Atajurt, a volunteer group that campaigns for Kazakh victims of oppression in Xinjiang, said Friday it had confirmed that the man, Yerzhanat Abai, has been detained by Kazakh police.

Serikzhan Bilash, who heads the group, said Yerzhanat Abai, a Chinese national, is being held in the Panfilov City Detention Center in Zharkent county, Almaty province, which is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with China.

“He could be secretly escorted to China by Xinjiang’s national security or Kazakhstan’s National Security Bureau at any time, and no one knows his specific situation. Only if this matter is made public to the world will the Kazakh government be unable to repatriate him,” said Serikzhan.

Serikzhan, who lives in exile in the United States, has been a vocal campaigner for the release of fellow ethnic Kazakhs from Chinese camps, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party held an estimated 1.8 million ethnic minority Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims in mass incarceration centers after 2017. Beijing denies the allegations.

“Many young people in Xinjiang are often summoned by the police, or sent to learning centers under various pretexts, saying they are providing employment opportunities. In fact, they are arranged to work in factories in the mainland, most of which are chemical factories that are harmful to health, and the wages are even lower than in Xinjiang,” Serikzhan said.

According to Atajurt, Yerzhanat Abai entered Kazakhstan on March 27 and sought help from the group in the Kazakh city of Almaty four days later. He said he was from Gongliu county, Yili prefecture in Xinjiang, China.

The circumstances of his leaving China and why he was detained in Kazakhstan weren’t immediately clear.

RFA sought comment without success from the Kazakhstan Interior Ministry and the Chinese Consulate General in Almaty.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

The court also ordered the confiscation of Yensebek’s phone and laptop as “material evidence,” required him to cover the costs of expert examinations, and ordered him to pay 78,000 tenge ($150 USD) into the victims’ compensation fund.

“Yensebek’s conviction is a clear example of how Kazakh authorities use such measures to intimidate and silence critical journalists,” said CPJ Chief of Programs Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “We call on the authorities in Kazakhstan not to contest any potential appeal of his conviction and to ensure that journalists in the country can carry out their work without fear of criminal prosecution.”

CPJ was unable to determine whether Yensebek intends to appeal his conviction.

Yensebek has been in pretrial detention since Almaty authorities arrested him on January 17, 2025, and charged him in connection with a since-removed January 2024 Qaznews24 post featuring a two-decade-old song containing offensive lyrics about Russians, Kazakhstan’s largest ethnic minority.

In a country with few independent media outlets, Yensebek has succeeded in using satire to comment on current affairs on social media, regularly publishing spoof news stories critical of authorities.

CPJ emailed Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment but did not receive a response.

Separately, police detained and questioned Kazakh journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov inthe capital, Astana, on April 10. He was held at a police station for several hours, before being released around 10 p.m. Before his detention, Akhmedyarov published a video report on Kazakh citizens in Russia allegedly coerced into signing contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense. He is now a witness in a criminal case involving charges of disseminating false information.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The incitement charges against Temirlan Yensebek raise concerns that he’s being targeted for his biting political satire,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities should release Yensebek, drop the charges against him, and free journalists Ruslan Biketov and Asem Zhapisheva, who were detained for protesting Yensebek’s arrest.”

Police in the southern city of Almaty arrested Yensebek on January 17. He was charged over a January 2024 Qaznews24 post, which has since been taken down, featuring a two-decade-old song with offensive lyrics about Russians, Kazakhstan’s largest ethnic minority. Authorities have since ordered the song be removed from social media.  

Yensebek’s lawyer, Zhanara Balgabayeva, told CPJ that the charges were inappropriate and “merely a pretext” to jail Yensebek. She said the post was clearly marked as satirical and Yensebek did not author or perform the song, which was not banned.

Balgabayeva’s view was echoed by journalists and activists who described it as a retaliatory response to a January 3 Qaznews24 post mocking Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.  

In a country with few independent media outlets, Yensebek has succeeded in using satire to comment on current affairs. With social media, he regularly publishes spoof news stories that criticize authorities.

Qaznews24’s political commentary has attracted more than 67,000 followers since its launch in 2021 — and the ire of authorities who swiftly arrested Yensebek on false information charges. The case was later dropped on the grounds that satire should not be prosecuted as false information.

On January 19 and 20, police detained independent journalists Biketov, of the online outlet Kursiv, and Zhapisheva, for separately protesting Yensebek’s arrest. They were sentenced to 15 days’ administrative detention for alleged violation of Kazakhstan’s strict public protest laws.

Almaty police did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment via email but were quoted as saying Yensebek was detained for publishing material “containing clear signs of incitement of ethnic hatred.”

(Editor’s note: The fourth paragraph of this alert has been updated to correct a typo.)

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“The incitement charges against Temirlan Yensebek raise concerns that he’s being targeted for his biting political satire,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities should release Yensebek, drop the charges against him, and free journalists Ruslan Biketov and Asem Zhapisheva, who were detained for protesting Yensebek’s arrest.”

Police in the southern city of Almaty arrested Yensebek on January 17. He was charged over a January 2024 Qaznews24 post, which has since been taken down, featuring a two-decade-old song with offensive lyrics about Russians, Kazakhstan’s largest ethnic minority. Authorities have since ordered the song be removed from social media.  

Yensebek’s lawyer, Zhanara Balgabayeva, told CPJ that the charges were inappropriate and “merely a pretext” to jail Yensebek. She said the post was clearly marked as satirical and Yensebek did not author or perform the song, which was not banned.

Balgabayeva’s view was echoed by journalists and activists who described it as a retaliatory response to a January 3 Qaznews24 post mocking Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.  

In a country with few independent media outlets, Yensebek has succeeded in using satire to comment on current affairs. With social media, he regularly publishes spoof news stories that criticize authorities.

Qaznews24’s political commentary has attracted more than 67,000 followers since its launch in 2021 — and the ire of authorities who swiftly arrested Yensebek on false information charges. The case was later dropped on the grounds that satire should not be prosecuted as false information.

On January 19 and 20, police detained independent journalists Biketov, of the online outlet Kursiv, and Zhapisheva, for separately protesting Yensebek’s arrest. They were sentenced to 15 days’ administrative detention for alleged violation of Kazakhstan’s strict public protest laws.

Almaty police did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment via email but were quoted as saying Yensebek was detained for publishing material “containing clear signs of incitement of ethnic hatred.”

(Editor’s note: The fourth paragraph of this alert has been updated to correct a typo.)

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Chinese police arrested Domalin and Koben in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, in April, according to the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA). The arrests were first reported by Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, a human rights organization based in Kazakhstan’s biggest city, Almaty, in June.

They both worked as Kazakh-language television journalists for the local state-run television network Xinjiang Television in Urumqi.  

CPJ was unable to confirm what, if any, charges the pair face or other details about their arrest. According to RFA, Koben’s arrest may be linked to his work on a historic building in Xinjiang that the government has intentionally neglected.

“Chinese authorities must free Kazakh journalists Kairat Domalin and Kuandyk Koben,” said Iris Hsu, CPJ’s China representative. “It’s time for China to cease its campaign of harassing and arbitrarily detaining press members of the Muslim ethnic minorities and release all imprisoned journalists.”

Domalin was a TV presenter for the program “Zholaushy” (Traveler) on Xinjiang Television network, and Koben produced, directed, and presented Kazakh-language documentaries and more than 20 award-winning television programs.

CPJ’s call to the Public Security Department of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region went unanswered. 

Serikzhan Bilash, founder of Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, told CPJ that Koben’s brother asked the organization to remove a May 10 YouTube video asking for information from the public about Koben’s arrest, fearing that the video would “complicate” Koben’s detainment. 

According to the RFA report, “several” Kazakh journalists for the state-owned newspaper Xinjiang Daily, along with a few Kazakh editors from different magazines, were also arrested. CPJ could not independently verify these arrests.

China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ’s latest annual prison census, with at least 44 behind bars as of December 1, 2023. Many journalists held were ethnic Uyghurs from Xinjiang.

Human rights groups, the United Nations, and foreign governments have accused Chinese authorities of crimes against humanity and genocide in the Xinjiang region as authorities harshly repress the region’s Muslim ethnic groups.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the "courage" to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the "white flag."

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying -- without mentioning the pope -- that "the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you."

Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the 'white flag,' we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century."

Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn't verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: "I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

"The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it 'negotiations,'" Kuleba said.

"Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags," added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his "constant prayers for peace" and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his "peace formula" are reached.

Ukraine's terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country's 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to "call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations," but did not mean capitulation.

"The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations," Bruni said.

"Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: 'Negotiations are never capitulations,'" Bruni added.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was "wounded but unconquered."

"Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread," Shevchuk said at St. George's Church in New York.

Andriy Yurash, Ukraine's ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that "you don't negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals," referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. "No one tried to put Hitler at ease."

Ukraine's regional allies also expressed anger about the pope's remarks.

"How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: "My Sunday morning conclusion: You can't capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders."

Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote "Russia...can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

At the same time, Kyiv denied Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's claim that Russian forces had captured the Ukrainian bridgehead at Krynka.

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"There were at least three strikes on the concentration of Russian troops at the training ground near Novaya Kakhovka," Nataliya Humenyuk, spokeswoman of the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine, told RFE/RL on February 22.

"The Russian military was preparing to storm Krynka, which they claimed they had already been captured.... According to preliminary data, commanders of the Dnieper group [of Russian forces] were also there. The information is still being checked," Humenyuk said.

In a separate statement made to Suspilne, Humenyuk said at least 60 Russian soldiers were killed in the attack.

Russia has not commented on the strike, which was first reported by both the Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState and Russian pro-war bloggers that it resulted in heavy losses. A video of the purported attack consisting of three strikes was also published on Telegram channels.

However, the information could not be independently verified.

At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 20, Shoigu said Krynka "has been cleared," but Ukraine's military said his statement was "a falsification of the facts."

Ukrainian forces in November 2022 liberated Kherson city and the rest of the region on the right bank of the Dnieper forcing Russian troops across the river. Last year, Kyiv's troops managed to also establish a small bridgehead on the Dnieper's left bank, which has come under constant Russian attacks.

The purported Ukrainian strike on Russian forces in Kherson was the second in as many days in which a large number of Russian troops were reportedly killed.

On February 21, BBC Russian reported that a Ukrainian strike on a training ground in Moscow-occupied Donetsk had killed at least 60 Russian troops.

According to the report, Russian soldiers from the 36th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade had been lined up and were waiting for the arrival of Major General Oleg Moiseyev, commander of the 29th Russian Army, when the strike occurred on February 20.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has commented on the report. Pro-Russian social media outlets posted videos and photos purportedly showing dozens of uniformed dead bodies, accusing Moiseyev of making soldiers stand in line waiting for his arrival when they were hit.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on February 22 that since launching the invasion two year ago, Russia has launched more than 8,000 missiles and 4,630 drones -- of which 3,605 have been shot down -- at targets inside Ukraine.

In Moscow, former President Dmitry Medvedev boasted that after Ukrainian forces last week withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiyivka following a monthslong bloody battle, Russian troops would keep advancing deeper into Ukraine.

With the war nearing its two-year mark amid Ukrainian shortages of manpower, more advanced weapons, and ammunition, Medvedev signaled Moscow could again try and seize the capital after being pushed back decisively from the outskirts of Kyiv during the initial days of the invasion in February 2022.

"Where should we stop? I don't know," Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said in an interview with Russian media.

"Will it be Kyiv? Yes, it probably should be Kyiv. If not now, then after some time, maybe in some other phase of the development of this conflict," he said.

Medvedev was once considered a reformer in Russia, serving as president to allow Vladimir Putin to be prime minister for four years to abide by term limits before returning to the presidency for a third time in 2012.

But the 56-year-old former lawyer has become known more recently for his caustic articles, social media posts, and remarks that echo the outlandish kind of historical revisionism that Putin has used to vilify the West and underpin the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has died while in prison, according to a statement from the local department of the Federal Penitentiary Service, triggering outrage and condemnation from world leaders who said the Kremlin critic paid the "ultimate price" for his courage to speak out against the country's leadership.

"On February 16, 2024, in penal colony No. 3, convict Aleksei Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness. The medical staff of the institution arrived immediately, and an ambulance team was called," the statement said.

"All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not yield positive results. Doctors from the ambulance declared the convict dead. The causes of death are being established."

Russian state-controlled media also quoted the statement as saying Navalny, 47, had died.

There was no immediate confirmation of Navalny’s death from his team. According to Russian law, family must be notified within 24 hours if a prisoner dies.

"I don't know if we should believe the terrible news, the news we get only from official media because for many years we have been in the situation where we cannot believe Putin and his government as they are lying constantly," his wife, Yulia, said in a brief statement from Germany where she was attending the Munich Security Conference.

"But if it is the truth, Putin and all his staff and everyone around him need to know that they will be punished for what they have done with our patriot, with my family, and with my husband. They will be brought to justice and this day will come soon," she added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying President Vladimir Putin had been informed of the report of Navalny's death but that he has no official information on the cause of death.

"It's very complicated to confirm the news that comes from a country like Russia," Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte also told RFE/RL as she attended the Munich Security Conference. "But, if you asked me whether I would be surprised if that's true, of course I would not, unfortunately, because we know that the regime in the Kremlin is an assassin regime, basically, who would go after their enemies as they understand it, after people with different opinions on the development of Russia and their relations to the rest of the world."

A day earlier, Navalny did not appear to have any health issues when speaking by video link to a court hearing.

Navalny spokeswoman Kyra Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter, that "we don't have any confirmation of [his death] yet." She added that Navalny's lawyer is now flying to the prison.

"Most likely it is true. Navalny was murdered," said Ivan Zhdanov, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It is a political murder which will for sure be investigated."

As the reports reverberated around the country and around the world, some people laid flowers at the buildings where Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was headquartered before the government shut it down after labeling the organization "extremist."

Others gathered in front of Russian embassies in countries such as Georgia and Armenia, while vigils were being planned in many cities across Europe.

"If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember we are an enormous power that is being oppressed by these bad people. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive," Navalny said at the end of the Oscar-winning documentary that carried his name.

U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told NPR in an interview just after the news broke that, if confirmed, Navalny's death would be a "terrible tragedy."

"The Russian government's long and sordid history of doing harm to its opponents raises real and obvious questions here.... We are actively seeking confirmation," he added.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny "paid for his courage with his life," while French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said in a post on X that the Kremlin critic's "death in a penal colony reminds us of the reality of Vladimir Putin's regime."

European Council President Charles Michel said Navalny had made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for the "values of freedom and democracy."

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told RFE/RL that Navalny's only crime was to root out "the corruption [and] the thievery of the current Russian elite" and to have a dream of a better Russia that abides by the rule of law, lives in peace with its neighbors, and invests in its people.

"That proved to be an unforgivable crime," Sikorski said, speaking with RFE/RL at the Munich Security Conference. He said the Russian state was responsible for Navalny's life and welfare "and therefore his death is the legal responsibility of the Russian state."

Navalny, who last month marked the third anniversary of his incarceration on charges widely believed to be politically motivated, nearly died from a poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent in 2020, which he blamed on Russian security operatives acting at the behest of Putin.

The man who once blasted Putin as "corrupt, cynical" in an interview with RFE/RL was detained on January 17, 2021, at a Moscow airport upon his arrival from Germany, where he was treated for the poisoning.

He was then handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during his convalescence abroad. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Navalny's poisoning.

In March 2022, Navalny was handed a nine-year prison term on charges of contempt and embezzlement through fraud that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.

Later, Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and his network of regional offices were designated "extremist" organizations and banned after his arrest, which led to another probe against him on extremism charges.

In August last year, a court extended Navalny's prison term to 19 years and sent him to a harsher "special regime" facility from the maximum-security prison where he was held.

Last month, Navalny was transferred to Polar Wolf, which is a "special regime" prison in Russia's Arctic region.

Navalny's death, if confirmed, comes as Putin, who publicly has long refused to actually say Navalny's name, runs for another term facing no real opposition as those who were expected to be his main challengers -- including Navalny -- currently are either incarcerated or have fled the country, fearing for their safety.

Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Kremlin and are neither free nor fair but are viewed by the government as necessary to convey a sense of legitimacy.

They are mangled by the exclusion of opposition candidates, voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and other means of manipulation.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin's tight grip on politics, media, law enforcement, and other levers means Putin, who has ruled Russia as president or prime minister since 1999, is certain to win, barring a very big, unexpected development.

Navalny married his wife, Yulia, in 2000. The couple has a son and a daughter.

With reporting by Rikard Jozwiak and Vazha Tavberidze in Munich

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the House of Representatives to quickly pass a bill that would provide billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, challenging Republicans lawmakers to take a stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin and vote in favor of the spending package.

Biden urged immediate passage of the bill in comments at the White House on February 13 after House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) sharply criticized the $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other countries, casting serious doubts on its future just hours after it passed the Senate.

"I urge speaker Johnson to bring it to the floor immediately, immediately," Biden said, adding that it is "critical" for Ukraine.

Johnson said in a statement late on February 12 that the bill was “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" -- border security provisions that Republicans had insisted be included in the bill, casting doubt on its chances of passing the House.

Biden didn't mention border security in his comments from the White House but reminded Republicans that the United States "stands up for freedom" and stands strong for its allies.

