Russia has barred eight officials from EU countries from entering the country in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russian citizens by Brussels.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said those banned included European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova, and David Sassoli, the president of the European parliament.
The EU imposed sanctions last month on two Russians accused of persecuting gay and lesbian people in the southern Russian region of Chechnya.
The EU also imposed sanctions on four senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin the same month.
Wolves, foxes, lynx, porcupines, and badgers all get starring roles on a network of cameras set up by conservationists in Georgia’s Chachuna protected area. The project helps monitor the numbers and behavior of wildlife and provides clues about the overall health of the ecosystem.
Kyiv’s Western backers have raised deep concerns over the Ukrainian government’s unexpected decision to replace the head of state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz.
The government said on April 28 that Andriy Kobolyev, Naftogaz’s chief since 2014, was dismissed from the post due to “unsatisfactory” results of the company’s operations last year, when it posted a loss of nearly $700 million.
The move threatens to complicate talks to access a $5 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Peter Stano, the lead spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, said Brussels had “serious concerns” over the decision, and called on “the leadership of Ukraine to ensure that the management decisions at state-owned enterprises are taken in full accordance with basic tenets of recognized corporate governance standards.”
The U.S. State Department earlier said the “calculated move” showed “disregard for fair and transparent corporate governance practices.”
“Unfortunately, these actions are just the latest example of ignoring best practices and putting Ukraine’s hard-fought economic progress at risk,” spokesman Ned Price told reporters on April 29.
He added that the United States “will continue to support Ukraine in strengthening its institutions, including advancing democratic institutions and corporate governance reforms, but Ukraine’s leaders must do their part.”
Ambassadors from the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations said in a tweet that “effective management and governance of state-owned enterprises, free from political interference, is crucial to Ukraine’s competitiveness, prosperity, and Ukraine fulfilling its international commitments.”
Kobolyev’s moves toward transparency won him support among Western investors and donors.
He was credited for 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 of heating costs.
His successor, Yuriy Vitrenko, said on April 30 that Naftogaz will continue to cooperate with international partners and that the company needed to return to profit.
Vitrenko was serving as acting energy minister before his appointment as CEO.
Ukraine’s Western backers tied financial aid to the country to concrete steps to clean up state companies 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.
A young Uyghur man says he has turned his dream into reality by opening a popular coffee house at the heart of Kashgar’s historic Old City to “blend the old and the new.”
A young Muslim woman moves from her remote village to the city for a “well-paid” factory job that enables her to provide a comfortable life for her family.
A Uyghur businesswoman challenges stereotypes to help young women in her community to pick Western-style wedding dresses for their big day.
They all purport to be content with prosperous lives, freedom of choice, and abundant opportunities they say they enjoy in their home region of Xinjiang in China’s northwest.
That is how a new Chinese documentary, Beyond The Mountains: Life In Xinjiang, depicts the lives of ethnic Uyghur and other Muslim minorities — mostly ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz — in the region.
The film makes no mention of China’s brutal crackdown on Xinjiang’s Muslims that has seen more than 1 million people forced into a notorious network of massive internment camps, often run in prison-like conditions, since 2017.
The documentary was released by the state-owned China Global Television Network in mid-April in several languages — including English and Russian — in a bid to push Beijing’s narrative of Xinjiang to global audiences.
It seeks to counter multiple accounts by natives of Xinjiang who say Muslims live in a climate of fear and oppression as authorities target their culture, religion, family life, and traditions.
The documentary emphasizes opportunities the government has allegedly created for young people to pursue their dreams in sports, music, business, and other areas.
Xinjiang activists who spoke to RFE/RL condemned the documentary as blatant Chinese propaganda that is a gruesome distortion of reality.
The Kashgar Coffee House Tale
The documentary depicts a coffee shop in a traditional two-story building with a flat rooftop on the backdrop of Kashgar’s scenic Old City.
Kashgar Corner Coffee & Tea is a startup business owned by young Muslim entrepreneur Mardan Ablimit, who describes himself as a “genuine Kashgar boy” with a big dream.
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Ablimit says his idea of a coffee shop was to mix his community’s history and culture with modern elements.
He describes his drinks as a perfect “blend of Western coffee and local herbs.”
The coffeehouse features colorful cushions and carpets along with traditional teahouse-style furniture.
Ablimit calls his coffeehouse a “miniature version of Kashgar” where “the older generation is trying new things” and young people like him “are pursuing their dreams.”
“I don’t see any conflicts or contradictions here,” he says, alluding to the official Chinese line of “peace and harmony” in the region.
People in Kashgar are “discarding the old way of thinking” and embracing change, Ablimit claims.
It’s difficult to verify Ablimit’s story of success in a business that he says pays tribute to his community’s history, culture, and traditions.
In reality, the Chinese government has shut down Xinjiang Muslims’ cultural centers, damaged or razed thousands of mosques and historical Muslim structures, and imprisoned community leaders.
Muslims are barred in many areas from entering mosques until they reach the age of 18.
Mardan Ablimit talks about his coffeeshop in the propaganda film.
Thousands have been jailed for performing Islamic prayers, celebrating holidays, or having traditionally large families.
Many Muslim children have been separated from their families and placed in special boarding schools — a move activists say is aimed at brainwashing the younger generation.
Beijing has also reportedly embedded more than 1 million civil servants from the country’s majority Han Chinese population to live with Muslim families in Xinjiang as part of the assimilation effort as well as to monitor their movements and contacts.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote in its International Religious Freedom Annual Report issued on April 28, 2020, that “individuals have been sent to the camps for wearing long beards, refusing alcohol, or other behaviors authorities deem to be signs of ‘religious extremism.’”
‘Grateful To My Factory’
A large segment of the Chinese documentary is dedicated to young Muslim women who — according to the video — have challenged their conservative community’s stereotypes to embrace modern life.
Zileyhan Eysa is introduced as a farmer from the rural county of Kuqa who gets a job at a factory in Bole in the relatively affluent northern part of Xinjiang.
Eysa makes about $600 a month, enough to support her impoverished family in Kuqa and her own life in the city.
With Eysa’s remittances, her mother, Tursungul Rejep, has paid her medical bills while her father is able to buy a car.
“I’m grateful to my factory,” Eysa says.
Eysa has “learnt many new things” in the city, the video says. She has no intention of moving back to her village and doesn’t think of getting married anytime soon.
In traditional Uyghur families, marriages are usually arranged by the parents. But Eysa’s family “will accept whomever she chooses to marry,” says Rejep, speaking in her native Uyghur.
Eysa — like all other young Muslims depicted in the documentary — speaks Mandarin.
The film shows the family’s spacious house in Kuqa, with Eysa, her parents, and two younger siblings — all exceptionally well dressed — happily chatting as they eat watermelon.
Samira Arkin is another Muslim woman who has broken with her community’s traditions and “set an example for many other young people.”
Arkin owns a bridal shop in Kashgar where she helps Muslim brides to choose fashionable white dresses for their wedding.
Arkin recalls how she decided to wear a Western-style gown for her own wedding in 2010 despite misgivings by her relatives.
Modern wedding dresses were frowned upon in her community, she explains.
Like many others in the documentary, she doesn’t say words like Muslims, Islam, or Uyghur.
Arkin says she was unhappy to see how some women “covered their faces” and didn’t even have “the right to go out” on their own.
The film depicts affluent migrants sending money back home.
She says she turned her protest into a business opportunity and opened her shop.
“I wanted to change how [Kashgar] brides dress and how they think about it,” Arkin says. The businesswoman claims she enjoys support from many people who tell her she has “made the right choices.”
China has banned the Islamic veil as a sign of religious extremism.
In vaguely worded legislation, Beijing has also outlawed certain Islamic names and other unspecified “extremism signs.”
Some Muslim women have reported being harassed by police for wearing long dresses.
Forced To Speak?
It’s impossible to know if Arkin, Eysa, Rejep, and others in documentary were speaking their minds or were ordered to repeat what authorities told them to say.
People are forced to “follow orders” from the Communist Party, says Qairat Baitolla, an activist from Xinjiang who lives in Kazakhstan.
“If they refuse, they face imprisonment, harassment, and even being shot dead,” Baitolla says.
Locked Up In China: The Plight Of Xinjiang’s Muslims
Radio Free Radio/Radio Liberty is partnering with its sister organization, Radio Free Asia, to highlight the plight of Muslims living in China’s western province of Xinjiang.
One ethnic Kazakh man, who currently lives in Altay in Xinjiang’s Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, has told his relatives abroad that authorities were forcing him to denounce on video former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s condemning comments about Xinjiang.
In January, Pompeo declared that China was committing “ongoing” genocide against Muslims in Xinjiang.
According to Arasan, police warned her husband he would be killed if he refused to make the video statement.
But “there are also many people” among the Muslim minorities who “blindly trust the Communist Party,” says Bekzat Maqsutkhan, an activist from Xinjiang.
