STOCKHOLM — An exiled Iranian opposition group said Monday that its offices in Stockholm were firebombed overnight, with police saying they had opened an investigation into arson. 

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political wing of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), the building had been hit “with several Molotov cocktails” in what the group dubbed a “terrorist attack.” 

“Several windows of the building were shattered, and the outer wall caught fire,” the NCRI said in a statement. 

It said residents put out the fire and “no one was injured.” 

Police said in a statement they had opened an investigation into arson, but police spokeswoman Anna Westberg told AFP she could not comment on details about how the fire was started. 

“We are still gathering information, and a technical examination will be done during the day,” Westberg said, adding that no arrests had been made. 

In its statement, the NCRI accused agents of Iran’s intelligence service of carrying out the attack. 

The MEK backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution that ousted the shah but swiftly went into opposition and was blamed for a series of deadly attacks that rocked Iran in the early 1980s. 

The MEK has been exiled from Iran since then. It is far from having universal support among the Iranian diaspora but is backed by several high-profile former U.S. and European officials. 
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washington — The U.S. Justice Department announced September 4 that two Russian nationals, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, had been charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the Southern District of New York.

“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”

That same day, the Justice Department announced the seizure of 32 internet domains used in the Russian government-directed “Doppelganger” foreign malign influence campaign, which it said violated U.S. money-laundering and criminal trademark laws.

Experts who study disinformation say disrupting the paid-influencer campaign is an important step in efforts to counter the Kremlin’s broader disinformation strategy of spreading propaganda that undermines support for Ukraine and stokes American political divisions.

Disrupting the Doppelganger campaign

“Persistent efforts to impersonate authoritative news websites and promote their content at scale in a coordinated manner can have a tangible impact, casting propaganda narratives far and wide consistently,” wrote Roman Osadchuk and Eto Buziashvili, researchers at the Disinformation Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

According to an FBI affidavit, Russia’s “Doppelganger” campaign created domains impersonating legitimate media sites, produced fake social media profiles and deployed “influencers” worldwide.

According to the Atlantic Council researchers, the primary method used by those involved in “Doppelganger” is to post, on X and other social media platforms, links to fake news sites in replies to posts by politicians, celebrities, influencers and others with large audiences.

Osadchuk told VOA that while the FBI’s measures are unlikely to stop Russian influence activities, they will make them more costly, noting those involved in the Russian influence campaign will be forced “to rewrite scripts, change the operation’s infrastructure, etc.”

At the same time, according to Osadchuk, the U.S. government’s moves against those involved in the influence campaign, which were widely covered in the U.S. and international media, will educate a broader audience.

“Researchers of the Russian disinformation have known about the Doppelganger campaign for some time,” he said. “Now, Americans and people in other countries have learned about it and maybe will become more aware that not all information they consume is coming from legitimate sources and hopefully will be more attentive to the domain names and other signs that might indicate that the page they are reading is not The Washington Post or Fox News but a fake created by Kremlin-linked entities.”

Influencers will be more aware

In a statement it released after indicting the two RT employees, the Justice Department said that “over at least the past year, RT and its employees, including Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company [U.S. Company-1],” and that “U.S. Company-1″ had “published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.”

While the Justice Department did not specifically identify “U.S. Company-1,” it is thought to refer to Tenet Media, a Tennessee company co-founded by entrepreneur Lauren Chen, who recruited six popular U.S. influencers with a large following.

YouTube subsequently took down Tenet Media’s channel on the platform, along with four other channels that YouTube said were operated by Chen.

Bret Schafer, a disinformation researcher at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a political advocacy group set up under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank, told VOA that by financing the U.S. content creation company, Russia was able to create an information channel with a large audience, and to use it for such messages as blaming the U.S. and Ukraine for the March terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.

Shutting down that Russian information channel sent a powerful message to influencers and content creators to do “due diligence about people funding their work and to try to figure out who’s behind these companies and their motives,” Schafer added.

Ben Dubow, a disinformation researcher affiliated with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research group, believes that influencers contracted by Tenet Media are unlikely to lose their existing followers, but that they might have difficulty attracting new ones.