"We never bow down to anyone, certainly not to Vladimir Putin, so let's get on with this," Biden said. "We can't walk away now. That's what Putin is betting on."

Biden, a Democrat, warned Republicans in the House who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable that "history is watching" and a failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment "will never be forgotten."

He also criticized recent comments by former President Donald Trump about NATO as "dangerous" and "shockingly un-American."

Biden reiterated Trump's claim that he told NATO allies that if they didn't spent enough on defense, he would encourage Russians to "do whatever the hell they want."

"Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that?" Biden asked. "No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I never will," he added.

He accused Trump, the current front-runner in the race to become the Republican party's presidential nominee, of looking at NATO as if it were a "burden" and failing to see an alliance that "protects America and the world." To Trump it is a "protection racket," and he doesn’t understand that NATO is built on the fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty, he said.

The U.S. president also stressed that the bill also provides funding for other U.S. national-security priorities in the Middle East, where the U.S. military has launched numerous attacks against militias backed by Iran, and money to help defend Israel in its fight against Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU.

It also provides funding to support U.S. national-security goals in Asia, Biden said, saying this is the "responsibility of a great nation."

In Kyiv, Ihor Zhovkva, deputy director of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office, told RFE/RL that the bill's passage by the Senate was "a very serious signal," and a "strong decision" was expected from the House of Representatives.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 70-29, and Zhovkva said the approval of 70 senators will make it difficult to find reasons for not voting for the bill.

"We have every reason to hope that the corresponding strong decision will be approved in the House of Representatives," Zhovkva noted.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the House of Representatives to quickly pass a bill that would provide billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, challenging Republicans lawmakers to take a stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin and vote in favor of the spending package.

Biden urged immediate passage of the bill in comments at the White House on February 13 after House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) sharply criticized the $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other countries, casting serious doubts on its future just hours after it passed the Senate.

"I urge speaker Johnson to bring it to the floor immediately, immediately," Biden said, adding that it is "critical" for Ukraine.

Johnson said in a statement late on February 12 that the bill was “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country" -- border security provisions that Republicans had insisted be included in the bill, casting doubt on its chances of passing the House.

Biden didn't mention border security in his comments from the White House but reminded Republicans that the United States "stands up for freedom" and stands strong for its allies.

"We never bow down to anyone, certainly not to Vladimir Putin, so let's get on with this," Biden said. "We can't walk away now. That's what Putin is betting on."

Biden, a Democrat, warned Republicans in the House who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable that "history is watching" and a failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment "will never be forgotten."

He also criticized recent comments by former President Donald Trump about NATO as "dangerous" and "shockingly un-American."

Biden reiterated Trump's claim that he told NATO allies that if they didn't spent enough on defense, he would encourage Russians to "do whatever the hell they want."

"Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that?" Biden asked. "No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I never will," he added.

He accused Trump, the current front-runner in the race to become the Republican party's presidential nominee, of looking at NATO as if it were a "burden" and failing to see an alliance that "protects America and the world." To Trump it is a "protection racket," and he doesn’t understand that NATO is built on the fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty, he said.

The U.S. president also stressed that the bill also provides funding for other U.S. national-security priorities in the Middle East, where the U.S. military has launched numerous attacks against militias backed by Iran, and money to help defend Israel in its fight against Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU.

It also provides funding to support U.S. national-security goals in Asia, Biden said, saying this is the "responsibility of a great nation."

In Kyiv, Ihor Zhovkva, deputy director of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office, told RFE/RL that the bill's passage by the Senate was "a very serious signal," and a "strong decision" was expected from the House of Representatives.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 70-29, and Zhovkva said the approval of 70 senators will make it difficult to find reasons for not voting for the bill.

"We have every reason to hope that the corresponding strong decision will be approved in the House of Representatives," Zhovkva noted.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

BAKU -- The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has slammed Azerbaijan's snap presidential election for being held in a "restrictive environment" and lacking genuine pluralism with incumbent strongman Ilham Aliyev on the verge of a landslide victory that will hand him a fifth consecutive term as president.

Aliyev, who called the early election following Baku's swift and decisive victory over ethnic Armenian separatists in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, faced no opposition amid a crackdown on independent media and the absence of any real contender.

The Central Election Commission said early on February 8 that with just over 93 percent of the ballots counted, Aliyev HAD garnered 92.05 percent of the votes. Election officials reported turnout of more than 76 percent of eligible voters.

"While six other candidates participated in the campaign, none of them convincingly challenged the incumbent president’s policies in their campaigns, leaving voters without any genuine alternative," the OSCE observer mission said in a statement issued on February 8.

"While preparations for the election were efficient and professional, it lacked genuine pluralism and critical voices were continuously stifled.... The campaign remained low-key throughout, lacked any meaningful public engagement, and was not competitive," the OSCE observer mission said.

According to the Central Election Commission, Zahid Oruj placed far behind in the vote with just 2.19 percent, while Fazil Mustafa came third with 2 percent. None of the other four ersatz candidates received more than 2 percent.

Musavat and the People’s Front of Azerbaijan (APFP), the two parties in Azerbaijan that offer genuine opposition to Aliyev -- who has exercised authoritarian control over the country since assuming power from his father, Heydar, in 2003 -- boycotted the race.

The APFP on February 8 announced that it does not recognize the results of the election.

"There was no real election as the polls were held without competition, freedoms were completely restricted, [the voting took place] in an environment of fear, threats, and administrative terror, and the declared results are not an expression of the will of the people and are illegitimate," the APFP said in a statement.

A presidential election had not been scheduled to take place until 2025, but Aliyev, bolstered by Baku's recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh, announced the early vote in December to take advantage of the battlefield victory.

Irregularities were reported as the vote took place. Observers "noted significant shortcomings, mainly due to issues of secrecy of the vote, a lack of safeguards against multiple voting, indications of ballot box stuffing, and seemingly identical signatures on the voter lists," the OSCE said.

RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service also collected reports of alleged irregularities, including so-called carousel voting, where individuals are transported to multiple polling stations to vote more than once and ballot tampering.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Aliyev in a phone call on February 8, according to a statement on the Azerbaijani president's website.

"The heads of state reaffirmed their confidence that allied and strategic partnership relations would continue to develop across various fields and discussed the prospects for cooperation," the statement said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also congratulated Aliyev in a message on X, formerly Twitter.

"Congratulations to President Ilham Aliyev on his reelection," Zelenskiy wrote, adding, "I value mutual support for our states' sovereignty and territorial integrity."

While Aliyev has voiced support for Ukraine's territorial integrity, Azerbaijan has maintained close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv.

The 62-year-old Aliyev has stayed in power through a series of elections marred by irregularities and accusations of fraud. Under his authoritarian rule, political activity and human rights have been stifled.

He called the snap election just months after Azerbaijani forces retook Nagorno-Karabakh region in a blitz offensive in September from ethnic Armenian forces who had controlled it for three decades. The offensive forced more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee the region, leaving it nearly deserted.

As Aliyev's popularity shot up dramatically following Azerbaijan's victory in Karabakh, a crackdown on independent media and democratic institutions intensified in the country.

Several independent Azerbaijani journalists were incarcerated after Baku took over Karabakh on various charges that the journalists and their supporters have called trumped up and politically motivated.

"Highly restrictive media legislation as well as recent arrests of critical journalists have hindered the media from operating freely and led to widespread self-censorship, limiting the scope for independent journalism and critical debate," the OSCE statement noted.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

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The latest round of Russian strikes came as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and the head of the UN's atomic agency, Rafael Grossi, were in Ukraine, with the latter visiting the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant to assess the situation amid concerns about the plant's safety.

In Kyiv, debris from a downed Russian missile fell on an 18-story residential block in the southern Holosiyivskiy district, triggering a fire that killed at least four people, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Sixteen people were injured in Holosiyivskiy and in the eastern district of Dnipro in the capital, Klymenko said. Rescue crews continue to work at the sites, he added.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said at least 38 people were wounded in the capital.

Fragments of a downed Russian missile also damaged electricity lines, leaving part of the Ukrainian capital without power and heating.

"Some consumers on the left bank [of the Dnieper River] are currently without electricity," Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram. "The heating supply main on the left bank was damaged."

"Another massive Russian air attack against our country," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on X, formerly Twitter, as an air-raid alert was declared for all of Ukraine. "Six regions came under enemy fire. All of our services are currently working to eliminate the consequences of this terror," Zelenskiy wrote.

In the southern city of Mykolayiv, one mad died following a Russian strike, Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said. Russian missiles also hit the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, wounding two people, regional officials said.

Parts of the Ukrainian capital were left without power and heating following a deadly Russian missile attack that struck in the early morning hours of February 7, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 64 drones and missiles at Ukraine's territory. The Ukrainian air defense shot down 29 missiles and 15 drones, it said.

Borrell, in Kyiv on a two-day visit to highlight the bloc's support for Ukraine, posted a picture on X from a shelter.

"Starting my morning in the shelter as air raid alarms are sounding across Kyiv," Borrell wrote. "This is the daily reality of the brave Ukrainian people, since Russia launched its illegal aggression."

Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meanwhile, arrived at Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhya -- Europe's largest nuclear power plant -- accompanied by IAEA mission staff and Russian soldiers, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Grossi on February 6 held talks in Kyiv with Zelenskiy, Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko and other Ukrainian officials.

Russia occupied the plant shortly after it launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and its six nuclear reactors are now idled.

The UN nuclear watchdog has voiced concern many times over the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe at the plant amid fighting in the area.

Zelenskiy said he told Grossi during their meeting that the Russian occupation of the plant must end.

"This is the main prerequisite for the restoration of radiation safety for our entire region," Zelenskiy said in his evening video address.

Grossi said the IAEA has had a monitoring team at the plant since September 2022, but its experts have not been able to inspect every part of the power station.

At times "we weren't granted the access that we were requesting for certain areas of the facility," Grossi said at a press conference in Kyiv.

One of the problems is the situation with the nuclear fuel, which has been inside the reactors for years and is reaching the end of its useful life.

Grossi also said he was worried about the operational safety of the plant amid personnel cuts after Moscow denied access to employees of Ukraine’s Enerhoatom.

Halushchenko said the Russian occupants were preventing hundreds of qualified workers from entering the plant.

"We're talking about 400 people who are highly skilled and, most importantly, licensed. You can't just take them away," Halushchenko told a joint news conference with Grossi.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

"I have the great honor to be here today, to reward you, because you have such a difficult and decisive mission on your shoulders, to repel the enemy and win this war," Zelenskiy told soldiers on February 4 following his visit to Robotyne, a southern village in the Zaporizhzhya region that was one of the few successes by Ukrainian forces during last year’s counteroffensive.

The presidential office released video of Zelenskiy handing out medals to troops of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which led the advance on Robotyne, a village with a prewar population of about 450 people.

While there, Zelenskiy appointed Ivan Federov -- mayor of now-occupied Melitopol who was once abducted by Russia -- as head of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.

Fedorov was abducted in March 2022 when he refused to cooperate with Russians troops, triggering local protests and calls by Zelenskiy for his immediate release. He was released five days later.

Zelenskiy faces a growing political storm amid reports he is poised to push out the country’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy.

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Polls show that Zaluzhniy is as popular, if not more so, than Zelenskiy, and some experts fear that, were Zelenskiy to oust Zaluzhniy, it would demoralize some of Ukraine's troops and undermine national unity.

There has been no official word from Zelenskiy’s office about his intentions in regard to Zaluzhniy’s position, although numerous media reports have said the president has informed his U.S. allies of an impending move.

In remarks to Italian TV late on February 4, Zelenskiy said, without being specific, that he is considering “replacing a number of state leaders," not only in the military.

"It is a question of the people who are to lead Ukraine," he told told RAI television when asked about reports that he is about to fire Zaluzhniy.

"A reset is necessary. I am talking about a replacement of a number of state leaders, not only in the army sector. I am reflecting on this replacement. It's a question for the entire leadership of the country."

"I have in mind something serious that does not concern a single person but the direction of the country's leadership."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the search-and-rescue operation at the site of a deadly building attack in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk has been completed.

Rescuers early on February 4 recovered more bodies from the rubble of the building in eastern Ukraine that was hit by apparent artillery fire, bringing the death toll to 28.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said in a post to Telegram that a child was among the bodies recovered from the rubble of the building, which it said housed a bakery and a restaurant. Another 10 people were rescued.

Moscow-imposed officials in the Luhansk region, which is nearly entirely controlled by Russia, initially blamed a Ukrainian drone strike for the attack, but later shifted explanations, asserting it was actually Ukrainian artillery. The claim could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian officials have made no comment on the incident.

Russia took control of Lysychansk in July 2022 after months of fierce fighting.

Nearly two years into Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine, the battlefield along the nearly 1,200-kilometer front line stretching from northeast Ukraine to the south-central region of Kherson has largely frozen. After an unsuccessful counteroffensive last fall, Ukrainian troops have turned to rebuilding their forces, and shoring up defenses.

Russia, for its part, has continued to push forward in several, localized offensives: near Kupyansk in the north, and around the industrial city of Avdiyivka, to the south.

Both sides have also launched longer-range attacks this winter, using long-distance precision artillery, drones, and air-launched cruise missiles.

Ukraine has increasingly used its drone arsenal to target industrial sites within Russia itself. On February 3, an apparent Ukrainian drone strike hit one of the largest oil refineries in Volgograd, about 400 kilometers east of the Ukrainian border.

Firefighters put out the blaze after several hours, and it was unclear the extent of the damage at the refinery, which is owned by Lukoil, and is one of the largest in Russia. It produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, and fuel for ships.

In Ukraine’s Sumy region, the military administration there said Russian forces had shelled the region in 16 separate attacks the previous day.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian and Ukrainian services, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

"I have the great honor to be here today, to reward you, because you have such a difficult and decisive mission on your shoulders, to repel the enemy and win this war," Zelenskiy told soldiers on February 4 following his visit to Robotyne, a southern village in the Zaporizhzhya region that was one of the few successes by Ukrainian forces during last year’s counteroffensive.

The presidential office released video of Zelenskiy handing out medals to troops of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which led the advance on Robotyne, a village with a prewar population of about 450 people.

While there, Zelenskiy appointed Ivan Federov -- mayor of now-occupied Melitopol who was once abducted by Russia -- as head of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.

Fedorov was abducted in March 2022 when he refused to cooperate with Russians troops, triggering local protests and calls by Zelenskiy for his immediate release. He was released five days later.

Zelenskiy faces a growing political storm amid reports he is poised to push out the country’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Polls show that Zaluzhniy is as popular, if not more so, than Zelenskiy, and some experts fear that, were Zelenskiy to oust Zaluzhniy, it would demoralize some of Ukraine's troops and undermine national unity.

There has been no official word from Zelenskiy’s office about his intentions in regard to Zaluzhniy’s position, although numerous media reports have said the president has informed his U.S. allies of an impending move.

In remarks to Italian TV late on February 4, Zelenskiy said, without being specific, that he is considering “replacing a number of state leaders," not only in the military.

"It is a question of the people who are to lead Ukraine," he told told RAI television when asked about reports that he is about to fire Zaluzhniy.

"A reset is necessary. I am talking about a replacement of a number of state leaders, not only in the army sector. I am reflecting on this replacement. It's a question for the entire leadership of the country."

"I have in mind something serious that does not concern a single person but the direction of the country's leadership."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the search-and-rescue operation at the site of a deadly building attack in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk has been completed.

Rescuers early on February 4 recovered more bodies from the rubble of the building in eastern Ukraine that was hit by apparent artillery fire, bringing the death toll to 28.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said in a post to Telegram that a child was among the bodies recovered from the rubble of the building, which it said housed a bakery and a restaurant. Another 10 people were rescued.

Moscow-imposed officials in the Luhansk region, which is nearly entirely controlled by Russia, initially blamed a Ukrainian drone strike for the attack, but later shifted explanations, asserting it was actually Ukrainian artillery. The claim could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian officials have made no comment on the incident.

Russia took control of Lysychansk in July 2022 after months of fierce fighting.

Nearly two years into Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine, the battlefield along the nearly 1,200-kilometer front line stretching from northeast Ukraine to the south-central region of Kherson has largely frozen. After an unsuccessful counteroffensive last fall, Ukrainian troops have turned to rebuilding their forces, and shoring up defenses.

Russia, for its part, has continued to push forward in several, localized offensives: near Kupyansk in the north, and around the industrial city of Avdiyivka, to the south.

Both sides have also launched longer-range attacks this winter, using long-distance precision artillery, drones, and air-launched cruise missiles.

Ukraine has increasingly used its drone arsenal to target industrial sites within Russia itself. On February 3, an apparent Ukrainian drone strike hit one of the largest oil refineries in Volgograd, about 400 kilometers east of the Ukrainian border.

Firefighters put out the blaze after several hours, and it was unclear the extent of the damage at the refinery, which is owned by Lukoil, and is one of the largest in Russia. It produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, and fuel for ships.

In Ukraine’s Sumy region, the military administration there said Russian forces had shelled the region in 16 separate attacks the previous day.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian and Ukrainian services, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Cyberattacks by unidentified perpetrators have targeted at least nine independent media outlets and multiple journalists in Kazakhstan since November 2023, according to data shared with CPJ by local press freedom group Adil Soz, which issued a statement on the attacks January 19, 2024, and several of the journalists, who spoke to CPJ.

