A man who approached a police station in Belgrade carrying a backpack with a crossbow inside has been arrested, police said.

The arrest comes two days after a crossbow attack at the Israeli Embassy in the Serbian capital.

Police said the man crossed a barrier in front of the station and walked away quickly after being ordered to stop.

Officers then caught up with him and searched his backpack, finding a crossbow with seven arrows, several knives, and a jar with firecrackers in it.

"Motives are being investigated and a search of his apartment is being conducted," police said in a statement.

It said the suspect was not on the government's list of potential "extremists."

Police said the man claimed that he was "being pursued by the mafia and secret services."

A medical examination will be carried out, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said in the statement, adding that further actions will be decided by the prosecutor.

Serbia has been on high alert since a member of a special police unit was shot in the neck on June 29 by a man with a crossbow outside the Israeli Embassy.

The officer opened fire and killed the attacker, identified as Milos Zujovic. The officer underwent surgery and remains in the hospital.

Authorities said the assailant was a Serbian convert to Islam. His wife, currently in Montenegro, is being questioned by police at Serbia's request.

With reporting by AFP

A UN rights group on July 1 called for the immediate release of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying he had been detained "arbitrarily in violation of international laws." The Geneva-based United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention made the demand after examining Khan's corruption case, in which he was sentenced last year. Khan has been facing multiple prison sentences since 2022, when he was ousted through a vote of no confidence. There was no immediate comment from the government on the working group's demand. Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023, when a court found him guilty of hiding assets after selling state gifts. It led to a ban on Khan from taking part in politics and contesting the February 8 elections.

The Prosecutor-General's Office of Belarus has announced the sentencing of 20 people associated with the "extremist formation of Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya's analysts."

Among those sentenced is Yury Drakakhrust, a journalist and analyst for RFE/RL.

Most of the those accused in the case are independent political analysts, sociologists, and economists.

The list also includes several employees of Tsikhanouskaya's office, which the Belarusian opposition leader set up in Vilnius after leaving the country in the wake of a crackdown on dissent that followed the 2020 presidential election.

The Crisis In Belarus

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

The Investigative Committee launched a "special investigation" into the activities of the 20 individuals -- all of them living outside the country -- in January for providing comments to independent media in Belarus.

The Minsk Regional Court found the defendants guilty on multiple charges, including conspiracy to seize power and promoting extremism.

The Investigative Committee accused all 20 of taking an active part in the development and implementation of "the concept of destructive activities aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus, and also contributed to the incitement of social enmity and strife in society."

The sentences range from 10 to 11 years in prison. Many of the defendants were also handed excessive fines amounting to the equivalent of thousands of dollars.

The sentences can be appealed, the Prosecutor-General's Office said.

Anna Krasulina, Tsikhanouskaya's press secretary and one of the people sentenced, said there was no particular logic to the list of people investigated.

"They just put as many people on this list as possible to intimidate as many people as possible," she told RFE/RL when the investigation was announced in January.

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

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

The Moscow City Court announced a guilty verdict on July 1 against two Kazakhs living in Moscow who were charged with railway sabotage. Aleksandr Abram and Eduard Burdilov were charged with sabotage committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy. Both received 13 years in prison. Abram will spend the first four years and Burdilov will serve the first five years of that time in prison before serving the remainder of his sentence in a maximum-security institution, according to Mediazona. The Kazakhs are also ordered to pay 387,000 rubles (about $4,468) in damages to Russian Railways. Abram and Burdilov were detained on June 22, 2023. To read the original story on RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, has been elected to head the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), the foundation said on its website on July 1. She is replacing Garry Kasparov, another Russian opposition member living abroad. "As someone who has witnessed firsthand the threat that dictatorship poses to our loved ones and the world at large, I am honored to serve as chair of the foundation. HRF's mission is close to my heart, and I look forward to helping realize it," Navalnaya said. HRF is a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights around the world. To read the original story on RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have made more progress in ongoing negotiations on the delimitation of their border, the Armenian government said on July 1.

"Negotiations continue constructively," a short statement released by the office of Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian said.

It said that the Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions on border delimitation have proposed to each other draft regulations for their joint work and should work out a relevant common document "soon."