“Hopefully, people who might otherwise explore those influencers will recognize their names and understand them as untrustworthy now,” he told VOA.

The Justice Department’s indictment quotes RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonian, as saying in an interview on Russian television that RT built “an enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects,” to influence Western audiences.

The FBI affidavit also revealed that one of the sanctioned Russian companies had a list of 2,800 people active on social media in the U.S. and 80 other countries, including “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors and comedians,” whom the company refers to as “influencers.”

Concrete steps and good timing

Several experts commended the U.S. government for taking concrete steps.

“They are sanctioning individuals and disrupting the supply chain of influence available to these threat actors,” noted Olga Belogolova, director of the Emerging Technologies Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“Punitive measures absolutely have to be part of the package,” said Jakub Kalenský, a senior analyst at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. “Otherwise, the aggressors have a free hand to continue their aggression unopposed. And in order to identify those who deserve to be punished, a proper investigation from the authorities is necessary.”

Experts also said that the Justice Department’s actions were taken early enough to prevent influence in the November U.S. elections and to signal to Russia and other foreign actors that the U.S. government is monitoring their actions and will respond aggressively.

“Of course, that was what the Obama administration was concerned about in 2016 and led to them not being as transparent as they probably should have been with the American public about what they knew about Russian interference,” Schafer said.

In announcing their actions against the Russian disinformation campaign, U.S. government representatives did not mention which political party or candidate they thought that the Russians were trying to assist.

“I know that the U.S. government, including agencies and the Foreign Malign Influence Center at ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], have been doing a lot of thinking over the last few years about how to strategically communicate these actions without unintentionally amplifying the very campaigns they are trying to thwart or politicizing the topic. And I think they’ve actually done a good job of striking that balance, at least from what I’ve seen thus far,” Belogolova said.

Ihor Solovey, who heads the Ukrainian government’s Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security, welcomed the U.S. government’s actions but told VOA that more steps are needed to thwart Russian activities on social media.

“X, TikTok or even more so the Russian Telegram – they are unlikely to want to spend on the fight against bots, troll farms or planned disinformation,” he said, adding that only pressure by a state, or even a coalition of states, will be able to force these social media platforms to block intruders and malicious content.

Andrei Dziarkach of VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.
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London — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived late Monday in London at the start of a week of diplomacy with the new U.K. government expected to touch on Ukraine and the Middle East. 

Blinken’s visit comes ahead of a trip to Washington on Friday by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his second meeting at the White House since his Labour Party won July elections, sweeping out the Conservatives after 14 years. 

Blinken — the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit London since Labour’s triumph — is expected to meet Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy during his talks Tuesday. 

The top U.S. diplomat will discuss Asia, the Middle East and “our collective efforts to support Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement announcing Blinken’s trip. 

The United States and Britain cooperate in lockstep on most global issues, and Starmer has made clear that he will maintain the U.K. role as one of the most assertive defenders of Ukraine as it pushes back against the Russian invasion. 

Former human rights lawyer Starmer, however, has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office, with his government announcing a suspension of some arms shipments, citing the risk that they could be used to violate humanitarian law. 

The Labour government has also dropped its Conservative predecessor’s plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The United States is not a member of the ICC and has opposed the bid to target Netanyahu, arguing that Israel has its own systems for accountability. 

But the United States, Israel’s primary weapons supplier, did not criticize the U.K. arms decision, saying that Britain had its own process to make assessments. 
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nicosia, cyprus — Cyprus and the United States have signed a defense cooperation framework agreement that outlines ways the two countries can enhance their response to regional humanitarian crises and security concerns, including those arising from climate change.

Cyprus Defense Minister Vassilis Palmas and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander hailed the agreement Monday as another milestone in burgeoning Cypriot-U.S. ties in recent years that saw the lifting in 2022 of a decades-old U.S. arms embargo imposed on the east Mediterranean island nation.

“The Republic of Cyprus is a strong partner to the United States, in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, and plays a pivotal role at the nexus of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” Wallander said after talks with Palmas.

