TBILISI -- A bipartisan group of 14 U.S. senators warned in a letter to Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that the Caucasus nation’s plan to reintroduce a "Russian-style foreign agents law" could lead to a change in U.S. policy toward Tbilisi.

In the letter -- sent on April 26 and obtained by Voice of America (VOA) -- the senators said they are “increasingly concerned that Georgia’s transatlantic aspirations are being undermined.”

The letter came after the U.S. Helsinki Commission called on the ruling Georgian Dream party to withdraw the "foreign agent" bill and urged Tbilisi “to divert from this destructive path."

Western governments and rights groups have condemned Georgia's controversial "foreign agents" bill, which many say is a replica of a similar Russian law used to muzzle dissent in that country.

Thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets to protest the bill after the ruling party gave an initial green light to it, despite an outbreak of scuffles in parliament.

The legislation also sparked mass protests when first introduced last year -- causing the government to withdraw the bill.

Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the parliamentary faction of Georgian Dream, this month said the party planned to reintroduce the bill, which would oblige noncommercial organizations and media outlets that receive foreign funding and who are engaged in broadly defined "political" activities to report their activities to the authorities.

It would also introduce wide oversight powers by the authorities and potential criminal sanctions for undefined criminal offenses.

Georgian Dream has said the new bill is identical to the one withdrawn last year, except for one change: The term "foreign agent" would be replaced by the words "an organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power."

The U.S. senators in their letter rejected Georgian government claims that the law is equivalent to a U.S. law that requires U.S. citizens to register as foreign agents if they represent the interests of a foreign party in the United States.

"We must also make it clear that the reintroduced foreign agents’ law does not mirror any U.S. law and would be used to silence the civil society and media that play a significant role in advancing Georgia’s democratic institutions," they wrote in the letter.

Former Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, chairman of Georgia Dream, on April 27 insisted that the senators' letter was "based on misconceptions."

Garibashvili told reporters that it was crucial to maintain communications with "European and American partners" so that "those misunderstandings are eliminated."

Georgian Dream officials have insisted the legislation is aimed at bringing transparency in a time of high tensions.

"Our country, unfortunately, is still facing challenges. The main challenge is foreign occupation of 20 percent of our country. Russian troops stand on the occupied territory, although there are also other risks in the country," Garibashvili said.

Anti-Russian sentiment can often be strong in Georgia. Russian troops still control around one-fifth of Georgian territory, most of it taken during a lightning war in 2008 that was ostensibly about breakaway efforts in two northeastern regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The final reading of the bill is scheduled to be debated on May 17. Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili told the BBC that she will veto it if it’s approved in its final reading.

Zurabishvili said that her major concern is the fact that the bill in question is "exactly a copy of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's law."

However, Zurabishvili said the ruling Georgian Dream party has enough lawmakers to override her if she does use her veto.

The European Union's ambassador to Georgia has criticized the introduction of the bill, saying it's "incompatible" with the values of the bloc Tbilisi is looking to join.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also assailed moves to introduce the law.

Georgia has been vocal in its drive to join the EU, which extended candidate status to Tbilisi late last year after the government recalled the first attempt at introducing the law following public protests.

EU officials have said that if Georgia adopts the bill as law, it would disrupt the nation’s membership hopes.

The EU and NATO are keen to maintain relations with Georgia and move it further away from Russian influence, but recent moves have caused concern in Western capitals.

Most opinion polls in Georgia indicate strong support from the public for closer ties with Western institutions.

With reporting by the Voice of America

Scuffles were reported on April 26 between police and residents of a village in Armenia that is due to be handed over to Azerbaijan as part of a border demarcation deal between Yerevan and Baku. Reports said protesters tried to stop a vehicle in Kirants on April 26, one of the border communities impacted by the upcoming move, believing they were Azerbaijani officials sent to work on the demarcation deal agreed on April 19. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has faced criticism at home after agreeing to cede several border areas to neighbor and longtime rival Azerbaijan as part of a peace deal. Both the United States and European Union have hailed the agreement. To read the original story from the RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, click here.

A Russian court on April 27 ordered a journalist for the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, Sergei Mingazov, to be placed under house arrest. Mingazov was detained by police in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk on April 26 on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military. His lawyer, Konstantin Bubon, said his client was detained because of social media posts he made about the Ukrainian city of Bucha, where more than 400 bodies of civilians were found, many bearing signs of torture, after Russian forces pulled out in April 2022. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. To read the full story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Ukraine said Russia had launched a massive attack overnight targeting energy installations, while a Russian oil refinery said it had suspended operations following a drone strike.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said its four thermal power stations had been hit.

