News Feed Brief summaries of major developments (August 1–2): Russian Supreme Court designates Azov as ‘terrorists,’ TOEFL is off limits to Russians and Belarusians, and the Donetsk evacuations begin

🚄 Donetsk evacuations begin

Ukrainians have officially begun evacuating from the Donetsk region. President Volodymyr Zelensky called for the evacuations on Sunday, telling citizens, “​​the more people leave the Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill." 133 people, including 34 children, have been evacuated so far, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

“Most of them were people with limited mobility, elderly people, and women with children who were afraid to go to sleep because of the shelling. Many people brought their pets with them. They came from Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, and Pokrovsk, and several even came from Sievierodonetsk; after all, the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region doesn’t mean the mandatory evacuation from the Luhansk region is over. A special train brought them to [...] Kropyvnytskyi, in the Kirovohrad region [in central Ukraine],” said Vereshchuk. She said the government is assuming full responsibility for transporting the evacuees and for continuing to support them in their new homes.

⛔ 'Putin’s girlfriend’ hit with U.S. sanctions

The list of Russian individuals and companies sanctioned by the U.S. on Tuesday includes gymnast and former State Duma deputy Alina Kabaeva, who is believed to have a romantic history with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kabaeva currently serves as the director of the National Media Group, ​​Russia's largest private media holding company.

According to the U.S. Treasury, Kabaeva was sanctioned “for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of the Government of the Russian Federation.” The list also includes 893 Russian officials, 31 “foreign government officials who have acted to support Russia’s purported annexation” of Crimea, three "oligarchs," 24 defense- and technology-related entities, and “four individuals and one entity illegitimately operating” in Ukraine.

📝 Russians and Belarusians banned from taking the TOEFL (though they will be able to take it online again soon)

The organizers of the TOEFL exam, a widely used international exam for non-native English speakers, have banned Russian citizens from taking the test. A prospective test-taker told Mediazona about the new policy after she noticed a warning message on her account that said her access to products and services related to the test was restricted. One of the outlet’s correspondents then found the same message on her own account. Russians are also reportedly unable to send past test results to universities.

ETS, the organization in charge of the TOEFL exam, said that because of unspecified U.S. Treasury requirements, citizens of both Russia and North Korea are banned from signing up for tests and creating new accounts.

In March, the organizers of the IELTS test, an international English test similar to TOEFL, canceled all scheduled exams in Russia because of the war in Ukraine. ETS reported then that it would stop giving the TOEFL exam in Russia and Belarus. IELTS and TOEFL are the ESL exams most frequently required by foreign universities.

Update: Representatives of ETS reportedly told the Russian state news agency TASS that TOEFL and other tests offered by the company will be made available remotely “in Russia and Belarus” beginning on August 4. ETS says it will not open any in-person testing in these two countries, however.

⚖️ Russia designates Azov as a terrorist group

In a session closed to the public on Tuesday, Russia’s Supreme Court granted a request by the Attorney General’s Office and declared the Ukrainian military’s Azov Regiment to be a “terrorist organization.” The group’s activities are now prohibited on Russian soil.

Azov first formed as a volunteer paramilitary militia in 2014 at the start of the war in the Donbas. Ukraine’s military later absorbed the group formally. Azov has drawn controversy over its early and allegedly continuing association with far-right groups. Russian officials and state media outlets often cite Azov as the quintessence of supposed state-supported neo-Nazism in Ukraine.

In May, several hundred Azov soldiers surrendered to Russian troops in Mariupol after a long and bloody standoff at the Azovstal iron and steel works. Officials in Russia and the self-declared breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk have announced criminal proceedings against these men. In late July, roughly 50 Azov prisoners died in an attack against a detainment center in occupied Olenivka.

