Bashkir singer Altynai Valitov, who openly protested the incarceration of activist Fail Alsynov in Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, wrote on Instagram on January 25 that he fled Russia fearing for his safety. Last week, police searched Valitov's home. About a dozen Bashkir activists were arrested and charged with taking part in mass unrest after they attended two rallies last week in the town of Baimak in support of Alsynov, who was handed a four-year prison term for inciting to "ethnic hatred," a charge he and his supporters say is politically motivated. Valitov did not say where he fled to. To read the original story Idel.Realities, click here.

The mayor of the Russian city of Biisk in Siberia, Viktor Shchigrev, said on January 26 that the entire city, except for one district, has lost access to cold water due to "pipeline damage." Shchigrev did not say what exactly caused the damage, while some residents of the city complained that they also do not have hot water. Since early January, accidents at electricity, water, and heating supply systems have been registered in at least 43 Russian regions. Authorities have blamed the situation on aging pipelines, many of which have not been repaired since Soviet times. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is set to rule on January 26 on whether to issue an emergency ruling that would order Israel to immediately halt its military operations in the Gaza Strip in a case filed by South Africa claiming it was committing genocide.

The ICJ’s 17-judge panel is expected to hand down its ruling at 1 p.m. CET in The Hague.

South Africa has asked the court for provisional measure to protest Palestinians saying it was "a matter of extreme urgency."

Israel has denied the accusation, at one point during the hearings saying that drawing similarities with Russia's war in Ukraine was "absurd."

"We expect the ICJ to throw out these spurious and specious charges," Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said in a briefing on January 25.

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Lawyers for Israel argued earlier this month that the country is doing what it can to limit the civilian impact of its battle against Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, and that Hamas and its warfare tactics are to blame for a rising death toll among the population.

As part of its case seeking the court order a provisional halt to the hostilities, touched off by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that killed some 1,200 civilians in Israel, South Africa has pointed to a March 2022 ruling it made calling on Russia to halt its military operations against Ukraine.

South Africa, which accused Israel of committing "systematic" acts of genocide in the conflict, is asking the court to hand down an emergency ruling to protect Palestinians in Gaza from further harm by Israel's war against Hamas. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says almost 26,000 Palestinians have been killed in the campaign, the majority of whom were women and children.

South Africa's heading up of the case has put a spotlight on its long-standing support of Palestinian rights, with even Nelson Mandela once saying that his country's freedom would be "incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Decisions by the ICJ cannot be appealed, but the court itself has no means to enforce its rulings.

Hamas leaders said on January 25 that they would abide by a court-ordered cease-fire if Israel did as well. They also said they would release all of the Israeli hostages in Gaza if Israel releases all Palestinian prisoners it holds.

While the court will rule on South Africa's request for emergency measures for Israel to halt its operations in Gaza, a decision on the broader allegations of genocide, legal experts say, could take years.

Analysts have previously noted that the ICJ's order for Russia to halt its military operations had no effect.

A Moscow court on January 26 rejected the latest appeal by U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich over his pretrial detention on an espionage charge that he, his employer The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and the U.S. government reject.

Gershkovich is one of two U.S. citizens held in pretrial detention in Russia on espionage charges they and the U.S. government reject as politically motivated. The second is former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.

A third U.S. citizen, RFERL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who also holds Russian citizenship, has been in pretrial detention on charges that the U.S. government and her employer say are reprisals for her work.*

"The period of detention of Evan Gershkovich...is extended by two months...until March 30, 2024," the Lefortovo District Court said on Telegram.

The court hearing was held behind closed doors because of what the court called the "classified" nature of the case.

Maria Korchagina, a lawyer for Gershkovich, had asked the court to commute Gershkovich's pretrial detention into house arrest or a 50 million ruble ($558,000) bail. The deposit was offered by Dow Jones & Company, the owner of WSJ.

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'It's All Becoming Less Bearable': RFE/RL Journalist Alsu Kurmasheva Marks 100 Days In Russian Custody

Gershkovich was detained in late March 2023 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said at the time of the arrest that it had opened an espionage case against the reporter for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex at the behest of the U.S. government -- accusations the WSJ and the United States firmly rejected.

In April, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, which raises the profile of his case and gives the department grounds to act in the interests of the U.S. citizen's release.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a press conference on December 14, said there had been "dialogue" between U.S. and Russian officials over the release of Gershkovich and Whelan, who has also been designated as wrongfully detained by the State Department.