The attacks, which have targeted well-known independent media including news agency KazTAG, and popular social media-based outlets like AIRAN and Obozhayu, included distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and blocking of outlets’ social media accounts through orchestrated mass complaints, causing media to lose access to their audiences and incurring heavy financial costs, those journalists told CPJ.

The latest wave follows a previous series of cyberattacks and physical attacks on independent journalists in Kazakhstan in late 2022 and early 2023. In March, authorities arrested and later convicted five people in connection with those incidents, including one who admitted to ordering the attacks. Despite those convictions, Karla Jamankulova, head of Adil Soz, told CPJ that cyberattacks against the independent press have continued throughout 2023 and intensified since November.

“Kazakhstan’s continuing epidemic of cyberattacks on the press poses a threat not just to the individual outlets targeted but has become a systemic threat to the country’s media and demands a concomitant response,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities in Kazakhstan must conduct a swift and thorough investigation into these attacks and hold all those responsible to account.”

According to data from Adil Soz, the organization recorded 56 incidents of cyberattacks on media outlets and journalists in 2023, up from 37 in 2022. Of those cyberattacks, 36 were against the websites and social media pages of media outlets, and 20 of them targeted the social media accounts of individual journalists.

Since November, DDoS attacks have targeted the websites of at least four independent media – KazTAG, independent news outlet Nege.kz, and business news outlets Kursiv.Media and inbusiness.kz, causing them to be inaccessible for short periods or load slowly, according to reports and Adil Soz. 

A January 5 statement by KazTAG said that the outlet closed access to its website from outside of Kazakhstan to fight the DDoS attacks, but the attacks later resumed from IP addresses located in the building of majority state-owned telecommunications company Kazakhtelecom. Kazakhtelecom denied involvement.

Over the same period, social media accounts or websites of at least four independent media – Kursiv.Media, and social media-based outlets AIRAN, ProTenge, Shishkin_like, and Obozhayu – were blocked by orchestrated mass complaints or by fake accounts posting banned content that triggered social media companies’ automated blocking systems, according to Adil Soz and several of the outlets, who told CPJ that it can take a long time, or prove impossible, to restore the blocked accounts. Kursiv.Media chief editor Mira Khalina told CPJ the outlet ’s Instagram accounts were blocked for over six weeks and that replacement accounts set up by the outlet remain blocked. Dmitry Shishkin, founder of Shishkin_like, told CPJ the outlet was unable to restore an Instagram account wrongly blocked in April 2023.

Askhat Niyazov, founder of Obozhayu, which covers the work of local authorities, told CPJ that in addition to blocking the outlet’s Telegram channel by flooding it with banned violent and pornographic content, perpetrators hacked or blocked the Instagram and WhatsApp accounts of Niyazov, two of the outlet’s journalists, and Niyazov’s parents and wife. Around 4,000 fake accounts left the comment “R.I.P.” under one of the outlet’s YouTube videos.

Mikhail Kozachkov, author of the popular Telegram channel Kozachkov offside, told CPJ that the channel has removed around 750,000 fake accounts posting banned or offensive content since October 2023. In November, dozens of fake Telegram accounts under Kozachkov’s name spread calls for interethnic violence, which is subject to heavy penalties under Kazakh law.

Jamankulova of Adil Soz told CPJ the ongoing attacks are having a “huge impact” on the functioning of independent Kazakh media, which often struggle financially and are forced to divert significant resources to deal with the cyberattacks. Khalina told CPJ that the attacks have cost Kursiv.Media over 19 million tenge (US$42,300) in redirected resources, lost advertising revenue, and other costs.

In January, six of the outlets filed a police complaint over the attacks but are still waiting for police to respond, Khalina said. She described the attacks as an attempt to “disable” independent journalism.

Maricheva of ProTenge told CPJ that while it remains unclear who might be behind the attacks, which usually cost tens of thousands of dollars, they require resources typically available only to wealthy business interests and those with access to state resources.

In November, a closed-doors court in the southern city of Almaty convicted Arkady Klebanov, the son of a former member of the Kazakh elite, of ordering attacks on journalists in late 2022 and early 2023, but declared him insane and ordered him to undergo psychiatric treatment. Several of the journalists targeted by those attacks have expressed skepticism that Klebanov was the real instigator of those attacks.

CPJ emailed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan for comment but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“RFE/RL’s Kazakh service is well known for its hard-hitting and dependable reporting. The mass denial of accreditation to the outlet’s journalists by authorities on such contrived grounds is deeply concerning and seriously undermines President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s stated commitment to freedom of the press,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Kazakh authorities should swiftly issue Radio Azattyq’s correspondents with accreditation and allow the outlet to work freely and without obstruction.”

On January 30, Radio Azattyq filed an appeal against a decision by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deny accreditation to 36 of the outlet’s correspondents, according to a report by the outlet. Radio Azattyq reported that the ministry notified them of the mass rejection on January 3 this year, and that some of the correspondents have been waiting for accreditation since 2022. Some of the journalists were seeking renewal of accreditation; some were applying for the first time. CPJ was unable to confirm an exact breakdown of accreditation application statuses.

The ministry argued that the journalists had violated accreditation rules by continuing to work while their applications were pending, that report said. The ministry also cited a November 2023 court ruling in which Radio Azattyq was fined 103,500 tenge (US$230) for alleged “false information” by describing the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Eurasian military alliance of which Kazakhstan is a member, as “Russia-led.”

Radio Azattyq’s appeal described the ministry’s arguments as “without merit,” saying it had filed the accreditation applications on time, but the ministry had failed to respond within the statutory two-month period, and that the applications long predated the November 2023 court decision.

On January 26, Kazakh deputies proposed amendments to a draft media law currently under parliamentary consideration that would ban the activity of unaccredited journalists working for foreign news outlets. One of those deputies denied any connection between those proposals and authorities’ refusal to accredit the Radio Azattyq correspondents.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

The United States continued to expressed outrage and vow a response to the deaths of American service members in Jordan following a drone attack it blamed on Iranian-backed militias, while Washington and London in a separate move stepped up pressure on Tehran with a new set of coordinated sanctions.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on January 29 doubled down on earlier vows by President Joe Biden to hold responsible those behind the drone attack, which also injured dozens of personnel, many of whom are being treated for traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.

"Let me start with my outrage and sorrow [for] the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded," Austin told a Pentagon briefing.

"The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops."

Later, White House national-security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that "we are not looking for a war with Iran."

He added, though, that drone attack "was escalatory, make no mistake about it, and it requires a response."

A day earlier, Biden said U.S. officials had assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was responsible for the attack and vowed to respond at a time of Washington’s choosing.

"While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq," Biden said.

"We will carry on their commitment to fight terrorism. And have no doubt -- we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing," Biden said in a separate statement.

Details of the attack remained unclear on January 29, but a U.S. official said the enemy drone may have been confused with a U.S.-launched drone returning to the military site near the Syrian border and was therefore not shot down.

The official, who requested anonymity, said preliminary reports indicate the enemy drone was flying at a low level at the same time a U.S. drone was returning to the base, known as Tower 22.

Iran on January 29 denied it had any link with the attack, with the Foreign Ministry in Tehran calling the accusations "baseless."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said that "resistance groups" in the region do not take orders from Tehran, though Western nations accuse the country of helping arm, train, and fund such groups.

Earlier, Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations said, "Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. base."

Jordan condemned what it called a "terrorist attack" on a military site, saying it was cooperating with the United States to fortify its border defenses.

The attacks are certain to intensify political pressure in the United States on Biden -- who is in an election year -- to retaliate against Iranian interests in the region, possibly in Iraq or Syria, analysts say.

Gregory Brew, a historian and an analyst with the geopolitical risk firm Eurasia Group, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that the attack in Jordan represented a "major escalation -- and the U.S. is bound to respond forcefully and promptly."

"The response is likely to come through more intense U.S. action against Iran-backed militias in either Syria or Iraq. It's unclear if this was an intentional escalation by Iran and its allies, but the genie is out of the bottle," he added.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a vocal critic of Biden, a Democrat, on January 28 said the "only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces.... Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward."

Many observers have expressed fears of a widening conflict in the Middle East after war broke out in Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which has been deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. At least 1,200 were killed in those assaults, leading to Israel's retaliatory actions that, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, have killed more than 26,000 Palestinians.

Because of its support for Israel, U.S. forces have been the target of Islamist groups in the Middle East, including Iranian-backed Huthi rebels based in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq who are also supported by Tehran.

In another incident that will likely intensify such fears of a wider conflict, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights -- which has extensive contacts inside Syria -- said an Israeli air strike against an Iranian-linked site in Damascus killed seven people, including fighters of Tehran-backed militias.

The Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), attributed the attack to Israel, writing that "two civilians" had been killed, while Syrian state television said "a number of Iranian advisers" had been killed at the "Iranian Advisory Center" in Damascus.

However, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, denied the Iranian center had been targeted or that "any Iranian citizens or advisers" had been killed.

Meanwhile, the United States and Britain announced a set of coordinated sanctions against 11 officials with the IRGC for alleged connections to a criminal network that has targeted foreign dissidents and Iranian regime opponents for "numerous assassinations and kidnapping" at the behest of the Iranian Intelligence and Security Ministry.

A statement by the British Foreign Office said the sanctions are designed "to tackle the domestic threat posed by the Iranian regime, which seeks to export repression, harassment, and coercion against journalists and human rights defenders" in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the latest sanctions packages "exposes the roles of the Iranian officials and gangs involved in activity aimed to undermine, silence, and disrupt the democratic freedoms we value in the U.K."

"The U.K. and U.S. have sent a clear message: We will not tolerate this threat," he added.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Meanwhile, Kyiv and Moscow continued to dispute the circumstances surrounding the January 24 crash of a Russian military transport plane that the Kremlin claimed was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Kyiv said it has no proof POWs were aboard and has not confirmed its forces shot down the plane.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, the Ukrainian commander in the Tavria zone in the Zaporizhzhya region, said Russian forces had "significantly increased" the number of offensive and assault operations over the past two days.

"For the second day in a row, the enemy has conducted 50 combat clashes daily,” he wrote on Telegram.

"Also, the enemy has carried out 100 air strikes in the operational zone of the Tavria Joint Task Force within seven days," he said, adding that 230 Russian-launched drones had been "neutralized or destroyed" over the past day in the area.

Battlefield claims on either side cannot immediately be confirmed.

Earlier, the Ukrainian military said 98 combat clashes took place between Ukrainian troops and the invading Russian army over the past 24 hours.

"There are dead and wounded among the civilian populations," the Ukrianian military's General Staff said in its daily update, but did not provide further details about the casualties.

According to the General Staff, Russian forces launched eight missile and four air strikes, and carried out 78 attacks from rocket-salvo systems on Ukrainian troop positions and populated areas. Iranian-made Shahed drones and Iskander ballistic missiles were used in the attacks, it said.

A number of "high-rise residential buildings, schools, kindergartens, a shopping center, and other civilian infrastructure were destroyed or damaged" in the latest Russian strikes, the bulletin said.

"More than 120 settlements came under artillery fire in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolayiv regions," according to the daily update.

The General Staff also reported that Ukrainian defenders repelled dozens of Russian assaults in eight directions, including Avdiyivka, Bakhmut, Maryinka, and Kupyansk in the eastern Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, said it remained unclear what happened in the crash of the Russian Il-76 that the Kremlin claimed was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were killed along with nine crew members.

The Kremlin said the military transport plane was shot down by a Ukrainian missile despite the fact that Russian forces had alerted Kyiv to the flight’s path.

Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told RFE/RL that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.

The situation with the crash of the aircraft "is not yet fully understood,” Budanov said.

"It is necessary to determine what happened – unfortunately, neither side can fully answer that yet."

Russia "of course, has taken the position of blaming Ukraine for everything, despite the fact that there are a number of facts that are inconsistent with such a position," he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Ukraine shot down the plane and said an investigation was being carried out, with a report to be made in the upcoming days.

In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the creation of a second body to assist businesses in the war-torn country.

Speaking in his nightly video address late on January 26, Zelenskiy said the All-Ukraine Economic Platform would help businesses overcome the challenges posed by Russia's nearly two-year-old invasion.

On January 23, Zelenskiy announced the formation of a Council for the Support of Entrepreneurship, which he said sought to strengthen the country's economy and clarify issues related to law enforcement agencies. Decrees creating both bodies were published on January 26.

Ukraine's economy has collapsed in many sectors since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Kyiv heavily relies on international aid from its Western partnes.

The Voice of America reported that the United States vowed to promote at the international level a peace formula put forward by Zelenskiy.

VOA quoted White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby as saying that Washington "is committed to the policy of supporting initiatives emanating from the leadership of Ukraine."

Zelenskiy last year presented his 10-point peace formula that includes the withdrawal of Russian forces and the restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity, among other things.

With reporting by Reuters and dpa

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

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.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

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.

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.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

CHISINAU -- Moldova has paused a recruitment effort to funnel construction workers to Israel, alleging that Israelis have put Moldovans in "high-risk conflict zones," withheld passports, and committed other abuses while plugging gaps in their workforce brought on by the current war in the Gaza Strip.

The Labor Ministry confirmed to RFE/RL's Moldovan Service this week that Chisinau had "temporarily postponed" the latest round of recruitment under the bilateral agreement following the accusations by Moldovan citizens, but said it could resume once Israel confirmed the practices were stopped and "security and respect" for Moldovan nationals were ensured.

Israel has faced an acute labor squeeze since hundreds of thousands of reservists and other Israelis were called up to fight and thousands of Palestinians were denied access to jobs in Israel after gunmen from the EU- and U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas carried out a massive cross-border attack that killed just over 1,100 people, most of them Israeli civilians, on October 7.

"As a result of the deterioration of the security situation in the state of Israel, workers from the Republic of Moldova were employed to work in high-risk conflict zones, some citizens had their passports withheld by employers, complaints were registered about the confiscation of workers' luggage, as well as Israeli authorities carried out activities of direct recruitment of Moldovan workers, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, which is contrary to the provisions of the agreement," the ministry said in a January 17 response to an RFE/RL access-to-information request.

The ministry did not accuse the Israeli state of perpetrating the abuses. It said Moldovan officials have reported the "violations" to Israel and asked it to put a stop to them and "ensure the security and respect of the rights of workers coming from the Republic of Moldova," one of Europe's poorest countries with a population of some 3.4 million.

The Moldovan Embassy in Tel Aviv said some 13,000 Moldovans were in Israel before the current war broke out. Many work at construction sites or provide care for the elderly, inside or outside the auspices of the recruitment agreement.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to RFE/RL's request for comment on the Labor Ministry's accusations.

Since the war erupted in early October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has sought to extend worker visas and attract more foreign labor from around the world, including by raising its quota on foreign construction workers by roughly half, to 65,000 individuals.

It appealed publicly for 1,200 new Moldovan workers for the construction sector, including blacksmiths, painters, and carpenters.

Speaking in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, the director of the Foreign Workers Administration, Inbal Mashash, named Moldova, along with Thailand and Sri Lanka, as countries where Israeli hopes were highest for more guest workers.

The bilateral Moldovan-Israeli agreement on temporary employment in "certain sectors" including construction in Israel was signed in 2012 and has been amended on multiple occasions, including in December.

In addition to setting up training and procedures to regulate and steer labor flows, it imposes restrictions that include a ban on Israeli companies recruiting on Moldovan territory.

In its decade-long existence, some 17,000 Moldovans have worked in Israel under the auspices of the agreement through 28 rounds of recruitment. At the last available official count, in 2022, there were about 4,000 participating Moldovans.

"The [29th] recruitment round will resume once the above-mentioned irregularities are eliminated and we receive confirmation from the Israeli side of the necessary measures being taken to ensure security and respect for the rights of employed [Moldovan] citizens on the territory of the state of Israel," the Moldovan Labor Ministry said.

From the early days of the current war, Moldovans have spoken out about family concerns and the pressures to pack up and leave Israel, but most appear to have stayed.

As rumors spread of pressure on Moldovan construction workers to stay in Israel after a January 5 pause announcement, Labor Minister Alexei Buzu confirmed there were problems but focused on the accusation that Israeli firms were improperly recruiting Moldovans outside the program or for repeat stints.

A failure to comply with some provisions brings "a risk that other commitments will be ignored [or] will not be delivered at the time or according to the expectations described in the agreement," he said.

Buzu stopped short of leveling some of the most serious accusations involving Moldovan workers being sent to work in 'high-risk conflict zones" or having their passports or belongings taken from them.

Reuters has reported that the worker shortage is costing Israel's construction sector around $37 million per day.

Moldova's National Employment Agency (ANOFM) is responsible for implementing the Israeli-Moldovan recruitment agreement. The Labor Ministry said the agency had already lined up construction recruits and scheduled professional exams for the end of December before the postponement.

The ministry said a similar agreement on the home-caregiver sector between Moldova and Israel -- the subject of negotiations in December -- had “not yet been signed."

The Hamas-led surprise attack on October 7 sparked a massive response from Israel including devastating aerial bombardments and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, which was home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the latest fighting displaced most of them.

The Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza say 24,700 people have been killed in the subsequent fighting and 62,000 more injured.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

CHISINAU -- Moldova has paused a recruitment effort to funnel construction workers to Israel, alleging that Israelis have put Moldovans in "high-risk conflict zones," withheld passports, and committed other abuses while plugging gaps in their workforce brought on by the current war in the Gaza Strip.

