ROME — Human rights groups and some analysts call Italy’s opening this week of migrant processing centers in Albania controversial and illegal. The Italian government is now appealing a court ruling against its flagship project to move migrant facilities offshore.

Italy’s right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, hailed her country’s deal — signed in November 2023 but enacted this week — with neighboring Albania to process migrant asylum claims there as “courageous,” in remarks this week to Parliament.

Under the five-year deal, up to 3,000 migrants rescued by the Italian coast guard in international waters each month will be transferred to Albania. An initial screening occurs on the ships before the migrants are sent to Albania for further screening.

“Italy has set a good example by signing the Italy-Albania protocol to process a final phase on Albanian territory but under Italian and European jurisdiction,” Meloni said.

Meloni’s government argues that diverting asylum seekers to migrant centers it set up under the agreement in Albania will help fight human trafficking and permit those with a genuine right entry to the European Union.

A special immigration court in Rome ruled on Friday that it was unlawful for the government to send this first batch of 12 Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants to Albania for processing. The court said they had to be returned to Italy because their countries of origin could not be considered safe if they were repatriated.

Kelly Petillo of the European Council on Foreign Relations told VOA there was political dissension over the controversial issue.

“There is a different push-and-pull factor in domestic legislation, and I expect the same in other countries that will look to implement these agreements,” Petillo said. “After all the political and financial investment that went into implementing this scheme, the result is that the migrants have been returned. So, I have major doubts that the implementation will be successful in any way.

“All these countries are watching and, so far, they cannot see good results.”

Petillo also referred to Britain backing away from its controversial and expensive plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as ultimately unworkable. Italy’s center-left opposition quickly called for an end to the Albania plan, saying the court ruling proves its illegality.

Meloni’s government is undaunted, though, and plans to appeal. She called the court decision “prejudiced,” suggesting she would draft new rules to rectify the issue.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier said the EU could “draw lessons” from Italy’s new migrant processing centers in Albania.

Meeting in Brussels Thursday, many EU leaders agreed to enact urgent and stricter laws to curb irregular migration and speed up migrant returns. They fear the extreme right in Europe is using the contentious migrant issue to gain political ground in elections and see outsourcing the problem as one solution.

However, activists and analysts question the traditional EU values and the legality of such mechanisms.

Elisa DePieri of Amnesty International told VOA that the Italy-Albania plan forces refugees and migrants to face longer sea journeys to Albania, where they face potentially prolonged detention and may experience an end to their right to seek asylum.

“We are very concerned that the whole system rests on automatic detention from the very beginning,” she said. “Automatic detention is arbitrary and unlawful under international law. The default position is for the respect of the right of liberty for the individual and any exception should be validated by a judge on the basis of an individual assessment.”

Davide Colombi, a researcher at the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies, speaking to Euronews, pointed to additional legal hurdles.

“This is extremely problematic,” he said. “The right to asylum is a fundamental right that cannot be suspended even in times of legally declared crisis. It is protected under EU law, under international law, which shows that this not a migration issue alone, but it is a broader rule-of-law issue.”
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Russia and Ukraine carried out a new exchange of prisoners of war on Friday, each side bringing home 95 prisoners in an agreement in which the United Arab Emirates acted as mediator.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, said the returning Russian service members were undergoing medical checks in Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies in the more than 2-1/2-year-old war.

Video posted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram account showed men, some wrapped in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag, getting off a bus well after dark and being embraced by loved ones.

A Russian military video showed smiling soldiers boarding buses.

“Every time Ukraine rescues its people from Russian captivity, we get closer to the day when freedom will be returned to all who are in Russian captivity,” Zelenskyy wrote.

The president said the freed prisoners had served on various fronts, including some who had defended the port city of Mariupol for nearly three months in 2022.

Ukrainian news reports said the returnees included Ukrainian journalist and rights advocate Maksym Butkevych, convicted by a Russian court of shooting at Russian forces.

The body coordinating the affairs of prisoners of war said 48 of the returnees had been handed sentences by the Russian judicial system.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, said the release was the 58th since the beginning of the war and brought to 3,767 the total number of prisoners returned home.

A private Russian group that says it looks after the interests of prisoners of war published a list of returnees and said most of them were captured in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged an incursion in August.

In his remarks, Zelenskyy again referred to soldiers in that operation who “replenish the exchange fund,” meaning the capture of Russian prisoners to be used as a bargaining chip in exchanges.

Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk, though Russia’s military says its forces have clawed back some of the captured territory.

A statement from the UAE’s Foreign Ministry, reported by state media, said it was the Gulf state’s ninth instance of mediation in the war. It described the exchange as “a reflection of the cooperative and friendly relations between the UAE and both countries.”

The last known prisoner swap — involving 103 prisoners from each side — took place in September. 
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paris — France’s prime minister said Friday that firefighters and other rescuers have been involved in about 2,300 operations, some of them lifesaving, in what appears to be the biggest flooding in 40 years in central France.

Michel Barnier visited French authorities’ crisis center in Paris and said there hadn’t been such violent rain in many people’s memory. Over 1,000 people were evacuated. Most of them were able to go home Friday.

Barnier also praised an alert system, used for the first time, that sent text messages urging people in the concerned areas to delay or cancel their planned trips and stay in a safe place.

French weather agency Meteo France said as much as 700 millimeters (27.5 inches) of rain fell in in 48 hours in some local areas in the regions of Ardeche and Lozere.

National railway operator SNCF halted regional trains between the cities of Lyon and Saint-Etienne on Thursday, saying the tracks were impassable. Local train services will remain disrupted for several days, it said.

The massive floods caused serious damage and power outages Friday in parts of France’s mountainous southeast region. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Several French news stations showed cars, cattle and traffic signs being swept away by the floods. The A47, a main highway near Lyon, was temporarily transformed into a giant stream of water and remained closed Friday.

Meteo France lifted its red alert for bad weather Friday morning but still warned of potential heavy rain and floods in southwestern France.

Some information for this story came from Reuters. 
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ISTANBUL — With a farewell song of “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, a Turkish radio station fell silent this week after nearly 30 years of broadcasts.

The final Acik Radyo broadcast on Wednesday came as a court upheld the Turkish media regulator’s order to revoke the Istanbul-based station’s license over the mention of “Armenian genocide” on air.

Following the court ruling on October 8, the Radio and Television Supreme Council, known as RTUK, informed Acik Radyo that it must stop broadcasting within five days.

The order to revoke the license silenced the independent radio station for the first time since it began terrestrial broadcasting in 1995.

“We are finishing now; thank you to all Acik Radyo listeners and supporters. Acik Radyo will remain open to all the sounds, colors and vibrations of the universe,” Omer Madra, the editor-in-chief, said on air before the last song played.

The license revocation is related to comments made on air by journalist Cengiz Aktar on April 24. Aktar said the day was “the 109th anniversary, the anniversary of the massacres of Armenians, that is, the deportations and massacres that took place in the Ottoman lands, the massacres that are termed genocide.”

“This year, the commemoration of the Armenian genocide was also banned, you know,” Aktar said.

In a statement to VOA’s Turkish Service, the RTUK said “the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘massacre’ were used for the 1915 Events, and the program moderator made no attempt to correct this.”

The term “1915 Events” is how Turkish officials usually refer to the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

April 24 is recognized as a commemoration day of the beginning of what many historians and countries, including the United States, Canada and France, recognize as the Armenian genocide.

Broadcasts cut

Turkey’s media regulator first imposed an administrative fine and five-day suspension on Acik Radyo in May over the guest’s statements.

RTUK said the broadcast violated the law by inciting public hatred and enmity by making distinctions “based on race, language, religion, gender, class, region and religious order.”

On July 3, the regulator moved to revoke the license, saying that Acik Radyo had failed to comply with the suspension.

In a statement, the radio station said that it had intended to comply and had paid the first installment of the administrative fine. It added that the failure to implement the suspension was a result of “technical inconvenience.”

An RTUK official told VOA that according to the law, if a media provider continues to broadcast after a suspension “the Supreme Council shall decide on revoking its broadcasting license.”

“As can be seen, the legislator did not grant the Supreme Board any discretion in this matter and made it mandatory to cancel the license in case the sanction is not applied,” the RTUK official told VOA.

Acik Radyo defended the guest’s statement as being in “the scope of freedom of expression.”

When Acik Radyo appealed the fine and suspension, a court in July ruled in the station’s favor.

But RTUK objected to the court ruling and, on October 8, the court ruled in favor of the regulator.

Umit Altas, Acik Radyo’s lawyer, called RTUK’s move “excessive intervention.”

