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Tag: Russia-Ukraine war

  • France’s Bastille Day parade meets the Olympic torch relay in an exceptional year

    France’s Bastille Day parade meets the Olympic torch relay in an exceptional year

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    PARIS — Paris hosted an extra-special guest for France’s national holiday Sunday — the Olympic flame lighting up the city’s grandiose military parade for Bastille Day.

    Just 12 days before the French capital hosts exceptionally ambitious and high-security Summer Games, the torch relay joined up with thousands of soldiers, sailors, rescuers and medics marching in Paris beneath roaring fighter jets.

    While people around France mark the day with concerts, parties and fireworks, here’s a look at what the holiday’s about, and what’s different this year:

    On July 14, 1789, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille fortress and prison in Paris, heralding the start of the French Revolution and the end of the monarchy.

    The holiday is central to the French calendar, with events across the country. It aims to embody the national motto of ‘’liberty, equality and fraternity,” though not everyone in France feels the country lives up to that promise.

    The Paris parade is the holiday’s highlight. This year, it paid tribute to those who freed France from Nazi occupation 80 years ago, with a re-enactment of the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, and a presentation by service members from the 31 countries whose troops contributed to the liberation. About half are African nations that were under French colonial rule during World War II.

    Some 4,000 people and 162 horses marched in the tightly choreographed show, among them units that served in NATO missions in eastern Europe, against Islamic extremists in the Sahel, protecting French territories in the South Pacific and global shipping corridors. They were joined this year by three German officers from a cross-border brigade.

    The ornamental uniforms are rich in symbolism — most notably those of the French Foreign Legion sappers, with long beards, leather aprons and axes from their original role as route-clearers for advancing armies.

    Overhead, 65 aircraft flew in formations, including a British Typhoon fighter alongside French Mirages and Rafales, rescue helicopters and aircraft used in missions from Afghanistan to Mali or international drug busts.

    President Emmanuel Macron kicked Sunday’s events off with a review of the troops.

    Military bands and choirs played an important role, performing a medley of French military songs, American jazz tunes, a Scottish bagpipe ballad — and the Marseillaise.

    The numbers are scaled back compared with previous years, because of Olympics security measures. Around 130,000 police are deployed around France for the holiday weekend.

    This year’s Bastille Day offered Macron a moment of distraction from the political turmoil he unleashed with snap elections that weakened his pro-business centrist party and his presidency.

    The result left a deadlocked parliament with no one clearly in charge. The prime minister could leave office within days, while the left-wing alliance that won the most seats is struggling to agree on a proposed replacement.

    Meanwhile, Russia’s war in Ukraine is threatening Europe’s security. At a meeting with military leaders Saturday, Macron said France will keep up support for Ukraine and called for higher defense spending next year because of ‘’approaching threats.’’

    The Olympic torch relay reached Paris just in time.

    The parade wrapped up with the arrival of the flame, escorted by riders on horseback, 25 torchbearers, and cadets dressed in the five Olympic colors forming the shapes of the five interlocking Olympic rings.

    The first torchbearer was Col. Thibault Vallette, equestrian gold medalist in the 2016 Rio Olympics, who passed it on to a group of young athletes smiling broadly as they passed it hand-to-hand in front of the presidential tribune.

    Usually, the parade travels from the Napoleon-era Arc de Triomphe to the Concorde plaza, where France’s last king and queen were beheaded.

    This year, Concorde has been transformed into a huge Olympic venue for breakdancing, skateboarding and BMX. So the parade route headed to the Bois de Boulogne park on the city’s edge instead.

    Olympic venue construction around the Eiffel Tower means spectators can’t gather beneath the monument to watch its annual fireworks show, either.

    After its Bastille Day appearance, the torch relay will swing by Notre Dame Cathedral, the historic Sorbonne university and the Louvre Museum before heading to other Paris landmarks Monday.

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    Philippe Marion in Paris contributed.

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    Follow AP’s Olympics coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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  • Fire breaks out at Russian oil depot as Russia and Ukraine exchange drone attacks

    Fire breaks out at Russian oil depot as Russia and Ukraine exchange drone attacks

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    KYIV, Ukraine — An oil depot caught fire in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region Saturday following a Ukrainian drone attack in the early hours, local officials said, in the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.

    Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow down the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is pressing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has made defenders vulnerable.

    Rostov regional Gov. Vasily Golubev said a drone attack had caused a blaze spanning 200 square meters (2,100 square feet), but there were no casualties. Some five hours after he reported the fire on Telegram, Golubev said the fire had been extinguished.

    In addition to two drones being intercepted over the Rostov region, Russian air defense systems overnight destroyed two drones over the country’s western Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Saturday.

    Ukraine’s air defenses, meanwhile, intercepted four of the five drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said Saturday morning. Mykola Oleschuk, commander of Ukraine’s Air Forces, said the fifth drone left Ukrainian airspace in the direction of Belarus.

    In other developments, Vadym Filashkin, the Ukrainian governor of the partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, said Saturday that Russian attacks on Friday had killed six people and wounded a further 22.

    Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region that is also partly occupied, said Saturday that one person had been killed and six wounded as a result of Russian shelling over the previous day.

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

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  • Chinese auto exports surge, partly offsetting a sales slump at home

    Chinese auto exports surge, partly offsetting a sales slump at home

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    BEIJING — Chinese auto sales slumped in June as the domestic economy remained sluggish, but buoyant exports offset the decline at home, an industry association said Wednesday.

    Sales in China dropped 7.4% compared to a year earlier to 1.8 million cars, while exports rose 29% to 400,000 units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a monthly report.

    In the first six months of the year, exports rose 31.5% while domestic sales edged up 1.6%. The surge in exports comes at a time of growing concern in Europe and the United States that inexpensive China-made cars could overwhelm established automakers in the West.

    While much of the concern has been focused on China’s flashy and moderately priced electric cars, export growth has been concentrated mainly in gasoline-powered vehicles. They climbed 36% in the first half of the year and accounted for 78% of vehicle exports. Chinese EV exports were down 2.3%, while hybrids jumped 180% from a smaller base.

    The exports have helped make up for weaker sales of gasoline vehicles in China as the overall market has stagnated and buyers have shifted to electric vehicles and hybrids.

    Russia is by far the largest and a still rapidly growing export market, where Chinese makers have filled a void left by the departure of other automakers after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Other sizeable markets include Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the Mideast and Belgium and the U.K. in Europe.

    The European Union imposed provisional duties on Chinese electric vehicles last week, alleging that government subsidies give automakers in China an unfair advantage.

    Chinese makers are moving production overseas. BYD, the country’s largest EV maker, opened a plant in Thailand last week and plans to build factories in Brazil, Hungary and Turkey.

    The sales drop in China was the second monthly decline in a row. Separate figures tabulated by the China Passenger Car Association show three straight months of falling sales. A severe real estate slump has dampened economic growth and depressed consumer confidence.

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  • Kyiv hit with heaviest bombardment in months

    Kyiv hit with heaviest bombardment in months

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The sky was crystal clear as Oksana Femeniuk took her daughter to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital for routine dialysis.

    Around 10 a.m, air-raid sirens blared. Sixteen-year old Solomiia was undergoing the treatment that required her to sit still for up to five hours and could not be interrupted. Her mother had to flee to the hospital’s basement shelter without her.

    Hurtling toward them at 435 to 497 miles per hour was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, according to Ukraine’s security service, the United Nations and open-source investigators. Using painstaking trial and error, Russia has modified the weapon over the last year to defeat Ukraine’s air defense systems by flying at low altitude and hugging terrain, according to military analysts.

    Minutes later the world turned black. Neither the patient nor her mother would remember the moment the missile struck. But they remember the chaos that ensued after regaining consciousness: Femeniuk thought she would choke from the fumes. Solomiia woke to find the ceiling crumpled over her small body.

    In an operating room in the next building, pediatric surgeon Oleh Holubchenko had been preparing to operate on an infant with a congenital facial defect. Covered in shrapnel wounds, he realized that the blast wave had catapulted him to the other side of the operating room.