The two sides had set July 1 as the deadline for reaching agreement on the draft regulation.

The Azerbaijani government issued a statement similar to the Armenian government statement. Neither side elaborated on why the deadline wasn't met or what problems arose in negotiations thus far.

At a think-tank event in Washington on July 1, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he saw a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan as "really within reach."

"There is an extraordinary opportunity potential to realize a peace agreement between the countries," Blinken said in response to a question about the situation in the Caucasus.

The border-delimitation commissions representing the two countries pledged to agree on the regulations by July 1 when they announced on April 19 the start of the delimitation process that took the form of Armenian territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.

In the following weeks, Baku gained control of disputed border areas that used to be occupied by four Azerbaijani villages captured by Armenian forces in 1991-92.

For its part, the Azerbaijani Army had occupied at the time large swathes of nearby land belonging to several villages in Armenia’s Tavush Province. It has not withdrawn from that land in return for the Armenian concessions. Baku has also refused to withdraw from Armenian territory seized by its troops in 2021 and 2022.

The land transfer was strongly condemned by the Armenian opposition and sparked angry protests in Tavush border villages seriously affected by it.

The protests were led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, the head of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. After failing to scuttle preparations for the handover, Galstanian took his campaign to Yerevan, where he held a series of big rallies in May and June in a bid to oust Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

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Pashinian has repeatedly defended his unilateral concessions, saying that they will lay the groundwork for Azerbaijan's recognition of Armenian territorial integrity.

He said that this "positive experience" will be used in the border delimitation and demarcation process that will supposedly be based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration signed by newly independent ex-Soviet republics.

Earlier on July 1, Pashinian refused to answer a question about the process when he was approached by an RFE/RL correspondent in Yerevan.

Grigorian also refused to answer a question on why it was not possible to agree on the regulations according to the established schedule.

The 1991 declaration committed Armenia, Azerbaijan, and other ex-Soviet state to recognizing each other's Soviet-era borders. But it does not contain a detailed description of those borders.

Yerevan until recently insisted that the two South Caucasus states should use Soviet military maps drawn in the 1970s as a basis for the border delimitation. Baku has rejected this.

A UN body condemned a series of incidents of what it said was Russian interference in the satellite systems of European countries and asked it to stop, according to a document published on July 1. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reviewed a series of complaints from France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Ukraine about satellite interference in recent months. The countries said Russia had jammed GPS signals, endangered air traffic control and interrupted children's TV channels to show violent images of the Ukraine war. Moscow, which denies breaking ITU rules, had also complained about alleged satellite interference by NATO countries.

A court in Pakistan sentenced a Christian man to death on July 1 for sharing what it said was hateful content against Muslims, his lawyer said, adding that he will appeal the verdict. Eshan Shan was accused of reposting defaced pages of the Koran on his TikTok account. Under Pakistan's blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam can be sentenced to death. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, accusations can cause riots and incite violence, lynching, and killings. On June 20, a man in Pakistan's Swat Valley was beaten to death and his body was set on fire after he was accused of blasphemy.

A court in the western Russian city of Pskov on July 1 fined Denis Kamalyagin, the editor in chief of the Pskovskaya Guberniya newspaper, for purportedly failing to comply with legal requirements stemming from his designation as a "foreign agent." The court ordered Kamalyagin to pay 30,000 rubles ($342) personally. In addition, it ordered a legal entity connected to him to pay 300,000 rubles ($3,420). Kamalyagin, who now lives in Latvia, was fined in 2023 for purportedly discrediting the Russian armed forces. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s North.Realities, click here.

BISHKEK -- A district court in Bishkek on July 1 sentenced Kyrgyz poet, composer, and political activist Askat Jetigen to three years in prison on a charge of calling for a seizure of power in a widely followed case rejected by Jetigen and rights observers.

Jetigen was acquitted on a charge of calling for mass unrest.

Prosecutors had sought a combined eight-year prison sentence for Jetigen, who began speaking out on social media in 2021 on cultural topics and political issues ranging from casino initiatives to a change of the national flag and the jailing of government critics.

