{"id":102962,"date":"2025-05-15T07:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102962\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T07:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:48:08","slug":"ukraine-live-russia-rocked-by-saboteur-attack-hours-before-peace-talks-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102962\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine LIVE: Russia rocked by saboteur attack hours before peace talks | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/russia\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Russia<\/a>\u2019s leading election watchdog Golos, has been sentenced to five years in prison by a Moscow court for allegedly working with an \u201cundesirable\u201d organisation.<\/p>\n<p>He denied the charges, which stem from Golos\u2019s past ties to a European election monitoring group banned in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/russia\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Russia<\/a>, and called the case politically motivated.<\/p>\n<p>His sentencing marks a major escalation in the Kremlin\u2019s post-<a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/ukraine\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ukraine<\/a> invasion crackdown on dissent, which has seen activists, journalists and NGOs targeted.<\/p>\n<p>Memorial, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/russia\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Russia<\/a>\u2019s Nobel Prize-winning human rights group, has recognised Melkonyants as a political prisoner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia\u2019s leading election watchdog Golos, has been sentenced to five years in prison by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32,12,657,47503,333,658,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-102962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-ukraine","11":"tag-ukraine-peace-talks","12":"tag-vladimir-putin","13":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky","14":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114510751556499310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}