NEW YORK — Arthur Frommer, whose “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day” guidebooks revolutionized leisure travel by convincing average Americans to take budget vacations abroad, has died. He was 95.

Frommer died from complications of pneumonia, his daughter Pauline Frommer said Monday.

“My father opened up the world to so many people,” she said. “He believed deeply that travel could be an enlightening activity and one that did not require a big budget.”

Frommer began writing about travel while serving in the U.S. Army in Europe in the 1950s. When a guidebook he wrote for American soldiers overseas sold out, he launched what became one of the travel industry’s best-known brands, self-publishing “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day” in 1957.

“It struck a chord and became an immediate best-seller,” he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the book’s debut.

The Frommer’s brand, led today by his daughter Pauline, remains one of the best-known names in the travel industry, with guidebooks to destinations around the world, an influential social media presence, podcasts and a radio show.

Frommer’s philosophy — stay in inns and budget hotels instead of five-star hotels, sightsee on your own using public transportation, eat with locals in small cafes instead of fancy restaurants — changed the way Americans traveled in the mid- to late 20th century. He said budget travel was preferable to luxury travel “because it leads to a more authentic experience.” That message encouraged average people, not just the wealthy, to vacation abroad.

It didn’t hurt that his books hit the market as the rise of jet travel made getting to Europe easier than crossing the Atlantic by ship. The books became so popular that there was a time when you couldn’t visit a place like the Eiffel Tower without spotting Frommer’s guidebooks in the hands of every other American tourist.

Frommer’s advice also became so standard that it’s hard to remember how radical it seemed in the days before discount flights and backpacks. “It was really pioneering stuff,” Tony Wheeler, founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company, said in an interview in 2013. Before Frommer, Wheeler said, you could find guidebooks “that would tell you everything about the church or the temple ruin. But the idea that you wanted to eat somewhere and find a hotel or get from A to B — well, I’ve got a huge amount of respect for Arthur.”

“Arthur did for travel what Consumer Reports did for everything else,” said Pat Carrier, former owner of The Globe Corner, a travel bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The final editions of Frommer’s groundbreaking series were titled “Europe from $95 a Day.” The concept no longer made sense when hotels could not be had for less than $100 a night, so the series was discontinued in 2007. But the Frommer publishing empire did not disappear, despite a series of sales that started when Frommer sold the guidebook company to Simon & Schuster. It was later acquired by Wiley Publishing, which in turn sold it to Google in 2012. Google quietly shut the guidebooks down, but Arthur Frommer — in a David vs. Goliath triumph — got his brand back from Google. In November 2013 with his daughter Pauline, he relaunched the print series with dozens of new guidebook titles.

“I never dreamed at my age I’d be working this hard,” he told the AP at the time, age 84.

Frommer also remained a well-known figure in 21st century travel, opinionated to the end of his career, speaking out on his blog and radio show. He hated mega-cruise ships and railed against travel websites where consumers put up their own reviews, saying they were too easily manipulated with phony postings. And he coined the phrase “Trump Slump” in a widely quoted column that predicted a slump in tourism to the U.S. after Donald Trump was elected president.

Frommer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, and grew up during the Great Depression in Jefferson City, Missouri, the child of a Polish father and Austrian mother. “My father had one job after another, one company after another that went bankrupt,” he recalled. The family moved to New York when he was a teenager. He worked as an office boy at Newsweek, went to New York University and was drafted upon graduating from Yale Law School in 1953. Because he spoke French and Russian, he was sent to work in Army intelligence at a U.S. base in Germany, where the Cold War was heating up.

His first glimpse of Europe was from the window of a military transport plane. Whenever he had a weekend leave or a three-day pass, he’d hop a train to Paris or hitch a ride to England on an Air Force flight. Eventually he wrote “The GI’s Guide to Traveling in Europe,” and a few weeks before his Army stint was up, he had 5,000 copies printed by a typesetter in a German village. They were priced at 50 cents apiece, distributed by the Army newspaper, Stars & Stripes.

Shortly after he returned to New York to practice law at the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he received a cable from Europe. “The book was sold out, would I arrange a reprint?” he said.

