When the U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on three companies belonging to Denis Postovoy on Wednesday, it was yet another move to break up what U.S. authorities say was an international scheme to violate sanctions.

A month earlier, on September 16, law enforcement officials arrested the 44-year-old Russian national in Sarasota, Florida.

He was charged with conspiring to violate sanctions on Russia, commit smuggling, commit money laundering and defraud the United States.

According to the indictment, Postovoy used an international network of companies to export dual-use microelectronic components from the United States to Russia –– potentially spare parts for military drones used in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.

Postovoy is not the first Russian charged with violating U.S. export controls. But he is one of the few who allegedly did it from inside the United States.

Using court documents and open-source information, VOA pieced together Postovoy’s history, revealing a story involving international trade, criminal charges in two countries, a U.S. startup and Florida real estate.

Postovoy pleaded not guilty to all the charges. If convicted, he could face decades in prison.

Postovoy is in pretrial detention and could not be reached for comment. His lawyer did not respond to a VOA request for comment. When VOA reached Postovoy’s wife by phone, she hung up. She did not respond to questions sent to her on the WhatsApp messenger app.

According to the latest court filings, Postovoy’s case was transferred to the U.S. District Court in Washington.

American charges

After Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. significantly expanded restrictions on the export of microelectronics to Russia.

The Department of Justice has accused Postovoy and several unnamed co-conspirators of using a network of companies under their control in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Russia to violate those sanctions.

It claims Postovoy misrepresented the buyers and destinations of the goods, routing them through Hong Kong, Switzerland, Turkey and Estonia.

“As alleged, he lied about the final destination for the technology he was shipping and used intermediary destinations to mask this illegal activity,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves stated in a press release. “Fortunately, our skilled law enforcement partners at HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] and our dedicated attorneys unraveled the plot.”

The prosecution states that Postovoy’s clients included the Russian company Streloi Ekommerts and other unnamed firms. According to the indictment, the contract with Streloi was completed before the company was added to the U.S. sanctions list in December 2023.

An investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found that Streloi actively helps Russia circumvent Western export restrictions.

Another recipient of the microelectronics, according to an invoice included in the case materials, was the Russian technology company Radius Avtomatika.

Neither company responded to emailed questions from VOA.

It is unclear whether the microelectronics Postovoy allegedly exported were ultimately used in drones, but one court document states that the people he contacted were members of Russia’s military-industrial complex.

Hong Kong story

Originally from Novosibirsk, Russia, Postovoy had lived in Hong Kong since at least 2010 with his wife — a Ukrainian citizen from Crimea — and their three children.

Shipping records indicate his companies were involved in exporting goods from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, to Russia. Prosecutors allege that after the U.S. expanded its sanctions, some of this activity became illegal.

When the DOJ announced Postovoy’s arrest, it also listed the names of his companies that it said were involved in the alleged scheme. Aside from the Russian-registered firm Vektor Group, all the others were in Hong Kong: Jove HK Limited, JST Group Hong Kong and WowCube HK Limited.

All are now under U.S. sanctions, except for WowCube HK Limited.

Its appearance in the indictment provoked a rapid response from Cubios, another company previously associated with Postovoy. It produces the WOWCube gaming console, wich looks like a Rubik’s cube with multiple screens.

Just a day after Postovoy’s arrest was announced, Cubios publicly denied any connection to WowCube HK Limited.

“Neither Cubios nor any of its officers, directors, managers or employees … have any connection to the HK Entity whatsoever. We do not own, operate or are in any way affiliated with the HK Entity,” the company said in a statement on its website.

The startup also said that Postovoy “falsely listed himself as a VP of the Company” on LinkedIn.

In fact, Postovoy was previously Cubios’ vice president for production, according to archived versions of its website.

Ilya Osipov, CEO of Cubios, told VOA that a mutual friend introduced him to Postovoy.

“I was looking for someone who could help with production in China — they gave me Denis,” he wrote in a message to VOA.

According to Osipov, Postovoy became a business partner and made important contributions to prototypes and test batches of the WOWCube. Later the company decreased cooperation with him.

Although Postovoy did not have an official position, Cubios allowed him to call himself the vice president of production “for business purposes,” Osipov told VOA.

He claimed that Postovoy founded the Hong Kong firm without Cubios’ permission. It was planned to become a distributor of the consoles in Asia, but that never happened, Osipov said.

Coming to America

In 2022, Postovoy and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, where Cubios’ headquarters is.

According to Osipov, Postovoy said the move was motivated by a desire to raise children in a Western country and concerns about increasingly strict Chinese control of Hong Kong.

American prosecutors see a different motivation.

In a response to U.S. federal investigators included in the case materials, Hong Kong police said Postovoy was charged on March 1, 2022, with money laundering — a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison and a fine of up to $643,000.

According to the email, Postovoy was scheduled to appear in court on March 4 but left Hong Kong the day before.

Hong Kong police did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

By June 2022, Postovoy’s wife purchased a house in southeastern Sarasota.

Sarasota County property records indicate the house was valued at around $980,000. A mortgage covered $680,000 of the cost.

In August 2023, Postovoy bought another house, in the new Rivo Lakes gated community in Sarasota. According to purchase documents, it cost $1.13 million. In September, he transferred it to a trust controlled by his wife.

On the same day, his wife transferred the house to another trust and later sold the property.

According to a U.S. magistrate judge, Postovoy’s decision to transfer the second house into a trust was likely an attempt to conceal his ownership.

