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  • Donors meet in Paris to get Ukraine through winter, bombing

    Donors meet in Paris to get Ukraine through winter, bombing

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    PARIS — Dozens of countries and international organizations were throwing their weight behind a fresh and urgent push Tuesday to keep Ukraine powered, fed, warm and moving in the face of sustained Russian aerial bombardments that have plunged millions into the cold and dark in winter.

    An international donor conference in Paris was expected to raise and help coordinate many tens of millions of dollars of aid — both financial and in kind — to be rushed to Ukraine in coming weeks and months to help its beleaguered civilian population survive winter’s freezing temperatures and long nights.

    French President Emmanuel Macron, in a speech opening the conference, described Moscow’s bombardments of civilian targets as a war crime. He said the Kremlin is attacking civilian infrastructure because its troops have suffered setbacks on the battlefields.

    Moscow’s intention is to “plunge the Ukrainian people into despair,” Macron said.

    Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who spoke by video link, said 12 million Ukrainians are suffering power outages. He said the country needs electricity generators as urgently as it also needs armored vehicles and armored vests for its troops.

    As temperatures plunge and snow falls, Ukraine’s needs are huge and pressing. Successive waves of missile and drone attacks since October have destroyed about half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the government in Kyiv says. It says Russia is trying to create a fresh wave of refugees to Europe. Russia says striking civilian infrastructure is intended to weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

    In Ukraine, life for many is becoming a battle for survival.

    “Globally we need everything,” said Yevhen Kaplin, who heads a Ukrainian humanitarian group, Proliska, providing cooking stoves, blankets and other aid to front-line regions and away from the battlefields.

    With “the shelling, the missiles strikes and strikes on the infrastructure, we can’t say whether there will be gas tomorrow, we can’t predict whether to buy gas stoves or not,” he said. “Every day the picture changes.”

    Specifically, the Paris conference is to focus on helping Ukraine meet its needs for water, power, food, health and transport during the coming months through to the end of March. The meeting’s French organizers say the aid drive will also send a message to the Kremlin that the international community is sticking by Ukraine against Russia’s aerial bombardments that have savaged the Ukrainian power grid and other key infrastructure.

    Sweden was among the first nations attending the meeting to pledge more aid. Its foreign trade minister, Johan Forssell, announced a contribution of 55 million euros (US$58 million) for humanitarian aid and the rebuilding of schools, hospitals and energy infrastructure.

    As winter bites, “we need to do whatever we can to help improve conditions in Ukraine and also help them to fight off the Russian invaders,” he said. “We’re here for them as long as it takes.”

    The meeting also aims to put in a place a system to coordinate international aid this winter, mirroring the way that Western nations supplying weapons coordinate their military support. A web-based platform will enable Ukraine to list its civilian aid needs, and allow donors to show what they’ll supply in response.

    The conference’s French organizers say they are expecting more than 45 nations and 20 international institutions to take part.

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    Varenytsia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. AP journalist John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed.

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

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  • Ukraine PM requests air defenses to counter Russia attacks

    Ukraine PM requests air defenses to counter Russia attacks

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s prime minister has appealed for Patriot missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians, putting Europe on alert Monday to brace for more refugees.

    Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told French broadcaster LCI that in addition to making Ukrainians suffer, Russia wants to swamp Europe with a new wave of Ukrainian refugees by continuing to strike power stations and other infrastructure.

    Poland’s president said his nation already has seen an increased demand to shelter refugees due to the combination of such attacks coupled with the freezing weather in Ukraine.

    “The number of refugees in Poland has risen (recently) to some 3 million. That will probably also mean an increase in their numbers in Germany,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said following talks with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin.

    Millions of Ukrainians fled their country after Russia invaded on Feb. 24. Thousands of people have died and dozens of cities and towns across Ukraine have been reduced to rubble during a war now in its 10th month. On Monday, Russia shelling again mostly focused on eastern and southern regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed.

    To defend against further strikes, Shmyhal reiterated previous Ukrainian calls for Patriot surface-to-air missiles — a highly sophisticated system. During an interview with LCI that aired Sunday night, he also asked for more German and French air-defense systems, resupplies of artillery shells and modern battle tanks.

    Organizers in France expect more than 45 nations and 20 international institutions to take part in a Paris conference starting Tuesday to raise and coordinate aid for Ukraine’s water, power, food, health and transportation needs during the tough winter months.

    The provision of Patriot missiles to Ukraine would mark a major advance in the kinds of air defense systems the West is sending to help the country repel Russian aerial attacks. So far, no country has offered them, and such a step would likely mark an escalation in the fight against Russia.

    U.S. officials have said they were considering providing Ukraine with Patriot missile batteries. But Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told reporters recently there were no plans to send the complex, high-tech system.

    “We’ll continue to have those discussions,” he said. He added, “None of these systems are plug-and-play. You can’t just show up on the battlefield and start using them.”

    Air defenses were also a topic of a phone call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held Sunday with U.S. President Joe Biden. Zelenskyy, his office said, told Biden “about 50% of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was destroyed.”

    Biden “highlighted how the U.S. is prioritizing efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense through our security assistance, including the Dec. 9 announcement of $275 million in additional ammunition and equipment that included systems to counter the Russian use of unmanned aerial vehicles,” the White House said.

    Russian drone attacks near the Black Sea port of Odesa over the weekend destroyed several energy facilities and left all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations without power.

    The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, completed a four-day visit to Ukraine, including Odesa, on Monday. She said she “saw how families have been torn apart and how power cuts and freezing temperatures have increased the suffering for too many during this difficult winter.”

    The European Union’s foreign ministers gathered Monday in Brussels to discuss fresh sanctions to further punish Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

    Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney sharply condemned “deliberate targeting by Russia of civilians in terms of inflicting suffering on a broad population.” He described Russia’s actions as “a crime, in terms of both aggression and a crime against humanity.”

    Slovakia said that in cooperation with Germany, it has opened a center to repair Ukrainian arms of Western origin. The center is located inside a military base in the town of Michalovce, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the border with Ukraine, the EU member nation’s Defense Ministry said. Howitzers and air defense systems are among the arms to be fixed there.

    In Ukraine, the eastern Donbas, which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, again has become a focus of intense fighting, particularly around the city of Bakhmut.

    Ukrainian officials said Monday the country’s forces hit a hotel in the Luhansk region that served as a headquarters of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military contractor and mercenary group that has played a prominent role in eastern Ukraine.

    The region’s Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said hundreds of Russians were killed in the strike on Kadiivka on Sunday. Moscow-backed local officials in Luhansk confirmed that a Ukrainian strike destroyed a hotel building in Kadiivka but claimed it was unused.

    The Ukrainian mayor of the southeastern town of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, reported that Ukraine also attacked a hotel that reportedly housed analysts from Russia’s top security agency, the FSB. Moscow did not comment on that claim, and none of the reports could be independently confirmed.

    Elsewhere on the battlefield, the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said Monday that two civilians were killed and 10 were wounded in Russia’s shelling of the town of Hirnyk in the Donetsk region.

    “It was yet another Russian attack against civilians,” Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on his Telegram messaging app channel.

    Kherson Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said a Russian strike on the southern city of the same name, which Ukraine reclaimed a month ago, killed two civilians and left five wounded Monday. He said the Russian shelling hit residential buildings and damaged power lines. Yanushevych urged city residents to move to shelters.

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    Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France.

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

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  • Dog therapy for kids facing the trauma of the war in Ukraine

    Dog therapy for kids facing the trauma of the war in Ukraine

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    BOYARKA, Ukraine — Bice is an American pit bull terrier with an important and sensitive job in Ukraine — comforting children traumatized by Russia’s war.

    The playful 8-year-old gray dog arrived on time this week to a rehabilitation center on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, ready to start his duties.

    As Bice waited in a hallway, inside of what looked like a school classroom with paintings and some books, a dozen children were seated around a table listening to Oksana Sliepora, a psychologist.

    “Who has a dog?,” she asked and several hands raised at once while the space filled with shouts of “Me, me, me!”.

    One youngster said his dog was named Stitch; “Tank,” said another boy, adding that he has a total of five, but he forgot all their names. Everyone burst out laughing.

