Far below the ice of Lake Baikal in Siberia lies a telescope used to search for neutrinos. These cosmic particles can pass through the Earth undetected, but in rare cases they emit radiation that can be measured in large bodies of water. The equipment placed on the bed of the world’s deepest lake collects information that aids researchers’ understanding of supernovas and black holes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered Russian troops to start returning to their permanent bases following extensive military drills in annexed Crimea that heightened tensions with the West over Moscow’s major military buildup near Ukraine.
“I believe the objectives of the snap inspection have been fully achieved. The troops have demonstrated their ability to provide a credible defense for the country,” Shoigu was quoted as saying on April 22 by the RIA news agency.
“In this regard, I have decided to complete the inspections in the southern and western military districts,” he said, adding that the troops would return to their bases by May 1.
However, it was unclear from Shoigu’s announcement if the return order covered all of the troops involved in that buildup.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the drills in Crimea involved more than 60 ships, over 10,000 troops, around 200 aircraft, and about 1,200 military vehicles.
But the Russian military hasn’t reported the total number of additional troops that have been moved to the region. Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat said on April 19 that Russia has massed some 100,000 troops near the border.
Russia has argued that it has the right to deploy its forces anywhere on its territory and claimed that they don’t threaten anyone.
On April 20, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that the Russian buildup across the border was continuing and was “expected to reach a combined force of over 120,000 troops” in about a week, urging the West to beef up sanctions against Moscow.
Shoigu said the military had to be ready to respond quickly in case of an “unfavorable” developments arising from NATO’s DEFENDER-Europe 21 exercises, an annual, U.S. Army-led, multinational joint exercise across 26 countries in Europe and Africa, including Estonia — which shares a border with Russia — Bulgaria, and Romania.
The Russian troop buildup near Ukraine’s border came amid stepped-up violations of a cease-fire in Ukraine’s east and prompted the West to urge Moscow to pull its forces back.
A correspondent with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Maryan Kushnir, documented recent frontline fighting between Ukrainian Army soldiers and Russia-backed separatists near Horlivka in eastern Ukraine.
The United States and NATO have said that the buildup was the largest since 2014, when Russia forcibly seized Crimea and threw its support behind separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The Crimea maneuvers included the landing of more than 2,000 paratroopers and 60 military vehicles on April 22, with fighter jets providing air cover for the operation.
Shoigu oversaw the exercise flying in a helicopter over the Opuk firing range in Crimea.
Russia last week announced the closing of large areas of the Black Sea near Crimea to foreign navy ships and state vessels until November, prompting protests from Ukraine and raising Western concerns.
Moscow also announced restrictions on flights near Crimea this week, arguing that they fully conform with international law.
Moscow also warned Kyiv against trying to retake by force territory controlled by separatists in the east of the country, where more than 13,000 people have been killed in fighting since 2014, saying that Russia could step in to protect civilians in the region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed an order on April 21 allowing the call-up of reservists for military service without announcing a mobilization.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
DUSHANBE — An imam at a Dushanbe mosque has been detained on extremism charges after he called a late Islamic cleric “one of great leaders of the country.”
State media outlets reported on April 22 that 44-year-old Imam-hatib Abdulhaq Obidov (aka Makhsumi Abdulhaq) from a mosque in Dushanbe’s Shohmansur district had been detained on suspicion of being a follower of the Salafi branch of Islam, which has been labeled as extremist and banned in the Central Asian country.
The State Committee for National Security said on April 22 that Obidov was detained along with four other men on unspecified criminal charges.
The day before, the website Bomdod reported that Obidov was detained after a speech he delivered last week at the burial ceremony of well-known Islamic cleric Domullo Hikmatullo Tojikobodi, during which he called him a great leader of Tajikistan.
Bomdod cited sources in Tajikistan’s law enforcement structures as saying that authorities considered Obidov’s statement as questioning the official title of authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon, who, in accordance with a 2016 law, is officially known as the leader of the nation.
Rahmon, who has ruled Tajikistan since 1992, also enjoys special powers following a May 2016 referendum, including the right to seek as many terms in office as he wants.
Rahmon has been criticized by international human rights groups for years over his disregard for religious freedoms, civil society, and political pluralism in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.
The State Committee on Religious Issues, Traditions, and Rites said in a statement that Obidov’s detention had nothing to do with his speech at the funeral and called on media “to stay away from spreading rumors.”
Tajikistan banned the Salafi branch of Islam in 2009 as extremist.
Salafists follow a strict form of Sunni Islam and do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi’a Islam and Sufism.
The majority of Muslims in Central Asia are followers of Hanafi, a more moderate branch of Sunni Islam.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service correspondent Yevhen Solonyna ventured inside the concrete sarcophagus of Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 in 2018 for a rare and risky glimpse at the stricken power plant’s radioactive ruins. On April 26, 1986, a routine safety test at the nuclear power plant spiraled out of control leading to the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
CHITA, Russia — A Russian military appeals court in Siberia has upheld the sentence of Private Ramil Shamsutdinov, who was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in prison in January for killing eight fellow servicemen in a rampage he says was the result of hazing he faced in the army.
Shamsutdinov’s lawyers, Ravil Tugushev and Ruslan Nagiyev, said in a post on Instagram that their client’s sentence was upheld on April 21.
The lawyers said that it was not immediately clear if there would be a further appeal by the victims’ relatives, some of whom had appealed the sentence as too lenient.
Shamsutdinov’s defense team has said their client went on a shooting spree in October 2019, killing eight — including two high-ranking officers — in the town of Gorny in the Zabaikalye region after being tortured and beaten by other soldiers and officers during his induction into service.
In late December 2020, a jury found Shamsutdinov guilty of murder and attempted murder, but also said he deserved leniency, which according to Russian law meant his sentence shouldn’t exceed 13 years and four months in prison.
However,
was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in January, while some of the victims’ relatives sought life in prison for him.
The case shocked many in Russia and attracted the attention of rights activists after Shamsutdinov claimed that he committed the act while suffering a nervous breakdown after what he had endured.
The Defense Ministry accepted at the time that Shamsutdinov “had a conflict” with one of the officers he killed. In March 2020, Private Ruslan Mukhatov was found guilty of bullying Shamsutdinov and was handed a suspended two-year prison term.
Deadly shootings among Russian military units as the result of widespread hazing have been a focus of human rights organizations for years.
In November, a soldier at a military air base in the western region of Voronezh shot an officer and two soldiers dead.
In recent years, photos and video footage have been posted online by members of the Russian military that show the severe bullying of young recruits as they are inducted into the army.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MINSK — A journalist in Belarus may face criminal charges for an interview his media outlet published with opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, in another sign of the government’s crackdown on press freedom.
Uladzimer Yanukevich, the chief editor of the independent Intex-press newspaper in the western city of Baranavichy, was questioned at a local police department for 4 1/2 hours over the interview, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAZh) said on April 22.
According to the BAZh, during questioning on April 21 Yanukevich was handed two administrative charges for violating the law on the distribution of “banned” information via the media and the Internet.
Yanukevich was also warned that a criminal case may be launched against him on a charge of “calling for actions aimed at violating the national security of the Republic of Belarus.” If found guilty on that charge, Yanukevich may face a lengthy prison term.
Journalist Lyudmila Stsyatsko, who interviewed Tsikhanouskaya, was also ordered to report for police questioning as a witness in the case.
The interview in question was published by Intex-press on April 14.
Yanukevich told the BAZh that he and his colleagues considered the situation they’re facing over the interview with Tsikhanouskaya as “pressure on freedom of speech.”
“We always take into account our readers’ interests and their right to receive information…. We do not understand what words exactly in the interview violated current laws. The police were unable to explain that to me. It looks like it’s not the content, but the fact itself that we interviewed [Tsikhanouskaya] that caused the accusations,” Yanukevich said.
Tsikhanouskaya is currently in Lithuania, where she relocated for security reasons amid unprecedented rallies protesting the results of an August 2020 presidential election that handed victory to Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has run the country with an iron fist since 1994.
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.
Lukashenka has overseen a violent crackdown on the protesters that has seen thousands of people — including media members — detained and scores injured.
Overall, more than 1,800 criminal cases have been launched against protesters, who say the vote was rigged and that Tsikhanouskaya was the real winner.
Tsikhanouskaya was charged in absentia with impeding the work of election officials, organizing mass protests, and activities to disrupt social order. She and her supporters reject the charges and say they are politically motivated.
The European Union, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate president of Belarus.
Last week, Belarusian lawmakers approved in the second reading several legislative amendments that severely restrict civil rights and the free flow of information amid the ongoing crackdown on protesters.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The new U.S. ambassador to Belarus, Julie Fisher, has met with exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, just ahead of talks between authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The meeting took place on April 21 in Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania, where former presidential candidate Tsikhanouskaya moved under pressure from the Belarusian authorities shortly after Lukashenka claimed victory in a widely disputed presidential election in August 2020.
Fisher met with Tsikhanouskaya on the eve of the meeting between Putin and Lukashenka in Moscow, during which the two are expected to discuss further deepening the ties between the countries.
“Today’s action sends a clear signal that the U.S. stands with the Belarusian people,” said Fisher, who in December was appointed the first U.S. envoy to Belarus since 2008, but has yet to present her credentials in Minsk.
“As U.S. ambassador to Belarus, my priority is to embody that 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.
However, State Department spokesman Ned Price said later on April 21 that Fisher wouldn’t take her position in the country under current conditions.
“Being able to return an ambassador to Minsk would send a powerful signal. But as long as what we have seen in Belarus continues, the human rights violations, the repression, there can be no business as usual,” Price said.
Fisher said at her meeting with Tsikhanouskaya that “it is important that the international community speak up and speak out about what’s happening, that we pay close attention, and that we call for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Belarus.”
Tsikhanouskaya said Belarus should retain its independence and sovereignty.
“I want 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 said.
Since the August election, which Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters say she won, Belarus has seen unprecedented protests and political turmoil, with opposition groups claiming the vote was stolen by Lukashenka, who has run the country with an iron fist since 1994.
Security forces have arrested more than 34,000 people in a crackdown that has led to accusations of beatings and other rights abuses against demonstrators.
The West has refused to accept Lukashenka’s victory, and few countries aside from Russia acknowledge him as president of Belarus.
Most prominent opposition leaders — including Tsikhanouskaya — have left the country.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions against individuals and companies tied to Lukashenka’s regime.