“Authorities select ignorant, trusting, and low-educated people who have never seen the outside world to participate in such propaganda,” he told RFE/RL.
Maqsutkhan, who now lives in Kazakhstan, says some members of Muslim communities take part in the state propaganda for financial gain or to advance their careers.
But the activists say the majority, including many children, have no choice but to read into the camera the scripted texts that proclaim support for Beijing’s version of events.
China denies all of the reports of widespread rights abuses in Xinjiang and insists that the internment camps are educational and vocational training centers aimed at preventing religious extremism.
But many survivors say many of the detainees at the internment camps are subjected to torture, rape, and forced labor — mainly working in textile factories and picking cotton. Some women have reported being forced to undergo an abortion and others say they were forcibly sterilized.
The documentary comes as the United States, Britain, Canada, and the European Union imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials over the reported rights abuses in Xinjiang.
On April 22, the British House of Commons approved a parliamentary motion declaring crimes against humanity and genocide are being committed against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslims in Xinjiang.
RFE/RL Kazakh Service correspondent in Almaty, Nurtay Lakhanuly, contributed to this report
Hey, you’re busy! We know rferl.orgisn’t the only website you read. And that it’s just possible you may have missed some of our most compelling journalism this week. To make sure you’re up-to-date, here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL’s team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.
After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, hundreds of thousands of children from hard-hit areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia spent summer vacations in the West to get away, even for a short time, from the irradiated region. Among them: Today’s Belarusian opposition leader, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, part of a generation of “children of Chernobyl.” By Alena Shalayeva
With dozens of new detentions and arrests of people who participated in or covered the April 21 demonstrations in support of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the Russian authorities seem determined to quash the most effective opposition movement since Putin took power two decades ago. By Mark Krutov, Maria Chernova, and Robert Coalson
Hoteliers on Georgia’s Black Sea Coast hope huge discounts can revive Batumi’s decimated tourism industry. By Amos Chapple
An independent TV channel in Siberia is one of the few Russian media outlets that has covered Aleksei Navalny. The Krasnoyarsk Independent Regional Channel (TVK) has reported on Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations and on protests against President Putin and his government. But the channel has paid a price for its independence: It’s facing pressure from the authorities and has been removed from cable TV services. By Current Time and Neil Bowdler
A leaked audio recording in which Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif complains of Revolutionary Guards interference and having to “sacrifice diplomacy for the [military] field” has prompted hard-line calls for action against Tehran’s top diplomat. By Golnaz Esfandiari
On the night of April 28, in Pushkarsky park in the center of St. Petersburg, a mural depicting Aleksei Navalny appeared on the side of a building, with the inscription “Hero of a New Time.” The artist is unknown. By Current Time
Magomed Magomedov and his two sons, both named Magomed, work in 10-day shifts to monitor the weather at a meteorological station high in the mountains of Russia’s southern Daghestan Republic. The site is cold, poorly supplied, and prone to avalanches, but the family takes pride in the unique information they’re able to collect. By Harutyun Mansuryan and RFE/RL’s Russian Service
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The Russian state’s reputation is taking some hits abroad, with rejections of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, mounting evidence of nefarious acts by its military intelligence agency across Europe, and anger over a buildup of military forces that sent tensions skyrocketing. At home, it’s hitting out hard at imprisoned Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny’s already marginalized organizations, seemingly seeking to annihilate a force that President Vladimir Putin fears ahead of parliamentary elections in September.
These actions have been accompanied by what one analyst called “increasingly unhinged” rhetoric from top Kremlin allies: The parliament speaker claimed without evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was unleashed in a leak from a U.S.-backed lab, while the longtime foreign minister was called out for presenting Russians with a “false choice” between personal well-being and national pride.
Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.
Crossing The Line
In his annual speech to the nation last week, President Vladimir Putin growlingly warned foreign countries not to cross Russia’s “red lines” — without stating where those lines lie, or much of anything else about them aside from their color.
At home, in the months before Putin’s speech and the week and a half since, his government has been crossing what its opponents, rights activists, and a substantial number of Russians may see as their own red lines.
Specifically, the state, having imprisoned its vocal opponent Aleksei Navalny earlier this year based on a parole-violation claim that was widely seen as a show of clumsy legal acrobatics — he was faulted for failing to report to the authorities but he had been in Berlin at the time, recovering from a weapons-grade nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin — took aim at the anti-corruption crusader’s organizations nationwide.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to the national anthem after his annual state-of-the-nation address in Moscow on April 21.
Prosecutors and courts are speeding through a process that seems likely to end soon with Navalny’s three main organizations — the Moscow-based Anti-Corruption Foundations (FBK), which has authored numerous reports revealing evidence of profligacy and graft in the highest circles around the Kremlin; the lesser-known Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation (FZPG); and his network of regional offices across Russia, the meat and bones of an opposition party that is not recognized by the state — outlawed as extremist groups.
This outcome would clearly mark a major step in what Kremlin critics say is Putin’s campaign to both sideline Navalny — to push him to the political margins and beyond — and to silence him.
The pressure on Navalny has intensified greatly in the past eight months, starting with his poisoning in Siberia last August. But it goes back at least as far as December 2011, when Navalny helped lead protests prompted by anger over evidence of election fraud that benefited the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party and dismay at Putin’s plans to return to the presidency in 2012 after four years as prime minister.
In 2013, Navalny ran for Moscow mayor and came in second to the Kremlin-backed incumbent, with almost one-third of the vote. A prison sentence on financial-crimes charges he contends were fabricated was suspended to allow him to campaign — but that was the last election he contested. He sought to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, setting up regionalcampaign headquarters across Russia to support the bid, but was barred from the ballot due to a conviction in a separate fraud case in 2013.
It is that constellation of offices that prosecutors are seeking to label extremist, along with the FBK and the FZPG — and that the Navalny aide who heads them, Leonid Volkov, announced on April 29 had been forced to disband — though he added that some would now operate independently.
“This is a punch in the gut, a blow to the heart itself,” Volkov said.
Putin’s main motive, at least in the short term, may be the desire to avoid a body blow — or even a scrape — in the elections to the lower parliament house, the State Duma, in September. United Russia is deeply unpopular, and Navalny has exposed weaknesses in the Kremlin’s electoral strategies with his Smart Voting initiative, which has helped defeat Kremlin favorites in several local elections in the past few years.
‘Incompetent Rule’
Longer-term, Putin may be determined to clear the field — or to clear Navalny off the field — ahead of 2024, when the next presidential election is due. Last year, he pushed through a raft of constitutional amendments that many critics saw as an ineffective smokescreen for a single amendment: the one that lets him run for a six-year term in 2024 and again in 2030, a full three decades after his first election, if he chooses.
Navalny, who is usually on the wrong side of verdicts, delivered a judgment on Putin’s first two decades in power as president or prime minister during a court hearing on April 29.
“Your emperor has no clothes, and millions of people are already shouting about it — not just one little boy,” he told the judge by video link from prison, looking rail-gaunt in his first appearance on camera since he ended a hunger strike that his doctors said would have killed him very soon. “Twenty years of incompetent rule have led to this result: There’s a crown that’s slipping off his head, there are lies on television, we have wasted trillions of rubles and still our country is sliding into poverty.”
Navalny’s court appearance is hard to explain, in a way: He is already serving a 2 1/2-year prison term, so why another hearing? Answer: It’s another case, another part of what Navalny and his opponents say is a baseless bid to — while physically blunting his challenge by separating him from society and shuttering his organizations — paint him as an unpatriotic enemy of the people and a puppet used by Washington and the West to undermine Russia.
The court was hearing Navalny’s appeal of his February conviction on a charge of defaming a World War II veteran — a politically and emotionally charged issue in countries that used to part of the Soviet Union, which lost an estimated 27 million people in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
Navalny, who had been charged after he mocked people who appeared in a Kremlin-organized promotional video involving the war, which Putin often uses as a rallying cry for patriotism, lost the appeal, as expected.
Meanwhile, Navalny’s backers reported that in examining the prosecution’s case in the extremism allegation, they discovered that Navalny, Volkov, and another senior associate are facing a criminal investigation on suspicion of creating an NGO that “infringes on the personality and rights of citizens.”
Details of the accusation were unclear, but the investigation came under a statute that Putin, last May, added to a list of crimes that bars anyone convicted from running for public office for five years — a period that would cover the 2024 election.
But wait, there’s more “Navalny crackdown news,” as one journalist put it: Also on April 29, a court in the city of Arkhangelsk convicted a former associate of the opposition leader of “distributing pornography,” seven years after he shared a video by the German rock band Rammstein on the Internet in 2014.
Amnesty International has described the case as “utterly absurd,” a statement that exemplifies expressions of outrage abroad over the plight of Navalny and his supporters, which has further damaged already severely strained ties between Moscow and the West.