He “did not list his home — which is valued at nearly a million dollars and held in the name of a trust controlled by his wife — on his financial affidavit submitted to this Court,” the judge wrote in a decision not to grant Postovoy bail.

This may not be the only attempted cover-up in the case: Russian company records indicate that, in December 2023, a man named Dmitry Smirnov replaced Postovoy as owner of his Vektor Group company.

VOA’s Cantonese Service contributed research to this story.
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istanbul — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday sued the main opposition leader and Istanbul’s powerful mayor over allegedly slanderous remarks made at a protest rally a day earlier, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Filed on Friday, the two separate lawsuits targeted Ozgur Ozel, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, also a top party official.

One accused Ozel of “publicly insulting the president” and “clearly committing a crime against the reputation and honor of the office of the presidency.”

The second suit alleged Imamoglu had made “unfounded accusations including slander, that violated Erdogan’s rights” and had “acted with the aim of humiliating the president in front of the public.”

Each lawsuit sought 1 million Turkish lira ($30,000) in damages from the accused.

The legal action centers on remarks the pair allegedly made Thursday at a demonstration in the Istanbul district of Esenyurt a day after police arrested its opposition mayor for alleged links to the banned Kurdish PKK militant group.

It was not immediately clear which remarks prompted the legal action, but Ozel, who took over as CHP leader just a year ago, quickly hit back.

Erdogan “pretends to have been insulted without any insult being made, and tries to make himself the victim … as if it was not he who insulted and victimized Esenyurt” by arresting its mayor, he told reporters. 

Imamoglu, who was elected as Istanbul mayor in 2019, is often portrayed as Erdogan’s biggest political rival and is widely expected to run in the 2028 presidential race. He is seen as one of Turkey’s most popular politicians.

Two years ago, Imamoglu was sued for defamation after describing Istanbul election officials as “idiots” during the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election.

A court found him guilty, sentenced him to nearly three years in jail and barred him from politics for the duration of the sentence, prompting an international outcry.

Imamoglu has appealed while continuing to serve as mayor.

At the time, Erdogan insisted the case had nothing to do with him.

The 70-year-old Turkish leader launched his own political career in the 1990s by being elected as mayor of Istanbul.
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Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Thursday validated the results of last month’s referendum, formally recognizing the country’s decision to join the European Union.

The “yes” result, however, was an incredibly close one, much closer than polls had predicted, and the road toward EU membership for Moldova is not expected to be smooth either.

Supporters of the measure attribute the much closer than expected result to Russian meddling in the run-up to the vote held on October 20, together with the presidential election.

Both campaigns were marred by massive Russian disinformation and an alleged vote-buying scheme said to have cost the Kremlin tens of millions of dollars.  Some have described an atmosphere of bitterness and division with unprecedented mud-slinging and “hate speech,” including ethnic slurs and fascist tropes, leaving the country, some would say, dangerously divided.

The top two presidential candidates, incumbent pro-Europe President Maia Sandu and pro-Kremlin former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, face a run-off vote on Sunday.

“I hope that the pro-European forces, that Maia Sandu will win elections, but I am worried that this victory will be achieved with a small margin,” Ludmila Barba, host of Moldovan program The European Vector, told VOA.  “That was the case with the referendum. And this state of affairs means that this antagonism in society will remain.”

Moldova is a parliamentary republic and those elections will take place next year. Right now, the government is controlled by Sandu’s PAS party, but some predict it could lose control next year.

Analysts expect Moldova will remain a battleground for hearts, minds and political allegiances for some time to come and Moscow is no doubt poised to further exploit divisions. It has been throwing its weight around Moldova since the collapse of the USSR but has been honing its meddling technique since last year’s local elections.

“It was like a bootcamp for them [the Kremlin] for interference and then they scaled it,” Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at London’s Chatham House, told VOA. “They’ve seen what worked and that was vote-buying, trying to put eggs in different baskets … but underneath it all, having influence, having them on the payroll of Russia.”

The most audacious part of the scheme was the participation of fugitive Russia-based oligarch Ilan Shor, who was convicted in 2017 of banking fraud in Moldova. He is accused of buying off a network of up to 300,000 Moldovans, paying them to vote against Europe in last month’s referendum.

“They have been paid for their activity, from the equivalent of 50 euros a month and up.  It’s not big money, but when you take into account the complicated economic and social situation in Moldova, for people with a low income, these 50 euros are important,” Barba said.

President Sandu called out the scheme but was unable to stop it.

Moldovan runoff follows Georgia election

Moldova’s runoff comes on the heels of a hotly disputed victory for Georgia’s pro-Russian Georgian Dream party.

Georgia’s opposition-aligned president, Salome Zourabichvili, declared the results illegitimate, describing a “Russian Special Operation” to undermine the vote and she is fighting back, at this point, with uncertain effect.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE]) has noted voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and bribery in Georgia, but Moscow claims its hands are clean. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the showing by the pro-Russian party is a dramatic turn for a country that had full-blown war with Russia in 2008.

“I would never have imagined Russia or a Russian agenda having such a strong comeback in Georgia. There was for a while so much open hatred toward Russia, that anything suspected to be related to Russia would immediately be rejected,” Lutsevych said.

“This is where Russians are smart in how they play the subversion game. They are not openly saying this is a Russian agenda.”