    The seven girls and nine boys — ranging in age from a 2-year-old boy to an 18-year-old young woman — look at first like schoolchildren enjoying class. But they have particular stories: Some witnessed how Russian soldiers invaded their hometowns and beat their relatives. Some are the sons, daughters, brothers or sisters of soldiers who are on the front lines, or were killed on them.

    They come together at the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation, a state-operated community center where people can get help coping with traumatic experiences after Russia’s invasion in February. Staffers provide regular psychological therapy for anyone who has been affected in any way by the war.

    In the past they have worked with horses, but now they are adding support from another four-legged friend: Canine therapy.

    Located in Boyarka, a suburb around 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Kyiv, the center was established in 2000 as part of an effort to give psychological support to people affected, directly or indirectly, by the explosion at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl in 1986.

    Now it focuses on people affected by the war. These days, when some areas are without power after the Russian attacks to Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the two-story building is one of the few places with light and heating.

    With the kids gathered, some wearing festive blue or red Christmas hats, Sliepora cagily asked if they wanted to meet someone. Yes, they did, came the response. The door opened. The faces of the children glowed. They smiled.

    And in came Bice, the tail-wagging therapist.

    Darina Korozei, the pooch’s owner and handler, asked the children to come one by one, to ask him to do a trick or two. He sat. He stood up on his hind legs. He extended a paw, or rolled over. Then, a group hug — followed by a few tasty treats for him.

    For more than 30 minutes, Bice let everybody to touch him and hug him, without ever barking. It was as if nothing else mattered at that moment, as if there were nothing to worry about — like, say, a war ravaging their country.

    This is the first time that Sliepora has worked with a dog as part of her therapies. But, she said, “I read a lot of literature that working with dogs, with four-legged rehabilitators, helps children reduce stress, increase stress resistance, and reduce anxiety.”

    The kids did not seem stressed out, but of course the reality is still out there.

    She observed how some children are scared of loud noises, like when someone closes a window or when they hear the sound of a jet. Some drop to the floor or start asking whether there’s a bomb shelter close.

    Among the children were a brother and sister from Kupyansk, a city in the eastern region of Kharkiv, who witnessed Russian soldiers storming into their home with machine guns, grabbing their grandfather, putting a bag on his head and beating him, Sliepora said.

    “Each child is psychologically traumatized in different ways,” she said.

    The moms of some of the kids remained almost all the time seated along one of the walls, watching and listening at distance. When Bice came, some took pictures of their children.

    Lesya Kucherenko was here with her 9-year-old son, Maxim. She said she can’t stop thinking about the war and what could happen to her oldest son, a 19-year-old paratrooper fighting in the town of Bakhmut in the the eastern Donetsk region — one of the most active fronts these days.

    Maxim smiled as he plays with Bice, but he was always checking on his mom and turned his head around to see her every once in a while.

    Kucherenko said sometimes she breaks into tears when thinking about her soldier son. Right before this session, she got a call from him. He told her that he was fine, and by just remembering that, she started crying. The next second, Maxim was there, asking why.

    “You see? He’s comforting me — not me him,” she said.

    As for the comforting canine, what’s the best message that Bice offers the kids?

    Owner Korozei needs to think for only a couple of seconds, and replies: “Freedom.”

    “Freedom from problems, and happiness,” she adds.

    ———

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

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  • Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’

    Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces have turned the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut into ruins, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukraine‘s military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.

    The latest battles of Russia’s 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have centered on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia’s struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine’s persistence to reclaim them.

    Zelenskyy said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the war’s outset and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.

    “Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have again found themselves in the crosshairs. “The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.”

    Some buildings remain standing in Bakhmut, and the remaining residents still mill about the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it endured a long siege and spent weeks without water and power even before Moscow launched massive strikes to take out public utilities across Ukraine.

    The Donetsk region’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, estimated seven weeks ago that 90% of the city’s prewar population of over 70,000 had fled in the months since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbas.

    The Ukrainian military General Staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting was in the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places came under fire. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.

    Russia’s grinding eastern offensive succeeded in capturing almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk eluded the same fate, and the Russian military in recent weeks has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, analysts and Ukrainian officials have said.

    After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, the battle heated up around Bakhmut, demonstrating Putin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks in Ukraine.

    Taking Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets for more than half of the year. A ground assault accelerated after its troops forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July.

    But some analysts have questioned Russia’s strategic logic in the relentless pursuit to take Bakhmut and surrounding areas that also came under intense shelling in the past weeks, and where Ukrainian officials reported that some residents were living in damp basements.

    “The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the #Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut,” the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, posted on its Twitter feed on Thursday.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian troops also pressed their Donbas offensive in the direction of the Donetsk city of Lyman, which is 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Bakhmut. According to the ministry, they “managed to take more advantageous positions for further advancement.”

    Russia’s forces first occupied the city in May but withdrew in early October. Ukrainian authorities said at the time they found mines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that were set to explode when someone tried to clear the corpses, as well as the bodies of civilian residents killed by shelling or who had died from a lack of food and medicine.

    On Friday, Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine negotiated by France and Germany had bought time for Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia this year.

    That deal was aimed to cool tensions after pro-Russia separatists seized territory in the Donbas a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that ballooned into a war with Russia itself after the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion.

    Ukraine’s military on Saturday also reported strikes in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are the four regions Putin claims are now Russian territory.

    A month ago, Russian troops withdrew from the western side of the Dniper River where it cuts through Kherson province, allowing Ukrainians forces to declare the region’s capital city liberated. But the Russians still occupy a majority of the province and have continued to attack from their news positions across the river.

    Writing on Telegram, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said two civilians died and another eight were wounded during dozens of mortar, rocket and artillery attacks over the previous day. Residential areas, a hospital, shops, warehouses and critical infrastructure in the Kherson region were damaged, he said.

    To the west, drone attacks overnight left much of Odesa province, including its namesake Black Sea port city, without electricity, regional Gov. Maxim Marchenko said. Several energy facilities were destroyed at once, leaving all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations were without power, electric company DTEK said Saturday.

    The Odesa regional administration’s energy department said late Saturday that fully restoring electricity could take as long as three months and it urged families whose homes are without power to leave the region if possible.

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

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  • Nobel Peace Prize winners blast Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

    Nobel Peace Prize winners blast Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

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    OSLO, Norway — The winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine shared their visions of a fairer world and denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine during Saturday’s award ceremony.

    Oleksandra Matviichuk of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties dismissed calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to retain some of the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories, saying that “fighting for peace does not mean yielding to pressure of the aggressor, it means protecting people from its cruelty.”

    “Peace cannot be reached by a country under attack laying down its arms,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “This would not be peace, but occupation.”

    Matviichuk repeated her earlier call for Putin — and Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who provided his country’s territory for Russian troops to invade Ukraine — to face an international tribunal.

    “We have to prove that the rule of law does work, and justice does exist, even if they are delayed,” she said.

    Matviichuk was named a co-winner of the 2022 peace prize in October along with Russian human rights group Memorial and Ales Bialiatski, head of the Belarusian rights group Viasna. Later on Saturday, the other Nobel prizes will be formally presented during a ceremony in Stockholm.

    Bialiatski, who is jailed in Belarus pending his trial and faces a prison sentence of up to 12 years, wasn’t allowed to send his speech. He shared a few thoughts when he met in jail with his wife, Natallia Pinchuk, who spoke on his behalf at the award ceremony.

    “In my homeland, the entirety of Belarus is in a prison,” Bialiatski said in the remarks delivered by Pinchuk — in reference to a sweeping crackdown on the opposition after massive protests against an August 2020 fraud-tainted vote that Lukashenko used to extend his rule. “This award belongs to all my human rights defender friends, all civic activists, tens of thousands of Belarusians who have gone through beatings, torture, arrests, prison.”

    Bialiatski is the fourth person in the 121-year history of the Nobel Prizes to receive the award while in prison or detention.

    In the remarks delivered by his wife, he cast Lukashenko as a tool of Putin, saying the Russian leader is seeking to establish his domination across the ex-Soviet lands.

    “I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin — a dependent dictatorship,” he said. “The same as today’s Belarus, where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and disregarded.”

