Ukraine’s religious sites have been repeatedly targeted by Russia over the course of the war.

Photo via Wikipedia

The project includes the uninhabited Adriatic island of Sazan and several hundred hectares of the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, a sensitive coastal wetland which is home to flamingos, seals and sea turtle nesting sites.

SPAK, the office of Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecutor, confirmed that it has opened an investigation into controversial changes in the area’s protected status and land ownership in 2024, which opened the door to tourism development.

The project is being spearheaded by Zvërnec South Adriatic Development, a company tied to Qatari investors as well as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The couple aims to develop a string of ambitious tourism projects in the region that they have dubbed the “Albanian Riviera.” (Greek Reporter, Politico, AP)

Image: Wikimedia Commons

HRW analyzed around 8,000 cases involving property seizures filed between March 2024 and January 2026 in 25 courts in occupied areas, with court records showing “consistent disregard of evidence of ownership and efforts by owners to assert their rights.” The seizure of property has affected millions of displaced Ukrainians or those who refuse to re-register their properties under Russian law, as they are stripped of shelter, income, or the means to sustain their lives. The rights group claims that this process undermines the prospect of refugees and internally displaced people returning home in “safety and dignity.”

HRW associate Ukraine director Yulia Gorbunova stated: “Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes in areas under Russian occupation due to the ongoing war. Now they also face the unlawful seizure of their property as Russia blatantly disregards its obligations as an occupying power.”

In October 2022, Russian authorities introduced “an unlawful and opaque administrative process” in occupied areas, through which Ukrainian owners are required to re-register their property under Russian law by January 2028. Ukrainian property owners are also required to obtain Russian citizenship to participate in this process. The deadline, however, was later brought forward to July 2026, with Russian authorities claiming residents had already had “more than enough time” to re-register their property. The authorities designate the private property that is not re-registered as “ownerless,” after which courts transfer it to municipal ownership.

Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia unilaterally annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts (regions), imposing their own administrative and legal systems. This annexation has been rejected as unlawful under international law. Russian authorities have also “methodically made passportization a tool of administrative control by linking all essential services to accepting Russian citizenship,” including phone communication, as SIM cards from local operators now require Russian identification.

According to Maksym Beznosiuk, a strategic policy specialist: “Moscow’s ultimate objective is to force pro-Russian allegiance and erase any traces of Ukrainian identity. Ukrainians who resist these efforts are receiving administrative removal orders and forced expulsions.”

Article 51 of Customary International Humanitarian Law, which applies universally to all warring parties, prohibits an occupying power from confiscating private property without justification of military necessity. Regulation 46 of the Hague Convention (1907), to which Russia is a party, provides a similar prohibition.

From JURIST, May 28. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last report on Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Map: PCL

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Photo: Xinjiang Judicial Administration via The Diplomat

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that the strike was deliberate, pointing to the drone’s low flight altitude as evidence. A criminal investigation has been opened under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine—violation of the laws and customs of war.

Zelensky also announced that he held a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Grossi on the 40th anniversary of the disaster. “I emphasized the unacceptability of formalizing and legitimizing Russia’s presence at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” he wrote on the X social media platform. (World Nuclear News, Chosun, AA Energy Terminal, The Guardian, BelSat,

Russian forces briefly occupied the Chernobyl site at the start of the war in 2022, but later withdrew. Russia continues to occupy and have operational control of the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Strikes across Ukraine, Russian-occupied territory and Russia killed at least 16 people on the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The greatest toll was in Dnipro, where Russian drone and missile strikes on the city killed at least nine. (AP)

See our last reports on the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear plants.

Photo: Wikipedia

The Sudzha gas pipeline is also still carrying Russian hydrocarbons to European markets through Ukrainian territory.

Image: Soviet postage stamp celebrating oil pipeline. Via Wikipedia

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Photo: Anali Marquez Huanca via Facebook

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Magyar’s incoming government to take immediate steps to restore democratic norms in Hungary. The organization called for the swift dissolution of the Sovereignty Protection Office, a body established in 2023 with broad powers to investigate journalists, civil organizations, and academics that receive foreign funding. HRW also pressed for an end to emergency decree powers that have allowed Orbán’s executive to bypass the parliamentary process since 2020.

HRW urged the incoming government to drop criminal charges against Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who is being prosecuted for holding the city’s Pride March last June in defiance of a ban imposed by Orbán’s government, and against Géza Buzás-Hábel, organizer of the Pride march in Pécs.

Orbán’s measures against dissent of course mirror those of Vladimir Putin, and indeed his defeat diminishes an emerging pro-Russian bloc on the continent, also including Slovakia and (outside the EU) Serbia and Belarus. The fall of Orbán is expected to free up a €17 billion loan to Ukraine that his government had effecitvely blocked.

