WASHINGTON — Russia’s Justice Ministry on Friday added more journalists to its list of so-called foreign agents, including reporters for Voice of America, Current Time and the BBC.

Six journalists were named to the registry, including Ksenia Turkova, who works for VOA’s Russian language service in Washington, and Iryna Romaliiska, who works for Current Time, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty program in partnership with VOA.

Others designated by Russia include Anastasia Lotareva and Andrey Kozenko, who work for BBC Russian; Alexandra Prokopenko, a journalist and research fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin; and Anton Rubin, a journalist at exiled media outlet Ekho Moskvy, who is also the director of a nongovernmental organization that helps orphans.

Authorities use law to target critics

Russia’s foreign agent law came into effect in 2012. Since then, say watchdogs, it has been used by authorities to target groups and individuals who are critical of the Kremlin. Hundreds of media outlets, journalists and civil society groups have been listed by the Justice Ministry.

Those named as foreign agents have to mark any online content, even personal social media posts, as having come from a foreign agent, and to share financial details. Failure to comply can lead to fines or even imprisonment.

Both VOA and its sister network RFE/RL have been designated as so-called foreign agents. Turkova is the first VOA journalist to be named individually.

In a statement, VOA director Mike Abramowitz said that VOA and its journalists, by law, provide “a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news around the world.”

“We stand with our journalists who often face repercussions for providing this vital public service and we remain committed to ensuring that audiences can access the vital content that VOA provides,” he said.

Turkova told VOA that she considers the designation by Russia a “meaningless label.”

“For the authorities, it’s a synonym for ‘traitor,’ ‘enemy of the people,’ ” she said. “For those whom the Russian authorities are targeting, it’s, in general, an empty sound, a word that means absolutely nothing.”

Previously, Turkova worked in Ukraine, where she reported on Russia’s occupation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and repressive actions by Moscow.

Since moving to Washington, Turkova said, “I continued to write and speak about the topics that I consider very important. First of all, it’s the war in Ukraine. It’s repression in Russia and it’s the role of propaganda.”

Current Time’s Romaliiska said she did not care about the designation.

“This only means that the Current Time channel is working great, that our team is doing a good job, which is what we will continue to do, regardless of any lists and statuses,” she told Current Time.

30 journalists behind bars

Russia has a dire media freedom record, ranking 162nd out of 180, where 1 shows the best environment on the World Press Freedom Index.

It is also a leading jailer of journalists, with 30 behind bars, according to data released Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ.

The report noted that as well as the high number of journalists in custody, Russia in 2024 “took its transnational repression to new levels.”

Foreign correspondents and Russian reporters in exile faced in absentia arrest warrants or sentences. The CPJ report described the action as “an intimidatory tactic,” adding that it “serves as a chilling illustration of Moscow’s determination to control the narrative of its war in Ukraine.”
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WASHINGTON — An Azerbaijani court on Friday denied petitions by two jailed journalists to be released from house arrest, their lawyers said.

The journalists, Aynur Elgunesh and Natig Javadli, work for Meydan TV, an independent outlet based in Germany. They were among six journalists arrested in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, in early December.

Azerbaijan is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with more than a dozen behind bars, according to a report released this week by the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ.

Azerbaijan is currently detaining at least 18 journalists for their work, according to CPJ.

The group’s latest prison census, which acts as a snapshot of media workers in custody as of Dec. 1, listed 13 journalists in the Azerbaijani prison. One of those was released after the census was taken, but authorities then jailed six more journalists, including Elgunesh and Javadli.

The arrests are a concern for local activists and reporters.

“Independent and critical media in Azerbaijan is going through its most difficult period,” Azerbaijani activist Samir Kazimli told VOA. “If this policy of repression does not stop, if it continues, independent media in Azerbaijan may completely collapse.”

The annual CPJ report found 361 journalists behind bars around the world. Azerbaijan ranked eighth worst in the census, behind countries such as China, Israel, Myanmar, Belarus and Russia.

“Azerbaijan has been cracking down on independent media for well over a decade,” CPJ’s CEO, Jodie Ginsberg, told VOA. “It doesn’t often get the attention that it deserves.”

Local journalists like Shamshad Agha are worried that Azerbaijani authorities are trying to stamp out independent media.