The Labor Ministry confirmed to RFE/RL's Moldovan Service this week that Chisinau had "temporarily postponed" the latest round of recruitment under the bilateral agreement following the accusations by Moldovan citizens, but said it could resume once Israel confirmed the practices were stopped and "security and respect" for Moldovan nationals were ensured.

Israel has faced an acute labor squeeze since hundreds of thousands of reservists and other Israelis were called up to fight and thousands of Palestinians were denied access to jobs in Israel after gunmen from the EU- and U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas carried out a massive cross-border attack that killed just over 1,100 people, most of them Israeli civilians, on October 7.

"As a result of the deterioration of the security situation in the state of Israel, workers from the Republic of Moldova were employed to work in high-risk conflict zones, some citizens had their passports withheld by employers, complaints were registered about the confiscation of workers' luggage, as well as Israeli authorities carried out activities of direct recruitment of Moldovan workers, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, which is contrary to the provisions of the agreement," the ministry said in a January 17 response to an RFE/RL access-to-information request.

The ministry did not accuse the Israeli state of perpetrating the abuses. It said Moldovan officials have reported the "violations" to Israel and asked it to put a stop to them and "ensure the security and respect of the rights of workers coming from the Republic of Moldova," one of Europe's poorest countries with a population of some 3.4 million.

The Moldovan Embassy in Tel Aviv said some 13,000 Moldovans were in Israel before the current war broke out. Many work at construction sites or provide care for the elderly, inside or outside the auspices of the recruitment agreement.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to RFE/RL's request for comment on the Labor Ministry's accusations.

Since the war erupted in early October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has sought to extend worker visas and attract more foreign labor from around the world, including by raising its quota on foreign construction workers by roughly half, to 65,000 individuals.

It appealed publicly for 1,200 new Moldovan workers for the construction sector, including blacksmiths, painters, and carpenters.

Speaking in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, the director of the Foreign Workers Administration, Inbal Mashash, named Moldova, along with Thailand and Sri Lanka, as countries where Israeli hopes were highest for more guest workers.

The bilateral Moldovan-Israeli agreement on temporary employment in "certain sectors" including construction in Israel was signed in 2012 and has been amended on multiple occasions, including in December.

In addition to setting up training and procedures to regulate and steer labor flows, it imposes restrictions that include a ban on Israeli companies recruiting on Moldovan territory.

In its decade-long existence, some 17,000 Moldovans have worked in Israel under the auspices of the agreement through 28 rounds of recruitment. At the last available official count, in 2022, there were about 4,000 participating Moldovans.

"The [29th] recruitment round will resume once the above-mentioned irregularities are eliminated and we receive confirmation from the Israeli side of the necessary measures being taken to ensure security and respect for the rights of employed [Moldovan] citizens on the territory of the state of Israel," the Moldovan Labor Ministry said.

From the early days of the current war, Moldovans have spoken out about family concerns and the pressures to pack up and leave Israel, but most appear to have stayed.

As rumors spread of pressure on Moldovan construction workers to stay in Israel after a January 5 pause announcement, Labor Minister Alexei Buzu confirmed there were problems but focused on the accusation that Israeli firms were improperly recruiting Moldovans outside the program or for repeat stints.

A failure to comply with some provisions brings "a risk that other commitments will be ignored [or] will not be delivered at the time or according to the expectations described in the agreement," he said.

Buzu stopped short of leveling some of the most serious accusations involving Moldovan workers being sent to work in 'high-risk conflict zones" or having their passports or belongings taken from them.

Reuters has reported that the worker shortage is costing Israel's construction sector around $37 million per day.

Moldova's National Employment Agency (ANOFM) is responsible for implementing the Israeli-Moldovan recruitment agreement. The Labor Ministry said the agency had already lined up construction recruits and scheduled professional exams for the end of December before the postponement.

The ministry said a similar agreement on the home-caregiver sector between Moldova and Israel -- the subject of negotiations in December -- had “not yet been signed."

The Hamas-led surprise attack on October 7 sparked a massive response from Israel including devastating aerial bombardments and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, which was home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the latest fighting displaced most of them.

The Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza say 24,700 people have been killed in the subsequent fighting and 62,000 more injured.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

CHISINAU -- Moldova has paused a recruitment effort to funnel construction workers to Israel, alleging that Israelis have put Moldovans in "high-risk conflict zones," withheld passports, and committed other abuses while plugging gaps in their workforce brought on by the current war in the Gaza Strip.

The Labor Ministry confirmed to RFE/RL's Moldovan Service this week that Chisinau had "temporarily postponed" the latest round of recruitment under the bilateral agreement following the accusations by Moldovan citizens, but said it could resume once Israel confirmed the practices were stopped and "security and respect" for Moldovan nationals were ensured.

Israel has faced an acute labor squeeze since hundreds of thousands of reservists and other Israelis were called up to fight and thousands of Palestinians were denied access to jobs in Israel after gunmen from the EU- and U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas carried out a massive cross-border attack that killed just over 1,100 people, most of them Israeli civilians, on October 7.

"As a result of the deterioration of the security situation in the state of Israel, workers from the Republic of Moldova were employed to work in high-risk conflict zones, some citizens had their passports withheld by employers, complaints were registered about the confiscation of workers' luggage, as well as Israeli authorities carried out activities of direct recruitment of Moldovan workers, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, which is contrary to the provisions of the agreement," the ministry said in a January 17 response to an RFE/RL access-to-information request.

The ministry did not accuse the Israeli state of perpetrating the abuses. It said Moldovan officials have reported the "violations" to Israel and asked it to put a stop to them and "ensure the security and respect of the rights of workers coming from the Republic of Moldova," one of Europe's poorest countries with a population of some 3.4 million.

The Moldovan Embassy in Tel Aviv said some 13,000 Moldovans were in Israel before the current war broke out. Many work at construction sites or provide care for the elderly, inside or outside the auspices of the recruitment agreement.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to RFE/RL's request for comment on the Labor Ministry's accusations.

Since the war erupted in early October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has sought to extend worker visas and attract more foreign labor from around the world, including by raising its quota on foreign construction workers by roughly half, to 65,000 individuals.

It appealed publicly for 1,200 new Moldovan workers for the construction sector, including blacksmiths, painters, and carpenters.

Speaking in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, the director of the Foreign Workers Administration, Inbal Mashash, named Moldova, along with Thailand and Sri Lanka, as countries where Israeli hopes were highest for more guest workers.

The bilateral Moldovan-Israeli agreement on temporary employment in "certain sectors" including construction in Israel was signed in 2012 and has been amended on multiple occasions, including in December.

In addition to setting up training and procedures to regulate and steer labor flows, it imposes restrictions that include a ban on Israeli companies recruiting on Moldovan territory.

In its decade-long existence, some 17,000 Moldovans have worked in Israel under the auspices of the agreement through 28 rounds of recruitment. At the last available official count, in 2022, there were about 4,000 participating Moldovans.

"The [29th] recruitment round will resume once the above-mentioned irregularities are eliminated and we receive confirmation from the Israeli side of the necessary measures being taken to ensure security and respect for the rights of employed [Moldovan] citizens on the territory of the state of Israel," the Moldovan Labor Ministry said.

From the early days of the current war, Moldovans have spoken out about family concerns and the pressures to pack up and leave Israel, but most appear to have stayed.

As rumors spread of pressure on Moldovan construction workers to stay in Israel after a January 5 pause announcement, Labor Minister Alexei Buzu confirmed there were problems but focused on the accusation that Israeli firms were improperly recruiting Moldovans outside the program or for repeat stints.

A failure to comply with some provisions brings "a risk that other commitments will be ignored [or] will not be delivered at the time or according to the expectations described in the agreement," he said.

Buzu stopped short of leveling some of the most serious accusations involving Moldovan workers being sent to work in 'high-risk conflict zones" or having their passports or belongings taken from them.

Reuters has reported that the worker shortage is costing Israel's construction sector around $37 million per day.

Moldova's National Employment Agency (ANOFM) is responsible for implementing the Israeli-Moldovan recruitment agreement. The Labor Ministry said the agency had already lined up construction recruits and scheduled professional exams for the end of December before the postponement.

The ministry said a similar agreement on the home-caregiver sector between Moldova and Israel -- the subject of negotiations in December -- had “not yet been signed."

The Hamas-led surprise attack on October 7 sparked a massive response from Israel including devastating aerial bombardments and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, which was home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the latest fighting displaced most of them.

The Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza say 24,700 people have been killed in the subsequent fighting and 62,000 more injured.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 17, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Ukraine's Western backers to provide advanced weaponry, including long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets, to help Kyiv "throw Russia out of the sky."

Ukraine has been subjected to a series of unusually intense Russian air strikes since the start of the year that has put its air defenses under massive pressure amid dwindling stocks of ammunition and equipment.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

"In 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies," Kuleba said during a panel discussion. "Because the one who controls the skies will define when and how the war will end."

Kuleba's comments echoed remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who said a day earlier at the forum that his country “must gain air superiority.”

"Just as we gained superiority in the Black Sea, we can do it. This will allow progress on the ground.... Partners know what is needed and in what quantity," Zelenskiy said.

Russian missiles later on January 17 struck a town outside Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, killing one person and damaging an educational institution, the regional governor and the military said.

Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on Telegram there were two strikes on the town of Chuhuyev. A female employee of a heating and power plant was killed and another person was injured. A military source, also reporting on Telegram, said the attack involved S-300 missiles.

Russian troops attacked Kharkiv with two S-300 missiles on January 16, wounding 17 people, including 14 who have been hospitalized.

The Ukrainian military also said it destroyed six Iranian-made Shahed drones over the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions late on January 17.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on January 17 said the Biden administration was "working very hard" to secure additional funding for Ukraine from Congress, warning that failure to do so would be a "real problem."

"If we don't get that money, it's a real problem. It's a real problem for Ukraine. I think it's a problem for us and our leadership around the world," he said.

President Joe Biden convened top congressional leaders at the White House to underscore Ukraine's security needs.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) and other Republicans used the meeting with Biden to push for tougher border security measures.

"We understand that there's concern about the safety, security, and sovereignty of Ukraine," Johnson told reporters after the meeting "But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) stressed that Biden had repeatedly said he is willing to compromise on certain border measures. He told reporters that there was a "large amount of agreement around the table" on both funding for Ukraine and border security.

The German parliament meanwhile rejected a motion put forward by the conservative opposition that called for the government to send long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Nearly all lawmakers from the three-party governing coalition -- Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) -- opposed to the motion on January 17.

The Greens and the FDP have been pushing Scholz for months to send the missiles, but lawmakers from the two parties said they voted against the proposal because the conservative opposition had linked it to a debate on the annual report on Germany’s military.

As Kuleba made his comments in the Swiss ski resort, Ukrainian authorities were declaring an air-raid alert for the whole country.

The Ukrainian Air Force warned on Telegram that a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet had taken off from the Mozdok airfield in Russia's North Ossetia, while Telegram monitoring channels reported that an Il-78M refueling plane was also airborne.

Earlier on January 17, a Russian drone attack on Odesa wounded three people and caused damage to civilian residential infrastructure, prompting the evacuation of 130 people, regional Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

The Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine said separately that it shot down 11 Iranian-made drones during the attack on Odesa, with the vast majority of the debris falling into the sea.

"Air-defense units worked for almost three hours.... The main efforts of the enemy were concentrated on attacks on Odesa," the military said in a statement.

The latest Russian attacks came as the United Nations said the past several weeks have seen a steep increase in civilian victims in Ukraine due to unusually intense missile and drone strikes.

In December alone, 101 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 491 were wounded in Russian strikes, amounting a 26.5 percent month-to- month increase in verified casualties, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report published on January 16.

In Brussels, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Bob Bauer, said on January 17 that the alliance would keep supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.

Russia launched a late-night attack on January 16 that struck the city center of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, as well as the Black Sea port of Odesa early on January 17, wounding civilians and causing widespread destruction to residential buildings.

“Today is the 693rd day of what Russia thought would be a three-day war. Ukraine will have our support for every day that is to come because the outcome of this war will determine the fate of the world,” Bauer said at the start of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers.

“This war has never been about any real security threat to Russia coming from either Ukraine or NATO,” Bauer added. “This war is about Russia fearing something much more powerful than any physical weapon on Earth: democracy. If people in Ukraine can have democratic rights, then people in Russia will soon crave them too.”

Bauer also urged a fundamental overhaul in the conflict readiness of the 31-member alliance.

“In order to be fully effective, also in the future, we need a war-fighting transformation of NATO,” he said.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

BISHKEK -- A day after searching the offices of the news website 24.kg, law enforcement officers in the Kyrgyz capital detained for questioning eight current and former members of the Temirov Live investigative group and the Ait Ait Dese project, as the government continues to pressure independent media.

Temirov Live's founder, prominent investigative journalist Bolot Temirov, said the journalists who were detained for questioning after their homes and offices were searched on January 16 included his wife and the director of the Temirov Live group, Makhabat Tajybek-kyzy.

Temirov said on X, formerly Twitter, that the searches and detentions may be connected to two recent investigative reports by Temirov Live -- one about a private New Year's Eve flight by President Sadyr Japarov to Milan, Italy, on a government plane, the second about corruption among top officials of the Interior Ministry, including minister Ulan Niyazbekov.

The Interior Ministry issued a statement, saying that the searches and detentions for questioning were linked to a probe launched into unspecified Temirov Live publications that "carried elements of calls for mass unrest."

Temirov said that Temirov Live reporters Sapar Akunbekov, Azamat Ishenbekov, and Aike Beishekeeva, as well as former journalists of the group Aktilek Kaparov, Tynystan Asypbek, Saipidin Sultanaliev, and Joodar Buzumov, also had their homes searched.

Temirov, who was deported to Moscow in November 2022 after a court ruled that he illegally obtained Kyrgyz citizenship, which he denies, added that two other employees of the Temirov Live group, whom he identified as Maksat and Jumabek, were detained.

Kyrgyzstan's civil society and independent media have traditionally been the most vibrant in Central Asia, but that has changed amid a deepening government crackdown.

Just a day earlier, officers of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK) detained for questioning the director-general of the 24.kg news website, Asel Otorbaeva, and two editors, Makhinur Niyazova and Anton Lymar, in a case of "propagating war" in an unspecified report about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The three were later released but ordered not to reveal details of the case.

Lawmaker Janar Akaev called the moves against the journalists "an attack on freedom of speech."

"Such types of situations lead to self-censorship, and obstruct investigative reports on political and corruption issues," Akaev said, adding that the latest developments around independent journalists will be raised at parliament's next session.

Another lawmaker, Nurjigit Kadyrbekov, told RFE/RL that the ongoing pressure on independent journalists "could damage the president's image."

UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Liz Throssell expressed concern over the developments around Kyrgyz journalists in the past two days.

"These latest actions by the authorities appear to be part of a larger pattern of pressure against civil society activists, journalists and other critics of the authorities," Throssel said in a statement on January 16, adding, "It is all the more concerning that the Kyrgyz Parliament is considering a draft law on mass media which would restrict the right to freedom of expression which includes media freedom."

"We call on the authorities to protect freedom of expression and ensure that media legislation in the country is in line with international human rights standards," Throssel said.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kazakhstan's authorities have unexpectedly allowed an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the birth of the late opposition politician Zamanbek Nurqadilov, an outspoken critic of the Central Asian nation's former president, Nursultan Nazarbaev.

On January 14, politicians, public figures, lawmakers, and celebrities gathered for an event to commemorate Nurqadilov at a restaurant in central Almaty, the country's largest city. Special letters by President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and the chairman of the Senate, Kazakh parliament's upper chamber, Maulen Ashimbaev, were read at the ceremony praising Nurqadilov's contribution to the building of Kazakh statehood.

Nurqadilov, was once mayor of Almaty and chairman of the Emergency Situations Agency before he turned into a fierce critic of Nazarbaev and his government in 2004. He was found dead with two bullets in his chest and one in his head at his home in Almaty in November 2005. Official investigators ruled the death was a suicide, sparking a public outcry at the time.

Toqaev's letter said a monument to Nurqadilov will be erected in his native Kegen district in the Almaty region, while one of local schools will be named after him and a plaque honoring him will be placed at the house in Almaty where he lived.

Nurqadilov's former associate, businessman Bolat Abilov, called the event commemorating Nurqadilov "a political, historical, and moral rehabilitation" of the politician, adding that all the Nazarbaev monuments across the nation must be demolished and memorials to honor Nurqadilov and other politicians and journalists who died amid suspicious circumstances must be built instead.

Nurqadilov’s death occurred around the same time as a series of deaths of opposition politicians and journalists.

Among them are the deaths of opposition leader and former Kazakh ambassador to Russia, Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, and his two associates, who were found shot dead near Almaty in February 2006, three months after Nurqadilov's death.

Both politicians were interviewed in July 2004 by prominent independent journalist Askhat Sharipzhanov, who was found later the same day as the interview beaten and unconscious with a fractured skull. He died three days later in hospital.

Police said Sharipzhanov had been hit by a car, but friends and colleagues said his injuries suggested he had been struck in the head and hands before being hit by a vehicle.