However, Péter Magyar is a creature of the center-right, and a former Orbán ally. His Respect & Freedom (Tisza) party broke from Fidesz in 2020, in response to Orbán’s growing authoritarianism. His proclivities are fundamentally conservative, and he may not mean a full de-Orbánification. In a bad sign, Magyar on April 15 held what the Israeli Foreign Ministry called a “warm introductory phone call” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointing to a continuity in ties. Orbán’s Hungary and Donald Trump’s United States are the only two countries Netanyahu has been able to safely visit since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest to face war crimes charges in November 2024.

Nonetheless, among those around the world taking courage in the fall of Orbán are the Israeli protesters who have mounted a campaign of militant demonstrations against Netanyahu and his wars. (Jurist, JP, PRI, EuroNews)

Sidelined by the world media spotlight, a more stark struggle with stakes just as high for the survival of democratic norms is emerging in the South American nation of Peru. As Hungarians voted, so did Peruvians, in a crowded field of 35 candidates following years of political chaos that have seen 10 presidents in as many years. Leading the field was Keiko Fujimori, perennial candidate of the hard-right Fuerza Popular.

Keiko is the daughter of ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, who shamefully died a free man in December 2024, having been released from prison after 17 years following a pardon for his convictions for corruption and human rights abuses. The younger Fujimori remained an unabashed supporter of the elder to the very end, and her potential election promises a reversal of the process of de-Fujimorification that Peru has undergone since the fall of his eight-year period of strongman rule in 2000.

A decision on who Keiko Fujimori would face in a run-off was delayed by several days after the National Office of Electoral Process (ONPE) found that a private contractor failed to deliver ballots to dozens of polling stations across the province of Lima, preventing more than 52,000 citizens from voting on time. One of her two leading contenders, former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga, alleged widespread fraud and called for the vote to be annulled. The EU election observer mission reported that it had found no evidence of fraud. But tension mounted as López Aliaga’s supporters mobilized to the street.

López Aliaga, known by his appropriate nickname “Porky,” is also a figure of the hard right, although of a more Catholic bent than Fujimori, and has similarly run on pledges of a harsh crackdown on soaring crime and the narco economy. In an echo of Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz, he has proposed building penal colonies in the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by moats filled with vipers.

López Aliaga has not dropped his demands for annullment, but it now emerges that Fujimori will face a contender from the left in the June 7 run-off. This is Roberto Sánchez Palomino of Juntos por el Perú. Sánchez is the political heir of imprisoned ex-president Pedro Castillo, a political outsider of campesino origins whose 2021 election shook up Peru’s establishment. Castillo’s ouster and detention by order of Congress the following year ended his contentious rule and sparked weeks of protests that were met with massive deadly repression. Sánchez, who had served in Castillo’s cabinet, similarly ran with strong support from rural Andean regions, traditionally excluded from Peruvian politics, and similarly wears a traditional campesino sombrero.

There is a sense of deju vu here, as Keiko Fujimori has made it as far as a presidential run-off in 2011, 2016 and 2021. During the first run, she brought in Rudolph Giuliani as “national security advisor.” In the second run (taking place five months before Trump was first elected here in Gringolandia), she was defeated by the center-right Pedro Pablo Kuczynski after Verónika Mendoza, the left-wing candidate who was bumped out of the race in the first round, threw her support behind him to avoid a re-Fujimorification of the country. As persident, it was Kuczynski who pardoned Alberto Fujimori, in a betrayal of the progressive-minded Peruvians who had helped elect him.

With the center now having effectively collapsed in Peruvian politics, this kind of outcome, at least, is excluded from possibility. However, a win by Keiko Fujimori on her fourth try for the presidency portends a far worse outcome. (Americas Quarterly, Jurist, France24, France24, AFP, Reuters)

Peru may seem far removed from the world stage compared to Hungary, but the Great Powers are definitely playing their chess game here as well. Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar has called on Peru’s next government to “take back” the Chinese-controlled port of Chancay, portraying the deep-water facility as a military threat to the hemisphere. Salazar, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said during a hearing on April 16 that Washington must help Peru wrest the megaport from Chinese hands. “The new Peruvian government, which will be elected next June, must take it back, that port, take it back, and the United States will help them,” Salazar said.

She argued that the port, just up the coast from Lima, has “dual usage” potential, meaning it could shift from commercial to military operations, allowing Chinese submarines, warships and aircraft carriers to operate from Peru’s territory. (SCMP)

Even a new President Fujimori would be unlikely to take this bait from Washington, as China, like the US, is a free-trade partner of Peru and top investor in its lucrative mineral sector. But there’s much contention about Chinese versus North American influence in the country. The last interim president, José Jerí, who had faced a wave of Gen Z protests last year, was finally removed by Congress this February following unregistered meetings with two Chinese businessmen. The incumbent interim president José María Balcázar is of the left, and popular anger at Peru’s traditional political class is palpable.

