Voting is under way on April 25 in Albania’s parliamentary elections, where the ruling Socialist Party of Albania is seeking a third term. RFE/RL filmed early voters in the capital, Tirana. A 2020 constitutional amendment brought in some new electoral rules, such as the introduction of preferential voting.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) just released its annual report that named Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” and recommended Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan be placed on the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List, a list Uzbekistan was removed from in December 2020.
Governments in Central Asia have worked since independence to increase control over religion in their countries and many groups and members of different faiths have been persecuted and denied registration. Some believers have been imprisoned, particularly Muslims, whom the governments of these countries seem to fear the most.
On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion about religious freedom and the lack thereof in Central Asia.
This week’s guests are: from Washington, Nury Turkel, commissioner at the USCIRF and also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; from Oslo, Norway, Felix Corley, the editor of the Forum 18 News Service, an agency monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe; from Warsaw, Poland, Muhamadjon Kabirov, the president of the Foundation for Intercultural Integration, the chief editor at Azda TV, and formerly the personal assistant of the chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikstan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) just released its annual report that named Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” and recommended Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan be placed on the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List, a list Uzbekistan was removed from in December 2020.
Governments in Central Asia have worked since independence to increase control over religion in their countries and many groups and members of different faiths have been persecuted and denied registration. Some believers have been imprisoned, particularly Muslims, whom the governments of these countries seem to fear the most.
On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion about religious freedom and the lack thereof in Central Asia.
This week’s guests are: from Washington, Nury Turkel, commissioner at the USCIRF and also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; from Oslo, Norway, Felix Corley, the editor of the Forum 18 News Service, an agency monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe; from Warsaw, Poland, Muhamadjon Kabirov, the president of the Foundation for Intercultural Integration, the chief editor at Azda TV, and formerly the personal assistant of the chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikstan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has tendered his resignation, formally freeing the way for parliamentary elections to be held in an effort to defuse a political crisis prompted by the country’s war last year with Azerbaijan.
“According to an agreement with the president and political forces, today I’m stepping down in order to hold early parliamentary polls on June 20,” Pashinian announced on Facebook on April 25.
Pashinian said he plans to continue to fulfill his duties as prime minister until the vote, and plans to take part in the elections.
“I will be a candidate for the prime minister,” said Pashinian, who will run as a candidate for his Civil Contract party. “If people decide that I should resign as the prime minister, I will do their will and if they want me to continue my job as the prime minister, I will also do the people’s will.”
The move follows recent changes made to Armenia’s Electoral Code that the opposition has said are aimed at helping Pashinian win.
The changes worked out by Pashinian’s My Step alliance revamp parts of the Electoral Code introduced in 2016 by the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), two years before Pashinian was swept into office after leading mass protests against the pro-Russia HHK of former President Serzh Sarkisian.
The amendments will switch the Caucasus country’s electoral system to a fully proportional one.
To this point Armenians had voted for parties and alliances as well as individual candidates, whereas the next elections will be held only on a party-list basis.
Armenia has been embroiled in a political crisis since Pashinian signed a Russian-brokered cease-fire in November 2020 to end the war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Following talks with the opposition, Pashinian agreed in March to hold the early vote in June.
Opinion polls show that public confidence in Pashinian’s government has fallen sharply since then, with its approval rating falling from 60 percent to around 30 percent today.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
OSH, Kyrgyzstan — Hundreds of Uzbek migrant workers, including many women from the country’s densely populated Ferghana Valley, cross into neighboring Kyrgyzstan every day looking for jobs.
Large crowds of Uzbek migrants gather near the Dostuk border crossing in the southern Kara-Suu district of the Osh region early every morning.
It’s where many of the migrants get hired for short-term, informal jobs. Others travel deeper into the country in search of employment.
Those who arrive early usually find work by midday, says Oibek, a laborer from the eastern Uzbek province of Andijon.
“On average we make about $10 to $20 a day in Kyrgyzstan. It’s quite good,” Oibek says. In Uzbekistan the median salary is about $130 per month.
“Of course, there are some days that we can’t find any work and go back home empty-handed,” he adds.
Oibek says most of the Uzbek migrants in Kyrgyzstan are those who were not able to go to Russia due to the pandemic-related travel restrictions and high ticket prices.
There is a reasonably good demand for Uzbek laborers in Kyrgyzstan, says one Kyrgyz employer. Sultan Aibashev, a Kara-Suu resident, was in Dostuk to hire a carpenter.
“Migrants from Uzbekistan agree to do the work for much lower money than our local workers,” Aibashev said. “Besides, they do their work efficiently. There are many skilled workers among them.”
But not everybody is happy.
Some Kyrgyz officials say the cheaper Uzbek workforce is putting increasing pressure on the local job market, squeezing out Kyrgyz workers.
Kyrgyzstan itself faces an unemployment crisis that has worsened during the pandemic.
A recent survey by the U.S.-based International Republican Institute showed that nearly 60 percent of the respondents in Kyrgyzstan consider unemployment the most serious problem facing the country.
“We need to provide jobs for our own citizens first,” says Oroz Sheripbaeva, the head of the Osh regional Employment and Social Development Department.
“People from the most vulnerable segments of the population come to us saying they are unable for find work. Meanwhile, there are so many people from Uzbekistan who are working at our construction sites,” Sheripbaeva told RFE/RL.
According to government statistics, nearly 157,000 people in Kyrgyzstan were registered as unemployed in 2020. The real number, however, is estimated to be about 500,000 in a country of some 6.5 million people.
Let Them Pay Taxes
Officials at the Dostuk checkpoint say some 300 Uzbek nationals, mostly residents of Andijon, cross into Kara-Suu every day.
Only a handful of them are thought to be entering Kyrgyzstan for a family visit or to go sightseeing. The majority come for black market work.
It’s not known how many migrants from Uzbekistan currently work in Kyrgyzstan because most of them are hired informally by private employers to build or renovate houses, demolish old buildings, and do other manual jobs. Women are often hired for housework and both men and women work on farms.
The jobs are short-term, lasting from several hours, such as cutting down trees or spring cleaning, to a few weeks working in construction or agriculture.
The workers usually stay in accommodation provided by the employer. Those who come from the border villages return home in the evening.
The jobs are offered informally, with a verbal agreement between the worker and the employer. Salaries are only paid in cash.
It’s highly uncommon for either the worker or the employer to register with authorities and pay taxes.
There are calls among some Kyrgyz officials and others to regulate the illegal labor sector, introducing a mandatory work permit and income tax for migrant workers.
Migrants from Uzbekistan began coming to Kyrgyzstan — on a smaller scale — in September 2017, when the two countries reopened checkpoints and simplified border-crossing procedures.
Just a year later, Kyrgyz lawmaker Kenjebek Bokoev said Uzbek migrants working informally bring no benefit to Kyrgyzstan.
Bokoev said the migrants, who force “thousands of Kyrgyz out of jobs,” must work legally and pay Kyrgyz taxes.
Until Russia Reopens
The number of Uzbek workers in Kyrgyzstan is not expected to drop until Russia removes pandemic-related travel restrictions.
Russia — the top destination for Central Asian migrant workers — reopened its doors to Uzbek citizens on April 1. But they’re only allowed to enter Russia by flying.
With just two flights a week scheduled for migrant workers, all of the plane tickets for the summer were quickly sold out.
Central Asia’s most-populous country, with some 35 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan depends heavily on remittances from migrant workers.
The official unemployment rate in 2020 was 13 percent. But even top government officials acknowledge that the jobless rate is actually much higher.
An estimated 6 million Uzbeks traveled abroad — mostly to Russia — for seasonal jobs every year before the COVID-19 pandemic struck early last year.
According to the Transport Ministry, Uzbekistan Airways made 87 flights per week from Uzbekistan to Russia before the pandemic.