Earlier this week, Washington reimposed sanctions on nine state-owned companies, a move expected to deliver a crippling blow to Belarus’s declining economy.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. President Joe Biden is likely to recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide, media reports say, amid calls for the move by more than 100 U.S. lawmakers.
The recognition, promised by Biden during the presidential campaign for the November election he won, would be largely symbolic but is likely to anger Turkey and step up already high tensions between the two NATO allies.
Biden is expected to use the word “genocide” as part of a statement on April 24 when annual Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day commemorations are held around the world, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters and The New York Times.
“My understanding is that he took the decision and will use the word genocide in his statement on Saturday,” a source told Reuters.
However, sources warned that given the importance of bilateral ties with Turkey, Biden may still choose to drop the “genocide” term at the last minute. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned the White House that recognition would “harm” U.S.-Turkish ties.
The reports came as a bipartisan group of more than 100 members of the House of Representatives on April 21 signed a letter to Biden calling on him to become the first U.S. president to formally recognize the systematic killings and deportation of Armenians as an act of genocide.
The letter was led by Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat-California).
“The shameful silence of the United States Government on the historic fact of the Armenian Genocide has gone on for too long, and it must end,” the lawmakers wrote. “We urge you to follow through on your commitments, and speak the truth.”
Biden as a candidate pledged in April last year that if elected he would recognize the Armenian genocide, saying that “silence is complicity,” but did not give a timeline for delivering on the promise.
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 countries 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.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on April 21 told reporters the White House would likely have “more to say” about the issue on April 24, but declined to elaborate.
The State Department referred queries on the issue to the White House and the National Security Council had no comment beyond what Psaki said.
Moves to recognize the Armenian genocide have stalled in the U.S. Congress for decades, and U.S. presidents have refrained from formally using the term amid concerns about relations with Turkey and intense lobbying by Ankara.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had established a close bond with former U.S. President Donald Trump, but he has yet to speak to Biden since he was inaugurated as president on January 20.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Newly appointed Czech Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhanek says dozens of staff members of the Russian Embassy in Prague will be expelled, as a noon deadline looms for Russia to allow 20 Czechs to return to work at the embassy in Moscow, a threat Russia warned would spark further retaliation.
In an interview with Lidovky.cz published late on April 21, Kulhanek said “about” 60 Russian Embassy staff will be expelled if Moscow ignores the deadline, which stems from a dispute over Moscow’s alleged role in a deadly 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot.
On April 19, 18 Russian diplomats identified by the Czechs as being intelligence operatives were expelled from their posts in Prague, prompting Moscow to retaliate with the expulsion of 20 Czech Embassy employees in Moscow.
The Czechs said they were surprised by the size of the Russian move, which they noted would severely hamper the operations of the embassy in Moscow.
“The aim is to bring the situation at the Russian Embassy in line with that at our embassy in Moscow at the moment,” Kulhanek said in explaining the number of possible expulsions.
The tit-for-tat moves over the Czech allegations have triggered Prague’s biggest dispute with Russia since the 1989 end of communist rule, putting the small Central European NATO member at the center of rising tensions between Moscow and the West.
Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova told the Vesti FM radio station on April 22 that she will speak with the Czech ambassador to Moscow, Vitezslav Pivonka, to outline “the actions that may be taken if Prague takes certain steps.”
“They need to realize what stage they have reached in terms of wrecking bilateral ties,” she added.
Kulhanek, who took over as Czech foreign minister on April 21, said in the interview that he had spoken with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and planned to talk with the ambassadors of NATO member countries to outline the details of the 2014 explosion in Vrbetice that killed two people in “an unprecedented encroachment on Czech sovereignty.”
“We want support regarding [the explosion in] Vrbetice. Also, we want support in the sense that Russians reacted by actually paralyzing our embassy’s operations in Moscow. We want support for this as well. I will talk about the issue with the North Atlantic Council on [April 23],” Kulhanek said in the interview.
The Kremlin has rejected Prague’s “baseless accusations” and called the Czech moves “unreasonable and harmful to bilateral relations.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Kulhanek’s interview with Lidovky.cz, said that President Vladimir Putin in his annual state-of-the-nation address on April 21 “had talked about the futility of issuing demands” against Russia.
The Czech Foreign Ministry says the number of Czech diplomats in Moscow after the expulsions sits at five, plus 19 other staff. Russia’s Embassy in Prague now has 27 diplomats and 67 other staff, according to the ministry. Both countries have additional staff at consulates in other cities.
As a result of the dispute, the Czech government has already decided to eliminate Russia’s state-run corporation Rosatom from a multibillion-dollar tender to build a new unit at the Dukovany nuclear power plant.
Interior Minister Jan Hamacek, who was acting foreign minister until Kulhanek’s appointment, said that Prague would also no longer consider buying Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19.
Citing Czech intelligence, the government said that Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency orchestrated the explosion in the eastern town of Vrbetice in 2014 in what the Foreign Ministry called “an unacceptable violation of the state sovereignty and national security of the Czech Republic.”
The October 16 blast set off 50 metric tons of stored ammunition, killing two people. Two months later, another explosion of 13 tons of ammunition occurred at the same site.
In connection with the October blast, Czech police said they were seeking two suspected Russian agents also identified as suspects in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England.
However, the open-source investigation organization Bellingcat said the Russian operation that the Czech authorities had linked to the blast in Vrbetice involved at least six GRU operatives.
Prague has called on fellow EU and NATO members to show “solidarity” by also expelling Russian diplomats.
EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on April 21 that the bloc “expresses full solidarity with the Czech Republic, supports the actions taken by its authorities so far and stands ready to support its further efforts to bring those responsible to justice.”
“The EU condemns the disproportionate reaction and subsequent threats of Russian Federation towards the Czech Republic,” Borrell said. “Disruptive actions of Russian intelligence services against the interests and security of the EU and its member states will continue to be met with the staunchest resolve, including at the level of the European Union, as appropriate.”
A NATO official has said that the allies “stand in solidarity over Russia’s dangerous pattern of destabilizing behavior.”
Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia nearly died after being exposed to what British authorities later concluded was Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent. A British woman who accidentally came into contact with the substance died.
Britain’s NATO allies responded to the Skripal poisoning by imposing sanctions on Russia and expelling diplomats.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Moscow and other Russian cities on April 21 in support of Aleksei Navalny, a prominent government critic who has been jailed since January. Navalny’s health is reported to be deteriorating as he continues a hunger strike to protest the lack of medical care in prison.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The announced withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan will grant Iran one of its biggest wishes and lead to the departure of all foreign forces, which Tehran has long blamed for insecurity in the region.
Analysts say the pullout of U.S.-led NATO forces from Afghanistan could potentially give Iran more room to maneuver within its war-torn neighbor, with which its shares cultural and religious ties.
But if Afghanistan spirals into chaos — as some Afghans fear — then Iran could be faced with the problems created by a humanitarian and security spillover as it did during the Afghan civil war, when Tehran was faced with an influx of refugees and, later, a hostile Taliban government.
“I think for the Iranians, I’d say, ‘Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it,’” says Colin Clarke, director of research and policy at the Soufan Group. “In other words, while Iran has been beating the drum for a U.S. withdrawal for years, there are potential second-order effects that Tehran might struggle with.”
U.S. President Joe Biden on April 14 announced that the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be leaving by September 11. NATO said it will follow Washington’s timetable and pull its remaining 7,000 non-U.S. soldiers out of Afghanistan by the same date.
Andrew Watkins, a senior Afghanistan analyst with the International Crisis Group, says the departure of U.S. and NATO forces will certainly leave something of a power vacuum, giving Tehran more space to seek influence both with Afghan officials and other power brokers in the country, including the Taliban.
But he adds that “it is unclear how much Iran’s essentially defensive, border-oriented interests in Afghanistan would expand, if at all.”
“Throughout the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Iran has sought to gain influence among local actors and stymie U.S. interests, but via a low-risk, low-reward approach,” says Watkins, who notes that “Iran generally exercises more restraint on its eastern border than it often has westward looking to the [Persian Gulf and the Levant].”
Fear Of A Vacuum
Speaking on April 16, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the “responsible” departure of U.S. forces as a “positive move,” saying the “presence of foreign forces has never contributed to peace and stability in our region and [their] removal will lead to at least less grounds for violence.”
But Zarif also warned against a “vacuum” forming that the militant Taliban could try to fill. “That is a recipe for a new war in Afghanistan and we in the region cannot tolerate, with 3 million Afghan refugees in Iran, we cannot bear more burden,” he said in on online discussion with Afghan and Indian officials. He added that Iran and other countries in the region need “a stable Afghanistan, a peaceful Afghanistan.”
Analysts say that in the case of increased violence in Afghanistan, Tehran could work with regional allies to ensure stability, fortify its borders, as well as deploy its proxy forces, which have played a key role in promoting Iran’s interests in the region.
Tamim Asey, executive chairman of the Institute of War and Peace Studies in Kabul, says Tehran’s actions going forward will depend on its level of threat perception from Afghanistan, adding that Iran could work with regional powers that have similar interests in order to prevent the Taliban from returning to power.
“In fact, Iran could revive the axis of Iran, Russia, and India to support a second national resistance against the Taliban if Afghanistan plunges into a civil war,” Asey, a former Afghan deputy defense minister, told RFE/RL.
The Daesh Threat
The Soufan Group’s Clarke says Tehran could also secure its porous border with Afghanistan with more troops if the security situation worsens. “If a U.S. withdrawal leads to an immediate return to civil war in Afghanistan, as some have predicted, Iran is going to move quickly to fortify its border and ensure that spillover violence is mitigated,” he told RFE/RL.
In his April 16 comments, Zarif warned about the presence in Afghanistan of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group, also known as Daesh, which has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks.
“Now we see the role of Daesh; we don’t know who’s supporting Daesh in Afghanistan but of course we have some circumstantial evidence about the people behind the transfer of Daesh from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan,” Zarif said.
He added that “Daesh is a threat to Afghanistan, to Iran, to Pakistan, to everybody — so we have a common threat.”
Clarke says one byproduct of a U.S. withdrawal could be an uptick in IS plots and attacks targeting “Iran and or Iranian assets in Afghanistan.”
“The Islamic State’s Afghan branch has repeatedly attacked sectarian targets and, if it hopes to rebound from a string of recent setbacks, it’ll likely resort to its playbook,” he says.