RFE/RL journalist Kurmasheva has also been held in pretrial detention for more than 100 days.

She was initially charged with failing to ask the Russian government to register her as a “foreign agent” and, two months later, she was charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military. The “foreign agent” charge carries a maximum prison term of five years, while the second charge is punishable by up to 10 years. Kurmasheva and RFE/RL deny the allegations and say Moscow is punishing her for her journalistic work.

RFE/RL has called on the State Department to also designate Kurmasheva as wrongfully detained.

"We hope the U.S. State Department will quickly designate Alsu as 'wrongfully detained,'" acting RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said in a statement on January 25.

"Even one day unjustly behind bars is a tragedy, but a U.S. citizen wrongfully held in a Russian prison for 100 days is outrageous," Capus said.

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the charges against RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.

Russia last year imported $1.7 billion worth of foreign-made microchips despite international sanctions meant to prevent Moscow from obtaining advanced technology that can be used for military purposes in its war in Ukraine, Bloomberg said, citing classified Russian customs service data. Most of the chips, worth $1.2 billion were produced by U.S. and European companies. The customs documents do not indicate which companies imported the chips to Russia and when they were produced, Bloomberg said. A Bloomberg source said in March that third countries that did not join the sanctions, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan, and the UAE act as intermediaries. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

The European Union and United States on January 25 slammed Belarus for a series of political raids this week as rights groups said more than 150 people were detained or interrogated by the Belarusian security service in a single day. Rights group Vyasna said the regime targeted the families of political prisoners and recently freed inmates. The EU "condemns in the strongest possible terms the recent wave of repression," said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Washington similarly condemned the regime's "attacks on human rights and attempts to thwart the democratic aspirations of the people of Belarus."

Six countries of the former Yugoslavia have agreed to renovate a barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp run by the Nazis that housed nearly 20,000 Yugoslavs during World War II, the UN's cultural agency said on January 25. The agreement was reached after 14 years of negotiations by Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The renovation work of Block 17 at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland will include the installation of a joint permanent exhibition on the Holocaust in the former Yugoslavia, which saw the murder of around 66,000 of the country's 80,000 Jews.

A Huthi delegation made a rare visit to Moscow on January 25 to discuss "the need to increase efforts to pressure" the United States and Israel to end the war in Gaza, a spokesman for the Yemeni rebels said. Mohammed Abdel Salam led the delegation that met with Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to discuss the conflict in Gaza. The Huthis have launched frequent attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea in a bid to pressure Israel to end the war. The attacks prompted the United States and Britain to launch a series of retaliatory strikes.

A Russian national has been sentenced to five years and four months in prison for his involvement in malicious software known as Trickbot used in ransomware attacks on U.S. hospitals, schools, and businesses, the U.S. Justice Department said on January 25.

The department said the sentence was handed down on January 24 to Vladimir Dunayev, 40, who has been in U.S. custody since 2021 after being extradited from South Korea. Dunayev pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to commit computer fraud, identity theft, and other charges.

Trickbot acted as an initial "intrusion vector" into victim computer systems and was then used to support various ransomware variants, the Justice Department said in a news release.

“Hospitals, schools, and businesses were among the millions of Trickbot victims who suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses,” the department said.

The Trickbot group, which was active from November 2015 through August 2020, operated in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Suriname, according to the Justice Department.

During Dunayev’s participation, 10 victims in the U.S. state of Ohio were defrauded of more than $3.4 million after Trickbot enabled the deployment of ransomware, the Justice Department said.

U.S. Attorney Rebecca C. Lutzko for the Northern District of Ohio said Dunayev and his co-defendants caused “immeasurable disruption and financial damage, maliciously infecting millions of computers worldwide."

One of Dunaev’s co-defendants, Alla Witte, a Latvian national, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer fraud and was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. She was arrested in February 2021 in Florida and charged with several cybercrimes.

The original indictment alleged that Dunayev and six other people “stole money, confidential information, and damaged computer systems from unsuspecting victims, including individuals, financial institutions, school districts, utility companies, government entities, and private businesses."

It alleged that Dunayev performed a variety of developer functions in support of the Trickbot malware, “including managing the malware’s execution, developing popular browser modifications, and helping to conceal the malware from detection by security software.”

The malware is typically spread through e-mail campaigns that entice an individual to open a malicious file attachment or click on a link that leads to a malicious file.