Agha is editor of Argument.az, a news website covering democracy, corruption and human rights.

“The lives of all independent journalists are in danger,” he told VOA. Agha said he has been banned from leaving the country since July 2024.

Azerbaijan’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Many of the journalists jailed in Azerbaijan are accused of foreign currency smuggling, which media watchdogs have rejected as a sham charge.

Many of those currently detained work for the independent outlets Abzas Media and Meydan TV.

Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist with the Azerbaijani Service of VOA’s sister outlet, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is among those currently imprisoned.

Jailed since May, Mehralizada is facing charges of conspiring to smuggle foreign currency, as well as “illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery.” He denies the charges, which carry a combined sentence of up to 12 years behind bars.

On Thursday, Ulviyya Guliyeva, a journalist who has been a contributor to VOA’s Azerbaijani Service since 2019, was summoned to a police station in Baku for questioning.

The journalist said she was questioned about Meydan TV, even though she is not an employee there. Guliyeva said she was also placed under a travel ban that blocked her from leaving the country.

“This is a very disturbing situation for me,” Guliyeva said. “I see this as pressure on my journalistic activities.”

Parvana Bayramova of VOA’s Azerbaijani Service contributed to this report.
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WARSAW, POLAND — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday condemned what he called “the poison of antisemitism rising around the world” after a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former German Nazi concentration camp.

His visit came as many international delegations are expected to attend the Jan. 27 ceremony commemorating 80 years since the Soviet Red Army liberated the death camp built in occupied Poland.

King Charles III will be among those attending the ceremony, Buckingham Palace said Monday, in his first visit to the former camp.

“Time and again we condemn this hatred, and we boldly say, ‘never again,'” Starmer said in a statement following his visit.

“But where is never again, when we see the poison of antisemitism rising around the world” in the aftermath of October 7th, he said.

The Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas staged the deadliest attack in Israeli history.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has left 46,876 people dead, the majority civilians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the United Nations has described as reliable.

Last week, the Polish government said it would grant free access to Israeli officials wanting to attend the commemoration, despite a warrant issued in November by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had information from the Israeli Embassy that the country would be represented by its education minister.

The International Criminal Court issued the warrant in November over the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, prompting outrage from Israel and its allies.

Auschwitz has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million European Jews, 1 million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
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For nearly three years, a combat medic from California named Jennifer Mullee has been saving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines. Mullee decided to join the Ukrainian war effort following the death of a close friend. Anna Kosstutschenko has her story. Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy  
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MOSCOW — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Moscow on Friday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the signing of a strategic partnership treaty involving closer defense cooperation that is likely to worry the West.

Pezeshkian, on his first Kremlin visit since winning the presidency last July, will hold talks with Putin focusing on bilateral ties and international issues before signing the treaty.

Ahead of the talks, the Kremlin hailed its ever closer ties with Tehran.

“Iran is an important partner for us with which we are developing multifaceted co-operation,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Moscow has cultivated closer ties with Iran and other countries hostile towards the U.S., such as North Korea, since the start of the Ukraine war, and already has strategic pacts with Pyongyang and close ally Belarus, as well as a strategic partnership agreement with China.

The 20-year Russia-Iran agreement is not expected to include a mutual defense clause of the kind sealed with Minsk and Pyongyang, but is still likely to concern the West which sees both countries as malign influences on the world stage.

Moscow and Tehran say their increasingly close ties are not directed against other countries.

Russia has made extensive use of Iranian drones during the war in Ukraine and the United States accused Tehran in September of delivering close-range ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine. Tehran denies supplying drones or missiles.

The Kremlin has declined to confirm it has received Iranian missiles, but has acknowledged that its cooperation with Iran includes “the most sensitive areas.”

Pezeshkian visit to Moscow also comes at a time when Iranian influence across the Middle East is in retreat after Islamist rebels seized power in Syria, expelling ally Bashar al-Assad, and after Iran-backed Hamas has been pounded by Israel in Gaza.

Israel has also inflicted serious damage on the Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Russia too finds itself on the backfoot in Syria where it maintains two major military facilities crucial to its geopolitical and military influence in the Middle East and Africa but whose fate under Syria’s new rulers is now uncertain.

Putin met Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan in October and at a cultural forum in Turkmenistan the same month.

