Funerals were held on both sides of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border after armed clashes on April 28-29 claimed more than 50 lives. The fighting erupted amid tensions over water facilities in disputed territory. With a cease-fire in place since May 1, evacuees have begun returning home, but many have found their houses damaged or destroyed by fighting and looting.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Photo: Amos Chapple (RFE/RL)
The beekeepers of western Georgia who risk their lives for liquid gold
This is jara honey, one of the purest natural treats on Earth.
It is made only in the mountains of Ajara, in western Georgia.
Each spring and autumn when the weather is mild and stable, Ajaran beekeepers near Georgia’s border with Turkey scale cliffs…
…and climb tall trees to harvest honey using a technique so ancient its origins are lost to time.
Jara beehives are made by hollowing out linden trees, which are favored for their lightweight and easily workable timber.
The logs are then placed where bees can discover them, usually deep in the forest. Carved logs are nearly identical to wild bees’ natural habitat of hollow tree trunks.
Bees inside the jara logs create their own honeycombs from scratch, unlike the more hands-on box hives in which many beekeepers use sheets of artificially shaped wax combs for the bees to work with.
The Caucasian Mountain Gray honeybees that produce jara honey are coveted around the world for their hardiness in cold weather and their long tongues that slurp up scraps of nectar missed by other species. The bees are relatively docile, but their stings feel unusually painful.
Some jara beekeepers keep their hives close to their homes where they can easily be protected.
Other beekeepers go to extraordinary heights to keep their hives out of reach of the honey-hungry bears that roam the Ajaran highlands.
Ramaz Dumbadze — seen checking on a hive about 16 meters high — keeps 26 jara hives in the forest around his home. The agile 44-year-old says, “I think there is something special about the hive hanging in the tree. It is like a separate kingdom where only bees reign.”
He says income from his jara honey has helped him renovate his house, which is a short walk from this tree.
As well as eating the fresh honey, some Ajaran villagers brew this fiery but smooth honey liquor from their harvests. It is estimated that around 6 tons of jara honey are produced each year, up from just 2 to 3 tons before 2017. A little more than two dozen jara beekeepers are currently active.
Tamaz Putkaradze harvests his jara hives from a rickety framework of wood and wire that he built some 20 years ago in the crevice of a cliff.
The 69-year-old says he has been “fascinated” by the jara beekeeping method since he was a small boy watching his father hacking hives into shape and working carefully with his dad’s bees. Putkaradze has taught his own adult son, seen in the white T-shirt, the same techniques.
Inside one of Putkaradze’s 20 hives, honeycombs hang from the top of the hollow log. He says he’s been working with bees all his life largely to “keep the tradition alive,” but thanks to the growing market for the unique honey he plans to add 10 more hives to his forest portfolio.
To harvest his honey, Putkaradze uses a curved blade (seen in first photo) to carefully slice honeycombs from the roof of the hive. The sweet treasure then flops onto his hand like a syrup-drenched pancake.
Putkaradze lowers a bag of the delicate harvest to his son, who is waiting below with a bucket to carry the honeycombs down the mountain. The harvest takes place only once each year.
As well as installing his beehives above the reach of bears, Putkaradze has also made a witchy perimeter fence of clanging, Soviet-era metal scraps and bear bones (pictured) to spook the sweet-toothed animals.
Putkaradze shares a chunk of honeycomb from his clifftop harvest. The honey is clear, slightly fruity, and thrilling to eat with a handful of cold mountain stream water to wash it down.
The elderly beekeeper is delighted the unique honey is seeing a small but growing level of interest from outside Georgia: “I have been following this journey for decades now…. I believe bees are important for keeping our beautiful nature alive, and jara beekeeping allows me to play my part in this.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Kyiv this week and meets with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he will seek to demonstrate strong Western support for Ukraine from the external threat of Russian aggression.
Behind the scenes, however, there could be tension between the two over what Blinken often calls Ukraine’s “internal threat”: corruption and weak institutions.
One week before Blinken’s expected arrival on May 5, Zelenskiy’s government did exactly the kind of thing that has raised questions in the West about Kyiv’s dedication to reforms, which observers and officials say are needed to make the system strong enough to withstand persistent pressure from Moscow.
The government dismissed Andriy Kobolyev, the respected chief executive officer of Naftogaz, the state-owned energy company that has been at the center of some of Ukraine’s biggest corruption scandals over the past three decades, using a legal loophole to get around Western corporate governance practices it had promised to uphold.
Analysts said the stealth move, coming amid an outpouring of Western support for Ukraine in the wake of a big Russian military buildup on its borders and in occupied Crimea, smacked of direct government interference in the management of a state-owned company, a practice that has had dreadful consequences for the Ukrainian economy in the past and which the West is trying to wean Kyiv off.
Kobolyev’s dismissal provoked pointed criticism from the European Union and the United States, which have tied financial aid to Ukraine to improvements in corporate governance at state-owned companies and overall anti-corruption efforts.
I believe that Zelenskiy has a fear that all these [managers] were affiliated with the previous team of Poroshenko.”
Philip Reeker, acting U.S. assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, called the move “troubling” during a phone briefing with reporters on April 30 and said the United States will push Ukraine’s leaders to “respect transparent corporate governance practices.”
The move has potentially jeopardized not only billions of dollars in aid from the International Monetary Fund, but also much needed private investment in the nation’s energy sector.
The Naftogaz CEO’s ouster was just the latest in a series of actions by the Zelenskiy administration that have raised concerns about a rollback of the reforms achieved since Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was pushed from power in 2014 by the massive Maidan protests, which were prompted largely by anger over corruption.
Blinken’s response to the situation surrounding Naftogaz will send an important signal to Zelenskiy about just how far President Joe Biden’s administration is willing to go to protect the nation’s reform path, analysts said.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers on April 28 dismissed Naftogaz’s supervisory board, opening a legal door for the removal of Kobolyev, who has been widely credited with turning around the historically graft-infested company during his seven-year reign.
The cabinet named Yuriy Vitrenko, the acting energy minister, to replace Kobolyev and then reinstated the board.
The government’s decision violated the corporate governance principles of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which stipulates that supervisory boards of state-owned companies have the power to hire and fire management.
Ukraine has never implemented OCED rules for state-owned companies, and Zelenskiy’s government just proposed a new law that would keep such powers with the cabinet, setting up the possibility of a similar development at another company, said Andriy Boytsun, a Ukrainian corporate governance and privatization adviser.
In a terse statement, the cabinet cited the “unsatisfactory” 2020 financial performance of Naftogaz, which posted its first annual loss in five years.
Pointing to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on economies worldwide, many quickly dismissed the government’s reasoning as an excuse to get rid of an independent manager who has consistently pushed Ukraine to carry out sometimes unpopular energy-market reforms.
Ukrainian officials have been seeking to oust Kobolyev for years under various pretexts, going back to the early days of post-Maidan President Petro Poroshenko’s administration. Critics say these efforts have been motivated by the desire for direct control over the nation’s largest company by revenue and its largest taxpayer.
“It’s not about the concrete performance of [Naftogaz] management, it’s a decision against corporate governance reform,” former Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk told RFE/RL about Kobolyev’s dismissal.
“For Zelenskiy and his team, it is very important to have total control” in order to carry out populist, nonmarket policies like price ceilings, he asserted.
Honcharuk, who was fired by Zelenskiy in March 2020 after six months on the job, is one of several former top officials who have been outspoken in their criticism of the administration’s policies.
Andrian Prokip, a Kyiv-based energy expert and senior associate at the Kennan Institute think tank, noted that Zelenskiy’s administration has changed the leadership of nearly all the key state-owned energy companies since he took office in May 2019.
“I believe that Zelenskiy has a fear that all these [managers] were affiliated with the previous team of Poroshenko,” Prokip said.
Energy prices have historically been a very sensitive political topic in Ukraine and can make or break a candidate.
Poroshenko’s rating took a hit after his administration was forced to take steps to liberalize energy markets as a condition for Western financial aid, causing prices to spike.
During the 2019 presidential election campaign, Zelenskiy seized on price increases to bash Poroshenko’s leadership.
After energy prices rebounded in late 2020 from historically low levels, coinciding with a decline in Zelenskiy’s ratings, his administration imposed a temporary cap on prices in January.
Energy price caps have traditionally fueled corruption in Ukraine, and Zelenskiy’s decision was criticized by proponents of market reforms.
In dismissing Kobolyev, Ukraine’s cabinet cited Naftogaz’s 2020 loss of 19 billion hryvnya ($680 million) versus management’s initial forecast of a 11.5 billion hryvnya ($410 million) profit.
But the company’s large loss was not out of the ordinary for the global fossil fuel industry in 2020. ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Conoco Phillips posted losses totaling more than $30 billion last year due to the sharp drop in energy demand and prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Many small, highly leveraged international energy firms went bankrupt as the pandemic persisted.
Naftogaz’s 2020 financial results were also hurt by new bad debt provisions exceeding $1 billion.
In a May 3 letter, Naftogaz’s supervisory board rejected the cabinet’s criticism of the results, saying the company would have posted a higher profit in 2020 compared with 2019 excluding extraordinary losses and gains.
Naftogaz Chief Operating Officer Otto Waterlander, a Dutch national who was appointed last year, said in a Facebook post the same day that Naftogaz earned more than 10 billion hryvnya in the first three months of 2021.
Naftogaz has not yet published audited results for the first quarter, but Waterlander’s comment would appear to support the view that the 2020 results were an aberration due to the pandemic and debt write-offs.
The upcoming publication of first-quarter results might have made it difficult for the government to justify dismissing the board and firing Kobolyev in the near future, possibly explaining what some analysts have called the awkward timing of the controversial move just days before Blinken’s visit.
Kobolyev, a corporate finance specialist who worked at Naftogaz from 2002 to 2010, has acquired many enemies since being tapped to lead the company in March 2014, a month after Yanukovych lost power and fled to Russia.
Over the past three decades, managers, government officials, and tycoons have milked Naftogaz for billions of dollars through procurement and subsidized-gas schemes, among other methods. Energy analysts said that, backed by a supervisory board comprising independent foreign members, Kobolyev’s team had managed to take on vested interests, including influential tycoons.
