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Russia recently expanded punishment against independent journalists and activists that the Kremlin designated as “foreign agents,” with Moscow charging a prominent exiled reporter, Tatyana Felgengauer, on criminal counts in absentia. The State Duma passed the law severely limiting the ability of “foreign agents” to get income from inside Russia. VOA Russian spoke to several people named “foreign agents” who said they expected repressions to ramp up further.

Click here for the full story in Russian.

Orleans, France — Nabil Attar sprinkles sesame and pomegranate over creamy mutabal, a roasted eggplant dip from his native Syria — one of his mother’s many recipes now featured at his restaurant, Narenj. A plate of stuffed grape leaves sits nearby, ready for the swelling lunchtime crowd.

The tiny kitchen where he works seems an unlikely place for Attar, once a successful Damascus businessman specializing in electronic fund transfers. That was before Bashar al-Assad’s regime kidnapped one of his sons, nearly a decade ago.

“It was so complicated,” recalled Attar, describing extortive practices wielded by the state to fill its coffers. “I paid a lot of money to get my son back.”

In 2015, Attar and his family joined the hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing their war-torn country for Europe. He settled in the Loire Valley city of Orleans, an hour’s train ride from Paris and best known for its historical ties to France’s patron saint Joan of Arc. Then came news earlier in December that the Assad era was over.

“I never imagined in my lifetime it could happen,” Attar said, scrolling through videos of himself and fellow Syrians in Orleans, rejoicing in the dictator’s downfall. “Now Syria is free.”

For a growing number of European Union countries, Assad’s ouster is triggering more than celebrations. Amid growing anti-immigration sentiment across the region, several have suspended Syrian asylum claims on grounds that the reasons that triggered them no longer exist.

That’s the case of Germany, which took in nearly a million Syrian asylum-seekers at the peak of the refugee influx, in 2015-16. While Chancellor Olaf Scholz says those “integrated” were welcome, one opposition Christian Democratic Union lawmaker suggested paying Syrians roughly $1,040 apiece to go home — a position already adopted by neighboring Austria.

Hardening attitudes are also evident in France, despite its having only about 30,000 Syrian refugees. A CSA poll this month found 70% of French supported suspending new asylum claims. French authorities say they are studying the matter.

“Since we hear that Syrian refugees are rejoicing in the fall of dictator Assad, let’s engage in sending them home,” Jordan Bardella, president of France’s far-right National Rally, told a cheering crowd recently. “And let’s hope Europe shuts the door after they leave.”

For Syria’s diaspora in Europe and rights advocates, the vanishing welcome mat is triggering alarm. In interviews across the region, many refugees say they fear returning.

“The situation in Syria is extremely volatile, extremely unpredictable,” said Olivia Sundberg Diez, the European Union migration and asylum advocate for Amnesty International. “What is most important should be the safety of Syrian refugees and people that are seeking protection — this has to be prioritized over political interests.”

“Rushing the return of millions of Syrians would put even more pressure on Syria at an extremely fragile moment and would undermine the prospect of a successful transition,” warned Will Todman, deputy director and a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research group, in a commentary.

The debate is echoed among the Syrian community around Orleans.

“I’m worried about the country, I’m worried about the future,” said Ramez Ghadri, a Syrian gynecologist who settled in France decades ago. Of Syria’s new leaders, he added, “they’re extremists.”

Ehad Naily, a Syrian rights lawyer living outside the city, is also concerned. Like Attar, he arrived in France in 2015 and set up a local association to support fellow refugees.

“You can’t say ‘the regime is destroyed, you can now live in Syria,'” Naily said, describing shattered infrastructure and towns, and a tangle of religious and ethnic tensions simmering in his homeland. After nearly a decade living in France, his 15-year-old daughter does not speak Arabic.

“You can’t force people to leave host countries if there’s no stability there,” he said.

Attar is more optimistic about Syria’s near future.

“I believe that Syria will be better — much, much better than before,” he said.

Like other Syrians here, he described Orleans residents as welcoming the newcomers. His older son, who was kidnapped, is now a pilot. His youngest is still in school. “We never had any problem” in France, Attar said.

After receiving asylum, he learned how to run a restaurant. In 2018, he and his wife opened Narenj, which means “bitter orange” in Arabic.

“He’s well-known here. He’s got lots of loyal customers,” said Sophie Martinet, Attar’s former French teacher who has now become a friend. “He’s undeniably talented. And people like Nabil.”

Throughout the years, however, Assad’s secret service kept tabs on him, Attar said, demanding money to leave him alone. “This regime, they keep tracking everyone,” he said. “It was a business, a network. It was organized crime.”