"The enemy again massively shelled the Ukrainian energy facilities," DTEK said in a statement. "The company's equipment was seriously damaged. At this very moment, energy workers are trying to eliminate the consequences of the attack."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy again appealed for quick delivery of further air defense weapons from Western allies after the attacks on crucial infrastructure.

"Terror should always lose, and anyone who helps us stand against Russian terror is a true defender of life," he said.

Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said the Russian strikes targeted the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine and the western regions of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk.

Halushchenko said one energy worker had been injured. DTEK also said there were casualties but provided no other details.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, a psychiatric hospital was damaged and one person was wounded in a Russian missile strike, officials said.

Oleh Synyehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said a 53-year-old woman was injured in what he described as a strike by a Russian cruise missile.

Synyehubov said at the time of the attack about 60 patients and five staff had been in the building.

Photos from the scene showed a huge crater on the grounds of the facility and patients taking shelter in corridors.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down 21 of 34 Russian missiles fired in an overnight attack, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force said on April 27.

Mykola Oleschuk said Ukrainian fighter planes, air defense missile units, mobile fire groups, and means of radio-electronic warfare were involved in repelling the Russian missile strikes.

Over the past month, Russia’s military has increased its targeting of Ukrainian power infrastructure, attacking thermal and hydropower stations and other energy infrastructure almost daily.

Ukrainian officials have said the country has lost about 80 percent of its thermal generation and about 35 percent of its hydropower capacity, prompting the government to introduce scheduled blackouts in several regions.

In Russia, meanwhile, an oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar region has suspended operations after a suspected drone attack early on April 27, local officials said.

"The work of the plant has been partially suspended. Exactly 10 UAVs (drones) flew into the plant. There was a strong fire. There may be hidden damage," Eduard Trudnev, the security director of Slavyansk ECO Group, which operates the plant, was quoted as saying.

A post on the Telegram messaging app showed what appeared to be a large explosion at the Slavyansk oil refinery.

Ukraine, which rarely comments on its targeting of Russian sites, said nothing publicly on the drone strikes.

Ukrainian officials on April 27 reported that Russia had reinforced its troops around the eastern Ukrainian town of Ocheretyne in an effort to take the embattled settlement, but Kyiv insisted that its forces were holding off the Kremlin’s offensive there.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command said government forces had the situation "under control" and that Ukrainian troops had managed to shell areas taken by Russian forces, blocking their advance ahead of a planned effort to “kick them out.”

Battlefield claims on both sides cannot immediately be verified.

In Chasiv Yar -- another town under direct Russian assault -- Ukrainian officials said the Kremlin’s forces had not entered the municipality, which had a prewar population of about 12,500.

Zelenskiy said in an interview on April 21 that Russia wants to occupy Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region before May 9, the day that Russia celebrates as Victory Day to mark the defeat of Germany in World War II.

With reporting by Reuters

Iran’s foreign minister said the crew of a seized Portuguese-flagged ship linked to Israel have been granted consular access and are expected to be freed, Iranian media reported on April 27. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seized the container vessel MSC Aries with a crew of 25 in the Strait of Hormuz on April 13, days after Tehran vowed to retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus. Iran had said it could close the crucial shipping route. Recent attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden by Yemen's Iran-aligned Huthis, claiming solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel's war with Hamas, have affected global shipping.

Associates of Aleksei Navalny, who died in February in a Russian penal colony, say a concert has been scheduled in his memory in Berlin on June 4, which would have been the opposition politician’s 48th birthday. Navalny’s associates announced the event on Telegram on April 26, saying they want to ensure that the name Navalny and his ideas continue to be heard. They said Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be able to defeat Navalny as long as he is remembered. Among the artists scheduled to perform are rapper Noize MC and the Russian hip-hop duo Aigel. To read the full story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Peter Magyar, an aspiring challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, renewed his calls for change on April 26 as he led a protest of several thousand people demanding a more robust child protection system and the resignation of Orban's government. Magyar led the demonstration outside the Interior Ministry as demonstrators criticized it for failing to prevent the sexual abuse of children in state-run institutions. In his comments to the crowd the 43-year-old Magyar took aim at Orban's portrayal of himself as a defender of families and traditional values and called for genuine reforms to address child welfare.

