help calm the socio-political issues happening in the Belarus and find a positive way forward…And while the Council feels that the World Championship should not be used for political promotion by any side, it has acknowledged that hosting this event in Minsk would not be appropriate when there are bigger issues to deal with and the safety and security of teams, spectators, and officials to prioritize.”

    Losing the chance to co-host the tournament is also a further blow to Lukashenka, who has cultivated an image as a jock, regularly taking to the ice to play hockey, his favorite sporting pastime.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who left her country for Lithuania following a disputed presidential election that she and her supporters claim she won, has asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to assist her and other exiled opposition politicians to safely return home.

    In a January 18 post on her website, Tsikhanouskaya said she made the request during an online meeting with European Union Ambassadors to the OSCE a day earlier.

    “Together with the international community, I would like to find an opportunity to safely return to Belarus. Two criminal probes have been launched against me, and they also put my name on the international wanted list, so there must be special guarantees for my return,” Tsikhanouskaya said at the meeting.

    She added that the situation with the Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who was immediately arrested upon his arrival to Moscow from Berlin over the weekend “shows that assistance from the international community, especially from the OSCE is essential” in this matter.

    Results from Belarus’s August election, which Lukashenka claims to have won, sparked mass protests, with Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters and opposition figures claiming she was the victor.

    In the days following the vote, several opposition figures, including Tsikhanouskaya, left the country amid security fears.

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

    Tsikhanouskaya also proposed that the OSCE organize an inclusive dialogue to solve the ongoing crisis in Belarus by creating a contact group to start negotiations between representatives of the European Union, the Belarusian opposition, and Lukashenka, who has run Belarus since 1994.

    Tsikhanouskaya reiterated her support for holding a new presidential election in Belarus, adding that “we are ready to hold the poll in 45 days.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 1 A man in Novosibirsk holds a poster saying, “Putin is afraid of Navalny.” This is one of dozens of photos shared by the Team Navalny Twitter account of individual protesters holding placards in cities throughout Russia.

    2 Izhevsk: “(Putin), you spit, we wipe it off. We spit and you will drown. Freedom for Navalny!”

    3 Belgorod: “Hey, release Aleksei Navalny!”

    4 Izhevsk: “Granddad, take your pills or you’ll be smacked on the bum. Freedom for Navalny.”

    5 Kaliningrad: “Freedom for Navalny and all political prisoners”

    6 Izhevsk: “One for all, all for one”

    7 St. Petersburg: “Freedom for Navalny! Putin to court!”

    8 Samara: “Cowards”

    9 Moscow: “Freedom for Aleksei Navalny”

    10 Izhevsk: “Freedom for Navalny. For those who wanted to kill him — to justice”

    11 Samara: “Freedom for Aleksei Navalny”

    12 Izhevsk: “Today Navalny, tomorrow — you!” 

    13 St. Petersburg: “We demand freedom for Navalny.”

    14 St. Petersburg: “Freedom for Navalny”

    15 Moscow: “For Navalny!”

    16 Kaliningrad: “Release Navalny.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Parler, a social media website popular with U.S. right-wing groups, has partially returned online with the apparent help of a Russina-based technology company, according to reports on January 18.

    The far-right-friendly social network went offline on January 11 after being kicked off Amazon Web Services (AWS) over allegations it failed to properly police violent content.

    Messages of support for the violence that shocked the United States in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and calls for new protests had flourished on the platform before the AWS move and led Apple and Google to remove the Parler app from their stores.

    Parler’s website was reachable again on January 18, but only with a message from its chief saying he was working to restore its functionality. Messaging services were not active.

    The Internet protocol address it used is owned by DDos-Guard, which is controlled by two Russian men, according to Reuters and Dave Temkin, vice president of network and systems at Netflix.

    “Parler is back up, and being hosted by “DDOS GUARD” out of Russia,” Temkin said on Twitter. “If that’s not an obvious sign of its malfeasance, there’s nothing else that could possibly be shown to convince you.”

    U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have said Russia has meddled in U.S. elections through propaganda efforts and hacking aimed at stoking political divisions, manipulating public opinion, and supporting outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump. Russia has denied the allegations.

    DDos-Guard generally provides services such as protection from distributed denial of service attacks, Reuters quoted infrastructure expert Ronald Guilmette as saying.

    Parler CEO John Matze and representatives of DDoS-Guard did not reply to requests for comment, Reuters said.

    In an update on January 18, Parler.com linked to a Fox News interview in which Matze said he was “confident” Parler would return at the end of January.

    DDoS-Guard has worked with racist, right-wing, and conspiracy sites that have been used to share messages, and it has also supported Russian government sites, Reuters said.

    DDoS-Guard’s website lists an address in Scotland under the company name Cognitive Cloud LP, but Guilmette told Reuters that it is owned by two men in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

    Temkin’s tweet included a screen shot of Parler’s URL registration that also lists Rostov-on-Don as the address.

    Parler filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon last week after AWS cut off its service, but Amazon defended its decision because Parler had shown an “unwillingness and inability” to remove violent content.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook said Parler could return to the App Store if it changes how it moderates posts.

    Cook justified the suspension because of “the incitement to violence,” but on January 17 said on Fox News: “We’ve only suspended them. So, if they get their moderation together, they would be back on” the App Store.”

    With reporting by Reuters, Engadget, Fox News, and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tens of thousands of ethnic Kazakhs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been sent to “reeducation camps” along with hundreds of thousands of others from that western province after being rounded up by China because they are Muslims.

    Serikzhan Bilash is one of the people who helped bring this great injustice to light by exposing the suffering of ethnic Kazakhs at the camps in Xinjiang.