Explosions And Expulsions
And as the legal onslaught rumbled on in Russia’s courts, the European Parliament on April 29 passed a resolution threatening action against Moscow over its treatment of Navalny, its recent military buildupin Crimea and near the border with eastern Ukraine, and what the lawmakers described as “Russian attacks in the Czech Republic.”
The latter was a reference to a snowballing dispute that erupted after the Czech government accused the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU of being behind an October 2014 explosion in the town of Vrbetice that set off 50 metric tons of stored ammunition and killed two people.
Aleksandr Mishkin (left) and Anatoly Chepiga
The accusations, based on Czech intelligence findings, focus on the same two purported GRU operatives — Aleksandr Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga — whom Britain says carried out a poison attack on former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in March 2018.
The dispute has led Prague and Moscow to trade large-scale diplomatic expulsions and is reverberating in several European countries, including Bulgaria, which is investigating six Russian citizens suspected of involvement in a series of blasts at four weapons and armament facilities in that country in the past decade.
Earlier in April, Slovakia reported problems with the doses it received, saying they differed from those being reviewed by a European regulator and also apparently from those whose testing resulted in a positive review from the respected medical journal The Lancet.
And on April 27, the health regulator in hard-hit Brazil rejected calls by state governors struggling with a deadly second wave to import the Russian-made vaccine, citing what it said were “inherent risks,” serious defects, and a lack of evidence guaranteeing that it is safe and effective.
The next day, the European Union accused Russia and China of conducting “state-sponsored disinformation” campaigns denigrating Western-developed coronavirus vaccines while promoting their own, suggesting that Moscow and Beijing had adopted a Cold War-style “zero-sum game logic” on a vital health-care matter.
‘Increasingly Unhinged’
Russia, at least from some quarters close to the Kremlin, countered with ire and more disinformation. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a former Putin deputy chief of staff responsible for domestic politics, recycled a baseless claim that the source of the COVID-19 pandemic was a leak from a U.S.-backed lab.
Volodin also said, erroneously, that worldwide more people have been killed by the coronavirus than had died in World War II. The global COVID death toll is about 3.2 million.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, faced criticism for remarks in which he took aim at “liberal views” and suggested that Russians who have criticized the government and his ministry for aggravating relations with the West are selfish ingrates who care too much about themselves and too little about their country.
Foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov said the remarks were an example of “increasingly unhinged statements” from Lavrov, who has been foreign minister since 2004 and is the longest-serving minister in Putin’s government.
In an article published on April 28, Yelena Chernenko, a prominent journalist with the daily Kommersant, accused Lavrov of presenting what the headline called “a false choice between well-being and national pride.”
“I see no contradiction at all in wanting to live well and experiencing patriotic feelings,” Chernenko wrote. “After all, the better citizens live, the more reason they have to be proud of their country.”
WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department says press freedom in Russia is under growing threat as authorities slap RFE/RL and other media organizations with restrictive “foreign agent” labels and fines.
Speaking at a press briefing on April 29, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the Russian government is increasingly “intolerant of outside perspectives” as it moves to quash any dissent in the country.
The comments come as Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor has hit RFE/RL’s Russian-language services with fines of nearly $1 million in recent months for hundreds of violations of the “foreign agent” law.
In its latest salvo against independent media, the Russian government designated the Latvia-based Meduza as a “foreign agent,” taking aim at a top Russian news source.
“We’ve made clear that Russia’s actions against RFE/RL and other media organizations labeled as so-called ‘foreign agents’ reflect significant intolerance and oppressive restrictions,” Price said.
First passed in 2012 and expanded several times since, the “foreign agent” law gives 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 requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.” The mandatory 24-word announcement must be twice as large as the font size used for the headline of the article. For video materials, the text must occupy at least 20 percent of the screen and be shown for at least 15 seconds.
The targeting of RFE/RL has raised concerns the Russian government may be moving to shutter RFE/RL’s operations inside Russia and force its Russian-language services and Current Time, the network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, out of the country.
“Should the Russian government continue to move to forcibly shut down RFE/RL, we will respond,” Price said, without specifying what action could be taken.
An independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL refuses to comply with the “foreign agent” law.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said, “RFE/RL will not be put in a position of undermining freedom of speech and journalistic integrity. We will not allow Roskomnadzor and the Kremlin to make editorial decisions about how we engage our audiences in Russia.”
In recent weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has raised the issue of RFE/RL with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
“We’ve been very seized with the RFE/RL situation with Russia,” Blinken said on April 28 at a roundtable discussion on world press freedom.
“We’re doing everything we can to be supportive and to find a good way forward. Ultimately, Moscow is doing what Moscow will do, but we’re trying to make sure that at least in some ways we can be supportive and helpful, even if our advocacy falls on deaf ears in Moscow itself,” Blinken said.
Four years ago, a court in the Russian Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk watched Kill The Cosmonauts — a satirical music video that proposed murdering space adventurers for “climbing toward heaven”– and was not amused.
The court found that the video, by a hardcore punk group called the Ensemble of Christ the Savior and Crude Mother Earth, constituted “extremist material.” It banned the video, on the basis of a 2002 Russian law, and added it to a federal blacklist of prohibited materials.
“It is hard to imagine that the calls…contained in the text could be taken seriously even by the most radical audience,” the SOVA Center, a Russian research organization, said in a 2018 report that documented how the law was being misused.
As of April 29, that blacklist of materials considered to be extremist includes nearly 5,200 items, including translations of the Bible, videos made by a splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
If indications are correct, in the coming days a Moscow court will add another organization to the list of “extremist” groups under Russian law: anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny and the network of activist groups that have turned into a major challenge for President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Such an order would effectively order the organization out of existence, Navalny’s allies and outside experts said.
No Concise Definition
Russian authorities’ turn to the ” extremism ” law in their yearslong struggle with Navalny has again brought the measure into sharp focus from rights groups to legal experts who say it is sweepingly ambiguous, possibly by design: a dragnet to be used against anyone deemed a threat for any reason.
Moreover, the law itself, while stipulating what qualifies as extremism, does not concisely define what it is in the first place. Instead, it merely lists a series of offenses that would fall under the law; for example, distribution of extremist materials, preparation of extremist acts, and incitement of hatred against religious or ethnic groups. The list also includes criticism of government officials and politicians, and, more recently, public questioning of Russia’s territorial integrity.
“Anti-extremism has two meanings in Russia: one legal, one political,” said Aleksandr Verkhovsky, the longtime director of the SOVA Center.
Since first passed 19 years ago, he told RFE/RL, “the law has changed, there’ve been lots of amendments, and it’s become significantly much harsher.”
Over the years, Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have spearheaded a string of scathing, and eye-popping, investigations into government corruption, targeting some of Putin’s closest allies. His most popular one to date, documenting an opulent Black Sea mansion purportedly built for Putin, is among the most watched Russian-language videos on YouTube.
He’s also organized so-called Smart Voting campaigns nationwide, initiatives that aim to sway disaffected voters and siphon votes away from candidates for the dominant, and deeply unpopular, ruling party, United Russia.
In the current case against Navalny, which is expected to result in his organizations being closed down, prosecutors charged that they were “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
If upheld, the ruling would result in anyone found to be a member of such an “extremist” organization facing up to 12 years’ in prison. Additionally, giving money to such an organization could also result in up to 10 years in jail, and anyone seeking to use the organizations’ logos, banners, or symbols could be banned from running for elected office.
For his part, Navalny, who returned to Russia in January following months of recuperation from exposure to a powerful nerve agent, has his own individual legal problems: He has been ordered to serve about 2 1/2 years in prison for allegedly violating parole conditions. He and his supporters say the case is trumped up, aimed at keeping him behind bars.
Religious Targets
The first law on the Russian books regarding the issue was passed in 2002, the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity, which is the main basis for such cases. Other provisions providing for various punishments — misdemeanors or felonies — exist in various other Russian laws as well.
The measure was specifically aimed at terrorism; it was passed at a time when authorities were determined to end all separatist activity in the North Caucasus — and at a time when terrorist attacks in Moscow and elsewhere were becoming more frequent.
Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were the main targets of the legislation, as were fundamentalist Islamic groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the missionary organization Tabligh.
After a series of anti-government protests in 2011-12, protests that were organized in part by Navalny, the government began to turn the extremist legislation against other religious groups, including, most prominently, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were labeled extremist in a 2017 Supreme Court ruling. More than 250 members of the group have been jailed on extremist-related charges.
“Russia’s anti-extremism legislation has remained vague and susceptible to being arbitrarily weaponized by local authorities,” Jarrod Lopes, a U.S.-based spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, told RFE/RL. “Russian authorities are making a mockery of the rule of law — both international human rights law as well as Russia’s own constitution, which protects religious freedom.”
