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Tag: Donetsk

  • Ukrainian woman’s quest to retrieve body of prisoner of war

    Ukrainian woman’s quest to retrieve body of prisoner of war

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    CHUBYNSKE, Ukraine (AP) — In the last, brief conversations Viktoria Skliar had with her detained boyfriend, the Ukrainian prisoner of war was making tentative plans for life after his release in an upcoming exchange with Russia.

    The next time Skliar saw Oleksii Kisilishin, he was dead — one of several bodies in a photo of people local authorities said were killed when blasts ripped through a prison in a part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

    For months, Skliar had held out hope she would reunite with her partner, who had been one of the defenders of the Azovstal steel plant, the last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the besieged city of Mariupol.

    Now, she has retrained her focus on getting his body back. Against enormous odds, Ukraine has now received the remains of dozens of prisoners who were held at the prison in Olenivka. But with experts still needing months to identify all the bodies — and no guarantee Kisilishin is among them — Skliar’s quest is far from over.

    That she even knows her boyfriend is dead is remarkable. She recognized his tattoos in a photo shared on social media following the July 29 blasts. It showed him laid out, semi-naked, on the ground in a line with eight other bodies.

    “When I saw the photo, my eyes did not go beyond Oleksii’s body,” Skliar told The Associated Press. “I didn’t have time to cry. I cried all my tears when they were in Azovstal. My first thought was to get the body back somehow.”

    Skliar said she contacted representatives with the International Committee of the Red Cross, told them about the photo and gave them his name in the hopes that they’d be able to arrange for him to be brought home. The humanitarian organization couldn’t tell her much — the group had to wait for official lists of prisoners and agreements from politicians before it could help repatriate any bodies.

    While she waited for word, Skliar feared her loved one would end up in a mass grave.

    Kisilishin, who died at 26, was called back to the Azov Regiment, part of the Ukrainian National Guard, where he’d served until 2016, two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The animal caregiver and activist had chosen to return to defend his hometown of Mariupol, rather than stay in Kyiv, where he’d met Skliar at an equestrian club a year before.

    When Kisilishin was holed up at the Azovstal steel mill during a three-month siege of the city, they spoke every day until Russian forces encircled the plant.

    In May, he was captured when the last Azovstal defenders were told by Ukraine’s military to turn themselves over to Russian forces.

    From captivity, Skliar continued to have phone calls from him, though they never lasted longer than a minute. Her boyfriend said little about himself, responding only “it’s OK” or “bearable” when she asked him how he was.

    Then, Skliar said she received a call from Kisilishin — and his voice was cheerful. “He said that they will be taken somewhere. He hoped for an exchange,” she said.

    She believes he was taken to Olenivka that day or soon after. Later, she said she heard from the Red Cross that he would be part of an upcoming prisoner exchange. But three weeks after that, he was dead.

    Authorities at the prison and Russian officials have said 53 Ukrainian POWs died in the blasts and another 75 were wounded. On a list of the victims released by Moscow and published in Russian media, Kisilishin was number 43.

    What exactly happened in Olenivka remains unknown.

    Russia claims Ukraine’s military hit the prison with rockets. The Ukrainian military denied launching any strikes and accused Russia of mining it. Kyiv alleges that the Kremlin’s forces tortured prisoners held in Olenivka — and that the blasts were meant to cover up any evidence of those crimes.

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights raised concerns recently about reports that prisoners in Olenivka and elsewhere were subjected to beatings, electrocution and other abuse.

    The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Ukrainian allegations of what happened in Olenivka.

    Russia and Ukraine agreed in August to a U.N. fact-finding mission, but U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said just over a week ago that the “appropriate security guarantees” were not in place for the work to start.

    When other Ukrainian POWs returned in September, the photos showed emaciated but smiling faces. Skliar believes Kisilishin was supposed to be among them.

    Instead, he probably returned to Ukraine in a bag labeled “Olenivka” — with 62 other bodies that were exchanged on Oct. 11. Relatives of soldiers have given DNA samples, and experts are now working to identify the remains, said the representative of the Patronage Service of the Azov Regiment, Natalia Bahrii.

    It’s not clear why there were more than 60 bodies in the exchange, even though authorities put the death toll from the blasts at just over 50.

    Kisilishin’s father, Oleksandr — who himself was captured as a POW and released — has given a sample.

    To honor his son, the father, working with the NGO UAnimals, plans to arrange grants for animal shelters — continuing the work that Kisilishin devoted his life to.

    The older Kisilishin and Skliar don’t talk much about their loved one. “We can’t have him back anyway,” Skliar recounted the father once said to her.

    Still, Skliar hopes she will one day be able to bury him.

    “He fought for the free people of a free country; he defended his city, Mariupol,” Viktoria said. “He is a warrior. And he has the right to be buried in the land he defended.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ukrainian woman’s quest to retrieve body of prisoner of war

    Ukrainian woman’s quest to retrieve body of prisoner of war

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    CHUBYNSKE, Ukraine — In the last, brief conversations Viktoria Skliar had with her detained boyfriend, the Ukrainian prisoner of war was making tentative plans for life after his release in an upcoming exchange with Russia.

    The next time Skliar saw Oleksii Kisilishin, he was dead — one of several bodies in a photo of people local authorities said were killed when blasts ripped through a prison in a part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

    For months, Skliar had held out hope she would reunite with her partner, who had been one of the defenders of the Azovstal steel plant, the last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the besieged city of Mariupol.