A group known as Cyberpartisans claims it has infiltrated the network of Belarus’s main security agency and accessed the personnel files of thousands of employees.

Cyberpartisans said on April 26 that the official website of the Belarusian KGB has not been working for more than two months because of its activities.

The group said on Telegram that its hackers penetrated the KGB system in the fall of 2023 and “pumped out all the available information.”

As proof that it breached the agency’s network, Cyberpartisans posted a list of administrators and the website's database and server logs on Telegram.

Belarusian KGB authorities have not commented on the claim, but the agency’s website opened with a page that said the site was “under construction.”

Group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told the Associated Press that the attack was in response to comments by the agency’s chief, Ivan Tertel, who accused the group this week of plotting attacks on the country's critical infrastructure, including a nuclear power plant.

“The KGB is carrying out the largest political repressions in the history of the country and must answer for it,” said Shametavets, speaking from New York. “We work to save the lives of Belarusians, and not to destroy them, like the repressive Belarusian special services do.”

Shametavets said once the group succeeded in hacking the KGB’s network it was able to download personal files of more than 8,600 KGB employees.

The action is the second claimed by the group in as many weeks. The Cyberpartisans claimed last week to have hacked into the computers and security systems of the Hrodna Azot plant in the region of Homel, a major state-run producer of nitrogen compounds and fertilizers.

The group claimed that it took control of all internal e-mail accounts of as well as hundreds of computers, servers, the security system, and security cameras in the plant’s buildings.

It said it would undo its work in exchange for the release of workers who were arrested during protests against the disputed 2020 presidential election.

Cyberpartisans is a decentralized community of anonymous hackers that first appeared in September 2020.

It has previously hacked into the resources of Belarusian state institutions and law enforcement agencies and publicized classified information in response to state repression against protesters. The group says its activity is part of the struggle against the authoritarian rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Lukashenka, 69, has tightened his grip on the country since the August 2020 election by arresting -- sometimes violently -- tens of thousands of people. Fearing for their safety, most opposition members have fled the country.

With reporting by AP

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on April 26 rejected criticism over the arrests of journalists and said the fact that people had access to the Internet meant press freedom was assured. "We must protect our media landscape from external negative influences just like any other country, and everyone must comply with the laws," Aliyev told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a visit to Berlin. Asked to respond to allegations that journalists' rights are being violated, Aliyev said it would be unfair to criticize Azerbaijan, which has hundreds of media organizations and no censorship. To read the full story on RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, click here.

A British man has been charged over alleged hostile state activity intended to benefit Russia, including by allegedly recruiting others for an arson attack on a Ukrainian-linked commercial property in London. UK Foreign Minister David Cameron voiced deep concern about the allegations, and the British Foreign Ministry later said it had summoned Russia's ambassador to London to express its concern about "Russian orchestrated malign activity on UK soil."

A Kurdish-language teacher in the Iranian city of Sanandaj has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for her cultural activities and support for the Women, Life, Freedom protests that have roiled the country since the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.

Soma Pourmohammadi, who is involved with the socio-cultural association Nojin, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that the first sentence handed down by Branch 1 of the Sanandaj Islamic Revolutionary Court was for a term of 10 years due to her association's activities, saying that it "disrupts national security."

In a second, related case, she said she received an additional one-year suspended sentence linked to her participation in the Women Life Freedom movement, again for "disrupting national security."

Pourmohammadi denied the accusations and criticized the Iranian judiciary and said she has little hope of receiving a reduced sentence on appeal.

During a recounting of her interrogation process, Pourmohammadi said she was blindfolded, forced to face a wall, and physically dragged and thrown outside in cold weather.

She was also forced to speak Persian despite her commitment to using only Kurdish, her mother tongue.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, died while in police custody for an alleged hijab infraction in 2022.

Human rights groups say that since Amini’s death, authorities have launched an intense crackdown in provinces with significant Kurdish populations, including Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan.

Nojin, which has been officially licensed since 2009, focuses on the education and empowerment of women through the teaching of Kurdish and on raising cultural and social awareness in Kurdistan.

Despite its legal status, its members, including Pourmohammadi, frequently face state scrutiny and intimidation.

Pourmohammadi’s case, activists say, reflects a broader pattern of cultural suppression in Iran, particularly against ethnic minorities and their linguistic rights.

Pourmohammadi's sentencing coincides with increased actions against members of the Nojin association, including other educators who have faced similar charges.

Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda

Russian authorities have reportedly arrested another Tajik national in connection with the March 22 terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow that left 144 people dead and hundreds more injured.

The RBK news agency cited sources in law enforcement on April 26 as identifying the detained suspect as Jumokhon Qurbonov, who was born in 2003.

Russian authorities have said 11 Tajik citizens and a Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen have been arrested in connection with the attack, Russia’s worst terrorist attack in two decades. Responsibility was claimed by an offshoot of Islamic State known as Islamic State-Khorasan.

Russian investigators say the assault was carried out by four men, all Tajik nationals. Other detainees are being held for aiding and abetting the attackers.

On April 12, Tajikistan’s Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin condemned the treatment of the Tajik suspects amid allegations that the detainees were tortured in custody.

Several Tajik suspects showed signs of abuse when they appeared in court in Moscow following the attack. The four accused gunmen had bruised and swollen faces and showed other signs of having been severely beaten. There were unconfirmed reports that one of them had his ear cut off during his arrest.

Muhriddin also condemned the surge of xenophobia in Russia after the attack, saying that as a result of an "ill-conceived information campaign" a "negative perception is being formed toward citizens of Tajikistan."

The Kremlin has insisted without evidence that Ukraine, with the help of the United States, was responsible for the attack. Both Kyiv and Washington have dismissed the accusation.

The attack was seen as a major failure for Russia's security and intelligence services. The United States has said it gave specific information ahead of time, warning of a possible terrorist attack. Iran also reportedly provided a tip ahead of time.

With reporting by RBK

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the continued occupation by Russia of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is Europe's largest, heightens the danger of a nuclear catastrophe. "For 785 days now, Russian terrorists have held hostage the Zaporizhzhia NPP," Zelenskiy said in a message on X, formerly Twitter, on the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. "It is the entire world's responsibility to put pressure on Russia to ensure that ZNPP is liberated and returned to full Ukrainian control, as well as that all Ukrainian nuclear facilities are protected from Russian strikes," he wrote. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here.

Four people, including three children, were wounded early on April 26 when Russian troops shelled the village of Derhachi in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Synyehubov said. Two girls, 16 and 5, received medical assistance on the spot, Synyehubov said, adding that a 4-year-old boy and a 52-year-old woman received minor injuries that did not need hospitalization. On April 25, 13 people were wounded in the Kharkiv region by Russian shelling. Russia has intensified its strikes on Kharkiv, whose regional capital, Kharkiv city, is just 30 kilometers from the Russian border. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here.

The bodies of 140 Ukrainian servicemen killed in action have been returned to Ukraine, the Kyiv-based Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War announced in a statement on April 26. They consist of 120 soldiers who were killed in the Donetsk region, with the remainder falling on battlefields in the Luhansk, Sumy, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson regions," the statement said. The International Committee of the Red Cross assisted in the return of the bodies, it added. On April 12, the bodies of 99 Ukrainian soldiers were returned to Kyiv, while Russia received 23 bodies. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here.

In an apparent attempt to prevent possible ethnic clashes, Kazakh authorities have deployed special forces and increased the presence of law enforcement in the town of Zaghambar in the southern region of Turkistan, where tensions are running high following the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl.

After police in the town -- where around three-quarters of its 5,400 residents are ethnic Uzbeks -- said on April 24 that a teenage boy had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the assault, unknown perpetrators threw Molotov cocktails at several houses, barns, and three cars belonging to ethnic Uzbeks.

Police said that 16 young men had been detained on suspicion of carrying out the arson attacks. Local residents told RFE/RL that all of the suspected arson attackers were ethnic Kazakhs.

Zaghambar has been cordoned off by police and special forces since April 24, while telephone and the Internet connections remain blocked.

By sending special forces to the remote village and blocking communications, the authorities appear to be trying to prevent possible ethnic clashes similar to those that took place in another southern region -- Zhambyl.

In that region in February 2020, a road-rage brawl led to violent clashes between Kazakhs and Kazakh citizens from the ethnic Dungan minority -- a Muslim group of Chinese origin -- that left 11 people dead, dozens injured, and more than 30 houses, 17 commercial buildings, and 47 vehicles burned down.

More than 20,000 people, mostly Dungans, fled the villages where the violence erupted. Many of them ended up in the neighboring Kyrgyz region of Chui, where the majority of Central Asia's Dungans live.

Kazakh officials said at the time that most of the displaced Dungans returned to Kazakhstan several days later.

