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Former Russian defense official detained on fraud suspicion

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Germany tightens security, asylum policies after deadly festival stabbing

Berlin — Germany’s coalition government on Thursday agreed to tighten security and asylum policies following a deadly stabbing attack linked to the Islamic State militant group which has fueled far-right opposition and criticism of Berlin’s migration policies approach.

Three people were killed and eight wounded in the attack which took place during a festival in Solingen as the western city was marking 650 years. The incident has heightened political dispute over asylum and deportation rules ahead of next month’s state elections as the suspect was a failed asylum seeker from Syria.

The package introduces stricter gun regulations, including tighter ownership rules, a general ban on switchblades, and an absolute ban on knives at public events such as folk festivals, sporting events and trade fairs.

Federal law officers will be authorized to use Tasers, and background checks for weapon permits will include new federal agencies to prevent extremists from obtaining weapons.

Berlin will also tighten asylum and residency laws and procedures, including lowering the threshold for “severe deportation,” when the deportee has committed a crime involving a weapon or dangerous tool.

Criteria for excluding individuals from asylum or refugee status will be tightened, including harsher penalties for serious crimes, including for youth offenders.

Asylum seekers will be excluded from receiving benefits in Germany if they have claims in other European countries and refugees who travel to their home countries without compelling reasons risk losing their protection status, the document read.

This rule would not apply to Ukrainian refugees, it said.

The government will push for reforms to the Common European Asylum System, simplifying transfers and deportations, and will also seek to enable the deportation of individuals who have committed serious crimes or are considered terrorist threats to Afghanistan and Syria.

The package also outlines measures to combat “violent Islamism,” including giving law enforcement authorities permission to use biometric data from publicly accessible online sources for facial recognition to identify suspects.

The government will strengthen the domestic intelligence agency’s powers when it comes to financial investigations and continue to ban Islamist organizations, according to a government document outlining the measures.
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Britain resumes bid for tougher police powers over street protests

LONDON — Britain has revived its attempt to give police wider powers to impose conditions on street protests, a decision that a civil rights group said showed a worrying disregard for the rule of law.

The group, Liberty, successfully challenged the changes to public order laws made by the country’s previous Conservative government. London’s High Court ruled in May that the government exceeded its powers by lowering the threshold for police to impose conditions.

The interior ministry’s appeal against the ruling was delayed in July – shortly after Labor won a parliamentary election – to allow for talks with Liberty about the change.

Britain’s new government this month decided to pursue the appeal which Liberty director Akiko Hart said was a disappointing decision.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry said all public order legislation had to be balanced against the fundamental right to protest.

“However, we disagree with the court’s ruling in this case and have appealed their decision,” the spokesperson said.

Liberty’s case focused on the Public Order Act, under which police can impose conditions on a protest which could cause “serious disruption to the life of the community.” The law was amended last year to allow police to impose conditions where a protest could cause “more than minor” disruption.

Liberty said the new powers gave police almost unlimited powers to shut down protests, citing the arrest in Britain of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was later acquitted.

The High Court ruled the new powers were unlawful, but put the quashing of the new powers on hold pending appeal.
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Germany expels head of banned Muslim association

FRANKFURT, Germany — Germany has told the Iranian head of the recently banned Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) that he is being expelled from the country and has two weeks to leave, authorities in Hamburg said on Thursday.

The interior ministry of the German city state of Hamburg said in a statement that it had informed Mohammad Hadi Mofatteh that he has until Sept. 11 to leave or else be deported.

Mofatteh had been head of the IZH since summer 2018, the statement continued.

He did immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment sent via social media.

According to findings by Hamburg’s domestic intelligence agency, he was the official deputy of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Germany as head of the IZH, until recently.

Bild newspaper and broadcaster NDR first reported on the expulsion orders.

Social media accounts associated with the IZH and its website have been taken down in Germany after the country banned the IZH and subsidiary organizations in July for “pursuing radical Islamist goals,” according to the federal interior ministry.

The ministry said the IZH, which includes one of the oldest mosques in Germany known for its turquoise exterior, had acted as a direct representative of Khamenei and sought to bring about an Islamic revolution in Germany.

