berlin — The NATO air base in the German town of Geilenkirchen has raised its security level “based on intelligence information indicating a potential threat,” it said late Thursday.

“All non-mission essential staff have been sent home as a precautionary measure,” the base said in a statement on the social media platform X, without giving details. “The safety of our staff is our top priority. Operations continue as planned.”

A spokesperson for the base in Geilenkirchen said the threat level had been raised to Charlie, the second highest of four states of alert, which is defined as “an incident (that) has occurred or intelligence has been received indicating that some form of terrorist action against NATO organizations or personnel is highly likely.”

It was the second time the base housing NATO’s fleet of AWACS surveillance planes raised the security level after an incident last week when a military base in nearby Cologne was temporarily sealed off as authorities investigated possible sabotage of the water supply.

The same day, the base in Geilenkirchen also reported an attempted trespassing incident that prompted a full sweep of the premises.

With regard to the suspected sabotage at the base in Cologne, the German military later gave the all-clear, saying test results had shown that the tap water was not contaminated.

NATO has warned in the past of a campaign of hostile activities staged by Russia, including acts of sabotage and cyberattacks. Russia has regularly accused NATO of threatening its security.

In June, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the Western military alliance saw a pattern evolving and that recent attacks were a result of Russian intelligence becoming more active.

Several incidents on NATO territory have been treated as suspicious by analysts in recent years, among them the severance of a vital undersea cable connecting Svalbard to mainland Norway in 2022.
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COPENHAGEN, denmark — A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday, the meteorological office said, spraying red-hot lava and smoke in its sixth outbreak since December.

“An eruption has begun. Work is under way to find out the location of the recordings,” the Icelandic Met Office, which is tasked with monitoring volcanoes, said in a statement.

The total length of the fissure was about 3.9 kilometers (2.42 miles) and had extended by 1.5 kilometers (.93 mile) in about 40 minutes, it said.

Livestreams from the volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula showed glowing hot lava shooting from the ground.

Studies had shown magma accumulating underground, prompting warnings of new volcanic activity in the area just south of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.

The most recent eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula, home to 30,000 people or nearly 8% of the country’s total population, ended on June 22 after spewing fountains of molten rock for 24 days.

The eruptions show the challenge faced by the island nation of nearly 400,000 people as scientists warn that the Reykjanes peninsula could face repeated outbreaks for decades or even centuries.

Since 2021, there have been nine eruptions on the peninsula, following the reactivation of geological systems that had been dormant for 800 years.

In response, authorities have constructed barriers to redirect lava flows away from critical infrastructure, including the Svartsengi power plant, the Blue Lagoon outdoor spa and the town of Grindavik.

Flights were unaffected, Reykjavik’s Keflavik Airport said on its web page, but the nearby Blue Lagoon luxury geothermal spa and hotel said it had shut down and evacuated its guests.

Volcanic outbreaks in the Reykjanes peninsula are so-called fissure eruptions, which do not usually disrupt air traffic as they do not cause large explosions or significant dispersal of ash into the stratosphere.

Iceland, which is roughly the size of the U.S. state of Kentucky, boasts more than 30 active volcanoes, making the north European island a prime destination for volcano tourism.
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brussels — Talks on forming a Belgian coalition government were thrown into turmoil Thursday when the chief negotiator handed his resignation to King Philippe, threatening further political limbo for the country two months after elections. 

With its linguistic divide between French and Dutch and a highly complex political system, Belgium has a record of painfully protracted coalition discussions, reaching 541 days back in 2010-11.  

Five groups had agreed in mid-July to formal coalition talks led by Flemish conservative Bart De Wever, in the wake of June legislative polls that boosted right-leaning parties. 

Usually, the person forming the coalition goes on to become prime minister. 

But De Wever, the mayor of Antwerp and head of the N-VA party that holds sway over the Dutch-speaking Flanders region, informed the king during a meeting late Thursday that the talks had fallen apart, largely over taxation. 

A palace statement said the king had accepted De Wever’s resignation and would pursue negotiations with the five party leaders himself starting Friday “with a view to forming a government.” 

Alongside the N-VA, the other parties involved are the Reformist Movement and Les Engages (The Committed Ones) in French-speaking Wallonia, and the Christian-Democrats and the leftist Vooruit (Onward, formerly the Socialist Party) in Flanders. 