    The toll of Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months — one of the deadliest of the war — shows the devastating human cost of Russia’s improved targeting tactics.

    The hospital’s director general, Volodymyr Zhovnir, stood at the scene of the explosion, eclipsed by the towering building with shattered windows. No children died, thank God, he said, but they lost a dear colleague, Dr. Svitlana Lukianchuk.

    Lukianchuk was hurrying along the children and parents from the toxicology building, which would later be destroyed, to the shelter. She returned to empty out more rooms. and then, the explosion, Femeniuk remembers.

    Solomiia was born with chronic renal failure, making hemodialysis part of her life.

    After the full-scale invasion, Femeniuk left her three children and husband behind in the small village near Rivne, in western Ukraine, to live in the capital so the girl could access the treatment she needs.

    Leaving her daughter during the air raid was a difficult decision. But the 34-year old mother had to project strength, she said. Her daughter was being brave by staying, knowing she could not interrupt her treatment. Femeniuk could not reveal to her daughter that she was actually terrified.

    As the air-raid siren blared, the girl was on her phone watching videos. Given how long dialysis can take, she tends to get bored.

    She awoke to find the ceiling in front of her eyes and the head doctor tending to her covered in blood and on her knees.

    The girl’s first impulse was to put her hands up to the ceiling to keep tons of concrete and debris from crushing her small body. She was trapped with a few other patients and hospital staff, and they were safely pulled out of the rubble.

    “The first thing I thought about was my mom, if she is alive or not. Then I thought: ‘Am I alive or not?’” she said, her fingers painted with small flowers, fidgeting as she spoke. Mother and daughter recounted their experience from the Kyiv City Children’s Clinical Hospital, where Solomiia was transferred.

    In the shelter, the exit was blocked and the fire blazing outside soon invaded the small space. Femeniuk called her husband, telling him she didn’t know if she would survive and she didn’t know if Solomiia was still alive.

    Eventually, those taking shelter managed to push their way out and to their horror they realized that the very building they had been in, that some of their children had been in, was hit. Femeniuk began picking up pieces of rubble in panic, calling out her daughter’s name. Then she saw the nurse who had been assisting them, covered in blood.

    Solomiia had been evacuated after the blast, the nurse said. She was safe.

    Meanwhile, in the operating room, it took Holubchenko fifteen minutes to realize that he was covered in shrapnel wounds. The doctor was too busy evacuating patients, starting with the 5-month old whose surgery was eventually completed elsewhere.

    “My colleagues and I who were in the operating room received shrapnel wounds to the body, the face, back, arms and legs,” he said. “There are glass windows in the operating room, the doors. All of it was just blown off, all destroyed.”

    In the hospital ward, he looked out to the street from a shattered window.

    “There used to be a wall here,” he said.

    When he went outside and realized the toxicology building had collapsed, his mind reverted to the times he would have consultations with patients there and check-ups. Now half the building was caved in.

    But he didn’t dwell on the thought for long and joined a line of volunteers, health workers and emergency crews removing debris, piece by piece.

    “Everyone wanted to do something,” he said.

    The assault hit seven of the city’s 10 districts. The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, where 627 children were being cared for at the time, drew ire from Ukrainian officials and the international community. Two adults were killed, including a female doctor, and 50 were injured.

    Russia denied responsibility for the hospital strike, insisting it doesn’t attack civilian targets in Ukraine despite abundant evidence to the contrary, including AP reporting. Moscow insisted it was a Ukrainian air defense missile that struck the hospital.

    Artem Starosiek, the founder of the Ukainian group Molfar, which analyzes events based on open-source evidence, said there were overwhelming signs of Russia’s culpability. The missile used in the attack bears the characteristics of the Kh-101, he said, pointing to the shape of the body, tail and location of the wings, he said.

    That it was a clear blue day also played an important role, he said. Launching the modified missile during a sunny day is optimal for the weapon’s optoelectronic system to recognize the target correctly, he said.

    “The force of the warhead’s explosion is important; an air-defense missile could not have caused such consequences,” he said.

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    By SAMYA KULLAB – Associated Press

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  • US DOJ says it disrupted Russian social media influence operation

    US DOJ says it disrupted Russian social media influence operation

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    The US Department of Justice reports that it disrupted a Russian-government-backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation.

    The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has disrupted a Russian operation that used fake social media accounts enhanced by artificial intelligence to covertly spread pro-Kremlin messages in the US and abroad, it said.

    The news on Tuesday comes four months before the US presidential election, which security experts widely believe will be the target of both hacking and covert social media influence attempts by foreign adversaries. Senior US officials have said publicly that they are monitoring for schemes intended to disrupt the vote.

    The  DOJ secured court approval to seize two domain names and search nearly 1,000 social media accounts allegedly associated with the effort.

    “With these actions, the Justice Department has disrupted a Russian-government-backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation in the United States and abroad,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

    Tuesday’s action marked the first time the US has publicly accused a foreign government of using generative AI in a foreign influence operation, according to DOJ and FBI officials. US officials have warned that adversaries may use the growing power of AI systems to scale up efforts to spread misinformation.

    Kremlin-funded effort

    The alleged operation, according to prosecutors, was created through a private intelligence organisation based in Russia staffed by Russian intelligence officers and a senior employee of the Moscow-based, government-funded news outlet Russia Today, or RT. The effort was approved and funded by the Kremlin in early 2023, according to the DOJ.

    Spokespersons for the Russian embassy in Washington and RT did not respond to requests for comment.

    This private organisation had designed a custom, AI-powered platform to create, control and manage hundreds of fake social accounts, which were made to look like those of real Americans, according to court documents.

    The accounts on social media platform X have since been banned. They commonly posted pro-Kremlin talking points, including videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and criticised the Ukrainian government.

    The US worked with Dutch authorities on the investigation. The campaign was run from a server in the Netherlands, according to investigators.

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  • Leaders across Europe express relief mixed with concern about the French election result

    Leaders across Europe express relief mixed with concern about the French election result

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    BERLIN — Leaders across Europe reacted with relief but also some concern to the result of the French legislative election, which leaves a key European Union country facing the prospect of a hung parliament and political paralysis.

    Relief, because the far-right National Rally didn’t come out as the strongest party, as many pro-European leaders had feared — but also concern, because no political grouping has a majority in the National Assembly.

    Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, which together with France has long been viewed as the engine of European integration, expressed relief Monday that the nationalist far right hadn’t topped the polls.

    The chancellor said it would have been a major challenge if French President Emmanuel Macron would have had to work with a right-wing populist party, German news agency dpa reported.

    “That has now been averted,” the chancellor said.

    Scholz expressed hope that Macron and the newly elected members of parliament would succeed in forming a stable government.

    “In any case, I am also pleased with regard to the important Franco-German friendship, and I can personally say that I am also pleased with regard to the good personal relationship that I have with the French president,” Scholz emphasized.

    “Germany has an interest in the success of the European Union like no other country,” the German chancellor said. “This is only possible together with France.”

    After the first round of the French election last month, in which the National Rally had gained the most votes, Scholz had spoken publicly of his worry that a second-round victory for the nationalist party could affect French-German relations.

    Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council president, sounded even more euphoric in his reaction to the election outcome.

    “In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief. Enough to be happy in Warsaw,” he posted on X late Sunday.

    Final results in France show that a leftist coalition that came together to try to keep the far right from power won the most parliamentary seats in the runoff election. There was high voter turnout Sunday.

    Macron’s centrist alliance came in second. The far right, which came in third, drastically increased the number of seats it holds in parliament, but fell far short of expectations.

    Several countries in the EU, including Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, have veered to the right in national elections as voters cast their ballots for euroskeptic parties promising nationalist solutions for European issues such as inflation, migration, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has brought in millions of refugees looking for shelter.

    Some pro-European politicians warned that the French result was nothing to celebrate.

    “The march of the right-wing nationalists and right-wing extremists has been stopped. This is to the great credit of the French,” Michael Roth, a German foreign policy expert and national lawmaker with Scholz’s Social Democrats, told daily newspaper Tagesspiegel.