The recent passage in Georgia of a “Foreign Agent” law, an act clearly inspired by Moscow, got the EU to pause further discussion about bringing Georgia into the bloc.  And the conduct of last week’s elections was to be another “litmus test” for Brussels on Tbilisi’s readiness to join.

While there may be clever, forward-thinking manipulation on the part of Moscow, Barba says one cannot ignore the effect of the immediate raw rage coming from the Kremlin.

“This is the first election since the Russian aggression in Ukraine began. The situation is more complicated because Russia is furious that it didn’t manage to take Ukraine in three days and that makes it more aggressive,” she says.

“Since it was not able to clinch victory in Ukraine, it is going after smaller ones in Georgia and Moldova to prove or assert its status.”

For the people of Moldova, fear has become the main theme of the elections. Barba points out that the pro-Russian side has said that if Moldova stays close to Russia, “the country will be safe. That Ukraine has war because they went toward the EU.”

“That narrative is going around. And thepro-Europeans say if we end up with Russia, we will have war, we will be dragged in.  Both sides are trying to say that the other option could lead to war.”

According to Lutsevych, fear can ultimately drown out Sandu’s main message that Moldova can have a brighter future with Europe. And this is taking its toll on some young members of Sandu’s team.

“They don’t feel it’s a fair game. They don’t feel they can win against that. It’s so powerful. It’s hard to compete when someone like Russia fuels anger, fear, and you have to compete on a positive agenda.”

Still, getting into Europe is a fight in itself and Lutsevych praises Sandu for taking up that fight. And the nature of this election campaign, she concludes, has put Moldova more front and center on Europe’s agenda and perhaps put enhanced focus on what Russia is doing on the sidelines of the Ukraine war.
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The United States is watching growing cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic closely and some of their recent military collaboration in the region sends “concerning signals”, the U.S. Arctic ambassador said.  

Russia and China have stepped up military cooperation in the Arctic while deepening overall ties in recent years that include China supplying Moscow with dual-use goods despite Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. 

Russia and the United States are among eight countries with territory in the resource-rich Arctic. China calls itself a “near-Arctic” state and wants to create a “Polar Silk Road” in the Arctic, a new shipping route as the polar ice sheet recedes with rising temperatures.  

Michael Sfraga, the United States’ first ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, said the “frequency and the complexity” of recent military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing in the region sent “concerning signals”. 

“The fact that they are working together in the Arctic has our attention,” Sfraga, who was sworn in last month, told Reuters in a telephone interview from Alaska. “We are being both vigilant and diligent about this. We’re watching very closely this evolution of their activity.” 

“It raises our radar, literally and figuratively,” he added.

Sfraga cited a joint run by Russian and Chinese bomber planes off the coast of Alaska in July, and Chinese and Russian coast guard ships sailing together through the Bering Strait in October.  

He said these activities had been conducted in international waters, in line with international law, but the fact that the bombers flew off the coast of Alaska had raised concerns for U.S. security. 

“We do need to think about security, heighten our own alliances, our own mutual defences,” Sfraga said. “Alaska, the North American Arctic, is NATO’s western flank and so we need to think about the Arctic that way.” 

The activity was also a concern for U.S. allies as the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea give access to the North Pacific and South Pacific, he said. 

The Pentagon said in a report released in July that the growing alignment between Russia and China in the Arctic was “a concern”.  

China and Russia are trying to develop Arctic shipping routes as Moscow seeks to deliver more oil and gas to China amid Western sanctions. Beijing is seeking an alternative shipping route to reduce its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. 

The Arctic also holds fossil fuels and minerals beneath the land and the seabed that could become more accessible with global warming.  
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TOKYO — Japan and the European Union announced a sweeping new security and defense partnership in Tokyo on Friday. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell hailed it as a historic and “very timely” step.

Borrell and his Japanese counterpart, Takeshi Iwaya, unveiled the pact to develop cooperation on joint military drills, the exchange of information related to the defense industry and space security, among other matters.

“I am extremely pleased to be here with Minister Iwaya to announce the conclusion of this security and defense partnership between the European Union and Japan,” Borrell said.

He called it the “the first agreement of this nature” the EU has made with an Asia-Pacific country, describing it as “historical and very timely.”

“We live in a very dangerous world” and “given the situation in both of our regions, this political framework deepens our ability to tackle emerging threats together,” Borrell told reporters.

He did not mention China, but Japan has previously called its neighbor its greatest security challenge as Beijing builds up military capacity in the region.

After the Tokyo talks, Borrell heads to South Korea, where concerns about North Korea will top the agenda.

The United States has said thousands of North Korean troops are in Russia readying to fight in Ukraine.

Pyongyang also test-fired one of its newest and most powerful missiles on Thursday, demonstrating its threat to the US mainland days ahead of elections.

Defense industries

The text of the EU-Japan Security and Defense Partnership, seen by Agence France-Presse, said they would promote “concrete naval cooperation,” including through activities such as joint exercises and port calls, which could also include “mutually designated third countries.”

It also said the EU and Japan would discuss “the development of respective defense initiatives including exchange of information on defense industry-related matters.”

Japan, which for decades has relied on the United States for military hardware, is also developing a new fighter jet with EU member Italy and Britain that is set to be airborne by 2035.

The agreement on industrial cooperation could “turbo-charge collaboration, such that joint defense projects between Japanese and European firms funded through EU mechanisms may be on the cards,” analyst Yee Kuang Heng of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy told AFP.

