Bashkir Service News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Cut off from family, American-Russian RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva shares details of her imprisonment with a Tatar news outlet

Six months since being detained in Russia, U.S. journalist Alsu Kurmasheva has insisted she will walk free "as an innocent person." Kurmasheva, who works for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, is charged with failing to register as a foreign agent and spreading misinformation about the Russian military. The charges are widely seen as reprisals for her journalistic work. Her comments were made in a message published by a Tatar-language monthly in Kazan.

Friends of noted Russian blogger Aleksandr Morozov said on February 21 that he committed suicide after citing unnamed sources online saying that Russian troops might have lost up to 16,000 troops while fighting for the Ukrainian city of Avdiyivka. ru

At least 45,123 Russian troops have been killed since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, according to research by journalists from Mediazona and the BBC's Russian Service who have established the deceased soldiers' identities.

Strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has urged police forces to send out patrols armed "at least with pistols" in Belarusian cities to better protect citizens against "crimes of an extremist nature."