Russia on July 31 completed the withdrawal of its border guards from Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport, a move that was demanded by Armenia earlier this year amid mounting tensions between the two countries.

Russian border guards have for decades been stationed at Zvartnots as well as along Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran in a show of the close military ties between Russia and Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced in March that his government had given Moscow until August 1 to remove them from the airport. Armenia has the capacity to carry out border controls there “without the help of the Russian side,” he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the move, saying that Yerevan risks inflicting “irreparable damage” to Russian-Armenian relations and jeopardizing Armenia’s security and economic development. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pashinian agreed on the withdrawal when they met in Moscow in May.

The process was completed with a farewell ceremony held for the few dozen officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at Zvartnots. The newly appointed commander of Armenian border troops, Edgar Hunanian, thanked them for their service in a speech at the ceremony. He said the Armenian side will use the “experience and skills of Russian border guards passed on during more than 32 years of joint service.”

"Your not always noticeable but very necessary work has made a significant contribution to the security of both Armenia and Russia,” the Russian charge d’affaires in Yerevan, Maksim Seleznyov, said.

At his May meeting with Pashinian, Putin also agreed to pull back Russia troops and border guards from Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. They had been deployed there at Yerevan’s request during and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The border guards will continue to protect Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey.

Russia also has a military base in the South Caucasus country. In March, a senior Russian lawmaker said he "would not recommend that the Armenian authorities even think about" demanding an end to the Russian military presence.

Pashinian has signaled no such plans so far, but he has frozen his country’s membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and not ruled out a bid to join the European Union.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met on July 31 with Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto in Moscow for talks on expanding relations between the two countries. Despite heavy sanctions against Russia, trade between the two countries has doubled, Putin said. A free trade agreement between Indonesia and the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia, which is ready to be signed, gives hope for further growth, he said. Prabowo welcomed Russian state airline Aeroflot's planned direct flights to the holiday island of Bali. He also said his meetings in Moscow covered Jakarta's interest in cooperation with the Russian nuclear company Rosatom. The former Indonesian defense minister was elected president in February and is due to take office in October.

Consultations began in Kosovo on July 31 on selecting a date for parliamentary elections next year, but representatives of the of the ruling party and the leading Serbian political grouping did not take part.

President Vjosa Osmani initiated the talks between the country's political parties and said after the meeting that the parties that attended expressed interest in all the possible dates.

According to the deadlines set by law, Kosovo can hold regular elections on January 26 or on February 2, 9, or 16.

Osmani said she didn’t know why no representatives of Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) Movement attended. Kurti’s office said he was in invited to lunch by EU Ambassador to Kosovo Tomas Szunyog.

There was also no representative of the Serbian List party at the talks. Osmani gave no reason for the absence, and the party didn't respond to RFE/RL's inquiry on why they didn't attend the meeting.

If 2025 is a regular election year as expected, then Kurti’s government will become the first since independence to complete the full mandate of four years.

Opposition parties in Kosovo have demanded early elections, but earlier this year they failed to reach an agreement on how to go about holding them.

Osmani said the possibility of early elections still exists, but this could only occur with a vote of two-thirds of the National Assembly.

"Whether the political parties in the assembly are willing to make such a majority is their matter. Today, such willingness did not appear," Osmani said.

Eugen Cakolli of the Democratic Institute of Kosovo told RFE/RL that the president has until mid-October to set a date for the elections, but considering the electoral reform, she may want to decide earlier so that the Central Election Commission has more time to prepare.

He added that it is not in the interest of any political entity to hold the elections in the winter months of January or February when the weather is cold and the days are shorter.

Therefore, a solution could be found to hold the elections earlier, but this mainly depends on reaching an agreement, said Cakolli.

Artan Muhaxhiri, sociologist and political analyst from Pristina, told RFE/RL that there are currently no indications of the potential for any radical change in the Kosovar political spectrum.

"The Kurti government is in the comfort zone. It is working with the inertia of the great victory in the last elections and does not feel seriously threatened by the opposition, which has not yet found the key to decoding the ubiquitous populism," he said.

According to Muhaxhiri, during the election campaign it is expected that Kurti’s main topic will be the change of dynamics in the north of Kosovo, which he will present as "the first step in the long-term transformation of the country,” even though the situation is far from being solved.

