Police in Islamabad have launched a crackdown against the central leadership of former Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf party. Police conducted raids to carry out the arrest of various party leaders. Those arrested included the chairman of the party, Gohar Ali Khan, central leader and member of parliament Sher Afzal Marwat, and party General Secretary Omar Ayub. The arrests came a day after Khan's party held a rally near Islamabad to demand his release. Khan is the main rival of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Rally participants vowed to use force if Khan isn't released within two weeks. Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023, and remains a popular figure despite a series of criminal cases against him.

Kazakhstan's Supreme Court on September 9 refused to hear an appeal filed by the leader of the Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, Zhanbolat Mamai, against a parole-like six-year prison setence, citing "lack of reasons" for the appeal. Mamai was sentenced in April 2023, and a court of appeals in June upheld the ruling. Mamai, his supporters, and a rights group have insisted the case is politically motivated. The charges are related to the unprecedented mass protests in January 2022 that turned deadly. Mamai has been trying to register his party for years, but claims he is being prevented from doing so by the government. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.

The Afghan Embassy in London is being shut down after its diplomats were dismissed by the country's Taliban rulers, Britain's Foreign Office said on September 9.

A Foreign Office statement e-mailed to RFE/RL said the embassy "is being closed following the dismissal of its staff by the Taliban." Britain does not recognize the Taliban-led government.

But the Afghan ambassador said the decision was made "based on the requirements of the host country's authorities." Zalmai Rassoul said on X that the embassy would shut its doors on September 27 "at the official request of the host country."

Neither the U.K. government nor the ambassador said what would happen to the embassy's staff, but a source at the Afghan Embassy who spoke with RFE/RL said the British government had given embassy staff 90 days to leave the country or apply for political asylum.

The source said the British Foreign Office also said that the embassy building would not be handed over to the Taliban and that the British government would not allow any Afghan political representation or consulate to operate until a recognized government was established in Afghanistan.

The Taliban-led government had asked the embassy staff to interact with the Foreign Office, but the embassy staff refused, and as a result, the embassy's services were declared invalid by the Taliban.

The news has worried Afghans living in Britain, who fear problems without the diplomatic services.

"After this, we Afghans will face many challenges because Afghans need to renew their passports, identity cards, and other documents," Sayed Shah Kharoti and Malik, two Afghans living in London, told RFE/RL.

Diplomats who served under Afghanistan's former Western-backed government were left in limbo when the Taliban seized Kabul and returned to power in August 2021. Many embassies in Europe and beyond have continued to operate.

SEE ALSO:

Taliban Cuts Ties With 14 Afghan Diplomatic Missions Abroad

The Taliban administration announced in July that it no longer recognized diplomatic missions set up by the former Western-backed government and that documents issued by embassies in Britain and 13 other mostly European countries were invalid.

Many Taliban leaders are under sanctions, and no country officially recognizes them as Afghanistan's legitimate rulers, though some countries retain active diplomatic missions in Afghanistan, including Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, and China.

SEE ALSO:

Which Countries Have Relations With The Taliban's Unrecognized Government?

Afghanistan has sent Taliban-approved diplomats to some of those countries, including Pakistan and China.

Britain and other Western countries are grappling with how to provide humanitarian aid Afghans without recognizing the Taliban-led government, which has dramatically curtailed education, employment, and personal freedom for women and girls.

With reporting by AP

A former salesman for a manufacturer of laser welding machines was arrested on September 9 on charges that he conspired to evade U.S. export-control laws in order to sell his company's products to a division of the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. Sam Bhambhani was charged in an indictment with working with a Russian citizen who resold laser equipment to the Russian government. It alleges they used falsified export documents to conceal the true end-user of the machines from the U.S. government. The indictment was filed in federal court in Boston. The equipment was sold from 2015 to 2021 to a subsidiary of Rosatom in Yekaterinburg, Russia, that produced components for nuclear munitions and various civilian goods, according to the indictment. A lawyer for Bhambhani did not respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.

Two more former convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group have been handed lengthy prison terms for murders in Siberia.

A court in the Siberian region of Khakassia on September 9 sentenced a former Wagner Group mercenary pulled from prison to fight in Ukraine to eight years in prison for shooting a man to death for questioning his parking.