Jetigen's lawyer, Samat Matsakov, alleged procedural violations and vowed to challenge the sentence.

The charges were brought after a video was posted in March in which Jetigen criticized President Sadyr Japarov's government and reforms enacted by the Culture Ministry, as well as journalist and activist arrests in the post-Soviet Central Asian republic.

Last week in court, Jetigen apologized over his use of profanity, saying it came during a "fit of rage."

But he insisted the accusations that he promoted insurrection and unrest were baseless.

Jetigen has alleged he was beaten and given electric shocks by investigators after his second detention in March.

Jetigen's relatives had expressed hope to an RFE/RL correspondent attending the trial that Jetigen would be acquitted or get off lightly with a fine, since, in the words of his aunt Boldu Toygonbaeva, "this was not a serious crime."

"We will continue to fight," Toygonbaeva said. "We think the truth will somehow win out."

The New York-based Human Rights Foundation has called the charges "trumped-up" and demanded Jetign's immediate and unconditional release, as well as an independent investigation into his torture allegations.

Jetigen gained popularity as a musician in his late teens before leading a traditional Kyrgyz folk ensemble called Ordo Sahna, and studied under some of the country's most influential folk artists.

Kazakh businessman Daniyar Abulgazin has denied that he or his guests on a rented luxury yacht had been responsible for triggering a forest fire on the Greek island of Hydra in the Aegean Sea. The fire, believed to have been triggered by fireworks, broke out June 22 and burned nearly 300,000 square meters of the island's pine forest before being extinguished. Greek judicial authorities have jailed the captain of the yacht, who has also denied responsibility. Abulgazin and his guests were allowed to leave Greece. Abulgazin on July 1 said they "fully observed fire safety" on the yacht. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.

Shortly after Bulgarian President Rumen Radev on July 1 asked the center-right GERB-SDS coalition to form a new government, the party submitted its proposal for a minority cabinet headed by former parliament speaker Rosen Zhelyazkov.

The proposed cabinet, which is dominated by former GERB ministers and representatives of the current caretaker government, will be submitted to parliament for consideration. A simple majority is needed to accept the proposal.

"This is a government that can share responsibility and a government in which GERB and SDS are fully responsible," said GERB leader and former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

GERB won 68 mandates in the 240-seat legislature in the June 9 elections, the country's sixth vote in the past three years. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) party, which holds 46 mandates in parliament, has said it would vote in favor of the proposed government.

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Borisov urged the relatively new We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) coalition, which holds 39 seats and which was GERB's partner in the coalition government that collapsed in March, to support the proposed government.

In comments on July 1, both Borisov and Zhelyazkov stressed the proposed government might be short-lived and would be focused on immediate issues, particularly passing a budget.

"We are not currently talking about a management program for four years," Zhelyazkov said. "We are talking about concrete policies that can calm the political conversation."

"The most important thing is the stabilization of public finances and steadfastness in our European perspective," he continued.

Following elections in April 2023, Bulgaria had a joint government supported by the pro-West, reformist PP-DB and GERB. They had agreed on an 18-month government with a rotation of prime ministers: first Nikolay Denkov from PP-DB and, after nine months, Maria Gabriel from GERB.

Denkov stepped down on March 5 to let GERB lead the government for the following nine months, as agreed. But Gabriel failed to form a government, and on March 27 Denkov also rejected Radev's invitation to try to put together a cabinet.

After the populist There Is Such a People (ITN) party refused an invitation to try to form a government, the stage was set for the June 9 vote.

A caretaker government led by Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev was sworn in on April 9 after being appointed by Radev.

Eighteen inmates, including some on death row, have escaped from a prison in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir after overpowering a guard with a pistol, Pakistani officials said on July 1. Local police chief Riaz Mughal said one of the prisoners was shot and killed in the breakout from Rawalakot prison the previous day. The prison's chief and some other officers have already been dismissed from their posts. Mughal said six of the prisoners were on death row, while another three were serving life sentences. Such jail breaks are rare in Pakistan, he said. Officials say one of the inmates had a pistol that was used to overpower a guard and snatch the keys to the prison cells.