Pezeshkian, who is holding talks with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin before meeting Putin, is accompanied to Moscow by his oil minister, and Western sanctions on the sector and the subject of how to circumvent them are likely to be discussed.
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MOSCOW — A Russian court on Friday upheld the jail term of Robert Shonov, a former U.S. Consulate worker sentenced to almost five years for “secret collaboration with a foreign state.”

Shonov, a Russian citizen, worked for more than 25 years at the U.S. Consulate in the far eastern city of Vladivostok until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.

He was arrested in 2023 on suspicion of passing secret information about Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine to the United States in exchange for money and sentenced to four years and 10 months prison in November 2024.

“The judicial act was upheld,” a court in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk ruled, according to its website, rejecting an appeal Shonov had made against his sentencing.

The United States strongly condemned the conviction last year, calling it an “egregious injustice” based on “meritless allegations.”

In September 2023, Russia expelled two U.S. diplomats it accused of acting as liaison agents for Shonov.

In recent years, several U.S. citizens have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms in Russia.

Others are being held pending trial.

Washington, which supports Ukraine militarily and financially against Russia’s military offensive, accuses Moscow of arresting Americans on baseless charges to use as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.

Even after a landmark prisoner swap in August, several U.S. nationals and dual nationals remain in detention in Russia.
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Britain and Ukraine signed a 100-year agreement Thursday, with Britain pledging to provide Ukraine with $3.6 billion in military aid this year.

The deal was announced during a joint news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, at the presidential palace where British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Starmer is on his first trip to Ukraine since he took office.

Starmer called the agreement historic and said the new partnership “reflects the huge affection that exists between our two nations.” The partnership will include cooperation in the areas of culture, education, science and technology.

Regarding military assistance for Kyiv’s war against Russia, Starmer said Britain plans to provide Ukraine with a loan of more than $2.6 billion. He said the loan “will be paid back not by Ukraine, but from the interest on frozen Russian assets.” Starmer also announced that Britain was providing Ukraine with 150 artillery gun barrels and a new mobile air defense system.

In his comments, Starmer credited Ukraine’s allies, particularly the United States, for contributing to the success Ukraine has had against “aggression from Russia.” He said he wanted to pay tribute to the U.S. for “the work that the U.S. has done here, the support that they have put in, because it’s been a vital component of what has been quite an incredible achievement by Ukraine.”

The comments came just days before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, a critic of U.S. support for Ukraine, takes office and a day after the new president’s pick to be the U.S. secretary of state, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, told a Senate panel the war must end.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing, Rubio called the conflict a “war of attrition” and a “stalemate” that must be ended. He said the first step should be a ceasefire that halts ground fighting, which has for more than a year mostly occurred in eastern Ukraine.

Rubio called the destruction in Ukraine “extraordinary,” saying it will “take a generation to rebuild.”

“The truth of the matter is that in this conflict, there is no way Russia takes all of Ukraine,” Rubio said. “It’s also unrealistic to believe that somehow, a nation the size of Ukraine … is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion.”

Even as he argued for a negotiated settlement to end the fighting that started with Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Rubio said it was unlikely that there would be much change in the current battle lines. Russia currently holds about a fifth of the internationally recognized Ukrainian land mass.

Democrats, and some Republicans on the committee, continued to voice their support for more military aid to Ukraine, saying it was important to give Kyiv leverage in any eventual peace talks with Moscow.

But Rubio said that one of Ukraine’s key problems was not a shortage of ammunition or money but its inability to train and recruit enough troops.

At Thursday’s news conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy refused to speculate on what U.S. support for Ukraine will look like under a Trump administration.

“It is too early to talk about the details, because we have not yet had a detailed conversation with the new U.S. administration about security guarantees,” he said.

Trump has voiced skepticism about continued U.S. military support for Kyiv and repeatedly vowed that he would end the war when he assumed the presidency on Monday.

In recent days, his aides have said the new timeline is ending the war in the first 100 days of his administration, which would be by the end of April.

Ken Bredemeier and Chris Hannas contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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With Donald Trump returning to the White House, analysts say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees an opportunity to rekindle what he calls his close working relationship with the president-elect. However, as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the incoming Trump presidency poses risks as well as opportunities.
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As Russia’s war with Ukraine approaches the three-year mark in February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is emphasizing his country’s hope for continued U.S. support under the incoming Trump administration. 

