Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Nobel Laureate Alexievich Says Lukashenka Has 'Declared War' On Belarusian People

 She said the Belarusian people were "absolutely sure" that Lukashenka lost the election to his main rival, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced to leave the country for Lithuania when she tried to file a formal complaint with the Central Election Commission about the official results. [...]

Alexievich also suggested that Russian riot police -- OMON security forces -- may have been brought into Minsk by Lukashenka's regime in order to violently disperse the ongoing protests. [...]

Alexievich said she thinks it is now impossible now for Lukashenka to resign without consequences because blood has been shed.

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Moldova's Orthodox Church Lashes Out At 'Anti-Christ Plot' To Develop Virus Vaccine

 The Moscow-affiliated Moldovan Orthodox Church has called on the country's leadership to ensure that a potential future anti-coronavirus vaccine will not be made compulsory, claiming conspiracy by a "world anti-Christ system" that will allegedly insert microchips into humans to control them via 5G technology. [...]

Such accusations are also present in the Moldovan church's statement, which says that "Bill Gates is considered the man responsible for the creation of a technology allowing people to be microchipped through a vaccine that would insert in their bodies nanoparticles that interact with 5G waves and allow people to be remotely controlled." [...]

The Moldovan Orthodox Church is autonomous but operates under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Romanian Orthodox Church's Metropolis of Bessarabia is the country's other major church.

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Russia Leads Effort To Strip Gay Decriminalization From UN Measure

Russia led an effort at the United Nations to strip language from an AIDS resolution that would have called for the decriminalization of homosexuality and drug use.

Russia was joined by Iran, Poland, and several Gulf states in blocking the decriminalization language from being included in a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on June 8 that called for ending the AIDS pandemic by 2030.

An earlier draft resolution had called for treating homosexuality and drug use as "human rights issues." Instead, it now stresses the need to help intravenous drug users, gay men, and transgender people who are at high risk of contracting HIV.

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Radio Free Europe: Ukraine Renames Third-Largest City

The Ukrainian parliament has voted to change the name of the country's third-largest city from Dnipropetrovsk to Dnipro. [...]

The city was originally known as Katerynoslav. It was named as Dnipropetrovsk in 1926 after the Dnipro River and Ukraine's Soviet Communist Party leader Hryhoriy Petrovskiy.

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