There were also 97 flights a week operated by various Russian airlines at the height of the migrant labor season.
The most popular and affordable option for migrant workers was to travel by land, with 12 buses and 13 trains a week connecting Tashkent and Andijon to various Russian cities.
Talks are reportedly under way to reopen the train service, which was suspended in March 2020. But no exact date for a resumption of service has been announced.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Several hundred protesters gathered in Almaty on April 24 for an unsanctioned rally to oppose a draft law on land ownership that they say poses a threat to Kazakh sovereignty and national security. According to RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, the event was organized by the unregistered Democratic Party. Protesters called on the parliament to stop considering amendments to the land ownership legislation that would enable long-term leasing by foreign entities. Opponents fear the amendments would open the door to land ownership for local oligarchs as well as further increase Chinese influence in the country. A strong police presence prevented protesters from marching through the city.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Around 200 protesters gathered in Almaty on April 24 for an unsanctioned rally to oppose a draft law on land ownership that they say poses a threat to Kazakh sovereignty and national security.
Rallies were planned in other cities, too, but many of the organizers abandoned the protests after authorities blocked permits to gather, citing COVID-19 risks.
The Kazakh parliament’s lower chamber, the Mazhilis, earlier this month approved the first reading of a bill banning the purchase and rental of farmland by foreigners in the Central Asian nation ahead of the expiration of a moratorium on land sales this summer.
The five-year moratorium was introduced in 2016 after thousands demonstrated in unprecedented rallies across the tightly controlled nation, protesting the government’s plan to attract foreign investment into the agriculture sector by opening up the market.
Agriculture Minister Saparkhan Omarov said at a session of parliament on April 7 that current agreements on farmlands rented by some foreign companies or joint ventures with foreign capital will expire in the 2022-25 period and will not be extended.
The move comes after President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev proposed the ban in late February.
The protests stopped after the government withdrew the plan, but two men who organized the largest rally in the western city of Atyrau, Talghat Ayan and Maks Boqaev, were sentenced to five years in prison each after being found guilty of inciting social discord, knowingly spreading false information, and violating the law on public assembly.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Belarusian state media say Alyaksandr Lukashenka has said he will sign a decree that would vest presidential powers in the country’s Security Council if he is unable to function as president.
Many governments already consider Lukashenka’s claim to the presidency illegitimate since a disputed reelection in August 2020 and with a brutal crackdown continuing against opposition protests eight months after the vote.
His critics have dismissed previous pledges by Lukashenka for future constitutional changes and elections as stalling tactics.
As Western sanctions and calls for a new election and Lukashenka’s exit have mounted, the authoritarian five-term president has increasingly looked to Moscow for support.
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.
No details were disclosed of a meeting between Lukashenka and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recognized Lukashenka’s claim of electoral victory, on April 22 in Moscow.
“Our teams are continuing to work to develop the legislation for the union state,” Putin said during the talks, in reference to a decades-old bilateral agreement that envisages a union with closer political, economic, and security ties.
The Belarusian Security Council is made up of hand-picked Lukashenka backers.
In his April 24 announcement, state news agency Belta reported, Lukashenka said the prime minister would head the Security Council in his absence.
Much of the leadership of the already hounded Belarusian political opposition has been jailed or forced to leave the country.
Lukashenka’s clampdown has included thousands of detentions and a massive security presence to dissuade protests, as well as strictures and expulsions to hinder journalists trying to report on the unprecedented movement to oust Lukashenka from leadership of the post-Soviet republic of more than 9 million people.
Meeting the new U.S. ambassador to Belarus in neighboring Lithuania on April 21, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya said she wanted to see Belarus “independent, free, and building friendly and mutually beneficial relations with all countries, first and foremost with our neighbors, but with other ones, too.”
Tsikhanouskaya, who ran after her husband was jailed after announcing his own candidacy for president, left Belarus under pressure from the authorities shortly after the August 2020 vote.
The Moscow summit with Putin came in the wake of a purported plot to remove Lukashenka that allegedly involved a blockade of Minsk, power cuts, cyberattacks, and an assassination attempt against Lukashenka. Security forces in Moscow claimed to have arrested several alleged coup plotters in Moscow earlier this month.
The embattled opposition Coordination Council and other pro-democracy forces this week published a memorandum criticizing Lukashenka’s efforts to “deepen integration” with Russia at this juncture.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
On March 20, 2012, a decree signed by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was published by the Russian government. The decree set out a system of payments to military servicemen “for special achievements in the service.”
Section 4 of the order, which was first highlighted by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, stated that “servicemen of military units 99450, 74455, and the structural unit of military unit 29155 are paid a monthly supplement.”
At the time, little attention was paid to the decree: Little was known about the units, which fell under the umbrella of the feared-and-respected military intelligence agency known as the GRU.
In the years that followed, however, these units burst into the public eye appearing in indictments, sanctions announcements, and political statements from Washington D.C. to the Black Sea.
Unit 29155 in particular has grabbed outsized attention, having been linked by 2018 to an alleged coup plot in Montenegro and the near-fatal poisonings of a former Russian military intelligence officer in England and an arms dealer in Bulgaria.
Now, Czech government allegations that the unit’s members were behind a 2014 explosion at a Czech ammunition depot have blown up relations between Prague and Moscow, with both sides expelling diplomats and exchanging angry rhetoric.
“These are the guys you send in because you want to break stuff,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security services.
Here’s a look at the Russian military intelligence unit that has captured the attention of Western intelligence.
Evolution of An Intelligence Unit
The GRU — whose official name is the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation — is not a new entity. It’s been around for decades, operating first in parallel with the KGB and then, after the Soviet breakup, with the KGB successor agencies: the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service.
In addition to providing more traditional tactical battlefield intelligence for Russian commanders, the agency also oversees several special forces units known as spetsnaz, some of which are charged with sabotage-type operations. It engages in electronic surveillance and recruitment of foreign spies, and, more noteworthy, cyberespionage and offensive cyberoperations — hacking into adversaries’ computers, and possibly even inserting destructive code into computer systems.
GRU spetsnaz units played a prominent role in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. And they played an instrumental role in the 1979 coup in Afghanistan, that led to a disastrous decade of intervention by Soviet troops.
The 2008 war with Georgia, in which the GRU also played a leading role, was considered a victory by the Kremlin but exposed major problems in Russian forces. The Kremlin undertook major reforms, including with the GRU.
Unit 29155 and similar units were likely established during these reforms, Galeotti and other experts said.
Since 2018, the overall agency has been headed by a naval officer, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, whose direct line of authority is to the chief of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, and the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin.
That means major operations that could have significant political consequences — like using a Soviet-era military-grade nerve agent that was developed in contravention to international law — likely get top-level Kremlin approval, or at least a heads-up.
A Wedding Near Moscow
The highly secretive nature of intelligence operations, in Russia or anywhere, means there is scant verifiable information about Unit 29155: its budget or its staffing.
However, journalists, open-source researchers, and law enforcement agencies in Western countries have been able to compile a substantial amount of information about the unit.
29155 is reportedly connected to Special Operations Forces Command, whose headquarters is based in Senezh, north of Moscow. Its commander is believed to be Major General Andrei Averyanov, whose daughter was married at a site near Senezh in 2017.
Averyanov became publicly prominent in late 2019, when The New York Times, RFE/RL, and other media uncovered photographs and video from the wedding that showed Averyanov’s presence, as well as that of a man named Anatoly Chepiga, who is also believed to be a member of Unit 29155.
At the time of the wedding in 2017, Chepiga was not publicly known. But his face and a pseudonym — Ruslan Borshirov — became front-page news about nine months later, when the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia nearly died in Salisbury, England.
British officials said the Skripal were poisoned with a secret nerve agent called Novichok, and they alleged two GRU officers were the culprits.