Soon after he spent his month’s vacation from the law firm doing a civilian version of the guide. “In 30 days I went to 15 different cities, getting up at 4 a.m., running up and down the streets, trying to find good cheap hotels and restaurants,” he recalled.

The resulting book, the very first “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day,” was much more than a list. It was written with a wide-eyed wonder that verged on poetry: “Venice is a fantastic dream,” Frommer wrote. “Try to arrive at night when the wonders of the city can steal upon you piecemeal and slow. … Out of the dark, there appear little clusters of candy-striped mooring poles; a gondola approaches with a lighted lantern hung from its prow.”

Eventually Frommer gave up law to write the guides full-time. Daughter Pauline joined him with his first wife, Hope Arthur, on their trips starting in 1965, when she was 4 months old. “They used to joke that the book should be called ‘Europe on Five Diapers a Day,'” Pauline Frommer said.

In the 1960s, when inflation forced Frommer to change the title of the book to “Europe on 5 and 10 Dollars a Day,” he said “it was as if someone had plunged a knife into my head.”

Asked to summarize the impact of his books in a 2017 Associated Press interview, he said that in the 1950s, “most Americans had been taught that foreign travel was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially travel to Europe. They were taught that they were going to a war-torn country where it was risky to stay in any hotel other than a five-star hotel. It was risky to go into anything but a top-notch restaurant. … And I knew that all these warnings were a lot of nonsense.”

He added: “We were pioneers in also suggesting that a different type of American should travel, that you didn’t have to be well-heeled.”

To the end of his life, he said he avoided traveling first class. “I fly economy class and I try to experience the same form of travel, the same experience that the average American and the average citizen of the world encounters,” he said.

As Frommer aged, his daughter Pauline gradually became the force behind the company, promoting the brand, managing the business and even writing some of the content based on her own travels. Her relationship with her father was both tender and respectful, and she summed it up this way in a 2012 email to AP: “It’s wonderful to have a working partner whose mind is a steel trap, and who doesn’t just have smarts, but wisdom. His opinions, whether or not you agree with them, come from his social values. He’s a man who puts ethics at the center of his life, and weaves them into everything he does.”

In addition to Pauline, Frommer’s survivors include his second wife, Roberta Brodfeld, and four grandchildren.
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Russia vetoed a United Nation resolution Monday calling for an immediate cease-fire between Sudan’s warring parties and the delivery of humanitarian aid to millions of Sudanese.

Russia was the only Security Council member that voted against the cease-fire resolution.

China, Russia’s ally, supported the resolution, drafted by the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone.

Russian Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told the council that Moscow vetoed the resolution because Sudan’s government should be “solely” responsible for what happens in Sudan.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “It is shocking that Russia has vetoed an effort to save lives, though perhaps it shouldn’t be.”

She added, “For months, Russia has obstructed and obfuscated, standing in the way of council action to address the catastrophic situation in Sudan and playing … both sides of the conflict, to advance its own political objectives at the expense of Sudanese lives.”

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said, “One country stood in the way of the council speaking with one voice. One country is the blocker. One country is the enemy of peace. This Russian veto is a disgrace, and it shows to the world yet again, Russia’s true colors.”

Polyanskiy accused the Security Council of operating under a double standard, pointing to the council’s failure to rein in Israel with what he said are violations of humanitarian law in Gaza.

War broke out between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, in the capital, Khartoum, just before the country was set to transition to civilian rule. The violence has spread to other regions around the country.

Eleven million people in Sudan have been displaced and half of the country’s population, an estimated 25 million people, are struggling with crisis-level food insecurity, according to the United Nations. Famine was confirmed in August in the northern part of Sudan’s Darfur region.

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — Young people who attend the U.N. climate talks have a lot to be angry about. They’ve lost loved ones and months of school. They’ve lost homes and family farms and connections to their families’ native lands.

They haven’t lost hope, though. Not yet.

“It has become so tiring for me to be just a poster child,” said Marinel Ubaldo, who by age 16 had watched two back-to-back supersized typhoons destroy entire communities in her native Philippines. Missing a chunk of high school in the aftermath, because there was no school to go back to, was a wake-up call. Now 27, COP29 will be her sixth time attending the summit where leaders negotiate the future she will inherit.

“I guess I’m very pessimistic, but I’m going to be positive that this COP could actually bring more clarity,” she said.