    Now, she has retrained her focus on getting his body back. Against enormous odds, Ukraine has now received the remains of dozens of prisoners who were held at the prison in Olenivka. But with experts still needing months to identify all the bodies — and no guarantee Kisilishin is among them — Skliar’s quest is far from over.

    That she even knows her boyfriend is dead is remarkable. She recognized his tattoos in a photo shared on social media following the July 29 blasts. It showed him laid out, semi-naked, on the ground in a line with eight other bodies.

    “When I saw the photo, my eyes did not go beyond Oleksii’s body,” Skliar told The Associated Press. “I didn’t have time to cry. I cried all my tears when they were in Azovstal. My first thought was to get the body back somehow.”

    Skliar said she contacted representatives with the International Committee of the Red Cross, told them about the photo and gave them his name in the hopes that they’d be able to arrange for him to be brought home. The humanitarian organization couldn’t tell her much — the group had to wait for official lists of prisoners and agreements from politicians before it could help repatriate any bodies.

    While she waited for word, Skliar feared her loved one would end up in a mass grave.

    Kisilishin, who died at 26, was called back to the Azov Regiment, part of the Ukrainian National Guard, where he’d served until 2016, two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The animal caregiver and activist had chosen to return to defend his hometown of Mariupol, rather than stay in Kyiv, where he’d met Skliar at an equestrian club a year before.

    When Kisilishin was holed up at the Azovstal steel mill during a three-month siege of the city, they spoke every day until Russian forces encircled the plant.

    In May, he was captured when the last Azovstal defenders were told by Ukraine’s military to turn themselves over to Russian forces.

    From captivity, Skliar continued to have phone calls from him, though they never lasted longer than a minute. Her boyfriend said little about himself, responding only “it’s OK” or “bearable” when she asked him how he was.

    Then, Skliar said she received a call from Kisilishin — and his voice was cheerful. “He said that they will be taken somewhere. He hoped for an exchange,” she said.

    She believes he was taken to Olenivka that day or soon after. Later, she said she heard from the Red Cross that he would be part of an upcoming prisoner exchange. But three weeks after that, he was dead.

    Authorities at the prison and Russian officials have said 53 Ukrainian POWs died in the blasts and another 75 were wounded. On a list of the victims released by Moscow and published in Russian media, Kisilishin was number 43.

    What exactly happened in Olenivka remains unknown.

    Russia claims Ukraine’s military hit the prison with rockets. The Ukrainian military denied launching any strikes and accused Russia of mining it. Kyiv alleges that the Kremlin’s forces tortured prisoners held in Olenivka — and that the blasts were meant to cover up any evidence of those crimes.

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights raised concerns recently about reports that prisoners in Olenivka and elsewhere were subjected to beatings, electrocution and other abuse.

    The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Ukrainian allegations of what happened in Olenivka.

    Russia and Ukraine agreed in August to a U.N. fact-finding mission, but U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said just over a week ago that the “appropriate security guarantees” were not in place for the work to start.

    When other Ukrainian POWs returned in September, the photos showed emaciated but smiling faces. Skliar believes Kisilishin was supposed to be among them.

    Instead, he probably returned to Ukraine in a bag labeled “Olenivka” — with 62 other bodies that were exchanged on Oct. 11. Relatives of soldiers have given DNA samples, and experts are now working to identify the remains, said the representative of the Patronage Service of the Azov Regiment, Natalia Bahrii.

    It’s not clear why there were more than 60 bodies in the exchange, even though authorities put the death toll from the blasts at just over 50.

    Kisilishin’s father, Oleksandr — who himself was captured as a POW and released — has given a sample.

    To honor his son, the father, working with the NGO UAnimals, plans to arrange grants for animal shelters — continuing the work that Kisilishin devoted his life to.

    The older Kisilishin and Skliar don’t talk much about their loved one. “We can’t have him back anyway,” Skliar recounted the father once said to her.

    Still, Skliar hopes she will one day be able to bury him.

    “He fought for the free people of a free country; he defended his city, Mariupol,” Viktoria said. “He is a warrior. And he has the right to be buried in the land he defended.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ukraine: Explosions rock Kyiv a week after Russian strikes

    Ukraine: Explosions rock Kyiv a week after Russian strikes

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Several loud explosions rocked the center of the Ukrainian capital Monday, a week after Russia orchestrated a massive, coordinated air strike across the country.

    Kyiv city mayor Vitaliy Klichko said the central Shevchenko district of the capital had been hit, and urged residents to take shelter. No further details were immediately known.

    The explosions came from the same central Kyiv district where a week ago a missile struck a children’s playground and intersection near the Kyiv National University’s main buildings.

    Social media posts showed a fire in the area of the apparently strike, with black smoke rising into the early morning light.

    Russian forces struck Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, wrote Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, in a post on the Telegram social media site. Russia has repeatedly been using the so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations.

    The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last night in his evening address that there was heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the bulk of the industrial east known as the Donbas, and were two of four regions annexed by Russia in September in defiance of international law.

    On Sunday, the Russian-backed regime in the Donetsk region said Ukraine had shelled its central administrative building in a direct hit. No casualties were reported.

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  • In Pictures: Russian Forces Assault World War I Hellscape At Bakhmut

    In Pictures: Russian Forces Assault World War I Hellscape At Bakhmut

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    In October, the city of Bakhmut is now virtually the sole focus of major Russian offensive operations in Ukraine. Last Saturday, Ukraine’s military reported repelling eleven separate attacks on Bakhmut and Avdiivka to the south.