Andrei Ashcheulov was serving an 18-year prison term for leading a criminal group when he was recruited by Wagner to fight in Ukraine in 2023.

He was pardoned after he returned from the war.

Also on September 9, a court in the Siberian region of Omsk sentenced another former inmate and Wagner recruit, Sergei Kozlov, who killed his pregnant 18-year-old girlfriend in October 2023.

The Omsk regional court also ordered the 36-year-old Kozlov to pay 12 million rubles ($11,060) to his victim's family.

In 2021, Kozlov was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for attacking a woman and her daughter with an ax. In 2022, he was recruited by Wagner and went to fight in Ukraine.

A year ago, he returned from the war.

In a report in July, the Agentstvo Telegram channel said that as of October 4, 2023, 27 people had been killed in 20 incidents by former military personnel who returned home from the war in Ukraine.

According to Agentstvo, 12 of the registered deadly incidents involved former Wagner mercenaries.

Courts in Russia tend to hand mitigated sentences to such persons, citing their "patriotism" and "contributions" they made to Russia's war against Ukraine.

Wagner's late leader and founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in late June 2023 that 32,000 former inmates recruited by his group from prison had returned home after being granted clemency as part of their remuneration for fighting in Ukraine.

Azerbaijan considers as "acceptable" Kazakhstan's proposal to hold talks between Baku and Yerevan on a peace treaty in Astana, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said during telephone talks with Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, Aliyev's press service said on September 9. Earlier in May, the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers met in Astana to discuss the peace agreement. Last week, Aliyev said Azerbaijan and Armenia had agreed on about 80 percent of the treaty's text. Baku continues to insist it wants a reference to Nagorno-Karabakh's unification with Armenia removed from the Armenian Constitution. Azerbaijan retook control of the breakaway region in September 2023 following a lightning offensive.

Russian state media quoted sources in law enforcement over the weekend as saying that a probe was launched in absentia against rapper Morgenshtern (real name Alisher Valeyev) on a charge of failure to comply with Russia's "foreign agent" law. Morgenshtern is accused of not marking his online materials as "made by a foreign agent." Morgenshtern was added to the list of foreign agents in May 2022. If tried and convicted, Morgenshtern could face up to two years in prison. Morgenshtern fled Russia in November 2021 after Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin publicly accused him of selling illegal drugs. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

The Kremlin is currently "not interested" in granting an interview with President Vladimir Putin to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on September 9. "For there to be an interview with foreign media and some specific one, we need to have an occasion," Peskov said. Gershkovich was one of 16 people freed by Russia in August's landmark prisoner swap with the West. He requested an interview with Putin while filling out a form requesting a presidential pardon ahead of the prisoner exchange, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gershkovich spent more than 16 months in Russian detention on espionage charges that he, his employer, and the White House denounced as false.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk launched a four-week session of the UN's Human Rights Council with a call for global leadership to avert a "dystopian future," invoking urgent warnings about the treatment of women in Taliban-led Afghanistan and Ukrainians under near-constant Russian attack.

Midway through his four-year mandate as the UN's leading voice on human rights, Turk said the world was "at a fork in the road."

The world faces a choice between continuing into "a treacherous 'new normal'" that fosters "sleepwalk[ing] into a dystopian future" or "wak[ing] up and turn[ing] things around for the better, for humanity and the planet," he said.

Turk cited "endless, vicious military escalation and increasingly horrifying, technologically 'advanced' methods of warfare, control, and repression."

He also cited indifference to inequalities between and within countries, a disinformation "free-for-all," the twisting of national sovereignty "to shroud -- or excuse -- horrific violations," and the discrediting of multilateral institutions or trying to "rewrite the international rules."

Turk said human rights aren't in crisis, "but political leadership needed to make them a reality is."

"At their most extreme, for example in Afghanistan, despicable laws and policies are effectively erasing women from public life," Turk said in reference to the Taliban-led government that has led that country since a U.S.-led international coalition withdrew in mid-2021.

The Taliban seized power promising more moderate policies than when the hard-line fundamentalist group ruled the country some two decades earlier, but its leaders have since doubled down on the recreation of a totalitarian clerical regime, especially with regard to women, who have effectively been denied any public role in society.

