Georgia’s largest opposition party, the United National Movement, will submit a lawsuit against the controversial “foreign agent” law to the Constitutional Court on July 29, the party has told RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. Thirty-two opposition lawmakers signed the lawsuit on July 22. Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, a fierce critic of the law, filed a challenge against the legislation with the Constitutional Court on July 16. Zurabishvili vetoed the law in May, but the country's parliament, which is dominated by the ruling Georgian Dream party, overrode her veto. Signed into law on June 4, it has jeopardized the country's aspirations to join the European Union. To read the full story by RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, click here.

Dozens of people have been put to death in Iran over the past week, after a lull in executions during the recent presidential election period. According to reports by foreign-based Iranian rights groups, at least 30 prisoners convicted of murder or narcotics offenses were hanged in various prisons between July 20 and July 27. Rights groups had said that the number of executions had dropped in the first half of the year, attributing it to the presidential election. They warned, however, that executions would pick up after the vote. Reformist lawmaker Masud Pezeshkian won the July 5 run-off election and took office on July 28. To read the full story by RFE/RL’s Radio Farda, click here.

A tribal land feud that sparked days of sectarian fighting has killed 35 people in northwestern Pakistan, local authorities said on July 28. Clashes over a land dispute between Sunni and Shi’ite tribes broke out on July 24 in the Kurram district, during which more than 160 people have been injured. The fighting started in the Boshera region and has since spread to at least five towns and villages. The clashes have resulted in the closure of public offices, schools, roads, and the local market. The authorities have shut down mobile internet in the district. To read the full story by RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal, click here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia would deploy new strike weapons if the United States deployed long-range missiles in Germany. The United States said on July 10 that it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 in preparation for a longer-term deployment, which will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons. Speaking at a naval parade in St. Petersburg on July 28, Putin vowed “mirror measures,” warning the United States that it risked triggering a Cold War-style missile crisis with the move. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

NATO inviting Ukraine to join the military alliance would mark “a definitive step away from the politics of appeasement and back to the rule of international law and protection of human rights,” dozens of scholars said in an open letter published by The Guardian on July 27. “The focus on Russia’s alleged ‘Nato expansion anxiety,’ and attempts to appease it, ignore Russia’s genocidal propaganda and systematic war crimes in occupied territory of Ukraine, including massacres, mass rape and torture,” they said. At its recent summit in Washington, the 32 members of NATO stated that the alliance would continue to support Ukraine on its "irreversible path" to membership, but no timeline was set.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally endorsed Masud Pezeshkian as the new president on July 28 and instructed him to focus on cultivating relations with Iran’s neighbors rather than Western nations.

The endorsement, known in the vernacular as tanfeez, means Pezeshkian’s tenure as president has officially started, despite not being sworn in until July 30.

The televised ceremony was held in Tehran and attended by senior military and political figures as well as foreign diplomats.

In his decree, Khamenei described Pezeshkian as a “wise, honest, popular, and scholarly” individual.

A heart surgeon by training, reformist Pezeshkian is a former health minister and multiterm lawmaker who was elected president earlier this month in a snap election held after the death of hard-line president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.

The first round of voting on June 28 had voter participation of 39 percent -- a record-low turnout for a presidential election in the history of the Islamic republic. The runoff vote on July 5, which saw Pezeshkian face off against ultraconservative candidate Saeed Jalili, saw the turnout rise to around 49 percent.

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Iran's New Reformist President Unlikely To Bring Major Policy Shifts

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Khamenei, who is Iran’s highest religious and political authority and has final say on all state matters, said the foreign policy of Pezeshkian’s government should prioritize “states that have supported Iran throughout these years in the face of pressure both inside and outside the United Nations.”

These countries, he said, include Iran’s neighbors as well as African and Asian nations.

“I don't say European countries are a priority in our foreign policy because of their bad conduct concerning issues like the sanctions and oil,” the 85-year-old supreme leader said.

“They’ll become a priority if they set aside their bad conduct. Of course, we’ll never forget the hostile conduct of some countries.”

Iran has long accused European powers of failing to deliver on their commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal after the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions targeting Iran’s economy and oil sectors. Iran has since scaled back its own commitments and expanded its nuclear program.

In his address after the endorsement, Pezeshkian spoke of the “need to reform” but added that he would strive to “implement the supreme leader’s general policies.”