“RTUK’s decision to revoke the license, which is the most severe penalty, is against all precedents. This has exceeded the proportionality criteria of both Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. License cancellation is the most severe decision. We think that it is not lawful to make such a decision,” Altas told VOA Turkish.

The station has appealed the most recent court decision, and its lawyer expects a verdict within a month.

Acik Radyo’s broadcast coordinator, Didem Gencturk, told VOA Turkish that the station is evaluating its options. She said that RTUK also requires internet broadcasters to obtain a license.

“We have the right to apply for different license forms as broadcasters. We hope to continue our broadcasts with one of these, even if not on a terrestrial [land-based] medium,” Gencturk said.

Supporters gather

On Wednesday evening, Acik Radyo’s listeners and supporters gathered in front of the outlet’s studios in Istanbul to show their solidarity.

Madra read a statement and called the license withdrawal “an attempt to silence the public voice.”

Madra added that the station is evaluating its options for continuing its broadcasts.

“There is no way that Acik Radyo will be silenced or be forgotten after the RTUK’s decision. Let me even say that we may be able to take [the license] back,” Madra told VOA Turkish.

Some of those who gathered outside the station had contributed to programming over the years.

“We are not giving in to despair. We will bring our broadcasts to our listeners and supporters as soon as possible,” said Yesim Burul, who produces “Sinefil,” a show on cinema, for Acik Radyo.

Murat Meric, who produces several music shows, called for solidarity and said he is preparing to continue his show.

Turkish actor Tulin Ozen told VOA Turkish she grew up with the station.

“I think the silencing of Acik Radyo is a shame for Turkey. I am here because I am against censorship in general. I am here because I am against being silenced,” Ozen said.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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Berlin — President Joe Biden made a lightning-fast, pomp-filled visit to Germany Friday, making an in-person push for transatlantic unity and scooping up Germany’s highest civilian honor.  

Biden also met in Berlin with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom, to discuss a range of issues behind closed doors – including how to continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, and the rapidly changing situation in the Middle East.  

“They talked about President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s victory plan and how we can all work together to try to see if we can’t get to a just peace that President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will approve of,” said John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson. “And of course, you know, can implement.”

And the brutal conflict in Gaza injected itself into Friday’s state visit, with news that Israeli forces had killed the leader of the U.S.-designated terror group Hamas, who was the mastermind behind the October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. 

Standing on the tarmac minutes after landing in Germany late Thursday, Biden addressed the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli troops, calling it a “good day for the world.”

“Now’s the time to move on,” he said. “Move on, move toward a cease-fire in Gaza, make sure that we move in a direction that we’re able to make things better for the whole world. It’s time for this war to end and bring these hostages home.”

Biden said he would dispatch Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Israel to discuss plans for the day after.

Kirby said the administration’s priority is freeing the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

“The president believes that, certainly, with Sinwar’s killing yesterday, that there’s a unique opportunity here for us all to kind of grab hold of, to see what we can do to end the war and to get a cease-fire. And we still believe that a cease-fire actually in the north, too, but we still believe a cease-fire is important for Gaza to get those hostages home.”

For Germany, this frenzied one-day visit – which included a brief meeting with a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor, Margot Friedlander – was suffused with meaning and history.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier — who awarded Biden the nation’s highest honor, Germany’s Grand Cross special class of the Order of Merit — began his reflection of the significance of Biden’s visit with an anecdote from the early 1980s, when a young U.S. senator visited Bonn, then the capital of the divided nation.  

In true German style, Steinmeier joked, the bureaucrat accompanying the 40-year-old senator made copious notes, saying he was “keenly interested” in Germany, and concluded that the young senator might have a “significant political future.” 

“What a remarkable understatement,” said Steinmeier before he pinned the 8-pointed golden star to Biden’s suit lapel. “Today, you are the 46th president of the United States – and under your leadership, the transatlantic alliance is stronger, and our partnership is closer than ever.” 

Steinmeier continued, “Maybe the most precious service to democracy, the most joyful and reassuring thing for people is to know that even this most powerful man in the world is – in the end – a fundamentally decent human being.” 

VOA asked White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan if part of Biden’s mission in Germany was to shield foreign policy against a possible Donald Trump presidency.

   

“What the president is trying to do is to make our commitment to Ukraine sustainable and institutionalized for the long term,” Sullivan replied. “And every other ally agreed that that was the responsible thing to do.”  
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seoul, south korea — South Korea said on Friday that it believes North Korea has sent troops to Russia, marking a grave security threat to the international community that Seoul will respond to with all available means, the presidential office said in a statement.

