Latest news with #Soviet-era
The Sun
an hour ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Belarusians in Warsaw celebrate prisoner release, hope for more
WARSAW: Belarusian exile Asya watched from the sidelines in central Warsaw as a crowd greeted and applauded Sergei Tikhanovsky, the Belarus opposition figure who was unexpectedly released, barely recognisable after five years in prison. A popular blogger, Tikhanovsky, 46, was jailed in 2020, weeks before he was due to stand in presidential elections against Belarus's long-time leader, Alexander Lukashenko. His arrest was the opening salvo in a sweeping crackdown that escalated after Lukashenko claimed victory over Svetlana Tikhanovskaya -- Tikhanovsky's wife, who ran in his place -- in a ballot widely decried by critics and rights groups as rigged. Asya was among several hundred fellow Belarusians, living in exile in neighbouring Poland, celebrating his surprise release under pressure from the United States. But her mind was with others still incarcerated. 'I am happy for those who are freed, but with each release I always look for the names of my friends,' she said. There are 1,169 political prisoners in Belarus, according to the Viasna rights group. The sight of Tikhanovsky -- who lost almost half his weight and appeared to have drastically aged behind bars -- has given even more urgency to securing their release, Asya said. 'Honestly, regime change is needed. But for me, the priority is for people to be freed and for them to be safe,' she said. - 'Recognised by his voice' - Having been held incommunicado since March 2023, many had long feared for how Tikhanovsky was being treated. His emaciated appearance was still a shock. 'I cried all day when I saw him,' said Alexandra Khanevich, a 71-year-old activist who fled Belarus in the wake of the protests. 'My mother went through concentration camps... This is what I thought of.' Tikhanovskaya said the couple's young daughter did not recognise him. The bones on his face and fingers are visible, and the 46-year-old looks far older. 'Only when we heard his voice, we knew it was really him,' said Yulia Vlasenko, who had protested in 2020 against Lukashenko in the eastern city of Vitebsk. Others said they knew him by his distinctive ears. Tikhanovsky has broken down in tears several times when talking about his ordeal in prison, describing alleged torture and being held in solitary confinement. Prison officials had attempted to 'fatten him up' in the months before his release by giving him 'meat, fats, butter,' he told a rally in Warsaw. - 'Hope' - He believes there will be more releases. Officers from the KGB state security service -- which has retained the feared Soviet-era name -- were touring prisons pressuring people to sign statements asking for pardons from Lukashenko, he said. Many were hopeful his release could give a new energy to the mostly exiled Belarusian opposition movement. Tikhanovsky, who has pledged not to get in the way of his wife, said he has 'even more energy' than before he was jailed. The couple are radically different in style. Svetlana has spent five years touring Western capitals, meeting leaders in polished suits. Sergei is known for his tongue-in-cheek colloquialisms, having famously called Lukashenko a 'cockroach' in one YouTube broadcast. 'Svetlana is more of a diplomat... Sergei is like from the street,' said protestor Alexandra Dobrovaya, giggling. Vitaly Moisa, a 42-year-old in construction, said he hoped the pair would be a 'double hit' for the regime, with the opposition boosted by Tikhanovsky's 'charisma'. He drove more than six hours from southern Poland to see 'hero' Tikhanovsky. 'It's hard to imagine he was not broken by such conditions,' he said. Many came to the rally with masks on, fearing retribution for their families back home if they were recognised attending the rally. Ukrainian Oleg Abrashim -- who has never been to Belarus -- had come with a mission: to give Tikhanovsky a hand-written letter from his Belarusian girlfriend. 'She did not want to come as it will be full of the KGB and she has not got her parents out yet,' he told AFP. Listening to Tikhanovsky, he was reminded of the style of someone back home he had voted for in 2019: Volodymyr Zelensky. 'I understand why they followed him,' Abrashim said. From Ukraine's Kharkiv, which has been pounded relentlessly by Belarus's ally Russia since it invaded, he was inspired by the messages of hope. 'Belarus and Ukraine should be free,' he said, clutching the letter.