Japan is ramping up defense spending to the NATO standard of 2% of GDP by 2027, partly to counter China, which is increasing military pressure on Taiwan.

Beijing claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who could head a minority government after a disastrous general election last week, has said that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia.”

Ishiba has also called for the creation of a NATO-like regional alliance with its tenet of collective security, although he has conceded this will “not happen overnight.”

The same warning was issued by Ishiba’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida, who was hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden for a state visit in April at which the allies announced plans to boost their defense partnership.

On Friday, Borrell and Iwaya also “exchanged an instrument of ratification for Japan EU Strategic Partnership Agreement, or SPA,” Iwaya said, referring to a separate, previously agreed-upon pact.

“This SPA will formally enter into force on January 1 next year. It will be a legal foundation to strengthen the Japan-EU strategic partnership into the future,” Iwaya said.
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Washington — As North Korean troops prepare to join Russian forces in the war on Ukraine, Kyiv is stepping up a psychological warfare campaign to target the North Korean soldiers, a high-ranking Ukraine official said.

The effort is liable to get a boost from a team of South Korean military observers that Seoul’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said this week will be going to Ukraine to watch and analyze the North Korean troops on the battlefield.

Last week, the Ukrainian military intelligence service-run project “I Want to Live” released a Korean-language video message on YouTube and X. The project also posted a Korean-language text message on Telegram.

The messages urged North Korean soldiers to surrender, arguing that they do not have to “meaninglessly die on the land of another country.” It also offered to provide food, shelters and medical services.

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told VOA Ukrainian on Wednesday that “in the future, additional videos featuring North Koreans will be published.”

“The North Koreans will undergo training in modern warfare and then be used in actual combat,” Kovalenko said. “We (the Center for Combating Disinformation) are actively involved in identifying the individuals who have arrived and the units they are joining, as well as gathering evidence of their presence in Russia, their likely participation in combat against the Ukrainian army, and their presence in temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine.”

Influence campaign

Ukraine has been running similar psychological operations toward the Russian soldiers since the beginning of the Russian invasion, U.S. experts said.

“Ukraine has been doing that with the Russians early on in the war,” Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told VOA Korean on the phone Thursday. “They got a lot of Russians to defect, and I suspect they will try to do the same things with the North Koreans.”

Bennett added that drones can also be used for sending messages in leaflets and in audio form to North Korean soldiers in the war zone.

David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel who served on the Combined Forces Command of the U.S and South Korea, said this could be “a great opportunity” to learn how to employ psychological tactics on North Korean forces in the time of war.

“Bombing and gunfire doesn’t happen 24/7,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Wednesday. “Military operations are also characterized by large amounts of boredom and inactivity, where soldiers are waiting for something to happen, and this is the time when loudspeakers and leaflets can really have an effect, because those messages give them something to think about.”

Earlier this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed in a phone call “to intensify the intelligence and expertise exchange” and “to develop an action strategy and a list of countermeasures,” according to a statement released by the Ukrainian presidential office.

Some experts in South Korea said the team of South Korean military observers headed to Ukraine will likely include psychological warfare strategists who can offer advice to the Ukrainian officials.

Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said psychological warfare could be a real threat to the North Korean army.

“In the case of North Korean soldiers, they now have been mobilized for a war without any justification,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Tuesday. “It is hardly likely that they have a strong will or high morale.”

South Korea’s role

Cho said the South Korean government can help Ukraine develop psychological tactics against North Korean soldiers, since the country “has the know-how of a long-term psychological war with North Korea.”

Ban Kil-joo is a senior research professor at Korea University’s Ilmin International Relations Institute. He told VOA Korean in a phone interview Tuesday that psychological warfare could help weaken the military cohesiveness between Russia and North Korea.

“The Ukrainians don’t know much about North Korea, don’t understand the North Korean culture, as we do,” Ban said. “We can provide indirect support in a more social sense, rather than military or operational support.”

Ban added that it is important for the South Korean team to be “well-integrated with the Ukrainian forces through its supporting role,” to achieve the desired political and operational effect of a psychological campaign.

Other experts, however, are not convinced that psychological warfare will be effective to persuade North Korean soldiers to surrender.

Mykola Polishchuk, a Ukrainian author who wrote the book Northern Korea in Simple Words, said Ukraine’s counterpropaganda will not work with North Korean soldiers.

“As for North Koreans, they are not particularly politicized,” Polishchuk told VOA Ukrainian. “These individuals have little interest in politics.”

Robert Rapson, a former charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, told VOA Korean that South Korea should carefully make a decision about whether to be engaged in Ukraine’s psychological warfare.

“If the ROK [Republic of Korea] does decide to deploy technical personnel to Ukraine to solely monitor and help advise the Ukraine military on matters related to North Korean troops deployed to the region, they would need to ensure they do not acquire, inadvertently or otherwise, status as combatants,” he said. “There are, of course, clear risks to ROK personnel whether they’re combatants or not.”

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has deepened military ties with North Korea. North Korea has exported dozens of ballistic missiles and more than 18,000 containers of munitions and munitions-related material to Russia since the invasion, according to the U.S. State Department.

In June, the two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement mandating immediate military assistance if either of them is attacked by a third country.

VOA Korean’s Kim Hyungjin contributed to this report.  
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A shadowy Russian political operator with close ties to the notorious Wagner Group and its late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is detained in Chad on unexplained charges, adding a fresh chapter to his long career of mystery and intrigue.  