Separately, the country’s spy agency said North Korea was participating in the war in Ukraine and had decided to send 12,000 troops, including a special forces unit, Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held an unscheduled security meeting with key intelligence, military and national security officials to discuss North Korean troops’ involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine, it said.

“The participants … shared the view that the current situation where Russia and North Korea’s closer ties have gone beyond the movement of military supplies to actual dispatch of troops is a grave security threat not only to our country but to the international community,” it said.

South Korean officials have previously said it was likely true that some North Korean personnel were in Russia and involved in its war with Ukraine but have not given a clear answer on the nature or the scale of any such deployment.

Yoon’s office said South Korea together with its allies have been closely tracking North Korea’s troop dispatch to Russia from the initial stages. It did not, however, provide any intelligence to backup the assertion of troop deployment.

It also did not specify if it had information on whether North Korean troops were involved in combat.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service could not be immediately reached for confirmation of the report on the number of North Korean troops.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused North Korea on Thursday of deploying officers alongside Russia and preparing to send thousands of troops to help Moscow’s war effort, although NATO’s chief Mark Rutte said there was no evidence of Pyongyang’s presence at this stage.

Zelenskyy said about 10,000 North Korean soldiers are preparing for deployment to fight Ukraine but Kyiv’s Western allies have yet to confirm its assertion that Pyongyang is sending troops, though they say they are studying it.

Since their leaders’ summit in the Russian far east last year, North Korea and Russia have dramatically upgraded their military ties and they met again in June to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership that includes a mutual defense pact.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said North Korea has been supplying ballistic missiles and other munitions to Russia.

Since September last year, the North has shipped at least 16,500 containers of weapons to Russia and Russia has fired missiles from those shipments in Ukraine, Washington has said.

Russia and North Korea both deny they have engaged in arms transfers.

The Kremlin has also dismissed South Korean assertions that North Korea may have sent some military personnel to help Russia against Ukraine.
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The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing mounting criticism over the rise of gender-based violence in Turkey, which ranks among the world’s worst countries for violence against women. 

Just last week in Istanbul, a 19-year-old Turkish man killed two young women — first, his 19-year-old girlfriend at his home, and then a woman, also 19, whom he met in the city. He beheaded the second victim and threw her head over a wall onto a crowded street before taking his own life. 

Critics contend that the traditional values-based policies of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) are contributing to a growing number of femicides — the killing of women — and Turkey’s entrenched domestic violence problem.  

“We Will Stop Femicide Platform,” a Turkish advocacy group known by the initials KCDP, reported 3,185 women were killed by men between 2008 and 2019, and at least 1,499 from 2020 to September 2024, with the number of femicides rising each year. The deaths of about 1,030 women were also found suspicious.  

More than 1.4 million women reported they had faced domestic abuse between January 2013 and July 2024, the Turkish Minute news site reported, citing data received from the Family and Social Services Ministry by the daily newspaper Birgün. 

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Istanbul and other cities in Turkey last week accusing Erdogan of failing to protect women from violence. 

In the facing of such accusations, Erdogan vowed last week to strengthen legal regulations concerning crimes against women and children and promised to set up a new unit at the Justice Ministry to monitor such cases.  

However, the Bursa Women’s Platform, which organized sit-in protests in Turkey’s Bursa province, accused Turkish authorities of acting only on “social media reactions rather than the testimonies of those subjected to violence.” 

Human Rights Foundation, a New York-headquartered international watchdog, accused the Erdogan government this week of failing to “adequately prevent femicide and violence against women, children, and gender minorities.” 

The Turkish government exercises “increasing control over social media platforms” posing “serious threats to freedom of expression,” the HRF said Thursday in a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

Independent research published this year in Frontiers in Psychology argued that the Turkish government’s tightening grip over what people can see in the media and the ruling party’s gender policies based on the stereotypes of women’s societal role and appearances contribute to the stigmatization of feminism and dehumanization of women. 

Erdogan’s own words have been cited as contributing to the problem. In widely quoted remarks made in 2014, he said it is “against nature” to “put men and women on equal footing,” and argued that feminists do not understand the importance of motherhood.  

“President Erdogan and the AKP have increasingly taken an explicitly anti-feminist stance, in particular over the last decade. Consequently, anti-feminism in Turkey has taken on a top-down outlook,” said a recent article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Mediterranean Politics. 