Sarsenbaiuly's killing was officially declared to have been motivated by personal enmity. A former chief of staff of the Kazakh parliament, Erzhan Otembaev, was convicted of ordering the slaying and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

However, in 2013, Otembaev's sentence was annulled after Kazakh authorities announced that the case had been sent for review based on newly obtained evidence they said indicated that Rakhat Aliev, Nazarbaev's former son-in-law, had ordered the killing.

Aliev, who was deputy chief of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee when the slaying took place and became an outspoken opponent of Nazarbaev in 2007, was in self-imposed exile in Europe at the time.

Aliev was later arrested by Austrian officials at the request of authorities in Kazakhstan, who accused him of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of two Kazakh bankers.

In February 2015, Aliev was found hanged in a Vienna jail.

Austrian officials ruled Aliev's death a suicide, but many in Kazakhstan believe he was murdered while in Austrian custody.

With reporting by zakon.kz

NOTE: RFE/RL correspondent Merhat Sharipzhanov is a brother of the late journalist Askhat Sharipzhanov.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kazakhstan's authorities have unexpectedly allowed an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the birth of the late opposition politician Zamanbek Nurqadilov, an outspoken critic of the Central Asian nation's former president, Nursultan Nazarbaev.

On January 14, politicians, public figures, lawmakers, and celebrities gathered for an event to commemorate Nurqadilov at a restaurant in central Almaty, the country's largest city. Special letters by President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and the chairman of the Senate, Kazakh parliament's upper chamber, Maulen Ashimbaev, were read at the ceremony praising Nurqadilov's contribution to the building of Kazakh statehood.

Nurqadilov, was once mayor of Almaty and chairman of the Emergency Situations Agency before he turned into a fierce critic of Nazarbaev and his government in 2004. He was found dead with two bullets in his chest and one in his head at his home in Almaty in November 2005. Official investigators ruled the death was a suicide, sparking a public outcry at the time.

Toqaev's letter said a monument to Nurqadilov will be erected in his native Kegen district in the Almaty region, while one of local schools will be named after him and a plaque honoring him will be placed at the house in Almaty where he lived.

Nurqadilov's former associate, businessman Bolat Abilov, called the event commemorating Nurqadilov "a political, historical, and moral rehabilitation" of the politician, adding that all the Nazarbaev monuments across the nation must be demolished and memorials to honor Nurqadilov and other politicians and journalists who died amid suspicious circumstances must be built instead.

Nurqadilov’s death occurred around the same time as a series of deaths of opposition politicians and journalists.

Among them are the deaths of opposition leader and former Kazakh ambassador to Russia, Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, and his two associates, who were found shot dead near Almaty in February 2006, three months after Nurqadilov's death.

Both politicians were interviewed in July 2004 by prominent independent journalist Askhat Sharipzhanov, who was found later the same day as the interview beaten and unconscious with a fractured skull. He died three days later in hospital.

Police said Sharipzhanov had been hit by a car, but friends and colleagues said his injuries suggested he had been struck in the head and hands before being hit by a vehicle.

Sarsenbaiuly's killing was officially declared to have been motivated by personal enmity. A former chief of staff of the Kazakh parliament, Erzhan Otembaev, was convicted of ordering the slaying and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

However, in 2013, Otembaev's sentence was annulled after Kazakh authorities announced that the case had been sent for review based on newly obtained evidence they said indicated that Rakhat Aliev, Nazarbaev's former son-in-law, had ordered the killing.

Aliev, who was deputy chief of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee when the slaying took place and became an outspoken opponent of Nazarbaev in 2007, was in self-imposed exile in Europe at the time.

Aliev was later arrested by Austrian officials at the request of authorities in Kazakhstan, who accused him of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of two Kazakh bankers.

In February 2015, Aliev was found hanged in a Vienna jail.

Austrian officials ruled Aliev's death a suicide, but many in Kazakhstan believe he was murdered while in Austrian custody.

With reporting by zakon.kz

NOTE: RFE/RL correspondent Merhat Sharipzhanov is a brother of the late journalist Askhat Sharipzhanov.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

U.S. and British forces have hit Iran-backed Huthi rebel military targets in Yemen -- -- an action immediately condemned by Tehran -- sparking fears around the world of a growing conflict in the Middle East as fighting rages in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that the move was meant to show that the United States and its allies “will not tolerate” the Iran-backed rebel group’s increasing number of attacks in the Red Sea, which have threatened freedom of navigation and endangered U.S. personnel and civilian navigation.

The rebels said that the air strikes, which occurred in an area already shaken by Israel's war with Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union, totaled 73 and killed at least five people.

"Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces -- together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands -- successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Huthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways," Biden said in a statement.

“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Huthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea -- including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” Biden said of the international mission that also involved Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden approved the strikes after a Huthi attack on January 9. U.S. and British naval forces repelled that attack, shooting down drones and missiles fired by the Huthis from Yemen toward the southern Red Sea.

Kirby said the United States does not want war with Yemen or a conflict of any kind but will not hesitate to take further action.

"Everything the president has been doing has been trying to prevent any escalation of conflict, including the strikes last night," he said.

The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting for later on January 12 over the strikes. The session was requested by Russia and will take place after a meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza.

Huthi rebels have stepped up attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since Israel launched its war on Hamas over the group's surprise cross-border attack on October 7 that killed some 1,200 Israelis and saw dozens more taken hostage.

The Huthis have claimed their targeting of navigation in the Red Sea is meant to show the group's support for the Palestinians and Hamas.

Thousands of the rebels held protests in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, where they chanted “We aren’t discouraged. Let it be a major world war!”

The White House said Huthi acts of piracy have affected more than 50 countries and forced more than 2,000 ships to make detours of thousands of kilometers to avoid the Red Sea. It said crews from more than 20 countries were either taken hostage or threatened by Huthi piracy.

Kirby said a "battle damage assessment" to determine how much the Huthi capabilities had been degraded was ongoing.

Britain said sites including airfields had been hit. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is still hospitalized following complications from prostate cancer surgery, said earlier the strikes were aimed at Huthi drones, ballistic, and cruise missiles, as well as coastal radar and air surveillance capabilities.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the strikes were "necessary and proportionate."

"Despite the repeated warnings from the international community, the Huthis have continued to carry out attacks in the Red Sea," Sunak said in a statement.

Iran immediately condemned the attacks saying they would bring further turbulence to the Middle East.

"We strongly condemn the military attacks carried out this morning by the United States and the United Kingdom on several cities in Yemen," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kannani said in a post on Telegram.

"These arbitrary actions are a clear violation of Yemen's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a violation of international laws and regulations. These attacks will only contribute to insecurity and instability in the region," he added.

A Huthi spokesman said the attacks were unjustified and the rebels will keep targeting ships heading toward Israel.

The Huthis, whose slogan is "Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam," are part of what has been described as the Iran-backed axis of resistance that also includes anti-Israel and anti-Western militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Huthi rebels have fought Yemen's government for decades. In 2014, they took the capital, Sanaa.

While Iran has supplied them with weapons and aid, the Huthis say they are not Tehran's puppets and their main goal is to topple Yemen's "corrupt" leadership.

With reporting by Reuters and dpa

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Zelenskiy met with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda on January 10 to discuss military aid, training, and joint demining efforts during the previously unannounced trip, which will also take him to Estonia and Latvia.

“We have proven that Russia can be stopped, that deterrence is possible,” he said after talks with Nauseda on what is the Ukrainian leader's first foreign trip of 2024.

"Today, Gitanas Nauseda and I focused on frontline developments. Weapons, equipment, personnel training, and Lithuania's leadership in the demining coalition are all sources of strength for us," Zelenskiy later wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lithuania has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since the start of Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion, which will reach the two-year mark in February.

Nauseda said EU and NATO member Lithuania will continue to provide military, political, and economic support to Ukraine, and pointed to the Baltic country's approval last month of a 200-million-euro ($219 million) long-term military aid package for Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has turned Ukraine into one of the most mined countries in the world, generating one of the largest demining challenges since the end of World War II.

"Lithuania is forming a demining coalition to mobilize military support for Ukraine as efficiently and quickly as possible," Nauseda said.

"The Western world must understand that this is not just the struggle of Ukraine, it is the struggle of the whole of Europe and the democratic world for peace and freedom," Nauseda said.

Ukraine has pleaded with its allies to keep supplying it with weapons amid signs of donor fatigue in some countries.

There is continued disagreement between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress on continuing military aid for Kyiv, while a 50-billion-euro ($55 billion) aid package from the European Union remains blocked due to a Hungarian veto.

But a NATO allies meeting in Brussels on January 10 made it clear that they will continue to provide Ukraine with major military, economic, and humanitarian aid. NATO allies have outlined plans to provide "billions of euros of further capabilities" in 2024 to Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement.

Zelensky warned during the news conference with Nauseda that delays in Western aid to Kyiv would only embolden Moscow.

"He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is not going to stop. He wants to occupy us completely," Zelenskiy said.

"And sometimes, the insecurity of partners regarding financial and military aid to Ukraine only increases Russia's courage and strength."

Since the start of the year, Ukraine has been subjected to several massive waves of Russian missile and drone strikes that have caused civilian deaths and material damage.

Zelenskiy said on January 10 that Ukraine badly needs advanced air defense systems.

"In recent days, Russia hit Ukraine with a total of 500 devices: we destroyed 70 percent of them," Zelenskiy said. "Air defense systems are the number one item that we lack."

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, an all-out air raid alert was declared on the morning of January 10, with authorities instructing citizens to take shelter due to an elevated danger of Russian missile strikes.

"Missile-strike danger throughout the territory of Ukraine! [Russian] MiG-31Ks taking off from Savasleika airfield [in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region].

Don't ignore the air raid alert!' the Ukrainian Air Force said in its warning message on Telegram.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

"Japan is determined to support Ukraine so that peace can return to Ukraine," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said during a surprise visit to Kyiv, becoming the first official foreign visitor for 2024.

"I can feel how tense the situation in Ukraine is now," she told a news conference -- held in a shelter due to an air-raid alert in the capital at the time -- alongside her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.

"I once again strongly condemn Russia's missile and drone attacks, particularly on New Year's Day," she added, while also saying Japan would provide an additional $37 million to a NATO trust fund to help purchase drone-detection systems.

The Japanese diplomat also visited Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces are blamed for a civilian massacre in 2022, stating she was "shocked" by what occurred there.

In a Telegram post, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked "Japan for its comprehensive support, as well as significant humanitarian and financial assistance."

In particular, he cited Tokyo's "decision to allocate $1 billion for humanitarian projects and reconstruction with its readiness to increase this amount to $4.5 billion through the mechanisms of international institutions."

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told a Stockholm defense conference that the main goal of the country’s foreign policy efforts in the coming years will be to support Kyiv.

“Sweden’s military, political, and economic support for Ukraine remains the Swedish government’s main foreign policy task in the coming years,” he posted on social media during the event.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link, told the conference that the battlefield in his country was currently stable but that he remained confident Russia could be defeated.

"Even Russia can be brought back within the framework of international law. Its aggression can be defeated," he said.

Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive last summer largely failed to shift the front line, giving confidence to the Kremlin’s forces, especially as further Western aid is in question.

Ukraine has pleaded with its Western allies to keep supplying it with air defense weapons, along with other weapons necessary to defeat the invasion that began in February 2022.

U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a national-security spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, but it has been blocked by Republican lawmakers who insist Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress address border security.

Zelenskiy also urged fellow European nations to join Ukraine in developing joint weapons-production capabilities so that the continent is able to "preserve itself" in the face of any future crises.

"Two years of this war have proven that Europe needs its own sufficient arsenal for the defense of freedom, its own capabilities to ensure defense," he said.

Overnight, Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 28 drones and three cruise missiles, and 12 people were wounded by a drone attack in the central city of Dnipro.

Though smaller in scale than other recent assaults, the January 7 aerial attack was the latest indication that Russia has no intention of stopping its targeting of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, often far from the front lines.

In a post to Telegram, Ukraine’s air force claimed that air defenses destroyed 21 of the 28 drones, which mainly targeted locations in the south and east of Ukraine.

"The enemy is shifting the focus of attack to the frontline territories: the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions were attacked by drones," air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.

Russia made no immediate comment on the attack.

In the southern city of Kherson, meanwhile, Russian shelling from across the Dnieper River left at least two people dead, officials said.

In the past few months, Ukrainian forces have moved across the Dnieper, setting up a small bridgehead in villages on the river's eastern banks, upriver from Kherson. The effort to establish a larger foothold there, however, has faltered, with Russian troops pinning the Ukrainians down, and keeping them from moving heavier equipment over.

Over the past two weeks, Russia has fired nearly 300 missiles and more than 200 drones at targets in Ukraine, as part of an effort to terrorize the civilian population and undermine morale. On December 29, more than 120 Russian missiles were launched at cities across Ukraine, killing at least 44 people, including 30 in Kyiv alone.

Ukraine’s air defenses have improved markedly since the months following Russia’s mass invasion in February 2022. At least five Western-supplied Patriot missile batteries, along with smaller systems like German-made Gepard and the French-manufactured SAMP/T, have also improved Ukraine’s ability to repel Russian drones and missiles.

Last week, U.S. officials said that Russia had begun using North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles as part of its aerial attacks on Ukrainian sites.

Inside Russia, authorities in Belgorod said dozens of residents have been evacuated to areas farther from the Ukrainian border.

“On behalf of regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, we met the first Belgorod residents who decided to move to a safer place. More than 100 people were placed in our temporary accommodation centers,” Andrei Chesnokov, head of the Stary Oskol district, about 115 kilometers from Belgorod, wrote in Telegram post.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kaster Musakhan, 34, who was left with multiple injuries, said he didn’t know his assailants, but suspects they beat him for speaking out about how Chinese authorities repressed Muslims in Xinjiang. 

“Someone I didn’t know grabbed my hand and struck me,” he told RFA Uyghur. “Three more individuals joined in. All of them were Kazakhs.”

The men punched, kicked and struck Musakhan with a billiard stick, bruising his face, knocking out a tooth and breaking some of his ribs, he said.

It wasn’t the first time that a Kazakh asylum seeker had been attacked and beaten up in Kazakhstan, said Erbol Doletbek, a Germany-based organizer of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights Organization who believes China is behind the attacks.

In January 2021, Muragir Alim Asatani, 30, was stabbed, and Kaisha Akan, 48, was beaten by unknown assailants, in two different places on the same day, said Doletbek, who lives in Germany, and a Kazakh doctor who has been checking on Musakhan. 

“These Kazakh asylum seekers, helpless people, without passports in their hands, in a more difficult economic situation, have no chance of being enemies to anyone in Kazakhstan,” Doletbek said. “There is only one place where they expose the massacres happening in their own country to the media. Therefore, we believe that China is behind these attacks.”

Bilateral agreement 

Kazakhstan, China’s most important economic partner in Central Asia, previously pledged to repatriate ethnic Kazakhs seeking refuge from repression in Xinjiang. 

But an agreement between the two countries last September set immigration curbs on ethnic Kazakh nationals of China, including the sharing of information on each others' citizens and the potential repatriation of asylum-seekers who cross their border.

Musakhan said that no one in the restaurant tried to stop the attackers and no one, including the restaurant owner, called the police.

Gheyret Beytulla, an Atajurt member who found out about the attack and arrived at the scene, reported the incident to police, called a local hospital, and notified Doletbek about Musakhan’s situation. 

Doletbek began investigating the situation and reported what he found out about the attack by livestreaming a video of Musakhan’s injuries on Facebook.

Imprisoned in China

Ten years earlier, Musakhan was arrested by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang in March 2013 for allegedly participating in public protests by ethnic Uyghurs in Urumqi in 2009. 

He was sentenced to prison but released in November 201. The he was he was placed under house arrest for 16 months, according to an October 2019 report by Eurasianet. Authorities also threatened to send him to one of the region’s internment camps.

Desperate to flee China, in October 2019, Musakhan and another ethnic Kazakh Chinese national scaled a wire fence to enter Kazakhstan illegally, he said. Since then, he has lived in Kazakhstan where he has sought asylum.

The two men were arrested by Kazakh police the same month after speaking at a press conference in Almaty about their passage into Kazakhstan and desire to apply for asylum because of ill treatment in China, Eurasianet reported. 

After the attack, Musakhan was first taken to a small hospital where the Kazakh doctor works, but was denied treatment because he didn’t have the necessary documents with him. He was then taken to Almaty Emergency Hospital, where medical personnel informed him that a sixth rib was broken. 

The next day, Musakhan’s friends took him to Turkish-run Sema Hospital, where doctors discovered that one of his kidneys had been damaged in the attack, said the Kazakh physician, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of losing his job by talking to the media.

“Kaster is currently recovering at home, and I've been checking on him from time to time,” the doctor told RFA, adding that he is concerned that his kidney condition, which needs medical attention in a hospital, may worsen.

Musakhan, who lives in a house rented by another person, cannot afford further hospitalization, the doctor said. His friends are now trying to raise money to rent a house for him.

Musakhan said his attackers later called him and threatened him, though they did not say why they assaulted him.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

Kaster Musakhan, 34, who was left with multiple injuries, said he didn’t know his assailants, but suspects they beat him for speaking out about how Chinese authorities repressed Muslims in Xinjiang. 