In testimony to Congress in November 2019, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch called Kobolyev “as clean as they come” and “fearless” in pursuing reforms, though some analysts have said his reputation exceeds his accomplishments and has been boosted by his own intensive lobbying efforts in Washington.
Poroshenko’s administration sought to fire him in 2016, only to be deterred by Biden, then President Barack Obama’s vice president and point man on Ukraine. Another attempt took place in 2019 shortly before the presidential election.
The Zelenskiy administration began putting pressure on Kobolyev last year, analysts said, when the State Audit Service launched a criminal investigation into Naftogaz management for its decision to write off bad debt.
The accounting policy impacts Naftogaz’s net profit and the dividends it has to pay to the budget. As a result of Naftogaz’s loss, the government will not receive about $400 million in dividends it had anticipated based on the company’s initial forecast of a profit.
However, Naftogaz’s financial reports have been audited and approved according to international reporting standards since 2014 by top global accounting firms, including Deloitte and KPMG.
Energy firms controlled by billionaire Dmytro Firtash, who has been indicted by the United States on corruption charges, account for a significant portion of the bad debt owed to Naftogaz.
Yet Ukraine has so far resisted U.S. calls to investigate Firtash, who earned hundreds of millions of dollars importing natural gas from Russia through a scheme many in the West and in Kyiv describe as corrupt.
Amos Hochstein, a former U.S. official who served almost three years on the Naftogaz supervisory board, called the State Audit Service investigation a tactic of “intimidation and retaliation” against Naftogaz.
In an October 2020 article in the Kyiv Post explaining his reason for stepping down from the Naftоgaz supervisory board, Hochstein, who served as the U.S. special envoy for international energy affairs in the Obama administration, warned of increasing efforts to “sabotage” the company’s reform agenda.
Hochstein said that Naftogaz management has been forced “to spend endless amounts of time combating political pressure and efforts by oligarchs to enrich themselves through questionable transactions.”
He slammed the Zelenskiy administration for signing a memorandum of understanding earlier in 2020 with Louisiana Natural Gas Exports to import liquefied natural gas from the United States while giving one of its executives, Robert Bensh, a seat on the board, calling it a “sordid affair” and a sign of Kyiv backsliding on corporate governance.
In the May 3 letter to the cabinet, the supervisory board also raised concerns about Bensh’s potential conflict of interest. In addition, it warned the government that Naftogaz executives, including recently hired foreign specialists, could leave if Vitrenko’s appointment isn’t reversed, potentially destabilizing the company.
The supervisory board announced on April 30 that it would be resigning effective mid-May.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
HOMEL, Belarus — Four associates of Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for organizing protests against authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka in the southeastern city of Homel.
Judge Alyaksey Khlyshchankou of the Chyhunachny district court on May 4 sentenced Tatsyana Kaneuskaya, Dzmitry Ivashkou, and Alyaksandr Shabalin to six years in prison each, and Yury Ulasau to 6 1/2 years in prison.
They were found guilty of organizing mass disorder and planning to seize administrative buildings in Homel. Ulasau was additionally found guilty of publicly insulting police officers.
The four were members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign team and were arrested just days before an August 9, 2020 presidential election as they urged people to demonstrate for independent candidates to be allowed to be registered for the vote.
They all rejected the charges, calling them politically motivated.
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
Kaneuskaya’s sons, Alyaksey and Alyaksandr Kaneuski, said given the current crackdown against dissent by Lukashenka, the prison sentences were expected.
“We do not have real courts, what we have are kangaroo courts. They just carry out whatever they are instructed to do by those who are in power,” Alyaksandr Kaneuski said after the sentences were announced.
Dzmitry Ivashkou’s wife Svyatlana said she hopes that the four activists “will not stay behind bars too long.”
“They all greeted the sentences with smiles. They are holding up quite well. Will we appeal? Well, the state has penalized them and now how does one appeal against the state? We will, for sure, write appeals, but that is to make sure no one in the future says that we gave up and admitted guilt,” Svyatlana Ivashkova said, adding her husband and her colleagues had done nothing illegal.
Prior to the election, police detained dozens of activists and politicians as they held rallies to collect the signatures necessary to register independent presidential candidates for the vote.
Tsikhanouskaya became a candidate after her husband, well-known vlogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski, was incarcerated for openly expressing his intention to run for president.
Tens of thousands of Belarusians then took the streets for several months after a presidential poll in which Lukashenka claimed a landslide victory.
The demonstrators, who say the vote was rigged, have demanded Lukashenka step down and new elections be held, but Belarus’s strongman has been defiant.
Security officials have arrested thousands in the protests, in a crackdown that has become more brutal with each passing month.
Several protesters have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used against some of those detained.
In response to the ongoing crackdown, the West has slapped sanctions on top Belarusian officials. Many countries, including the United States, as well as the European Union, have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian court has dismissed a case against an RFE/RL correspondent who was charged with the distribution of “false information about the coronavirus” over an article she wrote about a lack of ventilators for COVID-19 patients.
The lawyer for Tatyana Voltskaya, Leonid Krikun, told RFE/RL that the Gatchino City Court in the northwestern Leningrad region ruled on May 4 that there was no crime committed by the reporter.
Investigators initially demanded a criminal case be launched against Voltskaya regarding her article published on RFE/RL’s North.Realities website in April 2020.
In the story, Voltskaya reported on a lack of ventilation units at hospitals treating COVID-19 patients in the city of St. Petersburg, citing an unnamed physician.
After a local court refused to launch a criminal case, Russia’s Investigative Committee requested an administrative case against Voltskaya that could have seen her fined or spend several days in jail as punishment.
“The court had an opportunity to close the case because of the statute of limitations, but it looked into it taking into account our motion saying that Voltskaya had a right to express her opinion on an issue important for society and that the preparation of the report and offering it for publication were an expression of the journalist’s professional and civil position,” Krikun told RFE/RL.
After Voltskaya’s article in question was published last year, Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor demanded RFE/RL remove the material from the site, which the broadcaster refused to do.
In August, a court in Moscow fined RFE/RL’s Russian Service 300,000 rubles ($4,000) over Voltskaya’s article. RFE/RL refused to pay the fine, saying it was confident that the information in the article is valid.
Independent journalists across Russia have faced similar encounters as they worked to cover the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages and the Russian government’s efforts to cope with it.
In addition, Amnesty International said last month that Russian police have never cracked down so extensively and systematically on journalists as they are in their recent efforts to prevent coverage of protests in support of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.
In 2012, Russian lawmakers passed the “foreign agent” law giving authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as “foreign agents.”
Among other things, the law — which has been expanded several times since — requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.”
In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service on the list, along with six other Russian-language RFE/RL news services, and Current Time, a network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
Roskomnadzor has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL’s projects for failure to follow these rules that could result in fines totaling more than $1 million.
RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.”
The targeting of RFE/RL has raised concerns that the Russian government may be moving to shutter RFE/RL’s operations inside Russia and force its Russian-language services and Current Time out of the country.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BISHKEK — Four men will face trial in Kyrgyzstan for their role in a deadly bride-snatching case that shocked the Central Asian country in April.
The lawyer for Aizada Kanatbekova’s family, Nurbek Toktakunov, told RFE/RL on May 4 that an investigation into the case had been completed and that the materials of the case had been sent to a Bishkek court for trial.
According to Toktakunov, a fifth man, Zamirbek Tengizbaev, will be tried posthumously, as he committed suicide following Kanatbekova’s death.
“Tengizbaev will be tried posthumously on charges of murder and rape. An autopsy revealed that the victim was raped. Aizada fought and resisted the assault. Experts found bruises and traces of violence on her arms and legs,” Toktakunov said.
Toktakunov also said that he filed papers with the court over the “unprofessional handling of the case” by police and what he called “police attempts to cover up their misdeeds by forging documentation related to the case.”
Kanatbekova, 26, was abducted by three men on April 5 and found dead two days later in a car along with the body of her 36-year-old abductor.
Investigators say Tengizbaev strangled Kanatbekova to death with a T-shirt and then killed himself by cutting his carotid artery.
Authorities said at the time that Tengizbaev had been convicted in Russia three times for various crimes.
The case sparked a public outcry as it turned out that police were reluctant to pursue it even though the abduction was recorded on security cameras and the vehicle’s make, model and license plate were clearly visible on the recordings.
Relatives of Kanatbekova have described the approach by investigators as “casually dismissive.” They say the investigators failed at a crucial juncture as the tragedy unfolded, when the young woman was still alive and able to call them.
More than 40 police officers, including the Bishkek city police chief, were fired following the tragedy.
Fluent in four languages, Kanatbekova was an only daughter and a graduate of the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University in Bishkek.
Kyrgyzstan sees thousands of “bride kidnappings” each year despite the criminalization of the practice in 2013.
The UN Development Program and rights groups have highlighted the contining prevalence in Kyrgyz society of the practice, which they say often leads to marital rape, domestic violence, and other ills.
One of the most-notorious cases involved the stabbing death in 2018 of 20-year-old university student Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy by a man who was trying to force her into marriage.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
From the time Eduard Shmonin was a young man, he always wanted to be a gangster.
But disillusionment with Russia’s criminal world came quickly for the Sverdlovsk region native after he served two years in prison for burglary in the 1990s. Shmonin, now 50, instead decided to get into journalism — a profession that he quickly determined was inextricable from local battles over money, resources, and influence.
The business model he adopted involved digging up dirt on officials and industry players — and then publishing it or withholding it, depending on the bidder.
“I understood at the time that the job of a journalist is to get paid for what he doesn’t write,” Shmonin told RFE/RL’s Russian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda, last year.
Now prosecutors have asked a court to sentence Shmonin to 11 years in prison on charges of blackmail and distributing pornography — allegations linked to media operations he ran in Russia’s oil-rich Khanti-Mansi Autonomous District in western Siberia.
A verdict in Shmonin’s trial in Surgut, in western Siberia, which has been closed to the public, is expected next week.
And while Shmonin has never denied trafficking in “kompromat,” or compromising information, he believes he was targeted for an entirely different reason: a documentary he released exposing evidence of massive oil theft in the Khanti-Mansi region with the complicity of corrupt law enforcement officials.
An archive of materials gathered by Shmonin for the exposé and a planned sequel that never aired served as a pillar of an independent investigation by Radio Svoboda in March exposing the central role that Federal Security Service (FSB) and Interior Ministry officials play in the industrial-scale theft of oil from Russia’s network of pipelines.