    The triple peace prize award was seen as a strong rebuke to Putin, not only for his action in Ukraine but for the Kremlin’s crackdown on domestic opposition and its support for Lukashenko’s brutal repression of dissenters.

    Russia’s Supreme Court shut down Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest and most prominent human rights organizations that was widely acclaimed for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union, in December 2021.

    Prior to that, the Russian government had declared the organization a “foreign agent” — a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations that can discredit the targeted organization.

    Jan Rachinsky of Memorial said in his speech that “today’s sad state of civil society in Russia is a direct consequence of its unresolved past.”

    He particularly denounced the Kremlin’s attempts to denigrate the history, statehood and independence of Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations, saying that it “became the ideological justification for the insane and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine.”

    “One of the first victims of this madness was the historical memory of Russia itself,” Rachinsky said. “Now, the Russian mass media refer to the unprovoked armed invasion of a neighboring country, the annexation of territories, terror against civilians in the occupied areas, and war crimes as justified by the need to fight fascism.”

    While all the winners spoke in unison to condemn the war in Ukraine, there also were some marked differences.

    Matviichuk specifically declared that “the Russian people will be responsible for this disgraceful page of their history and their desire to forcefully restore the former empire.”

    Rachinsky described the Russian aggression against its neighbor as a “monstrous burden,” but strongly rejected the notion of “national guilt.”

    “It is not worth talking about ‘national’ or any other collective guilt at all — the notion of collective guilt is abhorrent to fundamental human rights principles,” he said. “The joint work of the participants of our movement is based on a completely different ideological basis — on the understanding of civic responsibility for the past and for the present.”

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  • Ukraine utility crews adapt, overcome after Russian strikes

    Ukraine utility crews adapt, overcome after Russian strikes

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Over the grinding wail of a chainsaw pruning trees, Oleh Braharnyk recalls how his crew sprang into action in Kyiv a week earlier to repair power lines downed by Russian missiles and keep electricity flowing to his beleaguered fellow Ukrainians.

    Braharnyk, an electric company foreman, knows the stakes: Like many others in Ukraine, his family has dealt with daily power outages caused by Russian strikes.

    “We, too, sit in the dark,” he says, acknowledging that his home gets power for only about half of each day.

    In recent months, Russia has rained missiles on Ukraine to try to take out power grid equipment and facilities that keep lights on, space heaters warm and computers running. It’s part of Moscow’s strategy to cripple the country’s infrastructure and freeze Ukraine into submission this winter.

    Braharnyk’s crew is one of many from energy company DTEK that moves swiftly in Kyiv – occasionally under artillery and rocket fire – to keep the city ticking. Colleagues across Ukraine do the same.

    From President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on down, Ukrainian leaders have warned that gas systems, water mains and power stations have become a new front as the war nears the 10-month mark.

    About half of Ukraine’s energy supply network is still damaged following widespread attacks on Nov. 23, when DTEK declared “the power system failed.”

    During that barrage, six of the company’s thermal power plants were shut down, and as many as 70% of residents in Ukraine’s capital lost power. The plants were brought back online within 24 hours, although power cuts affect about 30% of Kyiv’s residents during the day, dropping as low as 20% at night, DTEK spokeswoman Antonina Antosha said.

    DTEK, which works closely with Ukrainian energy company NEC Ukrenergo, says Russian forces have attacked its facilities 17 times since early October, including twice on Monday alone. The company has reported the deaths of more than 106 employees since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the vast majority of them members of the military, but says 14 were killed while either off-duty or working.

    Three Ukrainian energy workers were killed and 24 injured in the past week, DTEK said.

    On Thursday, Braharnyk’s crew had little more to worry about than freezing temperatures and piles of snow as they pared back branches near overhead electricity lines that power homes and businesses on much of the left bank of the Dnieper River that cuts through the capital.

    That doesn’t diminish their constant state of alert. When the missiles started dropping mid-afternoon on Nov. 23, the crew rushed to an unspecified emergency site, assessed the damage, and quickly determined what repairs needed to done within a span of a few hours. A second “brigade” was then called in to do the actual repair work.

    “Three or four lines were snapped,” and it required several hours of work to install new ones, Braharnyk said.

    The crews can’t just rush in. In theory, but not always in practice, de-mining experts are expected to arrive first and give the all-clear that there’s no danger from unexploded ordnance. Then, clean-up crews, when needed, clear away debris and fragments from downed lines and blast destruction so trucks and heavy equipment can get through to complete the repairs.

    The infrastructure-targeted strikes aren’t as perilous as the attacks of the opening phase of the war, when Russian forces advanced to the outskirts of Kyiv and some neighborhoods of the capital before being pushed back. At that time, repair work was done under fire.

    “That was much worse,” Braharnyk recalled. “These days, it’s better because the rockets are being fired from farther away.”

    Ukraine has adapted. A popular mobile phone app whose name title translates as Air Alarm regularly sounds warnings that Russian strikes are under way, specifying the region.

    In light of the new Russian strategy, “when we hear that there is an incoming strike from Russia, we already know they’re going to aim at the power supplies, or power lines,” Braharnyk said.

    DTEK’s crews now stay close to their operational base, ready to load up and deploy on a moment’s notice. The risks remain real.

    “Even now, we’re not really confident because no one knows if they will do a double hit when we deploy to repair a site that they’ve just struck,” he said.

    The psychological strain also weighs heavy.

    “The hardest thing is … hearing the explosions and the strikes and we don’t know what it is exactly: it could be incoming missiles or SWAT teams de-mining fields so other brigades can get through,” Braharnyk said.

    For the electric company crews, it’s about getting the job done, “no matter what’s happening around us,” he said. “We’re just here to fix it.”

    ———

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

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  • Helping Ukraine is ‘self-preservation,’ finance chief says

    Helping Ukraine is ‘self-preservation,’ finance chief says

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    FRANKFURT, Germany — Ukraine’s finance minister says crucial Western financial support is “not charity” but “self-preservation” in the fight to defend democracy as his country deals with growing costs to repair electrical and heating infrastructure wrecked by Russian attacks.

    Serhiy Marchenko also told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday from Kyiv that he believes European Union officials will sort out a dispute with Hungary that has blocked a key 18 billion-euro ($18.97 billion) aid package and would cover much of Ukraine‘s looming budget gap.

    Marchenko said financial support for Ukraine is tiny compared to what developed countries spent to combat emergencies like the global financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. And that the money bolsters freedom and security far beyond his country’s struggle, he added.

    “It’s not charity to support Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “We are trying to protect freedom and democracy of all (the) civilized world.”

    He said the damage from Russian missile attacks on civilian infrastructure such as power stations would cost 0.5% of annual economic output next year, adding to the burden as Ukraine tries to cover a budget deficit equivalent to $38 billion. The World Bank put Ukraine’s gross domestic product at just over $200 billion in 2021, so the damage could amount to roughly $1 billion.

    Ukraine needs outside financing to cover the budget deficit caused by the war. Cash or loans help it avoid printing money at the central bank to cover basic needs like paying people’s pensions, a practice that risks fueling already painful inflation.

    Proposed EU loans worth 18 billion euros, along with major U.S. support and possible help from the International Monetary Fund, would cover a large part of Ukraine’s budget shortfall. But the European package has been blocked by Hungary over disputes with Brussels, which is concerned about democratic backsliding and possible mismanagement of EU money in Budapest.

    “Of course, it’s worried us and we’re worried that it can block or postpone the money flow for Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “But I believe that the wisdom” of EU officials “can solve all issues, and they will together join Ukraine’s efforts for independence.”

    He praised what he called continuing strong support from Western governments, citing the U.S. in particular for its “predictability.”

    Total aid committed to Ukraine reached 113 billion euros ($119 billion) as of this week, according to data compiled by the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    “Now is not the time to postpone any support, to just be tired of Ukraine and Ukraine’s problems … because the next time, you realized that without Ukraine, Russia will come closer to the European border,” Marchenko said.

    “It’s about self-preservation, it’s self-protection — this should be in the minds of EU citizens,” he added.

    Ukraine has made gains on the battlefield but has been struggling with Russian attacks on critical infrastructure, leaving millions of Ukrainians without regular access to heat, electricity and water in sub-freezing temperatures, U.N. officials say.