The article said an “environment created by the AKP” had empowered anti-feminist actors in Turkey to push back against legal reforms advocating for gender equality and women’s rights. 

The paper uncovered an AKP-linked Turkish network of social media accounts including conservative civil society organizations, media representatives, social media influencers, writers and academics, celebrities” who articulate and amplify anti-feminist sentences, while exerting “significant influence in political sphere.”  

VoxEU, a forum for columns by leading economists, published a study in March finding that victim-blaming is common in Turkish society, along with an attitude that a woman should not provoke her husband. 

Hardliners from Erdogan’s party have argued that a man’s testimony should be given more weight than a woman’s in domestic violence cases.  

Turkish judges hand down lenient sentences to domestic abusers, or otherwise impose minimal sanctions against abusers who violate civil protection orders. Law enforcement, the analysts and activists say, is often slow to react to instances when these civil protection orders are violated.  

KCDP and others have documented instances when women were killed by men against whom they had taken out restraining orders. Women are particularly prone to facing violence at home, and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly spouses, men they are romantically involved with, family members, or other acquaintances.  

In July 2021, Turkey withdrew from The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention. Turkey was the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention in May 2011.  

Turkish authorities claimed to be acting because the Istanbul Convention had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality,” which it said, “is incompatible with” the country’s “social and family values.” 

On October 8, Erdogan said Turkey’s “withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention has not had the slightest negative impact on women’s rights,” adding “there is no opposition party that can teach us a lesson on women’s rights” or “help us strengthen women’s status.” 

Republican People’s Party leader Ozgur Ozel disagreed. 

“This government has not only failed to protect women and children but is also stepping back from positive actions. The clearest example is the sudden withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021,” Turkiye Today cited Ozel as saying on October 8. 
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TBILISI, GEORGIA — An uneasy calm has descended on the streets of Tbilisi ahead of a crucial election on October 26, widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s future.

Beneath the surface, there is palpable tension.

Campaign billboards, most for the ruling Georgian Dream Party, vie for voters’ attention with countless European Union, NATO and Ukrainian flags hanging from windows and graffitied on the city’s red brick buildings alongside anti-Russian slogans.

Six months ago, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi to protest the reintroduction of a so-called “foreign agent” law, which compels any organization receiving more than 20% of its funding from overseas to register with the government and submit to detailed financial investigation.

A brutal crackdown on the demonstrations prompted Western powers to impose sanctions on some Georgian officials.

Critics say the law mimics Russian legislation used to silence political opponents and independent media. The Georgian government insists the law is necessary to show who is funding political organizations.

Defiance

The foreign agent law came into force in September. However, most foreign-funded civil society groups have refused to comply. Dozens of the organizations are now working together to act as election monitors amid fears that Georgian Dream may not easily give up power, even if they lose the election.

Among the chief targets of the foreign agent law is Eka Gigauri, head of the anti-corruption group Transparency International. Alongside other prominent civil society leaders, she appears on government propaganda posters, accused of selling out Georgia and getting rich on foreign money. Their faces are marked with red crosses.

“This is a matter of dignity,” Gigauri told VOA. “We are not spies. We are not undermining the interests of the country. We are the patriots of this country, and we served this country and the people of this country for many years.”

Transparency International has refused to register as a foreign agent, risking prosecution and heavy fines for the organization and its staff.

“We are using all the legal tools, everything, to fight, to resist, not to comply, to inform the citizens about the wrongdoings of the government,” she said. “Still, we see that at any time, the government can enforce this law.

“And now especially, when there is this preelection period and the majority of the NGOs are involved in observing the elections, definitely it will be [an] additional obstacle for us if it happens. However, it did not happen yet.”

Transparency International said most foreign-funded civil society organizations have refused to comply with the new law, with only 41 organizations having so far registered as foreign agents.

Free media

Tabula Media, an independent multimedia organization, is one of several groups seeking to circumvent the legislation.

“We had to reestablish the organization in an EU country — Estonia — which deeply complicates financial operations,” Tabula editor-in-chief Levan Sutidze told VOA.

“We are familiar with this path and where it leads. It leads to Russia, to the complete silencing of critical voices, to the annihilation of independent media outlets and NGOs, and it will have catastrophic consequences in the future,” Sutidze said. “Even if the situation worsens, we will not submit to this insult.”