Radio Svoboda was able to independently corroborate numerous details of this illicit business, which, according to a 2013 estimate by state-owned investment bank VTB Capital, costs Russian oil companies $1.8 billion to $3.5 billion annually and the Russian budget $632 million to $1.2 billion.
Shmonin released his documentary, Criminal Oil, in November 2016 and was arrested the following April on not only the blackmail and pornography charges, but also for suspected libel based on a complaint by four individuals mentioned in the film — all of whom worked in security for a subsidiary of Rosneft, the state oil giant whose CEO, Igor Sechin, is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
One of the plaintiffs was a retired FSB general, and the other was a former FSB officer who has since been arrested and charged with oil theft.
Shmonin was held for nearly a year in pretrial detention, while his muckraking website and his TV channel, Yugra Public Television, ceased operations. He claims that, during his detention, he was tortured by FSB officers who tried to force him to reveal who financed the Criminal Oil documentary.
“They said, ‘You have three options to get out of here: You can be carried out of here feet first; you can eat the charges, we’ll release you on bail, and you leave the country; or you reveal who is behind you and we will classify you as a witness,’” Shmonin told Radio Svoboda, adding that he told investigators the documentary was made on his own initiative.
Shmonin claimed his interrogators then wrapped a plastic bag over his head and tased him, though Radio Svoboda was unable to independently corroborate his torture claims. The FSB did not respond to requests for comment sent in March.
A funny thing happened on the way to the verdict in Shmonin’s case: A trove of evidence went missing or was damaged, including hard drives, computers, mobile phones, and flash drives that authorities had confiscated. And the libel charges related to his Criminal Oil documentary were ultimately dropped.
Of the 13 original charges Shmonin faced, only two remain: blackmail and illegal distribution of pornography.
The blackmail charge relates to Shmonin’s alleged demand for money from Yevgeny Vostrikov, a lawmaker in the Khanti-Mansi city of Nefteyugansk, in exchange for withholding release of a film in which he was accused, among other things, of domestic abuse and trafficking in drugs. (Many of these allegations had already appeared on Shmonin’s websites prior to the film’s eventual release.)
The pornography charge relates to a secretly recorded video showing a sexual encounter between a lawmaker in the city of Nizhnevartovsk and another man. Shmonin has denied releasing the video.
He insists that the evidence that went missing in his case includes alibis that would exonerate him.
All of these developments have taken place behind closed doors. The trial was closed to the public, formally because of the intimate nature of the video related to the pornography charge.
Shmonin, who has been out on bail since 2018 pending a verdict in the trial, is barred by law from discussing the case with the media.
Meanwhile, the trial of Roman Chernogor — the former FSB officer who filed a libel complaint against Shmonin over his Criminal Oil film — continues.
Chernogor has been charged with illegally tapping into oil pipelines. His co-defendant, former FSB officer Vladimir Chernakov, was also implicated in oil-theft schemes in Shmonin’s film.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BISHKEK — The situation on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border remains stable after deadly clashes in recent days as both sides continue to blame each other for the violence.
Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry said on May 4 that police were in control of the situation in the southwestern Batken Province that borders Tajikistan’s Sughd Province a day after both sides announced the withdrawal of military units from the border.
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According to the ministry, Kyrgyz experts are working on liquidating unexploded shells near the village of Aktatyr after fighting broke out over water facilities in territory claimed by both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Deputy Health Minister Aliza Soltonbekova said on May 4 that a total of 36 Kyrgyz citizens died, 189 people were injured, and 58,000 were evacuated during the violence that erupted on April 28 and lasted for almost three days, Kyrgyz officials say, over the Tajik move to install surveillance cameras on the disputed part of the border.
According to Soltonbekova, 51 injured people remain in hospitals in Bishkek and 49 individuals injured in the clashes are being treated in hospitals in the Batken region.
Tajik authorities have not published information on casualties but correspondents of RFE/RL’s Tajik Service have reported from the area that at least 16 Tajik citizens, including several military officers, were killed, 90 people were injured, and a number of private houses were destroyed or damaged in the villages of Khojai Alo and Somoniyon during the armed clashes.
Like many other border areas in Central Asia, almost half of the 970-kilometer-long Kyrgyz-Tajik border has not been demarcated, leading to tensions over the past 30 years.
The latest fighting was the heaviest in years and raised fears of a wider conflict between the two impoverished neighbors.
The European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Russia have all urged both sides to respect the cease-fire agreement.
Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan host Russian military bases.
Prosecutors from both Central Asian states have launched criminal cases into the deadly violence, accusing each other of deliberately “encroaching” into each other’s territory.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When spray-painted pictures began appearing on the streets of Tashkent about a year ago, they prompted a wave of photos on social media and excited talk of the “Uzbek Banksy.” Now, in his first-ever interview, he told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that when he started, he had never previously heard of the famous English-based street artist he was compared to.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BUDAPEST — A controversial Chinese university project has renewed concerns about Beijing’s growing influence in Hungary and pushed Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s close ties to China back into the spotlight.
Hungary signed a strategic agreement with Fudan University on April 27 that would open a campus in Budapest by 2024. The deal would make it the first Chinese university in the European Union and the first foreign outpost for the prestigious Shanghai-based school, which the government says will raise higher-education standards in Hungary.
But growing concern about a lack of transparency over the project, as well as revelations that the Hungarian government is planning to take on a huge, opaque Chinese loan to build the campus, has left the venture embroiled in controversy.
“Until the government provides full disclosure of all the details of the project, we have nothing to negotiate about, which means that we will not give our consent to the construction of the Chinese university,” Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony told RFE/RL.
Karacsony remains one of the most vocal critics of the project, saying the planned campus places an undue financial burden on taxpayers and that the government is refusing to disclose all of its “decisions, contracts concluded or in preparation, and strategic agreements” regarding Fudan’s plans in Budapest.
Documents obtained in early April by Direkt36, a Hungarian investigative-journalism outlet, show that pretax construction costs for the Fudan campus are estimated at $1.8 billion, more than the Hungarian government spent on its entire higher-education system in 2019.
The state plans to finance around 20 percent of the project from its central budget, with the rest of the money provided by a $1.5 billion loan from a Chinese bank. According to the documents, the construction will be carried out using mostly Chinese materials and labor, and Fudan University has agreed that the China State Construction Engineering Corporation — the largest construction company in the world — will bid for the lucrative contract.
The area where the government wants to build Fudan University was previously picked to host a Student City that would provide accommodation and other facilities for Hungarian students. Karacsony said that the city’s plans were being overridden by the Hungarian government and that he and other high-ranking city officials planned to launch a referendum to block construction of the university. The strategic cooperation agreement “is about giving huge buildings to China for [free]. It serves the expansion of Chinese companies in Europe,” he said.
The proposed Fudan University campus is the latest manifestation of China’s growing footprint in Hungary, which has expanded since Orban returned to power in 2010 and launched an “Eastern Opening” policy meant to cultivate close ties with Beijing and Moscow in order to attract investment and new economic opportunities for Hungary following the global financial crisis.
While Chinese investment into Hungary and Central Europe as a whole has been slow to materialize, Orban has cultivated a strong relationship with Beijing over the years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with Orban on the phone on April 29, with Xi praising the nationalist leader for his China-friendly policies and deepened cooperation throughout the pandemic before inviting him to visit Beijing.
“Hungary is — and will remain — the centerpiece for Chinese engagement in Central Europe and that’s only become more true during the pandemic,” Paul Stronski, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told RFE/RL. “For the Chinese, Hungary is the gateway to the rest of Europe.”
A New Opening
Finding the right balance between friendly gestures to Beijing and still maintaining the trust of Western allies has been a unique feature of Hungary’s foreign policy. But walking that tightrope has become increasingly hard for Budapest during the pandemic.
The Orban government’s decision to move forward with the Fudan campus stirred concern in Washington for its NATO ally, with the U.S. Embassy in Budapest expressing reservations over the project. “The possible opening of Fudan University’s first campus in Europe is a cause of concern, as Beijing has a proven track record of using its higher-education institutions to gain influence and stifle intellectual freedom,” the embassy said in a statement to the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hang.
Budapest has also found itself at the heart of several incidents with the EU in which the Hungarian government has sought overtures to Beijing.
Following tit-for-tat sanctions in March between China and the EU over Beijing’s human rights abuses in its western Xinjiang region, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto denounced the measures as “pointless, self-aggrandizing, and harmful.”
A few days later, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe was in Budapest as part of a planned visit and used the opportunity to condemn EU sanctions and praise Hungary’s conciliatory approach, claiming that Beijing “has always regarded Hungary as a good brother.”
Budapest also reportedly blocked an EU statement the same month that criticized China’s new security law in Hong Kong, preventing the bloc from initially joining the United Kingdom and the United States in their own statements over the erosion of human rights in the former British colony.
Hungary is also the only EU member country that hasn’t acknowledged potential security concerns posed by Chinese vendors like Huawei to 5G mobile networks. Budapest is even home to Huawei’s largest manufacturing base outside of China and hosts a new regional research and development center for the company.
Opposition politicians in Hungary have also raised concerns about the proposed Fudan University campus, pointing to potential debt problems and a potential lack of academic freedom at the institution.
Katalin Cseh, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary’s Momentum Movement, told RFE/RL that she asked EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell to prevent the establishment of the Budapest campus due to the wider risks it could pose to the bloc.
“Beijing needs ‘Trojan horses’ within the EU, and the Hungarian government voluntarily offers Hungary for this role,” Cseh said. “It is a high risk when a country puts China’s interests above the European community’s interests, or above its own country’s interests.”
Between China And The EU
According to Tamas Matura, an assistant professor at Corvinus University in Budapest and the founder of the Central and Eastern European Center for Asian Studies, these moves should be viewed as political gestures to Beijing rather than substantial policy shifts, with the overtures to China functioning as a bargaining chip in Hungary’s ongoing standoff with the EU.
“In the framework of Orban’s battle with the EU, he needs a big brother like China,” Matura told RFE/RL.
Orban has championed what he calls “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and Budapest was singled out in human rights watchdog Freedom House’s annual report, published in April, for an “unparalleled democratic deterioration over the past decade.”