"This will be his only advantage, because during the government so far, apart from damaging relations with strategic allies, he has not demonstrated a realistic vision for improving socioeconomic problems, attracting foreign investments, and infrastructural advancements," he said.

In the last two years, Kurti's government has worked intensively to establish power in the north of Kosovo, which has been resisted by the local majority Serbian population and which sometimes has been criticized by the international community.

Among the changes are the reregistration of vehicles with Serbian license plates, the conversion of driver's licenses, limitations on the use of the Serbian currency, and the closure of some institutions that work in the Serbian system.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery Penny Pritzker on July 31 outlined a five-step plan to make Ukraine's economy more attractive to private sector investment.

"Ukraine is undertaking Europe's largest, most complex reconstruction and economic recovery ever since World War II," Pritzker said, speaking at a think tank in Washington following a visit to Kyiv on July 29.

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Pritzker cited a World Bank estimate from spring of this year that Ukraine's recovery will cost at least $486 billion, but she said this came out prior to the increased fighting in March and the summer.

Pritzker said Ukraine's economy has shown resilience and growth in the midst of Russia's full-scale invasion and expressed confidence that Ukraine "has economic greatness in its bones." She noted that in 2023, Ukrainian GDP grew 5 percent and tax revenue was up 25 percent.

"We have helped the Ukrainians keep their economy going, tackle corruption, and increase private sector engagement," Pritzker said. "Through it all, we have worked with the Ukrainians to develop a long-term recovery framework -- a blueprint that I call Ukraine's Path to Prosperity."

In the long-term, Pritzker said Ukraine needs to focus on attracting foreign investment. She said the international community should be encouraged by the fact that investments have increased 17 percent in Ukraine and there were over 37,000 new businesses registered in 2023.

Pritzker said Ukraine's expansion is "proof of concept" that Ukraine's economy will succeed through the mining of critical minerals such as lithium and titanium and the development of the agricultural and defense industrial sectors.

The defense industrial sector, which Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova described as "an inseparable part of Ukraine's success," has experienced record growth.

Markarova, speaking at the same event, said Ukraine has increased metalworks production 27 percent, cable and fiber-optics production 101 percent, and dozens of new companies that develop drones and unmanned aerial vehicles have been founded since the war began.

"The innovation-to-battlefield time is two weeks," Pritzker said, adding that U.S. innovators should try to learn from Ukrainian ingenuity.

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Pritzker said her plan is "ambitious but achievable" and modeled after the Marshall Plan, the U.S.-sponsored program to rebuild Europe after World War II. She described the Path to Prosperity plan as a "new economic model and social contract" that will strengthen Ukraine in the war while easing its economic future.

The first step of the plan is to develop a body that plans and prioritizes reconstruction programs into a "single-project pipeline" which Pritzker said must integrate city, municipal, and regional priorities. Pritzker called this integration the "missing link in Ukraine's reconstruction."

Next, Pritzker said Ukraine should "rapidly increase the number of shovel-ready projects" to prepare for investment and implementation.

This is followed by the continuation of reform efforts. Pritzker said Ukraine must "keep up the momentum" on new asset declaration and anti-monopoly laws. She also said Ukraine should codify the Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management (DREAM) database platform to monitor corruption and maintain transparency.

Pritzker also said the world must marshal more funds for Ukraine.

Ukraine needs a "runway to prevail in the war" supported by the international community, but that "justice requires that the reconstruction be largely underwritten by Russia," Pritzker said.

Pritzker said the fifth and final step of her plan is that Ukrainians should return to their country to work when it is safe to do so.

Russian state news media reported on July 31 that the Zamoskvorechye district court in Moscow extended the pretrial detention of French researcher Laurent Vinatier, who Russian investigators have said pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining information about the Russian military.

The 48-year-old French national was arrested in Moscow in early June over the alleged spying and for purportedly failing to register as a "foreign agent."

He said at a hearing on July 31 where the court extended his detention until September 5 that his Russian visa had expired. Vinatier's lawyers asked the court to transfer their client to house arrest or release him on bail.

Vinatier is an adviser who works for the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), a nonprofit conflict-resolution organization, and "travels regularly for his work," according to the group.

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HD said it was "doing everything possible to assist" and get legal representation for Vinatier, and was "reaching out to relevant governmental authorities."

Radio France International reported earlier that HD acknowledged Vinatier had not registered as a foreign agent because he was unaware of such an obligation.