⚖️ Latvian parliamentary committee endorses ‘terrorist state’ designation for Russia

The Latvian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has endorsed a resolution that would designate Russia as a “terrorist state,” declaring that its “targeted military attacks on civilians and public spaces in Ukraine” and use of “internationally banned cluster munitions” constitute a genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Since the February invasion of Ukraine, Russian gas deliveries to Latvia have been suspended several times, though the supply started to rebound in mid-June when Latvia resumed buying Russian gas through an intermediary. Around the same time, Latvia’s Parliament voted to ban all natural gas supplies from Russia, effective next year.

💻 Medvedev blames hackers for social media post predicting 'restoration' of Russia's imperial borders

A long post attacking the sovereignty of several of Russia's neighbors appeared on Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman (and former President) Dmitry Medvedev’s page on the Russian social network VKontakte on Monday evening before being deleted about 10 minutes later.

Among its other claims, the post said that “after the liberation of Kyiv and all of the territories of Little Russia from gangs of nationalists… Rus will be unified once again.” It also asserted that there was no such country as Georgia until 1801, when it became part of the Russian Empire. “North and South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the rest of Georgia’s territories can only be united as part of a unified state with Russia,” it read. Kazakhstan, according to the author, is an “artificial state” consisting of “former Russian territories,” and its leaders have lately been resettling various ethnic groups, which “can be classified as a genocide against Russians." The post continued: "We have no intention of closing our eyes to this. Until Russians arrive [in Kazakhstan], there will be no order.”

Medvedev’s assistant later claimed that the account had been hacked, according to RIA Novosti. VKontakte representatives said the company’s security team is investigating the incident.

✂️ Russian Foreign Ministry threatens to cut diplomatic ties if U.S. designates Russia as terrorism sponsor

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russia may break off diplomatic relations with the U.S. if Washington declares Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, according to Interfax. “It’s somehow been forgotten that every action has a counterreaction, and the logical result of an irresponsible move like [designating Russia as a terrorism sponsor] could be the severance of diplomatic relations, after which Washington risks crossing the point of no return, with all of the ensuing consequences,” Zakharova said at a press conference on Tuesday.

In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on U.S. President Joe Biden to add Russia to the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. On July 27, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling on the State Department to make the designation, citing actions by Russia that “generated insecurity and incited violence against innocent civilians” in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine. According to the New York Times, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken remains skeptical that the move would be a good idea.

📮 Ukrainian postal service no longer working in occupied territories 

Ukraine’s national postal service, UkrPoshta, is suspending operations in the country’s occupied regions. According to Ihor Smilianskyi, UkrPoshta’s director, the decision was made with postal workers’ safety in mind amid growing threats from the Russian military as well as from Russian-backed “DNR” and “LNR” forces. “They don’t allow us to deliver pensions because they need to collect passport numbers from pensioners for the ‘referendums’ in exchange for pensions in [rubles] — a classic case of extortion. They can’t do things any other way,” said Smilianskyi.

As for whether the suspension is permanent, Smilianskyi quoted the Terminator: “We’ll be back.”

🚧 Kosovo border policy change postponed after Serbs block streets in protest

Tensions flared in Serbian-majority northern Kosovo on Sunday amid plans by the authorities to start requiring Serbian citizens to be issued temporary IDs upon entering the country. Kosovo officials called the measures a “reciprocal” response to Serbia's policy of issuing temporary IDs to Kosovar visitors.

The changes were slated to come into effect on Monday, August 1. On July 31, local residents began building barricades to block major roads in the area, cutting off access to two major border checkpoints in the villages of Jarinje and Brnjak. In the city of Kosovska Mitrovica, air raid sirens sounded for over three hours, according to Reuters.

After consulting with representatives from the U.S. and the EU, the Kosovo authorities announced that they would postpone the new policies for one month if the protesters removed the barricades. The roadblocks were removed on Monday afternoon.

