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TALLINN, Estonia — The head of a banned Belarusian opposition party who had been behind bars for two years was released on Monday as the authoritarian country frees a trickle of political prisoners, according to the respected human rights group Viasna.

Mikalai Kazlou, who led the United Civic Party, was serving a 2½-year sentence on allegations of organizing actions violating the public order. His arrest came amid a harsh crackdown on the opposition that began as mass demonstrations gripped the country.

Those protests followed a presidential election in 2020 whose disputed results gave Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term.

Many prominent opposition figures were imprisoned in the crackdown and others fled the country, including Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was Lukashenko’s prime challenger in the election.

The Belarusian Supreme Court banned the United Civic Party a year after Kazlou’s arrest.

Lukashenko announced an amnesty in early July for some seriously ill political prisoners, and 19 have been released so far. But 1,377 remain imprisoned, according to Viasna. The prisoners include the group’s founder, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.

Activists say authorities have created conditions akin to torture in prisons, depriving political prisoners of medical care, transfers and meetings with lawyers and relatives.

Lukashenko’s release of ill political prisoners indicates he may be trying to improve relations with the West ahead of seeking reelection next year, Belarusian analysts suggest. He also recently dropped visa requirements for European Union citizens arriving by rail and road.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — This year, Ukraine’s largest music festival struck a different chord. Gone were the international headliners, the massive performance halls and the hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Instead, beloved local artists graced the stage this past weekend at the Atlas Festival — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 — for a smaller but still ebullient crowd. The stage was erected in a shopping mall parking lot, the only option with a shelter large enough to contain the 25,000 people expected in the event of an air raid.

Carefree youth danced, romanced and sang along, rubbing shoulders with hardened military commanders as famous singers who crooned lyrics imbued with national pride. Music was the main goal, but so was shattering the illusion that the capital is invulnerable to the bloody battles hundreds of miles away.

“Such kind of festivals can’t be separated from the life of the country. The country is at war. The core issues here should relate to the war,” said Vsevolod Kozhemyako, a businessman and one of the founders of the 13th “Khartia” Brigade, now a part of Ukraine’s National Guard and defending the front line in Kharkiv.

“People who are still young and who don’t join (the fight) should understand that they cannot live in a bubble,” he said.

And yet, a bubble is precisely how it feels to be in Kyiv, as the war approaches its third year. While Ukrainian soldiers are killed and wounded every day along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in the east, the capital is a contrast with its busy bars and clubs.

Every so often, Kyiv comes face to face with the war. Two weeks ago, a barrage of Russian missiles destroyed a children’s hospital and a private clinic, in one of the deadliest attacks since the full-scale invasion. Residents have grappled with power cuts caused by Moscow’s targeted destruction of Ukrainian energy generation at the height of a summer heat wave.

In every corner of the music festival, visitors were confronted with the inescapable reality that theirs is a country trapped in a bloody war of attrition. Festival organizers hoped to raise $2.2 million (2 million euros) to help soldiers purchase supplies for the front line.

In the mall’s basement parking lot, various military units, from Khartia to the 3rd Assault, offered interactive games to lure donations and possible recruits. A first-person shooter game offered visitors a chance to improve target practice by gunning down shadowy virtual infantrymen. In another corner, medics brandished severed plastic limbs and offered emergency medical training.

The festival concluded Sunday with a much-anticipated performance from Serhii Zhadan and his band Zhadan and the Dogs. Zhadan, a celebrated artist dubbed the poet of the Donbas, recently joined Khartia.

“It’s just a small break, an opportunity to take a breath,” said Zhadan, minutes before he took to the stage for a roaring crowd. “The most important things, they are happening over there, at the front line.”

On stage, Zhadan started with one of his most beloved songs “Malvi” or “Mallow.” The crowd sang along, word for word. “But what can you do with my hot blood,” they chanted. “Who will come at us.”

18-year old Viktoriia Khalis was excited to see his performance. She had been to the Atlas festival once before in 2021. The difference is stark, she said.

“The main thing that has changed, unfortunately, now the festival is connected with donations,” she said. But she also felt more connected to her homeland. “I feel this entire crowd is related to me. I feel unity.”