    For months, Russian tanks and troops have repeatedly assaulted the Donetsk Oblast city and its approaches, inching gradually forward even after Ukrainian forces liberated large swathes of territory to its northeast.

    After five months of shelling and direct attacks that began in May, Bakhmut and its surrounding towns and farmland have come to resemble a war-torn World War I battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers repel waves of Russian Wagner mercenaries and tanks backed up by massive artillery barrages from the cover of complex trench systems, surrounded by a shell-torn landscape of leafless trees, mud and impact craters.

    On October 13, Russian troops managed to penetrate into Bakhmut’s outlying southern suburbs of Ivanhrad and Optyne, only to be ejected by counterattacks by Ukraine’s recently rotated-in 93rd Brigade.

    The town of Bakhmut itself is thoroughly shelled out and no longer has running water or electricity. On October 14, a fresh Russian bombardment destroyed its historic College of Transport and Infrastructure.

    Other landmarks damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling and missiles include a machine-building plant, a trolleybus depot, the Metalurh stadium, a hotel, the Martynov Palace of Culture, the city’s central market, and many shops and residences.

    Destruction of a bridge in Bakhmut has made resupply of its defenders difficult. Ukraine has established a pontoon bridge to ease the flow of supplies.

    Only 20,000 civilians remained in Bakhmut, out of 80,000 prior to the war, when the Russian siege began in earnest in May. While even more have evacuated, some—particularly the elderly—refuse to leave.

    The battle has been costly for both sides. A Ukrainian medic told Estonian journalists he and his colleagues were having to stabilize 130 wounded personnel daily, of which 90% can be saved.

    Recently, elements of five Ukrainian brigades have held the defensive positions around Bakhmut including:

    • 30th Mechanized Brigade (one T-72AMT tank battalion and three mechanized battalions)
    • 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade (three motorized infantry battalions)
    • 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade (one tank and three infantry battalions)
    • 80th Air Assault Brigade (three air assault battalions mounted in BTR-80 APCs)
    • 93rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade (one tank, three mechanized (BMP-1) and one motorized infantry battalions)

    In the clip below you can see infantry and a T-64BV tank of the 93rd mechanized engaging Russian forces near an asphalt plant.

    At least two artillery brigades provide fire support:

    The Russian attacks are primarily spearheaded by Wagner mercenaries and separatist troops (many forcibly conscripted) of the Luhansk People’s Republic. Some identified units involved in these assaults include:

    • LPR 6th “Cossack” Motor Rifle Regiment
    • LPR 14th “Prizrak” Territorial Defense Battalion (decimated in June)
    • 27th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (1 T-90A tank battalion, 3 motor rifle battalions with BMP-3s, BTR-82As, BTR-80s)
    • 31st Air Assault Brigade (3 airborne battalions, BMD-2 and BMD-4)
    • 137th Air Assault Regiment of 106th Airborne Division (decimated September)
    • 144th Motor Rifle Division (1 tank and 2 rifle regiments with T-72 tanks, BTR-82A APCs)
    • 150th Motor Rifle Division (2 tank and 2 rifle regiments, T-72B3s, BMP-3s, BTR-82As)
    • 45th Engineering Camouflage Regiment

    These frontal wave assaults have incurred heavy losses.

    In mid-October, Russian TOS-1A vehicles unleashed extremely destructive thermobaric rockets on Ukrainian positions.

    Videos also show Russian kamikaze drones have actively targeted Ukrainian artillery and armored vehicles near Bakhmut.

    Presently, Russian units appear to be positioned a short distance outside southern and eastern Bakhmut but have yet to secure a lasting foothold in the city itself.

    The Big Picture: Offense, Defense and Bakhmut

    By October, it’s clear Russian forces are dangerously overstretched and vulnerable to counterattacks in multiple sectors across Ukraine. In September, Ukrainian forces overran a weak Russian garrison in Kharkiv province forcing Russian troops concentrated in Izium and (eventually) Lyman to retreat. Then in October in southern Ukraine, another surprise offensive forced Russian troops to fall back 20 miles out of northeastern Kherson province.

    Thus, it has mystified Western military analysts why Russian forces doggedly, even “robotically”, continue to assault heavily entrenched Ukrainian positions around Bakhmut at great cost and for only marginal gain.

    True, before Ukraine’s offensives in September-October, the fall of Bakhmut seemed inevitable. But now that Russia’s situation is so precarious nearly everywhere else, the continued expenditure of men and materiel for marginal gains seems foolish.

    Yes, in theory Bakhmut’s fall would open a corridor down the M03 highway to attack the strategically and symbolically important cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk 20 miles to the northwest. However, Russia’s ability to exploit that seems doubtful as other Russian forces previously threatening Slovyansk from the north (from Izium) and east (from Lyman) were driven out in September.

    Nonetheless, while most attacks are repelled, Russian forces have inched closer and closer to Bakhmut, even as the armies covering their flanks seem more and more vulnerable.

    Perhaps Russia’s military is desperate to claim any sort of offensive victory at a time it’s mostly compelled to be on the defensive. Online, pro-Russian bloggers and propagandists excitedly seize on reports of progress towards Bakhmut, emphasizing the rosy news (from their perspective) amidst grim reports coming from all other fronts. On multiple occasions, pro-Russian sources have falsely reported the fall of Bakhmut.