Ukrainian electricity provider Ukrenerho warned of blackouts and other restrictions on July 1 because of the effects of Russia's ongoing campaign of attacks targeting energy infrastructure combined with increased demand due to high summer temperatures.

The warning came as Ukraine's Air Force issued a missile and air-raid alert for most regions of Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, and after at least seven civilians were injured during an overnight Russian drone strike in the eastern city of Dnipro.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

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In the Kyiv region, three people, including a child, were reportedly injured in a rocket strike that damaged three private houses and several vehicles, officials reported late on June 30.

Noting that temperatures in most of the country were forecast to be above 30 degrees Celsius on July 1, the company urged Ukrainians to monitor consumption and avoid using demanding appliances simultaneously.

The company added that Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Moldova were providing electricity supplies to Ukraine.

“But due to the scale of the damage [from the Russian attacks], these measures are not enough to maintain the balance in the energy system,” Ukrenerho wrote on Telegram.

Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s electrical grid for months, forcing frequent power outages. In March, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said 80 percent of the country’s thermal-generation capacity had been destroyed. Around the same time, the Energy Ministry said thermal power plants controlled by Tsentroenerho and Ukrhydroenerho had been badly damaged.

Last month, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked the European Union to step up electricity exports to Ukraine, as well as to supply necessary equipment and other resources to make repairs.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is waging a full-scale war against our energy sector,” Zelenskiy said at a meeting of the European Council in Brussels on June 27. “If Russia succeeds in this, it will become part of military doctrines around the world. Energy is one of the foundations of normal human life.”

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Several Injured In Dnipro As Ukrainian Cities Targeted In Russian Strikes

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On June 23, Russia conducted its eighth large-scale strike targeting Ukraine’s energy grid in the past three months. The strikes damaged power transmission systems in the southeastern Zaporizhzhya and western Lviv regions, Ukrenerho said at the time.

Meanwhile, the administration of Belgorod, a Russian city of some 340,000 located 40 kilometers of the Ukrainian border, reported that electricity had been cut off in several areas of the city and the surrounding region as a result of Ukrainian drone attacks.

Telegram channel Ash said the reason for the power outage was an attack on a substation.

The Russian Defense Ministry said separately that Russian air-defense systems had downed 36 drones over the the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions early on July 1.

The ministry claimed its air-defense systems “destroyed and suppressed” 18 drones over the Bryansk region and nine drones each over the Kursk and Belgorod regions.

The claim could not be independently verified immediately.

Ukraine has over the past several months increasingly targeted fuel-production sites inside Russia, mainly oil-refining facilities that work for the Russian military.

Hungary, led by right-wing nationalist and Russia-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orban, takes over the EU's rotating presidency on July 1, raising concerns in much of the West amid signs of the rising strength of the far right throughout the continent.

"It's unbelievable. It's like the defendant in a trial has suddenly taken over the prosecution," Hungarian journalist and Orban biographer Paul Lendvai told the AFP news agency, referring to Orban's long-standing opposition to EU policies.

Orban, who has governed Hungary with a parliamentary supermajority since 2010, has angered many EU leaders with perceived attacks on democracy and the bloc's founding principles and inclusivity, his opposition to sanctions on Russia and military aid for Ukraine, and his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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The Hungarian prime minister has talked openly about his plans to turn the country from a democracy into an "illiberal state," and the government has taken control of much of Hungary's print and broadcast media.

Despite Orban’s stated policies, one observer said the Hungarian leader is not likely to have a major impact over EU decision-making during the six-month presidency.

Dorka Takacsy, a research fellow at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, told the Associated Press that the timing of the presidency will give Orban little opportunity to disrupt EU policies aside from the occasional controversial outburst. The term begins ahead of the long summer break and during the formation a new European Parliament and Commission.

"These six months are altogether not that long, which means that...Hungary cannot do potentially much harm, even according to the critics," she told AP.

Alongside allies from Austria and the Czech Republic, Orban on June 30 announced the imminent launch of a political alliance that he vowed would "quickly" dominate the European political right.

Speaking at a press conference in Vienna flanked by "Patriots For Europe" signs, the national populist and strident Brussels critic added that "This will happen within days, and after that the sky is the limit."