Her pessimism isn’t unwarranted. Fewer leaders were in attendance this year, with a backdrop of uncertainty as political will on climate unravels in major countries like the U.S. and Germany. While many passionate youths want to protest, this will be the third straight COP in an authoritarian country with tighter controls on protests and speech. 

And for many of the young people hardest hit by climate extremes, it’s simply difficult and expensive to get to the conference.

“We have this constant challenge of having sometimes the youth forums with spaces at the margins of the decision-maker spaces,” said Felipe Paullier, assistant secretary-general for youth affairs in the U.N. youth office. That’s why the U.N. has been working to institutionalize the role of youth in the climate talks, he said.

And climate change has a disproportionate impact on children around the world. Their growing bodies have a harder time handling extreme heat, which also causes an uptick in premature births and childhood malnutrition, said Kitty van der Heijden, UNICEF assistant secretary-general.

“We are simply not doing good enough for children in this world. We are failing children,” she said.

All that means young people are feeling the burden of speaking up about climate change more than ever. And many of those who come to COP, and even some of the ones who don’t, said they feel tired — weighed down by the knowledge that year after year, they show up to speak and don’t have a lot to show for it. This was the third year in a row that Earth’s projected warming hasn’t improved.

“I think for a lot of young people from extremely climate vulnerable nations, it actually it doesn’t feel like much of a choice” to speak out about climate change, said Fathimath Raaia Shareef, 20, of the Maldives.

Shareef’s grandmother migrated south to the small island nation’s capital, so she has never had the opportunity to see what her family’s home island was like. Growing up, after she found out about sea level rise, she had recurring nightmares about her island sinking. She would wake up crying.

“How am I supposed to focus on anything else when my island, when my home country is at risk?” she asked.

It’s that focus that brings many young people to the table even as they question their faith in the possibility that international negotiations can achieve real change. Here at his fourth COP, Francisco Vera Manzanares, 15, of Colombia called the U.N. summit a necessary but “very difficult space” to be in. He thinks slow pace of change from countries around the world creates a “credibility crisis” in the institutions that are most needed to keep the goals that require global cooperation within reach.

“People listen to children. But, let’s say, it’s different [to] listen than hear,” he said.

That’s why he hopes more adults will help children meaningfully advocate for themselves in a crisis where they have the most to lose — and the most to save. 

“It’s our rights. It’s our future. It’s our present,” he said. 
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Russia has been buying artillery shells and missiles from North Korea, buying drones and ballistic missiles from Iran and strengthening ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan to sustain its war in Ukraine.

All three governments are under U.N. embargoes that prohibit arms trade and financial dealings with the countries to curtail weapons proliferation and human rights abuses. Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has also provided diplomatic support to Iran and North Korea, including by vetoing sanctions.  

Iran

Iran has supplied Moscow with more than 2,000 Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones and 18 Mohajer-6 drones since Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia extensively used the Iranian drones to attack Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and civilian targets, and to deplete Kyiv’s air defense systems.

Ukraine said in September that Russia had deployed more than 8,060 Iranian-designed drones since the beginning of the full-fledged war. This number includes both Iranian-made drones and drones manufactured in a factory in the Russian republic of Tatarstan using Iranian parts and technology.

Additionally, Iran has helped replenish Russia’s munitions, providing hundreds of ballistic missiles in 2024.  

Russia has reportedly pledged to supply Iran with Su-35 fighter jets and advanced air defense systems. Some Russian technology, such as the Yak-130 aircraft for training Su-35 pilots, has already reached Iran, though the extent remains unclear.  

Iran also provides propaganda support to Russia aligning the top government officials’ rhetoric and the news media language with the Kremlin’s Ukraine narratives. For example, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described on multiple occasions Russia’s aggression as a “defensive act” against an imperialistic West and NATO. 

U.N. sanctions on Iran, led by the U.S. and supported by the European Union, target Tehran’s nuclear program, arms trade and financial systems. The restrictions are designed to curb Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region and beyond. Russia’s engagement in arms trade not only contravenes restrictions on arms exports but also boosts Iran’s military industry. 