The open-source research organization Bellingcat later published evidence identifying the men under their true names: Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin.
Eight months later, in November 2018, the GRU observed its 100th anniversary in Moscow, in a ceremony attended by Putin himself.
“As commander-in-chief, I of course know, and this is no exaggeration, about your unique abilities including in conducting special operations,” he said.
A Flood Of Revelations
In addition to resulting in the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from Britain, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere, the Skripal case prompted intelligence agencies throughout Europe to reexamine old cases.
That included the near-fatal poisoning in April and May 2015, in Sofia, of a Bulgarian arms dealer named Emilian Gebrev. Bulgarian prosecutors made little public headway in the case until four years later — and more than a year after the Skripal poisoning — when they announced they were reopening their investigation, partly because of information from British authorities.
That December, Bulgarian officials said their investigation was focusing on five alleged GRU agents, including a top officer who purportedly oversaw the team that targeted Skripal. The next month, Bulgarian prosecutors announced charges against three Russians.
In a joint report with Der Spiegel and The Insider, Bellingcat, utilizing flight tracking information, leaked databases, and cell phone records, said as many as eight GRU officers from the same unit — 29155 — may have traveled to Bulgaria in the weeks surrounding the poisoning.
In a new analysis published on April 22, utilizing some of Bellingcat’s travel data, RFE/RL’s Bulgarian Service tracked the travels of some of the known GRU officers in and out of Bulgaria, and found the visits occurred around the times of a series of unexplained explosions that occurred at Bulgarian weapons and armaments facilities in the country in 2014 and 2015.
At least one Bulgarian official, former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev, called on authorities to reopen their investigations into the explosions.
Galeotti said the year 2014 appears to be pivotal in GRU operations — the year the agency, and 29155 in particular, became more aggressive and far-reaching in its operations. Why 2014?
That’s when the months-long Maidan protests in Ukraine culminated in violence against the demonstrators and the ouster of Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych. Russia reacted by seizing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine that continues today.
“What we didn’t quite realize, which is what makes the Czech case really interesting, is that 2014 marks the beginning of the process, a reaction to what was seen as the continuation of [the] Maidan, and this belief [in Moscow] that the West is trying to steal Ukraine from us,” Galeotti said.
“Russia considered itself at political war with the West and from that point was willing to wage that war on Western soil,” he said.
“They were willing to conduct fairly dangerous operations as far back as 2014,” he told RFE/RL.
Montenegro Plot, Ukraine Weapons?
Unit 29155 is not widely known for cyberattacks and hacking activities. Those have been spearheaded by other GRU divisions — Unit 26165 and Unit 74455, which have been indicted by U.S. authorities on charges of election-related hacking — and the Foreign Intelligence Service.
But 29155 has been linked to at least one attempted cyberintrusion. In October 2018, Dutch officials said that GRU agents allegedly tried to hack into the computers at the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. The organization was deeply involved in the investigation of the substance used in the Skripal poisoning.
Two years earlier, in October 2016, Montenegrin authorities claimed they thwarted a plot to take over the country’s parliament building and assassinate the prime minister in a bid to block Montenegro from joining NATO.
In the investigation and trial that followed, 14 people were charged, including Serbian and Russian citizens. Prosecutors charged two Russian military intelligence operatives, Eduard Shishmakov and Vladimir Popov.
Shishmakov and Popov were among those convicted — in absentia in their case — in May 2019. But a Montenegrin court overturned the verdicts in February 2021, citing “significant violations of criminal procedure,” and asked the High Court to retry the case.
Popov is a pseudonym of a man tentatively identified as Vladimir Moiseyev, who also traveled back and forth to Bulgaria at least four times in 2014, all around the same time as four separate explosions at Bulgarian arms manufacturers.
On October 16, 2014, meanwhile, an arms depot near the eastern Czech town of Vrbetice exploded under mysterious circumstances; the bodies of two Czech men were later recovered.
It’s unclear how far the initial Czech investigation into that blast, and another one nearby two months later, proceeded.
But on April 17, at an unusual evening news conference, Prime Minister Andrej Babis announced that Czech intelligence had determined that Unit 29155 was to blame for at least the first explosion. Czech police said they were seeking the same two men wanted in Britain for the Skripal poisoning for questioning.
Other revelations have come out since Babis’s announcement. Bellingcat reported that Averyanov was in Vienna in October 2014, just before the Vrbetice explosion, and that one of the two Russians now linked to the blasts posted a photograph of Prague’s Old Town on October 11.
In another twist, initial reports said the ammunition at the depot that detonated was collected and owned by Gebrev, the Bulgarian arms dealer, and may have been destined for Ukraine as it fought Russian-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine, something partly corroborated by top Ukrainian security officials.
Gebrev has denied the arms were his, or that they were destined for export to Ukraine.
Tor Bukkvoll, a researcher who specializes in Russian security at the Norwegian Defense Ministry’s Defense Research Establishment, said the Czech revelations, while not revolutionary, add further detail suggesting how early and aggressively the GRU was in deploying this unit.
“This demonstration, showing the [Russian] willingness to engage in these kinds of missions, and go into other countries — and perform these kinds of operations — this is really scary,” he said.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Thousands of Armenians marched in Yerevan on April 23 to commemorate World War I-era mass killings of their kin by Ottoman forces, a bloodletting which U.S. President Joe Biden might reportedly recognize as genocide. The annual torch-lit march was held on the eve of the 106th anniversary of the massacres in which — Armenians say — up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were killed as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. So far about 30 countries have recognized the events as “genocide,” a characterization which Turkey objects to.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The European Union has dismissed Russian authorities’ labeling of Latvia-based independent news outlet Meduza as a “foreign agent” and urged Moscow to end its “systematic infringement” of basic rights and freedoms for the political opposition and other Russians.
Russia’s Justice Ministry announced the step — which requires organizations to label themselves as “foreign agents” and subjects them to increased government scrutiny and regulation — against the 7-year-old Meduza outlet a day earlier.
“We reject the decision by the Russian authorities to include independent media outlet Meduza on the list of ‘foreign agents,’” the EU’s diplomatic service said in a statement on April 24.
The bloc cited the media’s duty to “report on issues of public interest” and state authorities’ “obligation…to ensure they can do so in an atmosphere free of fear and intimidation.”
“It is extremely concerning that Russian authorities continue to restrict the work of independent media platforms, as well as individual journalists and other media actors,” the bloc’s spokesperson said. “It goes against Russia’s international obligations and human rights commitments.”
Meduza was formed in 2014 by the former chief editor of Lenta.ru, Galina Timchenko, after she and most of Lenta.ru’s editorial staff left following an ownership change.
According to the independent Medialogia monitoring site, Meduza was among the top 10 most-cited Russian-language Internet sources in 2020 and was No. 1 in the ranking of most-linked-to in social-media posts.
The same day that the designation was ordered against Meduza, the Justice Ministry added the little-known, Moscow-based First Anti-Corruption Media project, which describes itself as “a federal media outlet specializing in the fight against corruption in Russia,” to the same registry.
Russia’s so-called “foreign agent” legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. One of its modifications targets foreign-funded media.
In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service on the list, along with six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time, a network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on its “foreign agents” list and to impose restrictions on them.
“It is the European Union’s longstanding position that the so-called ‘foreign agent’ law contributes to a systematic infringement of basic freedoms, and restricts civil society, independent media, and the rights of political opposition in Russia,” the EU said. “Democracy is a universal value that includes respect for human rights as enshrined in international law.”
The Russian state media monitor Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration. The agency has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL’s projects for failure to follow such rules that could result in fines totaling more than $1 million.
RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Joe Biden has spoken by phone with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid speculation that the U.S president will recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide — a largely symbolic move that would likely infuriate Ankara and step up already high tensions between the two NATO allies.