In that case, Clarke suggests Tehran could deploy the Fatemiyoun Brigade, which has fought in Syria. The militia — whose members are reportedly recruited and trained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — is comprised mainly of men from Afghanistan’s Shi’ite minority. Between 2,500 to 3,500 Fatemiyoun fighters are believed to have returned to Afghanistan.
In a December 2020 interview with Tolo TV, Zarif suggested the Fatemiyoun fighters could help Kabul’s fight against IS. “They are the best forces with a military background in the fight against Daesh. The Afghan government, if willing, can regroup them,” Zarif said in remarks that were criticized.
Watkins believes all sides in Afghanistan are likely to oppose the deployment of the Fatemiyoun Brigade. “Both Taliban and the Afghan state, and many other stakeholders, would see them as foreign proxies and threats to their authority. Not to mention, the brigade is made up of Hazaras, an ethnic minority that widely feels under siege around the country, and in need of community defense [not aggressive expansion],” he says.
Biden has said Washington will ask other regional states to “do more” to support Afghanistan.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Czech Republic has warned Moscow that it will expel more Russian diplomats unless Czech Embassy staff ejected from Russia are allowed to return to work by noon on April 22.
In a dispute over Russia’s alleged role in a deadly 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot, 18 Russian diplomats identified by Czech intelligence as being intelligence operatives left their posts in Prague on April 19 as 20 Czech Embassy employees in Moscow also were forced to leave.
The tit-for-tat moves over the Czech allegations have triggered Prague’s biggest dispute with Russia since the 1989 end of Communist rule, putting the small Central European NATO member at the center of rising tensions between Moscow and the West.
Foreign Minister Jakub Kulhanek told reporters on April 21 that Russia “has until 12 p.m. tomorrow to allow the return of all expelled diplomats back to the Czech Embassy in Moscow.”
“If they cannot return, I will cut the number of Russian Embassy staff in Prague so it would correspond to the current situation at the Czech Embassy in Moscow,” said Kulhanek, who was appointed as minister on April 21.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Prague should “leave ultimatums for communication within NATO.”
“With Russia such a tone is unacceptable,” she said, adding that the Czech ambassador would be summoned on April 22.
The Kremlin has rejected Prague’s “baseless accusations” and called the Czech moves “unreasonable and harmful to bilateral relations.”
Speaking after summoning the Russian ambassador in Prague, Kulhanek said Moscow’s “disproportionate” retaliation “paralyzed the functioning of our embassy,” while the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats “did not jeopardize the functioning of the Russian Embassy.”
The Czech Foreign Ministry put the number of Czech diplomats in Moscow at five, plus 19 other staff, after the expulsions. Russia’s Embassy in Prague now has 27 diplomats and 67 other staff, according to the ministry. Both countries have additional staff at consulates in other cities.
As the spat escalates, the Czech government has decided to eliminate Russia’s state-run corporation Rosatom from a multibillion-dollar tender to build a new unit at the Dukovany nuclear power plant.
Interior Minister Jan Hamacek, who was standing in as foreign minister until Kulhanek’s appointment, has said that Prague would also no longer consider buying Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19.
Citing Czech intelligence, the government said that Russia’s military secret service, the GRU, orchestrated the explosion in the eastern town of Vrbetice in 2014 in what the Foreign Ministry called “an unacceptable violation of the state sovereignty and national security of the Czech Republic.”
The blast in October 2014 set off 50 metric tons of stored ammunition, killing two people. Two months later, another explosion of 13 tons of ammunition occurred at the same site.
In connection with the October blast, Czech police said they were seeking two suspected Russian agents also identified as suspects in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England.
However, the open-source investigation organization Bellingcat said the Russian operation which Czech authorities have linked to the blast in Vrbetice involved at least six GRU operatives.
Prague has called on fellow European Union and NATO members to show “solidarity” by also expelling Russian diplomats.
A NATO official said that the allies “stand in solidarity over Russia’s dangerous pattern of destabilizing behavior,” while the European Union said it stood in “full support and solidarity” with the Czech Republic and expressed concern about “the repeating negative pattern of dangerous malign behavior by Russia in Europe.”
Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia, nearly died after being exposed to what British authorities later concluded was Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent. A British woman who accidentally came into contact with the substance died.
Britain’s NATO allies responded to the Skripal poisoning by imposing sanctions on Russia and expelling diplomats.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reiterated its call for Belarusian authorities to release Ihar Losik, a popular blogger and RFE/RL consultant, as he marked his 300th day in detention on charges widely considered to have been trumped up.
Losik has been “cruelly separated from his wife, his daughter, and his colleagues for far too long” and “must be freed from detention and allowed to rejoin his family,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement on April 21.
He also urged the government to cease its “repressive campaign against independent journalists, including RFE/RL reporters and staff,” and allow them to “continue their work to provide objective information to the people of Belarus.”
Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, has orchestrated a brutal crackdown since protesters flooded streets across the country following a presidential election they say was rigged in his favor.
Almost 30,000 people have been detained since the vote, hundreds beaten, several killed, and the media targeted by security forces.
Losik, 28, is among more than 300 political prisoners caught up in the crackdown, according to human rights groups.
Losik has been in pretrial detention since June 2020. He was initially charged with allegedly using his popular Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” ahead of the August 2020 election.
Earlier this month, he tried to slit his wrists and launched a four-day hunger strike after being informed of new, unspecified charges. He had previously launched a six-week hunger strike to protest the original charges.
On March 22, 11 days after he was informed of the new charges, a court extended Losik’s pretrial detention to May 25. He has yet to face a court hearing on any of the alleged offenses police say he committed.
The Belarusian opposition says its candidate, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, won the vote. The West has refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
The European Union, the United States, and other countries have slapped sanctions on top Belarusian officials in response to the crackdown on protesters and the opposition.
In a letter addressed to Losik on March 26, a bipartisan group of seven U.S. lawmakers condemned his “unjust and illegitimate detainment,” saying they stand “shoulder to shoulder” with him, his family, and all other Belarusians struggling in the country’s prodemocracy movement.
“We join the international community in strongly condemning your unjust and illegitimate detainment by the Belarusian authorities,” the congressmen said in their letter. “We stand ready to hold those complicit in your illegitimate detention to account through targeted sanctions working with our friends and allies in the European Union.”
The U.S. State Department and other members of Congress have previously condemned the wrongful detention of Losik and other political prisoners.
On April 19, the U.S. State Department announced it would not renew a special license authorizing transactions with nine state-owned Belarusian companies, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that the country’s “regression” on human rights is “exemplified” by independent media experts like Ihar Losik and other Belarusians “unjustly imprisoned by the Lukashenka regime for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
President Vladimir Putin thundered about Russia’s “red lines” in warnings aimed westward, extolled the virtues of parenthood, elaborately hailed the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and called for cash support for citizens struggling with stagnant incomes.
His April 21 state-of-the-nation address came at a precarious moment: Putin now has the right to seek to remain president until 2036, but basement ratings for the ruling party could pose trouble in a September parliamentary vote. More Russian troops are deployed on the border with eastern Ukraine than at any time since 2014, and the plight of imprisoned Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny is one of many factors drawing the opprobrium of the West.
Here are five takeaways from the annual address.
Clouded COVID Claims
Putin opened his 17th state-of-the-nation address with a long section on the global coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s handling of the crisis that erupted in 2020. And although he admitted that it was a trying experience confronting “a new, previously unknown, and extremely dangerous infection,” his description of Russia’s response was uniformly upbeat.
Addressing a high-level audience seated at close quarters, many of the officials without masks, he used praise for the response to paint a picture of a united country working together with few flaws, asserting that “citizens, society, and the state acted responsibly and in unison,” adding, “Everyone worked quickly, efficiently, and conscientiously.”
His account did not include any somber notes. He did not mention medical workers who were unable to collect promised hazard pay or rural residents who were poorly served by a medical system that had been trimmed back in recent years under the government’s “optimization” program.
Putin did not mention the 106,706 Russians who the government’s COVID-19 task force says have died of the illness — or the far larger numbers of deaths indicated by the state statistics committee and other estimates. According to The New York Times, “at least 300,000 more people died last year during the coronavirus pandemic than were reported in Russia’s most widely cited official statistics.” That would be an excess mortality greater than what was reported by the United States and most European countries.
Putin said that the pandemic had been a “sad and disappointing” setback to government efforts to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis. But he stressed that the government’s goal of increasing life expectancy to 78 years by 2030 remained within reach.
As he has when talking about challenges in the past, Putin stressed the politically useful theme of “solidarity.”
“Throughout our history, our people have come out victorious and overcome trials thanks to unity,” he said. “Today, family, friendship, mutual assistance, graciousness, and unity have come to the fore as well.”
Domestic Pandering?
About two-thirds of the way through the speech, Putin made his only specific mention of the upcoming elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, which must be held by September 19. And he connected the reference to the thread of “unity” that ran through the entire 80-minute speech.
“I want to thank all the constructive forces in the country for their responsible and patriotic stance in the complicated period of the pandemic,” he said. “This enabled us together — and was very important; not just empty words, but patriotically significant — to ensure the strength and stability of the state and political system of Russia. This is always important, but particularly in the period of preparation for the elections to the State Duma and other organs of government,” he said, adding that Russians should take “a stance that unites us around the common tasks that remain.”
But the lion’s share of his speech was devoted to domestic issues, and he handed out a raft of short-term promises targeting issues that concern average Russians like inflation, poverty, bad roads, and access to health care and schools. It was hard not to take the pledges as a bid to shore up sagging support for the ruling United Russia party, whose popularity took a serious hit when in 2018 it pushed through an unpopular measure to raise retirement ages.
Putin promised a complete program “of measures to support families with children” to be rolled out by July 1. By the same date, he promised new subsidies for children in single-parent homes. By the middle of August he promised a 10,000-ruble ($130) payment to all schoolchildren to help them get ready for school.
He spoke of new schools for “a million children,” new school buses to take them there, new roads for those buses, and other goals that he said would be reached by 2024 — the year he will run for reelection if he chooses to do so. And he endorsed and credited by name a United Russia proposal under which all homes will be connected to natural gas for free, a goal that has existed since the Soviet era.
In short, the speech gave a lot of campaign sound bites for ruling party candidates to use to persuade voters to stick with the devil they know.
What Prisoner? What Protests?
Putin did not directly address the elephant in the room, or outside the room: the plight of his most prominent foe, jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, and the protests Russians nationwide were trying to hold in more than 100 cities to call for his release amid concerns that his health has considerably declined three weeks into a hunger strike.