    Despite the huge strain on Bakhmut’s defenders, Ukraine’s military seems to believe Russia’s assault there is barbed lodestone bleeding resources away from more critical fronts. Despite Ukraine’s declared intention to hold Bakhmut, some commanders have admitted they’re willing to risk losing the city if it comes at sufficiently heavy cost to Russian forces and tolerable casualties for its own.

    That’s likely why rather than diverting additional reserves to counterattack around Bakhmut, it’s seemingly husbanding reserves for an offensive elsewhere. If such a new attack meets with sufficient success, it may finally compel Russia’s military to give up its ceaseless assaults, giving Bakhmut’s defenders brief respite.

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    Sebastien Roblin, Contributor

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  • Thursday, October 13. Russia’s War On Ukraine: News And Information From Ukraine

    Thursday, October 13. Russia’s War On Ukraine: News And Information From Ukraine

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    Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 232.

    As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.

    By Polina Rasskazova

    The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a resolution that recognizes Russia as a terrorist regime and called for providing Ukraine with air defense systems. Key points of the document include recognition that the Russian regime is terrorist one; for the first time in history, the Council of Europe declared that weapons — air defense systems — should be given to a nation; it is noted that Russia’s presence in the UN Security Council is not legal; a call to establish an international tribunal as soon as possible.

    Mykolaiv.

    At night, the Russian army attacked the city of Mykolaiv with eight S-300 missiles. As a result of the shelling, a five-story building was damaged. “…the two upper floors were completely destroyed, the rest were under rubble. Previously, two people were injured,” reported the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration. Among the wounded was an 11-year-old boy who spent 6 hours under the rubble. According to preliminary information, there may be 7 residents of the five-story building under the ruins of the building. Rescuers are searching for them and analyzing the destroyed structures.

    Donetsk Region.

    During the day, Russian forces shelled 13 towns, damaging residential buildings in the area and killing and wounding local residents, reported the National Police of Ukraine. The Russian troops fired from artillery batteries, tanks, a rocket salvo system and mortars. According to police, “24 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged — 13 residential buildings, a school, a boiler house, trade pavilions, a shop, and farm buildings.”

    Dnipropetrovsk Region.

    During the night, Russian troops attacked the city of Nikopol with 60 rocket salvo system missiles, 15 bursts of barrel artillery were also recorded, according to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk State Administration, Valentin Reznichenko. As a result of the shelling, one person was injured––a 59-year-old man, listed as in serious condition. The attack damaged more than 30 high-rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines, and around 2,000 families were left without electricity.

    The Russian occupation authorities of the city of Melitopol treat wounded Russian soldiers with fraudulently obtained blood donated by local residents. Advertisements are posted around the city about the need to donate blood, allegedly for the needs of women in labor and cancer patients. “However, taking into account that refrigerators are constantly brought to Melitopol with the bodies of Russian soldiers eliminated in the Kherson direction and wounded from the entire region of hostilities, we understand for which ‘patients’ blood is needed,” wrote the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, on his Telegram channel.

    Moreover, in the Melitopol district, hospitals are mostly closed. More than 50% of doctors have left Melitopol. Russian occupation forces did not deliver medicines to hospitals for 7 months. A month ago, they blocked the delivery of medicines from Zaporizhzhia. In a few weeks, Melitopol will run out of rare medicines. “People will start to die or leave,” Fedorov said, “and unfortunately there is no way to leave the city today.”

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    Katya Soldak, Forbes Staff

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  • Putin signs annexation of Ukrainian regions as losses mount

    Putin signs annexation of Ukrainian regions as losses mount

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the final papers Wednesday to annex four regions of Ukraine while his military struggled to control the new territory that was added in violation of international laws.

    Ukrainian law enforcement officials, meanwhile, reported discovering more evidence of torture and killings in areas retaken from Russian forces.

    The documents finalizing the annexation were published on a Russian government website. In a defiant move, the Kremlin held the door open for further land grabs in Ukraine.

    Speaking in a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “certain territories will be reclaimed, and we will keep consulting residents who would be eager to embrace Russia.”

    Peskov did not specify which additional Ukrainian territories Moscow is eyeing, and he wouldn’t say if the Kremlin planned to organize more such “referendums.”

    Putin last week signed treaties that purported to absorb Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions into Russia. The annexation followed Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government and the West have dismissed as illegitimate.

    The Russian president defended the validity of the vote, saying it’s “more than convincing” and “absolutely transparent and not subject to any doubt.”

    “This is objective data on people’s mood,” Putin said Wednesday at an event dedicated to teachers, adding that he was pleasantly “surprised” by the results.

    On the ground, Russia faced mounting setbacks, with Ukrainian forces retaking more and more land in the eastern and southern regions that Moscow now insists are its own.

    The precise borders of the areas Moscow is claiming remain unclear, but Putin has vowed to defend Russia’s territory — including the annexed regions — with any means at his military’s disposal, including nuclear weapons.

    Shortly after Putin signed the annexation legislation, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on his Telegram channel that “the worthless decisions of the terrorist country are not worth the paper they are signed on.”

    “A collective insane asylum can continue to live in a fictional world,” Yermak added.

    Zelenskyy responded to the annexation by announcing Ukraine’s fast-track application to join NATO. In a decree released Tuesday, he also ruled out negotiations with Russia, declaring that Putin’s actions made talking to the Russian leader impossible.