The investigative organization Realpolitika has also registered its headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia, in a bid to avoid prosecution under the foreign agent law.

“For now, this law does not apply to us. However, this could change after the election,” said editor-in-chief Aka Zarqua.

“Pressure from the international community and the backlash within Georgian society have both contributed to the government not fully enforcing this legislation before the election, and we can see their partial retreat,” Zarqua said. “It’s clear that October 26 will be decisive in this regard.”

Backlash

For some civil society groups, navigating the foreign agent law has been a traumatic process.

The pro-democracy organization Shame was founded in 2019 after the ruling Georgian Dream Party allowed a visiting Russian prime minister to address lawmakers from the speaker’s chair in the Georgian parliament, prompting widespread outrage.

In August, the organization decided to comply with the foreign agent law and register with the government “because we believed there was no other way to save the organization and continue its work if Georgian Dream somehow managed to win the election and the law remained enforced,” according to Dachi Imedadze, Shame’s head of strategy.

The organization, however, reversed its decision after a bitter public backlash.

“It escalated into conspiracy theories and personal attacks, with people calling us traitors,” Imedadze said.

Shame is now campaigning to get young people to vote.

“One-third of young people, aged 18 to 25, do not participate in elections. This represents approximately 250,000 potential voters,” Imedadze told VOA. “Our main target audience is this group, many of whom will be voting for the first time in this election.”

‘Russian swamp’

Nino Lomjaria, a former public defender of Georgia, now heads Georgia’s European Orbit, a civil society group partly funded by the U.S.-based Soros Foundation.

Lomjaria and her team have traveled across the country urging people to turn out and vote. Their election leaflets mimic the election ballot but offer only two choices.

“It says: ‘Are you choosing European well-being or the Russian swamp?’” she said.

Georgian Dream insists it is not pro-Russian and wants to join the EU. Party leaders say they are seeking to improve relations with Moscow to avoid further conflict, accusing critics and rivals of being part of a “global war party” that is seeking to profit from war with Russia.

Lomjaria scoffs at that accusation.

“We know who starts wars. We know that the ‘global war party’ is Russia. It’s not the West. And for us, the European Union is the safe place. That’s why we want to join this community, because we consider that being the member of the European Union, being the member of NATO, this is something where we will find peace and stability,” she told VOA.

Election monitors

Georgia’s European Orbit has joined a coalition of nongovernmental organizations that are planning to monitor the election, “which is composed of up to 30 organizations,” Lomjaria said.

“And our plan is to be present at every polling station to observe the whole process of voting and vote tabulation. We will have evidence of how elections have been conducted in this country, and we will litigate if we find out that there was some manipulation or electoral fraud,” she said.

Gigauri of Transparency International doubts Georgia’s judicial system is robust enough to cope with such a crisis.

“The state institutions in Georgia are captured. This is a very unfortunate fact and the reality. Definitely it’s very difficult for everyone to operate. But we also see that more and more, it is very difficult for those institutions to deal with the resistance from the people,” Gigauri told VOA.

The government insists it will respect the election result.

“Georgian Dream is based on democratic principles, and therefore it will respect every decision made by the Georgian people. We will accept the people’s decision, whatever it may be,” Nikoloz Samkharadze, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA in an interview.

“At the same time, I want to emphasize that we are confident the vast majority of Georgians will support Georgian Dream.”
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Germany plans to introduce measures aimed at boosting its domestic wind industry, the economy ministry said on Thursday, amid concerns from European governments and companies over Chinese firms gaining momentum on the continent.

The measures will focus on improving cybersecurity, reducing dependency for critical components like permanent magnets, and ensuring fair competition in global markets, the ministry said following a meeting with unnamed European wind turbine manufacturers and suppliers in Berlin, without giving further details or a time frame.

China accounts for about 60% of global rare earth mine production, but its share jumps to 90% of processed rare earths and magnet output.

“We must continue improving conditions to keep this industry competitive and ensure future value creation within Germany and Europe. These measures are a crucial step,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement.

The plan will also address securing financing for increased production and adjusting public funding mechanisms to prevent market distortion.

The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for further details.  

Tensions are high between Beijing and the European Union, the world’s two largest wind markets. The European Commission launched an investigation in April into whether Chinese companies are benefiting from unfair subsidies.
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Tbilisi, Georgia — On a clear October day, the snow-capped Caucasus mountain peaks of Georgia’s South Ossetia are visible from Tbilisi. Yet for most Georgians, the region is off-limits. 