Now a French citizen, Attar doesn’t have worry about being sent back to Syria. But he believes other refugees here with legitimate reasons to stay in France have nothing to fear.

“People who are working, who are doing their best, who are well integrated in society — they will not be affected by what’s happening in Syria,” he said.

Attar himself is eager to return to a post-Assad Syria.

“I would like to go back, visit my family, my friends,” he said. “See the streets where I worked, where I lived.”

But not for good. Today, Attar said, his life and future are in France.

WASHINGTON — A journalist jailed in Azerbaijan for nearly seven months has said he believes his arrest is linked to his reporting.

Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist with VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has been jailed since May on charges including conspiring to smuggle foreign currency. The journalist, his employer and press freedom groups believe the case is retaliatory and part of a wider crackdown in Azerbaijan.

In messages relayed to VOA through his wife, Mehralizada spoke about his passion for journalism and said he believed he was targeted for his work.

“I’ve always enjoyed working with statistical data and numbers. As a journalist and economist, it was my job to interpret them,” Mehralizada said.

Mehralizada says he believes he is being detained in retaliation for his work, which is often critical of the government’s economic policy.

“I think my arrest highlighted how authoritarian governments, like Azerbaijan’s, fear the power of numbers and the reality they reveal through statistics,” Mehralizada said. Among the journalist’s criticisms was that the Azerbaijani government isn’t diversifying the economy’s reliance on oil and gas.

Mehralizada is one of at least 14 journalists jailed in the past year for their work in Azerbaijan, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ. Several of them work at Abzas Media, one of the country’s most prominent anti-corruption investigative outlets.

Mehralizada did not work with Abzas Media but he sometimes provided expert commentary to the outlet. Still, he is facing charges of “conspiring to smuggle foreign currency” in connection to a case brought against Abzas Media. Mehralizada denies the charge. Mehralizada and Abzas Media have both said that he never worked for the outlet.

Mehralizada is facing additional charges of “illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery.” He faces up to 12 years behind bars if convicted of all the charges against him. He denies the accusations.

A trial against Mehralizada and six Abzas Media staffers began on Dec. 17 in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Press freedom groups say the charges against the group of journalists are politically motivated.

The trial “epitomizes the way the Azerbaijani government has used retaliatory criminal charges to lock up vast swathes of the country’s leading independent journalists over the past year,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said in a statement.

RFE/RL has condemned the trial and called for Mehralizada’s immediate release.

“Farid is being punished for reporting uncomfortable truths about Azerbaijan’s economy. Azerbaijan must end this sham trial and release Farid to his wife and newborn daughter,” RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said in a statement last week.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called for the release of Mehralizada and other journalists jailed in Azerbaijan.

“The United States is deeply concerned not only by these detentions, but by the increasing crackdown on civil society and media in Azerbaijan,” Blinken said in a statement earlier in December.

Azerbaijan’s Washington embassy and foreign ministry did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment.

When the trial began, Mehralizada’s wife, Nargiz Mukhtarova, said it was difficult to see her husband and the other defendants in handcuffs.

“But their courage was incredibly impressive,” she told VOA. “They were smiling during [the] hearing.”

In prison, Mukhtarova said, her husband spends his days reading books — nearly 200 of them since he was detained — and doing crossword puzzles. He is being treated well, but without internet access, he “mostly suffers” from a lack of economic news, Mukhtarova added.

Mukhtarova and her husband are permitted one weekly meeting, which she said they always look forward to.

“He is doing good,” she said. “His mood is better now because at least they have a chance to talk publicly about their case.”

The trial is set to resume on Dec. 28.

PARIS — France unveiled a new government on Monday, composed of former ministers and senior civil servants that Prime Minister Francois Bayrou will hope can oversee the passage of a 2025 budget and avoid a collapse that would deepen the country’s crisis. 

Eric Lombard, 66, the head of Caisse des Depots, the investment arm of the French government, became finance minister, working with Amelie de Montchalin as budget minister. 

Conservative Bruno Retailleau remained interior minister. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu also remained in post. 

Elisabeth Borne, who stepped down as prime minister in January, became education minister, while former interior minister Gerard Darmanin will lead the Justice Ministry. 

Bayrou has struggled for almost 10 days to put together a government as he looks to stave off potential no-confidence votes from the far right and left.  

He will need to begin work immediately on passing a 2025 budget bill after parliamentary pushback over the proposed legislation led to the toppling of his predecessor, former Prime Minister Michel Barnier.  

The names were read out by President Emmanuel Macron’s chief of staff Alexis Kohler.