    In the eastern Kharkiv region, more disturbing images emerged from areas recently reclaimed from Russia.

    Serhiy Bolvinov, who heads the investigative department of the national police in the region, said authorities are investigating an alleged Russian torture chamber in the village of Pisky-Radkivski.

    He posted an image of a box of what appeared to be precious metal teeth and dentures presumably extracted from those held at the site. The authenticity of the photo could not be confirmed.

    Ukraine’s prosecutor general also spoke of new evidence of torture and killings found Wednesday in the Kharkiv region.

    Andriy Kostin told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a security conference in Warsaw that he had just been notified of four bodies found with signs of possible torture. He said they were believed to be civilians but an investigation was still needed.

    Two bodies were found in a factory in Kupiansk with their hands bound behind their backs, while two other bodies were found in Novoplatonivka, their hands linked by handcuffs.

    During his public speech, Kostin said officials found the bodies of 24 civilians, including 13 children and one pregnant woman, who had been killed in six cars near Kupiansk. It was not clear when the discovery was made.

    On the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine gave conflicting assessments of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Russian-occupied southern Kherson region. A Moscow-installed regional official insisted that Ukrainian advances had been halted.

    “As of this morning … there are no movements” by Kyiv’s forces, Kirill Stremousov said Wednesday in comments to state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti. He vowed the Ukrainian fighters would not enter the city of Kherson.

    However, the Ukrainian military said the Ukrainian flag had been raised above seven Kherson region villages previously occupied by the Russians. The closest of the liberated villages to the city of Kherson is Davydiv Brid, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.

    The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Once they are stabilized, Russian soldiers were getting sent to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

    “Not everyone arrives,” Sobolevskyi wrote.

    In the neighboring Mykolaiv region, the governor said Russian troops have started to withdraw from Snihurivka, a city of 12,000 that Moscow seized early in the war and annexed along with the Kherson region. A Russian-installed official in Snihurivka, Yury Barbashov, denied that Russian troops had lost control of the city, a strategic railway hub, but said the Ukrainian forces were advancing.

    In the Moscow-annexed eastern Donetsk region, where Ukrainian forces still control some areas, Russian forces shelled eight towns and villages, the Ukrainian presidential office said.

    After reclaiming the Donetsk city of Sviatohirsk, Ukrainian forces located a burial ground for civilians and found the bodies of four people, according to Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.

    In the Luhansk region, also in the eastern Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian forces have retaken several villages. He did not name the villages, but said the retreating Russian forces are mining the roads and buildings.

    In central Ukraine, multiple explosions rocked Bila Tserkva, a city about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital, Kyiv. Regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said six Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones struck the city and set off fires at what he described as infrastructure facilities. One person was wounded.

    Russia has increasingly employed kamikaze or suicide drones in recent weeks, posing a new challenge to Ukrainian defenses. The unmanned vehicles can stay aloft for long periods of time before diving into targets and detonating their payloads at the last moment.

    Many of the earlier attacks with the Iranian-made drones happened in the south of Ukraine and not near the capital, which hasn’t been targeted for weeks.

    ———

    Hanna Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Retreating Russians leave their comrades’ bodies behind

    Retreating Russians leave their comrades’ bodies behind

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    LYMAN, Ukraine — Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets, offering more evidence Tuesday of Moscow’s latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week.

    Meanwhile, Russia’s upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations following “referendums” that Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed as fraudulent.

    Responding to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks with Russia, declaring that negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin are impossible after his decision to take over the regions.

    The Kremlin replied by saying that it will wait for Ukraine to agree to sit down for talks, noting that it may not happen until a new Ukrainian president takes office.

    “We will wait for the incumbent president to change his position or wait for a future Ukrainian president who would revise his stand in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    Despite the Kremlin’s apparent political bravado, the picture on the ground underscored the disarray Putin faces amid the Ukrainian advances and attempts to establish new Russian borders.

    Over the weekend, Russian troops pulled back from Lyman, a strategic eastern town that the Russians had used as a logistics and transport hub, to avoid being encircled by Ukrainian forces. The town’s liberation gave Ukraine an important vantage point for pressing its offensive deeper into Russian-held territories.

    Two days later, an Associated Press team reporting from Lyman saw at least 18 bodies of Russian soldiers still on the ground. The Ukrainian military appeared to have collected the bodies of their comrades after fierce battles for control of the town, but they did not immediately remove those of the Russians.

    “We fight for our land, for our children, so that our people can live better, but all this comes at a very high price,” said a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nom de guerre Rud.

    Speaking late Tuesday in his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said dozens of settlements had been retaken “from the Russian pseudo-referendum this week alone” in the four annexed regions. In the Kherson region, he listed eight villages that Ukrainian forces reclaimed, “and this is far from a complete list. Our soldiers do not stop.”

    The deputy head of the Russian-backed regional administration in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian TV that Ukrainian troops made “certain advances” from the north, and were attacking the region from other sides too. He said they were stopped by Russian forces and suffered high losses.

    As Kyiv pressed its counteroffensives, Russian forces launched more missile strikes at Ukrainian cities.

    Several missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, damaging infrastructure and causing power cuts. Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said one person was killed. In the south, Russian missiles struck the city of Nikopol.

    After reclaiming control of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces pushed further east and may have gone as far as the border of the neighboring Luhansk region as they advanced toward Kreminna, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in its latest analysis.