By making no direct mention of Navalny or the protests, Putin may have been trying to show Russians and the West that he is not afraid of the anti-corruption activist — even as the state considers labeling his organizations “extremist” — and convey the idea Navalny and his backers are not an important part of Russia’s future, not one of the “constructive forces.”
But that didn’t mean the authorities were not paying attention.
As Putin spoke, footage on social media showed protesters being roughly detained in the Far East, and the human rights monitoring group OVD-Info was tracking the rising number and locations of arrested demonstrators nationwide.
Navalny’s team, which has said that protests are the “only thing that Putin responds to,” originally planned to launch spring demonstrations with an eye on ramping up pressure on the Kremlin in the run-up to the Duma elections.
The calendar was moved up to coincide with Putin’s speech after Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said that he “could die any minute” and that demonstrations were now “no longer Navalny’s chance for freedom, but a condition for his life.”
By the end of Putin’s speech, Yarmysh and other members of Navalny’s team were among the names of detained demonstrators rolling in.
If Putin heard rising calls both inside and outside Russia to humanely address Navalny’s situation, he responded only obliquely, saying that “the organizers of any provocations that threaten the fundamental interests of our security will regret what they have done in the way that they have not regretted anything for a long time” — words that appeared to be aimed at Kyiv, Brussels, and Washington but also at Navalny and his supporters.
Keep The West Guessing
For years, foreign policy under Putin has been an exercise in past glory and future greatness. Going back at least to the 2008 war in Georgia, the Kremlin has made upgrading and modernizing the country’s armed forces a priority. And a more muscular foreign policy reflects that: the 2014 blitzkrieg seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea; the 2015 deployment of regular forces to Syria; the deployment of irregular forces to Libya; and the entire ongoing operation in eastern Ukraine.
The buildup of forces along the borders of eastern Ukraine in recent weeks has turned into, according to Western officials, the biggest such Russian deployment since 2014.
NATO, the European Union, and the United States have noticed, and have warned Moscow publicly and privately not to do anything rash. President Joe Biden’s administration has even slapped two sets of sanctions on Russia since he took office in January — and signaled more were teed up and ready to go.
Many Western capitals have also spoken out about Navalny — not just his jailing but also the conclusions that last summer he was targeted with a nerve agent that almost killed him while traveling in Siberia. Navalny blames Putin for his poisoning, and mounting evidence suggests it was carried out by the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Moscow has portrayed its military moves as defensive and painted Kyiv and the West as potential aggressors. In that key, Putin used the more bombastic part of his speech to signal to the United States and NATO that Russia would not be afraid to use its military capabilities to punch back if provoked.
“We want good relations…and we really don’t want to burn bridges,” Putin said. “But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn down or even blow up these bridges, they should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift, and harsh,” he said.
“I hope that nobody would decide to cross the so-called red line in relations with Russia, and we will define those [red lines] on our own in every individual case,” he said. Analysts suggest the remark was meant to hobble Western responses to Russia’s actions by leaving them guessing about where the red lines lie.
No Bombshells For Now
Given the recent troop buildup, the tough rhetoric, and the warnings from Washington and Brussels, many Russia watchers had suspected there might be a major announcement of some sort coming from Putin in the address.
Formally recognizing the Russian-armed-and-funded separatist administrations in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk? Announcing a long-discussed-but-never-consummated union of Russia with Belarus? Putin running for reelection in 2024? A retort, or response, to Biden’s invitation to hold a one-on-one summit in the coming months?
None of those things happened in the speech.
Putin did take a moment to rehash Russia’s long-standing narrative of the events that rocked Ukraine in 2013-14, when months of streets protests ended in bloodshed and pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power. As he has before, Putin inaccurately labeled the events a “state coup.”
He also suggested a parallel with the situation in neighboring Belarus, where last August longtime leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed reelection victory but opponents cried foul and citizens poured into the streets for unprecedented protests. Lukashenka has refused to budge, cracking down hard and embracing the Kremlin tighter as Western criticism mounts.
In his speech, Putin reiterated a claim that Lukashenka made without evidence over the weekend — that there had been a botched coup attempt in Belarus.
“The practice of organizing coups and planning political assassinations of top officials goes over the top and crosses all boundaries,” said Putin, who also provided no evidence. The comments kept speculation about a big announcement involving Russia and Belarus alive ahead of a meeting between Putin and Lukashenka in Moscow on April 22.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
An independent, bipartisan advisory body has reiterated its call for the U.S. State Department to add Russia to its register of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedom, a blacklist that already includes Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and six other countries.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, proposes in its annual report released on April 21 that Russia, India, Syria, and Vietnam be put on the “countries of particular concern” list, a category reserved for those that carry out “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedoms.
The blacklisting paves the way for sanctions if the countries included do not improve their records.
Countries recommended for the State Department’s special watch list, meaning there are still “severe” violations of religious freedom there, include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
The USCIRF report says that “religious freedom conditions in Russia deteriorated” last year, with the government targeting religious minorities deemed to be “nontraditional” with fines, detentions, and criminal charges.
A total of 188 criminal cases alone were brought against the banned Jehovah’s Witnesses, while there were 477 searches of members’ homes, with raids and interrogations including “instances of torture that continue to go uninvestigated and unpunished.”
For decades, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been viewed with suspicion in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin.
In 2017, Russia outlawed the religious group and labeled it “extremist,” a designation the State Department has called “wrongful.”
‘Made-Up Charges’
Russia’s anti-extremism law was also used to “persecute religious minorities, particularly Muslims,” the report added.
In Russia’s region of the North Caucasus, “security forces acted with impunity, arresting or kidnapping persons suspected of even tangential links to Islamist militancy as well as for secular political opposition,” it said.
In occupied Crimea, the enforcement of Russia’s “repressive” laws and policies on religion resulted in the prosecution of peaceful religious activity and bans on groups that were legal in the peninsula under Ukrainian law. At least 16 Crimean Muslims were sentenced to prison terms on “made-up charges of extremism and terrorism,” the report said.
In Iran, the government escalated its “severe repression”” of religious minorities and continued to “export religious extremism and intolerance abroad,” according to the report, which cites “scores” of Christians being “arrested, assaulted, and unjustly sentenced to years in prison.”
The government also continued to arrest Baha’is and impose lengthy prison sentences on them, with between 50 and 100 followers of the Baha’i sect reported to be in prisons in Iran during the past year.
The USCIRF says religious freedom conditions also worsened in Pakistan, with the government “systematically” enforcing blasphemy laws and failing to protect religious minorities from “abuses by nonstate actors.”
It cites a “sharp rise in targeted killings, blasphemy cases, forced conversions, and hate speech targeting religious minorities” including Ahmadis, Shi’a, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs.
Abduction, forced conversion to Islam, rape, and forced marriage “remained an imminent threat for religious minority women and children,” particularly among the Hindu and Christian faiths.
In Turkmenistan, religious freedom conditions “remained among the worst in the world and showed no signs of improvement,” according to the report.
The government continued to “treat all independent religious activity with suspicion, maintaining a large surveillance apparatus that monitors believers at home and abroad.”
“Restrictive state policies have ‘virtually extinguished’ the free practice of religion in the country, where the government appoints Muslim clerics, surveils and dictates religious practice, and punishes nonconformity through imprisonment, torture, and administrative harassment,” the report said.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A Turkmen activist and outspoken critic of the tightly controlled Central Asian nation’s government who resides in Istanbul says she has come under pressure in Turkey ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Ashgabat.
Dursoltan Taganova told the Moscow-based Memorial human rights group on April 20 that she was summoned to Turkey’s immigration service last week, where she was warned that she may face problems with her residency unless she stops her political activities.
According to Taganova, during the questioning on April 15, a Turkish immigration official asked her about her relatives, permanent address, her request for political asylum, and the reasons for her being critical of the Turkmen government.
“They told me: ‘Stop your presentations on the Internet. That is what the Turkish government needs. We do not want you to have problems with your residency here’,” Memorial cited Taganova as saying.
Taganova also said that Turkish officials made it clear that they were monitoring her correspondence with other bloggers and their online presentations criticizing the Turkmen government.
She added that several days ago her TikTok account was blocked after she used it for her blog about economic problems in Turkmenistan.
Last July, Taganova, along with dozens of other Turkmen, mostly migrant workers, was arrested in Istanbul on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions.
She and others were detained just hours before they planned to hold a rally in front of the Turkmen Consulate in Istanbul to criticize Ashgabat’s inadequate response to the pandemic and to call for President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s resignation.
Most of the detainees were released about five hours later, but Taganova was remanded in custody as Turkish authorities wanted to deport her back to Turkmenistan.
She was released in October after a group of 11 human rights organizations urged Turkish authorities not deport her, saying she would face arbitrary arrest and torture if she was returned to Turkmenistan.
Protests against Berdymukhammedov were staged for several months last year by Turkmen citizens residing in Turkey, the United States, and Northern Cyprus.
Government critics and human rights groups say Berdymukhammedov has suppressed dissent and made few changes in the restrictive country since he came to power after the death of autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
PODGORICA – Reports from Montenegro say police have rearrested the alleged boss of a notorious criminal gang in an operation hailed by officials as a victory for the rule of law in the tiny Balkan country.
Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic declined to confirm or deny that the alleged kingpin, Slobodan Kascelan, was among those arrested on the Adriatic coast early on April 21, saying the police operation was not over yet.
However, he hailed what he called the “greatest success” of the Montenegrin police force in the past decade.
The government that took power in Montenegro after parliamentary elections in August has pledged to root out endemic crime and corruption in the Adriatic state — one of the main drug-smuggling transit routes for Western European markets.
Kascelan, 58, was arrested in Montenegro in 2019, on charges of attempted murder, the creation of a criminal organization, and loan sharking, but was released on $600,000 bail.
He is the alleged leader of the so-called Kavac drug gang, which has been involved in a six-year war with a rival Montenegrin gang in which dozens of people have reportedly been killed.
The two clans, both from the Montenegrin seaside resort town of Kotor, have launched deadly attacks against each other in Montenegro, neighboring Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Greece, Spain, and Italy.
Earlier on April 21, police announced that “several people” had been arrested in an operation targeting criminal groups, and that the operation was under way.
The short Twitter post did not provide further details, but it included a video clip showing the arrest of three people by the Special Police Unit.