Straits Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Russia jails photographer for 16 years for handing material to US journalist
A Russian court said on Thursday it had found a photographer, Grigory Skvortsov, guilty of treason and jailed him for 16 years after Skvortsov said he had passed detailed information about once secret Soviet-era bunkers to a U.S. journalist. Skvortsov, who was arrested in 2023, denied wrongdoing. In a December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled Russian lawyers, he said he had passed on information that was either publicly available online or available to purchase from the Russian author of a book about Soviet underground facilities for use in the event of a nuclear war. He did not name the U.S. journalist in the interview with Pervy Otdel, which the Russian authorities have in turn designated a "foreign agent" - a label which carries negative Soviet-era connotations and is designed to limit their activities and influence. A court in Perm said in a statement that Skvortsov would serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp and that his treason had been fully proven in a trial it said had been held behind closed doors. It published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage dressed in black looking calm as he listened to the verdict being read out. Russia radically expanded its definition of what constitutes a state secret after it sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 and has since jailed academics, scientists and journalists it deems to have illegally shared secrets. An online support group for Skvortsov said on Telegram after the verdict that "a miracle had not happened" and the photographer's only hope of getting out of jail was to be exchanged as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Sun
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Russia sentences photographer to 16 years for treason
MOSCOW: A Russian court said on Thursday it had sentenced a photographer to 16 years in jail for treason after a closed-door trial, without giving details of the charges. Grigory Skvortskov, 35, said while in pre-trial detention he had given a US journalist a book about Soviet bunkers and other material -- but that the information was declassified and publicly available online. Russia has escalated a crackdown on rights at home since it sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Alongside targeting opponents and critics of the Kremlin, authorities have become increasingly suspicious of journalists, scientists and academics with ties to the West. The Perm Regional Court said it had 'sentenced him (Skvortsov) to 16 years' imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony'. It said he had pleaded not guilty to treason. The trial was carried out behind closed doors -- typical for treason cases in Russia -- and prosecutors have not publicly outlined the case against Skvortsov. In a written interview with Russian rights group Perviy Otdel ('Department One') conducted while he was in custody, Skvortsov said investigators had questioned him about sending a book about Soviet-era bunkers to an unnamed US journalist, along with other architectural plans and photos. He said the book and other materials were publicly available online and feature only declassified material. Skvortsov, who specialises in architecture photography, has spoken out publicly against Moscow's military offensive on Ukraine. He alleged FSB officers beat him during his arrest in November 2023 and said they tried to force him under duress to admit guilt to treason.
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The bombing of Iran may teach an unwelcome lesson on nuclear weapons
'The risks of Iran acquiring a small nuclear arsenal are now higher than they were before the events of last week,' said Robert J. Einhorn, an arms control expert who negotiated with Iran during the Obama administration. 'We can assume there are a number of hard-liners who are arguing that they should cross that nuclear threshold.' Advertisement Iran would face formidable hurdles to producing a bomb even if it made a concerted dash for one, Einhorn said, not least the knowledge that if the United States and Israel detect such a move, they will strike again. It is far from clear that Iran's leaders, isolated, weakened and in disarray, want to provoke him. Advertisement Yet the logic of proliferation looms large in a world where the nuclear-armed great powers -- the United States, Russia and China -- are viewed as increasingly unreliable and even predatory toward their neighbors. From the Persian Gulf and Central Europe to East Asia, analysts said, non-nuclear countries are watching Iran's plight and calculating lessons they should learn from it. 'Certainly, North Korea doesn't rue the day it acquired nuclear weapons,' said Christopher R. Hill, who led lengthy, ultimately unsuccessful, talks with Pyongyang in 2007 and 2008 to try to persuade it to dismantle its nuclear program. The lure of the bomb, Hill said, has become stronger for America's allies in the Middle East and Asia. Since World War II, they have sheltered under a U.S. security umbrella. But they now confront a president, in Trump, who views alliances as incompatible with his vision of 'America first.' 'I'd be very careful with the assumption that there is a U.S. nuclear umbrella,' said Hill, who served as ambassador to South Korea, Iraq, Poland, and Serbia under Democratic and Republican presidents. 