In February 2015, a quarrel between a Kazakh and an ethnic Tajik in another southern Kazakh district, Bostandyq, ended in the Kazakh man's death, which led to an anti-Tajik rampage involving homes and vehicles belonging to Tajiks being set on fire.

The maintaining ethnic harmony has been a major goal of the Kazakh government's domestic policies for decades. About 140 ethnic groups are represented among citizens of the former Soviet republic, where many ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union were deported by Moscow in the 1940s.

The issue of ethnic concord became especially sensitive for Astana after Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022, asserting its "right" to intervene in foreign countries to protect Russian speakers.

More than 20 percent of Kazakhstan's 19 million people are ethnic Russians or so-called Russian speakers, mainly residing in northern regions bordering Russia and bigger cities, such as Almaty, the largest city, and Astana, the capital.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service

A court in Kyrgyzstan has sent a former deputy chief of the Anti-Monopoly Service to pretrial detention for at least two months on a charge of calling for mass unrest. Akjoltoi Tukunov was detained on April 17 and initially charged with public calls to seize power and calls for mass unrest. The first charge was later dropped. On April 19, a court ruled in favor of his release though it ordered him not to leave Bishkek. Prosecutors appealed that ruling, demanding that he be placed in pretrial detention. That request was granted by the Chui district court on April 26. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, click here.

The leader of the United Kyrgyzstan opposition party, Adakhan Madumarov, told journalists after he was released from a detention center on April 26 that he will appeal his fraud conviction because the case was "ungrounded." In late March, a Bishkek court found Madumarov guilty of financial fraud and ignoring Kyrgyzstan's interests while signing a Kyrgyz-Tajik border deal in 2009 when he led the country's Security Council. The court did not sentence Madumarov due to the statute of limitations but ordered him to remain in custody for another month until the decision takes force. Madumarov was arrested in September. To read the original story on RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, click here.

Russia's Justice Ministry said on April 26 that it had asked the Supreme Court to ban what it called the "International Anti-Russia Separatist Movement," a group that does not appear to exist. According to the ministry, the Supreme Court will look into its request on June 7. Last year, the Prosecutor-General's Office designated two movements registered abroad as undesirable organizations -- the League of Free Nations and the Forum of Post-Russia's Free Peoples, which advocate self-determination for ethnic republics within the Russian Federation. In November, the Supreme Court banned another nonexistent group -- the International Public LGBT Movement. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

A Russian court sentenced businessman Oleg Kan in absentia on April 26 to 17 years in prison after being convicted of ordering the assassination of a business rival in 2010. Kan, known in Russia as the "Crab King," was an influential businessman who accumulated significant wealth by exporting seafood from Russia's Sakhalin island. He fled Russia in 2018 after a probe was launched against him. Kan's lawyers claimed later that their client died of cancer in Britain in 2023. Russian officials presume that Kan is alive, saying that his death was not registered with the Russian authorities. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

Spain will send a small number of Patriot missiles to Ukraine in response to pressure from EU and NATO allies to send more military aid to Kyiv, according to a report published on April 26. With Russia having stepped up air attacks on Ukraine, EU governments have been urged to supply more protective systems to Kyiv, especially countries like Greece and Spain, which have such arms in their arsenals. Quoting unidentified government sources, the El Pais newspaper said that Spain had ruled out delivering Patriot antiaircraft launchers, but would supply the Ukrainian military with missiles for the system. To read the original story by Reuters, click here.

Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskiy was released from custody on April 26 after posting bail following his arrest earlier in the day over accusations that he had illegally acquired land worth about 291 million hryvnyas ($7 million).

Ukraine's anti-corruption court ordered that Solskiy be taken into custody following an investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).

The anti-corruption judge ruled that Solskiy be placed in custody until June 24 and set bail at 75 million hryvnyas ($1.9 million), although the prosecutor had recommended a much higher bail -- 200 million hryvnyas ($5 million).

A press statement issued by the Agriculture Ministry later on April 26 said a bail of 75.7 million hryvnyas had been paid for the release of Solskiy, who "continues to exercise the powers of agriculture minister of Ukraine."

It did not say who paid the bail.

Solskiy, 44, is the first member of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government to be officially accused of corruption.

After he was named as a suspect in the multimillion-dollar graft investigation, Solskiy offered to resign on April 25 in a handwritten letter, which Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk published on Facebook.

Solskiy's offer will be considered at an upcoming session of parliament, Stefanchuk said.