“We are waiting for the inauguration of the U.S. president. I think the whole world is waiting because the United States is a strategic partner in global stability,” Zelenskyy said this week during a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. 

Zelenskyy described the U.S. as “the largest donor supporting Ukraine in its war for survival against Russian aggression” and expressed optimism for deepened cooperation under the principle of “peace through strength.”  

He also said his administration is already coordinating with Washington regarding possible meetings with President-elect Donald Trump, who assumes office on Monday. 

“Our teams are working on the details of this crucial discussion. We want to end this war, but on the terms of a just peace,” he said.  

The key focus for Ukraine in future peace negotiations will be securing robust and comprehensive security guarantees to prevent any future Russian aggression. 

Trump has voiced skepticism of continued U.S. military support for Kyiv, repeatedly vowing that he would end the war before assuming the presidency on Jan. 20. In recent days, however, his aides have said the new timeline for ending the war is in the first 100 days of his administration, which would be by the end of April. 

Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday: “Even if the conflict ends, Ukraine must have the ability to defend itself.” He added that this is a matter of long-term security and stability for Ukraine. 

Tusk, standing alongside Zelenskyy in Warsaw, said Ukraine’s best security guarantee would be membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions. But, he pointed out, the thought of Ukraine joining NATO remains “controversial among some states,” making it vital for the Western alliance to provide Ukraine with a tangible solution to secure peace in Europe. 

Ukrainian military troop strength 

Ukraine cannot engage in “games” by reducing the size of its military, Zelenskyy also said, rejecting any proposals to do so. 

He said a strong defense force is “the only security guarantee” ahead of potential peace negotiations with Russia. His remarks referred to Bloomberg News reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to push for Ukraine to sever ties with NATO and adopt a “neutral state” status with a limited military during any discussions with Trump. 

Highlighting the current strength of Ukraine’s military, Zelenskyy said that it now comprises 880,000 soldiers tasked with countering an estimated 600,000 Russian troops concentrated in specific regions. According to the president, Ukraine produces more than 30% of its military equipment, mainly drones. He has called for allies and partners to invest in military production in Ukraine. 

Russia and Ukraine target each other daily with aerial strikes. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the Russian attacks, alongside vast casualties among both Ukrainian and Russian troops since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.  

European security initiatives 

Part of the proposed option for security guarantees involves French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of deploying European forces to Ukraine. 

During his visit to Warsaw, Zelenskyy confirmed that he had discussed the proposal. Answering questions from VOA, the Ukrainian president said that even though the idea remains in early stages, the initiative, in his view, could be part of Ukraine’s broader security guarantees. 

“We support the idea of a contingent involving our allies and strategic partners as part of the security guarantees. However, this alone will not suffice,” Zelenskyy said. As a first step, the Ukrainian president said it would be effective to send Western instructors to Ukraine with a comprehensive training plan to strengthen forces on the ground. 

Zelenskyy also said he plans to discuss the idea with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who arrived in Kyiv on Thursday with a pledge to help guarantee Ukraine’s security. Britain and Ukraine agreed on a “100-Year Partnership” treaty covering defense, science, energy and trade. 

The other security guarantees Zelenskyy noted involve additional sanctions, continued weapons shipments, and investments in its military production. He called for urgent international action, including utilizing frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine’s defense. “The strongest support for the Ukrainian army would be to allocate $250 billion from frozen Russian assets to purchase weapons Ukraine urgently needs,” he said.  

EU aspirations 

Polish and Ukrainian leaders embraced Ukraine’s European Union aspirations as part of the peace process. Poland, which holds the rotating EU presidency, reaffirmed its commitment to accelerating Ukraine’s European integration. Tusk described the EU presidency as an opportunity to break the impasse and expedite Ukraine’s accession. 

“We will work unconditionally with Ukraine and our European partners to speed up this big and essential task,” he said. 

Tusk noted that Ukraine’s EU membership will add to European security, and he promised to make the issue a priority. “We will break the standstill we have in this issue,” he said during the joint press conference. “We will accelerate the accession process.”
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In California, qualifying inmates volunteer as firefighters to assist in combating wildfires in Los Angeles. China uses forced labor involving arbitrarily detained Muslims in Xinjiang.
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