    “But it is still far too early to give the all clear, because the nationalist populists on the right and left are stronger than ever,” he added. “The center is weaker than ever. Emmanuel Macron has therefore failed resoundingly.”

    While it’s not clear yet which party will provide the next prime minister, Macron will still hold some powers over foreign policy, European affairs and defense, in line with the French Constitution. He has a presidential mandate until 2027 and has said he won’t step down before the end of his term.

    Nonetheless, the French president has been weakened by Sunday’s vote and that will have repercussions for Germany and all of Europe, said Ronja Kempin, an analyst of Franco-German relations at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

    “I think that Germany will have to adapt to the new balance of power in France,” Kempin said. “We have a weakened president who is much more forced to listen and react to the parliamentary majority, who can no longer act as freely as he has done for the last seven years.”

    In Italy, the main ally of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, far-right populist League leader Matteo Salvini, lauded her party’s overall result in parliament as its best-ever and criticized what he called Macron’s “all against Le Pen” drive to deprive her party of a governing majority.

    He claimed that there were “thugs attacking the police with stones” in several cities after the results were released, blaming them on “communists and social centers, pro-Islamists and antisemites.”

    Salvini is a junior partner in the right-wing government of Premier Giorgia Meloni and has long shared Le Pen’s anti-migrant positions.

    ——

    Associated Press journalists from across Europe contributed to this story.

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  • Ukrainian drone triggers warehouse explosions in Russia as war of attrition grinds on

    Ukrainian drone triggers warehouse explosions in Russia as war of attrition grinds on

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    KYIV, Ukraine — A village in a border region of western Russia was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.

    Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession.

    Gov. Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with emergency services, military and government officials working at the scene.

    A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that a strike had been carried out on a warehouse storing ammunition in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.

    “The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply ammunition to their troops in Ukraine.”

    Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not address the strike in their morning briefing, but said that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.

    Authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar province on Saturday said a fire at an oil depot had also been caused by falling drone debris. Russia’s emergency services said the blaze was extinguished Sunday morning.

    The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesperson told The Associated Press Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had retreated from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a monthlong Russian assault.

    Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine each day.

    Military analysts say Chasiv Yar’s fall could also compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and put nearby cities in jeopardy, bringing Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.

    Russian strikes have also heavily targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Officials in Kyiv said Saturday that the city had restored two-thirds of its power generation capacity after recent Russian missile attacks destroyed key power plants.

    “Colossal work has been carried out,” said deputy head of the Kyiv city administration Petro Panteleev. “The city’s energy facilities, which were built mainly in the Soviet period, are being modernized and become much more efficient.”

    Russia sent overnight into Sunday two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down but the officials did not elaborate on the impact of the missiles.

    Eight people were killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past day, according to local regional authorities.

    Four people were killed in the Kherson region, said Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin, while in Donetsk, Gov. Vadym Filashkin said another two people had been killed in the towns of Niu-York and Ukrainsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a Russian attack in the Nikopol district, while a 47-year old man was killed in the Kharkiv region, Governors Serhii Lysak and Oleh Syniehubov said in their respective statements.

    Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, leaving a single survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday evening. The victims included a 6-year-old child.

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    Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Russian-linked cybercampaigns put bull’s-eye on France’s Olympics and elections

    Russian-linked cybercampaigns put bull’s-eye on France’s Olympics and elections

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    PARIS — Photos of blood-red hands on a Holocaust memorial. Caskets at the Eiffel Tower. A fake French military recruitment drive calling for soldiers in Ukraine, and major French news sites improbably registered in an obscure Pacific territory, population 15,000.

    All are part of disinformation campaigns orchestrated out of Russia and targeting France, according to French officials and cybersecurity experts in Europe and the United States. France’s legislative elections and the Paris Olympics sent them into overdrive.

    More than a dozen reports issued in the past year point to an intensifying effort from Russia to undermine France, particularly the upcoming Games, and President Emmanuel Macron, who is one of Ukraine’s most vocal supporters in Europe.

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    This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an Associated Press series covering threats to democracy in Europe.

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    The Russian campaigns sowing anti-French disinformation began online early last summer but first became tangible in October 2023 when more than 1,000 bots linked to Russia relayed photos of graffitied Stars of David in Paris and its suburbs.

    A French intelligence report said the Russian intelligence agency FSB ordered the tagging, as well as subsequent vandalism of a memorial to those who helped rescue Jews from the Holocaust.

    Photos from each event were amplified on social media by fake accounts linked to the Russian disinformation site RRN, according to cybersecurity experts. Russia denies any such campaigns. The French intelligence report says RRN is part of a larger operation orchestrated by Sergei Kiriyenko, a ranking Kremlin official.

    “You have to see this as an ecosystem,” said a French military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal information about the Russian effort. “It’s a hybrid strategy.”

    The tags and the vandalism had no direct link to Russia’s war in Ukraine, but they provoked a strong reaction from the French political class, with denunciations in the legislature and public debate. Antisemitic attacks are on the rise in France, and the war in Gaza has proven divisive.

    The Stars of David could be interpreted either as support for Israel or as opposition. The effect was to sow division and unease. French Jews in particular have found themselves unwittingly thrust into the political fray despite, at just 500,000 people, making up a small proportion of the French population.

    In March, just after Macron discussed the possibility of mobilizing the French military in Ukraine, a fake recruitment drive went up for the French army in Ukraine, spawning a series of posts in Russian- and French-language Telegram channels that got picked up in Russian and Belarusian media, according to a separate French government report seen by The Associated Press. On June 1, caskets appeared outside the Eiffel Tower, bearing the inscription “French soldiers in Ukraine.”

    The larger disinformation efforts show little traction in France, but the Russian audience may have been the real target, officials said, by showing that Russia’s war in Ukraine is, as Putin has said, really a war with the West.

    Among the broader goals, the French military official said, was a long-term and steady effort to sow social discord, erode faith in the media and democratic governments, undermine NATO, and sap Western support for Ukraine. Denigrating the Olympics, from which most Russian athletes are banned, is a bonus, according to French officials monitoring the increasingly strident posts warning of imminent unrest ahead of the Games.

    On June 9, the French far-right National Rally trounced Macron’s party in elections for the European Parliament. The party has historically been close to Russia: one of its leading figures, Marine Le Pen, cultivated ties to Putin for many years and supported Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. And its leading contender for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, has said he opposes sending long-range weapons to Kyiv.

    In more than 4,400 posts gathered since mid-November by antibot4navalny, a collective that analyzes Russian bot behavior, those targeting audiences in France and Germany predominated. The number of weekly posts ranged from 100 to 200 except for the week of May 5, when it dropped near zero, the data showed. That week, as it happens, was a holiday in Russia.

    Many of the posts redirect either to RRN or to sites that appear identical to major French media, but with the domain – and content – changed. At least two of the more recent mirrored sites are registered in Wallis and Futuna, a French Pacific territory 10 time zones from Paris. A click on the top of the fake page redirects back to the real news sites themselves to give the impression of authenticity. Other posts redirect to original sites controlled by the the campaign itself, dubbed Doppelganger.

    The redirects shifted focus for the European elections and continued after Macron called the surprise legislative elections with just three weeks to spare. Three-quarters of posts from the week ahead of the June 30 first-round legislative vote that were directed toward a French audience focused on either criticizing Macron or boosting the National Rally, antibot4navalny found in data shared with The Associated Press.

    One post on a fake site purported to be from Le Point, a current affairs magazine, and the French news agency AFP, criticizing Macron.

    “Our leaders have no idea how ordinary French people live but are ready to destroy France in the name of aid for Ukraine,” read the headline on June 25.

    Another site falsely claimed to be from Macron’s party, offering to pay 100 euros for a vote for him – and linking back to the party’s true website. And still another inadvertently left a generative AI prompt calling for the re-write of an article “taking a conservative stance against the liberal policies of the Macron administration,” according to findings last week from Insikt Group, the threat research division of the cybersecurity consultancy Recorded Future.