Russia has long used its foreign agent laws to jail perceived domestic and international enemies and critics.

But it has stepped up detentions of Westerners under those and other charges since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

A foreign agent conviction can result in a five-year prison sentence.

In some cases -- including one against jailed RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva that Washington has said is to punish journalism -- allegations concerning Russia's military amid what Moscow calls a "special military operation" against Ukraine have accompanied the foreign agent charge.

The Russian Investigative Committee alleged publicly that the information Vinatier gathered "could be used against state security." It has not given details on the information.

With reporting by Interfax, TASS, and Radio France International

With tensions still high in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province following days of deadly protests, Amnesty International has called on authorities to end what it called a "brutal crackdown" in the restive region.

Violence erupted in the port city of Gwadar over the weekend after local activists had attempted to organize a protest against alleged human rights violations, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings of ethnic Baluchis.

As people made their way to Gwadar to join the protest, security forces began blocking major highways into the city, resulting in violent clashes, including an incident that left at least one person dead and several others injured on July 28.

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With the tumult showing no signs of abating amid reports of further fatalities, Amnesty International issued a statement late on July 30 urging Islamabad "to uphold the rights to freedom of expression, access to information, movement, and peaceful assembly."

Nobel Prize-winning rights advocate Malala Yousafzai also voiced her support for the demonstrators, saying on X that "I strongly condemn the violent response against peaceful protesters."

The Pakistani military claims its soldiers have been attacked by violent mobs and that its troops are exercising restraint to avoid civilian casualties.

Many Baluchis blame Islamabad for exploiting Balochistan's vast natural resources and committing grave human rights abuses in the impoverished region, which has been the scene of a low-level insurgency and harsh government clampdowns for decades.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on July 31 that the U.S. government is pausing more than $95 million in assistance to the Georgian government. Blinken said the pause is due to "the Georgian government"s anti-democratic actions and false statements" that are "incompatible with membership norms in the EU and NATO." While aid to the government will pause, the United States will continue to assist programs and activities in Georgia that strengthen democracy, rule of law, independent media, and economic development. The EU froze assistance to Georgia’s Defense Ministry on July 9.

In a move to try to ease a shortage of troops, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on July 31 that raises one-time payments to individuals who sign a contract to serve in the invasion of Ukraine between August 1 and December 31 to 400,000 ($4,640) from 195,000 rubles ($2,260). Meanwhile, some regions and cities have been offering their own payments to those going to the Ukraine war. City authorities in Moscow, for instance, now offer 1.9 million rubles ($22,000) for contracts lasting at least one year. Putin's decree on mobilization to the war in September 2022 sparked protests and a mass exodus of men to other countries. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

The Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, on July 31 approved in all three readings a bill that obliges naturalized Russian citizens to go through military registration. According to the bill, naturalized citizens who fail to register will be deprived of their Russian passports. Since January, police raids on labor migrants from Central Asia have increased across Russia. In some cases, detained labor migrants have been forcibly brought to military enlistment centers where they were forced to sign contracts for deployment in Ukraine. The bill now must be approved by the parliament's upper chamber, the Federation Council, and signed by the president. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

The Basmanny district court in Moscow on July 31 sentenced in absentia Ukrainian television journalist Natalia Moseychuk to five years in prison on a charge of inciting hatred. The charge stems from Moseychuk’s television program that aired on March 20, 2022, less than a month after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moseychuk condemned the invasion and warned Russians of what she called "the revenge of the Ukrainian people." The probe against Moseychuk was launched in July last year. Her trial in absentia started in early May. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a law allowing Kyiv to suspend its external debt payments until October 1. According to the database of the Ukrainian parliament, Zelenskiy signed the law on July 31. After Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv agreed with its creditors to freeze payments of around $23 billion until August 1, 2024. The adoption of the law allowing Kyiv to postpone payments means that Ukraine will enter a short-term debt default that will last until private bondholders agree to postpone Ukraine's debt payments until 2027. That option has been supported by foreign governments. Such a deal would have less of an impact on Ukraine's long-term borrowing than if no agreement is reached.

Lawyers for several high-profile prisoners being held in Russian correctional facilities have added their clients' names to a growing list of inmates whose whereabouts are unknown.

Olga Karlova, a lawyer for former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison term on espionage charges that he and Washington reject, said on July 31 that she does not know her client's location and authorities at the prison in Russia's Mordovia where Whelan is incarcerated have ignored requests to confirm whether he is at the penitentiary.

