[DAILYTIMES.PK] The heiress to Belarus’ largest independent news outlet, Evgeniya Chernyavskaya, says her country’s widening crackdown on media and opposition has imperiled freedom of speech and threatened lives.
"Nobody is safe now in Belarus especially journalists," says the heiress to Tut.by, the news outlet whose survival is now fragile, after members of its team were detained after office and home raids. On May 18, authorities blocked the site after searching and closing its offices and arresting 12 people, including several journalists and Yulia, Chernyavskaya’s mother.
Officially it was a tax evasion investigation but Chernyavskaya has no doubt that her country’s most popular independent news site was targeted as part of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s crackdown, that followed mass protests in 2020 against his rule. Chernyavskaya, whose late father Yuri Zisser founded the news site, has been organising remotely from Tel Aviv in Israel, where she has lived for five years.
In Belarus, "there is no freedom of speech, no freedom to access information," the 33-year-old entrepreneur said, who until the raids had maintained a low profile. "Belarus definitely has a dictatorship today — it got worse during the last year, and it’s very dangerous," she told AFP.
"Even people who go to the store to buy bread, they are unsafe, because they could be stopped, and their phone could be checked." The country’s stifling of dissent escalated Sunday, when Belarus triggered international fury in arresting opposition blogger Roman Protasevich, after intercepting his Ryanair flight.
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In Belarus, "there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of access information," t
Gee, sounds familiar. Wonder of the White Russians have access to stories that the White Americans must not be allowed to read.... like how their election was a ridiculous farce, or how their asterisk-president's crack addict son sold access to the Vice President for years and to dozens of international criminals as well as to the nation's mortal enemies in the Chinese military.
Can we get access to these and other facts about our criminal class of overlords if we move to Minsk?
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] Austria on Thursday slammed Russia after it refused to allow an Austrian Airlines flight to be rerouted to avoid Belarusian airspace, resulting in the Vienna-Moscow service being cancelled.
"Based on a recommendation by the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Austrian Airlines has suspended flights through Belarusian airspace until further notice. For this reason, adjustments to the flight route from Vienna to Moscow are necessary," said Austrian Airlines spokesperson Leonhard Steinmann.
"A change in flight routes must be approved by the authorities. The Russian authorities did not give us this permit. As a result, Austrian Airlines had to cancel today’s flight from Vienna to Moscow."
Passengers on the cancelled flight were rebooked, the airline said.
The move is the latest fallout from what Western nations have called hijacking and piracy by Russia’s ally Belarus on Sunday, which forced a Lithuania-bound Ryanair flight from Greece to land in Minsk, where a Belarusian dissident journalist on board was arrested.
In response, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... has urged its airlines to avoid Belarus and its airspace, but Russia has reacted by denying such carriers permission to fly to Russia, as it did with a Gay Paree-Moscow Air La Belle France flight that was cancelled on Wednesday.
"The Russian reaction is absolutely incomprehensible to us," Austria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Russia’s denial of permission for the Austrian flight, adding that it was a disproportionate response to measures taken after Sunday’s "brutal act of air piracy".
"The Austrian Foreign Ministry communicated this to the Russian ambassador today. The Austrian ambassador in Moscow also presented this position to Russia," it said, calling on Moscow to clarify its position and adding that all flights over and to Russia should be able to continue without problems.
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] The News Agency that Dare Not be Named reported earlier in the day that the Biden administration had informed Russia it had no intent to return the United States in the Open Skies treaty, which provided surveillance flights in both countries.
Washington has notified Moscow that it would not return to the Open Skies Treaty, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, confirming an earlier report by AP.
The news agency earlier reported that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman informed Russia that the United States had no plans to re-enter the agreement the former President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... had withdrawn from.
Earlier in the day, Kremlin front man Dmitry Peskov said that the time was running out for Washington to reconsider its refusal to participate in the Open Skies Treaty, adding that the issue could be discussed during the upcoming US-Russia summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... and his US counterpart, Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... , plan to hold a meeting on 16 June in Geneva.
The Open Skies Treaty was signed in 1992 and became effective ten years later to allow the signatories to conduct unarmed observation flights over each other’s territories on short notice.
The United States announced its unilateral withdrawal from the treaty last May and completed the process in November, citing alleged violations by Russia.
Russia has denied any violations and accused Washington back of non-compliance. In December, Moscow said it would withdraw, too, if other signatories refuse to guarantee non-sharing of data from their observation flights over Russian territory with the US. The Russian government launched the withdrawal procedure on 15 January.
Direct translation of the article: [Korrespondent] Observers daily record Russian military personnel in three regions, in particular, accompanied by civilians in medical suits.
The separatists violate the conditions and procedure for the disengagement of forces in the Stanytsia Luganskaya, Zolote and Petrovskoye sectors. This was reported by the press center of the JFO headquarters on Thursday, May 27.
On a daily basis, observer patrols spot members of the Russian armed formations in these areas, in particular, accompanied by civilians in medical suits. Also, the movements of cars are recorded there.
Since the beginning of May, 304 people have been recorded, at different times in the five-kilometer zone around the disengagement grounds. At the same time, 188 people were directly at the disengagement grounds.
Also, since January 2021, the separatists have placed containers of unknown purpose at the Zolote checkpoint. Cases were recorded of additional equipping of positions by separatists in the immediate vicinity of the disengagement areas.
According to the Ukrainian military, a concomitant component of violations in the disengagement areas is jamming by separatists of UAV flights of the OSCE Mission during previously announced and planned flights over these areas.
Finally, the headquarters stressed that the separatists are resorting to artificial aggravation of the situation near the disengagement area and are increasing the number of ceasefire violations, provoking the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to return fire. They also block the work of the checkpoint Zolote and Shchastye, trying to put pressure on Ukraine at the TCG meetings.
We will remind that earlier in Donbass a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was killed by a sniper's bullet . The enemy was aiming at the positions of the Ukrainian military near the village of Novotoshkovskoe.
The day before, nine attacks were recorded in the JFO zone , no casualties . The separatists actively used 120 mm and 80 mm mortars prohibited by the Minsk agreements.
Direct translation of the article. Edited
[Rusvesna] The FSB has just reported that the special services have successfully prevented two terrorist attacks, which the attackers planned to commit on the territory of the Stavropol Krai.
"The FSB of Russia in April of this year, on the eve of the May holidays on the territory of the Stavropol Territory, prevented two attempts to commit terrorist acts by supporters of the banned international terrorist organization "Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... The special service identified and detained a resident of Stavropol, who swore an oath of loyalty to one of the ISIS leaders, with the aim of further committing a terrorist attack on transport infrastructure facilities in the region using a homemade incendiary device.
During the same period, a citizen of one of the countries of Central Asia was detained on the territory of the region, who arrived in Stavropol to prepare and commit terrorist crimes.
In the places where the detainees lived, searches were carried out, means of terror were found and seized, including explosives and damaging elements purchased for the manufacture of an improvised bomb, "the FSB's Public Relations Center (DSP) said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] Austria on Thursday slammed Russia after it refused to allow an Austrian Airlines flight to be rerouted to avoid Belarusian airspace, resulting in the Vienna-Moscow service being cancelled.
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] The 
...46th president of the U.S. 
[Korrespondent] Observers daily record Russian military personnel in three regions, in particular, accompanied by civilians in medical suits.
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