But the anti-extremism provisions have also been used against other secular targets. In 2006, a journalist was convicted for publishing statements by Chechen separatist leaders. More famously, the provision on inciting religious hatred served as the basis for the criminal conviction of the performance-art group Pussy Riot after they performed a song criticizing Russian clergy in 2012.
In 2020, the law was amended again to add another item to the list of “extremist activity” — this time to include anyone who questions Russia’s territorial integrity, or rhetoric in support of a region’s secession. That provision appeared to be linked specifically to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a hugely popular move among many Russians.
“Putin has consistently created laws to serve his purposes,” said Maksim Trudolyubov, a former Moscow newspaper columnist who now edits the Kennan Institute’s Russia File.
“This time it’s expanding an existing law — that is conveniently broad — into new territory. The tactic is not new. He’s suspended his Ukraine brinkmanship for now. So, he looks reasonable to his counterparts. He is going after domestic ‘threats’ now,” he told RFE/RL. “Apparently, [Navalny] is a designated threat at this given moment.”
Verkhovsky, of the SOVA Center, argued that the law has been properly applied in many instances of clear extremist activity.
In 2002, when it was first written, it’s likely [lawmakers] didn’t anticipate that it would be used against political groups,” he said.
The problem now, he said, is not only the danger of how the law is defined, but the willingness of authorities to use it against a wider group of people, Navalny, or others — particularly when United Russia’s approval ratings are at record lows ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall.
“It’s very difficult, and we have elections coming up, and the authorities are nervous, and when they’re nervous they start wielding more and more oppressive measures,” he told RFE/RL.
Aleksei Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition leader who has been jailed since January, issued a scathing assessment of President Vladimir Putin on April 29. Navalny spoke at an appeal hearing for a case in which he was found guilty of defaming a World War II veteran. It was his first appearance since his three-week hunger strike, which he called off last week amid reports that his health was failing.
A court in northwestern Russia has sentenced a former associate of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to 2 1/2 years in prison for “distributing pornography” after he shared a video by the German rock band Rammstein in 2014, in a case Amnesty International described as “utterly absurd.”
The Lomonosovsky District Court in Arkhangelsk handed down its verdict against Andrei Borovikov, his lawyer told Russian independent media on April 29.
Amnesty International said Borovikov — a former coordinator of Navalny’s Arkhangelsk regional headquarters — was being “punished solely for his activism, not his musical taste.”
Describing Borovikov’s prosecution as “a mockery of justice,” the London-based human rights group’s Moscow office director, Natalia Zviagina, called for all charges against him to be dropped.
“The Russian authorities should be focusing on turning around the spiraling human rights crisis they have created, not devising ludicrous new ways of prosecuting and silencing their critics,” Zviagina said in a statement ahead of the verdict.
“This is not the first time the Russian authorities have used an overbroad definition of ‘pornography’ as a pretext for locking up their critics,” Zviagina said, citing the case of Yulia Tsvetkova, an LGBT activist from Russia’s Far East who stood trial earlier this month on pornography charges over her drawings of women’s bodies.
“It is astonishing that cases like this even make it to court,” Zviagina said.
The music video posted by Borovikov came to the authorities’ attention six months ago when a former volunteer at his office informed the police. Amnesty International said it suspected the volunteer was employed as an agent provocateur to help fabricate the case.
The prosecution said the video had been seen by “not fewer than two people” and ordered “a sexological and cultural examination” of the clip, before experts found it to be of “pornographic nature” and “not containing artistic value.”
Rammstein is no stranger to controversy.
In Belarus, the Council for Public Morals in 2010 protested against Rammstein’s concerts in the country that year, saying the band’s shows were “open propaganda of homosexuality, masochism, and other forms of perversions, violence, cruelty, and vulgarism.”
In 2019, a man in Belarus was charged with producing and distributing pornographic materials for posting a clip in 2014 of the band’s video Pussy, which showed graphic sex scenes.
That same year, a video for the group’s song Deutschland showed band members dressed as concentration camp prisoners, sparking outrage, especially among Jewish groups.
Anthropologist Tobias Marschall spent 11 months living among nomadic Pamir Kyrgyz herders in the isolated mountain valleys of northeastern Afghanistan between 2015 and 2019. His photographs intimately document their migrations and culture in an environment where temperatures, on average, rise above freezing for only two months a year.
ASHGABAT — Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s penchant for white is well known among drivers in the Central Asian nation.
For years exporters have been told to ship white automobiles only, while those who already had cars that weren’t white were told to paint them in the color that has long been a feature of the carefully constructed personality cult of Berdymukhammedov.
Now, RFE/RL correspondents say, Berdymukhammedov wants all detailing on cars — including radiator grilles and light frames — in the tightly controlled Central Asian nation to be painted white as well.
The correspondents said that local authorities in the eastern Lebap region began demanding the new requirement a week ago, prompting locals to complain that the changes have given traffic police yet another reason to demand bribes.
Under Berdymukhammedov’s rule, the isolated nation’s capital, Ashgabat, has been draped in white marble. He is often seen in public or shown on television riding white stallions, dressed in white amid white carpets, holding white doves or white flowers.
The official explanation for the request, however, is that dark colors attract and absorb more sun and heat in Turkmenistan’s subtropical desert climate.
Government critics and human rights groups say Berdymukhammedov has suppressed dissent and made few changes in the secretive country since he came to power after the death of autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.
Like his late predecessor, Berdymukhammedov has relied on subsidized prices for basic goods and utilities to help maintain his grip on power.
According to Human Rights Watch, Berdymukhammedov, “his relatives and their associates control all aspects of public life, and the authorities encroach on private life.”
Magomed Magomedov and his two sons, both named Magomed, work in 10-day shifts to monitor the weather at a meteorological station high in the mountains of Russia’s southern Daghestan Republic. The site is cold, poorly supplied, and prone to avalanches, but the family takes pride in the unique information they’re able to collect.
Three members of an Iranian Arab opposition group have pleaded not guilty to Danish charges of financing and promoting terrorism in Iran with Saudi Arabia’s backing.
The three, who are members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) and were arrested in February last year, risk 12 years in prison if found guilty in the trial that started in Copenhagen on April 29.
ASMLA is based in Denmark and the Netherlands and is considered a terrorist group by Iran.
The three, one of whom is a Danish citizen, are aged 39 to 50.
Gert Dyrn, a lawyer for the eldest of the three suspects, told the media that in his client’s opinion “what they are charged with is legitimate resistance toward an oppressive regime.”
“They are not denying receiving money from multiple sources, including Saudi Arabia, to help the movement and help them accomplish their political aim,” Dyrn said.
He added that this was “the first case in Denmark within terror law where you have to consider who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter.”
His client has lived as a refugee in Denmark since 2006.
The three were charged by the Danish public prosecutor on April 27.
“This is a very serious case where people in Denmark have carried out illegal intelligence activities and financed and promoted terrorism from Denmark in other countries. Of course, this cannot take place on Danish soil, and therefore I am satisfied that we can now bring charges in the case, ” Lise-Lotte Nilas, a prosecutor for Copenhagen, said in a statement on April 15.
According to the charge sheet, the three received around $4.9 million for ASMLA and its armed branch, through bank accounts in Austria and the United Arab Emirates.
The trio is also accused of spying on people and organizations in Denmark between 2012 and 2020 for Saudi intelligence.
They are also accused of promoting terrorism.
The prosecutor has said the case dates back to 2018 when one of the three was the target of a foiled attack on Danish soil believed to be orchestrated by the Iranian regime in retaliation for the killing of 24 people in Ahvaz, southwestern Iran that year.
Iran has denied the attack plan in Denmark, but a Danish court last year sentenced a Norwegian-Iranian to seven years for his role in the plot.
That attack put Danish authorities on the trail of the actions of three ASMLA members.
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order making the entire period from May 1 through May 10 a paid nonworking holiday. The extended vacation will encompass the May 3 Labor Day holiday and Victory Day, which is marked on May 10 this year.
The April 23 decree was justified as a measure aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 and improving the health of Russian citizens. It adds four additional days off to Russia’s calendar of holidays for this year only.
Many Russians took to social media to express an array of pointed views on the seemingly uncontroversial topic.
Historian and politician Boris Ykemenko wrote on Telegram that “it is about time.”
“The idea of having a 10-day May holiday has been obvious for many years,” he wrote. “People have been skipping out of work and their studies as much as possible anyway. Moreover, in May people leave the city — some rest, while the majority dig in their gardens and generally live actively. By comparison, in January they spend the whole 10 days sitting around, getting sour, and drinking.”
At the dacha
In recent years, Russians have gotten paid holidays between New Year’s Day and January 7, which is Orthodox Christmas.
“Russia is a dacha country,” agreed former Russian Planet editor Pavel Pryanikov in a post on Telegram. “People need lots of days off when the weather is good. A week in August would be nice, too, so people could gather mushrooms and harvest their potatoes.”