Karlova added that she lost contact with her client several days ago and has asked the Public Monitoring Commission rights group to help locate him.

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Just hours after Whalen’s disappearance was made public, the lawyer of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza said he was not allowed to enter correctional colony No. 6 in the Siberian city of Omsk to see his client, who last year was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on treason and other charges he calls trumped up.

Vadim Prokhorov said he has no idea about Kara-Murza's exact whereabouts, while lawyers for journalist Maria Ponomarenko, who is serving a six-year prison term in Siberia over her public condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said they too lost contact with their client.

In all, at least seven high-profile prisoners in Russia have reportedly disappeared and are thought to be being moved from the facilities where they were serving sentences. Though officials have not commented, the situation has sparked speculation that preparations may be under way for a prisoner swap with the West.

A day earlier, it became known that another opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, who is serving an 8 1/2-year prison term for his criticism of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had been unexpectedly transferred to an unknown location from correctional colony No. 3 in the western Smolensk region.

Yashin's lawyer, Tatyana Solomina, was cited by his supporters on Telegram as saying on July 30 that her client's current location was not known.

Others to have gone missing include Kevin Lik, a 19-year-old man from Russia's North Caucasus region of Adygea who was sentenced to four years in prison on a treason charge in December and unexpectedly transferred from a penitentiary in the northwestern region of Arkhangelsk.

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Who Are The Americans Behind Bars In Russia?

Earlier this week, relatives, supporters, and lawyers of four other imprisoned activists -- former chiefs of late opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's teams in Bashkortostan and Novosibirsk, Lilia Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva, veteran human rights defender Oleg Orlov, and anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko -- said they had been also unexpectedly transferred from prisons or detention centers to other unspecified penitentiaries and kept incommunicado since then.

Only Skolichenko's supporters were informed that she was transferred to an unidentified penitentiary in Moscow. The destinations of the other three remain unknown.

Human rights groups have criticized Russian regulations with regard to the treatment of convicts, whose whereabouts can be kept under wraps during the period they are transferred from one penitentiary to another, a process known as "etap."

Etap involves trains with caged compartments specifically designed for prisoners, who are provided with little fresh air, no showers, and only limited access to food or a toilet.

The transfers can take days, weeks, or even months as the trains stop and convicts spend time in transit prisons. Convicts almost always face humiliation, beatings, and sometimes even death at the hands of their guards.

Whelan, 54, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 on espionage charges and given a 16-year prison sentence in May 2020 following a trial that was condemned by the United States as a "mockery of justice.”

He is one of more than 10 U.S. citizens who are currently being controversially held in Russian jails and prisons, accused or convicted on charges ranging from drug possession and theft to treason and espionage.

In many cases, the charges against these Americans, including The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and RFE/RL’s Alsu Kurmasheva, are widely seen as trumped up or transparently political. Some of the sentences far exceed what legal experts say would be normal.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s North.Realities

Officials in Russia's northwestern region of Karelia said on July 31 that rescue workers found the body of another victim from a dam burst earlier this week on the White Sea-Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal), bringing the death toll to four. Karelia's Emergencies Ministry said all rescue operations ended after the body of a missing woman was found. Constructed using forced labor by gulag inmates, Belomorkanal is one of Russia's major shipping canals and connects the Arctic Ocean's White Sea with Onega Lake and then runs on to the Baltic Sea. It began operation in August 1933. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.

Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) agents and anti-corruption prosecutors on July 31 raided the premises of the country's parliament in Chisinau, RFE/RL has learned. "Procedural actions led by prosecutors from the Office for Combating Crime and Special Cases are under way at the moment," Daniela Manzat, a spokeswoman for SIS, told RFE/RL, adding, "We will get back to you with more details during the day." SIS sources told RFE/RL the search is linked to an espionage case targeting the parliament's legal department chief, Ion Creanga, who had allegedly been caught passing information to employees of the Russian Embassy to Moldova. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Moldovan Service, click here.