    On Monday, Ukrainian forces also scored significant gains in the south, raising flags over the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka.

    In Washington, the U.S. government announced Tuesday that it would give Ukraine an additional $625 million in military aid, including more of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that are credited with helping Kyiv’s recent military momentum. The package also includes artillery systems ammunition and armored vehicles.

    Before that announcement, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Perebyinis told a conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday that Ukraine needed more weapons since Russia began a partial mobilization of draft-age men last month. He said additional weapons would help end the war sooner, not escalate it.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military has recruited more than 200,000 reservists as part of the partial mobilization launched two weeks ago. He said the recruits were undergoing training at 80 firing ranges before being deployed to the front lines in Ukraine.

    Putin’s mobilization order said that up to 300,000 reservists were to be called up, but it held the door open for an even bigger activation. The order sparked protests across Russia and drove tens of thousands of men to flee the country.

    Russia’s effort to incorporate the four embattled regions in Ukraine’s east and south was done so hastily that even the exact borders of the territories being absorbed were unclear.

    The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, voted to ratify treaties to make the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia. The lower house did so Monday.

    Putin is expected to quickly endorse the annexation treaties.

    In other developments, the head of the company operating Europe’s largest nuclear plant said Ukraine is considering restarting the Russian-occupied facility to ensure its safety as winter approaches.

    In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Energoatom President Petro Kotin said the company could restart two of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s reactors in a matter of days.

    “If you have low temperature, you will just freeze everything inside. The safety equipment will be damaged,” he said.

    Fears that the war in Ukraine could cause a radiation leak at the Zaporizhzhia plant had prompted the shutdown of its remaining reactors. The plant has been damaged by shelling, prompting international alarm over the potential for a disaster.

    ———

    Adam Schreck reported from Kyiv.

    ———

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  • Ukraine presses on with counteroffensive; Russia uses drones

    Ukraine presses on with counteroffensive; Russia uses drones

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets Sunday with suicide drones, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.

    Russia’s loss of the eastern city of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening threats to use nuclear force.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin’s land grab has threatened to push the conflict to a dangerous new level. It also prompted Ukraine to formally apply for NATO membership, a bid that won backing Sunday from nine central and eastern European NATO members fearful that Russia’s aggression could eventually target them, too.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that his forces now control Lyman: “As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors,” he said in a video address.

    Russia’s military didn’t comment on the situation in Lyman on Sunday, after announcing Saturday that it was withdrawing its forces there to more favorable positions.

    The British military described the recapture of Lyman as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push farther into Russian-occupied territory.

    In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s hometown of Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that destroyed two stories of a school early Sunday, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

    Russia in recent weeks has begun using Iranian-made suicide drones to attack targets in Ukraine. In southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.

    A car carrying four men who wanted to forage for mushrooms in a forest in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region struck a mine, exploding the vehicle and killing all those inside, local authorities said Sunday.

    Russian attacks also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. And Ukraine’s military said Sunday it carried out strikes on multiple Russian command posts, ammunition depots and two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.

    The reports of military activity couldn’t be immediately verified.

    Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks that has embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted rare domestic criticism of Putin’s war.

    Lyman, which Ukraine recaptured by encircling Russian troops, is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing what was left of the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.

    In his nightly address Saturday, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”

    In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”

    The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.

    AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town, including a deep pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.

    Russian officials release limited information about military activity in what the Kremlin still refuses to call a war. They routinely claim that Russia exclusively targets Ukrainian military forces, the foreigners supporting them or Western-supplied weaponry.

    Putin frames the Ukrainian gains as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.

    Recent developments have raised fears of all-out conflict between Russia and the West.

    The leaders of Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint statement backing a path to NATO membership for Ukraine, and calling on all 30 members of the U.S.-led security bloc to ramp up military aid for Kyiv.

    German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, meanwhile, on Sunday announced the delivery of 16 wheeled armored howitzers produced in Slovakia to Ukraine next year. The weapons will be financed jointly with Denmark, Norway and Germany,

    Russia on Sunday moved ahead with steps meant to make its land grab look like a legal process aimed at helping people persecuted by Ukraine, with rubber-stamp approval by the Constitutional Court and draft laws being pushed through the Kremlin-friendly parliament. Outside Russia, the annexation has been widely denounced as violating international law.

    Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting about the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director for alleged questioning.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.

    The Zaporizhzhia plant is in one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians have continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.

    Pope Francis on Sunday decried Russia’s nuclear threats and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”

    ———

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  • Ukraine presses counteroffensive after Russian setback

    Ukraine presses counteroffensive after Russian setback

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets with suicide drones on Sunday, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.

    Russia’s loss of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening its threats to use nuclear force. Ukraine’s recent gains have embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and prompted rare domestic criticism.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday his forces now control Lyman, after Russia’s military announced Saturday its retreat.

    “As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors,” Zelenskyy said in a video address.

    In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s hometown Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that struck a school early Sunday and destroyed two stories of it, said Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

    Russia in recent weeks has begun using Iranian-made suicide drones to attack targets in Ukraine. In southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.

    Meanwhile, Russian attacks also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. And Ukraine’s military said Sunday it carried out strikes on multiple Russian command posts, ammunition depots and two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.

    The reports of military activity couldn’t be immediately verified.

    Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks.