Several wags urged the Kremlin to give the country a vacation from New Year’s to Victory Day. While the satirical Twitter account Tyotya Roza went even further and announced: “Putin has declared 2021 a nonworking year.”
Navalny associate Leonid Volkov: It will mean that “for 11 days, we will have no news from Aleksei or about Aleksei.”
Leonid Volkov, a close associate of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, wrote on Twitter that the Kremlin had one reason for declaring the long holiday. “For 11 days, we will have no news from Aleksei or about Aleksei,” he wrote. He noted that lawyers are not allowed to visit Russian prisoners during holidays.
Others, however, criticized the Kremlin for dumping the costs of the holiday on businesses. The opposition Telegram channel Sputnik And Pogrom, calling Putin “the president of the Bunker Federation,” estimated that each nonworking day would cost the country 130 billion to 150 billion rubles ($1.75 billion to $2 billion).”
“This celebration of life will be held at the expense of employers,” the channel wrote.
Likewise, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a staunch Kremlin critic who spent 10 years in prison on tax-evasion charges he says were politically and economically motivated, noted on Facebook that Putin “hasn’t worked one second in the private sector” and so didn’t hesitate “to hang all the costs for this on entrepreneurs.”
Political analyst Vasily Kashin wrote on Facebook that it was ridiculous “to introduce such holidays unexpectedly when deadlines have already been set without taking them into account.”
Writer and commentator Oleg Kozyrev wrote on Twitter that all around the world, a coronavirus lockdown means “clear rules and compensation for businesses.” In Russia, however, it means “rest some more and employers will pay. They’ll pay and go belly up and fire you.”
But such difficulties are a price the Kremlin is apparently willing to pay to give a “treat” to state-sector workers like bureaucrats, teachers, and the like.
“You can tell immediately that [Putin] is on the state budget,” wrote Kaliningrad journalist Alla Sumarokova on Facebook. “Only people sucking from the budget can be happy about a holiday from May 1 to May 10. Apparently, only state-sector workers and those close to them will be eating in June.”
Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson based on reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Ivan Belyayev.
BISHKEK — Raimbek Matraimov, the controversial former deputy chief of the Kyrgyz Customs Service who was placed on the U.S. Magnitsky sanctions list for his involvement in the illegal funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, has withdrawn his libel lawsuit against RFE/RL, its former correspondent, and two other media outlets.
Lawyer Akmat Alagushev — who represents RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Radio Azattyk, its former reporter Ali Toktakunov, and the Klopp and 24.kg news agencies — told RFE/RL that a court in Bishkek ruled on April 27 that the case had been closed due to a move by Matraimov’s lawyers to withdraw the lawsuit.
Matraimov and his family filed the libel lawsuit after the media outlets published a 2019 investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicating him in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan by Chinese-born Uyghur businessman Aierken Saimaiti, who was subsequently assassinated in Istanbul in November 2019.
“RFE/RL’s award-winning investigative reporting into Mr. Matraimov’s corrupt dealings has always spoken clearly for itself,” the broadcaster’s president, Jamie Fly, said in a statement.
“Our intrepid journalists reported this story despite months of serious threats, online harassment, and an organized pressure campaign. We continue to call on the Kyrgyz government to investigate those who threaten journalists and hold them accountable for their actions,” he added.
The court decided to stop the libel suit less than two weeks after Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said that the corruption probe against Matraimov had been halted, as investigators failed to find any cash or property belonging to Matraimov or members of his family abroad.
When Matraimov was rearrested in February, the UKMK said he was being held as a suspect for laundering money through the purchase of real estate in China, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.
A Bishkek court in February ordered pretrial custody for Matraimov in connection with the corruption charges after hundreds of Kyrgyz protested a previous ruling mitigating a sentence after a guilty plea to no jail time and fines of just a few thousand dollars.
The court justified the mitigated sentence by saying that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that disappeared through schemes that he oversaw.
That decision was based on an economic-amnesty law passed in December that allows individuals who obtained financial assets through illegal means to avoid prosecution by turning the assets over to the State Treasury.
The idea of economic amnesty was announced in October by Sadyr Japarov, then acting Kyrgyz president, just a day after Matraimov was detained and placed under house arrest.
Japarov has since been elected president on a pledge to stamp out graft and enact reforms. Japarov also championed a new constitution — approved by voters earlier this month — that expands the power of the president.
Critics say the amnesty legislation was proposed and hastily prepared by lawmakers to allow Matraimov and others to avoid a conviction for corruption, while the constitutional changes create an authoritarian system and concentrating too much power in the hands of the president.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the estimated $700 million scheme involved a company controlled by Matraimov bribing officials to skirt customs fees and regulations, as well as engaging in money laundering, “allowing for maximum profits.”
A U.S. report on human rights around the world, released in March, spotlighted threats to freedom of expression and a free press in Kyrgyzstan.
In a section on respect for civil liberties, including freedom of the press, the State Department noted threats to journalists involved in that report, which implicated Matraimov.
In January, the 49-year-old Matraimov changed his last name to Ismailov, while his wife, Uulkan Turgunova, changed her family name to Sulaimanova. The moves, confirmed to RFE/RL by a spokesperson for Kyrgyzstan’s state registration service, were seen as an attempt to evade the U.S.- imposed sanctions.
There has been no official statement from Matraimov or his lawyers to explain the name change.
BISHKEK — Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities are blaming each other for the latest clashes and shootings along a disputed segment of the border between the two Central Asian countries.
Police in Kyrgyzstan’s southern region of Batken said on April 29 that Tajik residents had started shooting at a military unit located in the village of Kok-Tash, adding that gunfire also came from the Tajik side near the Kyrgyz village of Ak-Sai.
An RFE/RL correspondent reported from the site that two Kyrgyz nationals were wounded and rushed to hospital on April 29.
Tajikistan’s Border Guard Service contradicted the Kyrgyz account in a statement, saying that it was Kyrgyz military personnel who were the first to shoot, when they opened fire at Tajik border units near the Golovnoi water-distribution center, located on territory under Tajikistan’s jurisdiction.
The standoff started the previous day, after local residents on both sides of the border clashed, throwing stones at each other.
Kyrgyz officials said that four Kyrgyz nationals were injured in the clashes, one of whom sustained a gunshot wound.
Tajik authorities said seven Tajik citizens were injured, and that the clashes had been instigated by Kyrgyz officials, which Bishkek rejected.
Local Tajiks and Kyrgyz clash near the border on April 28.
The clashes come amid the installation of surveillance equipment at the Golovnoi water-distribution center by Tajik officials.
Many border areas in Central Asia have been disputed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with numerous incidents involving deadly gunfire.
. The situation is particularly complicated near the numerous exclaves in the volatile Ferghana Valley, where the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan meet.
Earlier in April, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said during a visit to Tajikistan’s Vorukh exclave within Kyrgyzstan that agreements on almost half of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border had been reached during more than 100 rounds of negotiations between Dushanbe and Bishkek since work on border delimitation started in 2002.
On the night of April 28, in Pushkarsky park in the center of St. Petersburg, a mural depicting Kremlin critic and Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny appeared on the side of a building, with the inscription “Hero of a New Time.”
Police said a probe has been launched into “vandalism motivated by political, ideological, racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.” Investigators believe that several artists worked on the mural.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Reports in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, say police have launched a probe into the appearance of a giant mural of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny that survived only a matter of hours before authorities in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hometown painted over it.
Citing city law enforcement sources, reports said that the investigation was launched into “vandalism motivated by political, ideological, racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.”
Investigators believe that several artists worked on the mural in which Navalny, Putin’s most vocal critic, was shown smiling and making the shape of a heart with his hands with the slogan “A hero of a new time” next to them.
The mural in Putin’s hometown was painted over in a matter of hours on April 28 after police came to the site to take samples of the paint and search nearby trash bins. It’s not known who is responsible for the painting.
On April 29, another mural appeared in the same district, in which a masked police officer with a helmet and a gun was shown with the slogan “A hero of our time” above him.
It was not immediately clear if the mural was a sarcastic comment on the harsh crackdown on Navalny and his supporters, or a show of support for the police.
Navalny was arrested in January upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He blames the poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent on Putin and the security services. The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated. He is currently serving a 2 1/2-year sentence at a prison in the Vladimir region.
Navalny’s incarceration sparked numerous protests across Russia that were violently dispersed by police.
Leondid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny, said earlier on April 29 that the Kremlin critic’s regional network will be disbanded just ahead of an expected court hearing over a request from prosecutors to declare the main pillars of Navalny’s political organization as extremist.
With reporting by Fontanka and Komsomolskaya pravda
The United States is ready to cooperate with Russia “when it is in our mutual interest” but also respond when necessary, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a traditional presidential address to Congress marking his first 100 days in office. Biden spoke on April 28 to a joint session of Congress attended by a limited number of politicians due to social-distancing rules.