The Olekminsk district court in Russia's Siberian region of Sakha-Yakutia sentenced a man to 5 1/2 years in prison for severely beating his wife and cutting off her nose and an ear, the court said on July 30. Yevgeny Ivanov was also ordered to pay 2 million rubles ($23,000) to the victim, Anastasia Ivanova. The 24-year-old man attacked his wife in front of their children in April after she told him she wanted a divorce following his release from prison where he had served time for a drug-related conviction. Ivanova said the sentence is too lenient. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on July 31 it has begun the "final, third stage" of tactical nuclear missile drills with the involvement of the Central and Southern Military Districts. The exercises started in late May. The ministry said at the time that the goal was to increase the readiness of tactical nuclear forces near the Ukrainian border. In the first two stages, Russia's Leningrad and Southern military districts, as well Belarusian armed forces, participated in the drills. Russia has said that it has placed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Plans for the drills were announced on May 6. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, click here.

A court in Siberia on July 30 extended by one year the 19-year prison term of Ruslan Zinin, who shot a military commissioner at an enlistment center in the city of Ust-Ilimsk in 2022 amid protests against a military mobilization for the war in Ukraine.

Zinin's lawyer, Olga Chernova, said the court also ruled that her client must stay in a cell-like prison for the first eight years of the sentence before being transferred to a maximum-security correctional colony.

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A military court in the Siberian city of Irkutsk sentenced Zinin to 19 years in prison in January after finding him guilty of conducting a "terrorist act" and illegal firearm possession. He has already spent a year in prison, meaning he has another 19 years left to serve after the extension.

Zinin shot military commissioner Aleksandr Yeliseyev at a recruitment center on September 26, 2022, while he was recruiting soldiers amid rising tensions over the Kremlin's unpopular mobilization to support Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Yeliseyev was rushed to a hospital in serious condition but survived.

Zinin was initially charged with attempted murder, but in March last year the charge was changed to a "terrorist act."

Zinin's trial was held behind closed doors. Media reports said Zinin explained his action as an attempt to prevent the recruitment of a friend to fight in the war in Ukraine.

Later reports said Zinin told the judge that he wanted to prevent one of his three brothers who had been summoned to the recruitment center from being mobilized to the war after his best friend, who had never served in the army, was sent to Ukraine and died there.

Zinin's brother, who was 18 at the time, was not mobilized after the incident.

The mobilization for the war in Ukraine, announced by President Vladimir Putin in September 2022, was met with countrywide protests and the mass flight from Russia of men potentially eligible for military duty.

Thousands of people were detained in Russian towns and cities for protesting against mobilization, while several military enlistment centers and other administrative buildings in the country have been targeted in arson attacks.

Air-defense systems successfully repelled what officials called "the most massive attack of 2024" on the Ukrainian capital as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Kyiv's Western partners to make "bold decisions" and deliver enough resources that will allow Ukraine to fully protect its skies from Russian attacks.

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Ukraine's Air Force said on July 31 that its air defenses destroyed all 89 drones launched at the capital, as well as an X-59 guided missile, during an air-raid alert that lasted for more than seven hours.

Russian drones attacked Kyiv in two waves coming from all directions.

"This is one of the most massive drone attacks," the commander of Ukraine's Air Force, General Mykola Oleschuk, wrote on Telegram.

The attack was the seventh launched on Kyiv this month, Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said, adding that there were no casualties or damage in Kyiv.

Zelenskiy, in a message on X, called the repelling of the attack "an important result" and proof that "Ukrainians can fully protect their skies from Russian strikes when they have sufficient resources."

Zelenskiy reiterated his appeal to Ukraine's allies to keep sending the badly needed armaments to defend its cities and missiles that will allow it to strike deeper into Russia.

"Sufficiently bold decisions by partners are needed -- enough anti-aircraft systems, enough long-range. And Ukrainians will do everything correctly and accurately," Zelenskiy wrote.

Hours later there were reports that Ukraine has received the first F-16 fighter jets after pushing for them for more than a year. U.S. officials confirmed the deliver to the Associated Press and Bloomberg.

The United States and some of its NATO allies have been training Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the jets, and there have been indications that their arrival was imminent.

During the NATO summit in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on July 10 that the transfer of F-16 jets to Ukraine was under way. He said the jets were arriving from Denmark and the Netherlands.

Ukraine has said F-16s are needed to fight back against Russian missiles. Its Western allies have gone ahead with delivery despite concern that arming Ukraine with advanced weaponry would further escalate the war.

Russian shelling on July 31 also killed at least four people in Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Kherson regions, local officials said.

One resident was killed in the town of Toretsk, Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin reported on July 31, while in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, regional Governor Oleh Synyehubov reported that two civilians were killed by Russian artillery over the past 24 hours.