The White House and the Turkish presidency accounts of the April 23 call, the first direct communication between the two leaders since Biden’s inauguration in January, made no mention of the issue.
But Reuters quoted sources familiar with the conversation as saying that Biden told Erdogan that he intended to recognize the mass killing and forced deportations of Armenians as genocide in a statement on April 24.
State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter told reporters: “When it comes to the Armenian genocide, you can expect an announcement tomorrow.” She declined to reveal details.
Earlier this week, media reports said Biden would likely use the word “genocide” as part of a statement on April 24 when Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day annual commemorations are held around the world.
However, sources warned that given the importance of bilateral ties with Turkey, a key NATO member, the U.S. president may still choose to drop the “genocide” term at the last minute.
As a presidential candidate, Biden pledged that if elected he would recognize the Armenian genocide, saying “silence is complicity.” But he has not given a timeline for delivering on the promise.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned that such a move would “harm” bilateral relations.
Turkish Objections
During and immediately after World War I, Ottoman Turks killed or deported as many as 1.5 million Armenians — a Christian minority in the predominately Muslim empire. Many historians and some other nations consider the killings genocide.
Turkey objects to the use of the word genocide to describe the killings. Ankara claims the deaths were a result of civil strife rather than a planned Ottoman government effort to annihilate Armenians. Turkey also claims fewer Armenians died than has been reported.
Moves to recognize the killings as genocide have stalled in the U.S. Congress for decades, and U.S. presidents have refrained from formally using the term amid intense lobbying by Ankara.
During his April 23 call with Erdogan, Biden called for “a constructive bilateral relationship with expanded areas of cooperation and effective management of disagreements,” the White House said in a statement.
It said the two leaders agreed to meet one-on-one on the sidelines of a NATO summit in June to discuss their two countries’ relations.
Erdogan’s office said that “both leaders agreed on the strategic character of the bilateral relationship and the importance of working together to build greater cooperation on issues of mutual interest.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
DUSHANBE — Tajik authorities say they didn’t issue a passport that was allegedly used in 2014 by a Russian agent implicated in a deadly arms depot explosion in the Czech Republic.
Last weekend, the Czech government alleged that two people who entered the country as Russian citizens, Ruslan Boshirov and Aleksandr Petrov, used a Tajik passport issued to Ruslan Tabarov and a Moldovan passport issued to Nicolaj Popa to access an arms depot in the village of Vrbetice in 2014. The Czechs say the two are responsible for an explosion that occurred the same day they went to the depot, killing two people.
In a statement on April 23, Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry said that it had never issued a passport to a person born in 1975 with the name Ruslan Tabarov.
The statement came three days after Moldova’s Agency for State Services said that a Moldovan passport allegedly used by the other Russian agent implicated in the 2014 blast had been issued to a different person, but doctored to change the original name on the passport to Nicolaj Popa, born in 1979.
Czech authorities also allege that the two suspects were members of Russian military intelligence (GRU) and the same agents wanted for the poisoning attempt of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in 2018.
The faces on the passports — identified as Ruslan Tabarov from Tajikistan and Nicolaj Popa from Moldova — matched those of Petrov and Boshirov, who were captured on video in Britain.
The Bellingcat investigative group has identified Boshirov and Petrov as GRU operatives Anatoly Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin, respectively.
The results of the Czech investigation have led to a major diplomatic standoff between Prague and Moscow, including the mass expulsion of embassy staff from the missions of both countries.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Nineteen-year-old Mukhlisa Kadambaeva was found dead after what her parents said was brutal abuse by her husband’s family. The in-laws of the victim said she had hanged herself. The case has called attention to domestic violence in Uzbekistan, where such crimes are often seen as private matters and are rarely prosecuted.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In Kyrgyzstan, five directors are making a series of short films about the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the country in the spring and summer of 2020. Ten different stories will tell about how ordinary people experienced quarantine, how they fought for other people’s lives, and how the local health-care system was unready for the outbreak.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Few if any of the workers and volunteers in structures tied to imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was surprised earlier this month when prosecutors in Moscow began procedures aimed to officially label them “extremist organizations.”
“From the very beginning…it was understood that sooner or later this structure would be deemed ‘extremist,’” said Zakhar Sarapulov, head of Navalny’s office in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. “About two months ago we had a staff meeting and we discussed this and predicted that it would happen in the immediate future.”
Leonid Volkov, the director of Navalny’s network of regional offices who is currently living abroad out of concern for his safety, told Current Time the same thing.
“I would quote a Russian classic — ‘I knew it would be bad, but I didn’t know how soon,’” Volkov said. “We understood that there would be a new wave of attacks on our offices. We already survived a big attack in 2019, when all of our equipment was stolen, all our bank accounts were frozen, and so on. They thought that we couldn’t adapt, but we did, and we found ways to continue our work.”
“This new attack,” he conceded, “looks even more frightening, I’ll admit.”
On April 16, the Moscow prosecutor’s office appealed to the Moscow City Court with a request that three Navalny organizations — the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation, and his regional network — be officially labeled “extremist organizations.” The court has announced it will hold a closed hearing on the prosecutor’s request on April 26.
The Russian authorities have been widely criticized for using the country’s vague anti-extremism legislation for political reasons. “Anti-extremism laws are frequently used to increase censorship and state control: silencing political opposition, journalists, and civil society,” the NGO Article 19 wrote in 2019.
If the Navalny organizations are deemed “extremist,” all of their employees could face arrest and prison terms from six to 10 years. In addition, the organizations’ donors — tens of thousands of Russian citizens who have made donations — could also face prosecution for purportedly funding extremism.
“There can be no doubt that the court will grant the prosecutor’s request,” Sarapulov said. “I think every employee here will have to make up their own mind what to do. I can’t speak for the others. For my own part, I can say that I will continue working at Navalny’s office even after it is deemed ‘extremist.’ Of course, we will try to minimize our risks by rebranding, although most likely they will not let us register another legal entity.”
Not Surprised
Navalny himself has been in custody since he returned to Russia in January following weeks of recovery from a nerve-agent poisoning that he says was carried out by Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives acting at the behest of President Vladimir Putin. In February, Navalny was given a 2 1/2-year prison term on charges he insists were politically motivated.
On April 23, he said he would begin winding down a hunger strike he started on March 31 to protest what he called a deliberate campaign to undermine his health.
Navalny’s organizations flatly deny any extremist activity and are convinced the Kremlin is persecuting them for political reasons in the run-up to national legislative elections that must be held by September 19.
“Navalny’s offices and the FBK have always been organizations that insisted on the right of citizens to protest peacefully,” Sarapulov said. “We have never been extremists or terrorists. All that we have done is to investigate corruption and call on people to come out onto the squares of our cities and demand their constitutional rights.”
Ksenia Pakhomova, a volunteer at Navalny’s office in the Siberian oil city of Kemerovo, learned about the “extremism” threat when she emerged from serving a nine-day administrative jail term for participating in a demonstration outside the prison in the Vladimir region where Navalny was being held until he was recently transferred to another prison with better medical facilities.
“I wasn’t surprised at all by the news that they want to proclaim us ‘extremist,’” she said. “I was only surprised that it took so long. I thought Putin would try to shut us down earlier.”
Silent Majority?
Pakhomova said the attack on Navalny’s groups was motivated by growing public opposition to Putin, a 68-year-old former KGB officer who has ruled Russia as president or prime minister since 2000. She said the relatively small number of people who turn out to protest was backed up by a much larger pool of behind-the-scenes supporters.
“When you are jailed, you know that you will not be forgotten,” she told RFE/RL. “Someone will help you by gathering information about detainees. Others will give legal aid. Others will bring you water and food. Others will contact your relatives and friends. All this is happening naturally, voluntarily, but also effectively and efficiently. Any structure would envy such self-organization.”