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Elections in early June for the European Parliament showed big gains for Europe’s far right, although Orban’s own Fidesz party suffered a setback amid a challenge from party defector Peter Magyar's new movement at home.

Even with the far-right gains across Europe, the main takeaway from the European Parliament elections was that the three biggest political groups in the chamber are unchanged.

After EU citizens went to vote across the 27 EU member states, the center-right European People's Party (EPP) came in first -- as it has done in every European parliamentary election since 1999 -- with a projected 185 lawmakers in the 720-seat chamber.

With reporting by AP and AFP

Georgians stayed up late into the night to support the national soccer team, but their hopes of a second stunning upset came to an end as Spain beat the Caucasus nation’s squad 4-1 on June 30 at the Euro 2024 tournament in the last-16 knockout round. Georgia scored first with an own goal by Spain and it was deadlocked 1-1 at halftime in the game played in Cologne, Germany. But Spain scored three times in the second half to seal the victory. Tbilisi city authorities installed large-screen TVs and extended bus and subway services for those wishing to view the match, which began at 11 p.m. Georgian time. Georgia defeated a highly favored Portugal side 2-0 on June 26 to advance to the last 16. Portugal, which had already progressed to the next round, played mostly second-string players in that match. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Georgian Service, click here.

At least seven people were killed and 20 injured when a heavily loaded bus overturned in Karachi, Pakistan, on June 30. Martipur district police chief Zahid Khalid Mashal told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that the cause was a high-speed collision with a tractor-trailer. The dead include women and children, police said. The head of the Seoul Hospital in Karachi said 14 more people were hospitalized following the incident.

A council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has elected Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin as the church's new patriarch.

The election by 69 of 138 delegates puts a man seen as a pro-Russian who is close to Moscow at the head of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction, with some 6 million members in Bulgaria and 1-2 million more adherents outside the country.

The 52-year-old Daniil takes over after the death in March of Patriarch Neophyte.

Daniil has called Ukraine an aggressor alongside Russia in the current full-scale invasion by Russian troops of Ukraine.

He has also suggested that Ukraine is a creation of Vladimir Lenin's.

Daniil also criticized the closure of the Russian Church in Sofia last year and expressed outrage after the decision to expel its head, Archimandrite Vasian, and two other clerics on suspicion of espionage.

Daniil's main challenger in the election had been Metropolitan Hryhoriy of Vratsa, who was seen as more neutral on the war question.

Organizers have announced the awarding of the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for literature to Sarajevo-born writer Tijan Sila for his "touching text about the trauma of a Bosnian family," according to the prize's official website. The award carries prize money of 25,000 euros ($26,800) donated by the city of Klagenfurt. The winning story is titled The Day My Mother Went Crazy. Sila, who has lived in Germany since 1994, fled with his family from the Bosnian capital during the infamous siege of Sarajevo by Serb forces during the Bosnian War.

Russian media, including a VKontakte social media account purporting to belong to Kanye West, said on June 30 that the always-controversial American rapper is in the Russian capital.

There was no official word from West of the visit.

Images shared on social media show the 47-year-old music and fashion superstar, born Kanye Omari West but now known as Ye, at the Four Seasons in Moscow and a handful of other places.

The VKontakte page and other media suggested the purpose of the visit was to celebrate the 40th birthday of street-fashion designer and reported acquaintance Gosha Rubchinsky.

It said it was a private visit and no concerts were planned.

"Kanye West is already in Moscow! This is great news, he is staying in the heart of the capital," Russian state news agency TASS quoted local music producer Yana Rudkovskaya as saying, in an allusion to rumors that spread weeks ago suggesting West would perform in Russia.

A mercurial pillar of the global hip-hop scene since his debut studio album in 2004, West has repeatedly surprised with political statements and appearances that have gotten him into trouble.

His statements, including praise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and a seeming denial of the Holocaust, have contributed to the demise of collaborations with Adidas and others.

West has expressed praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past.

At least eight people have been confirmed killed in flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rainfall in a southern region of Kyrgyzstan.