Following the closure of the IZH, Iran summoned the German ambassador in Tehran.
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French authorities issue preliminary charges against Telegram messaging app CEO

PARIS — French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.

Both free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken out in Durov’s defense since his weekend arrest. The case has also called attention to the challenges of policing illegal activity online, and to the Russian-born Durov’s own unusual biography and multiple passports.

Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a sweeping investigation opened earlier this year and released earlier Wednesday after four days of questioning. Investigative judges filed preliminary charges Wednesday night and ordered him to pay 5 million euros bail and to report to a police station twice a week, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Allegations against Durov, who is also a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

The first preliminary charge against him was for ”complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group,” a crime that can lead to sentences of up to 10 years in prison and 500,000 euro fine, the prosecutor’s office said.

Preliminary charges under French law mean magistrates have strong reason to believe a crime was committed but allow more time for further investigation.

David-Olivier Kaminski, a lawyer for Durov, was quoted by French media as saying “it’s totally absurd to think that the person in charge of a social network could be implicated in criminal acts that don’t concern him, directly or indirectly.”

Prosecutors said that Durov is, “at this stage, the only person implicated in this case.” They did not exclude the possibility that other people are being investigated but declined to comment on other possible arrest warrants. Any other arrest warrant would be revealed only if the target of such a warrant is detained and informed of their rights, prosecutors said in a statement to the AP.

French authorities opened a preliminary investigation in February in response to ”the near total absence of a response by Telegram to judicial requests” for data for pursuing suspects, notably those accused of crimes against children, the prosecutor’s office said.

Durov’s arrest in France has caused outrage in Russia, with some government officials calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows among Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block the Telegram app but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.

In Iran, where Telegram is widely used despite being officially banned after years of protests challenging the country’s Shiite theocracy, Durov’s arrest in France prompted comments from the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weighed in with veiled praise for France for being “strict” against those who “violate your governance” of the internet.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Durov’s arrest wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation. Macron posted on X that his country “is deeply committed” to freedom of expression but “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”

In a statement posted on its platform after Durov’s arrest, Telegram said it abides by EU laws, and its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”

“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation,” it said.

In addition to Russia and France, Durov is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

The UAE Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it was “closely following the case” and had asked France to provide Durov “with all the necessary consular services in an urgent manner.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he hoped that Durov “has all the necessary opportunities for his legal defense” and added that Moscow stands “ready to provide all necessary assistance and support” to the Telegram CEO as a Russian citizen.

“But the situation is complicated by the fact that he is also a citizen of France,” Peskov said.

Telegram was founded by Durov and his brother after he himself faced pressure from Russian authorities.

In 2013, he sold his stake in VKontakte, a popular Russian social networking site which he launched in 2006.

The company came under pressure during the Russian government’s crackdown following mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.

Durov had said authorities demanded that the site take down online communities of Russian opposition activists, and later that it hand over personal data of users who took part in the 2013-14 popular uprising in Ukraine, which eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.

Durov said in a recent interview that he had turned down these demands and left the country.

The demonstrations prompted Russian authorities to clamp down on the digital space, and Telegram and its pro-privacy stance offered a convenient way for Russians to communicate and share news.

Telegram also continues to be a popular source of news in Ukraine, where both media outlets and officials use it to share information on the war and deliver missile and air raid alerts.

Western governments have often criticized Telegram for a lack of content moderation.
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Russia bans 92 Americans

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Russian media ‘in survival mode,’ says recently freed American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva

Following more than nine months of unjust detention, American-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva is adjusting to life in freedom with her family in Prague. While in Washington this week to receive an award, she tells VOA’s Liam Scott the fate of other political prisoners is on her mind. Camera: Cristina Caicedo Smit, Hoshang Fahim, Adam Greenbaum, Krystof Maixner, Martin Bubenik
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Russian hacker attacks target former US ambassadors, reveal prior penetration

Washington — Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev says he saw no reason to be suspicious when he received what appeared to be an email from former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a trusted contact with whom he communicates periodically.