Employees of Navalny’s organizations face risks from the looming “extremism” label, Pakhomova said, but volunteers are less vulnerable.
“Among volunteers who are getting no salary, as far as I know, no one is planning to give up,” she said. “People who previously tried to avoid politics now have fewer illusions. Their minds are being changed by Navalny’s investigations into the illegal assets of government officials and by Navalny’s arrest. But most of all by the mass detentions during the protests in January and February.”
“For example, my friend’s father used to support Putin,” she added. “But when he found out about my arrest and why I was arrested, he stopped watching [state-run] Channel One. He probably isn’t going to go to a protest, but he definitely isn’t going to vote for Putin and his kind anymore. And there are more and more people like him.”
‘A Protest Against Dictatorship’
Anastasia Korsakova, the head of Navalny’s office in the southern city of Krasnodar, said the Moscow prosecutor’s request was a sign that “they have given the green light to political repressions.”
“But no one among our volunteers or staff has said they might quit or is even talking about the possibility of future problems,” she added. “Of course, we are living in constant expectation of detentions, fines, trials, arrests. But you can’t really prepare in advance for being imprisoned. No one is ready for prison.”
Sarapulov, from Navalny’s office in Irkutsk, said his group maintained a closed chat group in which he posted that anyone who wants to leave the organization was free to do so without judgment.
“No one is leaving,” he said. “Not one person.”
And he agrees that the protests in Russia will continue. “It doesn’t matter what you are protesting against in Russia — against raising retirement ages or the rape of the constitution or tax hikes,” Sarapulov said. “It all comes down to one thing — our country has been ruled by one person for 20 years…. Any protest is a protest against dictatorship. There is nothing more important in Russia today than the struggle between dictatorship and democracy.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Russian government has designated the Latvia-based independent Meduza news outlet as a foreign agent — a move that will require it to label itself as such and will subject it to increased government scrutiny.
The Russian Justice Ministry made the announcement on April 23 on its website. while Meduza confirmed the news in a tweet.
“Hi, everyone! We’re Russia’s latest “foreign agent!” the media outlet said.
Russia’s so-called foreign agent legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.
Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time.
Meduza is an independent media outlet with hundreds of sources in Russia and across the former Soviet Union.
It releases news in Russian and English from its headquarters in Latvia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Security authorities in the Siberian cities of Kemerovo and Novosibirsk say they have apprehended an unspecified number of supporters of the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said on April 21 that alleged members of the group that was banned in the country in 2003 “carried out anti-constitutional activities based on the doctrine of creating a world caliphate.”
It did not say how many suspects have been apprehended.
Authorities in Russia and some other former Soviet republics say Hizb ut-Tahrir plays a role in a strategy used by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants to radicalize young people and recruit them to join radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a London-based Sunni political organization that seeks to unite all Muslim countries into an Islamic caliphate.
Banned in Russia and Central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir says it is a peaceful movement.
Human rights groups have criticized the government’s “abuse” of counterterrorism laws and the use of “secret witnesses” and other methods in prosecuting critics and religious groups to silence dissent.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
It’s April 24, 1915. Some 250 Armenian intellectuals are rounded up in Constantinople and imprisoned by Ottoman police. Known as “Red Sunday,” it is today a day of remembrance for a murderous yearslong campaign that would see the majority of the Ottoman Empire’s prewar Armenian population expelled or exterminated. According to estimates, between 664,000 and 1.2 million people lost their lives.
A century later, recognition of the killings as genocide is still a divisive diplomatic issue, with Turkey and Azerbaijan — who share strong ethnic and cultural ties — officially denying genocide took place. U.S. President Joe Biden promised recognition of the mass killings as genocide during his electoral campaign — a move that had also been promised by President Barack Obama, but which failed to materialize.
Reports now strongly indicate that the Biden administration will, indeed, recognize the killings as genocide on April 24, a day commemorated in Armenia as Genocide Remembrance Day.
In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate both passed resolutions recognizing the massacres as genocide, but Biden — if he follows through on his promise — would be the first U.S. president to adopt recognition of genocide as official policy.
What horrific events happened in Turkey beginning in 1915? And what’s behind Biden’s historic move?
Did World War I lead to the killings?
A secret pact between Germany and the Ottoman Empire set the stage for the massacres. Agreeing on the eve of World War I to fight alongside Germany against Russia, the Ottomans received a promise that Germany would be responsible for rectifying their eastern borders “in a manner suitable for the establishment of a link with the Muslim peoples of Russia.”
The empire’s proclamation on entering the war stated that it would establish a new frontier, uniting “all branches of our race.”
Separating the Muslims of Russia from those of Turkey was a large swath of territory inhabited by Armenians, stretching from the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire into Russian territory in the South Caucasus. That population had lived there for hundreds of years, for the most part coexisting peacefully with the Muslim Ottomans and enjoying a significant degree of autonomy.
A number of prominent Armenian families performed important functions for the Ottoman elite, working as architects, gunpowder makers, and administrators of the imperial mint.
After a long period of coexistence, what prompted the Ottomans to embark on an anti-Armenian policy?
Relations between the Armenians and their imperial rulers were fraught before the outbreak of World War I. Emboldened by support from European powers and major Ottoman territorial losses in both the Caucasus and the Balkans, Armenian revolutionary groups were active both in the Ottoman Empire and across the border in Russia by the end of the 19th century.
Groups such as the Dashnaks and Hunchaks organized uprisings, terrorist attacks, and assassination attempts in the Ottoman Empire. Some 100,000 Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Muslims in massacres in 1895 and 1896, foreshadowing what was to come two decades later.
With the Armenian population split between the Ottoman and Russian empires, the start of the war in 1914 saw tens of thousands of them fighting on both sides of the front in the Caucasus.
However, a significant proportion of Ottoman Armenians were supportive of Russia, and some had cooperated with Russian forces or greeted them as liberators in previous wars throughout the 19th century, such as the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, in which Russia annexed the regions of Kars and Batum, which both had large Armenian populations.
This contributed to the Ottoman leadership’s perception of Armenians along the Russian front line as a risk, and their fear was not unjustified. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, ordered that arms be smuggled to Ottoman Armenians in September 1914, ahead of the Ottoman Empire’s expected entry into the war. A Russian diplomat leaving Erzerum in late 1914 wrote:
The Armenian population…is waiting impatiently for the arrival of Russian forces and their liberation from the Turkish yoke. They will hardly risk to stage an uprising before Russian forces arrive on their doorstep, fearing that the smallest delay of Russian assistance will lead to their complete destruction, because, even though they still have weapons hidden in various secret locations, they will not dare to take it because of the state of war proclaimed in the country and the threat of imminent massacres.
The Ottomans began to turn on their Armenian subjects after a major defeat on the Russian front, at Sarikamish, in January 1915. Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal writes that after the disastrous failure of this attempt to advance into the Russian-controlled Caucasus, War Minister Enver Pasha ordered the disarming of non-Muslims in the army, who would be drafted into labor battalions.
This was followed by British and French landings on the Dardanelles, threatening the Ottoman capital. Faced with catastrophe, the Ottomans began deporting and killing Armenians in regions near the Russian front line in February 1915, according to British historian Christopher J. Walker. The position of the Turkish government is that the Ottomans decided to relocate Armenians living in the war zone or areas near the advancing Russian Army, as well as Armenians in other regions who were suspected of collaborating.
The diplomat’s prediction of an uprising was not too far off.
With Russian forces in nearby Persia, Armenians in the city of Van in April 1915 prepared to defend themselves from the Ottomans, who had been searching nearby villages for weapons and arresting suspected rebels. These searches were accompanied by anti-Armenian pogroms.