 

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday there are indications that North Korea is preparing to send more troops and weapons to support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

The additional weapons being readied include suicide drones, and North Korea has already sent 240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery to Russia, the JCS said in a statement.

North Korea has also sent about 12,000 troops already to Russia, according to South Korea, the United States and Ukraine.  

The JCS said Monday that at least 1,100 of the North Koreans have been killed or wounded.

Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 47 aerial drones that Russian forces launched in attacks overnight targeting multiple areas of the country.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia used a total of 72 drones in its latest round of daily aerial assaults.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down drones over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions, the military said.

Khmelnytskyi Governor Serhii Tiurin said on Telegram that the drone attacks damaged a business and some homes, while injuring one person.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday it destroyed a Ukrainian aerial drone over the Bryansk region, which is located along the Russia-Ukraine border.

Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram there were no reports of damage or casualties from the Ukrainian attack.

Some information for this story was provided by Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

Berlin — Germany searched for answers on Monday on possible security lapses after a man drove his car into a Christmas market, killing at least five people and casting a renewed spotlight on security and immigration ahead of a snap election.

The possible motive of the arrested suspect, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia with a history of anti-Islamic rhetoric and a sympathy for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, remains unknown.

As a nation mourned, with citizens leaving flowers and lighting candles in Magdeburg where the incident took place on Friday, questions swirled about whether more could have been done and whether the authorities could have acted on warnings.

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called for tougher internal security laws to be adopted, including a new act to strengthen police forces as well as the introduction of biometric surveillance.

“It is clear that we must do everything to protect the people of Germany from such horrific acts of violence. To do this, our security authorities need all the necessary powers and more personnel,” Faeser told Spiegel newsmagazine.

The deputy head of a security committee in the Bundestag (parliament) announced he would convene a special session asking why previous warnings about the danger posed by the suspect, identified only as Taleb A., were not acted on. The arrested man has lived in Germany since 2006.

The main opposition Christian Democratic Union, which is on course to form the next government after an election in February, called for the strengthening of intelligence services.

“We can no longer be satisfied with the fact that information about violent criminals and terrorists often only comes from foreign services,” Guenter Krings, justice spokesperson for the CDU, told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

“That is why our German security authorities need more powers of their own in order to gain more of their own knowledge, especially in the digital area.”

The security services also must be able to remove dangerous people from circulation based on such knowledge, he said.

“The authority and obligation for official cooperation and data exchange must also be improved,” he said.

Germany’s data protection rules are among the strictest in the European Union, which federal police say has prevented them from resorting to biometric surveillance to date.

Police in the northwestern city of Bremerhaven said on Monday they had arrested a man who had threatened in a TikTok video to commit “serious crimes” at the local Christmas market. In the video, the man said he would target people who looked Arab or Mediterranean on Christmas Day.

AfD LEADERS IN MAGDEBURG

A committee in the local parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, the state where Magdeburg is located, will also convene to discuss the possible causes of the attack and its consequences, a state interior ministry spokesperson said.

Holger Muench, president of the federal criminal police office (BKA), told public broadcaster ZDF over the weekend that Germany was reviewing security measures at Christmas markets and addressing any vulnerabilities.

Muench said Germany had received a warning from Saudi Arabia as far back as 2023 about the suspect, which German authorities investigated but found vague.

“The man also published a huge number of posts on the Internet. He also had various contacts with the authorities, made insults and even threats. But he was not known for acts of violence,” Muench said.

Leaders of the AfD, which has surged in support on an anti-immigration platform and is polling in second place ahead of the election, plan to stage an event in Magdeburg on Monday evening.

“The discussion about new security laws must not distract from the fact that #Magdeburg would not have been possible without uncontrolled immigration,” AfD leader Alice Weidel said on social media. “The state must protect citizens through a restrictive migration policy and consistent deportations!”

Also on Monday evening, an initiative organized under the motto “Don’t give hate a chance” is calling for a human chain to be formed in Magdeburg.

 

За даними міністерства соціального захисту, регіональні виплати для військових, які отримали інвалідність, поранення, контузію, захворювання чи травму, скасували з 11 грудня 2024 року

Russian forces captured two villages in Ukraine, one in Kharkiv region in the northeast and one in eastern Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

Donetsk region is where Moscow is concentrating most of its efforts to seize two cities.

Russian forces, making steady progress across Donetsk region, are moving on the towns of Pokrovsk, a logistics center and site of an important coking colliery, and appear to be closing in on Kurakhove, farther south.

The Defense Ministry statement said troops had taken control of Lozova, near the town of Kupiansk, in an area north of Donetsk region also under Russian pressure in recent weeks. The village of Sontsivka, north of Kurakhove, was also captured.