“This letter was visually no different from his other letters. I believed that it was his letter because it was visually no different from his other letters,” Ponomarev told VOA Russian in a Zoom interview.

But this email from several months ago turned out to be one of numerous “phishing attacks” targeting U.S. diplomats and others that have been identified as the work of two cyber-espionage outfits linked to the Russian government. And the fact that it accurately mimicked McFaul’s previous messages indicated the attackers had already seen those earlier messages.

“The letter contained a reference to a report on Ukraine that McFaul supposedly intended to deliver in China, and also a request to check whether he had mixed something up,” Ponomarev said. McFaul did in fact deliver a lecture to Chinese students in April.

McFaul has confirmed to VOA that he was the target of a hacker attack but did not elaborate. The details of the attack were revealed in a recent joint report from the digital rights group Access Now and the Canadian research nonprofit Citizen Lab.

The report says the attacks were conducted between October 2022 and August 2024 by two “threat actors close to the Russian regime” known as ColdRiver and ColdWastrel.

According to The Washington Post, “multiple governments” have said that ColdRiver works for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, while ColdWastrel is believed to be “working for another Russian agency.”

Among their targets were exiled Russian opposition figures, employees of U.S. think tanks, former U.S. ambassadors to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, political figures and academics, employees of American and European non-profit organizations, and media organizations.

VOA has spoken with several of those named as victims, including former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, a Russian journalist and a Russian human rights activist, as well as Ponomarev and McFaul.

The goal of phishing attacks is to try to get a user to click on a malicious link or enter their data – login and password – on a fake website. If the attack is successful, hackers gain access to the victim’s confidential information, including correspondence, contact lists and, in some cases, financial information.

Hackers conducting phishing campaigns employ a technique called “social engineering,” which a leading American cyber security software and services company described as using “psychological manipulation” designed to trick users into divulging sensitive information.

Herbst, who is currently director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told VOA that he has been facing attacks from Russian hackers for the past 10 years.

The Kremlin “didn’t like from the beginning what I was doing because I was pointing out that they’re conducting an illegal invasion of Ukraine, I guess going back to 2014,” he said.

Herbst said that Russian hackers target people who take a public position aimed at countering Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy: “So, it’s not surprising that people like Steve Pifer or Michael McFaul, or myself have received attention from the FSB, the GRU [Russian military intelligence] and others.”

Herbst added: “I don’t want to overstate the attention they give to us. You know, we are pretty much tertiary or even less than tertiary players on the international political scene, but they know they have such a massive security apparatus that they give some low-level guy the job of following people like me.”

“The stuff that linked me with Mike McFaul or Steve Pifer … was a fishing expedition, right? [To] see if they could get one of them to say something in confidence to me, which would be embarrassing.”

Steven Pifer did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the details of the hacker attack.

Ponomarev said that he responded to the fake McFaul email, but did not have time to download the malicious file attached to it since he was on a plane when he opened the email, and it was inconvenient to download the file from a phone.

“When I opened it on my computer, I noticed that the address he sent it to me from was not his usual Stanford University address, it was something completely different,” Ponomarev told VOA.

“Being an IT guy, I looked at the IP address of the file in the email and was convinced that it was phishing. After that, I passed the information on to the competent authorities so that they could look into the matter further.”

Ponomarev added that the fact the email ostensibly sent by McFaul came from a Proton service mailbox did not initially arouse any particular suspicions.

“I also have an address on Proton, for some kind of confidential correspondence,” he said, noting that attackers can forge addresses on Proton by changing one letter, so that visually it still looks like a regular mailing address.

“They use it because it’s completely anonymous,” Ponomarev added. “You can’t trace an IP address to Proton, so when you use Proton, it’s a dead end, you can’t excavate it any further.”

Polina Machold, publisher of Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet specializing in investigative journalism, told VOA that in the phishing attack targeting her, which took place last November, the hackers also employed social engineering and the Proton mail service.

“I received a letter from a ‘colleague’ from another media outlet, with whom we had previously done a joint project, asking to look at a new potential project or something like that,” Machold told VOA.