Russian officials and state-controlled media maintain that Maxim Shugaley, who was detained on September 19 along with two other Russians, is an innocent sociologist who was in Chad to deliver humanitarian aid and participate in a pro-Russian event in the capital, N’Djamena.    

But years of reporting on his exploits in countries as far-flung as Afghanistan and Libya present a picture of a master propagandist who has worked behind the scenes to advance the Kremlin’s interests with some of the world’s least reputable regimes. 

Shugaley, president of the St. Petersburg-based Foundation for National Values Protection, or FNZC, was arrested at N’Djamena’s airport “without explanation,” according to an account this week in the Russian news agency RIA Novosty. 

The report quoted the press attache at Russia’s mission in Chad saying the three Russians are being well-treated and that she looks forward to their early release. But it offered no explanation of why they were detained and little on why they were there. 

However the Russian daily Kommersant and a Paris-based weekly Jeune Afrique reported in late September and early October that Chadian military intelligence was behind Shugaley’s arrest, and said he was accused of espionage and influence activities on behalf of the Wagner Group.   

Kommersant said Shugaley maintains his innocence and “had no knowledge of Wagner activities in N’Djamena” — this despite his reputed role in directing communications and hybrid warfare activities by the Kremlin-financed mercenary, which according to the U.S. State Department plotted to overthrow the government of Chad last year. 

The Russian newspaper cited people close to Shugaley as saying that the “sociologist’s mission” in Chad was “strictly humanitarian.” It added that a suitcase in his possession at the time of his arrest “was full of souvenirs and cookies to be handed over at the pro-Russian rally in N’Djamena.”

Citing a source familiar with the case, Central African Republic-based Corbeau news Centrafrique reported that Shugaley and his companions were arrested for trying to “infiltrate the Chadian security services.”  

Whatever the truth of those reports, they are not out of character with previous accounts of Shugaley’s career and his own postings on Telegram — the Wagner Group’s favored messaging app — where he runs his own channel with almost 18,000 subscribers. 

In 2019, the FNZC organization that Shugaley heads was sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for serving in a covert operation to manipulate African politics in favor of the Kremlin by “sponsoring phony election monitoring missions,” and promoting “disinformation operations.”   

The Wall Street Journal profiled Shugaley in 2021 as a “spy” and a “shadowy figure” pursuing the Kremlin’s strategic goals across Africa.   

His latest post on Telegram, dated August 23, laments the death of Prigozhin, killed in a suspicious helicopter crash a year earlier. Shugaley calls the Wagner founder a “Russian hero” who is “very much needed now in the Kursk Oblast.” The post coincided with Ukraine’s military intrusion into Russia’s Kursk region. 

In earlier posts dating back to May of this year, Shugaley reported he was in Chad to observe the presidential elections, which he describes as successful, “despite the U.S. destabilizing efforts.” 

In June, Shugaley said in a Telegram post that he was in Chad “for the second time in less than two months” to prepare the introduction of a Russian House in N’Djamena, which he said was a “natural development” given the Chadians “anti-French sentiments and mistrust of the U.S. actions in the region.” 

In April 2023, The Washington Post reported that leaked U.S. intelligence documents showed the Wagner Group was trying to recruit “Chadian rebels and establish a training site for 300 fighters in the neighboring Central African Republic as part of an evolving plot to topple the Chadian government.”  

The European Union sanctioned Shugaley in February 2023 for operating “as the public relations arm” of the Wagner Group. 

Shugaley’s role “includes directing propaganda and disinformation campaigns in favor of the Wagner Group, particularly to improve the reputation of Wagner and support its deployment, as well as interfering in a covert manner on behalf of the Wagner group in the various countries where the group is active,” the EU said.  

In May 2019, Shugaley and his interpreter Samer Sueifan were jailed for 18 months in Libya on charges of espionage and election interference.  

Libyan officials said the mission of the two was to “recruit Libyans to gather information and to train them on how to influence any future Libyan elections.”      

Shugaley credited Prigozhin for his freedom in interviews with Russian media and in social media posts, saying that under his order, Wagner troops stormed the prison in Tripoli in December 2020 to free him. Prigozhin later commissioned an action movie lauding Shugaley and Wagner. His company, Concord, paid a $250,000 bonus to Shugaley and Sueifan.    

Shugaley is a common figure in Central Africa Republic, a territory where Wagner mercenaries have been deeply embedded in the security system since 2018.  

In February, the U.S. State Department issued a report titled, “The Wagner Group Atrocities in Africa: Lies and Truth,” which documented violations committed by the group in CAR, Libya, Sudan, and Mali.      

The State Department said, “In CAR, Wagner forces used indiscriminate killing, abductions, and rape to gain control of a key mining area near the city of Bambari, with survivors describing the attacks in detail.”    

A BBC documentary in 2019 reported that “at least six candidates were offered money by Russians in the lead-up to the 2018 presidential elections in Madagascar.”   

The BBC reported that Shugaley was among those “offering money” to various actors to sway the votes in favor of a Kremlin-backed candidate.    

According to the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, after the death of Prigozhin, Shugaley partnered with the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was released from a U.S. jail in 2022 in a prisoner swap for the American basketball star Brittney Griner.  

The group said Shugaley assisted Bout in winning a seat in the regional assembly of the city of Ulyanovsk in September 2023 as part of an ultra-nationalist party.    