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In the southern city of Kherson, one person was killed and one was wounded by Russian shelling from across the Dnieper River, the head of the city's military administration, Roman Mrochko, reported.

Kherson was liberated by Ukrainian troops in November 2022, but Russian forces that withdrew across the Dnieper continue to pound the city on a daily basis, causing victims among civilians and damaging infrastructure.

Since the beginning of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Moscow's forces have systematically targeted Ukrainian energy and civilian infrastructure facilities, causing casualties and huge damage.

In turn, Ukraine has started targeting oil-refining facilities and other energy infrastructure inside Russia that mainly work for the military.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on July 31 that its air defenses had destroyed 19 Ukrainian drones that attacked five of its regions as well as the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea.

"Air-defense systems intercepted and destroyed 11 drones over Belgorod, 4 over Bryansk, one each over the Kursk, Kaluga, and Rostov regions," and one in Crimea," the ministrysaid in a message on Telegram.

Iran said Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, was killed on July 31 in Tehran in a raid that it accused Israel of carrying out and which has sparked fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it was investigating the attack that killed the 62-year-old Haniyeh while he was in Tehran to attend the July 30 inauguration ceremony for Iran's new president, Masud Pezeshkian.

The Iran-backed Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Hamas confirmed the news in a post on its Telegram channel on July 31, saying Haniyeh was killed in an "air strike on his residence in Tehran."

The Israeli government has yet to comment officially, but a photo of Haniyeh with a stamp on his forehead saying "Eliminated" was posted on the Government Press Office's Facebook page. The post, which was later deleted without explanation, did not specifically claim the strike was carried out by Israel, though it noted the Hamas official "was killed in a precise strike in Tehran."

Haniyeh's death came the same day that the United States carried out a strike in Iraq, raising concerns about the possibility of an all-out war in the Middle East. Washington claimed as self-defense the strike inside a base south of Baghdad that is used by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces. It said the attack killed four members of the group, which contains several Iran-aligned armed militias, and wounded four others.

Although Haniyeh’s death has sparked fears of an escalation in the region, Ali Mamouri, a research fellow with Australia’s Deakin University and Middle East specialist, said the situation is "still far from a full-scale regional war."

"However, the existing rules where both sides exercise restraint to a very limited level of engagement will change, and new levels of conflict will arise," he told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.

"We will witness more attacks by Iran's allies in the region on Israeli territory rather than directly from Iran," he added. "I think that the level of tension will escalate and might lead us toward relatively dangerous borders."

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Radio Farda that there was "a likelihood that the Iranians will look for a way to react to the elimination of Ismail Haniyeh."

"But I think that the fact that the Israeli government did not recognize publicly and officially any responsibility...will somehow influence the extent or the extremity of the Iranian reaction. I think it will be somewhat more moderate than under different circumstances," he said.

Meanwhile, Pezeshkian said in a statement, less than 24 hours after his inauguration, that Iran "will defend its territorial integrity" after the attack, though he did not say how.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also vowed revenge against Israel over the killing.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas immediately condemned Haniyeh's killing, calling it a "cowardly act and dangerous development," according to the Palestinian state news agency WAFA.

Several countries denounced the attack, with Russia calling it an "unacceptable political assassination," while Turkey warned it would extend the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The killing of Haniyeh comes as Washington is making a push to get Hamas and Israel to agree to a temporary cease-fire and a deal to release hostages being held in Gaza. Senior officials from the United States, Israel, Qatar, and Egypt are engaged in the latest round of talks to secure such a deal.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Washington was "not aware of or involved in" Haniyeh’s assassination and wouldn’t speculate on the impact it might have on the region.

He did say, however, that the "best way to bring the temperature down" is to keep pushing for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

"We will continue to labor that for as long as it takes to get there," he told Channel News Asia while on a two-day official visit to Singapore. "It's vitally important to help end the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It's vitally important to get the hostages home…. It's vitally important to hopefully put things on a better path for more enduring peace and more enduring security, so that focus remains."

Earlier on July 30, Israel claimed it had "eliminated" Fuad Shukr, the Hizballah militant commander Israel alleges was behind a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 Israeli youths in Beirut.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a post on the X social media network that Shukr has "directed" attacks by Hizballah.

There was no immediate response from Hizballah.

