Washington  — In an interview with a Mongolian newspaper, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week accused the West of persecuting Russian journalists. 

“In order to hide from inconvenient facts, from truthful information, the West, which considers itself the standard of freedom, has launched an open persecution against Russian correspondents,” Putin told the newspaper Onoodor.  

Putin spoke with the newspaper the day before he arrived in Mongolia, where he traveled despite being under an international arrest warrant. 

And the comments came just days after the Kremlin announced it was banning entry to Russia for 92 more people — mainly U.S. citizens, including several journalists — over what Moscow characterized as Washington’s anti-Russia posture. 

Among those banned were The Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Emma Tucker, as well as other journalists from the Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post.  

Media analysts said Putin’s comments reflect the restricted environment facing journalists in Russia. 

“This is nothing new, this kind of vocabulary. But it underlines yet again that there is no independent press in Russia, especially when it comes to reporting on the war in Ukraine,” Karol Luczka, Eastern Europe monitor at the International Press Institute in Vienna, told VOA. 

Putin’s comments follow years of Moscow’s harsh crackdown on independent media, with dozens jailed, including local and foreign reporters, and a series of harsh laws that analysts say make independent journalism all but impossible. 

Since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, independent outlets and journalists have been forced to decamp to other countries to avoid arrest and to keep reporting on Russia. And even in exile, Russian journalists continue to face Moscow-backed harassment in a process known as transnational repression. 

Putin’s claims echoed a statement that Russia’s Foreign Ministry gave VOA in August. 

The Foreign Ministry declined to answer VOA’s specific questions about threats and harassment facing journalists, but a spokesperson said “protecting the rights of journalists” is the ministry’s “constant focus of attention.” 

The emailed response then shared a list of instances in which foreign governments fined, banned or suspended Kremlin-run media. 

Washington has imposed sanctions against some state-run Russian television stations, which it says have spread disinformation to boost Moscow’s war in Ukraine. And Canada and the European Union blocked broadcasts to Russian state-run news outlets.  

Russia’s Washington embassy, meanwhile, did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment for this story. 

Putin, however, maintained that news outlets operate freely in Russia. 

“The only requirement for them is compliance with Russian legislation,” he said. “Foreign correspondents accredited in our country should understand this.” 

Luczka said that statement was “laughable” and “not something that can be taken seriously.” 

“What does respect the law mean? The laws are such in Russia that independent media cannot function — so, yes, they can function as long as they respect the law, but the law says that they cannot function,” Luczka said. 

In early August, two American journalists — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Alsu Kurmasheva and The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich — were released from Russia, where they were held on bogus charges, in a historic prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia. Gershkovich was accredited to report in Russia but was still arrested for his work.

Press freedom experts say their jailings underscored Russia’s disdain for media freedom. 

Putin’s comments came ahead of his first trip to Mongolia in five years. 

Ukraine and the European Union expressed concern that Mongolia, which is a member of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, did not act on a warrant to arrest Putin when he arrived in Mongolia on Monday. 

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 over alleged war crimes committed in the war in Ukraine. As a member of the ICC, Mongolia has a responsibility to act on warrants. 

Some information in this report came from Reuters. 
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BARCELONA, Spain — A British woman has been found dead while emergency services search for a man of the same nationality after both were apparently swept away in a flash flood while hiking on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, Spanish police said Wednesday. 

Spain’s Civil Guard said that both people were taking a trail that leads through a small canyon to the sea when the storm hit on Tuesday. 

The police initially issued the erroneous information that they had found the corpse of the man and were searching for the woman. They later corrected themselves and said it was the woman who had been found dead on Wednesday. 

Firefighters collaborated with police in the search. 

More inclement weather was forecast for the island and parts of Spain’s mainland. The Balearic Islands and a large swath of Spain’s eastern coast was under alert for strong winds and heavy rains. 

More thunderstorms over Barcelona forced the organizers of the America’s Cup sailing event to postpone racing. That decision came after lightning struck near a yacht on Tuesday, forcing a race to be abandoned. 
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london — The future of German military aid to Ukraine and support for Ukrainian refugees in Germany are being called into question after a surge in support saw the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party emerge victorious Sunday in elections in the state of Thuringia.

The AfD won with 32.8% of the vote, ahead of the Christian Democrats with 23.6%. The newly formed far-left BSW party was in third place with 15.8%. The AfD came in second in the neighboring state of Saxony, just behind the Christian Democrats.

Björn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, said it was a “historic victory.”

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. And today, dear friends, we have won!” Höcke told cheering supporters Monday in the eastern town of Erfurt.

It’s the first state victory for Germany’s far right since World War II.

Rival parties, however, have vowed not to work in coalition with the AfD, meaning complex coalition talks could lie ahead for control of the state legislature.

Although widely predicted, the results have shocked many of Germany’s allies – not least Ukraine. Germany is Ukraine’s second-biggest donor of military aid, behind the United States. That is now in doubt, said Mattia Nelles, co-founder of the German-Ukrainian Bureau, a political consultancy based in Düsseldorf.