She was scared there would be another Russian air attack — a music festival with thousands of attendees would be a prime target — but said she couldn’t miss a chance to see her favorite artists.

For Nadiia Dorofeeva, one of Ukraine’s most famous singers, every concert feels different. “Before, when I entered a stage I was thinking only about if I looked good, sang well and if the people got what they came for. But now, I dream of having no air alarms, I am seeing how people cry at my concerts.”

One of Dorofeeva’s songs, “WhatsApp,” is about a girl waiting for her beloved to return from war. “She washed the phone with tears/Like rainy glass,” often moves listeners to tears.

Among the attendees was Lt. Gen. Serhii Naiev, an assistant deputy chief in Ukraine’s General Staff.

“There are well-known artists on stage, they are performing their concerts and there are a lot of Ukrainians around who are donating their money, much-needed money for the armed forces of Ukraine,” he said.

“We understand that our partners are supporting us, but we also understand that we could do a lot by ourselves, to be stronger,” he said.
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KYIV/BEIJING — Ukraine’s top diplomat will visit China on Tuesday at the invitation of Beijing for talks that Kyiv said would focus on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and on a possible Chinese role in reaching a settlement.

Nearly 29 months since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will discuss bilateral ties at talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a trip to China from July 23 to 25, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said.

“The main topic of discussion will be the search for ways to stop Russia’s aggression and China’s possible role in achieving a stable and just peace,” the Ukrainian ministry said in a statement on its website.

The Chinese statement said Kuleba’s visit would run from July 23 to 26 and provided less detail.

The trip is unusual as China is widely seen as close to the Kremlin, with which Beijing declared a “no limits” partnership in 2022 just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Though the world’s second largest economy has not condemned the Russian invasion and helped keep Russia’s war economy afloat, Kyiv has been cautious in its criticism of Beijing.

China meanwhile says its ties with Russia are built on the basis of non-alliance and do not target any third party.

Various peace initiatives have emerged in recent months as the fighting has dragged on ahead of a U.S. election in November that could see the return to power of ex-president Donald Trump who has threatened to cut vital aid flows to Ukraine.

Kyiv held an international summit without Russian representation in Switzerland in June to promote its vision of peace and now says it hopes to be ready to hold another one in November that would feature Russian representation.

China, which did not attend the Swiss summit, together with Brazil published a separate six-point peace plan on May 23, saying they supported an international peace conference being held that would be recognized by both sides in the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that only the world’s powerful countries would be able to successfully bring an end to the war, singling out China as well as Kyiv’s close U.S. ally as two possibilities.

The Ukrainian leader has said that China should play a serious role in helping to resolve the war.
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Islamabad — Pakistan has condemned Germany’s “failure” to safeguard its consulate in Frankfurt from being stormed and vandalized Saturday by dozens of protesters reportedly carrying Afghanistan’s national flag.

In a Sunday statement issued in Islamabad, the foreign ministry, without naming any specific nationality, described the assailants as “a gang of extremists” and decried the security breach of the consular mission, saying it endangered the lives of its staff.

“We are conveying our strong protest to the German government,” the ministry said. It urged Germany to take “immediate measures to fulfill its responsibility” under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to ensure the security of the Pakistani diplomatic missions and staff in the country.

Social media video from Saturday’s incident shows scores of people holding the tricolor Afghan national flag and jumping the fence to get into the consulate building in Frankfurt, with one of them taking down Pakistan’s flag. The protesters were reportedly shouting abuses and pelted the diplomatic facility with stones.

Diplomatic sources and witnesses in the German city confirmed the authenticity of the video to VOA, but it was not immediately known what the crowd was protesting.

Pakistani official sources told VOA that the attack was “a serious security lapse on the part of the German side.” They said German authorities did not inform the consulate staff about the upcoming protest or increase security for the diplomatic facility as per the “standard operating procedures.” 

There was no immediate reaction from the German government to the attack and its denunciation by Pakistan.

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan did not comment on the incident either.