“Someone I didn’t know grabbed my hand and struck me,” he told RFA Uyghur. “Three more individuals joined in. All of them were Kazakhs.”

The men punched, kicked and struck Musakhan with a billiard stick, bruising his face, knocking out a tooth and breaking some of his ribs, he said.

It wasn’t the first time that a Kazakh asylum seeker had been attacked and beaten up in Kazakhstan, said Erbol Doletbek, a Germany-based organizer of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights Organization who believes China is behind the attacks.

In January 2021, Muragir Alim Asatani, 30, was stabbed, and Kaisha Akan, 48, was beaten by unknown assailants, in two different places on the same day, said Doletbek, who lives in Germany, and a Kazakh doctor who has been checking on Musakhan. 

“These Kazakh asylum seekers, helpless people, without passports in their hands, in a more difficult economic situation, have no chance of being enemies to anyone in Kazakhstan,” Doletbek said. “There is only one place where they expose the massacres happening in their own country to the media. Therefore, we believe that China is behind these attacks.”

Bilateral agreement 

Kazakhstan, China’s most important economic partner in Central Asia, previously pledged to repatriate ethnic Kazakhs seeking refuge from repression in Xinjiang. 

But an agreement between the two countries last September set immigration curbs on ethnic Kazakh nationals of China, including the sharing of information on each others' citizens and the potential repatriation of asylum-seekers who cross their border.

Musakhan said that no one in the restaurant tried to stop the attackers and no one, including the restaurant owner, called the police.

Gheyret Beytulla, an Atajurt member who found out about the attack and arrived at the scene, reported the incident to police, called a local hospital, and notified Doletbek about Musakhan’s situation. 

Doletbek began investigating the situation and reported what he found out about the attack by livestreaming a video of Musakhan’s injuries on Facebook.

Imprisoned in China

Ten years earlier, Musakhan was arrested by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang in March 2013 for allegedly participating in public protests by ethnic Uyghurs in Urumqi in 2009. 

He was sentenced to prison but released in November 201. The he was he was placed under house arrest for 16 months, according to an October 2019 report by Eurasianet. Authorities also threatened to send him to one of the region’s internment camps.

Desperate to flee China, in October 2019, Musakhan and another ethnic Kazakh Chinese national scaled a wire fence to enter Kazakhstan illegally, he said. Since then, he has lived in Kazakhstan where he has sought asylum.

The two men were arrested by Kazakh police the same month after speaking at a press conference in Almaty about their passage into Kazakhstan and desire to apply for asylum because of ill treatment in China, Eurasianet reported. 

After the attack, Musakhan was first taken to a small hospital where the Kazakh doctor works, but was denied treatment because he didn’t have the necessary documents with him. He was then taken to Almaty Emergency Hospital, where medical personnel informed him that a sixth rib was broken. 

The next day, Musakhan’s friends took him to Turkish-run Sema Hospital, where doctors discovered that one of his kidneys had been damaged in the attack, said the Kazakh physician, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of losing his job by talking to the media.

“Kaster is currently recovering at home, and I've been checking on him from time to time,” the doctor told RFA, adding that he is concerned that his kidney condition, which needs medical attention in a hospital, may worsen.

Musakhan, who lives in a house rented by another person, cannot afford further hospitalization, the doctor said. His friends are now trying to raise money to rent a house for him.

Musakhan said his attackers later called him and threatened him, though they did not say why they assaulted him.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has given a lengthy interview in which he discusses what he sees as the origins of the "Bloody January" protests of 2022 as well as the threat of dual power systems.

Speaking to the state-run Egemen Qazaqstan newspaper, which published the interview on January 3, Toqaev said the protests that began in the southwestern town Zhanaozen on January 2, 2022, following a sharp rise in fuel prices and which quickly spread to other cities, including Almaty, were instigated by an unidentified "rogue group."

Toqaev's shoot-to-kill order to quell the unrest led to the deaths of more than 230 protesters, and the Kazakh president has been criticized for not living up to his promise to the public to answer questions about the incident.

The Kazakh authorities have prosecuted several high-ranking officials on charges that they attempted to seize power during the protests, with some removed from office or sentenced to prison, and others acquitted.

Many were seen to be allies of Toqaev's predecessor, long-serving Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbaev.

When asked what caused the unrest, Toqaev initially cited "socio-economic problems accumulated over the years," which had led to stagnation and undermined faith in the government.

However, Toqaev then suggested that "some influential people" did not like the changes to the country's political scene after he was appointed as acting president by Nazarbaev in 2019 and later that year elected as president.

Toqaev said the unknown people perceived the change "as a threat" to the power structure after decades of rule by Nazarbaev, and then "decided to turn back the face of reform and destroy everything in order to return to the old situation that was convenient for them."

"This group of high-ranking officials had a huge influence on the power structures and the criminal world," Toqaev alleged. "That's why they decided to seize power by force."

Toqaev, citing investigations by the Prosecutor-General's Office, said the unidentified group began "preparations" about six months before the nationwide demonstrations in January 2022, when the government made what he called "an ill-conceived, illegal decision to sharply increase the price of liquefied gas."

From there, Toqaev alleged, "extremists, criminal groups, and religious extremists" worked together to stage a coup. When the protests broke out in January 2022, Toqaev claimed that 20,000 "terrorists" had entered the country.

Experts have widely dismissed suggestions of foreign involvement in the mass protests.

Aside from about 10 members of the fundamentalist Islamic group Yakyn Inkar -- which is considered a banned extremist group in Kazakhstan -- who were arrested in connection with the protests, no religious groups have been singled out for alleged involvement in the protests.

The goal of the alleged coup plotters, Toqaev said, was to set up a dual power structure that would compete with the government.

"I openly told Nazarbaev that the political arrogance of his close associates almost destroyed the country," Toqaev said, without expounding on who the associates might be.

Toqaev had not previously mentioned speaking with Nazarbaev about the mass protests.

Toqaev also suggested that Kazakhstan, which has come under criticism for its imprisonment of journalists and civil and political activists, does not have any political prisoners.

When asked about political prisoners, Toqaev said only that "our legislation does not contain a single decree, a single law, a single regulatory document that provides a basis for prosecuting citizens for their political views."

For there to be political persecution, according to Toqaev, there would need to be "censorship, special laws, and punitive bodies" in place.

Toqaev also appeared to subtly criticize Nazarbaev, who became head of Soviet Kazakhstan in 1990 and became Kazakhstan's first president after the country became independent in 1991.

Nazarbaev served as president until he resigned in 2019, although he held the title of "Leader of the Nation" from 2010 to 2020 and also served as chairman of the Security Council from 1991 to 2022. Nazarbaev has since been stripped of those roles and titles.

While discussing Nazarbaev, Toqaev said that "everyone knows his contribution to the formation of an independent state of Kazakhstan. He is a person who deserves a fair historical evaluation."

But the current Kazakh president also said that "there should be no senior or junior president in the country."

"Go away, don't beg!" Toqaev said. "Citizens who will be in charge of the country in the future should learn from this situation and stay away from such things and think only about the interests of the state and the prosperity of society."

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has given a lengthy interview in which he discusses what he sees as the origins of the "Bloody January" protests of 2022 as well as the threat of dual power systems.

Speaking to the state-run Egemen Qazaqstan newspaper, which published the interview on January 3, Toqaev said the protests that began in the southwestern town Zhanaozen on January 2, 2022, following a sharp rise in fuel prices and which quickly spread to other cities, including Almaty, were instigated by an unidentified "rogue group."

Toqaev's shoot-to-kill order to quell the unrest led to the deaths of more than 230 protesters, and the Kazakh president has been criticized for not living up to his promise to the public to answer questions about the incident.

The Kazakh authorities have prosecuted several high-ranking officials on charges that they attempted to seize power during the protests, with some removed from office or sentenced to prison, and others acquitted.

Many were seen to be allies of Toqaev's predecessor, long-serving Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbaev.

When asked what caused the unrest, Toqaev initially cited "socio-economic problems accumulated over the years," which had led to stagnation and undermined faith in the government.

However, Toqaev then suggested that "some influential people" did not like the changes to the country's political scene after he was appointed as acting president by Nazarbaev in 2019 and later that year elected as president.

Toqaev said the unknown people perceived the change "as a threat" to the power structure after decades of rule by Nazarbaev, and then "decided to turn back the face of reform and destroy everything in order to return to the old situation that was convenient for them."

"This group of high-ranking officials had a huge influence on the power structures and the criminal world," Toqaev alleged. "That's why they decided to seize power by force."

Toqaev, citing investigations by the Prosecutor-General's Office, said the unidentified group began "preparations" about six months before the nationwide demonstrations in January 2022, when the government made what he called "an ill-conceived, illegal decision to sharply increase the price of liquefied gas."

From there, Toqaev alleged, "extremists, criminal groups, and religious extremists" worked together to stage a coup. When the protests broke out in January 2022, Toqaev claimed that 20,000 "terrorists" had entered the country.

Experts have widely dismissed suggestions of foreign involvement in the mass protests.

Aside from about 10 members of the fundamentalist Islamic group Yakyn Inkar -- which is considered a banned extremist group in Kazakhstan -- who were arrested in connection with the protests, no religious groups have been singled out for alleged involvement in the protests.

The goal of the alleged coup plotters, Toqaev said, was to set up a dual power structure that would compete with the government.

"I openly told Nazarbaev that the political arrogance of his close associates almost destroyed the country," Toqaev said, without expounding on who the associates might be.

Toqaev had not previously mentioned speaking with Nazarbaev about the mass protests.

Toqaev also suggested that Kazakhstan, which has come under criticism for its imprisonment of journalists and civil and political activists, does not have any political prisoners.

When asked about political prisoners, Toqaev said only that "our legislation does not contain a single decree, a single law, a single regulatory document that provides a basis for prosecuting citizens for their political views."

For there to be political persecution, according to Toqaev, there would need to be "censorship, special laws, and punitive bodies" in place.

Toqaev also appeared to subtly criticize Nazarbaev, who became head of Soviet Kazakhstan in 1990 and became Kazakhstan's first president after the country became independent in 1991.

Nazarbaev served as president until he resigned in 2019, although he held the title of "Leader of the Nation" from 2010 to 2020 and also served as chairman of the Security Council from 1991 to 2022. Nazarbaev has since been stripped of those roles and titles.

While discussing Nazarbaev, Toqaev said that "everyone knows his contribution to the formation of an independent state of Kazakhstan. He is a person who deserves a fair historical evaluation."

But the current Kazakh president also said that "there should be no senior or junior president in the country."

"Go away, don't beg!" Toqaev said. "Citizens who will be in charge of the country in the future should learn from this situation and stay away from such things and think only about the interests of the state and the prosperity of society."

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Azatbek, now 47, was an ethnic Kazakh of Chinese nationality living in China’s far western Xinjiang region until 2016, when he traveled to Kazakhstan and acquired Kazakh nationality shortly thereafter. 

RFA had previously reported that Azatbek was arrested on Dec. 7, 2017, when he visited the Khorgos International Center for Boundary Cooperation, a special international trade zone on the Kazakhstan-China border. In 2018, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for espionage.

His sister, Gauhar Kurmanalieva, who lives in Kazakhstan’s largest city of Almaty, said he was forcefully detained by Chinese police while in the Khorgos Market, on the Kazakh side of the border. 

“His passport was confiscated and he was forcibly taken to China by car,” she said.

The court verdict from 2018 stated that Azatbek was arrested by the Khorgos county (Huocheng county in Chinese) Police Department in China. 

After months of effort to corroborate this, RFA managed to speak to a police officer in that department who was involved in Azatbek’s abduction and described what happened.

The officer, who insisted on not being identified, said that Azatbek had been blacklisted by the police due to a complaint from an acquaintance who had helped him get a visa but with whom he had a financial dispute. 

The officers spotted him in the trade zone on Dec. 7, 2017, and they brought him to the Kazakhstan border control office and interrogated him. 

Azatbek insisted that he was a citizen of Kazakhstan and refused to answer their questions, the officer said. The police found out that his Chinese citizenship was not yet erased from the archive and moved him from the Kazakhstan border office to Chinese territory. 

“He was a little bit arrogant. It was intense, so we treated him badly,” said the officer. 

“He ripped up a letter we wrote. Then we started having a conflict,” he said. “There were 15 [police officers], so finally we managed to control him.” 

Police then grabbed him by the collar, dragged him out of the Kazakhstan police office, forced him into a car and took him to the Chinese side, the officer said.

“He was grabbed by the neck and thrown out of the office,” the officer said. 

Azatbek refused to go to the Chinese side of the border, so the police pushed and pulled him to the car. “While he was … resisting, we beat his hand a couple of times,” the officer said.

Befriended apparent spy

Azatbek was apparently arrested because of his links to Daniyar Serikbayev, who worked at Kazakhstan’s Consulate in Urumqi. He was not aware that Serikbayev also worked for Kazakhstan’s National Security Commission, the country’s intelligence agency. 

Kurmanalieva said that the accusation of "espionage" against her brother was slander and that the arrest of a Kazakh national by the Chinese police was disrespecting Kazakhstan’s sovereignty.

“If China had proof that my brother committed a crime, instead of crossing the Kazakhstan border to arrest him, they should’ve done so via Interpol or should’ve discussed it diplomatically with Kazakhstan,” she said. “I think what China did is an insult to Kazakhstan.”

She called on the Kazakh government to act on behalf of her brother and to protect and restore the honor Kazakhstan.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Uyghur.

Askar Azatbek didn’t realize that his friendship with a Kazakh consular officer would one day land him in prison.

The ethnic Kazakh who lived in China’s far-western Xinjiang region had retired from his job at the Ili Prefecture Immigration Bureau and moved in 2016 to neighboring Kazakhstan, where he obtained Kazakh citizenship.

But on Dec. 7, 2017, when he visited the Khorgos International Center for Boundary Cooperation, a special international trade zone on the Kazakhstan-China border, he was arrested by Chinese police and taken into custody.

What he got was a 20-year sentence for “divulging state secrets.”

Azatbek’s alleged crime involved guiding the consular officer around several dam construction sites near the Ili River in Xinjiang, some of which were in places in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture that attracted tourists, said his older sister, Gauhar Kurmanalieva, who lives in Kazakhstan.

“He’s been in jail for about six years now,” she said.

While many Muslims — Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic groups in Xinjiang —faced arrest and detention on charges of “national separatism” and “religious extremism” in 2017 — the year that Chinese authorities began holding them en masse against their will in “re-education” camps or prisons — others, like Azatbek, were held on unusual and unforeseen offenses. 

Azatbek, 47, had headed to Kazakhstan on his own at first, but planned to eventually relocate his wife and children who lived in Ghulja, a major city in Xinjiang called Yining in Chinese, Kurmanalieva told Radio Free Asia. 

After his arrest, Kurmanalieva made inquiries into her missing brother’s whereabouts for a year and discovered he had been accused of engaging in espionage for Kazakhstan. She also learned about her brother’s verdict handed down by the Ili Prefectural Court.

Visits to dams and reservoirs

According to the verdict, when Azatbek worked in Ili Prefecture, he struck up a friendship with Daniyar Serikbayev, who worked at Kazakhstan’s consulate in Urumqi. But he was unaware that Serikbayev also worked for the country’s National Security Commission, the government intelligence agency. 

Through Serikbayev, Azatbek secured visas for himself and other Uyghurs. Serikbayev also accompanied Azatbek on his visits to various water reservoirs and dam projects around the Ili River. He photographed the construction and key locations during the visit, while Azatbek provided details about the projects. 

The court ruling, supported by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s Department of Water Affairs and the regional and ministerial offices of China’s state security agency, classified the photos and project information as state secrets. 

The verdict said Azatbek knowingly committed the crime of “divulging state secrets,” recognizing Serikbayev’s affiliation with Kazakhstan’s National Security Commission and the confidential nature of the water project information.

Bextiyar Omar, who manages the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database from Norway said Chinese authorities crossed the border to arrest Azatbek, but during their interrogation, they did not find evidence of criminal activity, and in response to the political climate at the time, fabricated the charge against him. 

He also noted that the water projects are public facilities, and said the case is another illustration of the mass arrests of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in 2017.

The Embassy of Kazakhstan in Beijing recently informed Kurmanalieva that Azatbek was serving his sentence in a prison in Gansu province. 

Embassy officials first visited him this Jan. 18 and again six months later to ensure that he was in good health, she said. 

“My brother sent a letter to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking to be transferred to a Kazakh prison,” Kurmanalieva said, adding that Azatbek did this during the diplomats’ second visit.

Because Azatbek is a Kazakhstan citizen held in a foreign prison, the embassy officials said they wanted to transfer him to Kazakhstan.

When contacted by RFA, the Ili Prefecture Immigration Bureau refused to comment on Azatbek’s situation, saying that he had retired years ago.

“No one attended his court hearing,” said one employee. “We don’t know anything. If you want to inquire about this, ask the related government organizations.”

Mass detentions

During the peak of the mass detentions, authorities in Xinjiang transferred many Muslim prisoners to heavy-security facilities in Gansu and other provinces, RFA reported in 2019. That same year, RFA also reported that as many as 1,200 Uyghurs were detained in a jail in Gansu after being secretly transferred under the cover of night from political “re-education camps” in Xinjiang.

An employee of the prison administration department in Gansu province told RFA that inmates transferred from Xinjiang are not typical criminals and that they are incarcerated in every detention facility in the province. 