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‘If they dare to kill Serbs, Serbia will win’ Kosovo Serbs take to the streets in protest of new ID rules, leading international officials to get involved

2 years ago

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‘If they dare to kill Serbs, Serbia will win’ Kosovo Serbs take to the streets in protest of new ID rules, leading international officials to get involved

2 years ago

⛔ Adoption bans still part of Russia’s foreign policy arsenal

Russian legislators have proposed a new bill that would ban citizens of “unfriendly countries” from adopting Russian orphans. The bill’s authors include Leonid Slutsky, leader of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party of Russia; Nina Ostanina, the Communist Party deputy who leads the Duma’s Committee on Family Issues; and actor Dmitry Pevtsov, who represents the New People party.

Russia’s list of “unfriendly countries” was created in 2021 and currently contains 49 countries. In 2012, in response to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, Russia passed the “Dima Yakovlev law,” which prohibits U.S. citizens from adopting Russian orphans, among other things.

🚢 Grain ship successfully leaves Ukrainian port

A Ukrainian grain ship has left the port of Odesa for the first time since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine began. The ship, called the Razoni, is carrying over 26,000 metric tons of corn and is headed for the Lebanese port of Tripoli. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov posted a video of the departing ship on social media and said that 16 other ships in the greater Odesa region are “already waiting their turn.”

The Razoni’s departure came despite Russian missile strikes hitting Odesa on July 23, just one day after Ukraine and Russia signed a UN-brokered agreement to facilitate grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. 

⚖️ Treason charges for collaborating in Bucha

A Ukrainian man stands accused of treason for revealing the addresses of Ukrainian soldiers in Bucha to Russian occupiers. According to Ukrainian investigators, in March 2022, when the Kyiv region was occupied by the Russian army, the defendant gave the Russian military information about the whereabouts of Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the Donbas, as well as information about other locals who had weapons and were thus “capable of fighting back” against Russian forces.

“Having that information, Russian soldiers used torture on one participant of the ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation, or the war against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine],” reported the Ukrainian Attorney General's Office. The defendant also allegedly tried to join the Ukrainian military “with the aim of cooperating further with the enemy and obtaining information.”

⛓️ More foreign fighters to stand trial in ‘DNR’

A Swedish soldier, a Croatian soldier, and three British soldiers who were captured by Russian forces in Mariupol will face trial in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic for fighting with the Ukrainian army. According to Russian state news agency TASS, the case will be heard by the “DNR Supreme Court." No court date has been set for the men.

Back in June, two British citizens and a Moroccan citizen who fought alongside Ukraine were illegally sentenced to death by another court in the “DNR.” One of the men, Aiden Aslin, has appealed the sentence.

🩺 Chubais recovering in European hospital from sudden illness

Multiple sources familiar with his condition say Anatoly Chubais is recovering at a hospital (reportedly on the Italian island of Sardinia) after being diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome over the weekend. On July 31, journalist and celebrity Ksenia Sobchak reported that Chubais had been hospitalized in unstable condition after his extremities went numb.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has wished Chubais a speedy recovery and said the Putin administration has no additional information about his hospitalization.

Anatoly Chubais served as the head of Rusnano nanotechnology state corporation until December 2020, when President Putin appointed him his special representative for relations with international organizations. Chubais resigned in March 2013, reportedly in protest against the invasion of Ukraine. After he quit and left the country, federal officials began investigating Chubais and some of his former colleagues on corruption allegations, sources told the news agency TASS.

💥 Moscow claims to have destroyed six HIMARS in past month

Russia’s Defense Ministry says it destroyed another two M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems in Kharkiv through “precision strikes,” bringing the total number of HIMARS launchers that Moscow claims to have eliminated in the past month to six.

Manufactured by the U.S. arms company Lockheed Martin, HIMARS launchers have become a crucial weapon for Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion and pivotal for mounting a counteroffensive. Kyiv has dismissed Moscow’s claims about destroying six of these rocket launchers as “fake news,” while Pentagon spokespeople say they have no data indicating the loss of a single HIMARS.

Washington has not publicly stated exactly how many High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems it has sent to Ukraine.