The Interior Ministry congratulated the police force, saying that the “decisive fight against organized crime and corruption is a priority.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Navalny’s team has announced protests in more than 160 Russian cities and towns to draw attention to his plight and for prison authorities to allow him access to independent doctors.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BISHKEK — Four patients are being treated in hospitals in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, after consuming a toxic root that had been promoted by President Sadyr Japarov as an “effective” cure to treat COVID-19.
Doctors said on April 21 that Duishon Abdyldaev, 63, was being treated for poisoning with aconite root at the National Cardiology and Therapy Center, while three other patients, whose identities were not disclosed, were being treated for poisoning with the highly toxic root at the toxicology department of the Bishkek Trauma and Orthopedic Center.
The department’s main physician, Ulan Ismanov, told RFE/RL that two of the patients were a married couple.
All four patients were rushed to hospital the previous day.
On April 15, Japarov said in a post on Facebook that the root had proven to be an “effective” method to treat COVID-19.
The entry contained a video showing men without protective equipment bottling a solution with extracts from the aconite root, warning that drinking the solution while it is cold might result in death.
The next day, Health Minister Alymkadyr Beishenaliev announced at a press conference that such a concoction had been given to hundreds of coronavirus-infected patients.
He also sipped from a cup containing the poisonous root’s extract in front of journalists and said that “the solution is not dangerous to one’s health,” if it is consumed hot.
Facebook said it removed the post “as we do not allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm or spread false claims about how to cure or prevent COVID-19.”
Japarov’s press service said the account’s owner removed the post “without external interference,” adding that the possibility of using aconite root to treat COVID-19 will be studied by the country’s medical experts.
Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General Kurmankul Zulushev attended a parliament session on April 21, where he said that q preliminary investigation had been launched into a possible link between Beishenaliev’s press conference and the poisoning of the four people.
“400 individuals [with COVID-19] agreed to use the root and none of them was poisoned. A judicial assessment of the situation will be made due to the consequences of the situation,” Zulushev said.
Beishenaliev said on April 21 that the four patients hospitalized consumed aconite root before he and Japarov promoted it.
The World Health Organization’s mission in the former Soviet republic has harshly criticized the idea, saying that there’s no proof aconite root is safe for the treatment of any illnesses, including coronavirus infection.
Several physicians who spoke with RFE/RL said the use of the root to treat COVID-19 violates Kyrgyzstan’s law on public safety.
Aconite root is found in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang and some parts of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Some people use the root in herbal soups and meals, believing in its health benefits. But aconite roots contain aconitine, a cardiotoxin and neurotoxin. Consuming aconite root can lead to sickness or even death.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russia has declared 10 employees at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to be personae non gratae in what it called a “mirror” response to Washington’s expulsion earlier this month of 10 Russian diplomats and wide-ranging sanctions as it moved to hold the Kremlin accountable for actions against the United States and its interests.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on April 21 that the deputy head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Russian Federation, Bart Gorman was handed a note announcing the measure, which gives the 10 embassy employees until the end of the day on May 21 to leave the country.
“This measure is a “mirror” response to the hostile actions of the American side against a number of employees of the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Russian Consulate General in New York, who were unreasonably declared ‘persona non grata,’” it said in a statement.
Tensions between the West and Russia have been nearing the boiling point in recent weeks over a buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine, cyberattacks, Prague’s claims that Russian military agents were behind a deadly 2014 explosion at a Czech arms depot, and the imprisonment of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny after he was poisoned with a nerve-agent last year.
On April 15, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order outlining the expulsions and and sanctions against dozens of other Russian individuals and entities as it moved to hold the Kremlin accountable for actions hostile to the United States and its interests. In addition, the U.S. Treasury also placed additional limits on the Russian sovereign debt market.
Biden said the United States “could have gone further” in its retaliation, but chose not to because it was not looking to “kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict” through the wide-ranging sanctions.
At the time, Moscow swiftly swiftly denounced and warned of retaliation.
In its April 21 statement, Russia said “further steps will follow…the latest ‘wave’ of illegal US anti-Russian sanctions.”
U.S. intelligence officials and technology companies have said the Solarwinds cyberattack, discovered in December, was likely the work of Russian hackers.
In the attack, hackers slipped malicious code into updates of network-management software made by the U.S. company SolarWinds, which was then downloaded by several branches of the U.S. government and several U.S. and European corporations.
The U.S. sanctions were also aimed at retaliating for alleged interference during the 2020 presidential election. A U.S. intelligence community assessment concluded with a high degree of confidence that President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government authorized and directed an effort to influence the election.
Moscow has denied any involvement in either affair.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A 27-year-old Kazakh woman is fighting traditional attitudes in seeking justice against five men she accuses of trying to kidnap and force her into marriage.
Bride kidnapping is a common practice in Kyrgyzstan and parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, even though the long-standing practice is prohibited by law.
Among the men that Aruzhan — who asked that her real name not be used to protect her privacy — accuses of trying to abduct her in July 2020 is a co-worker at a military unit in the southeastern Almaty Province.
“I got a phone call from my colleague who asked me to make a cake for his brother’s birthday,” says Aruzhan, who supplements her income as a civilian contractor by baking cakes. “I didn’t have time as I was going to visit a friend, but my colleague insisted that he would give me a lift to my friend’s house if I made the cake.”
Aruzhan’s colleague picked her up at a village bus stop near her home. As they drove to an intersection near the Kulzhin highway, four other men got into the car.
The colleague said they were friends of his “who happened to be hitchhiking.” Aruzhan says she became suspicious when the car “took a wrong turn.”
She immediately demanded the man stop the vehicle. “He pulled over to the side of the road and said, ‘We’re going to snatch you.’”
“Snatching a bride” — or bride kidnapping — is a banned but widespread custom in some parts of southern Kazakhstan in which a man, usually with the help of a few friends, captures a woman of his choice for marriage.
In some cases, it’s just a pre-wedding ritual performed by the groom and his friends after getting the woman’s consent. But many cases involve nonconsensual kidnappings, with the victims targeted and forced into marriage against their will.
Most bride-kidnapping cases in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan go unreported. The victims often stay in these marriages because returning home would bring shame to the woman and her family in the conservative societies in which they live.
Dreading such an outcome, Aruzhan says she tried to fight back. “I jumped out of the car but the men tried to force me back into it.” She says she resisted their attempts by holding tight onto some racks atop the car, crying, and pleading with the men to let her go.
Hundreds of vehicles passed by on a busy highway leading to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, but no one “stopped to help me,” Aruzhan says. “I was begging them for help, but people just recorded me on their mobile phones as they drove by.”
Finally, Aruzhan’s colleague got a phone call from the police, who demanded the men report to the nearest police station. “We found out later that someone called the police and gave the license plate number of my colleague’s car, and police found his name and phone number,” Aruzhan says.
The men took Aruzhan to the Talgar district police station. Despite the bruises and scratches on Aruzhan’s arms, police let the men go free.
Aruzhan filed a formal complaint against the men.
Police Inaction
Aruzhan was summoned to the police station two days later. An investigator assigned to the case advised her to withdraw the complaint to avoid “being summoned thousands of more times.” She rejected his advice — but the case was still closed.
According to documents obtained by RFE/RL, the district police concluded that the suspects in the kidnapping case were not “subject to criminal liability” because they “voluntarily decided to abandon their intended act [of kidnapping].”
RFE/RL contacted the Almaty regional police office about Aruzhan’s case. The regional police said they supported the Talgar officials’ decision to close the case.
In September, Aruzhan submitted a complaint to the district prosecutor’s office, accusing police of mishandling her case. A new probe was launched in November. But in March she found out that the authorities had again decided to close it without pressing charges. She was again told the men had not committed a crime.
Aruzhan says she was left traumatized by the incident and is disappointed in the authorities’ attitude toward her case. She fears her kidnappers might come back for revenge after her multiple complaints. Since the death of her father three years ago, Aruzhan lives with her mother.
Many people in that small rural community are aware of the kidnapping attempt and Aruzhan believes police inaction toward her abductors sets a bad precedent. She says it emboldens other potential bride kidnappers who see that men can get away with trying to snatch a woman for marriage.
Despite her fears and failure thus far, Aruzhan is determined to continue her fight until the perpetrators face trial. In Kazakhstan, nonconsensual bride-kidnapping is a criminal offense punishable by up to seven years in prison.
“What happened to me can happen to any other young woman here,” she says. “The offenders must be punished for their actions so they don’t try the same thing with other women in the future.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Czech national unit to combat organized crime has detained at least five Czechs suspected of planning to travel to eastern Ukraine to fight alongside Russia-backed separatists against a backdrop of rising tensions between Prague and Moscow.
Investigators from the state prosecutor’s office suspect the five of preparing to join a militant group that calls itself the Donetsk People’s Republic, which opposes Kyiv and controls part of eastern Ukraine near the Russian border, Czech state prosecutor Martin Bily said on April 21.
Earlier reports suggested that around 20 people had been detained in the overnight operation by the NCOZ, a police unit to counter terrorism and extremism.
But Bily said five people had been detained and no one had been charged yet.
The roundup comes with the Czechs and Russians already embroiled in a flurry of diplomatic expulsions since the April 17 announcement that Czech authorities blame two Russian officers of a secretive GRU military intelligence unit for an explosion at an ammunition depot in 2014 that killed two Czech nationals.
The explosives that detonated in Vrbetice, in the southeastern part of the country, were purportedly part of a planned shipment via a Bulgarian businessman to supply Ukrainian forces fighting the separatists.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis rejected the label of “state terrorism” for the alleged Russian operation against his NATO-member state, triggering a national debate over relations with Russia.
But his government ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats, eliciting denials from Moscow and a bigger expulsion of Czech nationals by the Russian side.
Prague has since urged allies to carry out “collective action by EU and NATO countries aimed at solidarity expulsions” to support it in the ongoing dispute.
Czech reports said hundreds of police officers took part in the overnight operations on April 20-21 against the Czechs suspected of planning to fight in Ukraine, and some were said to be members of paramilitary groups.
The iDnes.cz news site said it wasn’t being ruled out that the suspects might have been in contact with some of the Russian diplomats, accused of being part of the military GRU directorate, who were targeted in the expulsions.
Kyiv and NATO have raised alarm bells this month over a buildup of Russian military forces near the border with Ukraine that threatens a new chapter in the simmering war since Russians invaded and annexed Crimea and began backing the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk in early 2014.