“We corresponded for some time, and when it came to opening the file, I discovered that something very suspicious was going on, because the link in the file supposedly led to Proton Drive, but the domain was something completely different.”

Machold said she called a colleague who confirmed that the attacker was pretending to be him. The information was passed on to Citizen Lab, which determined that hackers likely associated with the FSB were behind the attack.

Dmitry Zair-Bek, who heads First Department, a Russian rights group, said that a member of his group was among the first targets of a hacker attack “because we defend people in cases of treason and espionage.”

“One of our employees received an email from an address that mimicked the address of one of our partners,” he said. “The email contained a link that led to a phishing site.”

Zair-Bek added that the ColdWastrel group carried out the attack targeting First Department.

“They are the ‘C’ students of the hacker world,” Zair-Bek said of ColdWastrel. “The idea is the same as the ColdRiver group, they just paid less attention to some small details.

“The fact that they are ‘C’ students does not mean that they are less effective. They choose a person who from their point of view, on the one hand, has the largest amount of information that interests them and, on the other hand, is the most vulnerable.”

Even someone well-versed in digital security issues can fall for the bait of hackers, says Natalia Krapiva, an expert at Access Now, which co-authored the report on the Russian hacker attacks.

“The ColdRiver and ColdWastrel groups use quite sophisticated social engineering, a very good understanding of the context,” she told VOA.

“They know how the organization is structured in general, which people are responsible for finance, HR, politics, and so on. That is, they know which employee to send this [phishing] email to. They also understand with whom these organizations interact and on what issues.”

“We have seen examples of exploiting existing relationships between a Russian and an American human rights organization,” Krapiva added, noting that hackers knew that one of the organizations was waiting for a grant application and sent a malicious PDF file to the employee who was waiting for it.

This suggests that hackers already have a certain amount of information at the time they attempt to attack their victims, she said.
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2 men from Europe charged with ‘swatting’ plot targeting members of Congress, senior US officials

WASHINGTON — Two men from Europe are charged in a plot to call in bogus reports of police emergencies to harass and threaten members of Congress, senior U.S. government officials and dozens of other people, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday. 

Thomasz Szabo, 26, of Romania and Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia targeted at least 100 people with “swatting” calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, the federal indictment alleges. 

The calls also included threats to carry out mass shootings at New York City synagogues and to set off explosives at the U.S. Capitol and a university, the indictment said. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., handed up the indictment last Thursday. 

Online court records in Washington didn’t say if Szabo or Radovanovic have been arrested or if they are represented by attorneys. A court filing accompanying their indictment said investigators believed they were in separate foreign countries last week. A spokesperson for the office of Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, declined to elaborate. 

Szabo and Radovanovic are both charged with conspiracy and more than two dozen counts of making threats. The plot spanned more than three years, from December 2020 through January 2024, according to prosecutors. 

“Swatting is not a victimless prank — it endangers real people, wastes precious police resources, and inflicts significant emotional trauma,” Graves said in a statement. 

Szabo organized and moderated chat groups to coordinate swatting attacks against 40 private citizens and 61 officials, including cabinet-level members of the federal government’s executive branch, the head of a federal law enforcement agency, a federal judge, current and former governors, and other state officials, the indictment said. 

In December 2023 and January 2024, Radovanovic allegedly called government agencies to falsely report killings and imminent suicides or kidnappings at the homes of U.S. senators, House members and elected state officials, according to the indictment. One of the calls led to a car crash involving injuries, the indictment alleges.
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In photos: Spain’s annual food fight festival ‘La Tomatina’

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China-Russia cooperation in Arctic raises concerns

Stockholm, Sweden — As China and Russia look to deepen cooperation in the Arctic, analysts cite concern about increasing geopolitical competition in the region, forcing countries to think more about how to respond to potential threats.   

Following a meeting between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow on August 21, China released an expansive communique outlining ways the two countries are boosting cooperation.  

On the Arctic, Beijing and Moscow pledged to strengthen cooperation in areas including shipping development, navigation safety, polar ship technology and construction.  

“Both countries will encourage their enterprises to actively engage in Arctic shipping routes cooperation based on market principles and pay special attention to the protection of the Arctic ecosystem,” according to the communique.   