France-based political commentator Mohammad Javad Akbarin told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that the ceremony showed that the new president is “subservient” to the supreme leader.

“The leader of the Islamic republic will not have a problem controlling [Pezeshkian],” he said.

In his first two decrees after taking office, Pezeshkian named veteran reformist politician Mohammad Reza Aref as his first vice-president and Mohsen Haji-Mirzaei as his chief of staff.

A former lawmaker, Aref previously served as first vice-president in 2001-2005 under Iran’s last reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

Haji-Mirzaei was Iran’s education minister in 2019-2021 in the final two years of moderate former president Hassan Rohani’s tenure.

Suspected Ukrainian military drones have struck an oil storage depot in Russia’s Kursk region, a regional Russian official said on July 28, with video posted online showing a huge blaze lighting up the early morning sky.

Three storage tanks caught fire as a result of the drone strike, acting regional Governor Aleksei Smirnov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. He said one of the fires was quickly extinguished, but firefighters were trying to put out the two other blazes. Smirnov said 82 firefighters and 32 units of equipment were involved.

Russian Telegram channels led by Baza, which is linked to Russian security services, posted video showing what were described as the tanks on fire.

Smirnov said the drones also damaged a couple of residential buildings in the region, injuring one person.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram that its air defense systems had destroyed two drones over the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine.

SEE ALSO:

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine

Ukraine considers Russian oil infrastructure a legitimate military target and began targeting it in early 2024. Ukraine makes extensive use of long-range drones, which are virtually the only weapons that can hit military facilities deep inside Russia.

Russian oil refineries and military facilities are regularly targeted by Ukrainian drones. On July 27, Ukrayinska Pravda reported on July 27 that Ukrainian drones had hit an oil refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region.

Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) claimed on July 27 that its drones attacked the Olenya airfield in Russia's far northern Murmansk region, saying it struck a TU-22M3 strategic bomber. It also said that three Russian Army helicopters had been destroyed on Russian territory over the previous week.

The claims appeared to be an apparent effort to demonstrate Russia's ongoing losses in the 30th month of Moscow's full-scale invasion without directly claiming responsibility in all cases.

The Ukrainians' assertions have not been confirmed by Russian officials or independent sources.

Ukrainskaya Pravda quoted an unnamed source claiming the alleged "hit" on the Olenya airfield where the bomber was located.

SEE ALSO:

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine

Separately, the HUR said in a statement that the three damaged helicopters were being used against Ukraine and Russian authorities were "trying to hide the causes and consequences of the noise and fire" that destroyed the aircraft from local residents.

They said one aircraft had burned in Samara and two others hit by fire in Tomilino near Moscow.

Ukraine's military said on July 27 that Russia had lost 326 helicopters since the start of its all-out attack.

Azerbaijani media reports claim Baku is preparing a protest to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a complaint via diplomatic channels to Olympics host France after a commentator on French public television reportedly called Armenians "our friends" and suggested Nagorno-Karabakh had recently "passed into the hands of the Azerbaijani Army." The alleged remarks came during the introduction of national contingents on France 2 during opening ceremonies in Paris on July 26. There was no official confirmation of any Azerbaijani complaint. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory, but ethnic Armenians backed by Yerevan controlled it for decades until Azerbaijani forces retook it in September 2023. The IOC has tight rules in place to try to avoid the introduction of politics into its sports competitions and official events. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Armenian Service, click here.

Kazakh judoka Yeldos Smetov won gold in the 60-kilogram final on July 27 to give his Central Asian republic its second medal of the first full day of competition in the Paris Olympics. Compatriots Aleksandra Le and Islam Satpayev won the bronze hours earlier in the 10-meter mixed air rifle shooting event, the country's first shooting Olympic medal in nearly three decades. Judoka Smetov beat out French opponent Luka Mkheidze in the finals despite flirting with disqualification with two penalties. It was the Kazakh's third Olympic medal but first top prize in judo competition, having taken the silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the bronze in Tokyo in 2021.

Russian state officials and religious leaders have leveled bitter criticism at the opening ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, seizing on the wet weather and flamboyant first-night costumes to detract from global games where Russian participation is strictly curbed and national symbols remain banned over the invasion of Ukraine.

The current ban follows previous curbs on Russian athletes and the exclusion of Russian national symbols and officials over state-sponsored doping offenses.

Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian Orthodox Church's leadership issued anti-LGBT statements after the lavish July 26 opening ceremonies in which more than 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries plied the River Seine in national colors.

"A cultural and historical suicide is taking place in one of the former Christian capitals of European civilization," Vakhtang Kipshidze, a spokesman for the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, was quoted as saying.

President Vladimir Putin has made vilification of the LGBT community a key pillar of his politically packed appeals to preserve "traditional" aspects of Russian society.

The Russian Supreme Court last year declared the LGBT "movement" extremist, paving the way to strict penalties for offenders.

Also on July 27, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized a campy scene at one point in the sprawling ceremony in Paris that some likened to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper by saying it was a "mockery of a sacred story for Christians."

She accused the ceremony organizers of showing Christ's Apostles "as transvestites."

"Evidently in Paris they decided that if the Olympic rings are multicolored, you can turn it all into one giant gay parade," Zakharova said.

Zakharova called the event a "ridiculous open-air opening ceremony [that] forced guests to sit for hours under pouring rain" and suggested organizers should have thought of "seeding the clouds" to try to modify the weather.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on May 27 that the logistically complex and visually stunning opening ceremony had "made our compatriots extremely proud."

But the still unresolved sabotage of train networks around France caused delays and tarnished both the opening and second days of these Olympics. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the coordinated nighttime attacks on rail junctions.

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'Creating Havoc And Panic': Kremlin-Friendly Fake News Takes Aim At Paris Olympics

Already under siege from what experts said were Russian-based disinformation campaigns targeting the Paris Olympics, French authorities announced this week the detention of a 40-year-old Russian chef who is alleged to have been involved in a "largescale" plot to disrupt or destabilize the games.

Both of the Russian institutions that criticized the ceremonies are on the outside looking in, with the ongoing ban on Russian representatives at these Summer Games.

Last year, following athlete bans for systematic Russian doping, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended Russia over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's claim to have annexed four regions in its ongoing full-scale invasion.

But it later said individual Russian and Belarusian athletes could apply under strict criteria.

The IOC eventually cleared 14 Russian and 11 Belarusian athletes to compete under neutral status in cycling, gymnastics, weightlifting, and wrestling events.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) concluded in 2016 that more than 1,000 people had participated in an elaborate and long-running doping scheme between 2011 and 2014 that was sponsored by the Russian state.

Russian athletes were allowed to apply specially as individuals to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, but the Russian national team and state symbols were banned.

WADA then banned Russian athletes and officials from the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing for mishandling doping data.

With reporting by AFP and dpa

Government offices and banks throughout Iran were to remain closed on July 28 to avoid overtaxing power networks amid "extreme and unprecedented heat," which prompted similar shutdowns earlier this week, officials said. Temperatures reached nearly 50 degrees Celsius in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province and in the central Yadz Province, and were above 45 degrees in at least 10 provinces. The heatwave struck on July 24 before easing slightly, but the government ordered shortened working hours from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. at all government centers on July 27 after the Energy Ministry predicted "difficult conditions" for electricity production and supply. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, click here.

Havana residents watched from shore on July 27 as Russian warships arrived for the second time in as many months, in a visit that Cuba called routine. The patrol ship Neustrahimy, training vessel Smolny, and support vessels, all from the Baltic Fleet, are scheduled to depart on July 30. A Russian nuclear submarine, frigate, and support ships in June also flexed Moscow's muscles in the port of Havana, less than 160 kilometers from Florida. Russian naval activity -- though routine in the Atlantic -- has ratcheted up because of Washington's support for Ukraine, U.S. officials say. Relations between Cold War allies Russia and Cuba have markedly improved as the communist-run country battles an economic crisis it claims is due mainly to U.S. sanctions.

TUSNAD, Romania – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban again ripped into the European Union, using a speech in a Romanian spa town to trumpet his nationalist-tinged agenda, including a full-throated embrace of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

In his nearly two-hour speech on July 27, Orban said his visit to the country was positive, discussing with his Romanian counterpart a new high-speed railway between Bucharest and Budapest and Romania's membership in the Schengen visa-free zone. Currently, visa-free travel only applies to Bucharest’s air and maritime borders, something Romania trying to change.

But Orban also touched on many of the same themes he has promoted as prime minister, a post he was soundly reelected to two years ago.

He railed against policies in some Western countries promoting or protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and voiced support for what he asserted were Christian values.