Together, the five hold an 81-seat majority in Belgium’s 150-seat parliament. 

The difficult talks finally hit a wall after the Reformist Movement apparently rejected a capital gains tax proposed by De Wever as a way to plug the country’s budget deficit — 4.4% of gross domestic product in 2023 — while winning over the left-wing Vooruit. 

In a statement, the N-VA acknowledged the failure to win agreement on a budgetary framework for the new coalition including labor market, pension and tax reforms. 

“Bart De Wever remains convinced of the need for a government of recovery and reforms in order to protect Flemish prosperity and avoid European sanctions over the excesses of the federal budget,” it said. 

Belgium is one of seven European Union countries facing disciplinary action for running a deficit above 3% of GDP, in violation of the bloc’s fiscal rules. 

The country’s June 9 elections, conducted the same day as a European Parliament vote across the EU, saw the right and center-right triumphant. 

The result was the loss of a parliamentary majority for the outgoing government of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, a Flemish liberal who fronted a seven-party coalition formed after an arduous 493 days back in 2019. 

With center-right parties in prime positions across the country, analysts had predicted that finding a deal could take less time than usual, but still at least six months. 

For the time being, De Croo remains as a caretaker leader until his successor is named.
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The International Atomic Energy Agency said on August 12 that its representatives inspected a damaged cooling tower at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in Ukraine.  But the question remains: Who did the damage? Mariia Prus has the story.
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Ukrainians are reacting with skepticism to the latest claims that Ukraine may be linked to the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. The allegations are also raising concerns about Ukraine’s relations with Western allies. Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. Videographers: Serhii Rozov, Vladyslav Smilianets
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kyiv, ukraine — Ukraine said Wednesday that it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with U.S.-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and had gained ground in eastern Ukraine. 

Kyiv has announced a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into the Kursk region on August 6. Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by 2½ years of fighting. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military was responding to the Russian push by strengthening its forces around Pokrovsk, the focus of Russian advances in eastern Ukraine. 

Speaking in one of his regular televised addresses, he also urged Kyiv’s allies to honor commitments to send munitions for use by the Ukrainian armed forces. 

“This is fundamental for defense,” he said. 

Ukraine has closely guarded its overarching aims in the Kursk region but said it had carved out a buffer zone from an area Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes. 

A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in the Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym River as it seeks to hold the captured land. 

“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? Operators … accurately destroy them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on the Telegram messenger. 

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said Kyiv has made bigger territorial gains in the Kursk region than Moscow has made in Ukraine this year. Russia has called the incursion an escalation. 

Ukraine smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on August 6 in an attempt to force Moscow to divert troops from the rest of the front, though Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days. 

Russia took the settlement of Zhelanne, which lies less than 20 km to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defense ministry.  

Both sides reported being targeted by major drone attacks. Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia; Moscow said its air defenses destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region. 

Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defense ministry’s military-political department, said Russia had stalled the Ukrainian incursion. 

“We halted them and started pushing them back,” Alaudinov told Rossiya state television. He said Ukrainian forces were regrouping and could soon launch a new attack, though he gave no further details. 

Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has been halted. Ukraine has kept touting gains, saying it has captured 92 settlements over an area of more than 1,250 square km. 

The Ukrainian military, which has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022, has gotten a much needed morale boost from the incursion. 

Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s national defense committee, said Russia’s priority remained to capture the Donetsk region despite the incursion and that it was not pulling forces from near Pokrovsk to act as reinforcements.  

Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in Kyiv, said attacks on bridges and pontoons would help Ukraine build a defensive line along the river. 

“This is an opportunity to make it more stable, systemic, ready to repel Russian attacks,” he said in remarks on national television.  

Reuters confirmed that all of the strike locations of pontoon bridges shown in the video were on or near the Seym River in the Kursk region.  

The video also showed drone strikes on military trucks and other locations described as a Russian munitions warehouse and an electronic warfare complex in the region. Other locations or the date when the video was filmed could not be independently verified. 

Separately, Reuters was able to verify that at least one pontoon crossing was apparently destroyed.  

The Ukrainian statement said U.S.-manufactured HIMARS rocket systems had been used as part of operations to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, Kyiv’s first official statement acknowledging its use of the weapon during its incursion. 