Orban’s Fidesz party has also been suspended from the EU Parliament’s European People’s Party and, as Budapest and Brussels remain locked in a tug-of-war set off by EU concerns over the rule of law and misuse of the bloc’s funds, observers like Matura say the prime minister is using his relationship with China for domestic purposes.
“None of these ideas are coming from China, they are coming from the Hungarian side, but of course Beijing is happy to go along with them,” Matura said.
Hungary took out a 20-year, $1.9 billion loan in 2020 from Beijing to build a railway link that would connect Budapest with the Serbian capital, Belgrade, but the project remains controversial at home and across the region due to delays and a lack of transparency.
In April 2020, the Hungarian parliament voted to give the government extraordinary emergency powers on the premise of combating the pandemic, but it also voted to keep all details around the railway project classified, including a feasibility study about its profitability, arguing that it was required in order to secure a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.
This has led some critics in the country to question the project’s true benefit. Further concerns were raised after a significant contract for the construction work went to a consortium owned by billionaire Lorinc Meszaros, Hungary’s richest person and a childhood friend of Orban.
Elsewhere, Orban’s close relationship with Beijing has helped solidify his standing at home in at least one area.
While public approval in Hungary for China has declined since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Budapest’s use of Chinese vaccines has helped give Orban a domestic boost in combating the virus.
Hungary ordered doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines through the EU, but is the only member of the bloc that also approved China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, despite neither shot being approved by the European Medicines Agency.
So far, the move appears to have paid off for the populist Orban, who is looking to increase support ahead of parliamentary elections in 2022. Hungary has fully vaccinated 21.5 percent of its population as of May 2 — nearly double the EU average — and has begun to ease coronavirus restrictions.
“There might be a sense of satisfaction right now in the Hungarian government,” Matura said. “A satisfaction that ties with Beijing paid off when they needed help fighting the pandemic, which were also helpful ahead of the general elections next year.”
The Home Front
Analysts say the Orban government’s embrace of Beijing is difficult to separate from the shifts taking place within Hungary’s domestic politics.
The strategic agreement with Fudan University also coincided with recent changes to the management of Hungarian universities, which not only transfers billions in state assets to those close to the prime minister, but also could enable Orban and his supporters to exert long-term control over public education in the country.
The Fudan announcement also comes shortly after the Central European University — founded by billionaire George Soros and considered one of Hungary’s premier postgraduate institutions — was effectively forced out of the country in 2018 after amendments were passed to a higher education law that were widely seen as targeting the university.
The European Court of Justice said in October 2020 that the move against the university violated Hungary’s commitments under the World Trade Organization and infringed upon the provisions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights relating to academic freedom. Despite that ruling, the Central European University remains based in Vienna.
All this leaves Hungary at a crucial junction as it gears up for next year’s elections, Stronski says.
The shifts in the country’s domestic and foreign policies over the last decade have largely been led by Orban and should he and his Fidesz party lose in 2022, many of those changes could see a swift reversal.
“Having Orban in place for the last decade has allowed the Chinese to invest in him and also in the Hungarian elite,” Stronski said. “If the government changes hands there’s no certainty that this China policy would stay in place. There isn’t much support in Hungary for these pro-China policies beyond Orban’s current government.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When human rights lawyer Karinna Moskalenko learned that fellow attorney Ivan Pavlov had been detained in Moscow, alarm bells rang.
“This is a real state of emergency,” Moskalenko, who 20 years ago was the first Russian lawyer to speak before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and to win a case from Russia, wrote on Facebook on April 30.
“A lot depends — for him and for us all — on how we act now,” Moskalenko wrote. “For my part, I am sending the alarm to the headquarters of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. And I am asking this global organization to act immediately.”
In a post the same day, journalist and human rights activist Zoya Svetova called the prominent defense attorney “a knight among lawyers.” “Pavlov is an absolutely fearless and professional lawyer who is also sensitive and loyal,” Svetova wrote. She urged “a majority of bold, honest, and professional colleagues” to come to his aid and to the aid of the legal profession in Russia generally.
Pavlov, who specializes in cases involving state secrets, was questioned in Moscow and is under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information about the ongoing investigation of former journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov is accused of giving classified information about Russian arms sales to the Czech Republic, which he denies.
Also on April 30, law enforcement searched the St. Petersburg office of Pavlov’s legal-aid NGO Team 29, the home of the group’s IT specialist, the apartment of Pavlov’s wife, and Pavlov’s dacha.
At a court hearing the same day, a judge granted a prosecution request that Pavlov be barred from using the Internet or communicating with witnesses in the Safronov case.
‘A Bone In The Throat’
The Telegram channel SOTA posted a copy of the complaint that triggered the case, which was signed by Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Aleksandr Bortnikov and addressed to the head of the Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin.
Pavlov’s lawyer and longtime Team 29 colleague, Yevgeny Smirnov, wrote on Telegram that Bortnikov rarely signs such documents himself.
Lawyer Irina Biryukova made headlines in 2018 when she briefly left Russia because of threats when she was working on a case of alleged torture in a prison in the Yaroslavl region. She told RFE/RL the case against Pavlov was a demonstration of power by the security services aimed at the entire human rights community.
“He has been like a bone in the throat of the security agencies,” Biryukova told RFE/RL. “Any pressure against a lawyer — particularly one involved in political cases — is pressure against human rights as a whole. This is an attempt to show us all that now the security forces can do anything they want without consequences. To show that they can come for any dissenter at any moment. It is pressure not only against lawyers, but against the entire human rights community.”
“And I’m sure this is not the end of it,” she added. “Toward the autumn, we’ll feel all its charms. Things are not going to get any better.”
Russia is preparing for elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, which must be held by September 19. President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party has been polling at historically low levels, and many observers link this to the government’s latest crackdown on opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his colleagues, as well as on other dissenters and independent media outlets.
Pavlov had a long-running conflict with the FSB, and particularly with Aleksandr Cheban, the FSB investigator handling the Safronov case, Smirnov said. A Team 29 post on Telegram on April 30 quoted Smirnov as saying Cheban had told Pavlov, “You are standing on our throat, and we will do everything we can to put you in prison.”
Team 29 lawyer Maksim Olenichev told RFE/RL that “Ivan was threatened many times, since his human rights activity centered on defending innocent people from state pressure.”
Pavlov, 50, was born in St. Petersburg and graduated from the St. Petersburg University law department in 1997. He immediately became involved in his first major case, defending Russian Navy Captain Aleksandr Nikitin, who was accused of publishing classified information about emergency situations on Russian nuclear submarines. Nikitin was acquitted by the Russian Supreme Court in 2000. Nikitin was the first person in the Soviet or post-Soviet eras to be acquitted of a treason charge.
Freedom Of Information
More recently, Pavlov defended Svetlana Davydova, a woman from the Smolensk region who was accused in 2015 of passing military information to Ukraine the previous year. The charges against her were dropped for lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. In addition, the Prosecutor-General’s Office sent her a written apology.
Also in 2015, Pavlov created Team 29, which was devoted to”attaining justice in cases involving freedom of information.” In 2019, the group won a Supreme Court case that enabled a Russian to get information about his grandfather,who was executed in 1933.
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who died of cancer on April 29 while awaiting trial on treason charges. Pavlov was able to get him released from pretrial custody, which he later claimed had “completely damaged his health.”
Pavlov has also been defending Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) against the government’s efforts to have it labeled “extremist.” Some observers believe the case against Pavlov could be connected to his involvement in that high-profile case.
Human rights advocate Pavel Chikov wrote on Telegram that the Justice Ministry had already twice complained to the Petersburg Chamber of Advocates alleging that Pavlov had revealed secret information in connection with the Safronov case.
‘In The Face Of Outrage’
“Both times the Petersburg chamber refused to take disciplinary actions,” Chikov wrote. For its part, the chamber on April 30 published an open letter to Bastrykin, Bortnikov, and other senior officials saying the case against Pavlov “was being created by representatives of the investigative authorities with blatant and intentional violations of Russia’s criminal-procedural legislation.”
“The legal community cannot reconcile itself with the clearly illegal practices of the investigative authorities in forcibly taking confidential information from lawyers involved in criminal defense,” the letter stated. It added that investigators’ actions “will inevitably lead to the destruction of the legal foundations of our state.”
Pskov region legislator and opposition politician Lev Shlosberg told RFE/RL that the cases Pavlov had taken on in his career involving charges of “treason, terrorism, and extremism are usually cases that were initiated by the Russian government to cover up political persecution.”
“They are an attempt to destroy — legally, and sometimes physically — political opponents,” he added. “Defending the accused in such cases is a direct fight against the government in its bid to destroy dissent.”
In 2016, when Shlosberg became the first laureate of the annual Boris Nemtsov Foundation prize, he donated the entire 10,000-euro ($12,070) prize to Team 29. According to Team 29’s annual report, they spent almost all the money defending Natalya Sharina, the former director of Moscow’s Library of Ukrainian Literature, who was accused of purchasing extremist materials.
“These people are real defenders of the law in the face of outrage,” Shlosberg said in his acceptance speech. “They are the defenders of the citizen in the face of the despotism of the state. They are working hard in the name of freedom and democracy in our country.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab are expected to discuss issues related to Iran during their bilateral meeting on May 3 ahead of the start of a G7 ministers meeting in London.
The United Kingdom currently chairs the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrial countries and is involved in ongoing multilateral efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement that curbed Iranian nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Blinken and Raab face-to-face meeting also comes amid disputed reports that prisoner swaps and the unfreezing of billions of dollars in assets might be under negotiation between the United States, Britain, and Iran.
Both Washington and London have acknowledged their ongoing efforts to seek the release of nationals held in Iran but avoided linking them to other topics, including mutually held nationals.
The British Foreign Office downplayed Iranian reports on May 2 that a deal had been reached to exchange disputed assets for the release of dual British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran since 2016.
British officials on May 3 suggested the leaked reports were “disinformation” and sought to avoid linking a 400 million-pound ($550 million) historical debt to prerevolutionary Iran to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case.
But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged, “We of course make sure that we do everything we can to look after the interests of Nazanin and all the very difficult dual-national cases we have in Tehran.”
The U.S. State Department on May 2 rejected as “not true” unsourced Iranian reports claiming a deal on a prisoner swap and $7 billion in frozen Iranian assets had been agreed.