Dunayev, originally from the Amur region in Russia's Far East, is one of dozens of ethnic Russians extradited from third countries to the United States since 2011 to face hacking charges. Russia does not turn over its own citizens to foreign law enforcement.

Turkey has published a measure approving Sweden's membership in NATO in its official gazette, finalizing the ratification that brings the previously nonaligned country a step closer to joining the alliance. Hungary now remains the only NATO ally not to have ratified Sweden’s accession. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson welcomed the ratification on January 25, saying, “With this, a key milestone has been reached in Sweden’s path towards NATO membership.” Turkey’s parliament endorsed Sweden’s accession on January 23. The ruling party said the Nordic country’s tougher stance on Kurdish militants was key to winning approval.

RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva spent her 100th day in a Russian jail on January 25, and despite pressure to designate her as "wrongfully detained" as it has other U.S. citizens held in Russia, the U.S. State Department appears no closer doing so.

"I have no updates to offer on any specific designation, but we have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” spokesman Vedant Patel said at a briefing on January 24 after being asked whether the State Department was closer to making the designation.

The designation would raise the profile of the case against Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, effectively labeling it politically motivated. Two other U.S. citizens held by Russia, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, have been designated as "wrongfully detained."

“We hope the U.S. State Department will quickly designate Alsu as ‘wrongfully detained,’” acting RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said in a statement.

"Even one day unjustly behind bars is a tragedy, but a U.S. citizen wrongfully held in a Russian prison for 100 days is outrageous."

Capus called for Russia to release Kurmasheva, noting that she is “a wife, mother, and beloved member of this proud institution.”

Patel said the State Department is following Kurmasheva’s detention closely.

“We remain incredibly concerned about the extension of her pretrial detention,” he said. “I can also note that our request to visit her was denied on December 20. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow continues to seek appropriate consular access."

SEE ALSO:

'It's All Becoming Less Bearable': RFE/RL Journalist Alsu Kurmasheva Marks 100 Days In Russian Custody

Kurmasheva, who has worked for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir service for some 25 years, left Prague in mid-May because of a family emergency in her native Tatarstan, one of Russia's many republics.

She was briefly detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2, 2023, at the Kazan airport, where both of her passports and phone were confiscated. After five months waiting for a decision in her case, Kurmasheva was fined 10,000 rubles ($110) for failing to register her U.S. passport with Russian authorities.

Unable to leave Russia without her travel documents, Kurmasheva was detained again on October 18 and this time charged with failing to ask the Russian government to register her as a "foreign agent." Two months later, she was charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military.

Kurmasheva recently wrote from her prison cell in the Russian city of Kazan that her detention was “becoming slowly but surely less bearable."

The "foreign agent" charge carries a maximum prison term of five years, while the second charge is punishable by up to 10 years. Kurmasheva and RFE/RL deny the allegations and say Moscow is punishing her for her journalistic work.

Many critics and rights group say the so-called foreign agent law is used by the Kremlin to crack down on any dissent.

Moscow has been accused of detaining Americans to use as bargaining chips to exchange for Russians jailed in the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December that there had been "dialogue" between U.S. and Russian officials over the release of Gershkovich and Whelan. The two Americans are being held on espionage charges that they deny.

The prime minister of North Macedonia and his cabinet on January 25 submitted their resignations to parliament, clearing the way for a caretaker government to be installed ahead of general elections in May.

Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski said he thanked his ministers ahead of a meeting with Talat Xhaferi, speaker of the parliament, who also resigned on January 25, three days before he is expected to take over as caretaker prime minister.

“I will wish him a successful procedure until Sunday, and then a successful election of him as technical prime minister," Kovachevski told reporters, describing Xhaferi as a politician who has a lot of experience in running the parliament.

Xhaferi will be the first ethnic Albanian to hold the position of acting head of government.

Kovachevski said that while Xhaferi's style will be different, he “will certainly maintain the state's strategic direction, which is the Western orientation [and] the strategic partnership with the United States.”

The practice of forming a caretaker government 100 days before election day was established in 2015 as part of a deal between the main political parties under the mediation of the European Union to end a political crisis at the time.

Parliament is also scheduled to vote on a new cabinet on January 28. The current opposition will have two ministers in the 20-member cabinet and three deputy ministers.

The main political parties agreed last month to hold general elections on May 8, which is two months early and will coincide with the second round of presidential elections. The first round is scheduled for April 24.