North Korea

Since September 2023, North Korea has reportedly supplied Russia with up to 5 million artillery shells, a substantial figure given Russia’s annual production capacity of only 2 million to 3 million shells. Russia also deployed in Ukraine North Korean KN-23/24 ballistic missiles, though their failure rate is reportedly high. 

Apart from weapons trade, Russia supports North Korea diplomatically – for example, in international forums and by opposing U.N. sanctions on its oil imports and nuclear industry. In March, Russia vetoed a resolution renewing the U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring sanctions on North Korea. 

In June, North Korea and Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty committing to provide full military and other support if either faces an armed invasion or war. 

Russia’s importing of weapons and ammunition from North Korea violates U.N. Security Council sanctions prohibiting arms trade with Pyongyang.  

These sanctions were established to curtail North Korea’s weapons programs and have been reinforced with additional measures targeting its cyber activities and ship-to-ship transfers. 

The Taliban

The Russian government designated the Taliban as a terrorist group in 2003 and banned its activities in Russia. In May 2024, Russia’s foreign and justice ministries proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove the Taliban from the government’s list of terrorist organizations, where it remains to this day. 

However, since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021 following the U.S. withdrawal, the Kremlin has been gradually developing ties with the group. Since 2022, Taliban delegations have attended every International Economic Forum held in Russia’s “northern capital,” St. Petersburg.  

Moscow aims to strengthen economic partnership with the Taliban, envisioning Afghanistan as a transit hub for exporting natural gas to India and goods to Pakistani ports. However, this requires building a gas pipeline and extending a railroad from Mazar-i-Sharif, the regional hub of northern Afghanistan.

Russia’s developing economic ties with the Taliban can potentially violate international frameworks that sanction the Taliban as a terrorist organization and undermine measures aimed at isolating the group because of its human rights abuses and historical links to terrorism. 

No country formally recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, but China and the United Arab Emirates have accepted Taliban-appointed ambassadors.
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tbilisi, georgia — Demonstrators in Georgia’s capital have set up tents on a central thoroughfare and vowed Monday to stay around the clock to demand new parliamentary elections in the country.

The October 26 election kept the governing Georgian Dream party in power, but opponents say the vote was rigged with Russia’s assistance. Many Georgians viewed the election as a referendum on the country’s effort to join the European Union. Several large protests have been held since then.

President Salome Zourabichvili, who has rejected the official results, declared on Monday that she would appeal the vote results to the Constitutional Court. Zourabichvili, who holds a mostly ceremonial position, has said Georgia has fallen victim to pressure from Moscow against joining the EU.

Critics have accused Georgian Dream, established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia, of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted toward Moscow. The party recently pushed through laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

On Sunday, demonstrators closed an avenue leading into the center of Tbilisi. Nika Melia, leader of Coalition for Change, one of the opposition groups, voiced hope that the protests around the clock will mark “the beginning of the intense, strong protest movement that will finish with the fall of Ivanishvili’s regime.”

The EU suspended Georgia’s membership application process indefinitely in June after the country’s parliament passed a law requiring organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “pursuing the interest of a foreign power,” similar to a Russian law used to discredit organizations critical of the government.

The Central Election Commission said Georgian Dream won about 54% of the vote in October. Its leaders have rejected opposition claims of vote fraud. European election observers said the election took place in a “divisive” atmosphere marked by instances of bribery, double voting and physical violence.
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Russian opposition members in exile took to the streets of Berlin Sunday to demand a pullout of Russian troops from Ukraine and the resignation of President Vladimir Putin in a protest that would have been impossible in Russia due to police and judicial pressure on opposition movements. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Berlin.
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AMSTERDAM — The Netherlands’ foreign minister, whose ministry oversees export restrictions on top computer chip equipment maker ASML, said on Monday that China-Russia trade was “directly affecting” European security. 

NATO views China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia in its war against Ukraine, given that Chinese firms are selling goods that end up as components in Russian weapons, including drones, Caspar Veldkamp said before a meeting with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. 

“I raised this twice with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and I think as Europeans we should all do this, because this is something that China should be realizing: it is directly affecting European security,” Veldkamp said. 

In cooperation with the United States, the Dutch government has rolled out a series of progressively tighter export restrictions preventing ASML from shipping its most advanced technology to Chinese chipmakers. 