Analysts say the latest announcement is part of Beijing and Moscow’s efforts to deepen collaboration in areas such as shipping, energy exploration and Arctic security.  

“China has invested in Russia’s energy projects in the Arctic, cooperated with Russia in shipping and infrastructure development, and conducted military exercises in the strategically important region,” said Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish National China Center.  

In July, the U.S. Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command revealed that it had tracked two Russian and two Chinese long-range strategic bombers that appeared in the skies off coastal Alaska. 

Since 2023, Beijing and Moscow have worked jointly to develop the Northern Sea Route across Russia’s Arctic coastline, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has said is “absolutely fundamental.” The two also signed a memorandum of understanding aiming to deepen maritime security cooperation between their coast guards.

Despite attempts to deepen cooperation in the Arctic, Andersson said there are still several friction points between Beijing and Moscow.  

“Russia has historically been wary of inviting China into the Arctic because Moscow views the region as its backyard,” he told VOA in an interview in Stockholm.  

“As the bilateral power balance increasingly shifts in China’s favor since the start of the Ukraine War, Russia is becoming more economically and politically dependent on China, which may force Moscow to consider strengthening cooperation with Beijing in some areas where it was previously reluctant to do so,” Andersson said.  

And while the recent joint aerial patrol near Alaska has attracted a lot of attention, Andersson said the scope of their bilateral military cooperation in the Arctic remains unclear.  

“It’s difficult to determine how much these exercises mean that they are really ready to establish a closer military cooperation in the region or whether they are mainly about posturing and deterring the U.S. and its allies in the Arctic,” he told VOA.  

Growing Arctic awareness  

Even so, analysts say some Nordic countries are becoming more aware of the potential threat China may bring to the region through its cooperation with Moscow.  

“[While] officials in Finland are currently observing the developments in the Arctic, there’s definitely a growing awareness about the potential threats or challenges that come with the growing Chinese presence in the region,” said Minna Alander, an expert on Arctic security at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.  

She said Russia remains the main driver of the militarization of the Arctic but China could pose challenges to Finland and other Arctic states because of more opaque strategies.  

“There’s always this suspicion that most of the research that China is conducting at its research station in Norway’s Svalbard is not purely for ‘the advancement of human civilization,’” she told VOA by phone.  

Regional experts note that Nordic countries have yet to come up with a set of strategies to cope with the potential challenges.  

“I think we are realizing the complexity of hybrid threats that could be posed by China and Russia [in the Arctic] but we haven’t developed a toolbox to cope with those challenges,” Patrik Oksanen, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum, told VOA by phone.  

He said economic ties with China complicate Sweden’s attempt to produce a strategic plan to cope with the new challenges.  

“There is an unwillingness to do something that could be interpreted as escalating the situation with China, but we will need to address the potential threats that China and Russia pose in the Arctic in a very short time,” Oksanen said.  

Ice pact 

Alander in Finland said she expects countries like Finland and Sweden, which became NATO members in 2023, to increase cooperation in the Arctic with other NATO allies. 

“Finland has an interest in developing relations with [other NATO members] in sectors such as security, economy, and trade, and Finland has gone all in on this transatlantic link,” she told VOA.  

In July, the U.S., Canada, and Finland announced a trilateral initiative, called the “Ice Pact,” to collaborate on the production of polar icebreakers.  

The Canadian government said the initiative recognizes the “joint priority of upholding safety and security in the Arctic, including the continued protection of long-standing international rules and norms.”   

In addition to increasing cooperation with NATO allies, Joar Forssell, a Swedish MP from the Liberal Party, told VOA that lawmakers from Nordic countries also are looking to deepen coordination on issues related to the Arctic.  

As NATO countries, along with Russia and China, look to increase cooperation with partners in the Arctic, Alander said the trend likely will lead to greater geopolitical tension in a region that’s long been free from global power struggle.  

“There used to be a slogan ‘High north, low tension’ [to describe the state in the Arctic] but unfortunately, it might be more like ‘high north, high tension’ in the future,” she told VOA. 
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