Shukr was wanted by U.S. authorities for his alleged involvement in a 1983 attack on U.S. troops in Beirut. Washington had offered up to $5 million for information on Shukr, who is also known as al-Hajj Mohsin and is on the U.S. terrorist list.

Hizballah, which rarely shies away from claiming attacks on Israeli targets, has denied it was responsible for the July 27 attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but Israel had vowed to retaliate against the Iran-backed group.

Israel has vowed to kill leaders of Hamas over the group’s October 7 attack inside Israeli territory that killed 1,200 people. Around 250 others were taken hostage, some of whom have since been released.

Some of the hostages have died while in Gaza as Israel carries out a massive military operation it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas. Some of the hostages are believed to still be alive.

“Assassinating the Hamas leader will make negotiations and de-escalation more difficult. Things will become more violent and the situation will worsen, it will not improve," said Areepen Uttarasin, a Thai politician who has been one of the negotiators in talks to free the hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas.

Haniyeh had been part of Hamas for decades and became its political chief in 2017. He lived in the Gaza Strip until 2019, when he moved to live in exile in Qatar.

He had emerged as one of its most visible leaders during the war with Israel in Gaza as he shuttled between countries in the Middle East to attend international negotiations over the conflict, including the release of the hostages still being held by Hamas.

With additional reporting by Reuters

Russia’s World Friendship Games, scheduled for September 2024, have been postponed until 2025, according to a July 30 statement by the International Friendship Association, the official organizer of the games. The association said “insufficient time for the recovery of leading athletes” from the Paris Olympics prompted the delay. Russian authorities and organizers claimed the competition would include athletes from 70 countries around the world who would participate in 33 Olympic and non-Olympic sports. The games, reminiscent of the 1984 Soviet Union’s Friendship Games, have provoked condemnations from the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency. To read the original story on RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

An Iranian court has ordered Grammy Award winner Shervin Hajipour to begin his prison sentence for making the viral song Baraye, according to a July 30 Instagram post. The song became the anthem of the Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody. Hajipour said on Instagram that his almost four-year sentence was upheld by an Iranian appeals court, which claimed the song incited people to “kill and fight.” While Hajipour is no longer barred from leaving Iran, he said he will go back to prison rather than leave the country. He was previously arrested in September 2022.

TBILISI -- An international arbitration court has ruled in favor of the Georgian government in a high-profile case over the construction of the Caucasian country’s first-ever deep-sea port on its Black Sea coast.

The International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris on July 29 denied a claim brought by the supervisory board of the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) that sought to recover its investment after the Georgian government terminated the contract in 2020.

The 2-1 ruling removes a legal obstacle against the megaproject, which was thrust back into the headlines in Georgia in late May when the country’s Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Levan Davitashvili announced that a consortium of Chinese state-owned companies would be awarded a new deal to build the deep-sea port as part of a recently revived bid.

SEE ALSO:

Chinese-Led Consortium To Build Massive Port Project On Georgia's Black Sea Coast

“We are naturally disappointed in this outcome of the ICC tribunal as we continue to believe that the Georgian Government acted inappropriately to the detriment of all Georgians in its campaign to undermine the Anaklia Port Project,” the ADC said in a statement following the ruling.

The previous attempt to build the port in Anaklia, a coastal town in northwest Georgia, was led by Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze, co-founders of Georgia’s TBC Bank, and a collection of other investors from the Netherlands, the United States, Britain, and Bulgaria. After the government canceled the contract with the ADC, the consortium filed a request for arbitration in an attempt to recover the value of its investment and rights in the multibillion dollar port project.

Even before the contract was canceled there were signs of political pressure on the leaders of the consortium. Various charges were brought against Khazaradze and Japaridze in what outside observers and some rights groups said was a politically motivated campaign, which the ADC said violated the initial investment agreement.

Georgian government officials, meanwhile, claimed that the ICC's ruling shows that they behaved appropriately.

“Taking into account all the above, the arbitration confirmed that the Georgian government terminated the investment agreement legally,” Georgian Justice Minister Rati Bregadze said on July 29 at a press briefing.

After terminating the contract with the ADC, the state promised to build the Anaklia port in part with its own funds and announced a bidding process where it would hold a 51 percent stake and an outside investor would maintain 49 percent control.

While the ruling ends the ADC’s main challenge, a Dutch investor with a stake in the consortium also filed his own claim to a separate court. That claim is still pending.