Afghan women have been banned from working in many sectors and are barred from recreation and leisure activities such as visiting public parks and public baths, and also face severe restrictions on where and how they can appear in public.

Turk's concerns on Afghanistan were echoed in a warning ahead of the session by a Human Rights Watch (HRW) statement saying the UN Human Rights Council "should urgently create an independent body to pursue accountability for all those responsible for serious abuses -- past and present -- in Afghanistan."

HRW said the human rights and humanitarian reality there had "gravely spiraled downward" since August 2021.

Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, said in his report ahead of the 57th session of the Human Rights Council that women and girls had been victim to ever-greater restrictions under the Taliban.

In his wide-ranging speech, Turk also talked about horrific conditions for millions of Ukrainians and a region of Russia recently occupied by Ukraine as Russia's full-scale invasion grinds through its third year.

"In Ukraine, civilians are trapped in cycles of terror, through ongoing attacks by the Russian Federation striking civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and supermarkets, and repeated waves of targeting of energy infrastructure leading to country-wide blackouts," Turk said. "I fear for Ukrainians this coming winter."

He also cited the "horrific" attacks in Israel by the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people and injured many more, and the subsequent deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces.

Polish security services have neutralized a sabotage operation orchestrated by Russia and Belarus that aimed to destabilize Poland, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said on September 9. Warsaw has repeatedly accused Moscow of attempting to destabilise Poland because of its role in supplying military aid to its neighbor Ukraine, allegations Russia has dismissed. Saboteurs, operating from Belarus in cooperation with Russia, penetrated local and central government institutions, including state-owned companies implementing military contracts, he said. "The Belarusian and Russian foreign services...had a specific goal: to extort information, to blackmail individuals and institutions, and to wage a de facto cyberwar," said Gawkowski, who is also minister for digital affairs. Gawkowski said cyberattacks have doubled since last year.

Hundreds of policemen in northwestern Pakistan were blocking the Indus Highway that links Peshawar with the port city of Karachi on September 9 to protest alleged interference by Pakistan's military and its intelligence agencies in their daily work.

Senior officials of the local administration in the Lakki Marwat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province were engaged in talks with the protesting policemen to try to resolve the standoff.

Lakki Marwat is located on the periphery with the restive tribal region that borders Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters frequently target policemen and police stations.

The protesting policemen accused the intelligence agencies Military Intelligence (MI) and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of interfering in their work.

Addressing the gathering, police officer Rashid Khan said the army should leave the district and let the police department work freely.

"We promise that we would restore peace in the area within three months" if the military officers stopped interference, he said.

Criticism of the Pakistani military and especially its powerful ISI have long been considered a red line by some elements in the country.

Fighting erupted again on September 9 between Taliban forces and Pakistani security forces in the Kurram-Khost border areas, with eyewitnesses saying the violence included heavy weaponry and one elder saying a Pakistani soldier had been killed, although that could not be confirmed.

The outbreak follows reports of intense clashes in the same border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan that caused multiple casualties over the weekend.

Locals on the Afghan side of the border told Radio Mashaal that the latest fighting started around 1 p.m. local time on September 9.

Residents were said to be fleeing the villages of Palotsa and Setwan in the Zazai Maidan district of Afghanistan's Khost Province.

SEE ALSO:

The Azadi Briefing: Reclusive Afghan Taliban Chief Appears To Make Rare Trip

A local elder told Radio Mashaal that a Pakistani soldier had been killed but Radio Mashaal could not independently confirm that report.

Intermittent outbreaks of violence have heightened concerns about security in the region, with recent fighting sparked by an attempt to erect a security outpost on the Afghan side that Pakistani troops tried to stop.

Islamabad insists mutual agreements preclude the construction of new security posts by either side.

The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan has disputed Pakistani accusations that it is allowing gunmen linked to the outlawed Tehrik-e Taliban to shelter in the area and launch cross-border attacks in Pakistan.

The Taliban has moved reinforcement troops, artillery, and tanks to the area.

Radio Mashaal's Khost correspondent said the Taliban was preventing locals and journalists from sharing information with media or outsiders.