Moscow has consistently rejected accusations that it is actively involved in the eastern Ukrainian conflict despite years of evidence to the contrary, including captures of Russian troops in the war zone.
Russian relations with the Czech Republic had already taken a public turn for the worse after local officials last year dismantled a statue in Prague dedicated to Soviet commander Marshal Ivan Konev.
Russia threatened a response and opened a criminal case over the slight.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been detained by police for unknown reasons just hours ahead of planned nationwide protests to demand the immediate release of the jailed opposition politician.
“The police carried out an ‘interception’ plan, pulling Lyubov Sobol out of a taxi near the Avtozavodskaya metro station. According to her, many officers in uniforms were involved in her detainment. It is not clear where they are taking her,” Sobol’s lawyer, Vladimir Voronin, tweeted on April 21.
Last week, Sobol was handed a one-year suspended sentence of correctional labor for illegally forcing her way into the apartment of Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Konstantin Kudryavtsev in December, hours after Navalny had published a recording of what he said was a phone conversation with Kudryavtsev.
During the 49-minute phone call, in which Navalny posed as an FSB official conducting an internal review, Kudryavtsev described details of an operation to poison the Kremlin critic in August.
Sobol, who went to Kudryatsev’s apartment building to question him, rejected the charge, saying the case was filed to silence her.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The FSB and the Kremlin have denied any role in the poisoning, despite Kudryavtsev’s comments.
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 as being politically motivated. Navalny’s 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 time already served in detention.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the Navalny affair and its crackdown on protesters.
Last month, Sobol said she plans to run for parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, in September elections.
Sobol is currently under house arrest in another case. She and several other associates and supporters of Navalny were charged with violating sanitary regulations during unsanctioned rallies in January to protest Navalny’s incarceration.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
An ethnic Albanian group says work has begun to build a “memorial complex” in southern Serbia to honor a controversial guerrilla commander who fought Serb troops in three Balkan wars and an insurgency.
The planned venue to honor Ridvan Qazimi, whose nom de guerre was “Commander Lleshi,” would occupy property belonging to a mosque on a hillside above Veliki Trnovac, in the heavily ethnic Albanian Presevo Valley.
The project has been challenged by Serbia’s junior ruling Socialist Party.
Their leader in parliament, Djorjde Milicevic, demanded on April 13 that the Labor, Employment, Veteran, and Social Affairs Ministry report back to lawmakers on whether town or regional officials had given permits for the memorial.
Veliki Trnovac is in the Bujanovac municipality, which was part of a trio of southern strongholds for armed ethnic Albanian resistance to Belgrade’s rule after the 1998-99 war that ushered in a UN protectorate for Kosovo.
The area is on the border with Kosovo and was a flash point for ethno-nationalist tension and violence for decades.
![Ragmi Mustafi, president of the Serbian-based Albanian National Council: "There are dangerous statements coming from Belgrade in which [ethnic] Albanians are always enemies of the state."](https://gdb.rferl.org/598bcc1c-7cdb-49d5-a7f3-a507c09f2bda_w250_r0_s.jpg)
The president of the Serbian-based Albanian National Council, Ragmi Mustafa, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service that the planned Qazimi complex “will essentially be a place where the memory of Commander Lleshi will be nurtured so that we see a hero of our recent history and a man who sacrificed [himself] for the benefit of his people.”
He warned that “there are dangerous statements coming from Belgrade in which [ethnic] Albanians are always enemies of the state.”
But many Serbians see Qazimi as a brutal and opportunistic ethnic Albanian nationalist who fought Serbs at every opportunity, including in southwestern Serbia after the signing of the Kumanovo Treaty that ended the Kosovo War.
Ethnic Albanians counter that Qazimi and other fighters of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja, and Bujanovac (UCPMB) — who borrowed tactics from the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) — were forgiven along with other fighters in an amnesty.
Serbia’s 2002 Amnesty Law forgave “Yugoslav citizens” reasonably suspected of terrorism in Presevo, Medvedja, and Bujanovac between January 1999 and May 2001, when separatists were battling Yugoslav Army forces.
Rights groups say many egregious human rights violations on both sides remain unsolved, including guerrilla fighters’ abuses and disappearances and torture alleged against Serbian special forces and pro-Belgrade paramilitaries.
A veteran of the Croatian and Bosnian wars against Serb forces and a former UCK fighter, Qazimi died under still-unexplained circumstances on May 24, 2001.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), an NGO created to document wartime atrocities that has offices in Belgrade and Pristina, says Qazimi was killed by sniper fire near the village of Lucane.
He was a key figure in peace negotiations with the Yugoslav government and was participating in preparations for a cease-fire in the weeks before his death, including an eventual demobilization, according to the HLC.
The Serbian head of the coordination body for the region at the time, Nebojsa Covic, called it an accident as Yugoslav forces were returning under a truce plan.
Many ethnic Albanians revere Qazimi as someone who made sacrifices for future generations and they point to the amnesty that pardoned him and other combatants before Serbian law, even posthumously.
Mustafa, of the Albanian National Council, said it’s “unacceptable to call [Qazimi] an Albanian terrorist.”
“If all these people are amnestied, that means the state has in some way acknowledged that their revolt was just and that it was the amnesty that gave them the opportunity for reconciliation,” Mustafa said.
There are already three other, smaller memorials to Qazimi in Veliki Trnovac. One is at his gravesite, another on a plaque at the entrance to the town, and one at a modest “museum” that displays the car he was in and the clothes he was purportedly wearing when he died.
The mostly ethnic Albanian inhabitants of the town of Bujanovac even mark “Commander Lleshi Days” every year.
Other monuments to figures from the war years have caused trouble in the past.
In 2013, around 200 police were called in to dismantle a marble monument in Presevo to 27 UCPMB fighters who died in the conflict, over fiery resistance from ethnic Albanian politicians.
In that case, the monument had reportedly been erected on public property without permission from the state Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, based in the city of Nis.
Socialist leader and then-Prime Minister Ivica Dacic at the time called the Presevo monument “a provocation to which the state must react.”
Current Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic also called for the removal of the UCPMB monument.
It was eventually moved to the courtyard of a nearby mosque, where it still stands.
Other efforts at monuments to war dead have created similar disputes.
A Serbian law on war memorials gives jurisdiction over the decisions of public monuments to the Labor, Employment, Veteran, and Social Affairs Ministry. But the planned Veliki Trnovac “memorial complex” to Qazimi is unlikely to fall under its bailiwick, since it is slated to stand on ground that belongs to a local mosque.
The ministry is due to respond to Milicevic’s request for a stance by May 19.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Plenty To Talk About As Putin Prepares For Annual Address To Parliament
By RFE/RL
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to give his 17th annual state-of-the-nation address to a joint session of the Russian parliament in Moscow on April 21 amid a slew of crises both at home and abroad.
Internationally, the address comes at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West, a simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, and unrest in neighboring Belarus following a disputed presidential election last August.
Domestically, Putin will speak live to the nation just hours before supporters of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny gather for mass protests to demand the anti-corruption campaigner be given independent medical care, as well as amid preparations for legislative elections to be held before September 19 and the continued economic and social fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic.
On the eve of the speech, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan announced he would return to the United States for consultations, just days after Washington imposed a fresh batch of sanctions on Russia for its alleged cyberattacks on the United States and interference in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
Russia has also ramped up its military capabilities along its border with Ukraine and in and around the annexed Ukrainian Black Sea region of Crimea. Since 2014, Russia has provided military, economic, and political support to separatist formations in parts of eastern Ukraine that are waging war against Kyiv. Tensions have been on the rise in recent weeks, with sporadic fighting breaking out and the peace process remaining stalled.
Meanwhile, police raided several regional offices of Navalny’s organizations in anticipation of the protests scheduled for the evening of April 21. Navalny has been on a hunger strike for more than three weeks, demanding that he be seen by his own doctors. Prison authorities transferred him on April 19 to a prison with a hospital, despite saying that his health was “satisfactory.”
Russia is preparing for elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, with the ruling United Russia party facing historically low popularity ratings. In recent weeks, the authorities have cracked down on dissent in what many analysts see as a bid to strictly control the election process and outcome.
In the past, Putin has sometimes used the speech to put forward significant policy moves. Last year, he announced preparations for a raft of constitutional amendments that ended up including one that makes it possible for him to remain president until 2036. Shortly after the speech, then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the cabinet resigned, and former Federal Tax Service head Mikhail Mishustin was tapped to replace him.
In 2018, Putin gave a lavish, high-tech presentation that included video presentations of several advanced weapons systems, including an intercontinental ballistic missile, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, an unmanned nuclear-powered underwater drone, and the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system.
Putin’s speech is scheduled to begin at noon local time in Moscow. In addition to members of both chambers of parliament, the audience will include the prime minister, the cabinet, senior judges, military and security officials, senior leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and other major religious groups, and other guests. According to TASS, some 450 journalists have been accredited to cover the events.
Putin, a 68-year-old former KGB officer, has led Russia as president or prime minister since 1999.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
It’s one of Russia’s major exports, a source of symbolic pride and commercial revenue: atomic energy, in the form of civilian technology to build and maintain nuclear reactors around the world. State-owned company Rosatom is the driver of that policy, with ambitions for nearly $15 billion in revenues from outside Russia by 2024.
Now, a snowballing spy scandal in the Czech Republic, involving a pair of 7-year-old explosions and Russia’s military intelligence agency, threatens to pull the plug on one of Rosatom’s higher-profile international forays: a new $7 billion-plus nuclear power facility in the Czech Republic.
With relations between Prague and Moscow thrown into turmoil — the head of the Czech Senate called the 2014 blasts an “act of state terrorism” — Czech government officials said on April 19 that they were kicking Rosatom out of the bidding for the project in Dukovany, about 220 kilometers southeast of Prague.
The Czech deputy prime minister, Karel Havlicek, said the decision was made out of “security.” The final bidding process would be limited to companies from France, the United States, and South Korea, he said.
Rosatom described the decision as politically motivated.
“We regret this decision of the Czech authorities, because the Russian and Czech nuclear industries had serious prospects for the development of a mutually beneficial partnership, not only in the Czech Republic, but through joint work in third countries as well,” Rosatom said in a statement.
“The Russian offer envisioned the involvement of hundreds of Czech and European companies in the Dukovany nuclear power plant expansion project, which could have included contracts worth billions of euros. Thus, by excluding Rosatom from the tender, the Czech authorities are pushing aside their own national industry.”