    “They’re scraping automatically, sending the text to the AI and asking the AI to introduce bias or slants into the article and rewrite it,” said Clément Briens, an analyst for Recorded Future.

    Briens said metrics tools embedded within the site are likely intended to prove that the campaigns were money well-spent for “whoever is doing the payouts for these operations.”

    The French government cybersecurity watchdog, Viginum, has published multiple reports since June 2023 singling out Russian efforts to sow divisions in France and elsewhere. That was around the time that pro-Kremlin Telegram feeds started promoting “Olympics has Fallen” — a full-length fake Netflix film featuring an AI-generated voice resembling Tom Cruise that criticized the International Olympic Committee, according to the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.

    Microsoft said this campaign, which it dubbed Storm-1679, is fanning fears of violence at the Games and last fall disseminated digitally generated photos referring, among other things, to the attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

    The latest effort, which started just after the first round of the elections on June 30, merges fears of violence related to both the Olympics and the risk of protests after the decisive second round, antibot4navalny found. Viginum released a new report Tuesday detailing the risks ahead for the Games — not for violence but for disinformation.

    “Digital information manipulation campaigns have become a veritable instrument of destabilization of democracies,” Viginum said. “This global event will give untold informational exposure to malevolant foreign actors.” The word Russia appears nowhere.

    Baptiste Robert, a French cybersecurity expert who ran unsuccessfully as an unaffiliated centrist in the legislative elections, called on his government – and especially lawmakers – to prepare for the digital threats to come.

    “This is a global policy of Russia: They really want to push people into the extremes,” he said before the first-round vote. “It’s working perfectly right now.”

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  • Defense Secretary Austin says the US will provide $2.3 billion more in military aid to Ukraine

    Defense Secretary Austin says the US will provide $2.3 billion more in military aid to Ukraine

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    FILE – Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin addresses a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, June 14, 2024. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, June 24, that State Department counselor Derek Chollet, one of his most senior aides, is leaving to become Austin’s chief of staff. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

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  • French voters propel far-right National Rally to strong lead in 1st-round elections

    French voters propel far-right National Rally to strong lead in 1st-round elections

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    PARIS — The far-right National Rally leaped into a strong lead Sunday in France’s first round of legislative elections, polling agencies projected, bringing the party closer to being able to form a government in round two and dealing a major slap to centrist President Emmanuel Macron and his risky decision to call the surprise ballot.

    When he dissolved the National Assembly on June 9, after a stinging defeat at the hands of the National Rally in French voting for the European Parliament, Macron gambled that the anti-immigration party with historical links to antisemitism wouldn’t repeat that success when France’s own fate was in the balance.

    But it didn’t work out that way. With French polling agencies projecting that the National Rally and its allies got about one-third of the national vote on Sunday, Macron’s prime minister warned that France could end up with its first far-right government since World War II if voters don’t come together to thwart that scenario in round two next Sunday.

    “The extreme right is at the doors of power,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. He twice described National Rally policy pledges as “disastrous” and said that in the second-round ballot, “not one vote should go to the National Rally.”

    French polling agencies’ projections put Macron’s grouping of centrist parties a distant third in the first-round ballot, behind both the National Rally and a new left-wing coalition of parties that joined forces to keep it from winning power.

    Winning a parliamentary majority would enable National Rally leader Marine Le Pen to install her 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, as prime minister and would crown her yearslong rebranding effort to make her party less repellent to mainstream voters. She inherited the party, then called the National Front, from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for racist and antisemitic hate speech.

    Still, the National Rally isn’t there yet. With another torrid week of campaigning to come before the decisive final voting next Sunday, the election’s ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

    Addressing a jubilant crowd waving French tricolor flags of blue, white and red, Le Pen called on her supporters and voters who didn’t back her party in the first round to push it over the line and give it a commanding legislative majority. That scenario would force Bardella and Macron into an awkward power-sharing arrangement. Macron has said he will not step down before his term expires in 2027.

    Only the second round will make clear whether Le Pen’s party and its allies get the absolute majority they would need to comfortably form a government and then start to implement their promises to dismantle many of Macron’s key policies and foreign policy platforms. That would include stopping French deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion. The National Rally has historical ties to Russia.

    The far right’s more confrontational approach to the European Union, its plans to roll back Macron’s pension reforms and National Rally promises to boost voters’ spending power without clearly detailing how it would pay for the pledge could also spook European financial markets.

    Some polling agency projections indicated that in the best-case scenario for the far right, the National Rally and its allies could collectively clear the bar of 289 seats needed for a secure majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

    But, depending on how the second round shakes out, the far right could also fall short and leave no single bloc with a clear majority, polling agencies projected. Predictions are difficult because of the two-round voting system. Early official results for the first round were expected later Sunday.

    Already on Sunday night, the far-right’s rivals were working on arrangements to pull some of their candidates out of the race in round two, in an effort to concentrate votes against the National Rally.

    Turnout was at least 66%, according to polling estimates, which would make it the highest for a first-round legislative election in 27 years.

    Many French voters are frustrated with inflation and other economic concerns, as well as Macron’s leadership, seen as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. The National Rally party has tapped that discontent, notably via online platforms such as TikTok.

    Foremost for many voters were the rising cost of living and immigration, which the National Rally campaigned heavily on. The campaign was marred by rising hate speech.

    “People don’t like what has been happening,” said Cynthia Justine, 44. “People feel they’ve lost a lot in recent years. People are angry. I am angry.” With the rising hate speech, it was necessary to express frustrations with those holding and seeking power, she added.

    She said it was important as a woman to vote since women haven’t always had that right. And “because I am a Black woman, it’s even more important. A lot is at stake on this day.”

    The National Rally has questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France, and it wants to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality. Critics say that undermines human rights and is a threat to France’s democratic ideals.

    A 64-year-old voter, Philippe Lempereur, expressed fatigue with politicians from the left, right and center and what he called their inability to work together on issues such as ensuring people have shelter and enough to eat. “We vote by default, for the least worse option,” he said. “I prefer to vote than do nothing.”

    In the restive French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, polls closed earlier due to a curfew that authorities have extended until July 8. Violence flared there last month, leaving nine people dead, due to attempts by Macron’s government to amend the French Constitution and change voting lists, which the Indigenous Kanaks feared would further marginalize them. They have long sought to break free from France.

    Voters in France’s other overseas territories of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and French Polynesia, and those voting in offices opened by embassies and consular posts across the Americas cast their ballots Saturday.

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    Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Diane Jeantet in Lens, France, contributed to this report.

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  • 7 killed, dozens wounded after missiles hit town in southern Ukraine, officials say

    7 killed, dozens wounded after missiles hit town in southern Ukraine, officials say

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles slammed into a town in southern Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including children, and wounding dozens, local authorities reported.

    Ukrainian officials published photos of bodies stretched out under picnic blankets in a park in Vilniansk, and deep craters in the blackened earth next to the charred, twisted remains of a building.

    At least 38 people were wounded in Saturday evening’s attack, authorities said, and declared a day of mourning Sunday. Vilniansk is in the Zaporizhzhia region, less than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the local capital and north of the front lines, as Russian forces continue to occupy part of the province.

    Local Gov. Ivan Fedorov said that three children were among the dead and nine more were among the 38 wounded.

    He said the strike damaged a shop, residential buildings, and an unspecified “critical infrastructure” facility in Vilniansk, which had a population of around 14,300 prior to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    Russia continues to stretch out Ukrainian forces in several areas along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front. Moscow has stepped up airstrikes in a bid to drain Ukraine’s resources, often targeting energy facilities and other vital infrastructure.

    In the aftermath of the Vilniansk attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Kyiv’s Western partners to bolster its air defenses and long-range munitions to deter Russian attacks.

    In Ukraine’s war-torn eastern Donetsk region, eight civilians died and 14 were wounded overnight, according to Gov. Vadym Filashkin, as near-daily shelling continues in much of the province.