ASML dominates the market for lithography tools, which are essential for making the circuitry of computer chips. 

Despite the restrictions, China has still been the largest market for ASML and other top U.S. and Japanese equipment makers over the past year and a half, as Chinese firms expand capacity to make older chips not covered by restrictions, but still adequate for many military purposes.  

ASML tool sales to Chinese firms reached a record $2.94 billion in the third quarter, though the company forecasts a decline in 2025. 

Veldkamp said he would discuss what to do about Chinese support for Russia with other EU foreign ministers on Monday. 

“We are discussing anything regarding foreign assistance to Russia in its war in Ukraine, be it Iran, be it North Korea, be it China,” he said. 
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A Russian attack on Ukraine’s northeast city of Sumy killed 11 people and injured at least 89, Ukrainian officials said.

“Sunday evening for the city of Sumy became hell, a tragedy that Russia brought to our land,” military administrator Volodymyr Artyukh said in a post on the Telegram messaging channel.

Sumy regional prosecutors said the attack damaged 90 apartments, 28 cars, two educational institutions and 13 buildings.

The attack followed a massive Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s power infrastructure earlier in the day, as well as news reports that the United States granted clearance for Ukraine to use long-range U.S. weapons to hit military targets in Russia.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country and its allies should focus on “really forcing Russia to end the war.”

“Today marked one of the largest and most dangerous Russian attacks in the entire war – 210 drones and missiles launched simultaneously – including hypersonic and aeroballistic ones,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

Zelenskyy has long been lobbying for permission to use the Army Tactical Missile System, known by its initials ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia. He said in his address that negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin is not an effective strategy to end the war.

“This is the answer to all those who wanted to achieve something with Putin through conversations, phone calls, hugs – appeasement. Today, this ‘dove of peace’ sent us yet another barrage of ‘Kinzhal’ and ‘Kalibr’ missiles. That’s his diplomacy. His language is treachery,” Zelenskyy said.

Long-range capabilities

President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons as Russia deploys up to 12,000 North Korean troops to reinforce its war, according to a U.S. official and three other people familiar with the matter, the Associated Press reported.

In recent weeks, Putin has positioned troops – including those from North Korea – along the northern border of Ukraine in a push to regain territory.

Biden had been opposed to any escalation of the war in Ukraine, and Putin has said Moscow could provide long-range weapons for others to hit Western targets if NATO allies allow Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory.

But Zelenskyy has argued that the restriction on long-range weapons has hampered Ukraine’s defense against Russian attacks. Long-range capabilities, he said, are a key component of Ukraine’s victory plan.

“Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves,” Zelensky said. “They certainly will.”

Russia downs 59 drones

Meanwhile, Russia shot down 59 Ukranian drones overnight, according to the Russian defense ministry.

“During the past night, attempts by the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist UAV attacks against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation were thwarted,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said most of the drones were shot down across three regions bordering Ukraine: 45 in Bryansk, six in Kursk and three in Belgorod, Agence France-Presse reported.

Three drones were intercepted in the region of Tula, south of the capital, while two others were downed over the Moscow region.

Ukraine’s air force said on Monday that it shot down eight out of 11 Russian drones during an overnight attack.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Press.
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LONDON — Britain will seek backing from other United Nations Security Council members on Monday for its demand that Sudan’s warring parties stop hostilities and allow deliveries of aid, the British foreign ministry said.

With London holding the rotating presidency of the council, British foreign minister David Lammy is due to chair a vote on a UK/Sierra Leone-proposed draft resolution, which also calls for the protection of civilians.

Lammy will say “the UK will never let Sudan be forgotten” and announce a doubling of Britain’s aid to $285 million, according to a statement from his ministry.

A power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces broke out in April 2023 ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, killing thousands and triggering the world’s largest displacement crisis.

The ministry said Lammy would also criticize restrictions by Israel on humanitarian aid in Gaza and call for an immediate ceasefire along with the release of all hostages.

On the war in Ukraine, he was due to say that Britain “will keep standing with Ukraine until reality dawns in Moscow.” He was due to speak to media with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
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The Baltic states have committed to continue providing financial and material support to Ukraine’s fight against Russia in 2025. Part of that support is coming from the Latvian-led Drone Coalition. Vladislav Andrejevs has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Video editing by Sergii Dogotar.
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Tbilisi, Georgia — Opposition protesters in Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia on Sunday refused to cede control of key government buildings seized during rallies earlier in the week during which at least 14 people were injured in clashes with police.