"There is no public morality in the West. You could see this at the opening of the Paris Olympics," he said, referring the opening ceremonies of the games held a day earlier.

“In contrast to the ‘slim-fit-squeamish-avocado-latte-free-of-everything" liberals, we have to raise a banner so that brave, nationalist, young Christians can also gather under it,” he said.

Orban also accused the leadership of the European Union of constantly waging war -- an apparent reference to Brussels’ strong support for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.

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Orban has backed Trump, who is running as the Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential election in November. The Hungarian leader, who traveled to Trump’s home in Florida earlier this month, predicted that ex-U.S. president would win the U.S. election.

And if Europe has not switched to a policy of peace by then, then after [Trump’s] victory, [Europe] will have to do so after admitting its defeat,” Orban said.

Orban also told the crowd that he had spoken a day earlier by phone with Trump and the American sent his greetings to the Transylvanian forum, and he repeated a previous suggestion that "Hungarian professionals" are participating in the creation of Trump's program. RFE/RL could confirm neither the conversation nor the claim of Hungarian involvement in Trump's program.

The U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, responded to Orban's remarks by reposting part of a speech the envoy delivered earlier this month in Budapest. In it, he chided Orban for continuing "to remind us, daily, of who he would like to win that election, who he would vote for if he were an American, which he is not."

“We have no other ally or partner, not a single one, that similarly, overtly, and tirelessly campaigns for a specific candidate in an election in the United States of America -- seemingly convinced that, no matter what, it only helps Hungary, or at least helps him personally,” Pressman told his audience.

Pressman, a trained lawyer specializing in human rights, has sharply criticized and publicly jousted with Orban since he was appointed as ambassador in 2022.

Orban delivered his speech while visiting the small central spa town of Tusnad, which is in a region of Romania with a large population of ethnic Hungarians.

Throughout his tenure as Hungary’s dominant politician, Orban has frequently championed the cause of ethnic Hungarians throughout Eastern Europe, often antagonizing nationalist groups in other countries, such as Ukraine.

Orban called for expanding his government’s child support and welfare policies to include ethnic Hungarians living in other countries.

SEE ALSO:

Wider Europe Briefing: How Brussels Is Responding To Orban Going Rogue

Orban, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, has antagonized other EU leaders for years over his slow crackdown on civil society, independent media, and opposition political parties in Hungary.

And he has butted heads not only with the EU, but also NATO, in particular over his embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his unwillingness to do more to support Ukraine in its defense against Moscow's invasion.

Aleksandra Le and Islam Satpayev of Kazakhstan won the first medal of the Paris Olympic Games after claiming bronze in the 10-meter mixed team air rifle event. Le and Satpayev cruised to victory in their bronze medal match against Germany's Maximilian Ulbrich and Anna Janssen, outscoring their opponents 17-5. The medal was Kazakhstan's first in a shooting event since 1996, according to Olympic organizers.

Russian forces targeted more than a dozen settlements in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, an official said, and a Russian drone hit an ambulance, wounding its driver.

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.

Russian forces also fired at least one cruise missile and 11 other drones in four other regions across the country. Ukraine’s air force claimed the projectiles were all shot down.

Early on July 27, Ukraine launched nearly 20 drones at targets in Russian border regions, and Russian authorities claimed they had downed at least 14 of them.

At least two people were wounded, Russian officials said, when a Ukrainian helicopter drone dropped an explosive device on them in the Kursk region.

The exchange of drone attacks and air strikes came as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold back grinding advances by Russian troops in several locations along the 1,100-kilometer frontline.

Ukrainian commanders say the situation east of the Donetsk region city of Pokrovsk is critical, as well as in the city of Chasiv Yar, to the north, where Russian troops have advanced to a water canal separating its eastern district from the main city.

In an interview published in The Guardian, Ukraine's commander in chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy said the battlefield situation was “very difficult."

“The Russian aggressor attacks our positions in many directions,” he said.

“The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” he was quoted as saying. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”

Eight people were wounded in Russian strikes on 17 settlements in the Kherson region, the head of the military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.

In the town of Beryslav, on the west bank of the Dnieper River, a Russian drone hit an ambulance, wounding its driver, he said. It was unclear if the ambulance was transporting anyone at the time.

Russian forces who withdrew from the western side of the Dnieper River in late 2022 have continued to bombard and harass Ukrainian settlements on the opposite banks.