“We also urge the German authorities to take immediate measures to arrest and prosecute those involved in yesterday’s incident and hold to account those responsible for the lapses in security,” the Pakistani statement said.

Earlier, the Pakistani Embassy in Berlin also denounced the consulate attack as a “reprehensible vandalizing act.” It wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that the diplomatic mission was in contact with the German authorities “to ensure such a situation doesn’t arise again and the miscreants face legal consequences.”

The embassy appealed to Pakistanis in Germany to remain patient and calm in the aftermath of the episode.

German authorities have increasingly linked Afghan asylum-seekers in the country to criminal activities and announced last month they are considering resuming deportations of criminals to Afghanistan.

The announcement by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser came just days after a 25-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was accused of fatally stabbing a police officer in Manheim.

Germany ceased deporting migrants to Afghanistan after the Taliban regained power in August 2021 due to the risk of death in their home country.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Interior Minister Faeser told a June 4 news conference.

She emphasized that her country’s “security interests clearly outweigh the interests of those affected” and, “We are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people” to Afghanistan and Syria.

On July 8, Germany abruptly announced the closure of its consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi until further notice. It cited “imminent security concerns” but did not specify them. A consulate announcement last Friday, however, said the German diplomatic facility had “resumed normal operations.” 

The abrupt closure of the German consulate apparently had surprised and upset the Pakistani hosts. 

“Consulates in various cities offer important consular services and promote business-to-business ties,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Baloch told reporters Friday, just hours before the German consulate announced the resumption of its operations.   

“Closure of operations of any consular mission in Karachi would affect these services and slow down engagement with the biggest metropolis and the financial and commercial center of Pakistan,” Baloch said.
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Rome — Italian politicians including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed outrage Sunday after a journalist was beaten up in the northern city of Turin by suspected neo-fascists. 

On Saturday night, the reporter for La Stampa daily came upon by chance a party being held by the neo-fascist fringe group CasaPound, involving smoke bombs and fireworks. He started filming with his phone. 

According to his footage and an account by the newspaper, a group of men came up to him and asked, “Are you one of us?” Then they attacked him, causing him to require hospital treatment. 

Meloni, the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, offered her solidarity with the journalist, Andrea Joly, over the “unacceptable attack.”  

It was “an act of violence that I strongly condemn and for which I hope those responsible will be identified as quickly as possible,” she said in a statement. 

Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left opposition Democratic Party, also offered her solidarity with Joly and condemned a “climate of impunity.” 

“What else are we waiting for before neo-fascist organizations are dissolved, as the constitution says?” she asked. 

The attack was one of two incidents of random violence that made headlines this weekend in Italy, after a shocking video emerged of two gay men being beaten up by three men and a woman in Rome. 

That attack also drew condemnation from across the political spectrum.  

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Sunday deplored “too much violence and intolerance in Italy against those who do not think like you,” writing on X, formerly Twitter, that he “strongly condemned any violence.”
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Madrid — Barcelona will raise the tourist tax for cruise passengers visiting the city for less than 12 hours, the mayor said in an interview published on Sunday.

Jaume Collboni said the current tourist tax for stopover cruise passengers was 7 euros ($7.61) per day. He did not say by how much the tax would be increased.

“We are going to propose.. substantially increasing the tax for stopover cruise passengers,” he told El Pais newspaper.

“In the case of stopover cruise passengers (less than 12 hours) there is intensive use of public space without any benefit for the city and a feeling of occupation and saturation. We want to have tourism that is respectful of the destination.”

He said tourists, not local tax payers, should pay for local projects like air-conditioning schools.

The proposal will have to be agreed with the Catalan regional government, Collboni said.

In recent weeks, anti-tourism activists have staged protests in popular holiday destinations across Spain, such as Palma de Mallorca, Malaga and the Canary Islands, saying visitors drive up housing costs and lead to residents being unable to afford to live in city centers. 

Another protest is planned in Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the largest Balearic Island on Sunday evening.

Collboni announced last month that the city will bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, an unexpectedly drastic move as it seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city liveable for residents.  
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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis said on Sunday he hoped the Paris Olympics would be an occasion for truces in the world’s conflicts, urging athletes to be messengers of peace and models for young people.