    An ethnic Kazakh from Xinjiang who moved to neighboring Kazakhstan in 2000, Bilash received Kazakh citizenship in 2011 under the “oralman” program, which was designed in 1991 to entice ethnic Kazakhs abroad to resettle in sparsely inhabited Kazakhstan.

    In 2017, Bilash founded the Atajurt Eriktileri (Volunteers of the Fatherland) organization to keep track of ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs in Xinjiang as Beijing began implementing its latest and by far harshest campaign against perceived separatists, who were overwhelmingly Chinese Muslims.

    But China is a major investor in and trade partner of Kazakhstan.

    That brought the 46-year-old Bilash and his work into conflict with Kazakh authorities, and he was arrested and charged with inciting ethnic hatred in March 2019.

    But amid an international outcry and quite a lot of rumbling from inside Kazakhstan — where many people wondered why the government would try to silence someone defending ethnic Kazakhs against Chinese repression — Bilash was convicted in August 2019 but given a fine and released from custody in exchange for promising to cease his activism for seven years.

    But the pressure on Bilash, his family, and associates was massive and did not stop.

    So, in late summer 2020, Bilash and his family began their journey to Turkey, where they have been since September 10.

    He recently spoke with RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, to explain why he chose to leave.

    “In April 2020, two charges were filed against me [in Kazakhstan] — desecration of the state flag and inciting hatred,” he said.

    Bilash attempted to register Atajurt Eriktileri in Kazakhstan, but after his court case in 2019, Kazakh authorities registered another group called Atajurt Eriktileri, which was a phony splinter group made up of members who took a soft stance against China.

    Bilash then founded a group called Naghyz (the Real) Atajurt.

    Bilash told Azattyq that the desecration of the state flag charge stems from comments he made about a court case involving Saltanat Kusmankyzy, a Kazakh woman working for a Chinese company in Kazakhstan who was convicted of embezzlement in January 2020 and sentenced to eight years in prison.

    Lawyer Ayman Umarova (left) with Serikzhan Bilash (file photo)

    Lawyer Ayman Umarova (left) with Serikzhan Bilash (file photo)

    Kusmankyzy’s lawyer Ayman Umarova, who is also one of Bilash’s lawyers, said the court refused to accept her client’s evidence, which would have cleared her of the charge.

    Bilash said his comments about Kusmankyzy’s case were taken out of context and bizarrely presented as disrespecting the Kazakh flag.

    Bilash said police conducted a linguistic analysis of the comments that showed nothing Bilash said amounted to denigrating the flag.

    ‘A Heavy Blow’

    Bilash said one of the people behind the inciting hatred charge was Erbol Dauletbek, the leader of the Atajurt Eriktileri group registered instead of Bilash’s group. Bilash said Dauletbek is trying to gain the rights to Bilash’s Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights channel on YouTube.

    RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, asked Dauletbek about the claim but he denied filing any legal complaints against Bilash.

    Keeping the YouTube channel is part of the reason Bilash went to Turkey. Bilash officially registered the popular channel in 2013.

    “There were not any mass arrests in China then…and there was not even an organization called Atajurt,” Bilash said.

    He added that Kazakh police started coming to the apartment of Galym Rakizhan, the editor of the video for the Atajurt YouTube channel, and threatened the owner, who finally told Rakizhan he must leave despite having lived there for many years.

    Bilash then signed over the YouTube channel to Turkish citizen Babisalem Okitan, who is also a member of Naghyz Atajurt and now in charge of programming for the channel.

    Bilash said he has no plans to seek asylum in Turkey and intends to return to Kazakhstan. But he noted that cannot happen until he is cleared of charges there and the pressure against him, his family, and his organization ceases.

    “On August 18, 2020, a court ruled that I was involved with the activities of an unregistered illegal organization and was fined…[the equivalent of $333]. Several members of Naghyz Atajurt Eriktileri were also fined,” he said. “That was a heavy blow for us.”

    “Any time I drove, [the police] stopped me without fail,” Bilash said. “Day and night there are people and vehicles outside my house. My relatives and my wife’s relatives have all been questioned.”

    ‘Branded A Terrorist’

    Bilash said he was also put on a blacklist in Kazakhstan.

    Bilash said Kazakh authorities have branded him a terrorist and, when his mother died and he went to the notary to sign over her property to his father, he was told it was not possible.

    “It turns out that on their network I was shown to be a terrorist, I have a screenshot of it… from the computer at the notary public,” Bilash explained.

    He added that his bank accounts in Kazakhstan have been frozen and his car was impounded.

    Bilash also recounted seven meetings he had in 2019 while he was under house arrest in Nur-Sultan and Almaty with a person named Maksat Iskakov, a representative that Bilash said was sent by President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev.

    According to Bilash, at one of those meetings, Iskakov told him, “In September [2019], Mr. Toqaev is going to China and your sentence [and conviction] will be a present to the Chinese president.”

    Iskakov advised him to cooperate with Kazakh officials and agree to the deal whereby he would be fined and cease his activism for seven years.

    “My goals were not to challenge Kazakh authorities, I wanted to defend the rights of Kazakhs and other Turkic-speaking peoples who were abused in China,” Bilash said in explaining why he agreed to the deal.

    Bilash also assured: “I am not a dangerous person to the authorities of Kazakhstan, I am not an opposition figure, not an opponent.”

    Bilash said he hoped Turkish authorities will register Naghyz Atajurt. If that happens, Bilash said the group will then seek recognition as a human rights defender from international organizations.

    In the meantime, Bilash has been trying to help five other Kazakhs who recently illegally crossed from Xinjiang into Kazakhstan to obtain Turkish citizenship.

    Azattyq sent a copy of Bilash’s interview to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry and the presidential administration seeking comment but there had been no response as of the time this report was issued.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.