Dramatic footage of rescue operations from the Nookat district of the southern Osh region showed Kyrgyz troops helping to evacuate residents, including small children, across makeshift barriers and bridges over racing floodwaters.

A state of emergency has been declared in the area.

The Kyrgyz Emergency Situations Ministry said six of the eight deaths were children or teens from a single family.

The Emergency Situations Ministry in neighboring Kazakhstan said two Kazakh minors were among the dead in Nookat, and two more Kazakh nationals were still missing.

The floods erupted late on June 29 following heavy rainfall.

Authorities said around 1,300 people who were stranded by the flooding in a tourist area in the region, known as Abshyr-Sai, have been evacuated to a safe location.

Sudden springtime rains and flooding have hit much of Central Asia and Russian regions hard this year, displacing thousands of residents.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on June 30 announced alongside allies from Austria and the Czech Republic the imminent launch of a new political alliance that he vowed would "quickly" dominate the European political right.

Speaking at a press conference in Vienna flanked by "Patriots For Europe" signs, the national populist and strident Brussels critic added that "This will happen within days, and after that the sky is the limit."

Orban's right-wing Fidesz party has dominated Hungarian politics with a supermajority since 2010, but it has appeared isolated since quitting the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament under a threat of expulsion in 2021.

Despite an apparent setback for Orban's own Fidesz party in early June's European elections amid a challenge from party defector Peter Magyar's new movement at home, many right-wing parties in the European Union rode a surge of popularity to boost their gains in the European Parliament.

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Orban was flanked at the announcement in Vienna by Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) President Herbert Kickl and the billionaire former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who heads the ANO party.

"Today we are creating a political formation that I believe will multiply and very quickly become the largest faction of the European right," Orban said in a video of the event shared on Facebook and other social media.

But the Patriots For Europe project must first win further support, since those three allies so far fall short of the 23 representatives from at least seven member states required to form an official grouping in the European Parliament.

Budapest's influence will be amplified this week and for the remainder of 2024 as Hungary holds the six-month rotating EU Presidency.

It has announced that its goals include giving more space to more critical perspectives of the EU's mission and work.

Orban has hammered Brussels as his government imposed controversial laws on LGBT speech and clashed with the bloc over perceived backsliding on democratic and media freedoms.

He has also cozied up to Moscow diplomatically and economically while resisting EU and other sanctions imposed on Russia to punish its unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and refusing to join NATO and other Western efforts to help arm Kyiv.

"I think everybody is more or less aware that we are a very characteristically right-wing government," longtime Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told a recent gathering. "We don't really like leaving doubts in this regard or any other."

Szijjarto added, "We serve as the evidence that, no, liberal mainstream is not the only way to go forward."

There is a "conservative, patriotic, right-wing, Christian Democratic way as well," that Fidesz represents, he said.

Hungary has been embroiled in rule-of-law and LGBT- and migrant-rights disputes with Brussels that have left tens of billions of euros in EU funds withheld despite an awkward compromise in January that released billions more in funds despite misgivings about judicial independence there.

Two days of UN-organized talks on international relations with Taliban-led Afghanistan were getting under way in the Qatari capital, Doha, on June 30, with the Taliban present for the first time -- but rights groups expressed anger over the hard-line fundamentalist regime’s exclusion of women and its refusal to discuss women's rights at the forum.

"The Taliban had a major role in creating the agenda of this meeting and who should be in this meeting,” Shahrazad Akbar, the former head of the Independent Human Rights Commission and currently executive director of the Rawadari rights organization, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, speaking from Britain.

“This in itself is a big problem and is giving power and legitimacy to the Taliban," she said.

Habiba Sarabi, a prominent women’s rights activist and former member of the negotiating team of the deposed Afghan government, echoed those remarks, saying, “Afghan women are half of Afghan society.”

“How can we say that women are not present in important decision-making meetings. When it is specifically related to Afghanistan, women should be present and women should also participate in those decisions,” she told Radio Azadi.

This is the third such UN-sponsored meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, but the first in which the Taliban has been involved. Along with UN officials, delegations from some two dozen nations, including the United States, are expected to attend.