In Russia’s Ryazan region, local Telegram channels reported that an oil storage facility and an airfield may have been attacked. There was no official confirmation.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, meanwhile, claimed that its drones hit a Russian strategic bomber housed at an air base near the Arctic City of Murmansk—some 1,800 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border. The newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda quoted an unnamed official from the agency, known as HUR, as saying the Tu-22M3 long-range bomber was hit early on July 27.

It was unclear if the plane was damaged or destroyed, though The Kyiv Independent newspaper cited a HUR official as saying the bomber was damaged.

There was no immediate confirmation of either report.

With the Russian invasion now in its 28th month, the casualty toll on both sides continues to climb.

Ukraine has not released data for its dead or wounded, although President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in February that at least 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, a figure seen as a gross underestimate.

Western officials, meanwhile, estimate Russia’s casualties – killed or wounded – to exceed 500,000. The latest tally compiled by the BBC’s Russian Service and Mediazona, based on open sources such as published obituaries, found that at least 61,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since February 2022.

The last official figure released by the Russian Defense Department, in September 2022, said the death toll was 5,937 dead.

A Belgian judge ordered three Chechens jailed on terrorism-related charges, a day after police launched country-wide raids over fears of a possible attack. Six people in all appeared before the judge on July 26. Prosecutors said the judge found the three to be suspected members of an offshoot of the Islamic State extremist group, known as Islamic State Khorasan. The July 25 police raids were carried out in Brussels, and four other major cities, under judicial warrants. The country was hit by suicide bomb attacks at its main airport and in its subway system in 2016, attacks that killed 32 people and wounded hundreds.

Three Bulgarian citizens have been detained on suspicion of vandalizing the Holocaust Memorial in Paris in May, the State Agency for National Security (DANS) said on July 26.

Two of the Bulgarians were detained on July 25 in Bulgaria in a joint operation between DANS and the Interior Ministry. The third was detained in another EU country, the DANS said in a statement.

DANS said the detainees "gravitate around Bulgarian groups professing a far-right extremist ideology."

They are suspected of vandalizing the Holocaust Memorial by making 35 red palm prints on the monument. French authorities announced in May shortly after the graffiti appeared that it was investigating whether the desecration was coordinated by Russia.

DANS said Bulgarian law enforcement acted on a European arrest warrant issued on July 19 by French authorities into crimes, including participation in an organized criminal group and damage of property on ethnic, racial, and other grounds.

Investigators began tracking the Bulgarians in May when it identified three suspects who stayed in a hotel in Paris and then traveled to Belgium.

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Moldovan Police Say Stars Of David Graffiti On Paris Buildings Ordered By Fugitive Magnate

The French prosecutor's office told RFE/RL that the reservations were made from Bulgaria.

Investigators are looking into whether the graffiti was ordered by the Russian security services after a similar act of vandalism in October carried out by two Moldovans, who admitted to painting Stars of David on properties in Paris.

France blamed a Russian disinformation campaign for amplifying the graffiti on social media. The Russian Embassy in Paris condemned what it said were "groundless attempts" to seek a Russian connection.

The red palms on the Holocaust Memorial were meant to symbolize bloodstained hands and refer to Israel's war against Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Britain.

The vandalization took place on May 14, months into the war that erupted in October after Hamas launched an attack on Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has sparked numerous protests in Western countries by pro-Palestinian groups who have drawn attention to the relatively high number of Palestinian deaths and the conditions of Palestinian refugees.

The Paris Holocaust Memorial is inscribed with the names of 3,900 men and women who helped save Jews from persecution during the World War II Nazi occupation of France.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives. The penalty for the vandalism may be more severe if discrimination is proved.

A noted member of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), Muhammadali Faizmuhammad, died in a Tajik prison infirmary at the age of 65, his relatives told RFE/RL on July 26. According to the relatives, Faizmuhammad had heart problems and diabetes. He was arrested in September 2015 along with 13 other members of the IRPT and later sentenced to 23 years in prison. Tajikistan outlawed the opposition group in 2015, branding it a terrorist organization, a claim the party denies. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Tajik Service, click here.

Polish lawmakers voted on July 26 in favor of a bill making it easier for security services to use weapons at the Poland-Belarus border, legislation that has public support but that critics say infringes human rights. Poland has been dealing with an influx of migrants at the border since 2021. Both Warsaw and the EU say Belarus and Russia have been orchestrating the crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East and Africa. The situation turned tragic in June when a Polish soldier was fatally stabbed through the border fence. The bill would allow security services to use force including firearms on the border in certain emergency situations.