”In updates posted on the Telegram channel, Shugaley has reported on discussing plans with Bout to export military utility vehicles and aircraft to Africa,” the report said.  
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Turkey is seeing a boom in winemaking, with hundreds of new producers emerging over the last few years. The trend runs counter the Islamist, conservative policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have included restrictions and taxes on alcohol. Dorian Jones reports from Manisa, Turkey.
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Russia has fined Google an amount larger than the entire world’s gross domestic product over restricting Russian propaganda channels on YouTube.

Russian business newspaper RBC reported this week that legal claims brought by 17 Russian TV channels against Google in Russian courts, which have imposed compound fines on Google, had reached $20 decillion — an incomprehensible sum with 34 zeros.

By comparison, the International Monetary Fund estimates the world’s total gross domestic product to be $110 trillion. Google’s parent company Alphabet, meanwhile, has a market value of around $2 trillion.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted to reporters that he “can’t even pronounce this figure right.” But he said the fine was “filled with symbolism.”

“Google should not restrict the activities of our broadcasters, and Google is doing this,” he said.

The Russian state-run outlet Tass reported this week that a Russian court had previously ordered Google to restore the blocked YouTube channels or face rising charges. The fine has grown so high because it doubles every week.

Earlier this year, Russia experienced a mass YouTube outage in August. The platform is considered one of the few remaining sites where audiences can access independent information in Russia, where Moscow blocks independent news sites and press freedom has all but disappeared.

Google did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
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Tbilisi and Moscow have exchanged harsh rhetoric about the results of the October 26 parliamentary elections in Georgia that brought thousands to the streets protesting the victory of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is aligned with the pro-Western opposition, accused Russia of running a “special operation” to “falsify” the election results in favor of the ruling party, which is widely seen as increasingly pro-Kremlin and authoritarian.

In response, Russia denied involvement and framed the United States and European Union as destabilizing powers. In doing so, Moscow’s network of officials and state-owned outlets engaged in disinformation and conspiracy theories, going so far as to allege on a state-controlled news agency that the U.S. and Ukraine were secretly deploying snipers to shoot at protesters in Tbilisi to escalate the situation.

Zourabichvili also told Reuters that Russian “methodology and the support of most probably Russian FSB [Federal Security Service] types is shown in this election.”

“The propaganda that was used ahead of the election … was a direct duplication, a copy-paste, of Russian clips and videos used at the time of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s election,” said Zourabichvili, whose position as president is largely ceremonial.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russian interference in the election and accused Zourabichvili of “attempting to destabilize the situation.”

Peskov had earlier alleged it was the European countries that “tried to influence the outcome of this vote.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Zourabichvili a “puppet president” who “refused to accept the election and went against the Constitution by calling for a coup.”

“The standard practice in such cases is removal from office and arrest,” Medvedev wrote on X.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the U.S. of engaging in “neo-colonialism” after U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller warned the Georgian government could face “consequences” if it did not “walk back its anti-democratic actions and return to its Euro-Atlantic path.”

Russian state media went further, spreading a conspiracy theory that the West was seeking to foment violence in Georgia.

“In their attempts to knock off balance the internal political situation in Georgia following the October 26 election and set off another color revolution, Westerners stop at nothing,” the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency said, quoting unnamed “sources in the region.”

“Ukraine-trained snipers are arriving in the republic to organize provocations during mass protests,” Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reported Monday, citing a “regional official familiar with the matter.”

The term “color revolution” was widely adopted after the 2004-05 Orange Revolution in Ukraine was sparked by a corruption-ridden presidential runoff that saw the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, emerge victorious.

Russia typically uses the term when accusing the West of orchestrating movements to destabilize or overthrow Kremlin-preferred governments.

In the months leading up to Georgia’s parliamentary poll, Russian state media ran reports alleging the U.S. was seeking to foment a color revolution or “a Ukraine-style coup.”

In July, Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency cited an anonymous Russian intelligence official who claimed U.S. authorities were planning a “sacred sacrifice” from among the protest participants.

The disinformation narrative in Sputnik’s report reflects a well-worn Kremlin conspiracy theory going back to the 2013-14 pro-Europe rallies in Ukraine, when the Russians claimed that American-trained Georgian “mercenaries” were responsible for shooting protesters in Kyiv during the 2014 demonstrations at the city’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, widely known as the Maidan or Independence Square.

Russian state media and top officials, including Putin, falsely claimed that the U.S. organized protests in Ukraine to propagate a coup.

That narrative included a conspiracy theory that Victoria Nuland, an American diplomat and former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, had ordered “American specialists” to lead the “snipers, who shot people at the Maidan.”

Amid ongoing protests in Georgia, the U.S. and the EU have joined calls from international and local observers to investigate alleged election-related violations.

On Thursday, Georgian authorities launched an investigation into election-fraud allegations.

The EU and U.S. have repeatedly warned Georgia about what they call its “democratic backsliding,” even freezing financial support to the country’s government, focusing instead on supporting civil society initiatives.

In June, Georgian Dream officials signed into law a bill that required nongovernmental agencies receiving at least 20% of their funding from abroad to label themselves as foreign agents “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”

In response, Brussels paused Georgia’s accession process to the EU, saying the foreign agent law is incompatible with EU membership.

Georgia’s opposition has nicknamed Tbilisi’s new foreign agent law the “Russian law,” a reference to similar legislation enacted in Russia in 2012 that has been used to silence civil society and independent media.