The U.S. official praised Cyprus for acting as a haven for American civilians evacuated from Sudan and Israel last year and for its key role in setting up a maritime corridor to Gaza through which more than 20 million pounds of humanitarian aid has been shipped to the Palestinian territory.

“It is evident that Cyprus is aligned with the West,” Wallander said.

Palmas said Cyprus would continue building toward “closer, stronger and beneficial bilateral defense cooperation with the United States.”

According to a joint statement, the agreement also foresees working together on dealing with “malicious actions” and bolstering ways for the Cypriot military to operate more smoothly with U.S. forces.

 
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FRANKFURT, Germany — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agree that Russia should be included in a future peace conference aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine. He called for stepped up efforts to solve the conflict.

A previous peace conference June 15-16 in Switzerland ended with 78 countries expressing support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” but otherwise left the path forward unclear. Russia did not participate.

“I believe that now is the moment when we must discuss how we get out of this war situation faster than the current impression is,” Scholz said in an interview with Germany’s ZDF public television aired Sunday.

“There will certainly be a further peace conference, and the president and I agree that it must be one with Russia present,” Scholz said.

Scholz is facing more political discontent at home over his government’s support including money and weapons for Ukraine after populist parties that oppose arming Ukraine did well in state elections Sept. 1 at the expense of parties in his three-party governing coalition. Some members of his Social Democratic Party have also called for more emphasis on diplomacy toward Russia.

Zelenskyy has presented a 10-point peace formula that calls for the expulsion of all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory and accountability for war crimes.
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Moscow — Russia said on Sunday its forces had taken full control of a town in eastern Ukraine as Moscow’s forces advance on the strategically important city of Pokrovsk and seek to pierce the Ukrainian defensive front lines.

Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine since invading in February 2022, are advancing in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to take the whole of the Donbas, which is about half the size of the U.S. state of Ohio.

Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had taken the town of Novohrodivka, which lies 12 kilometers from Pokrovsk, an important rail and road hub for Ukrainian forces in the area. The town had a population of 14,000 before the war.

Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, published maps showing Russian forces attacking beyond Novohrodivka in at least two places less than 7 kilometers from Pokrovsk.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military, in a report issued on Sunday evening, gave details of fighting throughout the Pokrovsk sector, including Novohrodivka.

It said 29 attempted Russian advances had been repelled, with seven skirmishes continuing. “Our troops are taking measures to maintain designated positions,” it said.

But an interview with a Ukrainian officer broadcast last week by U.S.-funded Radio Liberty said Ukrainian forces had abandoned Novohrodivka on grounds that the positions there were not favorable for defending it.

Popular Ukrainian war blog DeepState said Russian forces had captured the village of Nevelske, to the southeast.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield reports from either side due to restrictions on reporting in the war.

President Vladimir Putin said last week that a Ukrainian incursion into the Russian region of Kursk had failed to slow Russia’s own advance in eastern Ukraine and had weakened Kyiv’s defenses along the front line in a boost to Moscow.

Ukraine’s top military commander said on Thursday that Kyiv’s incursion into the Kursk region was working. Russian forces, he said, had made no progress in their advance on Pokrovsk for the previous six days.

He said that one of the objectives of the Kursk incursion was to divert Russian forces from other areas, primarily Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia had diverted large numbers to Kursk but was also strengthening the Pokrovsk front, he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the Kursk operation was also to prevent Russian forces from crossing the border in the opposite direction.

Russia currently controls about 80% of the Donbas. Given the speed of recent Russian advances in the east, some Russian war bloggers have raised concern about the army overreaching itself.

Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine more than two and a half years ago in what he calls a special military operation. Ukraine and its Western backers have vowed to defeat Russian forces and expel all Russian troops.
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Seoul, South Korea — Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the occasion of North Korea’s founding anniversary, state media KCNA said on Monday.

“I am sure that the comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and the DPRK will be strengthened in a planned way thanks to our joint efforts,” Putin said, according to KCNA.

DPRK is short for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

Xi called for deeper strategic communication and cooperation with North Korea in his message, KCNA said.