'Countries like Japan and South Korea are wondering whether they can rely on the U.S.' Support for developing nuclear weapons has risen in South Korea, though its newly elected president, Lee Jae-myung, has vowed to improve relations with North Korea. In 2023, President Joe Biden signed a deal with Seoul to involve it more in nuclear planning with the United States, in part to head off a push by South Korean politicians and scientists to develop their own nuclear weapons capability. Advertisement In Japan, the public has long favored disarmament, a legacy of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But it has begun debating whether to store nuclear weapons from the United States on its soil, as some members of NATO do. Shinzo Abe, a former prime minister, said that if Ukraine had kept some of its Soviet-era bombs, it might have avoided a Russian invasion. President Vladimir Putin's threats to use tactical nuclear weapons early in that conflict gave pause to the Biden administration about how aggressively to arm the Ukrainian military. It also deepened fears that other revisionist powers could use nuclear blackmail to intimidate their neighbors. The lesson of Ukraine could end up being, 'If you have nuclear weapons, keep them. If you don't have them yet, get them, especially if you lack a strong defender like the U.S. as your ally and if you have a beef with a big country that could plausibly lead to war,' wrote Bruce Riedel and Michael E. O'Hanlon, analysts at the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington, in 2022. Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States and archrival of Iran, has watched Tehran's nuclear ambitions with alarm. Experts say it would feel huge pressure to develop its own weapon if Iran ever obtained one. The United States has tried to reassure the Saudis by dangling assistance to a civil nuclear program, but those negotiations were interrupted by Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And yet, for all the predictions of a regional arms race, it has yet to occur. Experts say that is a testament to the success of nonproliferation policies, as well as to the checkered history of countries that pursued weapons. Advertisement The Middle East is a messy landscape of dashed nuclear dreams. Iraq, Syria and Libya all had their programs dismantled by diplomacy, sanctions or military force. In the category of cautionary tales, Libya's is perhaps the most vivid: Moammar Gadhafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction in 2003. Eight years later, after a NATO-backed military operation toppled his government, he crawled out of a drainpipe to face a brutal death at the hands of his own people. Iran's strategy of aggressively enriching uranium, while stopping short of a bomb, did not ultimately protect it either. 'To the extent that people are looking at Iran as a test case, Trump has shown that its strategy is not a guarantee that you will prevent a military attack,' said Gary Samore, a professor at Brandeis University who worked on arms control negotiations in the Obama and Clinton administrations. Samore said it was too soon to say how the Israeli and American strikes on Iran would affect the calculus of other countries. 'How does this end?' he said. 'Does it end with a deal? Or is Iran left to pursue a nuclear weapon?' Experts on proliferation are, by nature, wary. But some are trying to find a silver lining in the events of the last week. Einhorn said that in delivering on his threat to bomb a nuclear-minded Iran, Trump had sent a reassuring message to U.S. allies facing their own nuclear insecurities. 'In Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing,' Einhorn said, 'they've taken notice not just of the reach and capacity of the U.S. military, but the willingness of this president to use that capability.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
The Advertiser
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Advertiser
Moscow blocks protest against restored Stalin monument
Moscow authorities have blocked a planned protest against a recently installed monument honouring Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, citing a COVID decree that still technically bans public gatherings. The liberal opposition party Yabloko, which had organised the protest, said it had not received permission and published a photo of the official rejection notice. "The authorities continue to refer to a decree issued by the mayor of Moscow on June 8, 2020, which upholds the earlier ban on mass gatherings due to the spread of the coronavirus epidemic," Yabloko said in a statement. The party intends to take legal action against the decision and is collecting signatures calling for the monument's removal. The piece, titled Gratitude of the People to the Leader and Commander, was unveiled in mid-May in Moscow's Taganskaya metro station to mark the system's 90th anniversary. It is a replica of a Soviet-era piece removed in the 1960s during the USSR's de-Stalinisation campaign. The move has sparked a backlash from critics, who accuse the Kremlin of sanitising Stalin's legacy. At the unveiling, Yabloko condemned the monument as a deliberate provocation. "We insist that the memory of the victims of repression be preserved, and that the glorification of a tyrant is unacceptable," said party member Maxim Kruglov. "The return of Stalinist symbols to Moscow is a mockery of history, of the descendants of the oppressed, and a disgrace to the city." Human rights groups and historians continue to hold Stalin responsible for the deaths of millions through mass executions, forced labour camps and widespread political repression. He died in 1953 having come to power in 1924. Russia's leadership has faced criticism for downplaying or distorting Stalin's crimes. The Kremlin has largely silenced independent media and opposition voices in recent years. While Yabloko has not held seats in the national parliament since 2007, the party remains active at a local level. Moscow authorities have blocked a planned protest against a recently installed monument honouring Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, citing