    In the latest major development, Ukrainian forces encircled Russian troops holding the hub of Lyman in the east, forcing the Russians to withdraw in what the British military described as a “significant political setback” for Moscow. Taking the city paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push farther into territory Russia has occupied.

    Lyman had been an important link in the Russian front line for ground communications and logistics. Lyman is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in battling to hold Lyman, but said outnumbered Russian troops were withdrawn to more favorable positions.

    In his nightly address Saturday, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”

    In a daily intelligence briefing, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”

    The British said they believed that the city had been held by “undermanned elements” prior to the Russian withdrawal, which prompted immediate criticism from some Russian officials.

    “Further losses of territory in illegally occupied territories will almost certainly lead to an intensification of this public criticism and increase the pressure on senior commanders,” the British military briefing said.

    The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.

    AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the Ukrainian town, including a deep sunless pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.

    Russian officials release limited information about military activity in what the Kremlin still refuses to call a war. Putin frames the Ukrainian gains as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.

    Pope Francis on Sunday decried the nuclear threats, and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”

    Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting about the fate of Europe’s largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.

    The plant is in an area of Ukraine controlled by Russia and within one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.

    ———

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  • Russian forces retreat from strategic Donetsk city a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region | CNN

    Russian forces retreat from strategic Donetsk city a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region | CNN

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    Kyiv, Ukraine
    CNN
     — 

    Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in the east, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that’s been declared illegal by the West.

    “In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.

    Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal was because “the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from North Atlantic alliance countries.”

    The retreat marks Ukraine’s most significant gain since its successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.

    Russia’s announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had encircled Russian troops in the city, which is located in the Kramatorsk district of Donetsk.

    Ukrainian forces said earlier Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.

    “The Russian group in the area of Lyman is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky are liberated. Stabilization measures are ongoing there,” Cherevatyi said in a televised press conference on Saturday morning.

    “[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.

    Cherevatyi said the Ukrainian troops actions are setting the tone to “break the course of these hostilities.”

    He added that there had been “many killed and wounded,” but could not provide any further details.

    The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday also revealed Saturday further details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting Russian forces had offered to retreat, but to no avail from the Ukrainian side.

    “Occupiers asked [their command] for possibility to retreat, and they have been refused. Accordingly, they have two options. No, they actually have three options. Try to break through, surrender, or everyone there will die,” Hayday said.

    “There are several thousand of them. Yes, about 5,000. There is no exact number yet. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has never been such a large group in the encirclement before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.

    Yurii Mysiagin, Ukrainian member of Parliament and deputy head of the parliament’s committee on national security, referenced the move into Stavky on Saturday by publishing a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving up the road with a clear sign indicating the region of Stavky. CNN could not independently verify the original source or the date.

    A video posted on social media, and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing on a military vehicle attaching the flag with tape to a large sign with the word “Lyman.”

    “We are unfurling our country’s flag and planting it on our land. On Lyman. Everything will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers says to the camera.

    Meanwhile, pressure appears to be growing on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

    Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement slamming Russian generals in the wake of the withdrawal from Lyman, said it was time for the Kremlin to make use of every weapon at his disposal.

    “In my personal opinion we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “There is no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”

    Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s President between 2008 and 2012, discussed nuclear weapons use on his Telegram channel, saying it was permitted if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by conventional forces.

    “If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat limit, we will have to respond … this is certainly not a bluff,” he wrote.

    Concerns have risen sharply that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons use after Putin’s proclamation on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens “forever.”

    The announcement was dismissed as illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is the Kremlin might argue that attacks on those territories now constitute attacks on Russia.

    In his speech in the Kremlin, the Russian leader made only passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting the United States was the only country to have used them on the battlefield.

    “By the way, they created a precedent,” he added.

    Also on Saturday, the director-general of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of state nuclear company Energoatom.

    Director-General Ihor Murashov was in his vehicle on his way from the plant when he was “stopped … taken out of the car, and with his eyes blindfolded he was driven in an unknown direction. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s Petro Kotin said in a statement.

    “Murashov is a licensed person and bears main and exclusive responsibility for the nuclear and radiation safety of the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Kotin said, adding, that his detention “jeopardizes the safety of operation of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”

    Kotin called for Murashov’s release, and urged the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate actions to urgently free” him.

    Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly” condemned Murashov’s “illegal detention,” calling it a “another manifestation of state terrorism from the side of Russia and a gross violation of international law.”

    “We call on the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive measures to this end,” the ministry said in a statement.

    Overnight, Russia hit Zaporizhzhia with four S300 missiles, according to the head of the regional administration Oleksandr Starukh.

    And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found following Russian shelling on a convoy of cars near the eastern town of Kupiansk.

    The cars were shot by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate,” it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.

    Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and police had “discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot dead near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district,” on Friday, Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.

    The SBU confirmed on Telegram they would be investigating a “war crime” where at least 20 people died in “a brutal attack.”

    CNN could not independently verify the allegations. There has been no official Russian response to the claims made.

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  • Occupied Ukraine holds Kremlin-staged vote on joining Russia

    Occupied Ukraine holds Kremlin-staged vote on joining Russia

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    KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Kremlin-orchestrated referendum got underway Friday in occupied regions of Ukraine that sought to make them part of Russia, with some officials carrying ballots to apartment blocks accompanied by gun-toting police. Kyiv and the West condemned it as a rigged election whose result was preordained by Moscow.