The European Parliament is due on April 29 to vote on a resolution threatening action against Russia over its treatment of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, its military buildup on Ukraine’s border, and what lawmakers describe as “Russian attacks in the Czech Republic.”
The nonbinding resolution is supported by the five mainstream political groups in the European Parliament.
A draft copy of the resolution posted on the European Parliament’s website says that Russia “poses not only an external threat to European security, but is also waging an internal war on its own people in the form of the systematic oppression of the opposition and arrests on the streets.”
It states that Navalny’s poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020 was “an assassination attempt” that was “perpetrated by agents of the Russian security services within the Russian Federation.”
“The poisoning of Navalny fits in with a pattern of actions taken against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s opponents…leading to the death of several leading opposition figures, journalists, activists, and foreign leaders,” it says.
It also states unequivocally that “the same GRU agents” from Russia’s military intelligence service who were “involved in the explosion of the ammunition depot in the Czech Republic were also responsible for the attempted murder” in Salisbury, England, of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, using Novichok.
It notes that GRU agents have also been charged with the attempted murder of Emilian Gebrev, the Bulgarian owner of a weapons factory, and other people in Bulgaria in 2015, using a Novichok-like substance.
“Russia is noncooperative in investigating these crimes committed on European Union territory” and is “sheltering key suspects,” it says.
The draft resolution calls for Russia to immediately release Navalny and pull its military forces back from the border with Ukraine, saying the “scale and striking capabilities” of the Russian troops there “indicate intentions of an offensive.”
It says that if those Russian forces are used to invade Ukraine, “imports of oil and gas from Russia to the EU [should] be immediately stopped” and Russia should be “excluded from the SWIFT payment system” of international bank transfers.
It also says that “assets in the EU of oligarchs close to the Russian authorities and their families” need to be frozen and their EU visas canceled if those Russian forces invade Ukraine.
On energy, the resolution calls on the EU to reduce dependence on Russia by halting the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The European Union says that China and Russia have intensified “state-sponsored disinformation” campaigns denigrating Western-developed COVID-19 vaccines while promoting their own.
“The so-called ‘vaccine diplomacy’ follows a zero-sum game logic” that seeks to “undermine trust in Western-made vaccines, EU institutions, and Western/European vaccination strategies,” a report from the strategic communications branch of the EU’s external action service said on April 28.
It said that Russian media, authorities, and state companies had united behind pushing the Sputnik V vaccine while using “antagonistic messaging” to accuse the EU of “sabotaging” the Russian jab.
The report said that part of the campaign was to sow distrust in the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
“Pro-Kremlin media outlets, including the official Sputnik V Twitter account, have sought to undermine public trust in the [EMA] and cast doubt on its procedures and political impartiality.”
State-backed media has been trying to “sow confusion” over an application for marketing approval by the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in a bid to fuel the narrative that the body had been deliberately delaying giving the green light, the report said.
“Pro-Kremlin outlets have also accused the EMA and the EU in general of political bias against the Russian-made vaccine,” it said.
Meanwhile, China is promoting its vaccines as “more suitable for developing countries,” including those in the Western Balkans, while deploying “misleading narratives” about the safety of Western vaccines and even on the origin of the coronavirus, the report said.
EU member Hungary has broken ranks with the rest of the bloc and has been administering the Russian and Chinese jabs, while Austria and Germany say they are in talks to purchase Sputnik V.
The EMA launched a rolling review of Sputnik V in March. If it gets the regulator’s approval it would be the first non-Western coronavirus vaccine authorized for use across the 27-member bloc.
Last month, EU member Slovakia’s government collapsed after its former prime minister orchestrated a secret deal to buy 2 million Sputnik V doses, despite disagreements with his coalition partners.
Leaked audio of dour foreign policy assessments from Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has raised a political storm amid questions about who was behind its release at a crucial juncture for Iran and the region.
In it, Zarif complains of interference by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Iran’s foreign policy and says assassinated Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani colluded with Russia to undermine nuclear diplomacy.
The IRGC’s role in Iranian foreign policy, mainly in the region, and its opposition to improved ties with the West are no secret. Neither is it a surprise that Iran’s postrevolutionary system heaps power in the hands of an unelected supreme leader and other hard-line institutions.
But Zarif’s blunt insights into the power that the IRGC wields and his obvious frustrations with the revolutionary guards and with ally Russia, which according to Zarif opposes any Iranian thaw with the West, came as a surprise to many.
“We paid for the [military] field more than the [military] paid for us,” Zarif complains in the audio recording, which was said to have been recorded as part of an oral history of current Iranian politics.
Zarif also says he was often left in the dark on important foreign policy decisions.
“During my work, I couldn’t — not that I didn’t want to — tell the field commander, ‘Do this, I need it for diplomatic reasons,’” Zarif is heard saying.
‘Betrayal’ And ‘Defamation’
The Tehran prosecutor’s office said on April 27 in an apparent reference to the leak that it had opened a criminal case “to identify the elements who committed the crime.” Meanwhile, hard-liners accused Zarif of “betrayal” and “defamation” of Soleimani, who has been hailed as a national martyr since being killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
The audio recording leaked via the London-based news channel Iran International on April 25 as the country’s power struggle intensifies amid a return to international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear activities and ahead of a June presidential election.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right) with the late IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in 2017
Iranian government officials have alleged that domestic rivals are working to undermine indirect talks in Vienna with the United States aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).
The Zarif interview was recorded on February 24 as part of an “oral history” series, the interviewer, prominent economist Saeed Laylaz, says 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.
‘Beginning Of The End’
There has been speculation that it was leaked by Zarif’s rivals as a political death blow or to thwart a possible presidential bid to succeed Rohani, who is in his second and final term.
“This is the Iranian equivalent of an October surprise — a deliberate leak timed to prevent the pro-engagement forces of Iranian politics from having any say in the upcoming elections,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Vaez said all signs point toward the IRGC as the probable culprit, adding, “It likely signals the beginning of the end of Zarif’s political life.”
But in a reflection of Iran’s complicated political scene, others have suggested that Zarif and his allies were behind the leak in order to boost his visibility and highlight his willingness to question state policies.
Mohammad Javad Zarif (left) with Iranian President Hassan Rohani, whose second and final term of office is coming to an end later this year.
One Tehran-based observer told RFE/RL that the leak could increase Zarif’s popularity because it shows he is willing to challenge state policies and to criticize Russia, which he said was “unprecedented.”
“Public opinion is usually anti-Russia and anti-China, which contravenes the so-called ‘look eastward’ [policies] promoted by the establishment,” said the source, who requested anonymity to speak openly without fear of official reprisal.
He acknowledged, however, that the recordings could be used by the conservative Guardians Council to disqualify Zarif from the June 18 presidential vote.
Moscow has consistently supported Tehran at the United Nations, and it called the U.S. assassination of Soleimani a “reckless step” that threatened regional stability.
Zarif has made around 30 visits to Russia during his seven-year tenure as foreign minister.
Moscow has worked with Tehran in Iraq and Syria, and has generally strengthened an already friendly and strategic relationship with Iran as tensions ratcheted back up between Iran and the United States.
Nuclear Talks?
Speaking on April 28, President Rohani suggested that the leak was aimed at derailing the nuclear talks, in which President Joe Biden is seeking a return to the JCPOA abandoned nearly three years ago by his predecessor.
“Right at the time that Vienna talks were on the verge of success, they broadcast [the Zarif comments] to create discord inside the country,” Rohani said. He urged the Intelligence Ministry to do “its utmost” to discover how the recording was “stolen.”
ICG’s Vaez said he thought the controversy was unlikely to affect the current nuclear talks in Vienna.
Earlier this week, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei noted that the interview was first aired by London-based Iran International TV, which Tehran says is funded by Saudi Arabia to undermine the leadership in majority-Shi’a Iran.
Rabiei said those circumstances proved it was “a conspiracy” against the government and Iranian national unity.
Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, blasted Zarif’s comments and blamed Rohani adviser Hesamodin Ashena for the leak.
The interview was reportedly recorded at the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS), a research arm of the presidency that is currently headed by Ashena.
“Was Ashena, who is among the security figures in Rohani’s government, unaware of the importance of this audio file and did he neglect to safeguard it, or has this file been published with prior planning to influence the [June] election?” Tasnim asked.
“What’s going to happen in the end?” asked another IRGC-affiliated media outlet, the Javan daily. It accused Zarif of insulting Soleimani and suggested that the Iranian foreign minister should face consequences.
“Zarif’s explanation and apology? Zarif’s resignation? Impeachment and dismissal? Or his trial for expressing an analysis that insults soldiers of the [military] field?” the Iranian daily wrote.
Javan also noted that former U.S. Secretary of State and current White House climate envoy John Kerry had faced political pressure over another of Zarif’s claims in the interview.