The games start on July 26 with an opening ceremony on the River Seine that will feature about 10,500 athletes and over 100 heads of state and government.

During his weekly address to the crowds in St Peter’s Square, the pope said he hoped that “according to the ancient tradition, the Olympics will be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars, by demonstrating a sincere desire for peace.”

He mentioned the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar and other countries, saying “let us not forget war is a defeat.”

Last month the final statement of a Group of Seven (G7) leaders’ meeting held in Italy included a unanimous call for a truce in global conflicts during the Olympic Games.
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paris — A year ago, the head of the Paris Olympics boldly declared that France’s capital would be ” the safest place in the world ” when the Games open this Friday. Tony Estanguet’s confident forecast looks less far-fetched now with squadrons of police patrolling Paris’ streets, fighter jets and soldiers primed to scramble, and imposing metal-fence security barriers erected like an iron curtain on both sides of the River Seine that will star in the opening show.

France’s vast police and military operation is in large part because the July 26-August 11 Games face unprecedented security challenges. The city has repeatedly suffered deadly extremist attacks, and international tensions are high because of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Rather than build an Olympic park with venues grouped together outside of the city center, like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 or London in 2012, Paris has chosen to host many of the events in the heart of the bustling capital of 2 million inhabitants, with others dotted around suburbs that house millions more. Putting temporary sports arenas in public spaces and the unprecedented choice to stage a river-borne opening ceremony stretching for kilometers along the Seine, makes safeguarding them more complex.

Olympic organizers also have cyberattack concerns, while rights campaigners and Games critics are worried about Paris’ use of AI-equipped surveillance technology and the broad scope and scale of Olympic security.

Paris, in short, has a lot riding on keeping 10,500 athletes and millions of visitors safe. Here’s how it aims to do it.

The security operation, by the numbers

A Games-time force of up to 45,000 police and gendarmes is also backed up by a 10,000-strong contingent of soldiers that has set up the largest military camp in Paris since World War II, from which soldiers should be able to reach any of the city’s Olympic venues within 30 minutes.

Armed military patrols aboard vehicles and on foot have become common in crowded places in France since gunmen and suicide bombers acting in the names of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group repeatedly struck Paris in 2015. They don’t have police powers of arrest but can tackle attackers and restrain them until police arrive. For visitors from countries where armed street patrols aren’t the norm, the sight of soldiers with assault rifles might be jarring, just as it was initially for people in France.

“At the beginning, it was very strange for them to see us and they were always avoiding our presence, making a detour,” said General Eric Chasboeuf, deputy commander of the counter-terror military force, called Sentinelle.

“Now, it’s in the landscape,” he said.

Rafale fighter jets, airspace-monitoring AWACS surveillance flights, Reaper surveillance drones, helicopters that can carry sharpshooters, and equipment to disable drones will police Paris skies, which will be closed during the opening ceremony by a no-fly zone extending for 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) around the capital. Cameras twinned with artificial intelligence software — authorized by a law that expands the state’s surveillance powers for the Games — will flag potential security risks, such as abandoned packages or crowd surges,

France is also getting help from more than 40 countries that, together, have sent at least 1,900 police reinforcements.

Trump assassination attempt highlights Olympic risks

Attacks by lone individuals are major concern, a risk driven home most recently to French officials by the assassination attempt against former U.S. President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Some involved in the Olympic security operation were stunned that the gunman armed with an AR-style rifle got within range of the former president.

“No one can guarantee that there won’t be mistakes. There, however, it was quite glaring,” said General Philippe Pourque, who oversaw the construction of a temporary camp in southeast Paris housing 4,500 soldiers from the Sentinelle force.

In France, in the last 13 months alone, men acting alone have carried out knife attacks that targeted tourists in Paris, and children in a park in an Alpine town, among others. A man who stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school in northern France in October had been under surveillance by French security services for suspected Islamic radicalization.

With long and bitter experience of deadly extremist attacks, France has armed itself with a dense network of police units, intelligence services and investigators who specialize in fighting terrorism, and suspects in terrorism cases can be held longer for questioning.