Iran is known to be holding at least four Americans: father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, and entrepreneur Emad Shargi.
The Iranian reports suggested Iranian nationals jailed in the United States might also be part of a deal.
The UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany wrapped up a third round of high-level talks on May 1 focused on bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018.
Prisoner swaps were a feature of the JCPOA nearly six years ago.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Armenia’s parliament has rejected the candidacy of acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian as the new head of government, in an agreed first step toward holding snap parliamentary elections.
Pashinian resigned on April 25, clearing the way for parliamentary elections to be held, in an effort to defuse a political crisis prompted by the outcome of the country’s war last year with Azerbaijan.
“One lawmaker voted in favor, three against, and 75 lawmakers abstained. Pashinian is not elected as prime minister,” speaker Ararat Mirzoyan announced after the vote on May 3.
A second special parliamentary session is expected to take place on May 10. If Pashinian fails to secure the support of lawmakers for a second time, parliament will be dissolved and President Armen Sarkisian will schedule early elections for next month.
Pashinian has said he plans to continue to fulfill his duties as prime minister until the vote, and plans to take part in the elections.
The move follows recent changes made to the Electoral Code that the opposition has said are aimed at helping Pashinian win.
The changes, worked out by Pashinian’s My Step alliance, revamp parts of the Electoral Code introduced in 2016 by the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), two years before Pashinian was swept into office after leading mass protests against the pro-Russian HHK of former President Serzh Sarkisian.
The amendments will change the country’s electoral system to a fully proportional one.
Up until now, Armenians have voted for parties and alliances as well as individual candidates, whereas the next election will be held only on a party-list basis.
Disastrous Defeat
Armenia has been embroiled in a political crisis since Pashinian signed a Russian-brokered cease-fire in November to end the war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian agreed in March to hold the early vote next month. He has indicated that he favors the date of June 20 for the elections.
Opinion polls show that public confidence in Pashinian’s government has fallen sharply since then, with its approval rating falling from 60 percent to around 30 percent last month.
Pashinian has come under fire since agreeing to a Moscow-brokered deal with Azerbaijan that took effect on November 10, ending six weeks of fierce fighting in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh that saw ethnic Armenian forces suffer battlefield defeat.
Under the cease-fire, part of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by Armenians.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the region’s population reject Azerbaijani rule.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
People inspected the chard remains of their homes, schools, and other buildings in villages on both sides of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border after deadly armed clashes along the frontier on April 28-29. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan completed the withdrawal of their military units from the border on May 3 as a cease-fire appeared to be holding.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says legal amendments being considered by Kyrgyz lawmakers would put the political opposition and human rights groups at greater risk in the Central Asian nation.
The rights group said in a statement on May 3 that the amendments — proposed by the Interior Ministry and approved by Kyrgyz lawmakers in the first reading last month — would broaden the scope for the criminal prosecution of organizations deemed “extremist” to include those found to incite “political enmity,” along with national, ethnic, or racial enmity, and to make financing such “extremist” organizations a criminal offense.
“Adding vague language about ‘extremism’ and ‘political enmity’ to Kyrgyz law will open the door to abuse, putting peaceful groups critical of government policy at enormous risk,” said Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at HRW. “Kyrgyz authorities should not introduce overbroad criminal law provisions that endanger freedom of association and speech.”
The draft law will enter into force after it passes two more parliamentary readings and is signed by President Sadyr Japarov, who took over the former Soviet republic in the wake of a deep political crisis sparked by mass protests against official results of parliamentary elections in October that led to resignation of Japarov’s predecessor, Sooronbai Jeenbekov.
HRW said in the statement that it had found that, despite some reforms, existing Kyrgyz laws on countering extremism have been applied unevenly and that its overly broad definition allowed for its misuse against political opponents, journalists, and religious and ethnic minorities.
“The Kyrgyz Criminal Code already contains articles that provide severe penalties for political crimes, such as attempting to violently overthrow the government,” the HRW statement said.
“Following months of political tensions, the Kyrgyzstan government should show its citizens and the world that it still supports strong human rights standards. These amendments to the legal codes should be rejected if Kyrgyzstan hopes to stay true to its international human rights commitments,” Sultanalieva said.
Japarov has praised the constitutional changes, which he initiated, saying they are needed to create a strong central branch of government to “establish order.”
In a March report, the watchdog Freedom House singled out Kyrgyzstan as being among nations recording the biggest losses in scores for political rights and civil liberties.
The report said Japarov has “advanced a new draft constitution that could reshape Kyrgyzstan’s political system in the mold of its authoritarian neighbors.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BISHKEK — Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have completed withdrawal of their military units from the border following deadly clashes last week, the Kyrgyz Border Service said on May 3.
The national-security chiefs of the two Central Asian neighbors agreed to the pullback in a crisis meeting on May 1.
The Kyrgyz Border Service said that after the withdrawal of the military units the situation in the area is calm and stable.
“The sides have completed the withdrawal of additional military units and equipment from the border…. The joint military commission consisting of officers from the defense structures of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan continue inspecting the areas left by the additional military forces and equipment,” the Kyrgyz Border Guarding Service’s statement said.
On May 2, the head of Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security, Saimumin Yatimov, said when visiting the country’s Vorukh exclave within Kyrgyzstan that Tajik military forces had been withdrawn from the border.
Kyrgyzstan says that during the April 28-29 clashes, 34 Kyrgyz citizens were killed, 178 were injured, and 50,000 people fled the area.
According to Bishkek, 78 private homes, two schools, one medical point, two border checkpoints, a kindergarten, 10 gasoline stations, a police building, and eight shops were destroyed in Kyrgyzstan’s southwestern region of Batken.
Tajik authorities have yet to give an official casualty toll.
Correspondents of RFE/RL’s Tajik Service in the area reported that at least 16 Tajik nationals were killed and at least 90 were injured.
The violence followed a dispute over the installation of surveillance cameras at a water distribution point near the Vorukh exclave, drawing in security forces from both countries.
Kyrgyz security officials at one point accused Tajik forces of using MI-24 helicopter gunships to shoot at Kyrgyz villages.
The meeting of the Tajik and Kyrgyz delegations followed a telephone conversation between Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rahmon.
The European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Russia have all urged both sides to respect the cease-fire agreement.
Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan host Russian military bases.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged an immediate investigation to hold either side responsible for laws-of-war violations against civilians.
Like many other border areas in Central Asia, almost half of the 970-kilometer long Kyrgyz-Tajik border has not been demarcated, leading to tensions for the past 30 years.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Britain has accused Iranian authorities of abuse that “amounts to torture” of a dual national held by Iran for five years, while the United States has rejected an unsourced report that a prisoner swap had been agreed for Westerners held in Iran.
The renewed focus on Westerners held in Iran emerged a day after the parties to a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran wrapped up a third round of tense talks on May 1 focused on bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the deal.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on May 2 said that dual British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran since 2016, is being held “unlawfully” and “being treated in the most abusive” way.
“I think it amounts to torture the way she’s being treated, and there is a very clear, unequivocal obligation on the Iranians to release her,” Raab told BBC television on May 2.
Raab spoke by telephone with former charity worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe on April 28, days after her lawyer announced that she had been sentenced to another year in prison in Iran for spreading “propaganda against the system.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was already serving a five-year sentence for plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters, and rights groups deny.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has accused Tehran of holding Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a diplomatic ploy.
Iranian state TV on May 2 quoted an anonymous source as saying a deal had been agreed for the United Kingdom to pay hundreds of millions of pounds for the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The claims of a prisoner swap came in the hours before a nationally broadcast speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he made no mention of such a deal.
The U.S. State Department denied Iranian reports suggesting a deal including a prisoner swap had been made between Washington and Tehran.
“Reports that a prisoner swap deal has been reached are not true,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “As we have said, we always raise the cases of Americans detained or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite them with their families.”
The unsourced reports said four Iranians and “four American spies who have served part of their sentences” would be traded and $7 billion in frozen Iranian funds released.
Iran is known to be holding at least four Americans: father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, and entrepreneur Emad Shargi.
Hawks in Iran and the West have opposed U.S. President Joe Biden’s stated aim of rejoining the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal his predecessor Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 to reimpose sanctions on Iran.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Both sides have reported calm on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border as a day-old cease-fire appeared to be holding and more than 40 people were being mourned from some of the worst clashes in decades on their disputed frontier.
A joint Kyrgyz-Tajik military commission reported finding an unexploded rocket embedded in a residence in the area as the group inspected the scene of 24 hours of intense violence on April 28-29.
Kyrgyzstan is observing two days of official mourning for 34 people who died in Batken Province. One hundred and seventy-eight more were reported injured on the Kyrgyz side, seven of them still in grave condition.
Some 30,000 Kyrgyz villagers were reportedly evacuated from their homes.
Fifteen people were thought to have been killed on the Tajik side and 90 more injured, according to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, although Tajik authorities did not disclose casualty figures.
The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said in a statement on May 2 that “the situation in all districts and villages of Batken Province on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border is stable and calm.”
The violence followed a dispute over the installation of surveillance cameras at a water-distribution point near Tajikistan’s Vorukh exclave, drawing in security forces from both countries.
Kyrgyz security officials at one point accused Tajik forces of using MI-24 helicopter gunships to shoot at Kyrgyz villages.
Kyrgyz reports say about 100 structures, including dozens of homes, three border checkpoints, a medical center, a police station, and two schools, were damaged.
The heads of national security for the post-Soviet, Central Asian neighbors agreed to the pullback during a crisis meeting on May 1.
The meeting of the Tajik and Kyrgyz delegations followed a telephone conversation between Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rahmon.
The European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Russia have all urged both sides to respect the cease-fire agreement.
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan both host Russian military bases.
Human Rights Watch has urged an immediate investigation to hold either side responsible for laws-of-war violations against civilians.
Like many other border areas in Central Asia, almost half of the 970-kilometer-long Kyrgyz-Tajik border has not been demarcated, leading to tensions for the past 30 years.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Anger spilled onto the streets of Minsk and across Belarus on August 9, 2020, shortly after polls closed and a state-run exit survey pointed to a big victory for Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Protesters marched through the streets of the capital, many facing off against armed riot police who dealt with them brutally.