Zarif is heard saying that Kerry acknowledged to him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria 200 times.
Kerry has rejected that claim as “unequivocally false.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said earlier this week that he would not comment on “purportedly leaked material” and could not “vouch for the authenticity of it or the accuracy of it.”
“In the United States, John Kerry came under intense pressure over a sentence in Zarif’s audio recording. But in Iran, there’s still no news of action against Zarif by oversight bodies,” Javan wrote.
Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Taghi Naghdali called for Zarif to apologize for his comments and vowed that parliament would take action. Another lawmaker, Nasrollah Pejmanfar, said Zarif should explain his remarks, which he said challenged Iranian “red lines.”
In his first public reaction to the controversy, Zarif on April 28 posted to Instagram a video of himself visiting the memorial to his “longtime friend” Soleimani in Baghdad. He wrote that he favors a “smart adjustment” between the diplomatic and the military spheres.
Zarif said he regretted that a “confidential theoretical discussion about the necessity to increase cooperation between diplomacy and the [military] field” had turned into an “internal conflict.”
MOSCOW — A Moscow court has increased from one minute to two hours per day the amount of time that can be spent outside by an editor of a student magazine, who along with three colleagues is accused of endangering minors over a video related to rallies against opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s incarceration.
Doxa magazine said on Telegram on April 28 that the Moscow City Court upheld a lower court decision to impose pretrial restrictions for Alla Gutnikova for two months, but mitigated the restrictions, ruling that she is allowed outside for two hours daily, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
The court also allowed Gutnikova to move from her parents’ apartment and stay at another address.
Two days earlier, the same court made similar rulings for Gutnikova’s colleagues, Armen Aramyan, Vladimir Metyolkin, and Natalya Tyshkevich.
On April 14, a court in the Russian capital ordered the four editors not to leave their homes between midnight and 11:59 p.m. for two months, giving them only one minute to be outside each day.
The four were detained for questioning at the Investigative Committee after their homes and the magazine’s offices were searched over the video, which the magazine posted online in January.
The video questioned teachers warning students about possible repercussions they could face for participating in unsanctioned rallies on January 23 and January 31 in protest of Navalny’s arrest.
Doxa editors say the video was deleted from the magazine’s website following a demand from Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove it.
More than 10,000 Navalny supporters were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies.
Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms. At least 90 were charged with criminal offenses and several have been fired by their employers.
Human rights groups have called on Moscow repeatedly to stop targeting journalists because they are covering the protests or express solidarity with protesters, since both are protected under the right to freedom of expression.
“Instead of targeting journalists, the authorities should hold accountable police who attack journalists and interfere with their work,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement on February 3.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning in Siberia in August 2020 that several European laboratories concluded was from a military-grade chemical nerve agent.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered politically motivated.
His 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given the amount of time he had been held in detention.
In the week since a wave of protests in support of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny swept Russia on April 21, at least 115 people in 23 cities have been detained by police. At least seven journalists who were covering the protests have also been summoned for questioning.
Immediately after the protests, activists and observers noted the relatively mild reaction of the authorities to the unsanctioned demonstrations, particularly in contrast to similar protests in January and February at which thousands of people were detained, often brutally.
But in recent days, Russian police have unveiled a new strategy, using surveillance-camera footage and other techniques to identify demonstrators and track them down, days after the event.
“I think they are trying a new tactic now,” opposition politician and political analyst Leonid Gozman told Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. Earlier, he said, the police would detain 2 or 3 percent of the protesters at a rally and the rest would go home feeling relieved.
“Now we have a different situation,” he continued. “They are signaling to everyone: ‘Go ahead and march, guys, but a year from now you can expect we’ll come, expect a knock at your door. And we’ll come or not as we wish….’ Now they have placed everyone in that position.”
Making a similar point, Ekho Moskvy editor in chief Aleksei Venediktov posted a warning to his own journalists on Twitter.
“To all seven Ekho correspondents who were working the streets on April 21, get ready,” he wrote.
At the same time, the authorities are proceeding swiftly to proclaim three national organizations tied to Navalny as “extremist,” which would place their employees and donors at risk of arrest and long prison terms. The Moscow City Court on April 26 approved the city prosecutor’s injunction suspending most activities by the organizations, including Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and his network of regional offices.
The court is expected to rule on the “extremist” designation at a closed hearing in Moscow on April 29.
“We have little hope of a miracle. So we are getting ready for the work of our offices to be shut down completely,” says Ksenia Fadeyeva, the former director of Navalny’s office in the Siberian city of Tomsk.
“Most likely on April 29, they will make that decision. And not in our favor,” said Ksenia Fadeyeva, the former director of Navalny’s office in the Siberian city of Tomsk, who was elected to the city council in September 2020. “We have little hope of a miracle. So we are getting ready for the work of our offices to be shut down completely. The offices will be closed. There will be no meetings of volunteers or staff — who, by the way, are not able to meet anyway. All of them except for me are under arrest.”
Potentially, everyone who has ever donated to any of Navalny’s organizations could be in jeopardy, said lawyer Dmitry Dmitriyev, and could face up to eight years in prison.
“In addition, all of those people will most likely find themselves on the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists,” he said, referring to the state financial-transactions monitoring agency. “That would mean their bank accounts would be blocked and they would only be able to spend 10,000 rubles ($134) per family member per month.”
A woman holds a sign reading “Putin is a murderer” during a rally in support of Navalny in Omsk on April 21.
The assault against Navalny’s organizations and supporters comes as Russia prepares for elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, that must be held by September 19. The ruling United Russia party is polling record-low popularity following its support of a reviled increase in retirement ages and the adoption of a raft of constitutional amendments, including one that would allow longtime authoritarian President Vladimir Putin to remain in office until 2036.
On April 27, the BBC reported that data about Navalny supporters that was hacked from a website set up to create momentum for protests was being used to pressure employers. At least three companies told the BBC they had received anonymous e-mails informing them that some of their employees were among Navalny’s supporters and that employing them could be considered “support for an extremist organization.”
Aleksei Golovenko, a doctor, was detained by police while walking with his family, five days after being caught on a surveillance camera near the April 21 demonstration in Moscow. “Repression,” he says, “is very effective.”
Aleksei Golovenko, a gastroenterologist, was interviewed by the BBC during the April 21 demonstration in Moscow, although he says he was only on the scene by chance. On April 25, he was detained by police while taking a walk with his wife and children.
During his hearing, prosecutors presented a clip from a surveillance camera. It was one of several reported cases in recent days of officials using Moscow’s newly created “Smart City” surveillance system to pressure demonstrators.
The 15-second clip of Golovenko walking down the street failed to convince the judge, who unexpectedly dismissed the charges.
“I think this might have happened because of the support that suddenly appeared and, to be honest, which I didn’t expect,” Golovenko told RFE/RL, referring to the fact that many of his medical colleagues spoke up on social media and offered other assistance. “I am definitely not the most famous gastroenterologist in Russian and certainly not the best. But most likely it has some effect because most social-media platforms were writing about it. I was stunned by the support from some of my eminent colleagues.”
Golovenko said the support he received and the fact that others were also being held for allegedly participating in the protest made his ordeal bearable.
“I don’t regret one kopeck of the money I’ve donated to OVD-Info,” he said, referring to the independent monitoring group that publicizes police activity around the country. “I regularly send them money and urge all activists to support them. Their slogan is: ‘No one should be left alone against the system.’ And it is true. The frightening thing isn’t that they might beat you…but that you are alone for two days and you don’t know what is happening in your life or what they are doing to your family.
“Repression,” he added, “is very effective.”
Exactly how effective remains to be seen, said political commentator and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov.
A demonstrator holds up a sign reading “Today they kill Navalny, tomorrow they kill me” during a rally in Moscow on April 21.
“The demand for an opposition is not going to go anywhere,” he told RFE/RL. “It exists and will grow stronger. After all, the fundamental reasons for it have not been addressed. Standards of living have not improved, Putin hasn’t gotten any younger, and the last 20 years are still with us. The demand for some renewal is only going to get stronger.
“But for some time, the protest movement will be without a leader, more chaotic, and less rational,” he added. “It won’t be able to generate political slogans as effectively, so it will flare up in completely unpredictable places. The authorities have significantly increased the likelihood of a strong protest vote in the Duma elections.”
Opposition politician Gozman said the state’s heavy-handed tactics were having two effects.
“First, it is reducing the number of people who will come out to protest,” he told Current Time. “Second, it is radicalizing those who will come out anyway. That is, they are provoking violent actions, which is something our country has seen in the past.”
Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson based on reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondents Mark Krutov and Maria Chernova. Current Time correspondents Timofei Rozhansky and Ksenia Sokolyanskaya contributed to this report.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A giant mural of jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny survived only a matter of hours before the authorities in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hometown, St. Petersburg, painted over it.