“This is a game changer,” said Pavel Havlicek (no relation to the deputy prime minister), a political analyst at the Prague-based Association for International Affairs. “In terms of rhetoric, diplomacy, politics, this is a very significant gesture, that things will not be the same in the future.”
The Czech Republic generates more than one-third of all its electricity from nuclear power, from two sites: one, in Temelin, about 120 kilometers south of Prague, with two reactors, and the other at Dukovany, with four reactors. All are Soviet designs; the first went into operation in the mid-1980s.
Both facilities are majority owned by the state energy company Ceske Energeticke Závody (CEZ).
Rosatom, and its immediate predecessors, has been the main holder of contracts for helping to maintain the reactors, and also for reprocessing spent fuel. The U.S. energy giant Westinghouse was brought in after the 1989 Velvet Revolution to modernize two of the Temelin units and also supply some of its fuel. But the Czech authorities later switched the fuel supply back to Russia.
Russia now supplies all fuel for Czech reactors.
By the mid-2010s, the Czech government forecast a substantial increase in power demand and the need to switch the country’s electricity supply away from coal. So it decided to build another unit at Dukovany and held talks with six companies, including Rosatom and Westinghouse.
Czech relations with China, plagued for years by criticism from mainly liberal Czech lawmakers concerned about Beijing’s authoritarian policies, ultimately led to China General Nuclear Group being frozen out of the process.
Rosatom, meanwhile, was long seen as a leading contender, given Moscow’s history with the Czech nuclear industry.
“For Rosatom, it’s both money and prestige,” said Martin Jirusek, an energy expert and an assistant professor at Masaryk University in the Czech city of Brno, and managing editor of the Czech Journal of Political Science.
He said the costs for building the new Dukovany facility were probably closer to $12 billion, when ancillary costs are figured in. The government’s time line for finishing construction in 2029, and starting generation by 2036, was already unrealistic, he said, even before the spy scandal
Despite the heated rhetoric and the move to remove Rosatom from the bidding, it’s not a certainty that will happen, Jirusek said. The current stage that Rosatom is being removed from entails a security review by Czech government agencies.
And there’s nothing at this stage to prevent Rosatom from being allowed to rejoin the process, depending on the outcome of October parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic.
“Kicking Rosatom out of the screening process is kind of a big deal. But at the same time, it doesn’t say anything about the future of the process,” Jirusek said.
If the ruling coalition — led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ ANO Party — wins a new mandate, that would potentially reopen the door for Rosatom. And President Milos Zeman, who supports closer business and political ties with Moscow, has said openly in the past that Rosatom should win the tender.
Zeman aside, Czechs’ opinion of Russian policies, while never particularly warm, soured markedly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Havlicek said.
The latest spy scandal means the issue of Russia’s role in Czech society is likely to be a prominent election issue; opposition groups have already come out with strong, clear statements critical of the Kremlin.
That includes the opposition president of the Czech Senate, who called the findings that a Russian military intelligence unit was behind the 2014 deadly explosions at the ammunition depot an “act of state terrorism.”
“This is about credibility of the country, our position in the world. Czechs are bit of an egotistical people,” Havlicek said. “We want to be seen. We want to be recognized. And we don’t want to be subordinate to Russia.”
“We know what it means to be dependent on Russia,” he said.
Since being established in 2007, Rosatom, which was formed out of a reorganization of the Atomic Energy Ministry, has played an important role expanding Moscow’s commercial ties outside the country.
Between 2009 and 2018, Russia accounted for 23 of 31 export orders for nuclear power facilities around the world, according to a 2020 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. And the company initiated construction on 10 reactor units overseas between 2007 and 2017. That compares with just four between 1986 and 2007.
In its 2018 annual report, the company said it had $133 billion in overseas orders spanning a 10-year period. Nearly three-quarters of that figure came from construction of nuclear plants; the rest came from fuel supplies and uranium products. Its reported overseas revenues that year were $6.5 billion
Unlike with private companies in the West, like Westinghouse, Rosatom is state-owned. For customers, that means Rosatom can provide contract sweeteners, like financing backed by the Russian state.
The company has become an instrument of “soft power” for the Kremlin, Jirusek said. He said there were parallels with another major Russian state-owned company — Gazprom — whose natural-gas exports to Europe and elsewhere have been tinged with political calculations.
“I see there is a strong government hand in what Rosatom has been doing lately, and the support the Russian government gives…resembles how the government did that with Gazprom a decade before,” he said.
“To help it clinch contracts abroad, it often comes with political strings. It’s a geopolitical thing,” he said
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Revelations that two Russian spies accused of a nerve-agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 may have been behind earlier explosions at a Czech ammunition depot that killed two people sparked outrage and anger in the Czech Republic.
The allegations by Czech intelligence have plunged relations between Prague and Moscow to their lowest level since the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in 1989.
Amid the escalation of tensions, Prague has expelled 18 Russian diplomats, and Moscow, which dismisses any role in the blasts and described it as a provocation concocted by Washington, has kicked out 20 Czech Embassy staff in Moscow.
It also comes amid a series of incidents that have roiled relations over the last few years, including claims, later dismissed, that Russia had smuggled ricin into Prague in 2020 to poison three municipal officials who had taken action or supported positions that angered the Kremlin, mostly to do with disputes over the Soviet role in World War II.
In 2020, the Czech Republic reported a series of cyberattacks on key institutions, including hospitals, that Czech intelligence suspected were the work of state-backed Russian hackers.
The fresh claims have triggered support for the Czech Republic and condemnations for Russia’s alleged role from the European Union, the United States, and others, including Ukraine.
For many in the Czech Republic, the alleged attacks by two officers of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service in Vrbetice in the southeast of the country in October and December 2014 was an act of terrorism, if not war.
Many of those voicing such charges are opponents of Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has been dogged by corruption allegations — some involving EU subsidies — that he denies, and President Milos Zeman, one of the European Union’s most Kremlin-friendly leaders.
Just Some “Goods”
Babis, who along with another top official first made public the blockbuster charge on April 17 in an emotional address in which he stressed the loss of life and widespread damage, two days later took a softer tone.
Babis, accused but cleared in 2015 by a court of working with communist secret police in the 1980s, said it was an unacceptable operation by Russian agents that went wrong. “Russia was not attacking the Czech Republic. The agents attacked the goods of a Bulgarian arms trader, who was probably selling these arms to parties fighting Russia,” Babis told a news conference on April 19. “The ammunition was supposed to explode en route. Of course it is unacceptable that GRU agents were undertaking the operation here — which they bungled,” he said.
Acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek on April 19 confirmed the trader to have been Emilian Gebrev, an arms-factory owner who survived an attempt to poison him in 2015. Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russians in absentia in 2020 with his attempted murder.
Gebrev’s company, EMCO, denied on April 19 that it had made or planned any shipment from the Czech warehouse in the months before the explosion or for at least a year after the blast.
Prague has previously said the warehouse blast was caused by the same GRU agents blamed for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain in 2018. Moscow denies involvement in the Skripal poisonings, which both victims survived.
‘Heinous’ Act
Babis’s apparent downplaying of the ammo-depot blast left many Czech politicians dumbfounded and spawned social-media memes ridiculing his comments.
“What Prime Minister Babis says is nonsense. An action resulting in deaths is an act of state terrorism, in contradiction with international law and the rule of bilateral relations in the 21st century,” said Pavel Zacek, a member of the opposition ODS party, in comments to Czech media on April 20.
Facing a backlash for the remark, Babis a day later said he was sorry for using the term “goods” and specifically said it was a “heinous and completely unacceptable terrorist act.”
Zeman, who holds less power than the prime minister, however, has been slammed not for what he has said, but for refusing to speak publicly on the matter yet. He says he will do so on April 25 during a TV program.
Zeman, who became the first directly elected Czech president when he took office in 2013, is rarely shy about sharing his views, often sharp-tongued, on domestic and foreign-policy matters. He has criticized Western sanctions on Russia and insulted journalists, among others.
Big blue letters reading “High treason” lit up Prague Castle, the official residence of the Czech president, on the evening of April 19. The message was delivered by a group calling itself Stop High Treason, which in a statement said it wanted Zeman brought before the country’s highest court to face charges of betraying the country.
A day after the stunt, Zeman’s spokesman lashed out at the country’s opposition. “A vote for the opposition is a vote for war. Remember that when you go to the polls,” Jiri Ovcacek wrote on Twitter.
The findings on the Vrbetice explosions by the Czech Security Intelligence Service (BIS) and the National Center for Combating Organized Crime (NUKIB) came amid efforts pushed by Zeman and his supporters to secure the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V, as well as support for the Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom in its bid to secure a lucrative deal to build a reactor at the Czech Dukovany nuclear power plant.
Czech Health Minister Jan Blatny was fired on April 7 by Babis, whose government is dependent on Zeman’s political allies, a month after the president called for his dismissal for his refusal to use the Russian vaccine without approval by the European Medicines Agency.
Also losing his job in part due to his stance against the Sputnik V vaccine was Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek, whom Zeman dismissed on April 12.
Petricek had clashed with his rival, the aforementioned Hamacek, over control of the Social Democratic Party. Petricek had also suggested the party should cut its ties to Babis’s populist ANO party. Petricek had also opposed efforts by Zeman and his supporters to push Rosatom on the Dukovany contract.
At the time of his dismissal, Petricek said that “the minister’s office has windows facing east” on Facebook.
“Sometimes when you defy physics and other forces, you can look completely, calmly, and boldly toward the West and Europe,” Petricek said. “It’s no secret that I have not been well regarded by the Prague presidency for some time,” he told reporters.
Who Is ‘Facing East’?
Zeman has characterized the BIS as a bunch of “incompetents” and is on less-than-friendly terms with its director, Michal Koudelka, pressing him last year for a list of Russian spies in the Czech Republic.
Zeman has said he will not recommend Koudelka be given another term at the head of the BIS once his current mandate runs out this summer.
With Petricek out of the way, Hamacek — also still holding the post of interior minister — had reportedly planned to travel to Moscow on April 19 to negotiate on Russian deliveries of Sputnik V. Those plans were quashed after he and Babis announced on April 17 the BIS and NUKIB findings on the 2014 Vrbetice blasts as relations between Prague and Moscow plummeted.
And Russia was effectively shut out of the multibillion-dollar contract for Dukovany when Czech Industrial Minister Karel Havlicek announced on April 19 that Rosatom would not take part in security assessments before a planned tender.