    Donors are scrambling to get generators, insulation, medical supplies and cash into the country as winter looms. The U.N. Development Program and World Bank are working to assess damage and fill requests for power transformers and substations to restore Ukraine’s electrical grid.

    On top of people losing power and heat, Marchenko noted how the number of Ukrainians living in poverty has been “increasing drastically.” Inflation was above 26% as of October and could rise to 28% by year’s end, he said.

    The government is working to increase pensions for some, while Western donations go toward social and humanitarian aid.

    “All possible resources which we can use, we will use to help our people to survive in this condition,” he said. “But again, people understand why they are suffering” — to live in an independent country.

    Marchenko said the war would leave behind Ukraine’s earlier reputation for corruption and political influence by prominent business figures dubbed oligarchs.

    Ukraine improved its score on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index in recent years but still ranked 122 out of 180 countries before the war.

    Now, “there is no time for oligarchs. There is no time for corruption in Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “Half our budget is military expenditure, so half is totally social and humanitarian expenditures,” leaving “no room” for misconduct.

    “And I would prefer that this myth or this story about Ukraine’s corruption will evaporate after the war,” he said.

    Marchenko’s stance on corruption was echoed by Torbjorn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, during an online book launch Thursday for “Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and Policies” by the Paris- and London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    “If a country is not spending money wisely when it’s being attacked by a neighbor like Russia, we know that they would have lost the war by now,” Becker said.

    “So the fact that Ukraine is still there and defending its territory is one of the testaments that corruption should not be our focus now when we are talking about support to Ukraine,” he added.

    ———

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

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  • Helping Ukraine is ‘self-preservation,’ finance chief says

    Helping Ukraine is ‘self-preservation,’ finance chief says

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    FRANKFURT, Germany — Ukraine’s finance minister says crucial Western financial support is “not charity” but “self-preservation” in the fight to defend democracy as his country deals with growing costs to repair electrical and heating infrastructure wrecked by Russian attacks.

    Serhiy Marchenko also told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday from Kyiv that he believes European Union officials will sort out a dispute with Hungary that has blocked a key 18 billion-euro ($18.97 billion) aid package and would cover much of Ukraine‘s looming budget gap.

    Marchenko said financial support for Ukraine is tiny compared to what developed countries spent to combat emergencies like the global financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. And that the money bolsters freedom and security far beyond his country’s struggle, he added.

    “It’s not charity to support Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “We are trying to protect freedom and democracy of all (the) civilized world.”

    He said the damage from Russian missile attacks on civilian infrastructure such as power stations would cost 0.5% of annual economic output next year, adding to the burden as Ukraine tries to cover a budget deficit equivalent to $38 billion. The World Bank put Ukraine’s gross domestic product at just over $200 billion in 2021, so the damage could amount to roughly $1 billion.

    Ukraine needs outside financing to cover the budget deficit caused by the war. Cash or loans help it avoid printing money at the central bank to cover basic needs like paying people’s pensions, a practice that risks fueling already painful inflation.

    Proposed EU loans worth 18 billion euros, along with major U.S. support and possible help from the International Monetary Fund, would cover a large part of Ukraine’s budget shortfall. But the European package has been blocked by Hungary over disputes with Brussels, which is concerned about democratic backsliding and possible mismanagement of EU money in Budapest.

    “Of course, it’s worried us and we’re worried that it can block or postpone the money flow for Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “But I believe that the wisdom” of EU officials “can solve all issues, and they will together join Ukraine’s efforts for independence.”

    He praised what he called continuing strong support from Western governments, citing the U.S. in particular for its “predictability.” Total aid committed to Ukraine reached 113 billion euros as of this week, according to data compiled by the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    “Now is not the time to postpone any support, to just be tired of Ukraine and Ukraine’s problems … because the next time, you realized that without Ukraine, Russia will come closer to the European border,” Marchenko said.

    “It’s about self-preservation, it’s self-protection — this should be in the minds of EU citizens,” he added.

    Ukraine has made gains on the battlefield but has been struggling with Russian attacks on critical infrastructure, leaving millions of Ukrainians without regular access to heat, electricity and water in sub-freezing temperatures, U.N. officials say.

    Donors are scrambling to get generators, insulation, medical supplies and cash into the country as winter looms. The U.N. Development Program and World Bank are working to assess damage and fill requests for power transformers and substations to restore Ukraine’s electrical grid.

    On top of people losing power and heat, Marchenko noted how the number of Ukrainians living in poverty has been “increasing drastically.” Inflation was above 26% as of October and could rise to 28% by year’s end, he said.

    The government is working to increase pensions for some, while Western donations go toward social and humanitarian aid.

    “All possible resources which we can use, we will use to help our people to survive in this condition,” he said. “But again, people understand why they are suffering” — to live in an independent country.

    Marchenko said the war would leave behind Ukraine’s earlier reputation for corruption and political influence by prominent business figures dubbed oligarchs.

    Ukraine improved its score on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index in recent years but still ranked 122 out of 180 countries before the war.

    Now, “there is no time for oligarchs. There is no time for corruption in Ukraine,” Marchenko said. “Half our budget is military expenditure, so half is totally social and humanitarian expenditures,” leaving “no room” for misconduct.

    “And I would prefer that this myth or this story about Ukraine’s corruption will evaporate after the war,” he said.

    Marchenko’s stance on corruption was echoed by Torbjorn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, during an online book launch Thursday for “Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and Policies” by the Paris- and London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    “If a country is not spending money wisely when it’s being attacked by a neighbor like Russia, we know that they would have lost the war by now,” Becker said.

    “So the fact that Ukraine is still there and defending its territory is one of the testaments that corruption should not be our focus now when we are talking about support to Ukraine,” he added.

    ———

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

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  • Blinken confident in Finland, Sweden accession to NATO

    Blinken confident in Finland, Sweden accession to NATO

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    WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday the United States is confident that Finland and Sweden will be approved soon for membership in NATO despite ratification delays in allies Turkey and Hungary.

    After meeting his Finnish and Swedish counterparts on Thursday, Blinken said both countries had proved their bona fides to join the alliance, notably in joining NATO in providing support to Ukraine to counter Russia’s invasion.

    Nearly all of NATO’s 30 members have already approved Finland and Sweden’s applications to join the alliance, which were made after Russia launched its war in Ukraine. Turkey and Hungary are the only two to not yet have ratified Finland and Sweden’s accession.

    “Both countries have taken significant, concrete actions to fulfill their commitments, including those related to the security concerns on the part of our ally, Turkey,” Blinken said. “As their membership process continues, the United States is fully committed to Finland and Sweden’s accession.”

    But Blinken said he believed Turkey’s concerns, notably with Sweden over its past support for Kurdish groups that Ankara sees as a threat, would be overcome in the near future. Sweden this week extradited a convicted member of the Kurdish PKK militant group to Turkey. Hungary’s parliament is expected to vote on NATO expansion early next year.

    “I’m confident that NATO will formally welcome Finland and Sweden as members soon,” he told reporters at a joint news conference at the State Department with Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.

    Blinken took the opportunity to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go to war with Ukraine had backfired if he truly intended to push back on NATO expansion.

    “As Sweden and Finland prepare to join NATO, we know that he’s failed at weakening our alliance,” he said. “Indeed, he’s only made NATO stronger and bigger.”

    Haavisto said discussions with Turkey over the PKK have gone well so far, although there was still not a date for the Turkish parliament to consider the expansion.

    “Of course, our hope is that this decision should come from Turkey rather sooner than later,” he said.

    Billstrom said he would soon travel to Turkey to continue talks on the matter. “I hope that the outcome of that discussion will also bring us forward,” he said.

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  • Nobel laureate: No lasting peace in Ukraine without justice

    Nobel laureate: No lasting peace in Ukraine without justice

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark — There will be no lasting peace in Ukraine until there is justice and human rights, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties said Thursday as she arrived in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize with fellow human rights campaigners from Belarus and Russia.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he can do exactly what he wants,” Oleksandra Matviichuk told reporters upon arrival at the Oslo airport. “There will be no lasting peace in our region until we achieve justice.”