Washington has not commented directly on the use of U.S.-made weapons in the Kursk region, while saying U.S. policies have not changed and Ukraine was defending itself from Russia’s ongoing all-out invasion. 

While allies have barred Ukraine from conducting long-range strikes with Western weapons inside Russia, they have allowed Kyiv to use them to hit border areas since Russia’s new offensive on Kharkiv region this spring.
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WASHINGTON — A new Ukrainian law aimed at removing the influence of the pro-Moscow Russian Orthodox Church enjoys broad popular support in Ukraine but is being viewed with reservations by international advocates for religious freedom.

Passed on Tuesday by Ukraine’s parliament, the law banning religious organizations that maintain ties to Moscow follows years of controversy over ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The law empowers a government office, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, to scrutinize religious organizations for possible connections with Russia. If connections are found, the SSU will first issue a prescription to eliminate the violations. If the ties remain, the office will go to court to stop the religious organization’s activities.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to sign the law. He congratulated lawmakers for passing the legislation “regarding our spiritual independence,” saying that they will “continue strengthening Ukraine and our society.”

The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which represents more than 90% of Ukrainian religious communities, welcomed the law’s adoption.

“We categorically condemn activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become an accomplice to the Russian invaders’ bloody crimes against humanity, which sanctifies weapons of mass destruction and openly declares the need to destroy Ukrainian statehood, culture, identity, and, more recently, Ukrainians themselves,” it said in a statement.

The Russian Orthodox Church operates only in Russia-occupied parts of Ukraine and in some monasteries directly subordinated to it. So, the ban will mostly apply to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which, according to the Ukrainian authorities, still maintains its ties to the ROC. After the Russian invasion in 2022, the UOC claimed that it broke those ties.

According to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted in May, 83% of Ukrainian citizens believe that the state should intervene in the activities of the UOC; 63% of respondents want it to be banned.

Religious freedom critics

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent agency responsible for reviewing possible violations of religious freedom abroad and making policy recommendations to the U.S. administration and Congress, has expressed concern about the law’s impact on Ukraine’s regular faithful.

“The most recent version of the law does not fully address prior concerns about the law’s potential to impose collective punishments on entire religious communities. It also introduced new problematic aspects that could compromise the protection of freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression,” says a statement that USCIRF Chair Stephen Schneck sent to VOA.

The commission said it will monitor the law’s implementation after it goes into effect and urged Ukrainian authorities “to ensure that the legislation complies with Ukraine’s commitments under international law.”

Mónika Palotai, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute, called the legislation “divisive.”

“It divides people. It divides the international community. There will be questions about what will happen to those people who belong to this church. What choices do they have?”

Viktor Yelensky, head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, told VOA that Ukraine will adhere to its laws and international obligations.

“Ukraine is not North Korea,” Yelensky said. “The procedure established by this law is quite democratic. The organization in question can challenge our demands in court at various stages. Only the court can stop the activities of the structures of the UOC if it does not want to sever ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Most Ukrainian Orthodox Christians belong to parishes with no affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.

After centuries in which the Russian Orthodox Church was the predominant Christian denomination in Ukraine, represented by the Ukrainian Exarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church established itself as a separate entity in 1990 while maintaining relations with the Russian church.

In May 2022, its leaders announced their complete independence from the Moscow-based church, which has been a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy of conquering Ukraine.

According to a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, only 4% of Ukraine’s population identifies with the UOC. UOC claims that the true number is higher.

There is another Orthodox Christian church in the country — the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was granted independence by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2019. Since then, many parishes and individuals have switched their affiliation from UOC to OCU, and the process continues.

The UOC spokesperson, Metropolitan Kliment, insisted that the new law will deny Ukrainian citizens and UOC believers the freedom of conscience and religious beliefs. He said that lawmakers ignored appeals from Ukrainian soldiers faithful to this church and targeted the UOC for ties with Moscow that do not exist.

“There are no Moscow churches in Ukraine. Our Church has been operating in Ukraine since time immemorial, and its priests and millions of believers are conscious citizens of Ukraine, not imported from abroad. We did not elect this Verkhovna Rada [parliament] so that it would take away our churches during the war, as the Russians do in the occupied territories,” he wrote to VOA.

In March 2024, the Moscow Patriarchate officially declared the war in Ukraine “holy.” The “World Russian People’s Council” issued a decree which said that “the entire territory of modern Ukraine should fall under the exclusive influence of Russia.”