“Both the far-right and the far-left populist forces were campaigning on cutting German aid for Ukraine, and they were explicitly calling for a reduction in military aid,” Nelles told VOA. “They called on the government to finally pressure Ukrainians to start negotiating with Russia. They were for pressuring Ukraine into submission. And that is very unfortunate for Ukraine to have these very vocal forces gaining traction in these regional elections.”

In the short term, Nelles said the state election results won’t affect the federal government’s funding of aid to Ukraine, “but you already see a slight change in the rhetoric of the centrist parties [toward Ukraine]. We have four centrist parties, and some of them already took some of the narratives or the frames that the populist and far-right parties were using,” he added.

Germany is set to hold nationwide federal elections next year.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the liberal Free Democratic party – part of the ruling coalition – is pushing for aid to Ukraine to be halved in the next budget. His party gained less than 5% in the Thuringia state election and fears a repeat in the 2025 federal elections, noted analyst Liana Fix of the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

“[They] are afraid that they will not get into parliament, which has happened already once before, that they were not able to cross the 5% threshold for the German parliament. So it’s really a sort of a fight, a battle for political survival, especially for the liberals who are pushing for this agenda of cutting the budget for Ukraine,” Fix said.

Immigration was a major issue driving votes for the far right, with much rhetoric directed at non-European, and especially Muslim, migrants. Germany, however, is also hosting more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees – and the financial cost was under the spotlight during the state election campaigns of both the far right and far left, said analyst Nelles.

“They were both – though on separate notes, different tonalities – campaigning on lesser aid or cutting of aid for Ukrainian refugees in Germany. The question whether and how they should be funded and whether they should be drafted or sent to Ukraine – that is a delicate issue,” Nelles said.

“We have males, Ukrainian males, that are legally eligible for the draft. So, there is growing pressure also on the male Ukrainian refugee population in Germany to push them back to Ukraine,” he added. “Germany is unable for good reasons to send males back to Ukraine. But the pressure on the government to do so is growing.”

The federal government has given no indication that it intends to cut support for Ukrainian refugees or send them back to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last month that Berlin would support Kyiv with military aid “as long as necessary.”

Scholz’s Social Democrat Party highlighted Monday that German intelligence services had classified the AfD as an extremist party and said its victory in Thuringia must act as a “wake-up call.”
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BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania, Hungary, Georgia and Azerbaijan launched a joint venture Tuesday to install a power line under the Black Sea aimed at bringing more renewable energy into the European Union from the eastern Caucasus.

The project, approved by leaders of the four countries in 2022, gained momentum after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and spotlighted the EU’s reliance on Russian energy as prices sharply rose. The 27-nation bloc has since pushed to wean itself off Russian energy.

The cable would link Azerbaijan, which is seen as having substantial potential to generate power at Caspian Sea wind farms, to EU members Romania and Hungary via Georgia.

Government ministers from the four countries launched the joint venture at a meeting Tuesday in Romania’s capital, saying the project would help strengthen energy security and drive down electricity prices for consumers.

Romanian Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja said the project was of strategic importance for his country and the EU.

“If you look at the energy map of Europe over the past few months … you see that on the eastern flank essentially we are paying a very high price recently — and that’s because there is not enough diversification,” Burduja said.

Azerbaijanian Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov said the harnessing of renewable energy would help tackle climate change issues. The undersea line is important for energy security, he said, “but at the same time it is going to provide the green energy … which is very high on the agenda of the international community.”

Bulgaria’s deputy energy minister also joined Tuesday’s meeting, and there were discussions about the EU member joining the infrastructure project. Burduja and Shahbazov said the next meeting on the project would be at a U.N. climate change meeting later this year in Azerbaijan.
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warsaw — Sava Trypolsky couldn’t wait for school to start. Days before the Ukrainian boy entered first grade Monday, his backpack was packed. Sitting on his bed in his home near Warsaw last week, he pulled out coloring pens, glue sticks and all manner of supplies emblazoned with Spider-Man, Minions and his favorite soccer player, Lionel Messi.

Sava was almost 5 when he fled his home in Cherkasy, Ukraine, with his mother and older sister soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. But the war has dragged on for more than 2½ years, and he is now a 7-year-old starting his educational journey.

For Ukrainian children, the last several years have been a time of severe disruption. First the COVID-19 pandemic brought online learning, and then war uprooted millions.

That disruption was still evident in Ukraine, where it was also the first day of school Monday. An overnight Russian drone and missile attack in Kyiv forced the cancellation of classes for some because of damage from the attack.

Many Ukrainians who fled to neighboring Poland never returned to a classroom at all, continuing their Ukrainian classwork remotely.

But as this new school year began Monday, a new Polish law makes school attendance mandatory for Ukrainian refugees. In cases where the kids don’t attend school, the government will enforce the law by withholding a monthly 800 zloty ($200) bonus that all citizens and refugees receive for each child under 18.

Only those entering the last year of high school are exempt from this new requirement. Poland’s Education Ministry said it was unrealistic for them to master the Polish curriculum in language and culture in time to pass final graduation exams by spring.

Sava can expect an easier time than many. Educators say kids his age learn Polish quickly. He has a best friend, Bart, going to his school, and a soccer group. Medals he earned while playing the sport decorate his room in Jablonna, a small community north of Warsaw.