“These transferred prisoners are not allowed to be in touch with anyone,” the employee said. “No one is allowed to get close to them.”

The Kazakhstan government maintains that Azatbek is innocent, and Astana is still trying to have him released.

“Work is going on between Kazakhstan’s and China’s related offices and ministries about my brother’s case,” Kurmanalieva said. “But it scares me they are going to stretch this whole discussion for another five years.”

Kazakhstan’s embassy in Beijing did not respond to RFA’s emailed requests for comment.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Corrects headline to say that the detainee is a Kazakh.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

On November 9, police arrested Ivanenko, a journalist with the independent regional news website Properm.ru, at his home in the central Russian city of Perm and took him to a Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens, according to Properm.ru and media reports.

On Monday, Ivanenko was taken to Yekaterinburg, some 350 kilometers (217 miles) southeast of Perm, and deported to Kazakhstan, Properm.ru reported. This was despite a Perm court on Friday suspending the decision to cancel Ivanenko’s residence permit and scheduling a hearing for November 14, it said.

“CPJ is concerned by Russia’s decision to expel Kazakh journalist Vladislav Ivanenko and calls on Russian authorities to disclose the reasons behind it,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said on Tuesday. “Russian authorities must clarify whether Ivanenko was expelled because of his work and allow members of the press across Russia to work freely.”

Ivanenko had lived in Perm for eight years but had recently received a notice of cancellation of his residence permit, which he appealed before the legal deadline, his outlet said. The authorities did not give a reason for the cancellation and Ivanenko had not faced any administrative or criminal charges, it said.

“We consider the actions of the law enforcement agencies to be illegal and excessive and demand that they stop putting pressure on the employee and the editorial office,” Properm.ru said, adding that it believed the reasons for canceling Ivanenko’s residence permit were “fictitious” and “groundless.”

Properm.ru covers the war in Ukraine as well as local issues such as COVID-19, urban planning and environmental pollution, according to CPJ’s review. Ivanenko had worked for the outlet for four years, according to the independent news website Sota. CPJ was unable to establish what topics he reported on.

The Department of the Russian Ministry of Interior in Perm said it was not aware of Ivanenko’s situation and declined to comment. CPJ’s phone calls to the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens in Perm and emails and text messages to Properm.ru did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Kusman Rehim, 56, was detained on July 14 after performing readings from the Quran in a melodious art form revered across the Islamic world, the head of the Kazakhstan-based rights group Atajurt, said in an interview on Thursday.

"Kusman Rehim was arrested on July 14," Atajurt chief Bekzat Maksutkhan said. "The main reason was that the police found a Quran in his home."

"Also, he had performed Quranic recitations in people's homes during Eid al-Adha [June 27-July 1] and taken part in a Muslim wedding," Bekzat said.

The arrest comes against a backdrop of renewed attacks on religious worship under Chinese President Xi Jinping, with Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and other religious adherents forced to submit to party control and the censorship of their religious lives under the government's "sinicization" program.

However, recitations of the Quran have been banned since 2017, when China began the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in "re-education" camps across Xinjiang.

Authorities claimed that normal Islamic customs like the wearing of beards and veils and Quran study groups were evidence of "religious extremism."

“Ethnic unity’

China has also targeted Muslim communities with “ethnic unity” campaigns under which Han Chinese "relatives" put pressure on them to give up fasting for Ramadan, drink alcohol and eat pork.

Bekzat said Kusman Rehim, who hails from Xinjiang's Jimsar county, had been locked up before due to his religious beliefs, and was released after Atajurt publicized his case.

Kusman's younger brother Bilal, who lives in Kazakhstan, said his brother was detained on April 21, released a month later, then detained again on July 14.

"One reason was that he was doing a Quranic recitation at a Muslim wedding ceremony," Bilal said. "The second reason was that the police found a Quran in his home."

He said the family has yet to receive any official notification of his brother's detention, nor any information on the charges against him.

"They just took him away," he said.

A switchboard operator who answered the phone at the Jimsar county police department on Thursday declined to transfer RFA's call.

"We don't really know about that," the operator said, before hanging up the phone.

Repeated calls to local police stations were returned to the same switchboard.

Religious crimes

China recently announced a 100-day “strike hard” campaign in Xinjiang, which typically include police raids on Uyghur households, and tighter restrictions on Islamic practices and curbs on the culture and language of the ethnic minority group.

An elderly Uyghur serving a nearly 14-year prison sentence in Xinjiang following his arrest in 2017 for studying religion as a child and for committing other religious “offenses” died of hypertension while in jail, a local police officer said earlier this month.

Abdurusul Memet, 71, was serving a 13-year-and-11-month sentence for learning the Quran between November 1964 and March 1965 at the time, according to the Xinjiang Victims' Database.

In 2017, another ethnic Kazakh man, Manat Hamit, was jailed for "disseminating terrorism-related audiovisual material," and "incitement to racial hatred and to racial discrimination" after the authorities found audio files of Quranic recitations on his computer.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.

On Friday, August 18, Saparkyzy, a correspondent for independent news agency KazTAG, was attempting to report on an accident at the Kazakhstanskaya mine in the central Karaganda region when around five unidentified men forcibly ejected her from the mine’s grounds, dragging her by her arms, took her phone, and deleted video footage, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by messaging app.

Five miners died in a fire at the mine on August 17. The company that owns the mine, ArcelorMittal Temirtau – part of the global ArcelorMittal Group – describes itself as Kazakhstan’s largest steel and mining producer. The company has been noted for the high number of fatalities at its mines in the region and Saparkyzy told CPJ it has restricted access to its sites for journalists for several years. She believes the company forcibly removed her to suppress coverage of the disaster.

CPJ emailed ArcelorMittal Temirtau for comment but did not receive a reply.

“The violent ejection of journalist Diana Sapakyzy while reporting on a mining disaster seems a deliberate and brutal stifling of coverage that is clearly in the public interest,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Kazakh authorities should investigate and prosecute those involved to send a message that violence against journalists will not be tolerated and that the press’s right to report on public disasters will be upheld.”

Saparkyzy told CPJ that she decided to report from the site of the Kazakhstanskaya mine after ArcelorMittal Temirtau published limited information about the fire in press releases and allowed journalists only to attend a pre-arranged press conference.

She said she entered the company’s office at the Kazakhstanskaya site without identifying herself as a journalist and recorded several interviews with deceased miners’ relatives. When staff from the company’s press service recognized her, they told security guards to “chuck her out.”

Rather than uniformed guards, who were also present, Saparkyzy said around five plainclothes men who did not identify themselves grabbed her tightly by the arms and dragged her out of the building. The men took her backpack and threw out her belongings and equipment, including glasses and a tripod, as they escorted her to the mine’s gates, she said.

When Saparkyzy began filming the men on her cell phone, one of them grabbed her by both arms from behind and another man took her phone, according to the journalist and footage of the incident from the phone shared with CPJ. The man deleted video Saparkyzy had recorded, but she was able to restore it after retrieving her phone, which the men dropped while she was struggling with them, she said.

The journalist suffered bruising on her arms and filed a complaint with police and underwent a forensic medical examination. As of August 22, police have not opened a criminal case over the incident, Saparkyzy said.

In a statement August 21, local press freedom group Adil Soz called for the perpetrators to be criminally prosecuted for obstructing journalistic activity, saying they had been encouraged to act so “brazenly” by Kazakhstan’s low rate of prosecution for the offense. Only two cases of criminal obstruction have reached the courts in the country’s 30 years of independence, the rights organization said.

CPJ’s calls, emails, and messages to Karaganda Region Police Department and email to Karaganda Region Prosecutor’s Office went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On July 3, the Saryagash District Specialized Administrative Court in Kazakhstan’s southern Turkestan region sentenced Batyrbekov, chief editor of local independent newspaper S-Inform, to 20 days’ administrative detention over a March 10  Facebook post accusing a parliamentary deputy of corruption. He was taken from the courtroom to begin his sentence.

Batyrbekov denied the charges and said he plans to appeal the verdict.

In a statement, the local free speech group Adil Soz described the ruling as “unlawful,” saying the court failed to prove Batyrbekov had knowingly spread false information. 

In 2019, Batyrbekov was sentenced to two years and three months on insult and defamation charges. In January 2022, he survived an assassination attempt allegedly organized by a local official in retaliation for his reporting.

“The 20-day prison sentence for Kazakh journalist Amangeldy Batyrbekov, who has been frequently targeted with defamation charges and even attempted murder for his reporting, is deeply troubling,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said, in London. “Kazakh authorities should free Batyrbekov immediately and reform their defamation laws to ensure that journalists are not jailed for their reporting.”

In the March 10 post, Batyrbekov alleged that parliamentary deputy Bolatbek Nazhmetdinuly was connected to corruption cases, pointing to a 2019 fraud case in which Batyrbekov said Nazhmetdinuly was allegedly a suspect and that police had “mysteriously closed.” 

In court, Batyrbekov showed what he said was a signed police document identifying Nazhmetdinuly as a suspect, according to Adil Soz. However, the investigator whose signature was purportedly on that document told the court that he denied signing it, saying Nazhmetdinuly was a witness and not a suspect.

Nazhmetdinuly told CPJ by email that his lawyer contacted Batyrbekov in the comments section under that post and asked him not to spread inaccurate information and to delete the post. When Batyrbekov refused to take down the post, Nazhmetdinuly filed a defamation complaint on March 15, he said.

Nazhmetdinuly told CPJ that investigators in the March 15 defamation case provided Batyrbekov with a document stating that the parliamentarian had not been a suspect in that case.

Judge Berik Kaipov ruled Batyrbekov had spread information without checking its accuracy, and that simply fining the journalist would be “insufficient” punishment, according to Adil Soz.

A person close to the journalist told CPJ that Batyrbekov believed authorities had falsified the document to favor Nazhmetdinuly’s description of the case.

That person, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said Batyrbekov had frequently written posts and articles critical of Kaipov and that the judge had twice previously convicted the journalist of defamation. Those rulings were later overturned by higher courts, that person said.

CPJ’s calls and messages to Batyrbekov’s lawyer and email to the Saryagash Specialized Administrative Court went unanswered. 

In 2020, Kazakhstan decriminalized defamation but maintained punishments of up to 30 days’ detention for the offense in its administrative code.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

At about 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 11, an unidentified individual was seen on security footage approaching Sutyagin’s car in the western city of Atyrau; seconds later, the footage shows a small explosion and the car on fire.

Sutyagin, a local correspondent for Kazakhstan’s state news agency Kazinform, told CPJ and local media outlets that his vehicle was destroyed in the blaze. In a statement on Telegram, Kazakh police said they had opened a criminal investigation into the intentional destruction of property.

Sutyagin told CPJ that he was “a journalist who doesn’t keep quiet” on controversial topics and has therefore “crossed many people,” but said it was too early to know whether the attack was related to his work. Those news reports said he is also a member of a local citizen’s council in Atyrau.

“The suspected arson attack on journalist Viktor Sutyagin’s car is yet another worrying reminder of the dangers and harassment journalists in Kazakhstan face on an all too frequent basis,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Kazakh authorities must thoroughly investigate this attack, establish whether it was related to his journalism, and hold all perpetrators to account, including anyone who may have ordered it.”

Sutyagin told CPJ he did not want to speculate on particular coverage that may have led to the attack. He often writes critically on his Facebook page, where he has 5,800 followers, and has posted about topics including potential price hikes for garbage collection in Atyrau and the privatization of city land for construction, according to CPJ’s review of his page.

In January, arsonists destroyed a vehicle belonging to independent journalist and activist Dinara Yegeubayeva and in February set fire to two cars belonging to camera operator Roman Yegorov.

CPJ emailed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan for comment but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On April 7, an individual emailed Moy Gorod’s editorial office in the northwestern city of Oral saying they had planted a bomb in their building, according to a Moy Gorod report and Anel Kainedenova, Moy Gorod‘s editor-in-chief who spoke to CPJ by messaging app.

The emailer described themselves as a “Russian shahid,” an Arabic or Islamic word for a martyr—and said they had set 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of TNT to a timer that would shortly detonate.

Police searched the office, but did not find any explosives, Kainedenova said. She said the threat could be related to Moy Gorod’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Russian separatist sentiment in western Kazakhstan. Moy Gorod has not previously received threats, she said.

“Bomb threats against media outlets must be taken fully seriously and demand a swift response,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director in New York. “Kazakh authorities should conduct a thorough investigation into recent threats and cyberattacks against Moy Gorod and take measures to ensure the safety of its staff.”

Moy Gorod (My City) is an independent newspaper and website covering current affairs in Kazakhstan’s western provinces, with over 400,000 followers across its social media accounts, its website said.

Kainedenova said Moy Gorod’s staff did not initially see the threat because it landed in the outlet’s junk mail, but that Oral police called her at home the evening of April 7 and asked her to open the editorial office after several local schools and courts received the same threat. Police with bomb-sniffing dogs searched the office, but did not find anything suspicious, she said.

In the message, the emailer identified themselves as Andrei Petrov and wrote it was a “great day” that “Kazakhstan will remember forever,” adding they will “put an end to this governance forever. … Soon (the explosives) will all detonate and the ammonal charge will do away with your pitiful lives tick tock.”

Kainedenova said she is unsure why the emailer chose Moy Gorod or how seriously to take the threat. She said separatist sentiment has been more frequently expressed in West Kazakhstan Region, where Oral is located, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The region borders five Russian oblasts—an administrative division similar to a province—and ethnic Russians comprise about 20% of its population.

Moy Gorod, which publishes in Russian, has been subject to repeated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since September 2022, Kainedenova said. The outlet believes this could be related to its reporting on the Ukraine war—which it has called a “war” rather than the Russian-designated term of “special military operation”—and on local separatist sentiment.

Russian authorities have repeatedly sought to censor Russian-language Kazakh reporting on the Ukraine war, and Kainedenova added that the start of the DDoS attacks coincided with a wave of such attacks on Kazakh media outlets and a mass influx into Kazakhstan of Russians seeking to avoid military drafts. Karla Jamankulova, head of local free-speech organization Adil Soz, shared data with CPJ that showed at least 11 Kazakh outlets were targeted by DDoS and hacking attacks since the start of 2022, but Jamankulova said there was not sufficient information to comment on the source of these attacks.

In 2021, Kazakh outlet Aq Zhayiq, which also covers west Kazakhstan and reported critically on Russia, received threats from users evincing strong Russian nationalist sentiment.

CPJ emailed Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment, but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The 47-year old singer, Zhanargul Zhumatai, was arrested Feb. 10 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, after she received a request for a "media interview" from someone claiming to be an Associated Press correspondent, according to the Kazahstan-based rights group Atajurt.

Her family members – her mother, sister and two brothers — were arrested on Feb. 13, according to police and an eyewitness.

Before they were arrested, Zhanargul’s family members were taken to a neighborhood committee meeting and publicly criticized them for not stopping her from speaking with foreign reporters, and accused them of helping her do it, according to an eyewitness who did not want to be identified for security reasons and a police officer.

“We arrested them because they did not stop Zhanargul from communicating with foreign reporters and allowing her to communicate with them conveniently,” a police officer said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Zhanargul did in fact speak with a foreign journalist. Calls earlier this month to the phone number given out by the purported AP reporter who contacted her on Feb. 8 resulted in a message saying the number was "temporarily unavailable."

Another officer from the police station in Benfangguo Bazar in Urumqi county confirmed that the station was currently detaining Zhanargul’s mother, elder sister, and two elder brothers, but could not confirm or deny that their detainment had anything to do with Zhanargul’s. 

Targeted for speaking out

In previous interviews with RFA, Zhanargul said she was being targeted for speaking out against the government’s appropriation of ethnic Kazakh herding communities' land to make way for highways and hydropower stations around Urumqi. 

She also said authorities sent her to a concentration camp between 2017 and 2019 when she refused to apologize for a letter she wrote to the local government complaining about it. 

Sources estimate that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have detained hundreds of ethnic Kazakhs in recent years, freezing their bank accounts and assets pending "investigation," also for “extremist” behavior that includes normal Islamic practices.

Arresting the entire family based on the actions of one member is an example of the Chinese government’s “unjust, cruel, and inhuman” policies toward ethnic minorities in the Uyghur region, Danish researcher Rune Stenberg, also known as Yusupjan, told RFA. 

Zhanargul had been in communication with Yusupjan, who told RFA on Feb. 13 that at times when he was not able to reach her, he would sometimes be able to get in touch with her by calling her family members. 

“Zhanargul’s telephone was off on February 10th. But her elder sister’s phone was on. I could speak with her twice that day,” he said. “Her phone was off yesterday too. I think the police might have [also] detained her elder sister.”

The arrests of Zhanargul’s family members for her actions was not surprising to Yusupjan, who described the Chinese government’s Uyghur policy as “punishing everyone in the family if one person in the family makes a mistake.”

He said he had communicated with international organizations and diplomats to bring their attention to Zhanargul's case and said this type of punishment would not produce the result the Chinese government wanted to achieve, adding that it was likely that Zhanargul would be sent to prison and her family released after they were done intimidating them.

“What they are doing to Zhanargul is not compatible with Chinese law,” Yusupjan said, urging the international community to pressure Beijing to release her. “What they say in theory does not match what they do in practice.”