The ministry on Saturday announced the capture of another village near Kurakhove, Kostiantynopolske.

The Ukraine military’s general staff made no mention of those villages falling into Russian hands, but said Sontsivka was in a sector subject to 26 Russian attacks in the past 24 hours. The general staff also reported heavy fighting near Pokrovsk, with 34 Russian attempts to pierce defenses.

The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Sontsivka was under Russian control.

Russian reports have described intensified pressure on Kurakhove.

The Moscow-appointed governor of areas of Donetsk region occupied by Russian forces, Denis Pushilin, said on Telegram that Russian troops now controlled the town center. He also said troops were advancing on Pokrovsk from the south.

Russian troops have been moving through eastern Ukraine in the past two months at the fastest rate since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Ukrainian military said on Friday its forces had pulled back from the area around two villages — one near Pokrovsk, the other near Kurakhove — to avoid being encircled by advancing Russian troops.

Madrid — For weeks, Spaniards had anticipated the arrival of “El Gordo” or “The Fat One.”

But unlike Santa Claus, El Gordo arrived three days before Christmas, before noon on Sunday.

El Gordo is the first prize of Spain’s hugely popular national Christmas lottery, which is said to be the world’s largest based on the total prize money involved, even though other lotteries have larger single prizes. This year’s draw will spread riches of around $2.8 billion, much of it in small winnings.

Several ticket holders with the number 72480 won the top prize, worth about $417,000 before taxes. The winning tickets were sold in Logrono, a city in northern Spain’s La Rioja region that is known for its wines.

Multiple tickets with the same number can be sold to different groups and full tickets are divisible into 10 parts. Buying and sharing these fractions, known in Spanish as “décimos” or tenths, is a popular tradition in the run-up to Christmas. Families, friends, and co-workers often take part, usually spending $21 each.

On Sunday, young students from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school selected the numbers from two revolving orbs in the capital’s Teatro Real opera house and sang them out in turn for nearly five hours in a cadence familiar to Spaniards. After “El Gordo” was announced, audience members — some dressed in costume as Don Quijote, Christmas elves, Biblical wise men and the lottery itself — began streaming out of the venue, from which the event was televised nationally.

María Angeles, a teacher from the southwestern province of Badajoz, said she waited for hours in line to get a seat inside the opera house to watch the event with a group of 14 friends and family members that she traveled with to Madrid.

“The point of coming to see the lottery is the hope,” Angeles said. She reckoned no one in her group won more than $146.

The lottery works on the premise of distributing the most winning numbers to the largest number of people possible. There are hundreds of small prizes and 13 major ones, including the “El Gordo” winner.

In the weeks leading up to the draw, lines form outside lottery offices, especially those with a history of selling prize-winning tickets in previous years.

Spain’s Dec. 22 Christmas lottery began during the Napoleonic wars in 1812 and has continued largely without interruption since then, even during the Spanish Civil War. Students from the San Ildefonso school have been singing the prizes since the start.

Spain’s national lottery was first established as a charity in 1763 by the Bourbon monarch King Carlos III. It was later used to shore up state coffers. Today, it supports various charities.

Раніше омбудсмен Дмитро Лубінець повідомляв, що відомо про 177 підтверджених випадків страти українських військовополонених російськими військовими від початку повномасштабного вторгнення

Tirana, Albania — Albania’s prime minister said Sunday the ban on TikTok his government announced a day earlier was “not a rushed reaction to a single incident.”

Edi Rama said Saturday the government will shut down TikTok for one year, accusing the popular video service of inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.

Authorities have held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents since the November stabbing death of a teenager by another teen after a quarrel that started on social media apps. Ninety percent of them approve of the ban on TikTok.

“The ban on TikTok for one year in Albania is not a rushed reaction to a single incident, but a carefully considered decision made in consultation with parent communities in schools across the country,” said Rama.

Following Tirana’s decision, TikTok asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” in the case of the stabbed teenager. The company said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok.”

“To claim that the killing of the teenage boy has no connection to TikTok because the conflict didn’t originate on the platform demonstrates a failure to grasp both the seriousness of the threat TikTok poses to children and youth today and the rationale behind our decision to take responsibility for addressing this threat,” Rama said.

“Albania may be too small to demand that TikTok protect children and youth from the frightening pitfalls of its algorithm,” he said, blaming TikTok for “the reproduction of the unending hell of the language of hatred, violence, bullying and so on.”

Albanian children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to domestic researchers.

Many youngsters in Albania did not approve of the ban.