Solskiy, who was appointed minister in March 2022, has denied the accusations, saying the case concerns a dispute in 2017-18 between state-owned enterprises and private individuals, particularly soldiers, over land that was given to these people "in accordance with the law."

He promised to fully cooperate with the investigation.

NABU said earlier this week that Solskiy, an ex-head of parliament's Agriculture Committee, was involved in a plot that resulted in him taking possession of state land worth 291 million hryvnyas and that he was also attempting to acquire more land worth 190 million hryvnyas ($4.8 million).

NABU said that Solskiy was the coordinator of the scheme, which involved three other people, including two employees of the state cadastral office.

The Agriculture Ministry has overseen Kyiv's efforts to continue to export grain and other produce despite Russian attempts to block Black Sea export routes.

Zelenskiy last year dismissed Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov after a series of corruption scandals involving his ministry and the procurement of supplies for Ukrainian troops fighting Russia in the east of the country.

The United States will provide Ukraine with Patriot missiles for its air-defense systems as part of a massive $6 billion additional aid package, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on April 26 after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

The missiles will be used to replenish previously supplied Patriot air-defense systems, Austin said in the announcement, which came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the countries in the contact group to provide additional defense systems to create an air shield against further Russian missile attacks.

In addition to Patriot missiles, the $6 billion package includes more munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, (NASAMS) and additional equipment to integrate Western air-defense launchers, missiles, and radars into Ukraine's existing weaponry.

Zelenskiy raised Ukraine’s need for U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems earlier on April 26 during a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, also known as the Ramstein Format.

Austin said in his opening comments to the meeting that everyone in the contact group shares Zelenskiy's sense of urgency, and he announced $1 billion worth of assistance to Ukraine, including HIMARS, 155-millimeter ammunition, air-defense interceptors, and armored vehicles.

Zelenskiy told the group earlier that Ukraine urgently needs to build its air defense to save lives.

Zelenskiy said this year alone Russian jets have already used more than 9,000 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine, "and we need the ability to shoot down the air combat aircraft so that they do not approach our positions and borders."

At least seven Patriot systems are needed to protect Ukrainian cities, he added.

At a Pentagon press conference following the meeting, Austin said the United States was working with allies to locate additional Patriot systems but did not commit to sending more U.S. versions. He said he has been speaking one-on-one with a number of his European counterparts in recent days about this issue.

“It's not just Patriots that they need. They need other types of systems and interceptors as well,” Austin said. “I would caution us all in terms of making Patriot the silver bullet.”

The contact group meeting comes just days after U.S. President Joe Biden signed a long-delayed $61 billion military aid package for Ukraine. The United States has already announced that $1 billion in artillery, air defenses, and other hardware would soon be heading to the battlefield.

Austin said that since the Ukraine Defense Contact Group was founded two years ago members have provided Ukraine with more than 70 medium- and long-range air-defense systems and thousands of missiles.

The group also sent more than 3,000 armored vehicles, including more than 800 main battle tanks, Austin said.

Despite all of the aid delivered, Zelenskiy said Russia "managed to seize the initiative on the battlefield" in the six months it took for Congress to pass the large U.S. aid package. But he said it is not too late to stabilize the front and "move toward achieving our Ukrainian goals in the war."

The flow of weaponry could improve Kyiv's chances of averting a major Russian breakthrough in the east, military analysts say. But it is unclear how much pressure Kyiv can apply after months of rationing artillery as its stocks ran low. Kyiv also faces a shortage of troops on the battlefield.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

A military court in Siberia has handed prison terms to two teenagers over graffiti they painted protesting Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Aleksandr Snezhkov, 19, and Lyubov Lizunova, 16, were sentenced to 6 years and 3 1/2 years in prison, respectively, on April 25. A third defendant in the case, Vladislav Vishnevsky, 20, was handed 18 months of work in an industrial facility to be designated by the authorities with the deduction of some portion of his salary by the state treasury. Snezhkov told RFE/RL earlier that he and Lizunova wanted their graffiti to express their opposition to “repressions and the war in Ukraine.” To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.

Ruben Vardanian, a former Russian citizen of Armenian descent who served as prime minister in the de facto government of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from November 2022 to February 2023, has ended a hunger strike in a Baku prison, his family said on April 25. A family statement said he ended the hunger strike because his health was deteriorating. Vardanian, a billionaire banker who renounced his Russian citizenship, was arrested and brought to Baku after Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. He began the hunger strike to demand his release and that of other detained former Karabakh separatist leaders. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.