The main opposition party, the center-right VMRO-DPMNE, had been pressing for early elections, accusing the government led by the center-left Social Democrats and their junior coalition partners of corruption, nepotism, and incompetence.

Kovacevski, representing the Social Democratic Union, has been head of the government since January 2022. He expressed confidence that on May 9 he will lead the new government.

North Macedonia began membership talks with the European Union in 2022. The small Balkan country of 1.8 million people must meet certain criteria to join including changing its constitution to recognize a Bulgarian minority. The issue is highly contentious because of the overlapping histories and cultures of Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

With reporting by AP and dpa

Activists in Iran and abroad have announced plans to go on hunger strike in protest against a rise in the clerical establishment's use of the death penalty, including the execution of a 23-year-old protester who was diagnosed with a mental condition.

The campaign comes after imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi said she and dozens of other female prisoners would go on hunger strike on January 25 following the execution of Mohammad Qobadlou.

Detained during the nationwide "Women, Life, Freedom" protests against the Islamic republic's leadership in 2022, Qobadlou was accused of killing a policeman and was executed on January 23.

The 23-year-old’s execution was condemned by activists and rights groups who noted that he suffered from bipolar disorder and that the Supreme Court had struck down the initial death sentence ruling. Qobadlou is the ninth person to be executed in connection with the 2022 protests.

Amnesty International said Qobadlou's execution marked a "plunge into new realms of cruelty" by the Islamic leadership.

In her statement on social media, Mohammadi said the striking prisoners demanded an “end to executions in Iran.”

Several people, including journalists, lawyers, and former prisoners, have expressed support for the hunger strike and said they would join. Dissident Iran-based artists Toomaj Salehi and Mehdi Yarrahi and political prisoners Bahareh Hedayat and Zeynab Jalalian are among those who said they would go on hunger strike.

Foreign-based activists such as Masih Alinejad and Atena Daemi have also said they would join the strike.

Canada-based critic Hamed Esmaeilion, a former spokesman for the Association of Families of the Victims of the Ukrainian Flight PS752, appealed to the UN's deputy high commissioner for human rights, Nada Al-Nashif, to visit political prisoners in Tehran's Evin Prison during her upcoming trip to the capital.

Joanna Taimasi, the wife of Kurdish prisoner Mohsen Mazloum, said she was joining the strike as well to protest against what she described as the European Union's and the German government’s silence in the face of Iran's continued use of the death penalty.

Some foreign-based Iranian human rights groups have said the Islamic republic executed more than 700 prisoners last year.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said at least 11 prisoners in Iran are at "imminent risk" of execution, most of whom are Kurdish.

In a report released in November, the United Nations said Iran is carrying out executions "at an alarming rate."

Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda

Britain and the United States said they had sanctioned four senior Iranian-backed Huthi officials for their roles in supporting or directing attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Huthi attacks have disrupted global shipping and stoked fears of global inflation. They have also deepened concern that fallout from the war in Gaza could destabilize the Middle East. Those sanctioned were Huthi Defense Minister Muhammad Nasser al-Atifi, Commander of Huthi Naval Forces Muhammad Fadl Abd Al-Nabi, coastal defense forces chief Muhammad Ali al-Qadiri, and Muhammed Ahmad al-Talibi, who the two governments described as the Huthi forces director of procurement.

The U.S. government provided Iran with a “private warning” about a terrorist threat within its borders ahead of a deadly attack earlier this month that killed more than 80 people, a U.S. official said on January 25.

The official said the U.S. government followed a long-standing “duty to warn” policy to warn governments against potential lethal threats.

“We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity in an e-mail to RFE/RL confirming a report earlier by the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report about the warning.

Two explosions on January 3 at a memorial for U.S. of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) General Qasem Soleimani in the southeastern city of Kerman were claimed by Islamic State (IS). The group said two of its members detonated their suicide vests, causing the explosions, which injured more than 280 people.

The Wall Street Journal quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying that the information passed to Iran was “specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely” that it could have helped Tehran to thwart the attack or at least mitigate the death toll.

Officials with Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, the newspaper said.

The incident intensified fears of a widening conflict in the Middle East as Israel continues its war against the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip and as Yemen-based Huthi rebels allied with Iran continue their attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping.