    “Human rights and peace are inextricably linked,” Matviichuk said. “A state that systematically violates human rights does so not only against its own citizens, but against an entire region, an entire world. Russia is a great example of this,” she said according to the Norwegian news agency NTB.

    This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was shared by jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the laureates “have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”

    The prize was seen as a strong rebuke to the authoritarian rule of Putin.

    “We have received this award during a war that started in 2014, and which has escalated into a bloody and cruel conflict,” Matviichuk said, adding that getting the Nobel Peace Prize “entails a great responsibility.”

    Jan Rachinsky, chairman of the International Memorial Board, who also arrived in Oslo Thursday to receive the prize, said the situation in Ukraine reminded him of the conditions in Russia during World War II, and what his own relatives then experienced: Lack of electricity, heat, food.

    “The most important message from us is that the world must react more strongly to violations of human rights,” he told reporters at the airport, according to NTB.

    Natallia Pinchuk, the wife of Ales Bialiatski, will receive the prize of her husband’s behalf, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has said. Bialiatski, who founded the non-governmental organization Human Rights Center Viasna, was detained following protests in 2020 against the re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. He remains in jail without trial and faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

    While the peace prize is handed out Saturday in the Norwegian capital, the other Nobel awards are given during a ceremony in Stockholm at the same time, in line with award founder Alfred Nobel’s wishes. The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

    Each prize includes a diploma, a gold medal and a monetary award of 10 million kronor (about $967,000) to be shared among the recipents.

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  • Scrutiny of Ukraine church draws praise, fear of overreach

    Scrutiny of Ukraine church draws praise, fear of overreach

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    KYIV, Ukraine — After its searches of holy sites belonging to Ukraine’s historic Orthodox church, the nation’s security agency posted photos of evidence it recovered — including rubles, Russian passports and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch.

    Supporters and detractors of the church debate whether such items are innocuous — or increase suspicions the church is a nest of pro-Russian propaganda and intelligence-gathering.

    What’s unambiguous are other photos shared by the agency, known as the SBU, posted as recently as Wednesday — some showing an armed Ukrainian officer standing outside a church building, others showing brawny, camouflaged officers questioning clerics in long beards and cassocks.

    They illustrate the increased pressure the Ukrainian government is putting on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with its centuries-old ties to Moscow, as the brutal Russian invasion slogs into the 10th month of a war that has had religious dimensions from the start.

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday announced measures primarily targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is one of two major Orthodox churches in Ukraine following a 2019 schism. Even though the UOC declared independence from Moscow in May, such a declaration is easier spoken than accomplished amid the complexities of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Besides, many Ukrainians don’t believe it’s really free from Moscow.

    Zelenskyy called for legislation that would forbid “religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.”

    He also wants a review of the “canonical” connection between the UOC and the Moscow Patriarchate — the center of the Russian Orthodox Church – and of the status of the revered, millennium-old Pechersk-Lavra monastery in Kyiv, now government-owned but largely used by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The government also placed sanctions on its abbot, another wealthy churchman and several bishops in Russia or Russian-held parts of Ukraine.

    “We will ensure, in particular, spiritual independence,” Zelenskyy said. “We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul.”

    The matter is testing whether the young republic can survive Russia’s attacks — and as a pluralistic state respecting freedom of conscience. It also raises the stakes as the two rival Orthodox churches vie for the loyalties of the nation’s majority Orthodox population and for church properties.

    Prominent Ukrainian Orthodox Church leaders say it has loyally supported Ukraine from the start of the war and that a government crackdown will only hand a propaganda coup to the Russians, who claim to be defending Ukraine’s Orthodox against persecution.

    “It is national suicide when they slander and try to ‘ban’ a part of their own people,” said the Rev. Mykolay Danylevich, who has often served as a Ukrainian Orthodox Church spokesman.

    But a bishop in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — the similarly named rival church, with no ties to Moscow — supported Zelensky’s measures.

    “Maybe it is hard psychologically that this is happening now in monasteries and temples,” said Metropolitan Oleksandr of the Transfiguration of Jesus Orthodox Cathedral in Kyiv. He spoke to The Associated Press by candlelight as portraits of church elders looked on, amid controlled power outages.

    “But I think it is better that there will be searches than some people who help guide enemy missiles.”

    The Biden administration says it supports Ukraine’s self-defense while expecting it to comply with international law on protecting freedom of religion.

    The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been loyal to the Moscow patriarch since the 17th century.

    In 2019, the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine received recognition from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. But Moscow’s and most other Orthodox patriarchs refused to accept that designation.

    Russia’s February invasion underscored the alliance between President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who said Russia was defending Ukrainians from Western liberalism and its “gay parades.”

    From the start, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church denounced the invasion and such justifications, backing Ukraine. In May, the church declared its own “self-sufficiency and independence” from Moscow.

    While that sounds definitive, the church didn’t declare itself “autocephalous” — the Orthodox gold standard of independence. That was in part to maintain ties with other countries’ Orthodox churches that hadn’t agreed to such a status. The UOC did give Moscow a liturgical cold shoulder by dropping the commemoration of Kirill as its leader in public worship and blessing its own sacramental oil rather than use Moscow’s supply.

    These acts represent “an enormous step” in the Orthodox world even if they seem arcane, said Elizabeth Prodromou, a fellow for Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

    Even so, some see the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as still aligned with Moscow and the “Russian world” concept of political and spiritual unity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians.

    “What the people want is for the church to make very clear who they are, who they are for,” said Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, a Ukraine native and professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm.

    Ukraine’s counter-intelligence service, known as the SBU, searched the landmark Pechersk Lavra complex last month, citing an incident in which “songs praising the ‘Russian world’ were sung.”

    The SBU said it searched 350 religious sites across Ukraine last month and more this week. It alleged the searches yielded pro-Russian materials, and accused a bishop of pro-Russia messaging. On Wednesday, it reported that a UOC priest from Lysychansk was sentenced to 12 years for tipping off Russian invaders to Ukrainian troop positions.

    While the evidence shows some within the UOC remain pro-Moscow, the church also has publicly disagreed with Kirill’s position, Prodromou said.

    Any enforcement actions need to be transparent and respect the religious liberty guaranteed in Ukraine’s constitution, said Prodromou, a former vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

    Even if there are pro-Russian elements in the church, “it still raises the question of what is to be done and whether this is a prudent step by the Ukrainian government,” she said, noting that in pluralistic Ukraine, a reduction of religious liberty for one group would be worrying for others.

    “This is not only an Orthodox question. Other communities will be watching: Protestants, Greek Catholics, Jews, Muslims” as well as the OCU.

    The UOC is being squeezed by all sides – from Russians claiming the church as their own to Ukrainians who see the OCU as Ukraine’s true church, said John Burgess, a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor and author of “Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia.”

    Zelenskyy, too, is in a tight spot, Burgess said: “There’s such anti-Russian sentiment that (with) anything that can be tainted as somehow pro-Russian, he gets a lot of pressure to do something about it.”

    But Prodromou says treating the entire UOC as disloyal “would be a mistake based on the empirical evidence and would also be imprudent because it would undermine the possibility of full reconciliation” between the two Orthodox churches.

    ———

    Smith reported from Pittsburgh.

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Italy’s La Scala opens season to Ukrainian protests

    Italy’s La Scala opens season to Ukrainian protests

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    MILAN (AP) — Italy’s most treasured opera house, Teatro alla Scala, opened its new season Wednesday with the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” against the backdrop of Ukrainian protests that the cultural event is a propaganda win for the Kremlin during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, in her first cultural outing since taking office, attended La Scala’s gala premiere in Milan, joining Italian President Sergio Mattarella and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the royal box.

    A group of about 30 Ukrainians gathered outside the theater to protest highlighting Russian culture while President Vladimir Putin wages a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture.

    They were kept across the main piazza, far from any interaction with arriving dignitaries and officials, and politics did not enter the theater.

    The crowd of mostly prominent figures from Italian business, culture and politics showered the production with 13 minutes of applause. The loudest praise was reserved for Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role along with a cascade of flowers for chief conductor Riccardo Chailly.

    Asked about Ukrainians’ objection to putting a spotlight on Russian culture as war rages in its tenth month, von der Leyen praised Ukrainians as “fantastic, brave and courageous people,” but said that Russian culture should not be conflated with Putin.