Six Pakistani police officers guarding a team of polio vaccination workers were injured when their police van struck a land mine in northwestern Pakistan early on September 9, an official told Radio Mashaal. Amin Wazir, deputy superintendent of police in Wana, a central town in the South Waziristan tribal district, told Radio Mashaal that nine people were injured in the blast. Pakistan launched a five-day anti-polio drive on September 9 aiming to vaccinate around 3 million children below the age of 5. Pakistan is one of two countries in the world where the deadly polio virus has not been eradicated. Polio teams were frequently targeted by insurgent groups in Afghanistan before the Taliban's takeover of the country in 2021, when the hard-line Islamist group said it wanted to work with the UN to stamp out the disease.

A court in the Russian city of Tomsk on September 9 sentenced the former governor of the Siberian Tomsk region, Dmitry Gurdin, to five years in prison on embezzlement charges. The Soviet district court also ordered the former official to pay a fine of 400,000 rubles ($4,425). Gurdin was found guilty of embezzling 79 million rubles ($873,780) allocated for construction projects in the region. The court also convicted Gurdin of using a forged document but did not sentence him on that charge, citing the statute of limitations. Gurdin's lawyers said the ruling will be appealed. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.

The head of Ukraine's military administration in the capital said on September 9 that an overnight drone attack was Russia's fifth aerial assault on Kyiv this month. The official, Serhiy Popko, claimed that all of the Iranian-designed Shahed drones involved were destroyed. "The fifth air attack on Kyiv since the beginning of September!" Popko said. Preliminary reports suggested there were no casualties or damage in the city from the attack. Officials, meanwhile, said a 16-year-old girl in the Dnipropetrovsk-region town of Nikopol died in an overnight attack there that injured three others. Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration head Serhiy Lysak said emergency responders pulled the girl from the rubble of a damaged building but could not save her. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here.

More Belarusian activists went on trial on September 9 on charges including allegations of support for a group called INeedHelpBy that assists political prisoners and their families.

Judge Vyachaslau Tuleyka of the Minsk regional court is presiding over the trial of 62-year-old activist Alena Totskaya, who is charged with "facilitating extremist activities" over alleged involvement with INeedHelpBY.

That group was labeled as extremist in January and dozens of activists reportedly associated with it, including Totskaya, have since been arrested.

Human right groups have recognized Totskaya as a political prisoner.

Also on September 9, the Hrodna regional court in the country's west started the trial of 26-year-old Katsyaryna Mendryk, who is also charged with facilitating extremist activities.

Mendryk was arrested on January 28 after she returned to Belarus from Poland, where she was alleged to have wired money and sent parcels to political prisoners.

After mass arrests in January of individuals involved in financial and other types of support of political prisoners and their families, about 30 activists were charged with facilitating extremist activities and 126 men and women were either fined or jailed on administrative charges.

A court in another western city, Brest, on September 9 started the trial of 10 activists over their alleged participation in unprecedented mass rallies after a presidential election in 2020 against the official results that declared Alyaksandr Lukashenka the winner.

Those activists have been charged with "taking part in activities that blatantly disrupt social order."

Thousands of people have been detained over protests following the 2020 election results, and rights groups have documented cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces. Several people died during the crackdown.

Lukashenka, who has run the country with an iron fist since 1994, has refused to negotiate with the opposition, and many of its leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country.

The United States, the European Union, and several other countries don't recognize Lukashenka as the winner of the vote and have imposed several rounds of sanctions on him and his regime, citing election fraud and the crackdown.

The European Union on September 9 described as "credible" information provided by allies suggesting Iran has supplied short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to help Moscow wage war in Ukraine and hinted at a "swift" response.

The statement came after the Kremlin declined to directly refute the accusation and instead highlighted its cooperation with Tehran in "the most sensitive areas" while Iran "strongly rejected" the allegation.

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.

"We are aware of the credible information provided by allies on the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia," EU spokesman Peter Stano said. "We are looking further into it with our member states and, if confirmed, this delivery would represent a substantive material escalation in Iran's support for Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine."

Stano added that "the EU leaders' unanimous position has always been clear. The European Union will respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran."

Earlier the same day, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the Russian side had "seen this report."

But he did not appear to refute it.