Soleimani was killed in what the U.S. called a "defensive" drone strike while he was traveling in a two-car convoy near Baghdad's international airport on January 3, 2020. He was considered to be one of the most powerful men in Iran and the architect of Tehran's foreign policy in the region at the time.

With reporting by The Wall Street Journal, AFP, and Reuters

A meeting between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto, scheduled for January 29 will be "related to the preparation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's visit to Ukraine," Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told RFE/RL on January 25. Orban "was last in Ukraine in 2010, in a country that we can hardly remember anymore," Stefanishyna said. Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, who is also to attend the meeting between Kuleba and Szijjarto in the Ukrainian town of Uzhhorod, told Interfax on January 22, "We are definitely moving toward a meeting between Zelenskiy and Orban." To read the original story by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here.

Opposition activist Madina Koketaeva has been sentenced to 15 days in jail for attending a peaceful protest in Almaty against the detention of activists who were detained during unrest at the city's airport. Zhanar Balgabaeva, Koketaeva's lawyer, said her client was handed the sentence on January 25. Koketaeva says she was beaten during her arrest -- which coincided with the arrival of President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev on January 24 -- to the point where she needed hospitalization. "They are not going to let me go until Toqaev leaves the city," she told RFE/RL's Radio Azattyk. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.

A billboard with the pictures of "honorary citizens" including Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, tennis player Novak Djokovic, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others, has been taken down in the Serb-majority Kosovo town of Zvecan. Kosovar Internal Affairs Minister Dzeljalj Sveclja and the local self-government minister, Eljbert Krasnici, oversaw the removal, saying there is no place in Kosovo for figures who represent "dictatorship and aggression." Zvecan is near where an attack on Kosovo police occurred in September that left four dead -- a local police sergeant and three of the attackers. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Balkan Service, click here.

The government of NATO member Lithuania has drafted legislation to ban its military personnel from taking non-work-related trips to Russia, Belarus, and China. The Lithuanian Defense Ministry said on January 25 that the list was compiled based on an assessment of risks and threats to national security. The ban also includes transiting the three states, with the exception of their airspace. "[Lithuania's] National Security Strategy states that Russia, Belarus, and China pose a threat to the country's security and to its citizens, including espionage actions against Lithuania by the intelligence and security services of these countries," the draft says. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

A military court in St. Petersburg on January 25 sentenced Darya Trepova to 27 years in prison after finding her guilty of killing prominent pro-Kremlin blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, a fervent proponent of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Prosecutors had asked the Second Western District Military Court for a sentence of 28 years in prison and a fine of 800,000 rubles ($9,000) on charges of terrorism and forgery.

Trepova, who pleaded not guilty to the terrorism charge and entered a guilty plea to the charge of document forgery, was arrested after an explosion in a restaurant in St. Petersburg on April 2 killed Tatarsky, whose real name was Maksim Fomin. The blast also wounded 52 people.

Tatarsky was talking to people who had previously attended a meeting with him when a woman presented him with a box containing a small bust of him that blew up, killing him, according th Russian media reports.

Trepova, 26, admitted giving Tatarsky the box, but said at the trial that she did not know that there was an explosive device inside.

Trepova's co-defendant, Dmitry Kasintsev, in whose apartment Trepova was detained, was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison.

Kasintsev pleaded guilty to the charge of failure to report a crime, but rejected the charge of covering up a crime.

In May, Russia's Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian citizen Yuriy Denisov, saying that he was suspected of organizing the deadly attack.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said at the time that Denisov and Trepova had decided to assassinate Tatarsky. The FSB also tried to link the killing to associates of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

The FSB has not provided any evidence to back the allegations, and Navalny's aides have alleged the authorities were trying to link the anti-corruption crusader to the explosion to lay further criminal charges against him in the future.

A court in Moscow has sentenced Russian nationalist Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov) to four years in prison on a charge of making public calls for extremist activities.

The prosecution last week had sought almost five years in prison for the former leader of Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Girkin has denied the charges.

Girkin, 53, was arrested in July 2023 after strongly criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin in online statements for his handling of the Ukraine invasion. He accused the Kremlin leader of "cowardly mediocrity" and described him as a "nonentity."

He has also called out Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for making "mistakes" in the invasion of Ukraine and accused him and Putin of "incompetence."

Girkin last year even called on Putin to transfer power to "someone truly capable and responsible."

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A former officer of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Girkin has also argued for a total military mobilization to ensure Russian victory in the war against Ukraine.