Few details have emerged since late May about the structure of the deal involving the Chinese consortium.

A deep-sea port in Anaklia is seen as a strategic investment as it would allow larger ships to transport increased volumes at a more efficient rate and is linked to various infrastructure projects backed by the European Union and China that are looking to boost regional and global trade.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused the European Union's Executive Commissionon July 30 of orchestrating a stoppage of some Russian oil supplies into the bloc through Ukraine and warned that the dispute could lead to an energy crisis. Ukraine adopted sanctions against LUKoil in June which prohibited the transit of its oil across the Druzhba pipeline through Ukraine and into Hungary and Slovakia. Szijjarto said that “despite the threat to the energy security of two EU member states…it was Brussels, not Kyiv, that invented the whole thing,” Szijjarto said. Hungary receives most of its crude from Russia, about half of which comes from LUKoil.

German citizen Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death on terrorism charges by a Belarusian court, was pardoned by the country’s authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka on July 30 following a pardon request announced on the same day, according to a press release from Lukashenka’s office.

A Telegram channel associated with Lukashenka's office said he convened a meeting with Belarusian KGB director Ivan Tertel, Krieger’s lawyer, and Lyudmila Gladkaya, who works for a state-owned newspaper and recently published the details of the trial against Krieger.

"[Lukashenka] invited people involved in the [pardoning] process to hear details, thoughts, and to get 'opinions,'" the Pul Pergova channel said of the meeting that preceded the pardon.

Lukashenka's office provided no additional information about the pardon.

• RFE/RL's Belarus Service

An exhibition of 30 images by Belarusian designer Artur Vakarau depicting the "heroic, unyielding, and stubborn resistance" of Belarusians under Alyaksandr Lukashenka's 30-year rule has opened near the Museum of Occupations and Struggle for Freedom in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Details of Krieger's case were not known until the Vyasna human rights group reported earlier this month that he was sentenced to death in June for mercenary activity, terrorism, creating an extremist group, intentionally damaging a vehicle, and illegal operations with firearms and explosives.

According to Vyasna, it was the first trial in Belarus for "mercenary activity."

On July 25, the state-run Belarus-1 television channel aired the video of the 30-year-old Krieger shown sitting behind bars in handcuffs and “repenting” for the crimes he was sentenced for.

During the 17-minute video Krieger said he was sorry and expressed hope that Lukashenka, who has run Belarus with an iron fist for 30 years, will pardon him.

The practice of showing so-called repentance videos by opposition politicians or activists made under apparent duress after their arrests has been common in Belarus for years.

Krieger's "confession" appeared as though it was being used for propaganda purposes, with him speaking German with a voiceover translation into Russian.

After the broadcast, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it was "unbearable how the Belarusian regime paraded a German national on television."

She said the Foreign Office and the German Embassy in Minsk were in "close contact" with Krieger and his family and were providing consular support.

"We must do everything to ensure that his rights are maintained and remain protected," Baerbock added.

The U.S. Treasury Department on July 30 announced sanctions on individuals and entities that have aided Iranian ballistic missile development and procurement through Tehran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

The five individuals and seven entities are based in Iran, China, and Hong Kong.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a press release that those sanctioned have procured “various components, including accelerometers and gyroscopes, which serve as key inputs to Iran’s ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program.”

The Treasury Department alleged that one of the sanctioned Iranian companies -- the Electro Optic Sairan Industries Company -- also contributed to the Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center’s development of Shahed-series UAVs, which the Treasury said “are being used by Russian forces in Ukraine.”

The United States designated the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics in 2007, citing weapons of mass destruction and their delivery, according to the press release. The ministry is connected to Iran’s ballistic missile program.

“Iran’s reckless proliferation of its ballistic missiles and UAVs risk further instability and endangers civilian lives,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said. “The United States will continue to impose costs on those that facilitate Iran’s ability to produce these deadly weapons.”

The announcement came on the same day as the swearing in of Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian, a moderate reformist and former heart surgeon who won a snap election following the death of hard-line president Ebrahim Raisi in May.

While Pezeshkian is expected to be a more moderate Iranian president, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “the supreme leader continues to call the shots” at a July 19 fireside chat.

Blinken “resolutely” affirmed that, per U.S. policy, Iran must not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon and said the U.S. has been “maximizing pressure on Iran across the board,” including through more than 600 sanctions on Iranian people and entities.