    “We should not allow Putin to destroy all this,” von der Leyen said, referring to great Russian writers and composers, including Modest Petrovic Musorgsky, author of “Boris Godunov.” She added: “Full solidarity with our friends in Ukraine, and let’s make sure that we stand together.”

    Meloni, who has maintained Italy’s support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression, also sought to draw a line between culture and politics.

    “We don’t have anything against the Russian people, Russian history, Russian culture,” Meloni said. “We have something against those who have made the political choice to invade a sovereign country.”

    A letter of protest from Ukraine’s consul in Milan and a petition by the Ukrainian diaspora failed to persuade the theater to drop “Boris Godunov.” La Scala officials say Chailly chose the opera as the 2022-23 season opener three years ago at Abdrazakov’s suggestion, and it was too late to substitute the production.

    Abdrazakov was heralded for his sixth La Scala season premiere performance, the first in his native language, leading a mostly Russian cast along with La Scala’s chorus.

    “I have sung here in Italian, in French, once in Italian, but in Russian, it is another thing entirely. And then, this opera, I adore it very much,″ Abdrazakov said backstage.

    Danish director Kasper Holten’s said he sought to emphasize the opera’s message about “the cynicism of power,″ which he said remains relevant more than 150 years after it was written. In Holten’s staging, Godunov is haunted by the bloody presence of the child prince he killed to become czar, and then has to confront bloody depictions of his own cherished children, foreshadowing their own fate.

    “This is sadly a reminder to us that wherever there’s a lust for power, it’s also the language of blood,″ Holten said backstage.

    La Scala management have insisted that “Boris Godonov” was not propaganda for Putin. Still, Russian media widely reported on the production, focusing on officials’ dismissals of the Ukrainian protests. Russian state TV was also on hand for opening night.

    In the piazza, Ukrainian protest organizers were unpersuaded by the attempt to keep politics out of culture.

    “I don’t know why Italians tend to think Russian culture does not have anything to do with Russian government or the Russian people. It is all intertwined with the medieval mentality that created Putin,” said Valeriya Kalchenko, a native of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and long-time Milan resident who organized a protest.

    She noted that the Polish National Opera in Warsaw canceled its scheduled April performances of the same opera just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, citing the suffering of the Ukrainian people. It said it would consider staging the opera in peacetime.

    “They could have reacted in the same way, because La Scala at the beginning of the war had nine months to substitute the opera with an Italian opera. There is no shortage of them; it is an Italian art form,” Kalchenko said.

    Other Ukrainian organizations, including a youth association, decided against physically joining the protest despite objections to the Russian production. Instead, they gathered silently, holding sheet music written by a Ukrainian composer.

    Zoia Stankovska said that “muting” Russian culture during the war “would be a gesture, a sign of solidarity, with Ukrainians, and a clear message as long as the aggression is ongoing.”

    La Scala management has emphasized its support of Ukraine, including a benefit concert that raised 400,000 euros ($421,000). La Scala was also the first theater in the West to cut off relations with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who was engaged at the Milan theater when the war broke out, after he failed to express a desire for a peaceful solution.

    The gala season opener, which is held on the Dec. 7 holiday for Milan’s patron St. Ambrose, is one of the top events on the European cultural calendar, and often attracts protests aimed at grabbing the attention of Italian movers and shakers in attendance.

    In that tradition, climate protesters early Wednesday threw paint on the opera house’s columns to promote more urgent actions to curb climate change. The paint was quickly removed. And union protesters set up near the Ukrainian protest, adding “no war” to their manifold slogans.

    ___

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

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  • Top TV ’22: The Slap, congressional docudrama and royal loss

    Top TV ’22: The Slap, congressional docudrama and royal loss

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    NEW YORK (AP) — In a year marked by unexpected winners and losers, television was keeping tabs.

    A Hollywood star tarnished his image and that of the Oscars. A battered country stood up to an invader, again and again. The Jan. 6 insurrection became an unexpectedly watchable TV docudrama. A monarch was celebrated and mourned. Television entertainment had its usual highs and lows.

    Here are some of 2022′s defining TV moments from the perspective of The Associated Press’ television and media writers.

    THE SLAP

    The Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest platform and Will Smith, one of its biggest stars, was expected to reign with a best-actor award for the tennis dad biopic “King Richard.” But Smith lost while winning. Angered by a joke that presenter Chris Rock made at the expense of wife Jada Pinkett Smith, he strode onstage and slapped Rock, hard, drawing gasps from the TV and theater audience. A tearful Smith made excuses during his acceptance speech that March night and issued subsequent apologies. The film academy penalized him, but the Oscar prospects of his upcoming movie, “Emancipation,” are being debated.

    HUTCHINSON’S TESTIMONY

    Frankly, expectations were low when the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection scheduled public hearings. Congressional hearings tend to produce more heat than light, as preening politicians compete for sound bites to impress their supporters. But with only two Republicans on the committee — both of them appalled by what happened at the Capitol — the committee put on sharp, tightly-focused presentations, aided by a former ABC News producer. All made for compelling viewing, but none more than the live testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who calmly described what was happening in the Trump administration

    DEPP vs HEARD

    Last year, Britney Spears’ bid to end her conservatorship was the mesmerizing celebrity legal battle. This year, the courtroom crossfire between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard — all playing out on TV — was the main attraction. Their defamation suits put the two actors in the kind of harsh, unflattering light barred from any Hollywood set. As the exes traded allegations of assault and substance abuse, the trial became increasingly sad, seamy and inescapable. The jury’s June verdict largely favored Depp. Heard might not be the only loser, experts warned: the spectacle and its outcome could have a chilling effect on women who might press abuse claims.

    UKRAINE BRAVERY

    The images of war are always awful, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine produced many of them. Yet the many moments of bravery shown by the Ukrainian people and their leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, changed the perception of a conflict many feared would be an ugly rout, and rallied the world to their side. Pick your moments — a woman who offered sunflower seeds to a Russian soldier so they can sprout from his pants pocket where his body falls, the defiantly profane response from Ukrainians stationed on a remote island when Russians told them to surrender, Zelenskyy’s media-savvy campaign for support. It was the stuff of heroes.

    KENOBI-VADER REMATCH

    Those who find Disney’s ever-expanding “Star Wars” universe is leaving them cold may have warmed up after the season finale of “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The epic, roughly four-minute lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and former apprentice Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vadar (Hayden Christensen) was a fierce back-and-forth with, of course, good and evil hanging in the balance. But it was the unmasking of Vadar that sent Disney+ viewers into a stratospheric tizzy, his scarred face and psyche revealing a man beyond redemption.

    YELLOWSTONE

    When 12.1 million people tuned in on Nov. 13 to watch the season premiere of Kevin Costner’s “Yellowstone” on the otherwise invisible Paramount and some sister cable networks, it was the most-watched scripted show of the new television season. The Western is the definition of a broadly popular show, yet wasn’t on a broadcast network, which were conceived on the idea of reaching as many people as possible. You could call that a failure of imagination that typifies the decline of the networks, but the truth was they never really had a shot at “Yellowstone,” which was initially developed at HBO but went nowhere there. For every television success, there are people kicking themselves because they didn’t see it coming.

    REAL-LIFE CROWN

    Queen Elizabeth wasn’t America’s monarch, but her death in September at age 96 hit home and drew blanket coverage in the former British colony. Maybe it was “The Crown,” maybe it was her conspiratorial smile when she shared tea and secrets with Paddington Bear. Her dedication to service and a stately funeral procession with echoes of history certainly merited attention. But the catnip for TV came when brothers William and Harry and wives Kate and Meghan, any tensions publicly masked, joined to greet mourners. Princess Anne provided a memorable grace note: A deep curtsy as her mother’s coffin was carried by her.

    THE WALKING DEAD

    When “The Walking Dead” aired its final episode on Nov. 20, it was the end of an era for the quintessential punch-above-your-weight AMC cable network. How much that was the case became clear less than two weeks later, when company chairman James Dolan sent a memo to staff saying CEO Christina Spade was out after three months and large-scale layoffs were coming. AMC is hardly the only media company, or cable network, that is hurting. “We are primarily a content company and the mechanisms for the monetization of content are in disarray,” Dolan said. Shed a tear for the boutique network that gave us “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” and cable networks in general.