"It is not every time that this kind of information is true," Peskov said. "Iran is our important partner, we are developing our trade and economic relations, we are developing our cooperation and dialogue in all possible areas, including the most sensitive areas."

Later, the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a flat denial. "We strongly reject the claims on Iran's role in exporting arms to one side of the war," ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told a press conference.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on September 9 that the United States was "incredibly alarmed by reports of the transfer of Iranian missiles to Russia."

Patel told reporters at a briefing that if the reports proved to be true, it would mean a "dramatic escalation of Iran's support of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine." He also confirmed that the United States would deliver "significant consequences" to Iran if necessary.

SEE ALSO:

How Would Iran Benefit From Exporting Ballistic Missiles To Russia?

Analysts had suggested as rumors of a possible transfer of the weapons circulated that it would provide a boost to Russia's war efforts as its 36-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues.

Russian forces have purportedly used North Korean ballistic missiles, but North Korean production capacity is thought to be relatively small.

Russian Security Council Secretary and until recently longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Tehran in early August, contributing to concerns.

Russia has used Iranian-designed attack drones since the early months of the invasion, although Tehran has denied its drones are being deployed there.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

The Ozbekiston-24 state television channel and other state media outlets in Uzbekistan reported over the weekend that former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev visited the Uzbek city of Bukhara last week, where it said he held "unofficial" talks with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev.

Nazarbaev disappeared from public life and the political scene after unprecedented antigovernment protests in 2022.

Neither Nazarbaev's website nor his representatives said anything about the September 6 trip.

There did not appear to be any coverage of the visit among Kazakh media outlets.

It remains unclear what Nazarbaev and Mirziyoev discussed.

Nazarbaev, 84, resigned as president in 2019, picking longtime ally Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev as his successor. But he retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council, enjoying almost limitless powers as "elbasy," the leader of the nation.

Meanwhile, many of his relatives continued to hold important posts in the government, security agencies, and profitable business and energy groups.

SEE ALSO:

Uzbekistan's Increasingly Influential First Daughter Seen As Successor To President Mirziyoev

Nazarbaev and his clan lost influence in the oil-rich Central Asian nation after unprecedented antigovernment protests in January 2022, which started over a fuel price hike and spread across Kazakhstan over underlying discontent over the cronyism that had long plagued the country.

At least 238 people were killed across Kazakhstan, mostly in the country’s largest city, Almaty, after the protests turned violent.

Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of the security council role, taking it over himself.

Since then, several of Nazarbaev's relatives and others close to the family have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.

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Relatives Fear Discussing Ethnic Kazakh Intelligentsia Behind Bars In China's Xinjiang

Critics said at the time that Toqaev's initiatives were mainly cosmetic and would not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country beleaguered for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.

In December 2023, Nazarbaev unexpectedly appeared in Moscow, where he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before that, Nazarbaev had met with Putin in Moscow in June 2022.

Weeks before the deadly unrest in Kazakhstan and two months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nazarbaev, Toqaev, and authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka held talks with Putin in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.

The State Department accused House Republicans of cherry-picking the facts and withholding information in a lengthy report on the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in August 2021.

The State Department's response to the report issued by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on September 9 also highlighted the deeply partisan nature of the report in the midst of the U.S. presidential campaign.

The Republicans on the committee and other Republicans in the House of Representatives, where the party holds the majority, "issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture," the State Department said.

The report specifically points to the Biden-Harris administration and their "failure to plan for all contingencies."

The House Republicans blamed the disastrous end of the United States' longest war on the Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats' current presidential nominee. The role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban, was minimized.

Representative Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the review revealed that the Biden administration "had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government."

But instead of taking steps toward a safe evacuatation "the administration picked optics over security," McCaul said in a statement.

The review lays out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump's February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed the fundamentalist Taliban to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on August 30, 2021.

The chaotic exit left behind many U.S. citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists, and others at risk from the Taliban.

The State Department said Biden "acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America's longest war."

The department's response also drew similarities to a 2022 report prepared by Republican lawmakers, which it said "did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions."

Newly appointed Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha has ended a temporary representative's long-term mission to Georgia as one of his first personnel moves, suggesting the outgoing representative, Mykhaylo Kharyshin, doesn't understand the realities of diplomacy in wartime.