No election in Belarus under Lukashenka, in power since 1994, had been deemed free or fair by the West, and this one was no different, although the strongman was suddenly more vulnerable than he had been going into past votes. He was under fire for refusing to institute lockdown measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which he dismissed as “mass hysteria.”
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
He was also facing a strong challenge from Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice and last-minute fill-in candidate for her jailed husband, Syarhey Tsikhanouski. Her huge campaign rallies had fueled hopes, quickly dashed, that Lukashenka’s decades-long authoritarian rule was nearing an end.
Maryna Zolatava, editor in chief of the country’s most popular news website, the independent outlet Tut.by, was working the editorial desk that day when reports came in of unrest on the streets of Minsk after the polls closed.
“The recollections from August 9 are seared into my mind,” Zolatava told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service in a recent interview, describing the scene “when our reporters in the field began calling in to the editorial office to tell us what was happening in the city.”
“Explosions, gunfire…. I couldn’t believe the things the reporters were telling me,” she said. It was all remarkable, but we didn’t have time to reflect on what was happening.”
The protests, with crowds swelling to as many as 200,000 people in Minsk, have continued ever since, albeit with dwindling numbers. That has been put down to fatigue and the fear instilled by the Lukashenka government’s brutal crackdown. More than 30,000 Belarusians have been detained, and hundreds beaten on the streets and in custody.
Rights groups have documented some 1,000 cases of suspected torture. At least five people have been killed. Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee to Lithuania after the vote amid threats to her and her family.
For the crackdown and alleged vote rigging, Lukashenka and his inner circle have been hit with sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and others, including Canada.
Lukashenka faces international isolation and is ever more reliant on support from larger, more powerful neighbor Russia, which commentators say is exploiting his weakness to squeeze out more concessions on a union treaty deal that critics say further erode what sovereignty it still possesses.
The practice of independent journalism, long dangerous work in tightly controlled Belarus, has become substantially riskier over the past year. And even journalists at state-run media weren’t safe: Dozens who voiced support for the opposition were thrown out of work and replaced by state TV journalists from Russia.
According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 481 journalists were detained in 2020, twice as many than the previous six years combined.
Fear And Courage
Belarus slipped five places, to 158th, in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2021 World Press Freedom Index. Three journalists were given hard prison time, including two facing two-year prison sentences.
“The authorities are trying to suppress all independent voices and to strike fear into the hearts of journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “RSF hails the courage of those who continue to report on the crackdown in Belarus and calls on international organizations to take action to prevent such harassment and to secure the release of journalists jailed for doing their job.”
During the early days of postelection protests, journalists were not widely targeted by police, Zolatava said — but that changed quickly, and soon police were harassing even those with vests clearing identifying them as “press.”
“At the time I thought, ‘This can’t be!’ But it is, and it should not be so. The administrative arrests had started. It all seemed impossible — the fact that all this was happening was surreal.”
The risk of her reporters being beaten or snatched off the street by police began to weigh on Zolatava. “It wasn’t like that before. Now you’re under constant stress as you try to maintain a state of normality within your team. And you constantly think about how you can guarantee the safety of your people,” she said. “It has greatly changed the job. It doesn’t impact you physically, it’s more like constant psychological pressure. You really have to be prepared for it.”
Long targeted by the authorities for its hard-hitting reporting, Tut.by has found itself under even greater scrutiny over the past year. The Ministry of Information warned the news site over four articles before withholding its accreditation for three months starting on October 1.
Tut.by only registered as a media outlet in January 2019. Before that, it had operated without media credentials since the site’s founding in 2000.
Behind Bars
Despite the growing pressures, Zolatava said her reporting team remains largely intact. “Have people left due to security issues or political problems? Nothing like that has happened. In August, our work underwent huge changes. Everything that happened before and after that has hugely impacted all of our lives,” she said, adding that her reporters were detained 38 times by police in 2020.
One of them was Katsyaryna Barysevich. She was arrested on November 19 after writing an article about Raman Bandarenka, who died several days earlier following a beating by a group of masked assailants. Barysevich disputed the official claim that Bandarenka was drunk, citing medical findings that no alcohol had been detected in his blood.
The doctor who provided the lab results, Artsyom Sarokin, was arrested, tried, and convicted along with Barysevich, ultimately receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence and fine of 1,450 Belarusian rubles ($560) for disclosing medical information. Barysevich was handed a six-month prison term and fined 2,900 rubles ($1,130) for disclosing medical information and instigating a crime by pressuring a first responder to share information.
“Katsyaryna is in good spirits. Barysevich is someone deserving of admiration. Katya is the best,” Zolatava said. “It is definitely very distressing that she is in there [prison]. And it’s awful that we can’t change that.”
“We are doing our best. We are writing appeals, trying to draw the attention of the international community to the situation of Katsyaryna,” she said, thanking the Belarusian Association of Journalists and human rights activists for their efforts. “But almost five months have passed since November 19, and Katya is still behind bars. And it’s just awful. How can this be happening?”
Barysevich’s arrest and sentencing served as wake-up calls to editors at Tut.by, Zolatava aid. “After Katya’s arrest, we began to discuss our future more often and consult with lawyers. Although, in principle, her arrest did not affect the editorial policy; self-censorship did not increase. Katya did nothing illegal. She did her job, did it as it should be done,” she said.
On April 20, the Minsk City Court upheld Barysevich’s conviction and sentence. She is now scheduled to be released from prison on May 19.
‘Nightmarish Events’
While Barysevich’s was one the harshest sentences, two other Belarusians suffered an even worse fate. Katsyaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova, reporters for Belsat, a Poland-based satellite TV station, were arrested on November 15 while covering a rally in Minsk to commemorate Bandarenka.
A court in Minsk on February 18 found Andreyeva and Chultsova guilty and sentenced them to two years in prison each, sparking international condemnation, with EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano denouncing it as a “shameful crackdown on media.”
Despite the dangers, more people than ever are turning to Tut.by for credible news coverage, although numbers are slipping as weariness creeps in, Zolatava said.
Visits to the site peaked in August, September, and October. By December, they began to dip and the downward trend continues, although there was a blip around March 25 and 27, when Tsikhanouskaya had called for a huge turnout coinciding with the anniversary of the founding in 1918 of the first free Belarusian republic.
“I think there is a fatigue factor with readers. A year ago, the coronavirus appeared, and the situation then was not completely normal. I think people were looking for something a bit lighter. The whole world is now stressed,” Zolatava said.
Meanwhile, Lukashenka’s government is pushing ahead with more media restrictions. Changes to the country’s mass media law — passed by the rubber-stamp parliament earlier this month — would make it illegal for journalists to “discredit” the state, or livestream mass unauthorized gatherings, among other draconian measures. According to Human Rights Watch, at least seven reporters face trial.
Despite the bleak prospects and pangs of doubt, Zolatava says she is determined to continue her work at Tut.by. “There have been so many nightmarish events, so much that is unfair, that I’ve wondered whether it’s possible to continue the work. The injustice, the fact that so much is horribly illegal, and yet we are still working,” she said.
“On the other hand, what else can we do?” she continued. “We have to continue working so that all that has happened is not forgotten and remains a chapter of our history. So that people will know everything that happened.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
More than 80 Russian journalists, writers, historians, and translators have issued an open letter in support of prominent defense attorney Ivan Pavlov, who was detained in Moscow on April 30 and accused of disclosing classified information about the ongoing investigation of former journalist Ivan Safronov.
“The persecution of Ivan Pavlov and the seizure of confidential case files is an act of terror directed not only at Pavlov but at the entire law community and an attempt to drive Pavlov out of the Ivan Safronov case,” the open letter published on May 2 said.
The signatories of the letter represent the Moscow PEN Club and the Free Speech Association.
Pavlov, 50, is one of Russia’s leading human rights lawyers and the head of the legal-aid foundation Team 29. Law enforcement officers searched the Team 29 office in St. Petersburg, the home of the group’s IT specialist, and the apartment of Pavlov’s wife.
Safronov is accused of treason and has been in pretrial detention since July 2020. Authorities say he gave classified information about Russian arms sales in the Middle East to the Czech Republic, an accusation that Safronov denies.
Pavlov has also been representing the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which was created by imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and which Russian authorities are pushing to have declared an “extremist” organization.
In a statement on April 30, Amnesty International described Pavlov as “one of the country’s most courageous lawyers” and said his detention was “a travesty of justice.”
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who was also charged with treason. Kudryavtsev died of cancer on April 29 as his trial was pending.
Pavlov told journalists that the 14 months Kudryavtsev spent in pretrial detention had “completely damaged his health.” The case was “an example of how the secret services are literally killing Russian science in general,” he added.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Long persecuted by Iran’s Islamic regime, followers of the Baha’i faith in Tehran have now been told they must bury their dead upon the mass graves of political prisoners.
The Baha’i community in the Iranian capital has for years buried its dead in a special section of Tehran’s Khavaran cemetery, near the resting place for hundreds or even thousands of political prisoners who were victims of mass executions in the late 1980s.
Cemetery officials have in recent days reportedly told Baha’is that they are no longer allowed to bury their dead in that section of the cemetery.
Instead, they have been given two choices: they can bury their dead in the narrow space between existing Baha’i graves or use the area where the mass graves are located, says Simin Fahandej, the Baha’i International Community representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
Baha’is find the order unacceptable and want to be able to bury their dead with dignity and according to their religious rules. “With the destruction of many Baha’i cemeteries in the past four decades, Baha’is have experienced the pain caused by disrespect to the deceased and they don’t want others to experience the same pain,” Fahandej said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
He added that this new pressure from the authorities is part of more than 40 years of state repression and discrimination that Baha’is have faced in Iran since the creation of the Islamic republic.
History Of Persecution
Baha’is — who number some 300,000 in Iran and have an estimated 5 million followers worldwide — have faced systematic persecution in Iran, where their faith is not officially recognized in the country’s constitution.
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, hundreds of Baha’is have been arrested and jailed for their beliefs. At least 200 have been executed or were arrested and never heard from again — that includes all the members of three National Spiritual Assemblies from 1980 to 1984.
Thousands more have been banned from higher education or had their property confiscated. The community has long had its cemeteries desecrated and its loved ones’ gravestones destroyed.