Russia's central bank raised its key interest rate by 200 basis points to 18 percent, promising further tightening to fight surging inflation. The July 26 hike brings the cost of borrowing to its highest level in more than two years. The key rate was last raised to 20 percent in April 2022, two months after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but was later eased. The bank also forecast inflation would hit 7 percent this year, up sharply from its previous estimate of 4 percent. The Kremlin has been vexed by soaring inflation, due largely to government spending on military expenditures and wages and benefits for soldiers. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.

Finland suspects a Russian vessel violated the country's territorial waters on July 26, the Finnish Defense Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said the border guard is investigating the incident, which it said took place in the eastern Gulf of Finland. The border guard's chief investigator said the ship was a seabed exploration vessel operating under the Russian Navy's Baltic Sea fleet. Petter Stauffer told Finland's Helsingin Sanomat newspaper that the ship was escorted out of the area by a Finnish border guard vessel and that the incident lasted around 7 minutes. Relations between Finland and Russia have soured since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which prompted Helsinki to join NATO.

Prosecutors asked a court in Siberia on July 26 to sentence Sergei Mikhailov, a journalist and founder of the LIStok newspaper in the city of Gorno-Altaisk, to 9 years in prison on a charge of distributing false information about the Russian military. The charge stems from coverage by LIStok in 2022 of alleged atrocities by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha. Mikhailov insists the decision to publish the materials in question had been made by his chief editor, Viktor Rau, and not him. Rau, who is currently outside of Russia, has confirmed it was his idea to publish the materials. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.

Uzbekistan's Central Election Commission announced on July 26 that parliamentary and local elections will be held in the Central Asian nation on October 27. Those up for election include 150 members of the parliament's lower chamber, the Legislative Chamber; 56 members of the upper chamber, the Senate; and 65 members of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, as well as members of the Tashkent municipal, regional, and 208 district councils. Half of the Legislative Chamber of deputies will be elected via party lists, while the other half will be voted in from single-mandate districts under a majority system. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, click here.

A German citizen sentenced to death last month in Minsk has been shown in a video on Belarus television asking for mercy in a statement that appears to have been made under duress.

Belarus-1 state-run television aired the video of Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death last month on a mercenary charge, late on July 25.

In the 17-minute video, the 30-year-old Krieger was shown sitting behind bars in handcuffs. During his monologue he said he is sorry and expressed hope that authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr 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.

A narrator's voice introducing Krieger says German officials remain silent despite Krieger's personal appeals to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

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However, a government spokesperson told a news conference in Berlin on July 26 that "the chancellor is of course aware of the case and, like the entire government, is worried about these events, especially in connection with the death sentence."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock later on July 26 commented on the actions of the authorities in Belarus.

"It is unbearable how the Belarusian regime paraded a German national on television," Baerbock told journalists in Hamburg.

She said the Foreign Office and the Germany 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.

In the video, Krieger says he worked as a paramedic and in the security service of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin before he established an online contact with Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) via a foreign mercenary unit in the Ukrainian armed forces last year.

• 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.

Krieger said an SBU officer asked him to conduct several assignments before he could be allowed to join the mercenary group.

Namely, Krieger said, the SBU officers asked him to travel from Germany to Belarus via Azerbaijan and take pictures of military objects in the eastern Belarusian region of Mahilyou and the Azyaryshcha railway station near Minsk, which he did in early October and sent the pictures to the SBU via the Internet.

After that, Krieger said, he was instructed by phone to find a backpack on October 5, 2023, at a site coordinated by SBU officers and place it on railways, which he also did.

"Now I know that no one was hurt, that there were no human casualties," Krieger says in the video as he starts crying.

Krieger then says he was arrested on October 6 at the Minsk airport while waiting for his flight to Berlin.

At that moment, a video showing an explosion on the rails near a station appears on the screen with the date and time: October 5, 2023, 11:22 p.m.

"I definitely consider myself guilty.... I repent every second," Krieger says, adding that he can be executed at any time and asking German officials for help and Belarusian authorities for clemency.

The details of Krieger's case were not known until the Vyasna human rights group reported last week 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."

Belarusian authorities have not commented on the case.

With reporting by dpa