Whether it is the populist left of Sánchez or the populist right of Fujimori that prevails in June, the Great Power pressures on Peru will remain. The implications for Peru internally, however, will be very different—and this also has regional implications, as the right has made recent electoral gains throughout Latin America: just over the past months, in Chile, Bolivia and Costa Rica. A new right-authoritarian bloc is emerging, just as the Trump regime is launching new adventures in gunboat diplomacy.

Hopefully, Peru will not be the next addition to this bloc. But a Fujimori victory could mean a fatal blow to Peru’s deeply troubled democracy. A Sánchez victory, on the other hand, would heighten the social contradictions in Peru—with both opportunities for a more meaningful democracy, and dangers of a backlash from the conservative establishment.

Photo: Wikipedia

“For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms—UGVs and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and this operation was carried out without the participation of infantry and without losses on our side,” Zelensky said in a video statement released April 13. The video showed Zelensky speaking in a room full of various drones and UGVs. He did not give a precise location for the territory taken in the operation.

The president said various robotic systems, including the Ratel, Termit, Ardal, Lynx, Snake, Protector and Volya, have carried out more than 22,000 missions over the past three months, aimed at reducing risks to personnel.

“Lives were saved more than 22,000 times—a robot went into the most dangerous areas instead of a soldier. This is about high technologies in defense of the highest value—human life,” Zelensky said.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported a sharp increase in the use of ground robots on the front lines, with more than 9,000 missions completed in March alone. This marks a sharp rise from roughly 2,900 operations in November 2025.

Military analysts believe these UGVs are for the most part remotely controlled rather than fully autonomous, but the technology is developing rapidly. (SOFX, PRI)

Photo via Nashaniva.com

Over 343 organizations have been deemed “undesirable,” 1,173 individuals and groups have been designated as “foreign agents,” and 830 organizations and 20,813 individuals have been put on “terrorist” and “extremist” watch lists.

This has recently escalated with the targeting of several key Russian human rights organizations. On April 8, six activists from the Vesna youth movement were sentenced to between eight and 12 years imprisonment for participating in an “extremist organization” because of their opposition to the Ukraine war.

These efforts to restrict fundamental freedoms have escalated since the start of the war against Ukraine in 2022. The rapporteurs describe a “repressive toolbox” used by authorities, stating:

[T]he government has deployed methods like massive designations or organisations as “undesirable” or “foreign agent,” along with the intstrumentalisation of national security and public safety legislation to target lawyers, journalists, anti-war activists, and human rights defenders.

On April 9, Russia’s Ministry of Justice requested that Nobel Peace Prize laureate International Memorial Movement be designated as an “extremist organization.” If granted by the courts, the designation would expose individuals and organizations associated with Memorial to criminal liability, including imprisonment. The move follows the liquidation of two Memorial-affiliated organizations under the “foreign agents” law in 2021. The rapporteurs said this new designation “reflects a deliberate and calculated strategy to spread fear among Russian people and deprive them from independent information, human rights defence, advocacy, and legal assistance.”

The Memorial Human Rights Defence Center in a statement highlighted its 40-year history of investigating Soviet-era state terror and political persecution, and asserted: “We understand that the case against ‘Memorial’ is yet another attempt to intimidate all dissenting voices in the country and silence civil society.”

Russian authorities have also targeted indigenous human rights defenders. For example, in June 2024, the Supreme Court of Russia grouped together 55 indigenous and minority organizations as a “movement” to label them as “extremist,” a move met with condemnationby the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia. This has also resulted in arbitrary detentions of rights advocates Daria Egereva and Natalya Leongardt. They were charged for their involvement with Aborigen Forum, an informal network of indigenous defenders.

Other examples show how widespread this pattern of repression has been throughout the Ukraine war. In November 2025, Russian authorities proscribed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organization,” which effectively criminalized involvement in the group. Around the same time, the prosecutor general’s office opened a case against Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot seeking to have them designated as extremists, a designation already imposed on several individual members. Additionally, authorities labelled the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by the late opposition leader Aleksei Navalny a “terrorist organization.”

Human Rights Watch has also recently warned of escalating online censorship, including internet and cellular access shutdowns and the blocking of Telegram, one of the most popular social media platforms in Russia.

From JURIST, April 11. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last report on resistance and repression in Russia. See our last podcasts on the internet crackdown and the persistence of dissidence.

Photo: Pavel Kazachkov via Wikipedia