    Russian-appointed officials in Donetsk, which is partially occupied and illegally annexed by Moscow, said that Ukrainian shelling on Sunday wounded a 4-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. According to Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, four of its staff also came under shelling Sunday as they attempted to put out a fire in the Kremlin-occupied local capital, also called Donetsk.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday claimed its forces captured two more villages in the eastern region, as they seek gains in an apparent bid to draw Kyiv into a war of attrition.

    Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian shelling killed one civilian and wounded five more on Saturday and overnight in the southern Kherson region, its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported on Telegram.

    According to Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov, four people were wounded in the northeastern province, the site of fierce battles in recent months following Russia’s cross-border push that threatened Ukraine’s second-largest city.

    Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday reported its forces overnight shot down three dozen Ukrainian drones over six regions in Russia’s southwest. It later said that a total of 72 were downed on Saturday and during the night.

    Debris from one drone fell on a village in the Kursk region, blowing out windows and damaging roofs and fences, according to a Telegram post by regional Gov. Aleksey Smirnov. In the city of Lipetsk, farther north, a drone was shot down as it appeared to target the industrial zone, local Gov. Igor Artamonov reported. There were no casualties in either case.

    In a separate attack Sunday afternoon, a drone struck a private home in Russia’s southern Belgorod region, wounding a man and woman inside, according to local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.

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  • Russian officials report 5 dead in a drone strike as a Russian attack hits apartments

    Russian officials report 5 dead in a drone strike as a Russian attack hits apartments

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    KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian drone strike killed at least five people in Russia’s Kursk region, local officials said Saturday, while rescuers in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro dug through rubble after a Russian attack ripped through a nine-story residential building, leaving one dead.

    Two children were among the victims of the Ukranian attack in the village of Gorodishche on the Russian-Ukrainian border, Gov. Alexey Smirnov said on social media.

    In Dnipro, at least one person died and 12 were injured, including a 7-month-old girl, after a Russian strike destroyed the top four floors of the apartment bloc Friday evening, regional head Serhii Lysak said.

    The attacks came as Russia continues to stretch out Ukrainian forces in several areas along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front. Moscow has stepped up airstrikes in a bid to drain Ukraine’s resources, often targeting energy facilities and other vital infrastructure.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country had lost about 80% of its thermal power and one-third of its hydroelectric power in Russian strikes.

    Discussing the attack in Dnipro, Zelenskyy said it was a reminder to Ukraine’s allies that the country needed more air defense systems. The Ukrainian air force said Saturday that it had downed 10 Russian drones overnight.

    “This is why we constantly remind all of our partners: only a sufficient amount of high-quality of air defense systems, only a sufficient amount of determination from the world at large can stop Russian terror,” he said.

    Kyiv has also struck back at Russia with its own aerial attacks, also often targeting energy infrastructure.

    In its morning statement, the Russian Defense Ministry said that six Ukrainian drones had been shot down overnight over the country’s Tver, Bryansk and Belgorod regions, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. It did not give information on the reported strike in the Kursk region.

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  • Russia warns it can respond to US drone flights over Black Sea

    Russia warns it can respond to US drone flights over Black Sea

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    Russia’s Defense Minister ordered officials to prepare a “response” to U.S. drone flights over the Black Sea, the ministry said Friday, in an apparent warning that Moscow may take forceful action to ward off the American reconnaissance aircraft.

    The Russian Defense Ministry noted a recent “increased intensity” of U.S. drones over the Black Sea, saying they “conduct intelligence and targeting for precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian military by Western countries for strikes on Russian facilities.”

    “It shows an increased involvement of the U.S. and other NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the Kyiv regime,” the ministry said in a statement.

    It noted that “such flights significantly increase the probability of incidents involving Russian military aircraft, which increases the risk of direct confrontation between the alliance and the Russian Federation.”

    “NATO members will bear responsibility for that,” it added.

    The ministry said that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has directed the General Staff to “make proposals on measures of operative response to provocations.”

    Washington and Moscow have clashed before over U.S. drones in the Black Sea. In a 2023 incident, a Russian fighter jet damaged an American drone there, causing it to crash. A repeat of such a confrontation could further fuel tensions over the war in Ukraine.

    On March 14, 2023, a Su-27 fighter jet of the Russian air force intercepted and damaged a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, causing it to crash into the Black Sea. The incident marked the first direct clash between the Russian and U.S. forces since the Cold War.

    The Pentagon and U.S. European Command said after the incident that two Russian Su-27 aircraft dumped fuel on the MQ-9, which was conducting a routine surveillance mission over the Black Sea in international airspace.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said then that the U.S. drone was flying near the Russian border and intruded into an area that was declared off-limits by Russian authorities.

    Russia has declared broad areas near Crimea off-limits to flights. Ever since Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and long before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has accused U.S. surveillance planes of flying too close to its borders while ignoring the notices issued by Russia.

    Friday’s Russian statement follows a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol over the weekend with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles, which killed four and injured about 150, according to Russian authorities.

    Russian officials have claimed that the U.S. was directly involved in the attack by providing intelligence and targeting and warned to take retaliatory measures.

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  • Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 851

    Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 851

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    As the war enters its 851st day, these are the main developments.

    Here is the situation on Tuesday, June 25, 2024.

    Fighting

    • At least five people were killed and 41 injured, including four children, after a Russian missile attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, according to Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin. About 61,000 people lived in Pokrovsk, which is about 24km (15 miles) from the front line, before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
    • Two people were killed in the northeastern region of Kharkiv when their car hit a Russian antitank mine near the border village of Lyptsi.
    • One man was killed in the southern Kherson region, which is partially occupied by Russian forces, after a Russian-guided aerial bomb attack.
    • Four people were injured after a Russian cruise missile hit a warehouse in the southern port city of Odesa, sparking a fire that spread across 3,000 square metres (3,590 square yards), Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said.
    • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Lieutenant General Yuriy Sodol as the commander of the Joint Forces of Ukraine’s Armed Forces after he was accused of incompetence and abuse of power, replacing him with Brigadier General Andriy Hnatov.
    • The Ukrainian military said it registered 715 cases of the use of ammunitions containing “hazardous chemical compounds” by Russian forces in May.
    Some of the people injured in the Russian attack on Pokrovsk receive hospital treatment [Alina Smutko/Reuters]

    Politics and diplomacy

    • The Kremlin warned the United States of “consequences” and summoned its ambassador after a Ukrainian attack on Moscow-annexed Crimea killed four people. Russia said the attack was carried out with US-supplied ATACMS long-range missiles and claimed Washington bore responsibility.
    • In response to the Russian claims, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States regretted any civilian loss of life and that Russia was to blame for the war. “We provide weapons to Ukraine so it can defend its sovereign territory against armed aggression — that includes in Crimea which, of course, is part of Ukraine,” Miller told reporters. Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said that Ukrainians “make their own decisions”.
    • Zelenskyy told Colonel Oleksii Morozov, the new chief of Ukraine’s state guard, to clear its ranks of people discrediting the service after two of its officers were accused of plotting with Russia to assassinate senior officials. The guard provides security for various government officials.
    • Polish President Andrzej Duda said during a visit to Beijing that he hoped China would “support efforts to strive for a peaceful end to the war waged by Russia in Ukraine,” that respects international law and Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
    • The US said it would help print 3 million new textbooks for Ukrainian primary schools, after a Russian strike destroyed the Faktur-Druk printing house in Kharkiv in May.
    • The European Union imposed sanctions on 61 more companies, including 19 in China, for allegedly providing “dual-use goods and technology”, which could be used by Russia’s defence and security firms to advance its invasion of Ukraine. Others targeted included companies from Russia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, India, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates.
    • The EU was due to open membership talks with Ukraine on Tuesday at a ceremony in Luxembourg.

    Weapons

    • The US is expected to announce on Tuesday that it will send an additional $150m in critically-needed munitions to Ukraine. The shipment is expected to include munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armour weapons, small arms and grenades and 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds, two US officials told the Associated Press news agency.