Rafael de Nogales, a Venezuelan mercenary among the Turkish forces, described witnessing a massacre in the village of Adilcevaz. Confronting an Ottoman official over the killings, he was told that the Ottoman forces, assisted by local Kurds, were carrying out an order from the provincial governor “to exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years of age and over.”
About 55,000 Armenians were killed throughout the province.
Greatly outnumbered and outgunned, Armenian forces, totaling just 1,300 men, held parts of Van for about a month, weathering a siege by the Ottomans and taking in refugees from the surrounding countryside, until Russian forces arrived on May 19, 1915.
When did the killings turn systematic?
The clash over Van marked a tipping point in the Turkish policy, which became much more radical.
A week after Russian forces arrived in the city, the Ottoman government legalized the policy by adopting a Deportation Law. The deportations were conducted openly, with announcements giving local communities a few days to prepare.
According to American historian Eugene Rogan, mass murders of these same deportees were secretly ordered in parallel. Regional officials who did not comply, or who asked for written confirmation, could be removed from their posts or even killed:
“When one district governor in Diyarbakir Province demanded written notice before carrying out the massacre of Armenians from his district, he was removed from office, summoned to Diyarbakir, and murdered en route.”
The U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau Sr., described the situation as follows in a July 1915 telegram:
“Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempts to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests, terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other, accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage, and murder, turning into massacre, to bring destruction and destitution on them.
“These measures are not in response to popular or fanatical demand but are purely arbitrary and directed from Constantinople in the name of military necessity, often in districts where no military operations are likely to take place. The [Muslim] and Armenian populations have been living in harmony, but because Armenian volunteers, many of them Russian subjects, have joined [the] Russian Army in the Caucasus and because some have been implicated in armed revolutionary movements, and others have been helpful to Russians in their invasion of Van district, terrible vengeance is being taken.
“Most of the sufferers are innocent and have been loyal to [the] Ottoman government. Nearly all are old men, women, all the men from 20 to 45 are in Turkish Army…. Untold misery, disease, starvation, and loss of life will go on unchecked.”
That many of the sufferers were innocent was admitted at the time by the Ottoman interior minister and “architect” of the massacres, Talaat Pasha. In an interview with the Berliner Tageblatt, he said:
“We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow.”
In the same interview, the minister admitted that deportees were being killed — although he put the blame on individual officials and claimed they had been punished. “We are no savages,” he told the newspaper.
The views Pasha expressed privately were quite different, however.
A German envoy wrote that Pasha was unambiguous about the Ottoman government’s intention to “use the world war to make a clean sweep of its internal enemies — the indigenous Christians of all confessions — without being hindered in doing so by diplomatic intervention from other countries.”
In the envoy’s words, Pasha intended to “annihilate the Armenians.”
This was echoed in a report from Germany’s ambassador to Constantinople, Baron Hans von Wangenheim. The expansion of the deportations to provinces far from the front line, he said, “and the manner in which the deportation is being carried out shows that, indeed, the government is pursuing the purpose of annihilating the Armenian race in the Turkish Empire.”
As suggested by the baron’s reference to the expansion of deportations and killings to new provinces, the policy was not carried out evenly throughout the empire. Nor were all parts of the Ottoman state willing participants. Some regional governors asked for their Armenians to be spared or took active measures to save them, and the Ottoman military’s role in the deportations has been described as minimal.
Instead of the military, the massacres were mainly carried out by the so-called Special Organization, an outfit of some 30,000 men that was mainly composed of ex-convicts. The German consul in Aleppo wrote that the Ottoman government had “released convicts from prison, put them in soldiers’ uniforms, and sent them to areas which the deportees are to pass.”
The killings followed the same general pattern, as described by Rogan: A few days after deportation notices were posted, armed men would drive Armenians from their homes. The males aged 12 and up would be separated from the rest and led out of town to be killed. The women, children, and elderly men would be marched from town to town in the blazing heat until they collapsed and died, or would be killed as they fell behind.
Most were marched toward Aleppo, from where the survivors were sent on to other cities along the Euphrates River. By some estimates, less than 10 percent of the prewar Armenian population was left in the Ottoman Empire when it finally collapsed in 1922.
Did the outside world know what was happening?
The atrocities were well-known to the outside world while they were occurring. In a joint diplomatic note protesting the killings, the Entente Powers — Russia, France, and Britain — were the first to use the phrase “crimes against…humanity.”
Besides diplomatic notes and reports home from envoys and ambassadors, the massacres were widely reported in the press. On July 12, 1915, The New York Times wrote: “Armenians have been pitilessly evicted by tens of thousands and driven off to die in the desert near Konia or to Upper Mesopotamia…. It is safe to say that unless Turkey is beaten to its knees very speedily, there will soon be no more Christians in the Ottoman Empire.”
A relief movement formed in the United States, and Ambassador Morgenthau was instructed to inform Constantinople that its policy toward the Armenians had “aroused general and unfavorable criticism among the American people, which is destroying the feeling of goodwill which the people of the United States have held towards Turkey.”
Publicity turned the massacres into a significant political issue in the United States and even featured in President Woodrow Wilson’s campaign for reelection in 1916. The U.S. Congress adopted a resolution in July 1916 urging Wilson to “designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing to the funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians in the belligerent countries.”
In response, Wilson declared October 21-22, 1916, as Armenian (as well as Syrian) relief days.
What is the Turkish position on the killings and deportations?
Turkey does not deny that many Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but the government’s official position is that the “Armenian deaths do not constitute genocide.”
Highlighting deaths among other nationalities of the empire, Turkey justifies the policy of deportations, with a Foreign Ministry website stating that the “Armenians took arms against their own government. Their violent political aims, not their race, ethnicity, or religion, rendered them subject to relocation.”
It also states that “no direct evidence has been discovered demonstrating that any Ottoman official sought the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians as such.”
The United States knew what the Ottomans were doing. Why wasn’t it recognized as genocide back then?
The term “genocide” did not exist while the massacres were taking place. It would only be coined in 1944, before being recognized as a crime in international law with the adoption of the UN’s Genocide Convention in 1948.
This was at the beginning of the Cold War and just a year before NATO was created. Turkey joined the Western military alliance in 1952. Despite the American relief effort and diplomatic interventions on behalf of the Armenians, the killings have remained unrecognized as genocide at the U.S. federal level for over a century — although 49 out of 50 U.S. states, as well as the District of Columbia, have adopted their own resolutions recognizing them as such.
Turkey’s importance as a strategic ally was a major factor in the reluctance to use the word and extend official recognition, with the Trump administration referring to “atrocities” instead and saying bills passed by both the U.S. House and Senate in 2019 that symbolically recognized the killings as genocide did not reflect U.S. policy.
Voting on the Senate bill was even blocked temporarily at the request of the White House in order to avoid offending Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was in the United States when the vote was scheduled.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan became the only sitting U.S. president to refer to the killings as genocide. However, this was in the context of a proclamation issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day and was not a statement of policy.
What has changed and put the United States on the brink of recognizing the killings as genocide?
The decision to recognize the killings as genocide, if it is announced, would come amid a significant worsening of relations with Turkey in recent years, and after a pledge by Biden in his campaign to make “universal human rights a top priority.”
One major bilateral issue is the Turkish purchase of advanced Russian S-400 air-defense systems, which led to the United States kicking Ankara out of the F-35 fighter program and imposing sanctions on the NATO ally’s weapons-procurement sector. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Turkey operating the Russian system would “endanger the security of U.S. military technology and personnel and provide substantial funds to Russia’s defense sector.”
The S-400 purchase is not the only thing contributing to the deterioration of the relationship. The United States has also refused to extradite Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of organizing what it calls an attempted coup in 2016. A Turkish military operation against Kurds who fought alongside U.S. forces in Syria also angered Washington, although no action was taken against Ankara by the Trump administration. More recently, Erdogan accused the United States of siding with Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan.