    ELECTION CALM

    With memories of the 2020 election chaos fresh, news organizations prepared for a midterm election night where democracy itself could be in peril. Only… it wasn’t. Certainly, there were close elections and control of Congress wasn’t clear for several days. While there were a few exceptions, the election ran smoothly and most candidates accepted the results. And the story became those results: an unexpectedly strong showing for Democrats that defied history and expectations.

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  • Poland says it will accept German Patriot air defense system

    Poland says it will accept German Patriot air defense system

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    WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s defense minister said Tuesday that his country will accept a Patriot missile defense system which Germany offered to deploy to Poland last month.

    The German offer was made after an errant missile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine, killing two Polish men.

    Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak had initially said he accepted the offer with “satisfaction.” But he and other Polish officials later said they felt the Patriot system should be placed in Ukraine, something Germany was unwilling to do.

    What appeared to be Poland cold-shouldering Germany’s offer created strains in the relationship between the two neighboring countries, which have a difficult history but today are important trade partners and allies in NATO.

    Blaszczak said Tuesday on Twitter he was sorry Germany did not want to place the Patriot system in Ukraine.

    “I was disappointed to accept the decision to reject the support of Ukraine,” he wrote. “Placing the Patriots in western Ukraine would increase the security of Poles and Ukrainians.”

    Nonetheless, he said the two side were proceeding “with arrangements regarding the placement of the launcher in Poland and connecting them to our command system.”

    Germany has said the Patriot system offered to Poland was part of NATO’s integrated air defense and only to be deployed on NATO territory.

    ———

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

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  • Spain: numerous devices found after Ukrainian Embassy blast

    Spain: numerous devices found after Ukrainian Embassy blast

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    MADRID — Police in Spain detonated a suspicious parcel discovered at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spanish officials said Thursday, a day after a similar package sent to the Ukrainian Embassy ignited upon opening and injured an employee.

    “We can confirm a suspicious package was received at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, and are aware of reports of other packages sent to other locations throughout Spain,” the American embassy said in a response to an Associated Press inquiry.

    “We are grateful to Spanish law enforcement for their assistance with this matter,” it added.

    Spain’s police said the detonated parcel “contained substances similar to those used in pyrotechnics.”

    The action followed police reporting that multiple explosive parcels were sent in Spain over the past two days. Police said they were delivered to Spain’s Defense Ministry, a European Union satellite center located at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base outside Madrid and to an arms factory in northeastern Spain that makes grenades sent to Ukraine.

    Authorities said a bomb squad also destroyed an explosive device that was dispatched by regular post to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Nov. 24.

    Spain’s interior ministry, which is charge of the country’s police forces, said that the envelope intercepted at the American embassy’s security screening point was “of similar characteristics as the previous ones.” It was then detonated by authorities after a wide area was cordoned off by Spanish police around the embassy in the center of Spain’s capital.

    Spanish authorities have yet to determine who was responsible for the letters or link them to the war in Ukraine.

    The Russian Embassy in Madrid on Thursday condemned the letter bombs, saying in a tweet that “any threat or terrorist attack, especially those directed at diplomatic missions, are totally condemnable.”

    The package sent to the Ukrainian Embassy was addressed to the country’s ambassador to Spain, Serhii Pohoreltsev. The employee handling it was slightly injured when it burst into flames.

    In an interview Wednesday following the blast, ambassador Pohoreltsev told European Pravda, a news website linked to the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, that the explosion could have been more serious but for the professional behavior of the injured employee.

    He said the parcel looked suspicious to the secretary of the ambassador because there was no return address and it did not look like a typical diplomatic post.

    “The package contained a box, which caused suspicion to the commandant and he decided to take it outside – with no one in the vicinity – and open it. After opening the box and hearing a click that followed, he tossed it and then heard the explosion,” said the ambassador.

    The embassy employee was treated for light wounds on his hand and later returned to work.

    Spain’s National Court is investigating the incident as a terrorist act.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba ordered stepped-up security at all of Ukraine’s foreign embassies abroad and asked his Spanish counterpart for a fast investigation.

    Two further Ukrainian embassies received threatening letters on Wednesday, Kuleba said on the sidelines of a high-level security meeting in Lodz, Poland, on Thursday.

    Kuleba added, without giving details, that “other disturbing events took place” on Wednesday, involving “the sending of very concrete threats to Ukrainian embassies.” He declined to specify the embassies in question.

    An initial assessment indicated the first five packages were likely sent from within Spain, Secretary of State for Security Rafael Pérez said. Police said all but one of the letter bombs were disposed of.

    Pérez said the one intact explosive device was from the air base and that it and its packaging would be part of the investigation.

    Officials said that package was sent to the director of the European Union Satellite Center. The center, known as SatCen, is an EU geospatial intelligence body, and and its missions include monitoring Ukraine.

    “The Spanish authorities were immediately alerted, they safely disabled the parcel and they have started their investigations,” said Nabila Massrali, EU spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

    “Nobody has been injured and the situation is under control.”

    The Defense Ministry package was addressed to Defense Minister Margarita Robles, Pérez said. Spain has contributed both military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.

    Robles was visiting Ukraine on Thursday to support its defense effort with another aid bundle. Authorities did not provide details about the aid, saying they did not want to give away sensitive information to Russia’s forces.

    Robles said the disturbing discoveries of recent days would have no effect on Spain’s full backing of Ukraine.

    “The police are investigating these packages, but let one thing be perfectly clear,” she said in Spanish. “None of these packages or any other violent act will change the clear and firm support that Spain and other NATO and EU countries have for Ukraine.”

    The arms factory targeted is located in the northeastern city of Zaragoza. The parcel was addressed to the factory’s director.

    A government official in Zaragoza said that both the arms factory and Ukrainian Embassy packages had the same email address listed as the sender. No further details were given.

    The sending of small explosive devices in postal parcels is not uncommon in many countries. They were a common occurrence for many years in Spain, especially during the most active years of the now-defunct armed Basque group ETA.

    Pérez said security was increased at public buildings following the discovery of the package sent to Spain’s prime minister. The move now has been extended to embassies, which already had extra security measures in place after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.

    —————

    Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.

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  • Security meeting overshadowed by Russia’s war, ban on Lavrov

    Security meeting overshadowed by Russia’s war, ban on Lavrov

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    LODZ, Poland — Europe’s largest security organization, one founded to maintain peace and stability on the continent, opened a meeting Thursday with strong denunciations of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a conflict that is among the greatest challenges the body has faced in its nearly half-century of existence.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been a rare international forum — along with the United Nations — where Russia and Western powers have been able meet to discuss security matters, and the meeting in Lodz, Poland, is the first high-level meeting of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

    But since the war began, the OSCE has been another forum for the bitter clash to play out between Russia and the West, even as the OSCE’s own powers to help resolve conflict have waned.

    Notably absent was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who wanted to join the meeting but was banned by Poland, the current chair of the OSCE, from entering the country. Poland is a member of the 27-member European Union, which has put Lavrov on a sanctions list.

    Lavrov himself denounced the ban on Thursday.

    “I can say responsibly that Poland’s anti-chairmanship of the OSCE will take the most miserable place ever in this organization’s history,” Lavrov said. “Nobody has ever caused such damage to the OSCE while being at its helm.”

    “Our Polish neighbors have been digging a grave for the organization by destroying the last remains of the consensus culture,” he said in a video call with reporters.

    The Polish chairman in office, Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, said he had a responsibility to defend the OSCE’s “fundamental principles,” and argued that it was not Poland but Russia which has hollowed out the organization by blocking much of its work. He accused Russia of spreading disinformation against Poland.

    “I would say it’s outrageous to hear Russia accusing the chairmanship of pushing the OSCE into the abyss, destroying its foundations and breaking its procedural rules,” Rau said.

    The OSCE’s effectiveness has been harmed by the war in Ukraine. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the OSCE acted as a mediator in Ukraine, negotiating the peace deals for eastern Ukraine following a Russian-backed separatist war that began there in 2014.