The Taliban was not invited to the first Doha conference and set conditions that were rejected for its participation in the second gathering in February, including that it be the sole representative of Afghanistan at the meeting.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the group’s demands were “unacceptable” and amounted to recognizing the Taliban as the country’s legitimate government, something the international community has refused to do.

Afghan women’s rights groups and supporters have held protests inside Afghanistan and in Europe over the Taliban’s participation and its exclusion of women at the gathering.

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Zahid Mustafa, who has organized a protest in Amsterdam, told Radio Azadi that "our goal by these protests is that the United Nations has invited the Taliban to this meeting on behalf of Afghans. But we are protesting this and calling for a boycott of the Doha meeting."

Shukriya Barakzai, a women's rights activist and Afghanistan's former ambassador to Norway -- who was invited to the previous meeting -- expressed frustration with the UN organizers of the summit.

"The United Nations’ looking down upon Afghan women and representatives of civil society shows that, despite the fact that this meeting was organized by the United Nations, they are acting against their own procedures and values," she told Radio Azadi from London.

She did not say if she was invited to the current gathering in Doha.

Roza Otunbaeva, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), has defended the failure to include Afghan women at the meeting, saying that women’s rights are certain to be raised with the Taliban. She said the group's inclusion in the talks does not represent a legitimization of its government.

The Taliban government, which took over after the U.S.-led international coalition left the country in mid-2020, is not recognized internationally, although Beijing has accepted credentials from a Taliban ambassador.

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The United Nations has accused the Taliban of waging "gender apartheid" on women and girls since returning to power nearly three years ago, closing girls' schools and forcing women out of the workplace and out of public spaces.

Women's rights groups and civil society activists are expected to meet with international diplomats and UN officials on July 2, after the close of the official two-day talks.

But Sima Samar, the former head of Afghanistan’s human rights commission of the deposed Afghan government, said that was not sufficient action by the international community.

“They [the UN] have said they will meet the [Afghan] women on the sidelines after the end of the meeting on July 2,” she told Radio Azadi.

“If they care about women, why don't they meet with women before that, or why aren't women directly at the table, because the Taliban's desire is to erase women from all social and political issues in Afghanistan.”

China's Foreign Ministry announced on June 30 that President Xi Jinping will attend the 24th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana and pay state visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan from July 2 to July 6.

The announcement, on the ministry's official website, quotes spokesperson Hua Chunying as saying the Kazakh and Tajik visits will come at the invitation of those Central Asian states' respective leaderships.

"From July 2 to 6, President Xi Jinping will attend the 24th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Astana and, at the invitation of President [Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev] of the Republic of Kazakhstan and President Emomali Rahmon of the Republic of Tajikistan, pay state visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan," the ministry said.

The SCO, a political and security grouping, was launched by China and Russia in 2001.

Its July 3-4 summit comes with SCO members -- which include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan but not Turkmenistan among the post-Soviet Central Asian republics -- expected to focus in part on economy and energy issues but also grappling with fallout from Russia's war on Ukraine and other geopolitical issues.

Beijing has continued and intensified cooperation with Moscow since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, days after Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a new "no limits" partnership in part to counter Western power and influence.

Russia was Astana's largest trading partner when the war broke out, and the attack on Ukraine and the international backlash have posed additional challenges for Kazakh diplomacy, society, and the economy as Astana has sought to maintain neutrality.

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A recent report by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, alleged that China was experimenting with spreading its authoritarian model to other countries.

The gunning down of a Kazakh opposition activist and journalist in Ukraine earlier this month raised fresh questions about possible authoritarian trends and dissent in Kazakhstan.

Natalya Sadyqova, the wife of Aidos Sadyqov, who remains hospitalized in Kyiv, has called his June 18 shooting an attempt to silence him over reporting she and Sadyqov have done on Russian influence in Kazakhstan.

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In January 2022, Kazakh President Toqaev allowed Russian troops to help quell deadly unrest that he suggested was part of an internal power struggle against people connected to Kazakhstan's former leadership, in a move that raised concerns of tighter security and military reliance on outside powers including Moscow.

China and Tajikistan pledged in May to boost bilateral cooperation as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with President Rahmon in Dushanbe, following up on Rahmon's to China visit a year earlier.