In the work, Putin’s most vocal critic is shown smiling and making the shape of a heart with his hands with the slogan “A hero of a new time” next to them.
The painting appeared overnight on a wall of a building in St. Petersburg’s central Pushkarsky park. The artist of the mural is not known.
By early morning on April 28, police arrived at the scene, followed by a work crew, who quickly painted over the mural with mustard-colored paint.
“The beautiful St. Petersburg graffiti with Navalny was quickly painted over. This is how they transform everything ‘alive’ and beautiful into faceless and ‘dead,’” Navalny lawyer Lyubov Sobol said on Twitter.
“We have Russia for happiness, they have it for despondency and stagnation.”
Several people commented on Twitter that the police acted quicker in response to the picture than they do for violent crimes.
The incident comes a day before a court is expected to rule on a motion by prosecutors to label Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and his regional offices as “extremist” organizations.
That proposal has been condemned by international and domestic human rights groups who say that if they’re are labeled as “extremist,” their employees and those passing on information about the groups could face arrest and lengthy prison terms.
Navalny was arrested in January upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August 2020.
He blames the poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent on Putin and Russia’s security services. The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated. He is currently serving 2 1/2-year sentence at a prison in the Vladimir region.
Navalny’s incarceration sparked numerous protests across Russia, which were violently dispersed by police.
With more 20,000 new COVID cases and at least 400 deaths per day, Iran faces what looks like its worst wave of the coronavirus pandemic yet. After facing criticism for downplaying the virus last year, Iranian authorities have put partial lockdowns and other measures into place to try and slow the coronavirus’s spread.
MINSK — An associate of jailed Belarusian vlogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski has been sentenced to six years in prison on charges he and his supporters have rejected as politically motivated.
The Lenin district court in the western city of Hrodna late on April 27 found 38-year-old Alyaksandr Aranovich guilty of plotting mass disorder and organizing activities that violate public order.
Judge Alena Pyatrova sentenced Aranovich the same day.
“The case is fabricated. No evidence was presented. I was not allowed to defend myself. Everything is being done to put me behind bars,” Aranovich said in his final statement at the trial.
Aranovich was arrested in late May last year along with Tsikhanouski and several opposition politicians and activists after they campaigned across the country, demanding election officials allow independent candidates, including Tsikhanouski, to officially register to run in an August 9 presidential election.
The trials of Tsikhanouski and the others in the case are pending. Tsikhanouski has been charged with organizing mass disorder, incitement of social hatred, impeding the Central Election Commission’s activities, and organizing activities that disrupt social order.
If convicted, Tsikhanouski may face up to 15 years in prison.
Crisis In Belarus
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.
Tsikhanouski was the owner of a popular YouTube channel called “The Country For Life,” which challenges Belarusian authorities, when he announced his willingness to run against authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka early last year.
During the campaign, Tsikhanouski and his associates moved between towns and cities in a camper with a large inscription “The Country For Life” that was driven by Aranovich.
Before his arrest, Tsikhanouski’s candidacy was rejected by election officials.
His wife Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya took over during the campaign and ran as a candidate in the presidential poll, rising to become the main challenger to Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994.
The European Union and the United States have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate president of Belarus after he claimed a landslide victory in the election that has been widely criticized as rigged.
The results have sparked months of mass protests and have been contested by Tsikhanouskaya, whose supporters claim she won the vote, as well as opposition figures across the country.
Lukashenka has overseen a violent crackdown on the protesters which has seen thousands — including media members — detained and scores injured.
Overall, more than 1,800 criminal cases have been launched over the protests against the official results of the presidential election.
Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus immediately after the vote fearing for her family’s security. She currently lives in Lithuania with her children. Most leading opposition figures have been forced from the country, while many of those still in Belarus have been detained by law enforcement.
Amnesty International says Belarusian workers are facing reprisals in their attempts to set up independent trade unions amid pro-democracy protests that followed a presidential election last year that opposition leaders and the West say was rigged.
“Many people chose to express their peaceful opposition to the election results at their workplace, through industrial action. Some faced administrative detention, and some criminal prosecution for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly,” the London-based human rights group said in a report published on April 28.
Realizing “how little support they had from official trade unions,” protesting workers attempted to set up independent trade unions, but “in response they faced reprisals in the workplace,” according to the report.
Belarus, where workers at state enterprises represent 90 percent of the working population, is a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and a state party to all fundamental ILO conventions.
The UN labor agency has repeatedly drawn attention to violations of the rights to freedom of assembly and association in the country, where there are two main trade union bodies: the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus (FTUB) and the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BCDTU).
The BCDTU unites independent trade unions such as the Belarusian Independent Union (BNP), and has a membership of 10,000.
FTUB, with 4 million members, is the successor to the Soviet Belarusian Republican Council of Trade Unions, and “it retains many of the characteristics of Soviet trade unions such as the participation of managers and government representatives…directly in the decision-making of trade union bodies.”
In this environment, independent trade unions face “enormous challenges” in attempting to register, and their members are “subject to discrimination at the workplace,” Amnesty International said.
In its report, titled Independent Unions In The Line Of Fire, the group cited a failed attempt by workers at the Belarusian Steel Factory in the eastern town Zhlobin, who in August 2020 started to hold strikes to put forward the demands that were being echoed throughout the country — the resignation of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the chair of the election commission, an end to the beating of peaceful protesters, and accountability for police brutality.
After an August 17 strike during which access to the factory was blocked for three hours, the workers learned that a criminal investigation against them had been launched.
They formed an 11-member founding committee for a BNP branch with Vadzim Laptsik as chair, and in December 2020 they agreed with a local property developer that he would provide the trade union with premises for their legal address.
However, the property developer was later forced to withdraw his offer under pressure from the authorities. Without an address, the union could not register.
After that, members of the organizing committee were subject to retaliatory action.
In January, Laptsik was dismissed from his job without any warning, officially for absenteeism because he had visited the medical department of the factory without a pass.
He also received a notification that he was being investigated for preparing actions that “gravely violate public order,” and left Belarus on January 24.
Four other members of the founding committee have been convicted and three are serving between 2 1/2 and three-year prison sentences on charges of participating or organizing “actions which gravely violate public order.”
Opposition and public outrage over the August 9 disputed presidential election, in which incumbent Lukashenka claimed a landslide victory, has sparked continuous protests, bringing tens of thousands onto the streets demanding new elections be held.
More than 30,000 people have been detained under administrative legislation for taking part in demonstrations and “an increasing number of peaceful protestors are being prosecuted under criminal charges and sentenced to long prison sentences,” according to Amnesty International, which said allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in detention are “widespread.”
The “shocking” clampdown on dissent demonstrates “the deep-rooted and pervasive nature of government repression in Belarus,” the watchdog said.
Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994, has denied any wrongdoing with regard to the election and refuses to negotiate with the opposition on stepping down and holding new elections.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said he favors a “smart adjustment” between the military and diplomatic spheres, in his first public comments after a controversial leaked audio clip.
Zarif wrote on Instagram on April 28 that the “main point” of his remarks in the recording — in which he said the Iranian army and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were too influential in diplomacy — was “the need for a smart adjustment of the relationship between these two wings.”
He also saw a need for “setting priorities through legal structures and under the great purview of the supreme leader.”
Zarif’s comments in the audio clip have dominated the discussion in Iran since its publication by media outlets outside Iran on April 25, and sparked a furious reaction from conservative media and politicians.
“In the Islamic republic, the military field rules,” Zarif said in the three-hour-long recording, quoted by The New York Times. “I have sacrificed diplomacy for the military field rather than the field servicing diplomacy.”
Among other things, Zarif complained in the recording about the extent of influence that the late Major General Qasem Soleimani had over foreign policy, hinting that the top IRGC commander tried to spoil Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers by colluding with Russia. Solemani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, greatly intensifying tensions between the United States and Iran.
In his Instagram post, Zarif said he deplored the fact that “a secret theoretical talk regarding the need for synergy between diplomacy and the [military] field…turns into domestic infighting.”
“Honest and passionate” argument in a private setting had been misconstrued as “personal criticism,” the minister wrote.
The previous day, a government spokesman announced that President Hassan Rohani has ordered the Intelligence Ministry to identify who leaked the “stolen” recording, calling the leak “a conspiracy against the government, the system, the integrity of effective domestic institutions, and also against our national interests.”
The Foreign Ministry had described the recording as “selectively” edited, and said it represented just a portion of a seven-hour interview that included “personal opinions.”
Meanwhile, the Tehran prosecutor’s office said it had opened a criminal case into the matter, Fars reported.
According to another semiofficial news agency, ISNA, the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission has summoned Zarif.
The leak comes ahead of a presidential election on June 18, which will see the moderate Rohani step down after two terms in office and after conservatives fared well in parliamentary elections last year.