The EU also warned it may freeze visa-free travel with Georgia if it finds the parliamentary poll neither free nor fair.
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ISTANBUL — Hundreds gathered Thursday in Istanbul to protest the arrest and removal from office of a mayor from Turkey’s main opposition party for his alleged links to a banned Kurdish militant group.

Ahmet Ozer, mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district and a member of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, was detained on Wednesday by anti-terrorist police over his alleged connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Turkey’s government on Thursday replaced Ozer with Istanbul’s deputy governor, a move the CHP’s leader, Ozgur Ozel and other politicians described as a “coup.”

The mayor’s arrest comes as Turkey is debating a tentative peace process to end a 40-year conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state that has led to tens of thousands of deaths.

Demonstrators filled a square in Esenyurt after the government banned a rally outside the municipality building. Some carried banners that read: “(We want) an elected mayor not an appointed mayor” and called for the resignation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

“In our view, this (government), which acts against the law and violates the constitution, has carried out a political coup. We will never accept it,” said Tulay Hatimogullari, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, whose supporters joined the rally in a show of solidarity.

Ozel, whose CHP made significant gains in local elections earlier this year, called for early elections.

Ozer, 64, is a former academic originally from Van in eastern Turkey. He was elected mayor of Esenyurt, a western suburb in Istanbul’s European side, in March local elections.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said an investigation found Ozer had maintained contacts with PKK figures for more than 10 years, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Politicians and members of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish movement have frequently been targeted over alleged links to the PKK, which is considered a terror organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.

Legislators have been stripped of their parliamentary seats and mayors removed from office. Several lawmakers as well as thousands of party members have been jailed on terror-related charges since 2016.

Other opposition parties have been largely unscathed but the CHP metropolitan mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, is currently appealing a prison sentence and political ban imposed by a court in December 2022 for “insulting” members of Turkey’s election board in 2019.

Imamoglu accused Erdogan’s government of “plotting a dirty game” to snatch Esenyurt municipality away from the opposition “by declaring [Ozer] a terrorist for fictitious reasons.”
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LONDON — The European Union is investigating Chinese online retailer Temu over suspicions it’s failing to prevent the sale of illegal products, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said on Thursday.

The European Commission opened its investigation five months after adding Temu to the list of “very large online platforms” needing the strictest level of scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook designed to clean up online platforms and keep internet users safe, with the threat of hefty fines.

Temu started entering Western markets only in the past two years and has grown in popularity by offering cheap goods — from clothing to home products — that are shipped from sellers in China. The company, owned by Pinduoduo Incorporated, a popular e-commerce site in China, now has 92 million users in the EU.

Temu said it “takes its obligations under the DSA seriously, continuously investing to strengthen our compliance system and safeguard consumer interests on our platform.”

“We will cooperate fully with regulators to support our shared goal of a safe, trusted marketplace for consumers,” the company said in a statement.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said in a press release that Brussels wants to make sure products sold on Temu’s platform “meet EU standards and do not harm consumers.”

EU enforcement will “guarantee a level playing field and that every platform, including Temu, fully respects the laws that keep our European market safe and fair for all,” she said.

The commission’s investigation will look into whether Temu’s systems are doing enough to crack down on “rogue traders” selling “noncompliant goods” amid concerns that they are able to swiftly reappear after being suspended. The commission didn’t single out specific illegal products that were being sold on the platform.

Regulators are also examining the risks from Temu’s “addictive design,” including “game-like” reward programs, and what the company is doing to mitigate those risks.

Also under investigation is Temu’s compliance with two other DSA requirements: giving researchers access to data and transparency on recommender systems. Companies must detail how they recommend content and products and give users at least one option to see recommendations that are not based on their personal profile and preferences.

Temu now has the chance to respond to the commission, which can decide to impose a fine or drop the case if the company makes changes or can prove that the suspicions aren’t valid.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year. It has also opened an investigation into another e-commerce platform, AliExpress, as well as social media sites such as X and Tiktok, which bowed to pressure after the commission demanded answers about a new rewards feature.

Temu has also faced scrutiny in the United States, where a congressional report last year accused the company of failing to prevent goods made by forced labor from being sold on its platform.
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The Vatican tribunal said Wednesday it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying a self-styled intelligence analyst over a half-million euros in Vatican money that she then spent on luxury items and vacations.

The city-state’s tribunal issued 816 pages of written motivations from its Dec. 16 verdicts in the Vatican’s “trial of the century.” The two-year trial of 10 people was borne out of the Holy See’s $380 million investment in a London property but grew to include a host of other financial dealings.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a once-powerful cardinal who was the No. 3, or “substitute,” in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, was the most prominent of the nine people convicted. He faces five and a half years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement, fraud and other charges.

He and the eight other defendants have announced appeals, as has the Vatican prosecutor. With the tribunal’s written explanations now filed — nearly a year after the convictions were handed down — both sides can elaborate the basis of their appeals.

The trial focused on the Vatican secretariat of state’s participation in a fund to develop a former Harrod’s warehouse into luxury apartments. Prosecutors alleged Vatican monsignors and brokers fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros to cede control of the building.

Becciu was convicted of embezzlement stemming from the original Vatican investment of 200 million euros into the fund that invested in the London property. The tribunal determined that canon law prohibited using church assets in such a speculative investment.