“I’ll have fun,” he said beaming.

But his 16-year-old sister Marichka hopes to return to Ukraine for university and knows school can be hard for adolescents even without the pressure of being a refugee. She has one year left and opted to continue her home schooling.

“Some people are just mean, you know, and I’ve heard many stories about just being excluded or bullied,” Marichka said. “That happens in every country, it’s not just Poland, it’s just kids who try to grow up in this world.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that it was important to bring Ukrainian youth into the system to avoid the formation of social “pathologies.”

“Since we do not know how many Ukrainian families will want to stay with us for longer, and perhaps forever, we are very keen for these children to be educated like their Polish peers,” Tusk said Friday.

Some Ukrainians have already returned home, and many others plan to. That has led many of them to live in Poland, but to keep kids out of Polish schools and do remote learning with schools back in Ukraine.

Jędrzej Witkowski, CEO of the Polish nonprofit Center for Citizenship Education, said that allowing online learning made sense during the initial crisis, but now Polish authorities can’t even track whether Ukrainian children are continuing with their education or dropping out. There isn’t reliable data or research that can measure the educational loss, he said.

“This would have been the fifth consecutive year of online learning,” Witkowski said. “We’re very happy with the move that the government has made.”

Poland has the second-largest population of Ukrainian war refugees in the West after Germany, and most are women and children. UNHCR estimated the number of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, a nation of 38 million, at slightly over 957,000 in June, the latest figures published on its website.

UNICEF and UNHCR — the United Nations’ children’s and refugee agencies — had expressed concern about the large numbers of children living in Poland but not attending schools in person, estimating the number at around 150,000 — a calculation based on administrative data and the number of Ukrainian kids with Polish identity numbers.

Other countries with large Ukrainian populations, like Germany and Italy, required school attendance from the start, said Francesco Calcagno, chief of education for the UNICEF refugee response office in Warsaw, which is working with the national government, local authorities and nongovernmental organizations to help get kids back into schools.

“Education is not just about academic achievement but also about fostering resilience, stability and hope,” Calcagno said. “Schools provide a crucial sense of structure and safety, which helps children from Ukraine to catch up on learning and supports their psychosocial wellbeing.”
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Warsaw, Poland — Decades after they were killed, Poland held a state burial on Monday of the remains of more than 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions that were recently uncovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north.

The observances in the town of Chojnice began with a funeral Mass at the basilica, leading to an interment with military honors at a local cemetery of the victims of the Nazi crimes. The remains were contained in 188 small wooden coffins with ribbons in national white and red colors across them.

Relatives of the victims, an aide to President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the state National Remembrance Institute, which carried out and documented the exhumations, took part in the events.

“We want to give back memory, we want to give back dignity to the victims of the crimes in Chojnice,” presiding Bishop Ryszard Kasyna said.

Duda sent a message saying that the deaths weren’t in vain and will always be held in the national memory, because the only reason they were killed by the Nazis was the fact that they were Polish.

The remains of Polish civilians, including 218 asylum patients, were exhumed in 2021-2024 from a number of separate mass graves on the outskirts of Chojnice.

Personal belongings and documents helped identify around 120 of the victims of an execution in early 1945. Among them were teachers, priests, police officers, forestry and postal workers, and landowners.

Historians have established that the Nazis, shortly after invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, executed some of the civilians, in a drive to subdue the nation. The remains of another 500 victims are from the January 1945 execution, when the Germans were fleeing the area. Bullets and shells from handguns used by German forces were found in the graves.

Experts will continue to comb the area for more mass graves of the so-called Pomerania Crime.

Poland lost 6 million citizens, or a sixth of its population, of which 3 million were Jewish, in the war. The country also suffered huge losses to its infrastructure, industry and agriculture.
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Vatican City — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip (to Dubai in November) on doctors’ orders.

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. 

Here is a look at the trip and some of the issues that are likely to come up, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever-present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.

Indonesia

Francis loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Tunnel of Friendship” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, before both partake in an interfaith gathering and sign a joint declaration.

Francis has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority, and has often used his foreign travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God’s name.

Papua New Guinea

Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he delivered to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those who need God’s comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope on the eve of his own election.

Few places are as remote and poverty wracked as Vanimo, a northern coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who are working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.

East Timor

When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population who had suffered under Indonesia’s brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years.

“For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle,” John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass.

East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002, but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left as many as 200,000 people dead — nearly a quarter of the population.

Francis will literally walk in John Paul’s footsteps when he celebrates Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili, the same seaside esplanade as that 1989 liturgy, which some see as a key date in the Timorese independence movement.

Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.

There is no word on whether Francis will refer to Belo, who is still revered in East Timor but has been barred by the Vatican from ever returning.

Singapore

Francis has used several of his foreign trips to send messages to China, be they direct telegrams of greetings when he flies through Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when nearby.

Francis’ visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him yet another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

“It’s a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.

The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop nominations.

Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized Tianjin Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who as far as the Vatican is concerned had taken over as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law now was “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”

But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse which maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.
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