South Ossetia, and Abkhazia farther to the west, have been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 1992. Both regions broke away from Georgia during the collapse of the Soviet Union, in brutal ethnic conflicts stoked by Moscow.  

Russia’s historical influence looms over Georgia’s upcoming election on Oct. 26, which is widely seen as a referendum on a future aligned to the West or to Moscow. 

The ruling Georgian Dream party has pledged to reconcile with the breakaway regions and reunite Georgia. 

“I want to use this opportunity to address our people on the other side of occupation land in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) regions,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said at the United Nations’ General Assembly last month. 

“Whatever actions we take are done to help our people, so that one day with our children we can live together in one happy, united and developed Georgia. On this side of the occupation line, we will always meet you with an open heart. We have to rebuild all the broken bridges in our country,” Kobakhidze added. 

Russian forces invaded Georgia in 2008, before formally recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Several hundred Georgian soldiers and civilians died in the five-day conflict. Russia’s troops still occupy 20% of Georgian territory, including the two breakaway regions. 

Yet the billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, blames Georgia for the conflict, accusing the “criminal regime” of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili of starting the war on the orders of foreign powers. 

“Immediately after the October 26 elections, those who instigated the war will face justice,” Ivanishvili said at a campaign event on Sept. 15 in Gori, a city briefly occupied by Russian forces in 2008. He said that Georgia would then apologize for the war. 

Ivanishvili’s comments sparked widespread anger among Georgians.  

Critics said it’s a stark example of Georgian Dream’s closer alignment with Russia — but this time, it backfired. 

“In this case, they didn’t get a favorable response from Russia,” noted political analyst Ghia Nodia of Georgia’s Ilia State University. “Russia stated that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are independent states, and reunification with Georgia isn’t going to happen.” 

Georgian Dream officials defended Ivanishvili’s comments. 

“In order to resolve this conflict, of course, there’s the issue with Russia, but there’s also the problem between Georgian society and the Ossetians and Abkhazians,” said Nikoloz Samkharadze, a member of Georgian Dream and chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee. “Reconciliation won’t happen unless these societies forgive and apologize to one another.” 

The legacy of Stalin 

The weight of history on the upcoming election extends from well before the collapse of communism and Georgian independence in 1991.  

Giorgi Kandelaki is from the Tbilisi-based Soviet Past Research Laboratory, an organization dedicated to busting romanticized myths about the Soviet Union and uncovering the truth of Communist rule. He said Georgian Dream’s leaders, aided by Moscow, are attempting to rewrite the history of Georgian-born Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — an effort to stoke divisive culture wars ahead of the election. 

“Many polls indicate that Stalin’s popularity is rising in Georgia, with him being seen as a model of Georgian patriotism,” Kandelaki told VOA. 

“This narrative paints Western civilization as a threat, for example by attempting to ‘make us all gay,’ while portraying the Russian world, with an emphasis on religion, as the savior of our souls. In this project, Stalin, as an icon of Georgian patriotism, plays a crucial role.

“Georgian Dream, especially its grassroots supporters and local leaders in the regions, also plays a role in promoting this narrative,” he added. 

More than 70 years after his death, the debate over Stalin’s legacy remains a live issue in Georgia’s election.  

The European Union has frozen accession talks with the Georgian government, citing concerns over a slide towards autocracy. Last Friday, EU lawmakers approved a resolution that expressed regret over the “growing cult of Stalin and the related increase in Soviet nostalgia in Georgia, supported by the ruling government, which underscores its closer alignment with Russia.”  

Georgian Dream strongly rejected that characterization.  

“This is utter nonsense and absurd. No one is promoting the cult of Stalin in Georgia,” Samkharadze told VOA. “I urge [EU lawmakers] to once again come to Georgia and show me the processes that supposedly contribute to promoting the cult of Stalin. This is especially offensive to me, considering I come from a family that was repressed by the Stalin regime.” 

The EU resolution, which calls for sanctions to be imposed on Ivanishvili, also suggested that the Georgian government was trying to bury the truth about what happened during Soviet times.

“Some of Georgia’s most important Soviet-era archives (including the archives of the former KGB and the former Central Committee of the Communist Party) have been completely closed since October 2023 without any explanation,” according to the EU parliament resolution. 