Domestically, more than 100 House members signed a letter on April 21 calling on Biden to recognize the killings as genocide. The move has also long been demanded by the significant Armenian diaspora in the United States.
Samantha Power, the UN ambassador under Obama, apologized for that administration’s failure to follow through on its campaign pledge, calling the killings an “open wound.”
The earlier U.S. congressional resolutions drew a rebuke from Turkey’s communications director, who called them “irresponsible and irrational actions…against Turkey.”
If Biden makes good on his promise and the United States joins some 30 other countries, including Russia, with an official policy of genocide recognition, it will certainly anger Ankara and further strain an already uneasy relationship between the two NATO allies.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Hey, you’re busy! We know rferl.org isn’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.
The cause of the 2014 explosions at two Czech arms depots has been a mystery for years. Czech authorities now say a secretive Russian military intelligence unit was to blame — the same unit linked to a spate of poisonings, assassination attempts, and subversive actions across Europe. By Mike Eckel, Ivan Bedrov, and Olha Komarova
Czech officials blame a secretive Russian military intelligence unit for a 2014 explosion at an ammunition depot. Members of that same unit were traveling in Bulgaria around the same time that six explosions hit Bulgarian weapons factories in 2014 and 2015. By Boris Mitov and Ivan Bedrov
Current Time has visited the intensive-care unit of a COVID-19 hospital in Kyiv, where a recent surge in infections means every single bed is full. Many patients arrive in critical condition and require mechanical ventilation of their lungs. Medical staff say they’re battling difficult conditions and fatigue, while surviving patients speak of the trauma they have experienced. By Current Time and Neil Bowdler
Satellite imagery has some fearing that an ancient monument faces “erasure” after its recapture by Azerbaijan. By Amos Chapple
“Commander Lleshi” fought Serbs in the Croatian, Bosnian, and Kosovar wars before a sniper’s bullet felled him a week before he was to return to his stronghold in southern Serbia. By Branko Vuckevic
A Kazakh woman is fighting to bring justice to five men she says tried to kidnap her and force her to into marriage. The victims of bride kidnapping — a local custom in parts of Central Asia — often don’t report incidents to police and stay in such marriages to avoid social disgrace. By RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service
Analysts say the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan could allow Iran to expand its influence in the region, though any uptick in violence after the pullout could create additional burdens for Tehran. By Golnaz Esfandiari
Farit Zakiyev, the head of an organization that promotes Tatar language and culture, was sentenced to community service for taking part in Tatarstan’s annual Commemoration Day. The crackdown on Zakiyev’s group appears to be part of a larger pressure campaign against ethnic minority activists in Russia. By RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service and Margot Buff
A newly opened museum by Azerbaijan inspired by last year’s war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh has been criticized for belittling Armenians and disrespecting those who died in the fighting. By Neil Hauer
This Russian painter has dedicated her life to chronicling the changing face of her country’s capital. By Amos Chapple
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Germany has called on Serbia and Kosovo to step up efforts toward a normalization of their relationship, more than two decades after Belgrade lost control of its former southern province in 1999.
“The time is right for continuing the normalization process — and to achieve results,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at a live-streamed news conference after meeting Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade on April 23.
“It is important not to hold this dialogue just for dialogue’s sake, there must be results. Germany stands ready to help in this respect,” Maas added.
For his part, Vucic said that Serbia wants to reach a compromise solution with Kosovo and was ready to continue the dialogue.
“Serbia is not looking for excuses to refuse to reach a compromise,” Vucic said, adding that Belgrade believes that a frozen conflict is always in danger of being reignited.
Serbia was forced to cede control over Kosovo in 1999 after a U.S.-led NATO campaign ended Belgrade’s crackdown against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists. More than 10,000 people died in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008 but Belgrade does not recognize this. Most EU members and the United States have recognized Kosovo’s independence, but not Serbia’s allies Russia and China.
Vucic, in an April 22 interview from Belgrade with the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, said he was also actively seeking stronger ties with the United States.
Vucic, who has met U.S. President Joe Biden five times, described the U.S. president as “politically the best prepared man I ever talked to.”
Vucic, however, admitted there are difficulties in the bilateral relationship, especially differing views on peace talks with Kosovo.
Biden has considerable Balkan experience and was engaged with the region while serving as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has summoned the Polish ambassador following Warsaw’s expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff, Russian news agencies reported.
Poland’s ambassador to Russia, Krzysztof Krajewski, arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow on April 23 without commenting to reporters, TASS reported.
The Polish Foreign Ministry said on April 15 that three staff members at the Russian embassy were declared personae non gratae for violating their diplomatic status and conducting activities harmful to Poland.
Russia replied last week by saying it would expel five Polish diplomats.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russia has expelled five staff members at Poland’s embassy in Moscow in a tit-for-tat move after Warsaw declared three Russian diplomats in Poland personae non gratae for violating their diplomatic status.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 23 it had summoned Poland’s ambassador to Russia, Krzysztof Krajewski, to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, where he was informed of the decision.
It said the move, which gives the Polish diplomats until May 15 to leave Russia, was made because Warsaw was “consciously pursuing a course towards the further degradation and destruction of our bilateral relations.”
The Polish Foreign Ministry expelled the three Russian Embassy staff members on April 15 for violating their diplomatic status and “conducting activities harmful to Poland.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
PRAGUE — Czech Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhanek has announced the equal number of diplomats that will be allowed by Prague and Moscow at their embassies as tensions between the two escalate over Russia’s alleged role in a deadly 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot.
“[The Czech Republic’s and Russia’s embassies] should have seven diplomats and 25 administrative and technical staff each,” Kulhanek said in an interview with Czech daily Blesk.
Kulhanek’s clarification came a day after he said that Russia won’t be allowed to have more diplomats in Prague than the Czechs currently have at their embassy in Moscow, following Russia’s expulsion of Czech diplomats in a retaliatory move.
The row flared on April 17 when Prague expelled 18 Russian staff, whom it identified as spies.
The Czechs said two Russian intelligence officers accused of a nerve-agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 were also behind an explosion at a Czech ammunition depot in 2014 that killed two people.
Russia has denied the Czech accusations and on April 18 ordered out 20 Czech staff in retaliation.
On April 22, Moscow ignored a deadline to allow the expelled Czech diplomats’ return to work by noon. Moscow had called the ultimatum “unacceptable.”
“We will cut the number of diplomats at the Russian Embassy in Prague to match the number of our staff at the embassy in Moscow,” Kulhanek told a news briefing on April 22 after the deadline had passed, adding that Russia had until the end of May to recall its staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
WASHINGTON — Serbian President Aleksandr Vucic highlighted what he said were good personal relations with U.S. President Joe Biden amid expectations that the new U.S. administration could take a tougher stance on the rollback of democracy in the Balkan nation.
In an April 22 interview from Belgrade with the Washington-based think tank the Atlantic Council, Vucic said he was actively seeking stronger ties with the United States, but admitted there were difficulties in the bilateral relationship, especially differing views on peace talks with Kosovo.
Vucic, who has met Biden five times, described the U.S. president as “politically the best prepared man I ever talked to.”
Biden has considerable Balkan experience and oversaw the region while serving as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
“He always had a good sense and he always wanted to listen to us, which was very good for [Serbia],” Vucic told the audience in English.
Vucic had expressed a preference for former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the divisive 2020 election, raising some concerns his comments could now impact his relationship with the Biden administration.
However, the Serbian leader sought to downplay talks of warm ties with the former U.S. president, saying he knows Biden “much better” than Trump and knows more people from his administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Vucic, who will seek reelection next year, has been accused of tightening his grip on power and clamping down on the media.