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  • Ukraine’s emergency blackouts return after Russia pounds infrastructure

    Ukraine’s emergency blackouts return after Russia pounds infrastructure

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    KYIV, Ukraine — During daytime, entire districts of Ukraine’s capital are disconnected from the power grid to save energy. Traffic lights stop, choking traffic, accompanied by the constant rumble of generators installed outside cafes and shops.

    Ukraine, including Kyiv, is struggling to cope with a new wave of rolling blackouts after relentless Russian attacks took out half the country’s power generation capacity.

    Residents and businesses of Kyiv are adapting to the absence of electricity using generators, power banks, and flashlights and even recalculating their bathroom visits. Heavy damage inflicted to the country’s power system has left millions feeling uncertain about Ukraine’s ability to meet the national electricity demand after the warm weather months are over and the weather turns cold.

    “I light my apartment as our grandparents used to — with candles and small flashlights,” said Rudoy, a 40-year-old insurance agent from Israel who relocated from Tel Aviv to Kyiv in 2023 after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

    He said that he wanted a new life despite the war — to live side-by-side with old friends and reside in a milder climate — but he hadn’t foreseen the inconveniences of living without power. Rudoy bought an apartment on the seventh floor of a newly built 25-story high rise with no gas system or water supply that’s wholly dependent on electricity.

    “I have to adjust my life to the blackout schedules, otherwise it is impossible to live normally — not even to use a toilet at times,” Rudoy told The Associated Press.

    A friend in a nearby district typically has power when he doesn’t, which makes his life easier. Work often gets done at a cafe that has a generator, but there’s a catch.

    “Even if you find a free table at a cafe nearby, working generators are very noisy and spread diesel fumes,” he said. “That’s why not many cafes that operate during blackouts are actually good to work in.”

    Ukraine is struggling to meet electricity demand as systematic attacks on its power infrastructure have intensified since March, forcing utilities to ration household supplies over the last three months. The country’s top officials repeatedly called on allied countries to provide more air defense systems to protect its power plants from Russian missiles and drones, but tangible damage had already been inflicted.

    The blackouts in Kyiv are the worse since the early months of the war when Russian strikes on the country’s power grid led to major winter-time blackouts that led to authorities setting up communal heating areas and hundreds of emergency points where residents could drink tea, recharge their phones and get help.

    “As of today, due to missile and drone attacks, we have lost 9.2 gigawatt of electricity (generating capabilities),” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in early June. Despite having the capacity to import 2.2 gigawatts of electricity from European countries, Ukraine is importing 1.7 gigawatts, Shmyhal said.

    Apart from direct imports, Ukraine is working to attract foreign investment to its private energy sector. At a summit in Berlin this month, Ukraine presented investment projects that could enable additional capacity of 1 gigawatt, said Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of power utility Ukrenergo.

    But in the short-term, Ukraine’s readiness before next winter looks highly uncertain considering the damages to its energy system, the feasible outlook for reconstruction, and electricity demand.

    Constant blackouts bring disruption to many city residents’ daily rituals. Official power outage schedules published regularly by Ukrainian energy operators make it easier to plan the day. But energy companies often resort to unscheduled emergency blackouts when the city overconsumes electricity at the peak hours.

    The circumstances force businesses and households to rely on alternative sources of electricity and light to get through a day as the summer heat makes more and more people use air conditioners. And many are worried the situation could get even worse.

    Small businesses don’t always keep up, with the energy situation rapidly changing every week.

    Oleksandr Solovei, the 25-year-old owner of Informatyka coffee shop in Kyiv, just plans to buy a generator, which typically costs around $1,000, to keep his business open during blackouts.

    In the meantime, he must improvise. “We prepare hot water in advance, to cook matcha and teas. Cooking coffee at times like this is impossible. The coffee machine consumes too much energy,” Solovei told the AP.

    A fiber-optic internet cable and a power bank that keeps the router on attract patrons to Informatyka, where they can work on their laptops. Still, customers have thinned out since the blackouts began.

    “We think the situation will get worse (by winter),” Solovei said. “We already plan to buy a generator, powerful enough to brew coffee, light the space, and charge the devices of our visitors. We are preparing for a hard winter.”

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  • Russia obliterates front-line Ukraine towns by retrofitting bombs

    Russia obliterates front-line Ukraine towns by retrofitting bombs

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    KHARKIV, Ukraine — The first shock wave shattered aisles stacked almost to the ceiling with home improvement products. The next Russian bomb streaked down like a comet seconds later, unleashing flames that left the megastore an ashen shell.

    A third bomb failed to detonate when it landed behind the Epicenter shopping complex in Kharkiv. Investigators hope it will help them trace the supply chain for the latest generation of retrofitted Russian “glide bombs” that are laying waste to eastern Ukraine. The Soviet-era bombs are adapted on the cheap with imported electronics that allow distant Russian warplanes to launch them at Ukraine.

    Other cities that have been devastated by the weapons include Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar and Vovchansk, and Russia has nearly unlimited supplies of the bombs, which are dispatched from airfields just across the border that Ukraine has not been able to hit.

    Store manager Oleksandr Lutsenko said the May 25 attack hints at Russia’s aim for Kharkiv: “Their goal is to turn it into a ghost city, to make it so that no one will stay, that there will be nothing to defend, that it will make no sense to defend the city. They want to scare people, but they will not succeed.”

    Russia has accelerated its destruction of Ukraine’s front-line cities in 2024 to a scale previously unseen in the war using the glide bombs and an expanding network of airstrips, according to an Associated Press analysis of drone footage, satellite imagery, Ukrainian documents and Russian photos.

    The results can be seen in the intensity of recent Russian attacks. It took a year for Russia to obliterate Bakhmut, where the bombs were first used. That was followed by destruction in Avdiivka that took months. Then, only weeks were needed to do the same in Vovchansk and Chasiv Yar, according to images analyzed by AP that showed the smoldering ruins of both cities.

    Now, Russia is putting the finishing touches on yet another airstrip less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Ukraine and launching the bombs routinely from multiple bases just inside Russian borders, according to the AP analysis of satellite pictures and photos from a Russian aviation Telegram channel.

    The bombing of the Epicenter in Kharkiv killed 19 people, including two children. In all, glide bombs have hit the city more than 50 times this year, according to Spartak Borysenko of the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office.

    He showed investigation documents to AP that identified at least eight Russian air bases used to launch the attacks, all within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Ukraine. He said at least one of the munitions had foreign electronics and was made in May. That date suggests Russia is using the bombs rapidly and that it has successfully circumvented sanctions for dual-use items.

    Photos on Russian Telegram channels linked to the military show glide bombs being launched three and four at a time. In one launch of four bombs, the AP traced the aircraft’s location to just outside the Russian city of Belgorod, near the air base now under construction. All four bombs in the photo were headed west — with Vovchansk and Kharkiv in their direct line of fire.

    At the end of May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was launching more than 3,000 of the bombs every month, with 3,200 used in May alone.

    Oleh Katkov, whose military-oriented site Defense Express first traced the launch location, said hitting air bases is key to slowing the pace of the bombings by forcing Russian planes to launch farther away.

    “This doesn’t mean they will completely stop their bombings, but it will become more difficult for them,” Katkov said. “They will be able to make fewer sorties per day.”

    For months, Ukrainian officials complained bitterly about restrictions on using Western-supplied weapons against targets in Russia, including the airfields that house Russian bombers. The United States and Germany recently authorized some targets in Russia, but many others remain off-limits.

    The newest airfield, just outside Belgorod, has a 2,000-meter (-yard) runway, the AP analysis found. Construction began late summer 2023, during the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive.

    A Ukrainian intelligence official, who provided information to AP on condition of anonymity, said his government had been closely following the construction, which did not yet appear complete in a photo taken mid-June.

    The official also noted that Belarus provides sanctuary for Russian bombers. A map created by the Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState showed 10 airfields in Belarus, including five just across the border from Ukraine.

    In all, the DeepState map shows 51 bases used by Russia within 600 kilometers (370 miles) of Ukrainian-controlled territory, including three in occupied eastern Ukraine, six in the illegally annexed peninsula of Crimea, and 32 in Russia.