The latest restriction put on Baha’i burials in Tehran, where most of Iran’s Baha’is live, has also upset the families of the executed political prisoners. They even wrote in an open letter dated April 25 complaining that several new graves had appeared near the site of the mass burials at Khavaran.
“On Friday April 23, while visiting the nameless land of our loved ones, we saw something that was shocking to believe: graves were dug in the mass graves’ site of our loved ones and two Baha’is were also buried in those graves,” said the letter, which was signed by 79 family members of the executed political prisoners.
“It is our right to know the exact burial place of our loved ones,” the letter said, adding that “after being deprived of this right for 40 years, we demand that there won’t be any changes and invasion at this cemetery.”
They also urged the Iranian authorities to refrain from forcing Baha’is to bury their loved ones on the area where the mass graves are located. “Don’t rub salt in our old wounds,” said the letter, addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rohani and Tehran Mayor Piruz Hanachi.
‘Salt In Our Wounds’
In a separate statement, some of the children of the executed prisoners said they opposed “any changes” at Khavaran, calling on the Baha’is not to submit to the order telling them where to bury their dead. “This is not the first time that the Islamic republic has attempted to cover up the remains of its crimes,” the statement said.
Several photos of the purported new graves at Khavaran, including two that had signs and flowers laid on them, have been posted online. The images appeared also to show white lines drawn in the dirt apparently as marks for new graves. RFE/RL cannot verify the authenticity of the images. Reports suggest about 10 new graves have appeared recently at Khavaran’s mass graves’ section.
Amnesty International said in a statement on April 29 that the Iranian authorities had attempted for years to destroy the mass-grave sites of the victims of the 1988 prison executions “in a bid to eliminate crucial evidence of crimes against humanity, denying truth, justice, and reparations to the families of those forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret.”
“As well as causing further pain and anguish to the already persecuted Baha’i minority by depriving them of their rights to give their loves ones a dignified burial in line with their religious beliefs, Iran’s authorities are willfully destroying a crime scene,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The executions of political prisoners were carried out in the last days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, after the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that apostates and those who had taken up arms against the Islamic republic were “waging war against God” and should be sentenced to death.
The prisoners were sent to their deaths following very brief interrogations by a small group of state officials, dubbed by prisoners as “death commissions.”
The Iranian establishment has rarely acknowledged the executions while also enforcing a news blackout on the issue. They have also repeatedly harassed family members of the victims who seek answers about their loved ones.
The Baha’i faith is a monotheistic religion whose central figure is Sayyed Ali Muhammad Shirazi, better known as Bab, who was executed in Tabriz by the Persian authorities in 1850. Based on the teachings of Persian religious leader Bahaullah, it considers the founders of various faiths — including Buddha, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammad — as expressions of God.
The central tenet of Baha’is is to promote a “oneness of humankind” that treats people of different nationalities, races, and classes equally.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and many years ago was touted by its first president as being destined to become a second Kuwait.
Turkmenistan has now become a country where people stand in long lines for rations of bread, dig through garbage for scraps and things they might possibly be able to sell, while the government celebrates horses and dogs.
Turkmenistan’s economy has been in dire shape for more than half a decade now and the standard of living for the country’s people continues to drop.
And recently, current President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has been guiding his son Serdar up the hierarchy of the government leading to speculation the presidency will be passed from father to son and the mismanagement that characterizes the Turkmen government will continue for another generation.
On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion that looks at the deterioration of Turkmenistan.
This week’s guests are: from the Netherlands, Ruslan Myatiev, the head of the Turkmen.news website; from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and many years ago was touted by its first president as being destined to become a second Kuwait.
Turkmenistan has now become a country where people stand in long lines for rations of bread, dig through garbage for scraps and things they might possibly be able to sell, while the government celebrates horses and dogs.
Turkmenistan’s economy has been in dire shape for more than half a decade now and the standard of living for the country’s people continues to drop.
And recently, current President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has been guiding his son Serdar up the hierarchy of the government leading to speculation the presidency will be passed from father to son and the mismanagement that characterizes the Turkmen government will continue for another generation.
On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion that looks at the deterioration of Turkmenistan.
This week’s guests are: from the Netherlands, Ruslan Myatiev, the head of the Turkmen.news website; from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Embattled Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has apologized for comments he made in a recording that was leaked last week in which he criticized the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the powerful late General Qasem Soleimani.
Zarif wrote on Instagram on May 2 that he hoped Soleimani’s family and the Iranian people would forgive him for the controversial comments.
The leaked recordings have touched off a firestorm in Iran less than two months ahead of a presidential election. On the recording, Zarif criticizes the IRGC’s involvement in diplomacy and charges that Soleimani maintained separate relations with Russia.
He also criticized his lack of influence within the country’s theocratic political system, saying that he was often left in the dark on important foreign-policy decisions.
Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad in 2020 and, since then, has been lionized in Iran as a martyr. Prosecutors in Tehran have launched a criminal investigation into the leak, while hard-liners have accused Zarif of “betrayal” and the “defamation” of Soleimani.
The leaked audio was from an interview with Zarif that was recorded on February 24 as part of an “oral history” series, the interviewer, prominent economist Saeed Laylaz, said in an audio file that was posted online.
Zarif can be heard repeatedly saying his comments are not for publication.
After the disclosure, the Foreign Ministry said the most controversial excerpts were taken out of context from a seven-hour conversation.
Zarif has said he does not plan to participate in the June presidential election. In the past he has been often mentioned as a possible challenger to the hard-line faction.
Russia has long been one of Iran’s closest allies and has consistently supported Tehran at the United Nations. Moscow called the assassination of Soleimani a “reckless step” that threatened regional stability.
On April 28, Zarif posted on Instagram a video of himself visiting the memorial to his “longtime friend” Soleimani in Baghdad. He wrote that he favored a “smart adjustment” between the diplomatic and military spheres in Tehran.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Ukraine’s capital has eased tough lockdown measures imposed in March to prevent the rapid spread of the new coronavirus.
Starting on May 1, Kyiv authorities have allowed cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, and sports clubs to reopen, and they have also permitted the operation of transport services without restrictions, although the numbers of passengers and customers will be limited.
Wearing masks remains mandatory in transport and public places.
Schools and kindergartens are to open their doors from May 5, officials said.
In March, city authorities closed schools and kindergartens, theaters, and shopping centers, while cafes and restaurants were only allowed to provide takeaway food.
Kyiv public transport is now operating on special passenger passes for those working for critical infrastructure enterprises.
Despite the measures, Kyiv recorded some of highest numbers of new infections among Ukrainian regions in April, but new cases have dropped significantly over the past week.
Ukraine has registered more than 2 million infections and over 44,400 deaths since the pandemic started last year.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The supervisory board of Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz is resigning following the government’s decision to replace the firm’s CEO – a move that has raised concerns among Kyiv’s Western backers.
On April 28, the government announced the dismissal of Andriy Kobolyev, Naftogaz’s chief since 2014, citing the “unsatisfactory” results of the company’s operations last year, when it posted a loss of nearly $700 million.
The supervisory board, which was temporarily suspended in order to dismiss Kobolyev, issued a statement on April 30 saying that all its members were submitting notice of their resignations, effective from May 14.
“The Supervisory Board will use the coming two weeks of its notice period to help the Company as much as it can to deliver an orderly transition and will inform the Shareholder in detail early next week,” the statement said.
The unexpected move to fire Kobolyev threatens to complicate talks to access a $5-billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, with Ukraine’s international partners warning that integrity and transparency in such decisions were key to maintaining confidence in the country’s commitment to reform.
The European Union, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation said in a joint statement on April 30 that they were “seriously concerned” about recent events at Naftogaz.
“We call upon the leadership of Ukraine to ensure that crucial management decisions at state-owned enterprises are taken in full accordance with the basic tenets of recognised corporate governance standards,” they said.
The U.S. State Department earlier said that the “calculated move” showed “disregard for fair and transparent corporate governance practices.”
The matter is set to be on the agenda when Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Ukraine on May 5-6.
Ukraine’s western backers tied financial aid for the country to concrete steps to clean up state enterprises such as Naftogaz, one of the country’s largest companies by revenue.
Naftogaz has long been the object of corruption schemes by officials and oligarchs, but the situation began to change after the 2014 upheaval that swept pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
Naftogaz’s new CEO, Yuriy Vitrenko, told reporters on April 30 that the concerns of international partners were “understandable” and “a number of problems needed to be resolved.”
The company needed to return to profit, said Vitrenko, who was serving as acting energy minister before his appointment.
Naftogaz has said the 2020 loss reflected lower demand, lower gas prices, and provisions for bad debts.
Kobolyev’s moves toward transparency won him support among Western investors and donors.
He was credited with overseeing an energy overhaul that helped Ukraine to narrow its budget deficit, and leading the former Soviet republic to a multibillion-dollar win in a legal dispute with Russian energy giant Gazprom in 2018.
He also faced criticism for increases in heating costs.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Kyrgyz authorities say the situation on a disputed border area with Tajikistan remains “tense” after more than 40 people were reported killed, including civilians, and dozens of others wounded in the worst such clashes in at least three decades.
Kyrgyzstan’s Border Service said in the early afternoon of May 1 that it had registered the movement of Tajik military equipment in the direction of the border, and that Tajik forces were blocking a road linking two Kyrgyz areas in Batken region.
Tajik troops opened fire on residential homes that had been previously evacuated in the Leilek district, while Kyrgyz border units took up defensive positions.
Tajik officials did not immediately comment on the allegations.
The clashes began on April 28 after a violent dispute between residents on both sides of the border over the installation of surveillance cameras at a water distribution point near Tajikistan’s Vorukh exclave drew in security forces from both countries.
A cease-fire was announced after some 24 hours of violence — the worst and most widespread fighting the region has seen since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Kyrgyzstan says 31 of its citizens were killed and 154 others were injured. Authorities said some 20,000 people, mainly women and children, were evacuated from villages near the border.
Tajikistan, an authoritarian state with tight control over the flow of information, said that nine of its citizens were wounded. Two of them were taken to hospital with gunshot wounds, officials said.
However, RFE/RL correspondents reported from the area that at least 12 Tajik citizens were killed and dozens of others injured in the violence.
Both sides blamed each other for the escalation.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov signed a decree on May 1 to declare a two-day period of nationwide mourning, during which national flags will fly at half-mast across the country and at its diplomatic missions abroad.