Last year, Kim marked the country’s founding day on Sept. 9 with a parade of paramilitary groups and diplomatic exchanges in which he vowed to deepen ties with China and Russia.
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Athens — Greece plans to impose a 20-euro ($22) levy on cruise ship visitors to the islands of Santorini and Mykonos during the peak summer season, in a bid to avert overtourism, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Sunday. 

Greece relies heavily on tourism, the main driver of the country’s economy which is still recovering from a decadelong crisis that wiped out a fourth of its output. 

But some of its most popular destinations, including Santorini, an idyllic island of quaint villages and pristine beaches with 20,000 permanent residents, risk being ruined by mass tourism. 

Speaking at a news conference a day after outlining his main economic policies for 2025, Mitsotakis clarified that excessive tourism was only a problem in a few destinations. 

“Greece does not have a structural overtourism problem… Some of its destinations have a significant issue during certain weeks or months of the year, which we need to deal with,” he said. 

“Cruise shipping has burdened Santorini and Mykonos, and this is why we are proceeding with interventions,” he added, announcing the levy. 

Greek tourism revenues stood at about 20 billion euros ($22 billion) in 2023 on the back of nearly 31 million tourist arrivals. 

In Santorini, protesters have called for curbs on tourism, as in other popular holiday destinations in Europe, including Venice and Barcelona. 

Part of the revenues from the cruise shipping tax will be returned to local communities to be invested in infrastructure, Mitsotakis said. 

The government also plans to regulate the number of cruise ships that arrive simultaneously at certain destinations, while rules to protect the environment and tackle water shortages must also be imposed on islands, he said. 

Greece also wants to increase a tax on short-term rentals and ban new licenses for such rentals in central Athens to increase the housing stock for permanent residents, Mitsotakis said Saturday. 

The government will provide more details on some of the measures Monday.
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Saint-Denis, France — This time, it really is au revoir.

A summer sporting bonanza which started under pouring rain on July 26 with a remarkable opening ceremony on the Seine River was ending Sunday with the Paralympics closing at a rain-soaked Stade de France.

It lowers the curtain on successful back-to-back events that captivated fans and raised the bar high for others to follow. Good luck Los Angeles in 2028.

As the stadium was lit up in the blue, white and red colors of the French national flag, a trumpet player played the national anthem “La Marseillaise” and Paralympic flagbearers then made their way into the stadium carrying national flags to the sound of “Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis.

Later Sunday, famed French electronic music composer Jean-Michel Jarre was to close out the ceremony which was again led by artistic director Thomas Jolly.

His intention this time was to turn the stadium into a giant open-air dance party. More than 20 DJs, including Etienne de Crecy, Martin Solveig and Kavinsky, were to perform in a tribute to French electro music to the theme “Journey of the Wave.”

Or the wave goodbye from the 64,000 fans, and the city itself, to the more than 4,000 Paralympic athletes.

Summer vibes kept going

After the successful Olympics showcased the vibrancy of fans from around the world and the beauty of the city’s iconic venues, there were doubts that the energy would keep going into the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympics.

Those doubts were dispelled, with athletes enjoying strong support. Not all venues were sold out, but this was also because the summer holiday period was ending and children were returning to school.

A surge of enthusiasm saw 2.4 million tickets of the 2.8 million tickets sold — second only to the 2.7 million sold at the 2012 London Games — and this was some feat considering that by late June only 1 million had been sold.

Large swathes of Parisians vacated — some say fled — the city amid concerns over traffic chaos, political upheaval, social tensions and growing fears over security.

But locals who stayed or French fans coming in from other towns and cities gave their athletes huge support over both Games.

French success on and off the track

In the Olympics, France tallied 16 golds among its 64 medals to finish fifth overall in the medal count, and it won 75 medals overall in the Paralympics.

The Games themselves were a success for French President Emmanuel Macron. Transport ran well, there were very few organizational glitches and security issues were appeased, with police even engaging in friendly banter or posing for photos with fans — a rarity in France.

For how long the feel-good factor stays remains to be seen.

An early indication came on Saturday, when thousands took to the streets to protest the president’s appointment of a conservative new prime minister.

There were some boos for Macron when he was introduced at the start of the ceremony.

Plus ça change, as the French saying goes.
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