Demonstrators stormed the buildings Friday to protest new measures allowing Russians to buy property in the seaside region.

Protesters on Sunday continued to demand the ouster of self-styled Abkhazian President Aslan Bzhania, and one prominent politician vowed that the opposition would form a rival government if he refuses to step down.

“If our demands for the president’s resignation are not met, we will have to form a temporary government to ensure the normal functioning of state bodies,” Temur Gulia told his supporters, according to local agencies.

Bzhania, who is backed by Russia, signaled Sunday that he was prepared to step aside temporarily and hold early elections, even as he continued to slam the demonstrations as “an attempted coup d’etat.”

Opponents of the property agreement say it will drive up prices of apartments and boost Moscow’s dominance in the region.

On Saturday, Bzhania announced that he would only agree to a snap election if demonstrators vacated the region’s parliament building. But crowds that gathered in the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi, rejected the deal and opposition leaders said they would only accept Bzhania’s unconditional resignation.

Meanwhile, protesters on Sunday began dismantling the security barriers around the government complex in Sukhumi.

One prominent opposition figure called the metal barriers a symbol of the authorities being out of touch.

“This barrier shows that the government has decided to fence itself off from its people,” Adgur Ardzinba said, according to local media.

Most of Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in fighting that ended in 1993, and Georgia lost control of the rest of the territory in the short war with Russia in 2008. Russia recognizes Abkhazia as an independent country, but many Abkhazians are concerned that the region of about 245,000 people is a client state of Moscow.

Abkhazia’s mountains and Black Sea beaches make it a popular destination for Russian tourists and the demand for holiday homes could be strong.

At least 14 people were injured Friday when opposition protesters clashed with police, Russian state agencies reported.

Lawmakers had gathered at the region’s parliament building to discuss ratifying measures allowing Russian citizens to buy property in the breakaway state. However, the session was postponed as demonstrators broke down the gate to the building’s grounds with a truck and streamed inside. Some threw rocks at police, who responded with tear gas.

The arrest of five opposition figures at a similar demonstration Monday set off widespread protests the next day in which bridges leading to Sukhumi were blocked.
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Russia launched a massive airstrike campaign against neighboring Ukraine on Sunday. Local officials say several people died and the power system suffered “severe damage.” VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Berlin — Prominent Russian opposition figures led a march of at least 1,000 people in central Berlin Sunday, criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine and calling for democracy in Russia.

Behind a banner that read “No Putin. No War,” the protesters were led by Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of top Putin critic Alexei Navalny, as well as Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who were freed from Russian detention in a high-profile prisoner exchange this summer.

Shouting “Russia without Putin” and other chants in Russian, the demonstrators held up signs with a wide array of messages on a red background, including “Putin = War” and “Putin is a murderer” in German.

Some marched with the flags of Russia or Ukraine, as well as a white-blue-white flag used by some Russian opposition groups.

Organizers said the march began near Potsdamer Platz and went through the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie and was expected to end outside the Russian Embassy.

“The march demands the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, the trial of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, and the release of all political prisoners in Russia,” the protesters said in a statement.

Yashin, in a statement before the demonstration, said demonstrators were “using the freedom we have here in Berlin to show the world: A peaceful, free, and civilized Russia exists.”

Navalnaya, Yashin and Kara-Murza have all billed Sunday’s rally as a show of unity at a time when recent rounds of acrimony have roiled the anti-war camp.

Russia’s exiled anti-war opposition has so far largely failed to speak with one voice and present a clear plan of action.

The landmark East-West prisoner swap in August freed key dissidents and promised to reinvigorate a movement unmoored by the death in prison of Navalny, a charismatic anti-corruption campaigner and arch-Kremlin foe.

Instead, tensions have spiked in recent months, as Navalny’s allies and other prominent dissidents swapped accusations that appeared to dash any hopes of a united anti-Kremlin front.

Many opposition-minded Russians have voiced deep frustration with the infighting, and with what some view as efforts by rivaling groups to discredit and wrest influence from one another.
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