BELGRADE: Serbian authorities on Friday allowed into the country a Russian antiwar activist who was previously denied entry and had spent more than one day at the Belgrade airport.
Peter Nikitin said he received no explanation from the authorities for what happened. A fierce critic of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Nikitin told Serbian media he believed Moscow was behind his ordeal.
“I have no idea how I became persona non grata. The only explanation is that this was done on Putin’s order,” he said. “This is an illustration how big an influence Russian regime holds here.”
Though it formally seeks European Union membership and has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbia has maintained friendly relations with Moscow and refused to impose Western-backed sanctions over the aggression.
Serbia’s pro-Russian intelligence chief Aleksandar Vulin this week was sanctioned by the United States for alleged crime and corruption and for aiding “Russian malign influence.” Serbian media have reported that Vulin wiretapped a Russian opposition meeting in Belgrade in 2021, which he has denied.
Nikitin holds both Russian and Dutch citizenship and has a residence permit for Serbia, where he and his family have lived for years.
He was turned back early on Thursday upon returning from a trip abroad and told to return to Frankfurt, Germany, from where he had flown in. Nikitin refused this and stayed at the Belgrade airport until he was allowed into the country on Friday.
Nikitin is well known as an outspoken critic of Putin and of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was one of the organizers of antiwar and pro-democracy protests in Serbia called for by Russians and Ukrainians living in the country.
Some 200,000 Russian citizens have moved to Serbia since the start of the war in Ukraine as the Balkan country requires no entry visas for Russians and is a fellow-Slavic nation. Many have fled being drafted into the army or moved their businesses to a sanctions-free country.
Russian antiwar activist allowed into Serbia after spending more than a day at the Belgrade airport
https://arab.news/4gc4v
Russian antiwar activist allowed into Serbia after spending more than a day at the Belgrade airport
- A fierce critic of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Nikitin told Serbian media he believed Moscow was behind his ordeal
- “I have no idea how I became persona non grata. The only explanation is that this was done on Putin's order,” he said
TikTok finalizes deal to form new American entity
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years.
The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form the new TikTok US joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for US users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.
Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.
In addition to an emphasis on data protection, with US user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on US user data, the company said in its announcement.
Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX are the three managing investors, who each hold a 15 percent share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture.