Kharyshin had recently suggested publicly that unnamed forces were trying to undermine Georgia and Ukraine's historically strong relations.

Sybiha was appointed as foreign minister on September 5 amid one of Ukraine's biggest government revamps since the ongoing Russian invasion began 2 1/2 years ago.

Sybiha said on social media after reportedly consulting with Kyiv's ambassadors and consuls that weapons and other defense needs for Ukraine were the unconditional priority of Ukrainian diplomacy.

Kyiv replaced its ambassadorial presence in Tbilisi with a temporary representative more than two years ago, following up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's announcement just a week into the invasion that he was recalling his ambassador to Georgia for consultations due to the Georgian government's alleged obstruction blocking volunteers seeking to help Ukraine, and over sanctions.

Georgia's ambassador to Kyiv, Giorgi Zakarashvili, left Ukraine in July 2023 amid more public spats between Zelenskiy and Tbilisi.

Tensions have ratcheted up throughout the war, including as Georgia's ruling party has seemingly softened on aspects of its relations with Moscow and stoked disputes with its Western partners.

China's Foreign Ministry announced on September 9 that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Russia for a security meeting in St. Petersburg this week of BRICS group officials, with the visit and joint military exercises in the western Pacific underscoring Beijing and Moscow's cooperation on the international stage.

Moscow has increasingly looked to Beijing for diplomatic and economic support since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, sparking unprecedented international sanctions against Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's office said last week it expects Chinese leader Xi Jinping to attend a BRICS summit in Kazan, southern Russia, in late October.

BRICS unites Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and has expanded since its founding to include other major emerging economies including the United Arab Emirates and Iran.

Also on September 9, China's official Xinhua news agency said Russian air and naval forces would be joining a Chinese military exercise this month in the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk, in the western Pacific.

The Chinese report said the joint exercise would help boost "the level of strategic coordination between the Chinese and Russian militaries and enhance their ability to jointly respond to security threats."

Western leaders have tried hard to discourage China from providing Russia with weapons, artillery, or any other military support for Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wang was invited to the meeting on September 11-12 of BRICS "high-ranking officials responsible for security matters" by former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Moscow and Beijing inked a "no limits" partnership weeks before Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine began, and Putin and Xi have each argued for demolition of U.S. "hegemony."

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

The German domestic intelligence agency has issued a rare public warning about the activities of a cybergroup within Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, citing recent joint research with U.S. agencies that points to the GRU group's efforts to target U.S. and global "critical infrastructure."

It did not include any specific, imminent threats.

In a post on social platform X on September 9, the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz identified GRU Unit 29155 as a current threat and noted the group had "carried out cyberattacks and other reconnaissance activities against targets in NATO and EU countries."

It referred to its most recent joint cybersecurity advisory with the FBI, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), and other international partners whose findings were published last week.

That advisory said, "The cyber actors, assessed to be affiliated with the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155), are held responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm."

Western intelligence and other officials have alleged numerous cyber and other attacks from GRU actors that appear to have accelerated since Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

A U.S. grand jury last week charged six Russian nationals, including five GRU officers, with conspiracy to hack into computer systems and commit wire fraud stemming from an alleged effort to hack the Ukrainian government ahead of the launch of that invasion.

The attempt also spread around the world and included targeting 26 NATO countries, the U.S. indictment alleged. It offered millions of dollars in rewards for information leading to the defendants' locations.

GRU Unit 29155 is also reportedly known as Cadet Blizzard or Ember Bear.

It is thought to focus frequently on vandalizing websites and spreading stolen data.

The GRU has been accused by Western prosecutors and security officials of being behind bombings, poisonings, and other deadly activities in Europe since Russia initially invaded Ukraine in 2014, annexing Crimea.

European Union ambassadors are set later this week to remove Nikita Mazepin and Violetta Prigozhina from the bloc’s sanctions list, according to multiple diplomats familiar with the file who weren’t authorized to speak on the record.

The EU has imposed asset freezes and visa bans on 2,300 people and entities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022.

Every six months, that blacklist must be prolonged by unanimous consensus of the 27 member states.

The latest deadline is set to expire on September 15.