Hundreds of thousands of background checks have scrutinized Olympic ticket-holders, workers and others involved in the Games and applicants for passes to enter Paris’ most tightly controlled security zone, along the Seine’s banks. The checks blocked more than 3,900 people from attending, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. He said some were flagged for suspected Islamic radicalization, left- or right-wing political extremism, significant criminal records and other security concerns.

“We’re particularly attentive to Russian and Belorussian citizens,” Darmanin added, although he stopped short of linking exclusions to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Belarus’ role as an ally of Moscow.

Darmanin said 155 people considered to be “very dangerous” potential terror threats are also being kept away from the opening ceremony and the Games, with police searching their homes for weapons and computers in some cases.

He said intelligence services haven’t identified any proven terror plots against the Games “but we are being extremely attentive.”

Critics fear intrusive Olympic security will stay after Games

Campaigners for digital rights worry that Olympic surveillance cameras and AI systems could erode privacy and other freedoms, and zero in on people without fixed homes who spend a lot of time in public spaces.

Saccage 2024, a group that has campaigned for months against the Paris Games, took aim at the scope of the Olympic security, describing it as a “repressive arsenal” in a statement to The Associated Press.

“And this is not a French exception, far from it, but a systematic occurrence in host countries,” it said. “Is it reasonable to offer one month of ‘festivities’ to the most well-off tourists at the cost of a long-term securitization legacy for all residents of the city and the country?”
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Warsaw, Poland — Belarus and Germany are holding “consultations” over the fate of a German man reportedly sentenced to death by a court in Minsk last month, Belarus’s foreign ministry said Saturday. 

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” at a secretive trial held at the end of June, according to Belarusian rights group Viasna. 

“Taking into account a request from the German Foreign Ministry, Belarus has proposed concrete solutions on the available options for developing the situation,” Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoly Glaz said. 

“The foreign ministries of the two countries are holding consultations on this topic,” he added. 

Few details have been published about the case. 

Part of the court proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against the man were not immediately clear and there has been little information in Belarusian state media about the trial. 

According to a LinkedIn profile that Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. 

A source at the German Foreign Ministry told AFP on Friday that it and the embassy in Minsk were “providing the person in question with consular services and are making intensive representations to the Belarusian authorities on his behalf.” 

The source added that “the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that Germany rejects under all circumstances.” 

Belarus is reported to have executed as many as 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International.  

But executions of foreign citizens are rare.  

The country is run as an authoritarian regime by long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him. 
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SHUSHA, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pledged Saturday to help France’s overseas territories secure independence, the latest in a series of incidents pitting his ex-Soviet state against Paris over long-running conflicts in the Caucasus region. 

Aliyev accuses France of interfering in its affairs over its contacts with Armenia, against which it has waged two wars in 30 years linked to disputes over Baku’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

In recent months, Azerbaijani leaders have focused on France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, gripped by weeks of violence over the objections of Indigenous Kanak activists to a contentious electoral reform. 

Aliyev made his latest comments at a media forum days before the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris and just after the staging in Baku of a congress bringing together pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories. 

“We will support you until you are free,” Aliyev told the forum, citing French territories that he said were still subject to colonialism. 

“Some countries are still suffering from this. The Comoros islands, Mayotte are still under colonial rule. It has been our duty to help these countries liberate themselves from this revolting remnant from the past.” 

Accusations of meddling

Earlier this week, an “initiative group” staged a congress in Baku attended by pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories, including Corsica and Caribbean and Pacific islands. 

French media accounts of the meeting said participants sharply criticized French authorities and an Azerbaijani delegation was invited to visit New Caledonia. 

France accused Azerbaijan in May of meddling and abetting unrest in New Caledonia by flooding social media with what it said were misleading photos and videos targeting French police. 

Azerbaijan has denied the allegations. 

Azerbaijani authorities accuse France of bias in favor of Armenia in efforts to achieve a peace treaty to end three decades of conflict and in signing defense contracts with authorities in Yerevan. Azerbaijan expelled two French diplomats last December. 
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