    Meanwhile, in a grim reminder of the brutality of the 7-month-old invasion, U.N. experts and Ukrainian officials pointed to new evidence of Russian war crimes. Kharkiv region officials said a mass burial site in the eastern city of Izium held hundreds of bodies, including at least 30 displaying signs of torture.

    The referendums in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions were widely seen as a prelude to Moscow annexing the regions. The voting, which was overseen by authorities installed by Russia, is scheduled to run through Tuesday and is almost certain to go the Kremlin’s way.

    Authorities in the Kherson region said residents of a small Moscow-controlled area of the neighboring Mykolaiv province also will be able to vote, and that small area was “incorporated” into Kherson until all of Mykolaiv is taken over by Russian forces.

    Ukraine and the West said the vote was an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to slice away a large part of the country, stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula. A similar referendum took place in Crimea in 2014 before Moscow annexed it, a move that most of the world considered illegal.

    Citing safety reasons, election officials carried ballots to homes and set up mobile polling stations for the four-day voting period. Russian state TV showed one such election team accompanied by a masked police officer carrying an assault rifle.

    Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, told The Associated Press that Russians and residents of Crimea were brought into his city to urge people to vote.

    “The Russians see an overwhelming reluctance and fear to attend the referendum and are forced to bring people… to create an image and an illusion of the vote,” he said. “Groups of collaborators and Russians along with armed soldiers are doing a door-to-door poll, but few people open the doors to them.”

    Voting also occurred in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those regions cast ballots.

    Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed separatist leader in the Donetsk region, called the referendum “a historical milestone.”

    Lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s State Duma, said in an online statement to the regions: “If you decide to become part of the Russian Federation, we will support you.”

    Thousands attended pro-Kremlin rallies across Russia in support the referendums, news agencies reported. “Long live the one, great, united Russian people!” one speaker told the large crowd at a central Moscow rally and concert titled, “We Don’t Abandon Our Own.”

    Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai accused officials of taking down the names of people who voted against joining Russia. In online posts, Haidai also alleged that Russian officials threatened to kick down the doors of anyone who didn’t want to vote.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in occupied regions to undermine the referendums and to share information about the people conducting “this farce.” He also urged Ukrainians to avoid being called up in the Russian mobilization announced Wednesday.

    “But if you do end up in the Russian army, then sabotage any enemy activity, interfere with any Russian operations, give us all important information about the occupiers. … And at the first opportunity, switch to our positions,” he said in his nightly address.

    President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization of reservists could add about 300,000 troops, his defense minister said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed as false media reports of plans to muster up to 1.2 million troops.

    Across the vast country, men hugged their weeping family members before departing as part of the call-up, which has raised fears that a wider draft might follow. Anti-war activists planned more protests Saturday.

    Other Russian men tried desperately to leave the country, buying up scarce plane tickets and creating traffic jams hours or even days long at some borders. The lines of cars were so long at the border with Kazakhstan that some people abandoned their vehicles and walked — just as some Ukrainians did after Russia invaded their country Feb. 24.

    Russian authorities sought to calm public fears over the call-up. Lawmakers introduced a bill Friday to suspend or reduce loan payments for those called to duty, and media emphasized that they would be paid the same as professional soldiers and that their civilian jobs would be held for them.

    The Defense Ministry said many of those working in high tech, communications or finance will be exempt, the Tass news agency reported.

    Amid the mobilization and referendums, the horrors of the conflict persisted.

    Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Synyehubov and regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said at least 30 of the 436 bodies exhumed so far in Izium bore signs of torture. Among them were the bodies of 21 Ukrainian soldiers, some found with their hands bound behind their backs, they said.

    Russian forces occupied Izium for six months before being pushed out by a Ukrainian counteroffensive this month. The exhumations, which began a week ago, are nearing an end, as investigators work on identifying victims and how they died. A mobile DNA lab was parked at the edge of the burial site.

    “Each body has its own story,” Synyehubov said.

    Experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council also presented evidence of potential war crimes, including beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity in Russian detention facilities, and expressed grave concerns about extrajudicial killings the team was working to document in Kharkiv and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy.

    With world opinion pushing Moscow deeper into isolation over the war, Russia lashed out against the West. Its U.S. ambassador, Anataly Antonov, said at a Moscow conference Friday about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that Washington is trying to bring Russia “to its knees” and divide it into “several fiefdoms” while stripping it of its nuclear weapons and its permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council.

    In new reports of fighting, Ukraine’s presidential office said 10 civilians were killed and 39 others wounded by Russian shelling in nine regions. Battles continued in the southern Kherson province during the vote, it said, while Ukrainian forces meted out 280 attacks on Russian command posts, munitions depots and weapons.

    Heavy fighting also continued in the Donetsk area, where Russian attacks targeted Toretsk, Sloviansk and several smaller towns. Russian shelling in Nikopol and Marhanets on the western bank of the Dnieper River killed two people and wounded nine.

    In other developments, Kyiv expelled Iran’s ambassador and reduced staff at the Iranian Embassy in response to Tehran’s “supply of weapons to Russia for war on Ukrainian territory,” said Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. Ukraine reported shooting down an Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drone that can be used for surveillance or to carry precision-guided weapons, adding that it destroyed four other Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.

    Earlier Friday, Ukrainian officials said Russia had attacked the port city of Odesa with Iranian-made drones, killing one person.

    —-

    Associated Press writer Lori Hinnant in Izium contributed.

    ___

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