Becciu was also convicted of aggravated fraud for his role in paying a self-proclaimed intelligence expert from his native Sardinia, Cecilia Marogna, 575,000 euros in Holy See money. He had said the payments were authorized by Pope Francis as ransom to free a Colombian nun held hostage by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali.

The investigation showed, however, that Becciu essentially double-billed the Vatican, with the same amount of money being sent to a British security firm that actually has expertise in liberating hostages. The nun was subsequently freed, but there is no indication Marogna had anything to do with it, the tribunal noted.

The tribunal, headed by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone, said Becciu never provided a reasonable explanation for why he paid Marogna the same amount of money, or why he never asked her for any updates on her alleged efforts to liberate the nun.

Even when told by Vatican gendarmes that Marogna had instead spent the Vatican’s money on luxury vacations and purchases at Prada, Becciu didn’t file a complaint with prosecutors or keep his distance from Marogna. Instead, they continued to communicate via a family friend.

“An objectively inexplicable behavior, all the more for someone in a position of the defendant, a cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and for seven years the substitute in the secretariat of state, who for a long period enjoyed the full trust of the pope,” the tribunal wrote. “A behavior, moreover, that the defendant has never explained in any way.”

Marogna, for her part, was tried in absentia and provided contradictory and inconclusive explanations in her written defense, the tribunal said. She too was convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

The bulk of the written motivations were devoted to deciphering the complicated transactions at the heart of the London deal. The text also repeated the tribunal’s previous rejection of defense arguments that the trial itself was fundamentally unfair.
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Pentagon and United Nations — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Yong-hyun, urged North Korea on Wednesday to withdraw from Russia an estimated 10,000 troops, which both countries believe are headed to fight alongside Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“They’re doing this because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has lost a lot of troops, a lot of troops. And, you know, he has a choice of either getting other people to help him, or he can mobilize. And he doesn’t want to mobilize, because then the people in Russia will begin to understand the extent of his losses, of their losses,” Austin said during a joint news conference at the Pentagon.

More than a half-million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale illegal invasion on February 24, 2022, U.S. officials say. Russia, they say, is now turning to pariah state North Korea to bolster its forces.

“Kim Jong Un didn’t hesitate to sell out his young people and troops as cannon fodder mercenaries,” Kim said. “I believe such activities are a war crime that is not only anti-humanitarian but also anti-peaceful.”

Western nations have expressed concerns about what Kim Jong Un’s regime will get in return from Moscow for its troops. North Korea is under international sanctions for its illicit nuclear ballistic missile programs.

The South Korean defense minister said it was likely that North Korea would seek nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology in exchange for the troops, escalating security threats on the peninsula and across the globe.

UN Security Council meeting

At the United Nations, Ukraine — with the support of the United States, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Slovenia and Malta — requested the Security Council meet to discuss the development.

Russia’s envoy dismissed the meeting, saying it was convened to tarnish Moscow with more lies and disinformation, adding it was “bare-faced lies” that North Korean soldiers are in Russia.

Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia’s comments appeared to contradict Putin, who last week did not deny that North Korean troops were currently in Russia, saying it was up to Moscow to decide how to deploy them as part of a mutual defense security pact that he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Nebenzia went on to claim that the Western nations were making accusations about North Korean troops assisting Moscow to lure South Korea into providing Ukraine with arms.

“We can see the Western spectacle in the Security Council today pursuing another goal. The Zelenskyy regime and collaborators for two years have been trying to compel the Republic of Korea [South Korea] to more actively cooperate with the Kyiv regime, and to have them provide and supply the much-needed lethal weapons. And here, the anti-Pyongyang frenzied rhetoric is very convenient for Washington, London and Brussels, because their own supply is something that the Kyiv regime has drained,” Nebenzia said. “We do hope that our South Korean colleagues will be wise enough not to fall for this trick.”

Since the war started, Seoul has joined U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow and sent both humanitarian and financial support to Kyiv but has not sent weapons, in line with its policy of not arming countries actively engaged in conflicts. On Tuesday, Seoul said it could consider sending weapons to Ukraine in response to the North dispatching troops to Russia.

Troop estimates

Ukraine’s ambassador said as many as 12,000 North Korean troops are being trained at five training grounds in Russia’s eastern military district.

“This contingent includes at least 500 officers of the DPRK army, with at least three generals from the general staff,” Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s full name. “Subsequently, it is planned to form at least five units or formations from DPRK military personnel, consisting of 2,000 to 3,000 servicemen each.”

The troops’ identities are expected to be concealed, Kyslytsya said, and they will be provided with Russian military uniforms and weapons and identity papers. They are likely to be integrated into units with ethnic minorities from the Asian part of Russia, he said.

“According to available information, between October 23 and 28, at least seven aircraft carrying military personnel of up to 2,100 soldiers flew from the Eastern Military District to Russia’s border with Ukraine,” Kyslytsya said, adding that they are expected to begin directly participating in combat operations against Ukrainian troops in November.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that a “small number” of North Korean troops have deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where they are likely to be used in combat against Ukrainian troops. Kyslytsya told the Security Council that they number about 400.

Pyongyang and Moscow are in close contact and are entitled to develop bilateral relations in many fields, said North Korea’s envoy, citing their strategic partnership treaty.

“If Russia’s sovereignty and security interests are exposed to and threatened by continued dangerous attempts of the United States and the West, and if it is judged that we should respond to them with something, we will make a necessary decision,” Ambassador Kim Song told the council.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.
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