a COVID decree that still technically bans public gatherings. The liberal opposition party Yabloko, which had organised the protest, said it had not received permission and published a photo of the official rejection notice. "The authorities continue to refer to a decree issued by the mayor of Moscow on June 8, 2020, which upholds the earlier ban on mass gatherings due to the spread of the coronavirus epidemic," Yabloko said in a statement. The party intends to take legal action against the decision and is collecting signatures calling for the monument's removal. The piece, titled Gratitude of the People to the Leader and Commander, was unveiled in mid-May in Moscow's Taganskaya metro station to mark the system's 90th anniversary. It is a replica of a Soviet-era piece removed in the 1960s during the USSR's de-Stalinisation campaign. The move has sparked a backlash from critics, who accuse the Kremlin of sanitising Stalin's legacy. At the unveiling, Yabloko condemned the monument as a deliberate provocation. "We insist that the memory of the victims of repression be preserved, and that the glorification of a tyrant is unacceptable," said party member Maxim Kruglov. "The return of Stalinist symbols to Moscow is a mockery of history, of the descendants of the oppressed, and a disgrace to the city." Human rights groups and historians continue to hold Stalin responsible for the deaths of millions through mass executions, forced labour camps and widespread political repression. He died in 1953 having come to power in 1924. Russia's leadership has faced criticism for downplaying or distorting Stalin's crimes. The Kremlin has largely silenced independent media and opposition voices in recent years. While Yabloko has not held seats in the national parliament since 2007, the party remains active at a local level. Moscow authorities have blocked a planned protest against a recently installed monument honouring Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, citing a COVID decree that still technically bans public gatherings. The liberal opposition party Yabloko, which had organised the protest, said it had not received permission and published a photo of the official rejection notice. "The authorities continue to refer to a decree issued by the mayor of Moscow on June 8, 2020, which upholds the earlier ban on mass gatherings due to the spread of the coronavirus epidemic," Yabloko said in a statement. The party intends to take legal action against the decision and is collecting signatures calling for the monument's removal. The piece, titled Gratitude of the People to the Leader and Commander, was unveiled in mid-May in Moscow's Taganskaya metro station to mark the system's 90th anniversary. It is a replica of a Soviet-era piece removed in the 1960s during the USSR's de-Stalinisation campaign. The move has sparked a backlash from critics, who accuse the Kremlin of sanitising Stalin's legacy. At the unveiling, Yabloko condemned the monument as a deliberate provocation. "We insist that the memory of the victims of repression be preserved, and that the glorification of a tyrant is unacceptable," said party member Maxim Kruglov. "The return of Stalinist symbols to Moscow is a mockery of history, of the descendants of the oppressed, and a disgrace to the city." Human rights groups and historians continue to hold Stalin responsible for the deaths of millions through mass executions, forced labour camps and widespread political repression. He died in 1953 having come to power in 1924. Russia's leadership has faced criticism for downplaying or distorting Stalin's crimes. The Kremlin has largely silenced independent media and opposition voices in recent years. While Yabloko has not held seats in the national parliament since 2007, the party remains active at a local level. Moscow authorities have blocked a planned protest against a recently installed monument honouring Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, citing a COVID decree that still technically bans public gatherings. The liberal opposition party Yabloko, which had organised the protest, said it had not received permission and published a photo of the official rejection notice. "The authorities continue to refer to a decree issued by the mayor of Moscow on June 8, 2020, which upholds the earlier ban on mass gatherings due to the spread of the coronavirus epidemic," Yabloko said in a statement. The party intends to take legal action against the decision and is collecting signatures calling for the monument's removal. The piece, titled Gratitude of the People to the Leader and Commander, was unveiled in mid-May in Moscow's Taganskaya metro station to mark the system's 90th anniversary. It is a replica of a Soviet-era piece removed in the 1960s during the USSR's de-Stalinisation campaign. The move has sparked a backlash from critics, who accuse the Kremlin of sanitising Stalin's legacy. At the unveiling, Yabloko condemned the monument as a deliberate provocation. "We insist that the memory of the victims of repression be preserved, and that the glorification of a tyrant is unacceptable," said party member Maxim Kruglov. "The return of Stalinist symbols to Moscow is a mockery of history, of the descendants of the oppressed, and a disgrace to the city." Human rights groups and historians continue to hold Stalin responsible for the deaths of millions through mass executions, forced labour camps and widespread political repression. He died in 1953 having come to power in 1924. Russia's leadership has faced criticism for downplaying or distorting Stalin's crimes. The Kremlin has largely silenced independent media and opposition voices in recent years. While Yabloko has not held seats in the national parliament since 2007, the party remains active at a local level.
