Amid an ongoing crackdown on civil society groups and free speech in Belarus, activist Palina Sharenda-Panasyuk, who finished serving a prison term in early August but was not released, has gone on trial again, this time on a charge of "blatantly violating the penitentiary regulations."
Slovakia's Foreign Ministry said on October 2 it had summoned a Russian Embassy representative to protest what it called "inadmissible interference" by Moscow in the Slovak parliamentary elections.
Russian authorities have sent jailed Crimean Tatar activist Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov to a psychiatric clinic for unknown reasons, his lawyer said on October 2.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hopes that a meeting later this week in Granada, Spain, will give impetus to the development of a peace agenda for Nagorno-Karabakh amid claims of continued violence in the breakaway region.