Cultural institutions, as well as television and radio channels were asked to cancel entertainment events and programs.
In Tajikistan, a prayer for peace was read in mosques across the country during the previous evening.
Mahmud Sangaliyev, a representative of Tajikistan’s Council of Ulema, told RFE/RL that the prayer called for the preservation of calm in the border areas and “mutual understanding with neighbors.”
Like many other border areas in Central Asia, almost half of the 970-kilometer long Kyrgyz-Tajik border has not been demarcated, leading to tensions for the past 30 years.
Japarov and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon held a “constructive” telephone conversation on April 30, during which they discussed measures to quickly de-escalate the situation, the Kyrgyz presidential office said.
Tajikistan’s Khovar state news agency reported that Rahmon invited his Kyrgyz counterpart to Dushanbe to discuss border demarcation plans, and Japarov accepted the invitation.
The visit’s date had not yet been determined, the report said.
Meanwhile, the lead spokesperson for the European Union’s Foreign Affairs and Security Policy urged Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on April 30 to “undertake all the necessary steps to avoid any conflict in the future.”
“The EU stands ready to provide, if needed, technical assistance through its regional programs dealing with border management and water management, as well as continued political support for a stability and prosperity in the region,” Peter Stano said in the statement.
Calling the situation along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border “alarming,” Helga Maria Schmid, the secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said the cease-fire agreement between Dushanbe and Bishkek was “a step in the right direction.”
“I encourage adherence to #OSCE commitments through continued efforts and negotiations to further de-escalate the situation,” she tweeted.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The wife of detained Crimean journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko is demanding his immediate release and called his arrest a “deliberate attack on freedom of speech.” Kateryna Yesypenko said her husband had been tortured with electric shocks and falsely accused of being a spy. Yesypenko is a freelance contributor to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service that is known locally as Radio Svoboda. He was detained on March 10 after covering an event marking the 207th anniversary of the death of Ukrainian poet and thinker Taras Shevchenko in the city of Simferopol on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When FBI agents knocked on the door of Rudy Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment just after dawn on April 28, they brought with them search warrants to seize computers and devices like cell phones from the former U.S. attorney and personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump.
Among the things U.S. investigators were looking for, according to multiple news reports: Giuliani’s communications with powerful Ukrainian tycoons and government officials.
And so again, 21 months after the Ukrainian government was sucked into the vortex of U.S. politics and the first bruising impeachment trial of Trump, Kyiv is again being pulled back in.
Giuliani has not been charged.
But if his legal problems, which he and his attorney have dismissed, were to result in an indictment, many of his interactions with current and former Ukrainian officials would likely be made public, subjecting Ukraine’s own political world — and potentially some of its more sordid, corrupt corners — to new scrutiny.
“There are a lot of people here who could give testimony against Giuliani,” said Anatoliy Oktysyuk, a political analyst at Democracy House, a Kyiv think tank. “A lot of people dealt with him over the years.”
In his radio show on April 29, Giuliani was defiant, lashing out at the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, which the former prosecutor — and later New York City mayor — used to head decades ago.
“What have they done?” he said. “Nothing, except come after me at 6 o’clock in the morning with a piece of nonsense.”
A Campaign Against An Ambassador
Giuliani’s work in Ukraine goes back at least to 2017, when he consulted for the legendary mayor of Kharkiv, Gennadiy Kernes, who died recently after contracting COVID-19. A Ukrainian-Russian real estate developer named Pavel Fuks was instrumental in setting up the deal.
But it was Giuliani’s work in 2019 that was crucial to the events that were central to Trump’s first impeachment and reverberated in the campaign for the 2020 presidential election that the incumbent lost to Joe Biden.
In April 2019, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was abruptly recalled from Kyiv by the State Department. In later testimony during the impeachment trial and other congressional hearings, it emerged that Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing for Yovanovitch’s ouster.
That effort involved two Soviet-born businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were charged by U.S. authorities in October 2019 with violations of U.S. campaign finance laws.
Those allegations include charges that Parnas and Fruman donated to and promised to raise more money to benefit a congressman who was involved in the effort to oust Yovanovitch.
She had been the focus of intense criticism from Trump allies, including Giuliani, who complained that she was hindering efforts to reopen an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that had been under scrutiny by Ukrainian prosecutors.
Among Yovanovitch’s actions that allies of Trump had criticized: her refusal to grant a U.S. visa to a Ukrainian chief prosecutor named Viktor Shokin whom Biden, when he was vice president, and other European officials saw as corrupt and ineffectual. Shokin was fired in 2016.
Biden’s son Hunter was on Burisma’s board of directors at the same time as his father was vice president. He reportedly received $50,000 a month to be a consultant and a member on the board before he left in May 2019.
But Yovanovitch was also the object of ire from other Ukrainian officials and businessman. According to The New York Times and other U.S. news organizations, U.S. prosecutors have explored whether Giuliani’s efforts also came on behalf of Ukrainian officials.
That would potentially be a violation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Neither Parnas nor his lawyer Joseph Bondy responded to text messages seeking comment. Yovanovitch, who left the State Department entirely, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Burisma Again
According to files released by the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Parnas and Fruman were in regular contact with Giuliani and Ukrainian prosecutors in the first half of 2019, about Yovanovitch as well the Burisma case.
In May, one month after Yovanovitch was recalled, Giuliani planned to travel to Kyiv, but then called off the trip after it became public.
The event that sparked Trump’s first impeachment came two months later: a July 25, 2019, phone call with Zelenskiy, in which Trump appeared to condition future U.S. aid to Ukraine on Zelenskiy ordering a new investigation into the Bidens. A whistleblower revealed that millions of dollars in congressionally authorized aid was being held up by the Trump White House; the outcry that resulted led to the White House releasing the aid.
In December 2019, the Democrat-led House of Representatives impeached Trump; the Republican-led Senate later acquitted him.
That same month, Giuliani traveled to Ukraine, along with a film crew from the right-wing TV network One America News. During the trip, he met with Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who used to be affiliated with a pro-Russian bloc.
Derkach, whose father was a KGB officer in the Soviet era and then later became the head of Ukraine’s intelligence agency in the late 1990s, was hit with financial sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department in September 2020, saying he “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services.”
Last month, the U.S. intelligence community released a report on election meddling that said Derkach’s actions were likely directed by the Kremlin, possibly by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The report also singled out a documentary shown on One American News called The Ukraine Hoax hosted by a Republican operative.
Ukrainian Gas, U.S. Charges
In his December 2019 trip to Kyiv, Giuliani also reportedly met with Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian magnate who made billions of dollars in Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt natural gas industry and who was indicted by U.S. officials in 2013.
He has been fighting extradition from Austria, where he lives. As part of that legal effort, he had hired a Democratic-connected lawyer named Lanny Davis to assist in his defense. Davis registered as a foreign agent under U.S. law.
However, in 2019, Parnas and Fruman, at Giuliani’s behest, had persuaded Firtash to change lawyers, to a husband-and-wife legal team well known in Republican political circles: Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova. They did not register under U.S. law.
In September 2019, Firtash made a series of wire transfers totaling around $1 million from a Russian bank. The recipient, according to documents filed by U.S. prosecutors, was Lev Parnas’s wife.
That same month, an affidavit by Shokin, made at Firtash’s behest, circulated in some U.S. news media. In it, Shokin claimed that Biden had wanted him fired as a way to protect his son — but stated he did not have evidence of this, saying only that he “assumed” that Burisma had been supported by Biden.
The following month, Parnas and Fruman were arrested as they were boarding a Vienna-bound flight at Dulles airport in Washington, D.C.
Parnas later said publicly that Firtash’s help in the effort to damage Biden came in exchange for their efforts to prevent his extradition and make his U.S. legal troubles disappear.
“For us to be able to receive information from Firtash, we had to promise Firtash something,” Parnas said in a January 2020 interview on NBC TV. “So, for Firtash, it was basically telling him that we knew his case was worthless here and that he’s being prosecuted for no reason. And that basically, it could get taken care of.”
On the same day that Giuliani’s home and offices were searched, FBI agents also searched the Washington-area home of Toensing, seizing her cell phone.
“Ms. Toensing was informed that she is not a target of the investigation,” a spokesperson said in a statement released to the media after the searches. “She has always conducted herself and her law practice according to the highest legal and ethical standards.”
Will Criminal Probes Be On Blinken’s Agenda?
In May 2020, as the U.S. presidential campaign began to take shape, Derkach held an extraordinary news conference in Kyiv, where he released excerpts of phone calls between Biden and Zelenskiy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
The edited recordings, however, did little to bolster Derkach’s arguments. Zelenskiy later said that prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into the origin of the leaked tapes, and Poroshenko himself said they had been fabricated.
The U.S. intelligence community report from March said Derkach’s release of the recordings was “part of his plan to secure the reelection of former President Trump.”
A report by the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security Committee later concluded that Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma was problematic, and noted it had alarmed some officials at the U.S. State Department. But the committee provided no evidence that Biden had improperly handled U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Giuliani’s legal problems pose a new risks for Zelenskiy, who has studiously tried to avoid getting sucked into the pitched U.S. political battles.
Volodymyr Fesenko, an independent political analyst, told RFE/RL that Zelenskiy has benefited from a warmer approach to Ukraine under the Biden administration. The White House gave strong backing to Zelenskiy in the recent fears over a massive building up of Russian troops on the eastern Ukrainian border.
But Biden was slow to call Zelenskiy after taking office in January — something Fesenko and others have ascribed to an apparent desire in the White House for Zelenskiy to push for criminal investigations into some of the Ukrainian officials.
Zelenskiy has already started pressuring some of Ukraine’s oligarchs, include his longtime patron Ihor Kolomoyskiy, who met with Parnas and Fruman in 2019 but concluded they were frauds.
The leaked phone calls that Derkach released was one major area ripe for investigation, Fesenko said, since it involved potentially illegal wiretaps or the distribution of classified information.
Oktysyuk, the analyst at Democracy House, predicted that the subject of Ukraine opening criminal investigations would come up when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to Kyiv next week.
The Guiliani case “could end up being a positive for Zelenskiy and his government, giving him reason to open investigations against Derkach” or other tycoons, Oktysyuk said. “It’s likely to come up during Blinken’s visit. I have no doubt about this.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