China has pledged billions of dollars to megaprojects in some of Central Asia's poorest areas, including a major China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) highway that is among Beijing's most ambitious there.

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Chinese Megaprojects Back In Fashion In Central Asia's Poorest States

A Chinese company is also said to have committed itself to a major solar power plant in Tajikistan, near that country's border with Afghanistan.

China has already invested major sums in power and other infrastructure projects in Tajikistan just as Dushanbe's debt payments are on the rise to China's Exim Bank.

The SCO's membership also includes India, Iran, and Pakistan.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service on June 30 raised the number of injured to more than 35 in an apparent Russian rocket attack the previous night that killed seven people in the city of Vilnyansk, in the southern Zaporizhzhya region.

It reported that building and car fires had been put out at the scene, where Governor Ivan Fedorov said three children were believed to be among the dead and nine more children among the dozens of injured.

Initial reports had put the number of injured at around 10.

“How can we be expected to live?” a resident of Vilnyansk said in comments to RFE/RL.

“There is a burned corpse there,” she said, pointing to rescue workers wrapping the body of a blast victim.

“This is a very popular area. There is an ATB [supermarket]. There are benches. People are walking. Children are walking. Some people were driving by from work. They just disappeared [in the blast] and we cannot find them.”

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The attack in Vilnyansk came with Russian forces putting heavy pressure on Ukrainian defenders along the 1,000-kilometer front line and with increased air strikes in the 28-month-old full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his June 30 video address, urged Ukraine's Western allies to allow the country's forces more freedom to conduct attacks inside Russia.

"The sooner the world helps us to deal with the Russian warplanes dropping these bombs, the sooner we can attack the Russian military infrastructure, the Russian military airfields, the closer we are to peace," Zelenskiy said

On June 30, local leaders in Kyiv and Kharkiv -- Ukraine's two largest cities -- reported attacks on residential and civilian areas.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said fragments of a Russian-launched missile caused a fire in the Obolon district of the capital. There was no initial report of casualties, but authorities said emergency crews were at the site.

Separately, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekho said Russia had fired guided bombs into a residential area of Ukraine’s second-largest city, causing casualties.

"Unfortunately, we already have information that one person has been killed. Inspection of the site of arrival continues," he said.

Also on June 30, Ukraine’s military released video it said was filmed from a drone that showed what appears to be bodies in a civilian area in Toretsk, claiming that Russia had used powerful “glide bombs” on the mining town in the Donetsk region.

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Highly destructive Soviet-era glide bombs are launched from warplanes that are out of the range of air-defense systems.

Johan Norberg, a senior analyst and expert on Russia’s military at the Swedish Defense Research Agency FOI, has said jet-dropped glide bombs have been used to a devastating effect and have been key to allowing Russia to make gains in recent months.

Late on June 29, Zelenskiy cited a huge Russian strike that gutted four floors of an apartment building in the central city of Dnipro on June 28 as further evidence that his country needs more air-defense systems from its allies.

"There are ways to overcome the daily Russian terror from which Ukrainian cities and communities suffer," Zelenskiy said. "For this, it is necessary to destroy Russian terrorists and launchers where they are, as well as increase the number of modern air-defense systems in Ukraine."

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.

The previous night, Kyiv had reported thwarting 10 aerial drone attacks, and said Russian forces had dropped anti-tank missiles on the city of Derhachi, in the central Kharkiv region.

Russia has stepped up air strikes this year in a bid to drain Ukraine’s resources, often targeting energy facilities and other vital infrastructure, and deal psychological blows to the population.

Ukrainian officials have said that half of the nation's power system has been damaged by Russian strikes.

Russia said that Ukraine launched attacks on Sevastopol in Crimea as well as Kursk on June 29.

The Ukrainian General Staff said late on June 29 that the "hottest" combat situation continued to be in the area of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region.

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry meanwhile said four of its employees had been injured in what it said was Ukrainian shelling in Donetsk.

Russia said on June 29 that it had captured Shumy, a settlement located about 7 kilometers southeast of Toretsk.

RFE/RL cannot confirm claims by either side in areas of the heaviest fighting.

With reporting by AP