Girkin was a key commander of Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region in 2014 and helped Russia annex Ukraine's Crimea that year.

In November 2022, a court in the Netherlands sentenced Girkin and two other defendants to life in prison in absentia in the case of the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. All 298 people on board died in the crash.

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MH17 Investigators Close Probe Despite 'Strong Indications' Of Putin's Involvement

In February, international investigators said there were "strong indications" that Putin was personally involved in the incident.

The Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014, amid a conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian armed forces. The victims came from more than a dozen countries, although more than two-thirds of them were Dutch citizens.

Russia has denied any involvement in the downing of the plane.

The Kremlin's war on Ukraine has split Eastern Europe, prompting Moldova and Ukraine to grow closer to the European Union while Georgia has exhibited a "penchant for appeasing Russia," according to a new report.

The report by the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum published on January 24 says Georgia "has flatlined in its overall EU approximation because of serious backsliding in fundamental freedoms, democracy and governance-related indicators, the government’s evident disregard for civil society and its penchant for appeasing Russia, which is at odds with the EU consensus."

While Moldova and Ukraine improved their public administration in 2023, there was a "downwards drift in politically polarized Georgia," the report, called the Eastern Partnership Index, notes.

It adds that Georgia had "lost considerable ground" in terms of democracy and good governance.

Georgia was granted EU candidacy status in December 2023, while Ukraine and Moldova were shown the green light to begin negotiations to join the bloc.

The report notes that Georgia was afforded the status "even though" it had engaged in "anti-Western rhetoric" and attempted, but failed, to pass a controversial "foreign agents" bill in 2023.

Ukraine and Moldova, however, "are steadily making the kinds of systemic changes that Brussels expects them to do to proceed along the accession path."

The report says Georgia's "declining alignment with significant EU statements and its liberal trade policy," including strategic cooperation with China, could become "a critical concern for the EU in the future."

It also notes a "glaring" contradiction between Georgia's stated aspirations to join the bloc and its "reluctance to adhere to the EU's foreign policy consensus."

"While the Georgian government presents its foreign policy as pragmatic, its voting patterns clearly suggest a departure from an EU-style values-based normative approach," the report says.

The report suggests that "eliminating informal governance and oligarchic influences" were among key measures that could help Tbilisi in "realizing rules-based democratic institutions in line with EU membership norms."

This comes as Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party, announced in December 2023 that he was returning to politics as the party's "honorary chairman," a decision he described as "unpleasant."

The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum is an umbrella network of nongovernmental organizations from the region and the European Union. Its mission is to aid civil societies in the planning, monitoring and implementation of the Eastern partnership policy that is aimed at bringing Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine closer to the EU.

Ukraine expects to start construction work on four new nuclear power reactors this summer or autumn, Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Reuters, as the country seeks to compensate for lost energy capacity due to the war with Russia. Two of the units -- which include reactors and related equipment -- will be based on Russian-made equipment that Ukraine wants to import from Bulgaria, while the other two will use Western technology from power equipment maker Westinghouse. All four reactors will be built at the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant in the west of Ukraine, Halushchenko added.

The Investigative Committee of Belarus has launched a "special investigation" of 20 individuals now living outside the country -- including RFE/RL journalist and analyst Yury Drakakhrust -- for providing comments to indepdendent media in Belarus.

The Investigative Committee said on January 25 the 20 were accused of conspiring to seize power and promoting extremism, among other charges.

Most of the those accused in the case are independent political analysts, sociologists, and economists. The list also includes several employees of the office of Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus's opposition leader in exile.

All "took an active part in the development and implementation of the concept of destructive activities aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus, and also contributed to the incitement of social enmity and strife in society," the committee said.

The Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

"There is no particular logic to this list, they just put as many people on this list as possible to intimidate as many people as possible," Hanna Krasulina, Tsikhanouskaya's press secretary and one of those on the list, told RFE/RL's Belarus Service.

Since a disputed 2020 presidential election, authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka has cracked down hard on dissent and civil society, jailing hundreds and forcing most of the country's opposition figures, including Tsikhanouskaya, to flee in fear of their safety and freedom.

While the official results handed Lukashenka victory and his sixth consecutive term in office, the opposition and many Western governments and organizations say the poll was rigged and that Tsikhanouskaya actually won.

Earlier this week, the Vyasna human rights center said that Belarusian authorities had detained more than 70 people recently, highlighting the continued crackdown on dissent.