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

State security police in Urumqi's Shayibak district took Zhanargul Zhumatai, 47, away from her mother's house on Feb. 10, after she received a request for a "media interview" from someone claiming to be an Associated Press correspondent, according to the Kazahstan-based rights group Atajurt.

"State security police from the Shayibak branch of the Urumqi police department detained Zhanargul at 5.40 p.m. on Feb. 10," Atajurt spokesperson Nurbek told Radio Free Asia. "She is gone."

While Zhanargul's whereabouts are currently unclear, critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party have repeatedly reported being held in psychiatric facilities despite having no diagnosis of mental illness.

A few days before she was detained, Zhanargul made a recording of a phone call with local state security police, who wanted to arrange a time to visit her at home.

"I don't want you people in my home," she says on the recording. "I need to tell you straight, Officer Xu, I don't want anyone from the residential office, particularly not the neighborhood committee or the political and legal affairs commission, in my home either."

"I don't want any of this. All I want is to be left in peace," she says.

But the police paid no heed to her request.

"The Xinjiang police called to threaten her at around 5.00 p.m. Urumqi time on Feb. 10, then they sent two ethnic Kazakh [officers] round," Atajurt founder Serikzhan Bilash said.

"They went to her mother's house and took Zhanargul Zhumatai away by force," he said.

Calls to the phone number given out by the purported AP journalist who contacted her on Feb. 8 resulted in a message saying the number was "temporarily unavailable" on Monday.

Land compensation

Her detention comes after she told Radio Free Asia in a Jan. 6 interview that she has been targeted by the authorities ever since she spoke out against government appropriation of ethnic Kazakh herding communities' land to make way for highways and hydropower stations around Urumqi.

Zhanargul spoke out after some herding communities received low compensation or none at all for the loss of their grazing lands, with some of the compensation money believed embezzled by local government officials.

"I wrote in a letter that the Urumqi county government has been suppressing herding communities and violating management regulations for national grasslands including resettlement subsidies that herding communities should get," she said in the interview with RFA Mandarin on Jan. 6.

"Urumqi officials sent me to a concentration camp, for so-called re-education ... because I refused to apologize," she said, adding that she was initially detained at the Urumqi No.3 Detention Center in 2017, before being transferred to one of the mass incarceration camps across Xinjiang which the ruling Chinese Communist Party says are for "re-education" and "vocational training."

She was put under huge pressure in the camp to write a confession detailing her "extremist" thoughts based on religious material on her cell phone, but continued to insist on her innocence. 

In the interview, Zhanargul described being made to sing revolutionary songs about the "motherland" and the Communist Party, as well as study the government's guidelines on religious "extremism," which include a number of behaviors that are required or commonly regarded as desirable for Muslims, such as reading the Quran, or wearing head-coverings or beards.

She also said she was injected with unknown substances by medical staff during her time in the camp.

"I nearly fainted, had diarrhea and felt nauseous afterwards," she said. "While they were injecting me, they laughed at my screams and asked if it hurt. I couldn't lift my arm for a couple of weeks after they injected me."

Zhanargul said she lost nearly half her body weight during her stay, developed a number of health problems, and was denied permission to communicate with her family.

"When I went in there, I weighed 86 kilos, and I was a very strong woman," she said. "By the time I got out in May 2019, I was a skeleton who weighed around 50 kilos. I almost died."

Camps 'still there'

Serikzhan Bilash said little has changed in Xinjiang since Zhanargul's incarceration in the camp.

"The inhumane genocidal policies haven't changed; they're still being implemented in Xinjiang," he said. "The Xinjiang concentration camps are still there."

He said that while the Chinese government had released some ethnic Kazahs and allowed them to be reunited with their relatives in Kazakhstan, those who remain inside China remain "under huge pressure."

He said in a Jan. 6 interview that Zhanargul was "extremely brave," as she had been one of the first camp detainees to speak out about her experiences while still in China.

"She is still in Xinjiang, so the state security police could make her disappear, fake her suicide, or put her in a psychiatric hospital at any time," he warned at the time. 

Zhanargul's detention came after U.S. lawmakers called on Washington to do more to enforce recent laws passed by U.S. lawmakers addressing the forced labor of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority group, who have made up the majority of detainees in the camps.

The government has detained large numbers of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities simply for posting religious videos not approved by officials, or for possessing Qurans, prayer mats and traditional clothing, all of which have been described as evidence of "extremism" by Chinese police in recent years.

Sources estimate that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have detained hundreds of ethnic Kazakhs in recent years, freezing their bank accounts and assets pending "investigation," also for “extremist” behavior that includes normal Islamic practices.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting and Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.

On January 24, the Leninsky District Court in the western city of Vladimir summoned the Kazakhstan-based independent news website Arbat.Media to a February 17 hearing for publishing allegedly inaccurate information about the war in Ukraine, according to multiple media reports, a report by Arbat.Media, and the outlet’s chief editor Syrym Itkulov, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Itkulov called the summons “surreal” and added that it “goes without saying” that the outlet’s representatives would not travel to Russia to respond to the summons.

“After cracking down on the coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine on its own territory, Russian authorities are now trying to censor reporting abroad as well,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately drop any legal proceedings against the Kazakh outlet Arbat.Media, and stop trying to put foreign media under the same yoke as Russian outlets. Kazakh authorities, for their part, must send a clear signal that the country’s news outlets are in no way subject to Russian law.”

A court notice published on Arbat.Media’s website states that the Vladimir military prosecutor’s office requested the outlet be banned in Russia and accused Arbat.Media of publishing “false” information about Russian army casualties, Russian forces’ shelling of residential buildings, and the deaths of civilians.

The notice also alleges that an article about Russian forces retreating from the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in September 2022 was “misleading,” and accused the outlet of “shaping a distorted perception of current events among the Russian Internet audience and creating dissenting sentiments.” Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor requested Arbat.Media remove that article in November, but the outlet refused to comply.

In a public letter sent to the Kazakh Ministry of Information on Thursday, independent local free speech organization Adil Soz reminded authorities that “censorship is prohibited in Kazakhstan.”

Adil Soz head Karla Jamankulova told CPJ that she hoped the Kazakh government would take “a public firm stand” to “protect our information space from any attempts of other countries to dictate what our media should write about and how.”

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Roskomnadzor said in a statement that all media “must only use information and data received from official Russian sources,” under the threat of being blocked online. Since then, authorities have requested at least 11 Kazakh media outlets to remove war-related content, according to data sent to CPJ by Adil Soz.

The independent media outlet Vlast and the news portal Informburo.kz refused such orders, while other outlets complied, according to reports.

“This is a violation of international jurisdiction,” Itkulov said. “How can a Russian district court summon a foreign media outlet to a trial?”

Roskomnadzor has blocked several Central Asia media outlets, including services affiliated with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Kyrgyz independent news outlet Kloop, Kazakh information portal NUR.kz, and the Central Asian service of independent Russian news outlet Mediazona over their war coverage.

CPJ emailed the Leninsky District Court, Roskomnadzor, and the Kazakh Ministry of Information for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On Sunday, December 18, officers from Kazakhstan’s Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) in the southern city of Almaty arrested Kozachkov, who covers alleged corruption and abuses by government officials and prominent business figures for independent news website Vremya and his Telegram channel, according to news reports and a report by local free speech organization Adil Soz.

In a statement on its Telegram channel, FMA accused Kozachkov of helping a criminal group carry out illegal hostile takeovers of local businesses by publishing information discrediting the takeovers’ victims. The statement added that the journalist was under investigation for spreading state secrets.

CPJ was not able to obtain contact information for the journalist’s lawyer, but Adil Soz told CPJ that the journalist, via his lawyer, denied the accusations. A news report, citing a Facebook post that Adil Soz confirmed as authentic, said the journalist denied the accusations, calling them retaliation for articles he wrote about FMA and its head.

An open letter to Kazakhstan President Qasym-Zhomart Toqayev published by Adil Soz and signed by dozens of prominent Kazakh journalists, media outlets, and free speech organizations said there were numerous indications that Kozachkov’s arrest was a “political order, linked to his journalistic investigations.”

“The arrest of Mikhail Kozachkov, a well-known anticorruption journalist who frequently published allegations against state officials, law enforcement agencies, and wealthy businessmen, is concerning, especially given reports of procedural and rights violations against him by the investigating body,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities should reveal the nature of the charges or release Kozachkov pending a transparent and impartial investigation of his case and ensure that his legal rights are fully upheld.”

In its statement, FMA accused Kozachkov and an acquaintance of the journalist of receiving 52 million tenge (US$111,200) from the criminal group to obtain and publish information discrediting several of its victims. FMA said the group was run by a man identified by Kazakh media as an assistant of the brother of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

FMA officers searched Kozachkov’s home following his arrest, those reports said, and the journalist’s lawyer told local news outlet Nege.kz that Kozachkov was placed in 48-hour detention, and that a court would decide on further custody measures.

Officers conducted the search without a lawyer present, detained the journalist for “several hours” without the chance to communicate with his lawyer, and did not allow the journalist to talk privately with his lawyer, Adil Soz reported.

In articles for Vremya and on his Telegram channel, Kozachkov offside, which has around 91,000 subscribers, Kozachkov regularly reported allegations of corruption against government and law enforcement agencies and had recently covered alleged abuses by FMA, according to a Vremya statement and a CPJ review of the journalist’s reporting. The FMA statement claimed Kozachkov published articles critical of FMA after learning that it was investigating Kozachkov’s associates.

In its statement, Vremya said it stood by Kozachkov’s reporting, saying he always verified information and that the outlet “scrupulously” checked his articles and consulted legal advisorsbefore publication.

Kozachkov had recently received threats against him and his family, been subjected to online slander, and complained of surveillance, the open letter and Vremya statement said.

CPJ emailed FMA for comment but did not receive a reply. In response to the open letter, President Toqayev’s spokesperson, Ruslan Zheldibay, said Kozachkov’s legal rights must be “fully observed” and called on the prosecutor general’s office to ensure that any investigation into him was legal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On October 5, unidentified individuals sent a severed pig’s head to Orda’s editorial offices in the southern city of Almaty, with a torn photo of Bazhkenova in its mouth, according to news reports and Bazhkenova, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

The incident is the latest in a series of threats, online harassment, and cyberattacks against Bazhkenova, her family, and Orda, following the outlet’s publication of an investigation into alleged lobbying practices by a company reportedly connected to Kazakhstan’s former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Bazhkenova told CPJ she believes these incidents are connected to this and other investigations into Nazarbayev-linked organizations.

CPJ emailed representatives of Nazarbayev for comment via an address provided on his official website but did not immediately receive any reply.

“The shocking and repulsive campaign of threats and harassment against Gulnara Bazhkenova and her outlet Orda are something no journalist ought to face for simply doing their work,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities must swiftly and transparently investigate all incidents of harassment of Bazhkenova and her staff, hold the culprits accountable, and ensure that journalists can operate free from such odious forms of pressure.”

Orda’s July 13 investigation suggested that a London-based company allegedly controlled by Nazarbayev had employed a British lord to lobby on behalf of the former president’s U.K. business interests. A week later, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks began against the outlet’s website, forcing it offline for three weeks, Bazhkenova said.

While Orda has strengthened its cybersecurity, Bazhkenova said DDoS and other forms of cyberattacks have continued “incessantly” since July, with perpetrators constantly seeking “weak spots,” causing the site to go offline for short periods.

Bazhkenova said they do not believe the cyberattacks came from Kazakh authorities, who normally simply block websites, and that such attacks require considerable resources—experts have told her they cost up to $15,000 per day to carry out.

Alongside the website cyberattacks, she said, unidentified users have flooded Orda’s Telegram chat with indecent images and insults directed at Bazhkenova and Orda staff, orchestrated mass complaints that caused the outlet’s Instagram accounts to close, and posted Bazhkenova’s photo and number and the number of Orda’s editorial office in social media ads proposing sexual services, causing them to receive large numbers of unsolicited calls, among other forms of online harassment.

In recent weeks, the online insults have been replaced by threats against Bazhkenova and her seven-year-old son, the journalist said. Photoshopped, pornographic images featuring Bazhkenova and her son have been sent to the outlet’s Telegram chat, accompanied by the address of her son’s school and threats to kidnap him, she said.

On October 4, the day before the pig’s head delivery, threats against Bazhkenova and her son were graffitied in large letters on a square overlooked by Orda’s office windows, according to Bazhkenova and a post by the journalist. Bazhkenova said she filed a complaint with police following this incident and police are investigating both incidents together.

CPJ emailed Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment but did not receive a reply. Information Minister Darkhan Qydyrali, whose ministry oversees the media, condemned the pressure on Orda on Facebook and offered the outlet legal support.

In October 2021, independent news website HOLA News was apparently blocked by Kazakh authorities for 10 days following reporting on Pandora Papers leaks concerning Nazarbayev’s wealth. Bazhkenova said Orda also was blocked for one day during that time over its coverage of the same story.

At the start of Kazakhstan’s mass anti-government protests in January 2022, Orda was one of two outlets blocked before authorities enacted a nationwide internet shutdown.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A Kazakh former internment camp inmate is suing the United Kingdom’s trade secretary for allowing imports of cotton he believes were obtained through forced labor in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

Erbakit Otarbay was arrested in Xinjiang in 2017 for watching illegal videos on Islam and installing the WhatsApp instant messaging service on his cell phone, amid a crackdown there by the Chinese government on Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. 

The next year, Otarbay was detained in an internment camp, where he was tortured and forced to work in an apparel factory, he said.

“There was an auto repair shop, a bakery, a sweet shop and a barber shop,” he told Radio Free Asia. “I told them I was not good at baking, and that I liked sewing.”

Otarbay joined a group of mostly women at the garment factory, who included not only Uyghurs, but also other ethnic minorities such as Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz. He produced cloth loops for belt buckles.

After he was released in 2019, Otarbay wanted to call attention to the suffering of detainees and those being forced to work, he said.

“If you ever get out, go as far as you can to every country and call for our release and tell them what the Chinese government is doing to us,” he said.

As many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims are believe to be held in network of internment camps that China has set up to prevent purported “religious extremism” and “terrorism.” Inmates have been subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilizations of female detainees and forced labor.

Beijing has insisted that the camps were vocational training facilities and that they are now closed. 

The United States and nine Western parliaments have declared that the repression of predominantly Muslim groups in Xinjiang amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Call for import restrictions

In a pre-action letter to Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, Otarbay called on the U.K. government to address an “ongoing failure” to impose any restrictions on cotton imports from Xinjiang, the U.K’s Sky News reported on Oct. 9.

China is a major cotton producer, with most of it coming from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights issued a report at the end of August saying that China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang province “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

But China has vowed to fight any U.N. action on human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang cited in the OHCHR report. 

In December 2021, an independent tribunal in London found that China committed genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, based on testimony from dozens of witnesses, including formerly jailed Uyghurs and legal and academic experts on China’s actions in the region. 

Otarbay also testified at the tribunal about his detention, saying that authorities confined him to a metal tiger chair, used to immobilize suspects during interrogations, for hours.

Otarbay emigrated from China’s Xinjiang to Kazakhstan with his family in 2014, but returned three years later. He was arrested and sent to a “re-education camp.” After a year, he was taken to another detention center where he was forced to work without pay in a clothes factory inside the facility, until he was released in May 2019.

“What I tell the U.K. government is ban all the goods from Xinjiang,” Otarbay told RFA. “They have to take measures. They should globally expose the genocide that China is committing.”

“They have to inspect all the imported goods from China, where they were manufactured, who made them and so on, and they should take actions to stop the forced labor,” he said. 

Though the U.K. government has measures in place to ensure that its companies are not complicit in alleged forced labor practices in Xinjiang or involved in the region’s supply chain, but critics say enforcement is lax.

“It is very disappointing that the British government have not taken a lead in this issue,” said Otarbay’s attorney, Paul Conrathe. But he said he is hopeful that the court will recognize that the government’s actions are “unlawful.”

14 days to respond

The trade secretary now has 14 days to respond, he said. Their next steps will depend on the reply.

Rahima Mahmut, U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, or the WUC, said the British government has not gone far enough to stop goods made with Uyghur forced labor from entering the U.K.

“Even though the U.K. government openly and loudly criticized China’s horrific treatment of the Uyghurs, so far it has not taken any meaningful actions in terms of ending Uyghur forced labor,” she told RFA. “It has not stopped the flow of products [made with forced labor] into [the UK].”

Otarbay is “the best plaintiff to pursue this case” against the U.K. trade secretary, and WUC is working closely with him, she added. 

To address concerns about Uyghur forced labor, the United States enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which assumes goods made in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor and thus banned under the U.S. 1930 Tariff Act. The law requires U.S. companies that import products from the region to prove that they have not been manufactured at any stage with Uyghur forced labor.

The European Union has proposed a total ban on all goods produced using forced labor at any stage of production, harvest or extraction, including clothing, cotton and commodities, irrespective of where they have been made.  

“It is very commendable that the American government has taken a lead in effectively banning imports that derive from Xinjiang, and also that the European Commission is looking at doing something similar,” Conrathe said. “This is a very important case dealing with one of the most appalling situations in terms of human rights abuses in the world today.”

Translated by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The story was updated to say that the U.S. and some Western parliaments have determined that the abuses constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Martin Williams.