However, the Czech news website Aktualne reported that not only had senior Czech politicians known about the BIS and NUKIB findings much earlier, on April 11, but a special session of the country’s security council had been canceled.
Asked why he had only canceled his trip to Moscow at the last moment despite knowing of the alleged Russian role in the blasts much earlier, Hamacek said on April 18 that he never had any intention of flying to Moscow, and that it had all been a “coordinated action.” That left few convinced and many suspected that those with friendly ties with the Kremlin were intent on at least delaying the release of the BIS and NUKIB findings.
“If the FM (Foreign Ministry) AB (Andrej Babis), Hamacek and others had known about Vrbetice for some time and still got rid of Petricek, after which Hamacek wanted to go to Moscow,” said Jiri Pehe, a longtime political analyst and director of New York University in Prague on Twitter on April 18.
“The whole affair begins to take on the dimensions of a huge political scandal, one in which treason cannot be ruled out.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — Allies of ailing, imprisoned Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny have not held back in delineating the stakes of their latest standoff with the Russian state. A wave of protests planned for April 21, they say, represents the “final battle between good and neutrality.”
Members of Navalny’s embattled opposition movement, many of whom have fled Russia under the threat of incarceration, had planned not to announce new anti-government rallies until 500,000 people had registered online to take part. Strength in numbers, they said in viral clips posted online, was the only sure way to protect participants from police beatings and arrest.
But on April 18, as the online tally passed 430,000 and Navalny’s doctors warned he may have only days to live as he continues his hunger strike in a prison outside Moscow, his team shifted gear and named April 21 as the date for nationwide demonstrations they hope can force concessions from President Vladimir Putin’s government.
“Each of us, whether we like it or not, faces a choice,” Navalny’s team said in a video announcing the protests. “If we are silent now, Russia will be plunged into total darkness. Peaceful political activism in Russia will become impossible.”
A weeks-long crackdown since the previous protest wave in January, after Navalny was detained upon return to Russia following treatment for a poisoning attack he blames on Putin, has left many of Navalny’s remaining allies in Russia behind bars or under house arrest.
Now, authorities have moved to label his Anti-Corruption Foundation and his network of offices across the country “extremist,” a designation that, if upheld in court, will leave its staff and supporters open to criminal prosecution.
But turnout on April 21 may hinge largely upon whether the dangers faced by protesters, especially since lawmakers passed a flurry of punitive legislation aimed at radically curtailing the space for dissent, will outweigh any collective sense that the decisive moment to act in defense of political freedoms and in favor of change has come.
“The authorities definitely succeeded in spooking a proportion of people,” former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, now a political analyst, told RFE/RL. “But Putin remains in the Kremlin, Navalny remains in jail, the regime remains authoritarian, and living standards are falling. And the reasons that previously made people take to the streets have remained the same.”
Gallyamov said a “protest core” of some 10,000 people is almost certain to come out in Moscow for the protest on the evening of April 21, hours after Putin delivers his annual state-of-the-nation address — a speech that comes amid deep international concern over Navalny’s condition as well as other issues, including a Russian military buildup in occupied Crimea and along the border with eastern Ukraine.
But a big question, Gallyamov contends, will be how much of the much larger “protest periphery” — the mass of occasional political activists who regularly weigh up the pros and cons of demonstrating and often decide last-minute — will opt to join the core at a time when the risks of doing so have significantly grown.
On April 20, Navalny was moved from his prison 100 kilometers east of Moscow to a medical unit on the grounds of another correctional facility nearby, almost three weeks into a hunger strike that he announced to protest a lack of treatment for acute back and leg ailments and a lack of access to his own doctors.
Aleksei Liptser, a members of Navalny’s legal team who visited the opposition leader shortly after his transfer on April 20, said the inmate looked emaciated. “He’s losing weight, and it’s clear he’s weak and struggling,” Liptser told RFE/RL in a phone interview. “He’s speaking much slower than he used to.”
As Navalny’s team works to convince Putin supporters and Russians who remain skeptical or simply indifferent to the fate of the opposition, some people have embraced extreme measures to prove how much they care.
More than 100 have signed up on Facebook to a mass hunger strike in solidarity with Navalny, and among those who are refusing food in a show of support are five parents whose children died in the 2004 school siege in Beslan, the legacy of which still resonates in Russia’s North Ossetia region.
“They’ve taken a man hostage and are destroying him. Our children were also taken hostage in 2004, and no one saved them,” one of them, Ella Kesayeva, told the Novaya gazeta newspaper.
Navalny’s team will also hope that public discontent has reached a level critical enough to leave thousands of Russians no choice but to protest. In video after video since Navalny’s sentencing to 2 1/2 years in prison on February 2, they have cited statistics showing declining real wages, an erosion of the influence of state-controlled television, the falling popularity of ruling party United Russia, and declining public trust in state institutions and in Putin himself.
Whether that message will have enough mobilization potential, analysts say, will depend on its force relative to the force of the state’s ongoing crackdown. The authorities have moved swiftly to thwart turnout at the mid-week rallies, arresting people who have promoted the protests and demanding that YouTube, the video-sharing platform, delete videos that mention them.
On April 16, the Moscow prosecutor’s office asked the Moscow City Court to uphold its demand that three organizations founded by Navalny — including the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Navalny’s network of regional political offices — be labeled “extremist” and banned.
Against that backdrop, Gallyamov said, the apocalyptic protest slogan that Navalny’s aides have chosen to rally the crowds on April 21 “is not plucked from thin air” but rather a very real reflection of ominous developments on the ground.
“It will motivate many people, including those who are vacillating or afraid,” Gallyamov said. “Some people might be thinking, ‘I can’t make it this time, I’ll join next time.’ But considering what’s taking place, there may not be a next time.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Iran and world powers have made progress in talks to save their 2015 nuclear accord, but “much more hard work” is necessary to rescue the deal, a senior European Union official said on April 20.
EU envoy Enrique Mora made the statement on Twitter on April 20, adding that talks will resume next week.
Discussions in Vienna between Iran, China, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, along with the indirect participation of the United States, are being chaired by the European Union.
“Participants took stock of progress made in the ongoing discussions in Vienna regarding specific measures needed in terms of sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation for the possible return of the U.S. to the JCPOA and its full and effective implementation,” the EU said in a statement, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The joint commission overseeing the talks decided to create a third expert group “to start looking into the possible sequencing of respective measures,” the statement added.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to the talks, said on Twitter that the group would seek “practical steps leading to full restoration of the Iranian nuclear deal.”
Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, said on April 20 that while the talks were moving forward, Tehran would stop the negotiations if faced with “unreasonable demands,” time wasting, or irrational bargaining, according to Iranian state media.
The talks are aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear accord abandoned by the United States in 2018.
The EU has been carrying out shuttle diplomacy with U.S. negotiators located in a nearby hotel because Tehran has refused face-to-face talks with Washington.
The EU statement on April 20 reiterated the participants’ resolve to pursue their joint diplomatic effort and the “continued separate contacts of the coordinator with all participants and the United States.”
The five world powers and Iran remain parties to the original 2015 accord, which offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for limits on the country’s nuclear program. However, since the U.S. withdrew from the deal Iran has consistently breached restrictions imposed under the deal.
Iran has said it will not return to strict observance of the 2015 agreement unless all sanctions reimposed or added by former President Donald Trump are rescinded first.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is ready to remove “all sanctions that are inconsistent” with the deal, though it has not spelled out which measures it means.
Separately, the Iranian government said on April 20 that it had launched enrichment of uranium to 60 percent fissile purity in order to show its technical capacity after a sabotage attack at a nuclear plant that Tehran has blamed on Israel. But the escalation of enrichment can be quickly reversible if Washington drops sanctions, the government said.
Biden has called Iran’s decision to increase uranium enrichment unhelpful but has said the United States is “pleased” that Iran is still participating in indirect talks.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Photo: G-rant Gulesserian (Courtesy Image)
Satellite imagery has some fearing that an ancient monument faces “erasure” after its recapture by Azerbaijan
The Twitter account for Caucasus Heritage Watch on April 19 shared satellite images apparently showing several vehicles parked next to the Vankasar Church in Azerbaijan’s Agdam district. The region was recaptured from Armenian forces during last year’s conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The images are hard to discern but were widely shared on Twitter amid fears they may show a first step in the “erasure” of the ancient Christian monument.
Lori Khatchadourian, an associate professor at Cornell University who is one of the researchers of Caucasus Heritage Watch, told RFE/RL by e-mail that there appears to be one truck “approximately 8.6 meters long” — far larger than a regular car, truck, or van — in the photo, alongside other undefined vehicles and “a temporary rectangular structure” nearby measuring 18-by-8 meters that she believes may be a tent or some other type of shelter.
There is no evidence Vankasar Church has been targeted for destruction since coming under Azerbaijan’s control, but some fear it could be demolished after a recent news report highlighted the erasure of another historic church on recaptured Azerbaijani territory.
In March, a BBC camera crew went looking for a church in the retaken Azerbaijani town of Jebrayil. The small church, which was built in 2017, became known during the 2020 conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenian forces after video emerged of a fighter standing atop its damaged cross and shouting Islamic slogans.
Instead of a church, the BBC journalists found smoothed-out rubble at the site.
In response to the church’s destruction, senior Azerbaijani official Hikmet Hajiyev pointed to the heavily damaged Azerbaijani towns that he said had become wastelands under Armenian occupation since the first conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s.
Simon Maghakyan, an American-Armenian researcher, told RFE/RL he hopes the objects seen in the satellite imagery alongside Vankasar Church are simply military vehicles manning an outpost. But a recent statement about the nearby archaeological site of Tigranakert by Azerbaijani officials has him worried for the wider site around Vankasar Church.
On March 13, Hajiyev, who is an adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, tweeted cryptically that the “falsified mythic story” about Tigranakert “is over.” The Tigranakert ruins are less than 2 kilometers from Vankasar Church and were damaged during the 2020 conflict.
Armenians also remember the total destruction in 2005 of the special Armenian “khachkar” tombstones at the cemetery in Julfa, Azerbaijan.
Khatchadourian says of the images her organization released on April 19: “Our hope is that there is no risk at all and the vehicles are merely passing by. But deterrence only works if we make potential threats visible to the wider public and to responsible authorities in order to seek clarification. Unlike most research teams, we are most pleased when we are wrong.”
RFE/RL contacted UNESCO for comment about the images but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.