According to Vyasna, some of those detained were released after they were questioned and their homes searched, while some remained in custody as raids and detentions continued into the evening. In some cases, entire families were detained.

Many of the people detained are either former political prisoners or relatives of individuals who are behind bars on politically motivated charges.

Last week, police in the western region of Brest detained six men on unspecified charges after searching their homes, breaking car windows, and destroying items inside their houses.

The January 25 list of people being investigated includes Ryhor Astapenia, Philip Bikanov, Alyaksandr Dobravolsky, Andrey Kazakevich, Anna Krasulina, Yevhen Kryzhanovsky, Dzianis Kuchynski, Veronika Laputska, Alyaksandr Lagvinets, Anna Lyubakova, Vasil Naumau, Maria Rohova, Pyotr Rudkovsky, Alesia Rudnik, Natalia Rabova, Paval Usau, Tatsyana Chulitskaya, Alyaksandr Shlyk, and Kateryna Shmatina.

According to Vyasna, as of January 23, the number of political prisoners in the country is 1,415.

Ukraine and Russia have contradicted each other over whether there had been proper notification to secure the airspace around an area where a military transport plane Moscow says was carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs crashed, killing them and nine others on board.

Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov told deputies in Moscow on January 25 that Ukrainian military intelligence had been given a 15-minute warning before the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane entered the Belgorod region in Russia, near the border with Ukraine, and that Russia had received confirmation the message was received.

Kartapolov did not provide any evidence to back up his claim and Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov reiterated in comments to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.

Yusov said Ukraine had been using reconnaissance drones in the area and that Russia had launched attack drones. There was "no confirmed information" that Ukraine had hit any targets, he said.

"Unfortunately, we can assume various scenarios, including provocation, as well as the use of Ukrainian prisoners as a human shield for transporting ammunition and weapons for S-300 systems," he told RFE/RL.

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There has been no direct confirmation from Kyiv on Russian claims that the plane had Ukrainian POWs on board or that the aircraft was downed by a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for an international investigation of the incident, and Yusov reiterated that call, as "there are many circumstances that require investigation and maximum study."

The RIA Novosti news agency on January 25 reported that both black boxes had been recovered from the wreckage site in Russia's Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into what it said was a "terrorist attack." The press service of the Investigative Committee said in a news release that preliminary data of the inspection of the scene of the incident, "allow us to conclude that the aircraft was attacked by an antiaircraft missile from the territory of Ukraine."

The Investigative Committee said that "fragmented human remains" were found at the crash site, repeating that six crew members, military police officers, and Ukrainian POWs were on board the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on January 25 called the downing of the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane a "monstrous act," though Moscow has yet to show any evidence that it was downed by a Ukrainian missile, or that there were Ukrainian prisoners on board.

While not saying who shot down the plane, Zelenskiy said that "all clear facts must be established...our state will insist on an international investigation."

Ukrainian officials have said that a prisoner exchange was to have taken place on January 24 and that Russia had not informed Ukraine that Ukrainian POWs would be flown on cargo planes.

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Ukraine Seeks Investigation As Details On Russian Plane Disaster Remain Scarce

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Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have "reliable and comprehensive information" on who was on board the flight but said the Russian POWs it was responsible for "were delivered in time to the conditional exchange point where they were safe."

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's commissioner for human rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that "currently, there are no signs of the fact that there were so many people on the Il-76 plane, be they citizens of Ukraine or not."

Aviation experts told RFE/RL that it was possible a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile downed the plane but added that a Russian antiaircraft could have been responsible.

"During the investigation, you can easily determine which system shot down the plane based on the missiles' damaging elements," said Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian reserve colonel and an aviation-instructor pilot.

When asked about Russian claims of dozens of POWs on board, Svitan said that from the footage released so far, he'd seen no evidence to back up the statements.

"From the footage that was there, I looked through it all, it’s not clear where there are dozens of bodies.... There's not a single body visible at all. At one time I was a military investigator, including investigating disasters; believe me, if there were seven or eight dozen people there, the field would be strewn with corpses and remains of bodies," Svitan added.

Russian officials said the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members, and three escorts.

A list of the six crew members who were supposed to be on the flight was obtained by RFE/RL. The deaths of three of the crew members were confirmed to RFE/RL by their relatives.

Video on social media showed a plane spiraling to the ground, followed by a loud bang and explosion that sent a ball of smoke and flames skyward.