Biden has said he will make strengthening democratic institutions a key focus of his foreign policy, potentially setting the two up for a tough first call.
The two leaders have yet to speak since Biden took office on January 20.
Vucic admitted his country was “not perfect,” but said his government was making progress on rule-of-law issues.
“I don’t expect an easier time for Serbia because politics is not always about personal issues, but we will do our best to boost the friendship between our two countries,” Vucic said.
The Serbian leader has installed a close confidant as ambassador to Washington, expanded the diplomatic mission in Chicago, and taken steps to open a mission in San Francisco as part of a larger attempt to enhance ties with the United States.
Vucic said Serbia needs U.S. support to achieve faster progress, including greater economic growth.
U.S.-Serbian relations were severely strained after the breakup of Yugoslavia three decades ago, though ties have gradually improved.
The United States led a NATO air campaign against Serbian forces in 1999 to stop a deadly crackdown on its ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo.
Washington then led an international campaign to recognize Kosovo’s independence in 2008.
Serbia has yet to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation, preventing both countries from joining Western-led organizations, including the European Union and NATO.
During the April 22 talk, Vucic criticized the United States and Europe for its approach to a settlement between Belgrade and Pristina.
“They always just say ‘we will just wait for Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s independence.’ When you ask someone what they offer, you hear nothing. No one can even guarantee you full-fledged membership status [in the EU]. No one can guarantee nothing to you when you ask them, ‘okay, what might Serbs get,’” Vucic said.
He said that, even if a Serbian politician were to cave in to Western demands, the Serbian people would not accept it.
Vucic criticized the European Union for not strongly backing a Belgrade-led plan to create an economic zone for free trade and travel throughout the Balkans.
Currently, only Serbia, Albania, and North Macedonia are part of the free economic zone.
Vucic said other countries like Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina may worry that Serbia will dominate the free trade zone and garner most of the benefits.
“We need to understand their fears. We need to convince them that it’s not good for Serbia only, [but] that it’s even better for them,” he said.
Vucic addressed the recent controversy that erupted following reports that Slovenian President Borut Pahor last month broached the possible “dissolution” of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The multiethnic country is governed as a Bosniak and Croat federation along with a Serb-majority entity called Republika Srpska.
Separately, a “nonpaper,” supposedly by Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, had been circulating proposing that proposed “the unification of Kosovo and Albania” and “joining a larger part of the Republika Srpska territory with Serbia.”
Vucic, who previously belonged to a radical nationalist party, said his government was “not interested in creating any kind of greater Serbia.”
The president said his focus was on making Serbia “great” through economic growth led by foreign direct investment.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Most Ukrainian hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. The number of hospitalizations over the past month has increased dramatically and many medical facilities are suffering from an acute oxygen shortage. In the western Ukrainian city of Khmelnytsky, the main designated COVID-19 hospital is running out of beds and some have even been placed in an operating room.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russia’s Olympic Committee (ROC) says a selection of music by 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky will replace the Russian national anthem at this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The International Olympic Committee has approved a fragment from Tchaikovsky’s Concerto For Piano And Orchestra No. 1, the ROC said in a statement on April 22.
In December 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) partially upheld a previous ruling by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that barred Russia’s name, flag, and anthem from major sporting events for manipulating lab samples and doping test data.
The ban covers the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, which have been postponed for one year because of the global pandemic, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to be held from July 23 to August 8.
Russia is also barred from hosting international events for two years.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is calling on Russia to release opposition leader Aleksei Navalny from prison and ensure in the meantime that all his rights are respected, including “all necessary medical care.”
The lawmakers made the call in a resolution on April 22, a day after Russian police detained more than 1,700 people across the country during protests demanding Navalny’s release amid reports his health is failing as he enters the third week of a hunger strike.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most-vocal critic should be released “immediately and in any event before the next ‘human rights’ meeting of the Committee of Ministers in June 2021,” according to the resolution, which was backed by 105 parliamentarians during a session of the assembly in Strasbourg.
Pending his release, the document calls on the authorities to provide Navalny with “all necessary medical care, including examination and treatment by a doctor of his choice, and to ensure that his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and domestic law are fully respected.”
At total of 26 lawmakers from Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia voted against the resolution. Those who abstained included representatives from Turkey, Serbia, and one from the Czech Republic.
Navalny, 44, has been in custody since January. He went on a hunger strike to demand doctors treat him for severe pain in his back and legs.
Thousands of Russians from Vladivostok in the Far East to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea joined the April 21 protests called by leaders of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), who fear the Kremlin critic be harmed “irreparably” if he doesn’t get adequate medical treatment.
OVD-Info, which monitors the detention of political protesters and activists, reported more than 1,700 detentions across the country, with about half the detentions in St. Petersburg, in what Amnesty International described as being part of a “shocking crackdown on basic freedoms.”
The number of protesters appeared smaller than previous rallies organized by Navalny’s team amid a heavy police presence, a roundup of his allies early in the day, threats of arrest, and the closure of key meeting spots.
“There was less police violence and brutality on April 21 compared with the January and February pro-Navalny protests, but the authorities’ continued clampdown on freedom of assembly is wholly unjustified,” said Damelya Aitkhozhina, a Russia researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Russian police detained more than 1,700 people across the country as protesters gathered on April 21 to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. The prominent Kremlin critic is reported to be seriously ill as he enters the third week of a hunger strike, and prison authorities have rejected demands for him to be treated by independent doctors.
“The authorities are quick to allege that without police interference so-called ‘unauthorized’ gatherings become violent, but the April 21 protests showed how baseless that allegation is.”
Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow office director, said that, in many cities, the authorities arrested protesters “en masse, often using excessive force” such as in St. Petersburg, where police “used tasers indiscriminately and in several instances beat detained protesters.”
The authorities’ “attempts to trample dissent into dust are growing increasingly desperate — from the ongoing detention of Navalny and the effort to ban his movement by branding it ‘extremist,’ to the violent targeting and mass arrest of his supporters,” she added.
“There are simply not enough jail cells to lock up and silence every critical voice in Russia.”
The nationwide demonstrations came just days after the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office asked a court last week to label as “extremist” three organizations tied to Navalny — the FBK, the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation, and Navalny’s regional headquarters.
Prosecutors claim the organizations are “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
The FBK has rattled the Kremlin over the years with its video investigations exposing the unexplained wealth of top officials, including Putin.
The prosecutor’s request comes ahead of crucial parliamentary elections later this year, in which Navalny’s organizations are seeking to organize citizens to vote against the ruling United Russia party at a time its ratings have tumbled amid growing frustration over eroding living standards.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for the poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Putin. The Kremlin has denied any role in the incident
.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 have been politically motivated.
Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a prison term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served in detention.
The activist, who is serving his term in a notorious prison about 100 kilometers east of Moscow, went on a hunger strike three weeks ago to protest the inadequate medical treatment he has received while in detention.
Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying four doctors from outside Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) visited Navalny in the prison on April 20 and found no serious health problems.
However, that assessment runs contrary to a letter to the FSIN last week by Anastasia Vasilyeva, Navalny’s personal physician, and three other doctors, including a cardiologist, who said the opposition leader’s health was rapidly deteriorating and his potassium count had reached a “critical level,” meaning “both impaired renal function and serious heart rhythm problems can happen any minute.”
U.S. lawmakers later on April 21 introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the poisoning, “wrongful imprisonment and brutal treatment” of Navalny.
The United States and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on Russia for Navalny’s poisoning.
His supporters are now calling on the West to impose new sanctions on Moscow for its treatment of the opposition leader.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Farit Zakiyev, the head of an organization that promotes Tatar language and culture, was sentenced to community service for taking part in Tatarstan’s annual Commemoration Day. The crackdown on Zakiyev’s group appears to be part of a larger pressure campaign against ethnic minority activists in Russia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