    “The greatest strategic advantage Russia has over Ukraine is its advantage in the sky,” Zelenskyy said last week. “This is missile and bomb terror that helps Russian troops advance on the ground.”

    Russia launches up to 100 guided bombs daily, Zelenskyy said. Besides missiles and drones, which Russia already routinely uses for attacks, the bombs cause “an insanely destructive pressure.”

    The base material for the glide bombs comes from hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era unguided bombs, which are then retrofitted with retractable fins and guidance systems to carry 500 to 3,000 kilograms (1,100 to 6,600 pounds) of explosives. The upgrade costs around $20,000 per bomb, according to the Center for European Policy Analysis, and the bombs can be launched up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) from their targets — outside the range of Ukraine’s regular air defense systems.

    The bombs are similar in concept to the American Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, missiles, which have had their GPS systems successfully jammed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

    Because Russia does not have the strength to occupy eastern cities such as Kharkiv, bombing is their preferred option, said Nico Lange, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

    “From their point of view, the strategy seems to be to terrorize the cities enough that people will leave,” Lange said.

    Back at the Epicenter home improvement store, surveillance footage taken just before the explosion showed salesperson Nina Korsunova walking across the floor toward the aisle that she was staffing that day. Then there was a blinding flash, and the camera cut out.

    Korsunova curled into the fetal position as a display crashed on top of her. She uncovered her eyes just in time to see the second bomb streak inside. With her eardrums blown out, she could hear nothing and saw not a single sign of life.

    “I thought I was alone and that they had abandoned me there. It gave me the strength to climb out,” she said. She crawled over piles of shattered lamps, and cables snarled her legs as she climbed through debris from the electrical supply aisle.

    Two weeks later, the skeleton of the building reeked of a disorienting combination of scorched metal and laundry detergent that spilled from melted jugs in the cleaning products aisle.

    Neither Korsunova nor the store manager have any plans to leave their hometown.

    “It didn’t break me,” she said. “I will remain in Kharkiv. This is my home.”

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    Hinnant reported from Paris. Arhirova reported from Kyiv. Associated Press reporters Volodymyr Yurchuk, Susie Blann and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, and graphic artist Phil Holm in New York, contributed to this report.

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    Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

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  • Russia President Vladimir Putin makes a rare visit to North Korea, an old ally

    Russia President Vladimir Putin makes a rare visit to North Korea, an old ally

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    SEOUL, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in North Korea early on Wednesday, after saying the two countries want to cooperate closely to overcome U.S.-led sanctions in the face of intensifying confrontations with Washington.

    Putin was met at Pyongyang’s airport by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. They shook hands and embraced, and Kim later joined Putin in his car to personally guide him to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan State Guest House, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said. The agency described their meeting as a historic event that demonstrates the “invincibility and durability” of the two nations’ friendship and unity.

    Putin, making his first trip to North Korea in 24 years, said in comments that appeared in its state media hours before he landed that he appreciates the country’s firm support of his military actions in Ukraine. The Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country in 2022.

    He said the countries would continue to “resolutely oppose” what he described as Western ambitions “to hinder the establishment of a multipolar world order based on justice, mutual respect for sovereignty, considering each other’s interests.”

    Putin’s visit comes amid growing concerns about an arms arrangement in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with badly needed munitions to fuel Russia’s war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.

    In the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the streets were decorated with portraits of Putin and Russian flags. A banner on a building said: “We warmly welcome the President of the Russian Federation.”

    Putin also said in his published remarks that Russia and North Korea will develop trade and payment systems “that are not controlled by the West” and jointly oppose sanctions against the countries, which he described as “illegal, unilateral restrictions.”

    North Korea is under heavy U.N. Security Council economic sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programs, while Russia is also grappling with sanctions by the United States and its Western partners over its aggression in Ukraine.

    Putin said the countries will also expand cooperation in tourism, culture and education.

    Before heading to North Korea, Putin traveled to Yakutsk, a city in eastern Russia, where he met regional Gov. Aisen Nikolayev, and received briefings on technology and defense-related projects. He also met with young professionals working in Russia’s Far East.

    Putin is being accompanied by several top officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Denis Mantrurov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to his foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov. He said a number of documents will be signed during the visit, possibly including an agreement on a comprehensive strategic partnership.

    U.S. and South Korean officials say military, economic and other exchanges between North Korea and Russia have sharply increased since Kim met Putin in September in the Russian Far East, their first since 2019.

    U.S. and South Korean officials accuse the North of providing Russia with artillery, missiles and other military equipment for use in Ukraine, possibly in return for key military technologies and aid. Both Pyongyang and Moscow deny accusations about North Korean weapons transfers, which would violate multiple U.N. Security Council sanctions that Russia previously endorsed.

    Along with China, Russia has provided political cover for Kim’s continuing efforts to advance his nuclear arsenal, repeatedly blocking U.S.-led efforts to impose fresh U.N. sanctions on the North over its weapons tests.

    In March, a Russian veto at the United Nations ended monitoring of U.N. sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it buys weapons from Pyongyang for use in Ukraine. U.S. and South Korean officials have said they are discussing options for a new mechanism for monitoring the North.

    Earlier this year, Putin sent Kim a high-end Aurus Senat limousine, which he had shown to the North Korean leader when they met in September. Observers said the shipment violated a U.N. resolution banning the supply of luxury items to North Korea.

    In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Putin’s visit to North Korea illustrates how Russia tries, “in desperation, to develop and to strengthen relations with countries that can provide it with what it needs to continue the war of aggression that it started against Ukraine.”

    “North Korea is providing significant munitions to Russia … and other weapons for use in Ukraine. Iran has been providing weaponry, including drones, that have been used against civilians and civilian infrastructure,” Blinken told reporters following a meeting with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday.

    Stoltenberg reiterated concerns about the “potential support that Russia provides to North Korea when it comes to supporting their missile and nuclear programs.”

    Lim Soosuk, spokesperson of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, said Seoul has been stressing to Moscow that any cooperation between Russia and North Korea must not “proceed in a direction that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions or undermines peace and stability in the region.”

    Tensions on the Korean Peninsulas are at their highest point in years, with the pace of both Kim’s weapons tests and combined military exercises involving the United States, South Korea and Japan intensifying in a tit-for-tat cycle. The Koreas also have engaged in Cold War-style psychological warfare that involved North Korea dropping tons of trash on the South with balloons, and the South broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda with its loudspeakers.

    South Korea’s military said soldiers fired warning shots to repel North Korean soldiers who temporarily crossed the land border Tuesday, apparently in error, for the second time this month.

    Putin has continuously sought to rebuild ties with Pyongyang as part of efforts to restore his country’s clout and its Soviet-era alliances. Moscow’s ties with North Korea weakened after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Kim Jong Un first met with Putin in 2019 in Russia’s eastern port of Vladivostok.

    After North Korea, the Kremlin said Putin will also visit Vietnam for talks that are expected to be focused on trade. The United States, which has spent years strengthening ties and accelerating trade with Vietnam, criticized Putin’s planned visit.

    “As Russia continues to seek international support to sustain its illegal and brutal war against Ukraine, we reiterate that no country should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalize his atrocities,” a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Vietnam said in a statement.

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  • Russia-Ukraine war set to grind on as peace conference packs little punch

    Russia-Ukraine war set to grind on as peace conference packs little punch

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine are set to remain locked in battle for the foreseeable future after an international gathering billed as a first step toward peace delivered no eye-catching diplomatic breakthrough that might suggest a coming end to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

    The absence of Russia and China from the two-day conference in Switzerland on the weekend and the decision by some key countries — including India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Mexico — not to sign the meeting’s final document Sunday meant that the gathering had little to show beyond some goodwill and pledges to keep working for peace after more than two years of war.

    Meanwhile Ukraine, after being starved of ammunition due to late deliveries of promised Western military aid, is trying to hold on against a Russian onslaught in eastern parts of the country until its prospects improve.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the conference’s outcome was “close to zero.”

    Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is trying to line countries up behind his version of what an eventual peace agreement should look like, said international meetings of advisers and government ministers would follow up on the talks and lay the ground for a second meeting at some future time.

    Nearly 80 countries approved the final communique covering steps toward nuclear safety, food security, and the release of prisoners and deportees, including thousands of children abducted by Russia.

    It did not resolve the bedrock — and seemingly intractable, for now — issue: Ukrainian land occupied by invading Russian forces.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said last Friday he would order an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine if Kyiv’s forces pulled out of the four Ukrainian regions Russia illegally annexed in 2022 and Kyiv dropped its bid to join NATO.

    His other conditions for ending the war included Ukraine recognizing Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, as part of Russia; restrictions on the Ukrainian military; and keeping Ukraine’s nonnuclear status.

    Kyiv rejected those proposals as “absurd.”

    Near Kyiv’s main war memorial, city resident Nataliia Kulbaka said she supported the idea of internationally backed peace talks but remained deeply distrustful of Russia.

    “Russia can make promises but tomorrow it will break those promises,” she said.

    Zelenskyy has previously presented a 10-point peace formula that, among other things, demands the expulsion of all Russian forces from Ukraine and accountability for war crimes. Those proposals are rejected out of hand by Moscow.

    The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Putin “is unlikely to be interested in good faith negotiations for the foreseeable future,” because he thinks that eventually he will win the war.

    Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes. It has also disrupted world markets for goods such as grain and fertilizer, fueling inflation, and it has driven a wedge between the West — which has sanctioned Moscow — and Russia, China and some other countries.

    The war is in a critical period.

    The Ukrainian army has shown resilience in facing down one of the world’s most formidable armies but it’s unable to keep up the fight without Western resupply. It also faces challenges with insufficient manpower and a lack of fortifications, offering Russia the chance to make battlefield gains this summer.

    Russia, after more than two years of fighting, has so far been unable to deliver a knockout punch and is looking abroad for help to fuel its war effort.

    Western military analysts say Russia’s army lacks quality due to losses of junior officers in the fighting. That means the Kremlin’s forces have difficulty generating momentum at scale, allowing Ukraine to hold them to incremental gains for now.

    ___

    Derek Gatopoulos and Yehor Konovalov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Litvinova in Tallin, Estonia contributed.

    ___

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

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  • World leaders to meet at Swiss resort to discuss Ukraine; Russia notably absent

    World leaders to meet at Swiss resort to discuss Ukraine; Russia notably absent

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    GENEVA — The presidents of Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Somalia will join many Western heads of state and government and other leaders at a conference this weekend aimed to plot out first steps toward peace in Ukraine – with Russia notably absent.

    Swiss officials hosting the conference say more than 50 heads of state and government, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will join the gathering at the Bürgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne. Some 100 delegations including European bodies and the United Nations will be on hand.

    Who will show up – and who will not – has become one of the key stakes of a meeting that critics say will be useless without the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and is pushing ahead with the war.

    U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is set to attend while Turkey and Saudi Arabia have dispatched their foreign ministers. Key developing countries like Brazil, an observer at the event, India and South Africa will be represented at lower levels.

    China, which backs Russia, is joining scores of countries that are sitting out the conference, many of whom have more pressing issues than the bloodiest conflict in far-away Europe since World War II. Beijing says any peace process needs to have the participation of both Russia and Ukraine, and has floated its own ideas for peace.

    Zelenskyy recently led a diplomatic push to draw in participants.

    Russian troops who now control nearly a quarter of Ukrainian land in the east and south have made some territorial gains in recent months. When talk of a Swiss-hosted peace initiative began last summer, Ukrainian forces had recently regained large swaths of territory, notably near the cities of southern Kherson and northern Kharkiv.

    Against the battlefield backdrop and diplomatic strategizing, summit organizers have presented three agenda items: nuclear safety, such as at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia power plant; humanitarian assistance and exchange of prisoners of war; and global food security — which has been disrupted at times due to impeded shipments through the Black Sea.

    That to-do list, encapsulating some of the least controversial issues, is well short of proposals and hopes laid out by Zelenskyy in a 10-point peace formula in late 2022.

    Putin’s government, meanwhile, wants any peace deal to be built around a draft agreement negotiated in the early phases of the war that included provisions for Ukraine’s neutral status and limits on its armed forces, while delaying talks about Russia-occupied areas. Ukraine’s push over the years to join the NATO military alliance has rankled Moscow.

    With much of the world’s focus recently on the war in Gaza and national elections in 2024, Ukraine’s backers want to return focus to Russia’s breach of international law and a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

    The International Crisis Group, an advisory firm that works to end conflict, wrote this week that “absent a major surprise on the Bürgenstock,” the event is “unlikely to deliver much of consequence.”

    “Nonetheless, the Swiss summit is a chance for Ukraine and its allies to underline what the U.N. General Assembly recognised in 2022 and repeated in its February 2023 resolution on a just peace in Ukraine: Russia’s all-out aggression is a blatant violation of international law,” it said.

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  • Biden goes straight from G7 to Hollywood fundraiser, balancing geopolitics with his reelection bid

    Biden goes straight from G7 to Hollywood fundraiser, balancing geopolitics with his reelection bid

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    WASHINGTON — Flying through the night across nine time zones, from southern Italy to Southern California, President Joe Biden will shift focus from Russia’s challenge of Western unity to raking in big bucks for his reelection campaign at a Hollywood fundraiser featuring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

    Biden went straight from the Group of Seven summit of wealthy democracies, where Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine took center stage, to Los Angeles and the glitzy gathering unfolding Saturday night at the Peacock Theater. The journey was only broken up by a layover to refuel outside Washington.

    Former President Barack Obama is joining the megastar headliners Clooney and Roberts, and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will interview all of them onstage. In a text message to donors beforehand, Roberts called it “a crucial time in the election.” Kimmel wrote in his own text that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump “will hate this, so let’s do it.”

    Top luminaries from the entertainment world have increasingly lined up to help Biden’s campaign, hoping to provide a fundraising jolt and to energize would-be supporters to turn out ahead of Election Day against Trump.

    But hobnobbing with the megastars this time means Biden is skipping a summit in Switzerland about ways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s a stark reminder that his responsibilities as president and his reelection effort can sometimes conflict.

    “We are going to see an unprecedented and record-setting turnout from the media and entertainment world,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, major Democratic donor and co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said in a statement.

    A Biden fundraiser in March at Radio City Music Hall, on the other side of the country in Manhattan, featured late-night host Stephen Colbert interviewing the president, Obama and former President Bill Clinton. It raised a then-record-setting $26 million. The Biden campaign says it is still counting receipts ahead of Saturday’s event and likely won’t release an expected total until closer to when it starts.

    Trump has hauled in even bigger numbers.

    He outpaced Biden’s New York event in April, raking in $50.5 million at a gathering of major donors at the Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson. The former president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee announced they had raised a whopping $141 million in May, padded by tens of millions of dollars in contributions that flowed in after Trump’s guilty verdict in his criminal hush money trial.

    That post-conviction bump came after Trump and the Republican Party announced collecting $76 million in April, far exceeding Biden and the Democrats’ $51 million for the month and narrowing a fundraising advantage Biden built earlier in the race.

    The money race aside, Biden missing the Ukraine summit means Vice President Kamala Harris is being deployed for her own whirlwind trip — leaving Washington for Switzerland and dashing back in a little more than 24 hours.

    At a joint appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G7 summit, Biden said Harris would be a strong representative of the U.S. in Switzerland. But Zelenskyy previously suggested that Biden’s not attending was “not a strong decision.”

    “I would want President Biden to be personally present,” he said late last month, predicting that Putin would “stand and applaud” Biden not coming. Putin and Russian representatives also aren’t going to the summit.

    In another sign of his day job colliding with his political aims, Biden’s fundraiser was expected to attract protests from pro-Palestinian activists angry about his administration’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

    Such demonstrations have become common wherever Biden goes in recent months, including outside his Radio City Music Hall fundraiser.

    —-

    Superville reported from Bari, Italy.

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