As in previous rollovers, Hungary has demanded the delisting of a number of people before Budapest will give its green light to the extension.

Some of the more hawkish member states, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, have countered that the bloc should move from a six-month extension of the sanctions to an annual decision -- a move Budapest has opposed.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government have consistently resisted sanctions and accused Brussels of strong-arming the bloc into actions that undermine Hungary's and other member states' economies.

Hungary currently holds the bloc's six-month rotating Presidency of the European Council and has used the increased visibility to launch an uncoordinated diplomatic push that Orban described as a "peace initiative" but EU officials rejected as wholly of Budapest's own design.

EU diplomats have told RFE/RL that a compromise has been struck in which the six-month extension will remain but just two people will be delisted this time.

It was proposed that Mazepin and Prigozhina should be removed as they are both considered "weak cases" by the EU legal service that monitors the judicial aspects of Brussels’ sanctions policy.

Mazepin, a former Formula One driver and son of the Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin, earlier this year won a case in the EU’s general court to have the sanctions against him removed.

He has, however, remained listed as the EU has argued that the court ruling only referred to an earlier period of the sanctions and that Brussels since then had renewed the lists with new criteria.

Prigozhina, mother of the late Russian oligarch and Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, won a court battle last year but so far has remained the target of sanctions.

Prigozhin, long a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died along with nine other people in a mysterious plane crash in August 2023, two months after he announced a rebellion at the head of his Wagner Group, a private army, that captured parts of Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow.

The septuagenarian Prigozhina is a longtime artist and art-gallery owner.

In the spring, a similar discussion was held in Brussels in which Arkady Volozh, co-founder of the Russian Internet giant Yandex, the businessman Sergei Mndoiants, and Jozef Hambalek, a Slovak national and head of the Russian nationalist Night Wolves motorcycle club in Europe, eventually were delisted by the EU.

The next renewal of the sanctions is due in March 2025.

Incumbents and other loyalists of President Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party were expected to coast to victory in most of the 21 regional governorships and other local voting that wrapped up in Russian elections that most rights groups and independent experts agree lacked any genuine competition.

Three days of balloting concluded late on September 8 in the votes, which include for a Moscow City Duma and the leadership of Russia's second city, St. Petersburg.

All of the current or acting governors in the races appeared headed to hugely one-sided contests, with only one challenger in double digits in the early tally results.

Russian authorities appear eager to tout the lop-sided contests of hand-picked Putin loyalists and other candidates as an exercise of patriotism 2 1/2 years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Russian censors describe as a "special military operation" amid an intense clampdown on possible dissent.

"Let's be honest: There's a war going on. Our task is to defeat our enemy," Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister and longtime Putin ally who now chairs the ruling United Russia party and serves as deputy chairman of the country's Security Council, said according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Twenty-four years into Putin's rule, Russia's elections are more tightly controlled than ever, lacking of any credible international observer missions and with genuine opposition candidates frequently disqualified or badly hamstrung.

The nationwide regional and local vote processes included ballot collections staged in parts of Ukraine occupied and unilaterally annexed by Russia, including Crimea, to fill Moscow-backed regional legislatures.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the processes in the occupied regions as a violation of international law. "We emphasize once again that the results of the so-called 'elections' in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea…are worthless, and the 'elections' themselves are illegitimate,” the ministry said ahead of the voting.

A group defending voters' rights, Golos, dubbed the vote an "imitation" of elections, saying it lacks genuine competition.

It said more than one-third of candidates were barred by Russian election authorities from participating in the votes across the country.

The vote collection lasted three days.

The head of the Russian Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, said there were no significant violations during the balloting and turnout was around 90 percent.

Golos said it received more than 500 accusations of violations during the election campaign alone.

Supporters of the imprisoned Pakistani leader Imran Khan have gathered to demand his release, amid tight security. Members of Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf, the main opposition party in Pakistan, rallied in Islamabad on September 8 despite police having blocked roads into the city. Imprisoned since August 2023, Khan, the main rival of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, remains a popular figure despite a series of criminal cases against him. Supporters of Khan went on the rampage on May 9, 2023, after he was briefly arrested, vandalizing military installations across the country. Khan is on trial in a civilian court for allegedly abetting the violence, a charge he has denied. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, click here.