“We disclose our daily life and entertain ourselves, that is, we exploit it during our free time,” said Samuel Sulmani, an 18-year-old in the town of Rreshen, 75 kilometers north of the capital Tirana, on Sunday. “We do not agree with that because that’s a deprivation for us.”

But Albanian parents have been increasingly concerned following reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

“Our decision couldn’t be clearer: Either TikTok protects the children of Albania, or Albania will protect its children from TikTok,” Rama said.

«На Харківському напрямку з початку доби ворог проводив наступальні дії в районах населених пунктів Гоптівка, Глибоке, Висока Яруга, Бугруватка, Стариця, всього відбулося сім зіткнень»

Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks at the Kremlin on Sunday with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, one of the few European leaders he has stayed friendly with since the eruption of hostilities with Ukraine, according to Russian television.

“Putin is currently holding talks in the Kremlin with Slovak Prime Minister Fico,” Russian TV journalist Pavel Zarubin, a Kremlin insider, posted on his Telegram channel, along with a short video showing the two leaders.

The visit by Fico, whose country is both a NATO and European Union member, had not been previously announced.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told Zarubin however that it had been arranged “a few days ago.”

Peskov did not give details of the talks but said it could be “presumed” that supplies of Russian gas would be discussed.

Ukraine announced this year that it would not renew a contract allowing the transit of Russian gas through its territory that runs out on December 31.

Slovakia and Hungary, which rely on Russian gas, have raised concerns about the prospect of losing supplies.

Fico ended military aid to Ukraine when he became prime minister again in October 2023, and like Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban has called for peace talks.

Fico announced in November that he would go to Moscow in May for ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Belgrade — Thousands protested Sunday in Serbia’s capital Belgrade to demand that leaders take responsibility for the collapse of a train station roof that killed 15 people last month.

For over seven weeks, the Serbian government has been under pressure from nation-wide demonstrations following the deaths in the northern city of Novi Sad, with many protesters accusing authorities of corruption and inadequate oversight.

Sunday’s protest organized by university students started with 15-minutes of silence as tribute to the 15 victims in the incident.

The demonstration occupied Slavija square, a key roundabout, snarling traffic in the city center.

“The state is children’s property” and “Protests are exams” read some of the banners of the demonstrators who have demanded that the prime minister and the Novi Sad mayor resign, and that those found responsible be prosecuted.

Farmers, actors and other citizens from across Serbia have come to support the students.

Students have also called for legal proceedings to be dropped against demonstrators, and for the prosecution of assailants who have attacked the protesters.

In a bid to dilute the anger and calm the protests, the authorities over the past weeks have promised various subsidies for young people.

On Friday, the government announced plans to close schools early for winter holidays.

Students continued to protest, saying their demands have only been partially met.

Fourteen people, aged between six and 74, were killed on November 1 when the roof collapsed after major renovation works on the station.

A 15th victim died in hospital weeks later. 

SAARISELKA, Finland — Russia poses a bigger threat to European Union security than just defense as Moscow can use illegal immigration and other issues to undermine the bloc, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday.

Finland hosted the leaders of Italy, Sweden and Greece, as well as the EU foreign affairs chief, in its northern Lapland region at the weekend to discuss security in the Nordic region and the Mediterranean, as well as migration challenges in southern Europe.

“We have to understand the threat is much wider than we imagine,” Meloni, who leads a conservative government, told a press conference when asked about Russia.

The danger to EU security from Russia or from elsewhere would not stop once the Ukraine conflict ended and the EU must be prepared for that, she said.

“It’s about our democracy, it’s about influencing our public opinion, it’s about what happens in Africa, it’s about raw materials, it’s about the instrumentalization of migration. We need to know it’s a very wide idea of security,” Meloni said.

She urged the EU to do more to protect its borders and not let Russia or any “criminal organization” steer the flows of illegal migrants.

Some EU members, including Finland and Estonia, have accused Russia of allowing illegal migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere to enter EU states via Russia without proper checks, undermining the EU’s security.

Moscow has denied Russia was deliberately pushing illegal migrants into the EU.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said securing his country’s 1,340-km border with Russia was “an existential” question for Finland and for other EU members and NATO allies.

Meloni said the EU had been wrong in dealing with the issue of immigration over the years simply in terms of how to share the burden.

“Tackling the issue of illegal immigration solely as a solidarity-based debate was a mistake,” she said. “The result is that we have been unable to protect our borders. … We want to defend our external borders and we will not allow Russia or criminal organizations to undermine our security.”

While NATO remained “the cornerstone” of EU security, the bloc had to tackle wider challenges, Meloni said.

“Security also means critical infrastructure, it means artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, raw materials, supply chains. It means a new and more effective foreign and cooperation policy, it means migration,” she said.