Giorgi Kandelaki of the Soviet Past Research Laboratory echoed that complaint. “Since 2013, [the Georgian government] has implemented increasingly restrictive measures, gradually making it harder for researchers to access these archives. Today, it’s easier to study Soviet archives in Russia than it is in Georgia,” he said. 

Again, Georgian Dream denied those accusations. “Regarding the archives, there are no restrictions, except for foreign citizens. Georgian citizens have no restrictions whatsoever,” Samkharadze told VOA. 

Georgian Dream insisted it intends to join the EU by 2030, an aspiration enshrined in the country’s constitution. The party denied it is pro-Russian, highlighting resolutions it has sponsored at the U.N. condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The party has held power since 2012 — but polls suggest it will struggle to retain its majority in the upcoming election.  

Aka Zarqua, the editor-in-chief of the website Realpolitika, said voters no longer trust Georgian Dream. 

“The strategic ambiguity they tried to maintain over the years — claiming to support the EU and the West, while simultaneously taking anti-Western steps — has collapsed,” he said.
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Criticism is growing against Hungary’s longtime leader, Viktor Orban, and so are questions about the future of his country’s role in Europe. Hungary holds the EU presidency until the end of this year, and members of Hungary’s rising opposition are accusing Orban of working to undermine Europe’s security and unity. VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze reports from Budapest. VOA footage by Daniil Batushchak
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LONDON — Some of the most prominent artificial intelligence models are falling short of European regulations in key areas such as cybersecurity resilience and discriminatory output, according to data seen by Reuters.

The EU had long debated new AI regulations before OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in late 2022. The record-breaking popularity and ensuing public debate over the supposed existential risks of such models spurred lawmakers to draw up specific rules around “general-purpose” AIs.

Now a new tool designed by Swiss startup LatticeFlow and partners, and supported by European Union officials, has tested generative AI models developed by big tech companies like Meta and OpenAI across dozens of categories in line with the bloc’s wide-sweeping AI Act, which is coming into effect in stages over the next two years.

Awarding each model a score between 0 and 1, a leaderboard published by LatticeFlow on Wednesday showed models developed by Alibaba, Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Mistral all received average scores of 0.75 or above.

However, the company’s “Large Language Model (LLM) Checker” uncovered some models’ shortcomings in key areas, spotlighting where companies may need to divert resources in order to ensure compliance.

Companies failing to comply with the AI Act will face fines of $38 million or 7% of global annual turnover.

Mixed results

At present, the EU is still trying to establish how the AI Act’s rules around generative AI tools like ChatGPT will be enforced, convening experts to craft a code of practice governing the technology by spring 2025.

But LatticeFlow’s test, developed in collaboration with researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich and Bulgarian research institute INSAIT, offers an early indicator of specific areas where tech companies risk falling short of the law.

For example, discriminatory output has been a persistent issue in the development of generative AI models, reflecting human biases around gender, race and other areas when prompted.

When testing for discriminatory output, LatticeFlow’s LLM Checker gave OpenAI’s “GPT-3.5 Turbo” a relatively low score of 0.46. For the same category, Alibaba Cloud’s 9988.HK “Qwen1.5 72B Chat” model received only a 0.37.

Testing for “prompt hijacking,” a type of cyberattack in which hackers disguise a malicious prompt as legitimate to extract sensitive information, the LLM Checker awarded Meta’s “Llama 2 13B Chat” model a score of 0.42. In the same category, French startup Mistral’s “8x7B Instruct” model received 0.38.

“Claude 3 Opus,” a model developed by Google-backed Anthropic, received the highest average score, 0.89.

The test was designed in line with the text of the AI Act, and will be extended to encompass further enforcement measures as they are introduced. LatticeFlow said the LLM Checker would be freely available for developers to test their models’ compliance online.

Petar Tsankov, the firm’s CEO and cofounder, told Reuters the test results were positive overall and offered companies a roadmap for them to fine-tune their models in line with the AI Act.

“The EU is still working out all the compliance benchmarks, but we can already see some gaps in the models,” he said. “With a greater focus on optimizing for compliance, we believe model providers can be well-prepared to meet regulatory requirements.”

Meta declined to comment. Alibaba, Anthropic, Mistral, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While the European Commission cannot verify external tools, the body has been informed throughout the LLM Checker’s development and described it as a “first step” in putting the new laws into action.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said: “The Commission welcomes this study and AI model evaluation platform as a first step in translating the EU AI Act into technical requirements.”
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