The UOC, in its statement published the next day categorically rejected and condemned that declaration: “Instead of providing ideological support and justification for Russia’s military aggression and intervention in Ukraine, we believe that the Orthodox Church in Russia should have raised her voice against this war of aggression.”

However, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian authorities have opened criminal cases against more than 100 clergy members of the UOC for such crimes as treason, collaborationism, aiding and abetting the aggressor country and the sale of firearms.

Ukrainian MP Mykyta Poturaiev, the chairman of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, which worked on this legislation, told VOA that the law doesn’t ban the UOC. Its latest version, adopted this week, established an extended grace period of nine months for Ukrainian organizations that still have ties with Russia to sever them and decide on their future.

“They can establish a dialogue with Istanbul, with the Patriarch of Constantinople, or they can establish a dialogue with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” he said.

He insisted that the law doesn’t target religious customs or beliefs but only collaboration with the enemy. “It would be strange if we allowed the FSB or another Russian state body to operate in Ukraine now because they are enemies,” he said.

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian theologian and professor at University College Stockholm, says the challenge posed by the Russian Orthodox Church is not unique to Ukraine but is more urgent there than elsewhere.

“All European countries with a sizeable presence of the Moscow Patriarchate face the same dilemma: how to neutralize its influence without violating human rights.”

He said no single country, including Ukraine, has come up with an ideal solution.

“Nevertheless, the adopted law features mechanisms that help contain the damaging Russian influence without damaging the freedom of religion in the country,” he told VOA. 
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washington — A journalist with VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Wednesday marked 1,000 days in jail in Belarus on charges that he and his employer reject as politically motivated.

Andrey Kuznechyk, with RFE/RL’s Belarusian Service — known locally as Radio Svaboda — has been jailed in Belarus since his arrest on November 25, 2021.

He was initially sentenced to 10 days in jail on hooliganism charges, which he rejected. When Kuznechyk was due to be released, authorities kept him in prison and added an additional charge of creating an extremist group.

In a trial that lasted only one day, a regional court found Kuznechyk guilty in June 2022 and sentenced him to six years in prison.

“Belarus’ treatment of Andrey Kuznechyk is reprehensible,” RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said in a post on the social media platform X.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent organization of RFE/RL and VOA, also called for Belarus to release Kuznechyk.

“Journalism is not a crime, yet journalists around the world continue to be persecuted just for reporting the truth,” USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett told VOA in a statement. “Today sickeningly marks the 1,000th day Andrey Kuznechyk has been wrongly detained in Belarus. Every moment he spends in this hard-labor camp is one too many.”

Kuznechyk is one of several journalists and activists who have been jailed in Belarus since 2020, when President Aleksander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, claimed yet another victory in a contested presidential election. Massive protests against the disputed election were met with a severe government crackdown.

There are more than 1,400 political prisoners still held in Belarus, according to the rights group Viasna, and independent news outlets have been forced to shutter or retreat into exile. At the end of 2023, Belarus ranked third worst in the world in terms of journalist jailings, with 28 behind bars, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kuznechyk is one of two RFE/RL journalists currently jailed in Belarus.

The second is Ihar Losik, who has been detained since June 2020, before the contested election took place. He was eventually tried behind closed doors on charges including “organization of mass riots” and “incitement of hatred” and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The charges against him are also widely viewed as bogus.

“Andrey Kuznechyk and Ihar Losik have been locked away for years, with callous disregard by Belarus,” Capus said on X.

Kuznechyk and Losik — as well as opposition leader Viktar Babaryka — are being held at Correctional Colony No. 1, which is considered one of the harshest prisons in Belarus.

The third RFE/RL journalist who is imprisoned is Vladyslav Yesypenko, who has been jailed in Russian-occupied Crimea since March 2021. He was charged with “possession and transport of explosives,” which he denies, and sentenced in a closed-door trial to six years in prison.

“Their so-called crimes?” Capus said, referring to the three jailed journalists. “Sharing journalistic words of truth.” RFE/RL calls for their immediate release, he added.

American RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was among the outlet’s wrongly jailed journalists until early August, when she was released from Russia as part of a historic prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

The Washington embassy of Belarus told VOA it had no comment for this story. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment. Russia’s Washington embassy also did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

 
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