    The Vienna-headquartered OSCE, founded in 1975, also is engaged in conflict prevention efforts in other places, including Moldova, the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

    Also missing from the meeting in Lodz was Belarus Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, who died suddenly last weekend at the age of 64 and was buried earlier this week. Belarusian authorities didn’t give the cause of Makei’s death, and he wasn’t known to suffer from any chronic illness, triggering speculation about possible foul play.

    Officials at the conference lamented the loss of the security order in Europe which had prevailed since the end of World War II.

    “For the first time since the end of World War II, we are dealing with such a glaring, armed act against the principles that we all voluntarily agreed to in order to prevent the outbreak of another war in Europe,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told the gathered representatives.

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  • Noted Russian nationalist says army has too few doctors

    Noted Russian nationalist says army has too few doctors

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    MOSCOW — One of Russia’s most prominent nationalist politicians said the Russian military does not have an adequate number of doctors among other problems, a message he delivered in a meeting Saturday with the mothers of soldiers mobilized for the fight in Ukraine.

    The comments by Leonid Slutsky, leader of the populist Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of parliament, was an unusually public admission of problems within the military as Russian forces suffer a series of battlefield setbacks.

    “There are not enough doctors in the military units; everyone says this. I cannot say they do not exist at all, but they are practically not seen there,” Slutsky said at the meeting in St. Petersburg.

    Olga Suyetina, foster mother of a soldier mobilized for the Ukraine conflict said she has heard from her son that the troops are underequipped.

    “There are no gunsights, nothing, we have to buy them by crowdfunding,” she said, referring to a device on a gun that helps to aim it. “There is nothing; they left Kharkiv, there was zero, there was not even polyethylene to cover the dugouts.”

    Slutsky, a strong supporter of Russia’s fight in Ukraine, said he would address the Defense Ministry about problems that troops face in Ukraine.

    “We must understand that the whole world is watching us. We are the largest state and when we do not have socks, shorts, doctors, intelligence, communications, or simply care for our children, questions arise that will be very difficult to answer,” he said.

    The meeting came a day after President Vladimir Putin met with another group of soldiers’ mothers. At that meeting Friday he hit out at what he said were skewed media portrayals of Moscow’s military campaign.

    “Life is more difficult and diverse that what is shown on TV screens or even on the internet. There are many fakes, cheating, lies there,” Putin said.

    Putin said that he sometimes speaks with troops directly by telephone, according to a Kremlin transcript and photos of the meeting.

    “I’ve spoken to (troops) who surprised me with their mood, their attitude to the matter. They didn’t expect these calls from me,” Putin said.

    He added that the calls “give me every reason to say that they are heroes.”

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  • Poland upsets some by rebuffing German air defense system

    Poland upsets some by rebuffing German air defense system

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    WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s government says an anti-missile system which Germany offered to send to Poland should instead go to Ukraine, a proposal that is a likely non-starter for Berlin because it would significantly ratchet up NATO involvement in Ukraine.

    Poland’s surprising response to Berlin’s offer was welcomed by Ukraine, which is desperate to protect its airspace as barrage upon barrage of Russian missiles have knocked out power across the country.

    But Germany’s Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht stressed that use of NATO defense systems outside its territory needs to be agreed by all member states.

    “It is important to us that Poland can rely on allies to stand by each other, even in difficult times, and especially Poland in its exposed position,” Lambrecht told reporters in Berlin.

    “That’s why we have offered to support air policing and Patriots, but these Patriots are part of an integrated air defense of NATO, that is, they are intended for NATO territory,” the minister said. “If they are used outside the NATO area, then it has to be agreed with NATO and with the allies beforehand.”

    In Poland, critics of the populist ruling party accused it of sacrificing the country’s security with a war next door in Ukraine for the sake of a domestic political struggle which exploits anti-German sentiment for short-term gain.

    The Rzeczpospolita daily called the new proposal by Poland’s leaders “shocking,” arguing that it would require sending German soldiers operating the system to Ukraine, and “that, in turn, would involve NATO in a direct clash with Russia, something the alliance has been trying to avoid from the beginning.”

    “This proposal affects Poland’s credibility and, worst of all, its security. The Germans get a clear signal that we do not want their help, so the defense potential of the Polish sky will be lower,” deputy editor Michal Szuldrzynski wrote. “In the worst war in Europe since 1945, this is an unforgivable mistake.”

    Poland’s populist ruling party, facing elections next fall with its popularity dented by 18% inflation, has been ratcheting up its anti-German messaging, long a staple of the party’s campaign rhetoric. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has also been trying to link his domestic opponents, particularly Donald Tusk, a former European Union leader, to Germany, saying Sunday that if Tusk’s party wins next year, Poland would find itself “under the German boot.”

    When Germany recently offered Warsaw Eurofighter planes and Patriot air defense missile batteries, Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak initially said it was an offer he would accept with “satisfaction.” The offer came after two men were killed when an apparently stray Ukrainian defense projectile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine on Nov. 15.

    But Poland’s tune changed after Kaczynski gave an interview to the state news agency PAP on Wednesday, saying that the offer is “interesting,” but that “it would be best for Poland’s security if Germany handed the equipment to the Ukrainians.”

    Since then, both Blaszczak and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki have repeated the position of Kaczynski, the country’s most powerful leader.

    After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, NATO beefed up its defenses along its eastern flank, including Poland, while Warsaw has worked to strengthen the nation’s own military with massive armaments purchases.

    NATO deployed U.S. Patriot batteries to Poland, and German Patriot batteries to Slovakia, as well as a French equivalent system to Romania.

    NATO’s policy is to not get directly involved in the war and to deploy the batteries only to protect member countries.

    Tapping into anti-German feelings has long been a political strategy to win votes in Poland. Older Poles still carry the trauma of the atrocities inflicted on Poland by Germany during World War II. With the election campaigning underway, Poland has been demanding $1.3 trillion in wartime reparations from Germany — a bill Berlin says it won’t pay.

    Kaczynski also blames Germany for supporting EU efforts to defend the rule of law in Poland and reverse changes to the judiciary, by withholding funding.

    Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created new strains. Poland was long a critic of Germany’s gas deals with Russia and has also been critical of Berlin’s initial hesitancy to arm Ukraine.

    In Poland, some critics pointed out that the government was not only refusing higher military protection but also turning its back on critical EU funding, billions of euros that have been held up by the government’s refusal to follow EU guidelines on safeguarding the independence of judges.

    Marcin Kierwinski of the opposition Civic Platform party said Kaczynski “has gone mad” for “rejecting” the Patriot missiles and EU funding “during war and crisis.”

    ————

    Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

    —————

    Follow all AP stories about the impact of the war in Ukraine at

    https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

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  • EU nations work on rift over gas price cap as cold sets in

    EU nations work on rift over gas price cap as cold sets in

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    BRUSSELS — On winter’s doorstep, European Union nations have not been able to surmount bitter disagreements as they struggle to effectively shield 450 million citizens from massive increases in their natural gas bills as cold weather sets in.

    An emergency meeting of energy ministers Thursday only shows how the energy crisis tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine has divided the 27-nation bloc in almost irreconcilable blocs.

    A massive August spike in natural gas prices stunned all but the wealthiest in the EU, forcing the bloc to look for a cap to contain volatile prices that are fueling inflation. Following several delays, energy ministers are back trying to break a deadlock between nations that are demanding cheaper gas to ease household bills — including Greece, Spain, Belgium, France and Poland — and those like Germany and the Netherlands that are insisting a price cap could cut supplies.

    A solution was nowhere near the horizon — to the frustration of many.

    “It’s already minus 10 (Celsius) in Poland,” said the nation’s energy minister, Anna Moskwa. “It’s winter now.”

    Natural gas and electricity prices have soared as Moscow has slashed gas supplies to Europe used for heating, electricity and industrial processes. European officials have accused Russia of energy warfare to punish EU countries for supporting Ukraine.

    So finding a deal is not only about providing warmth to citizens but also about showing a united front to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Talks have dragged on for months and even if a summit of EU leaders proclaimed some sort of breakthrough last month, nothing has been visible on the ground. Nations had been waiting for a proposal from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to set a threshold for a price cap, and when it came Tuesday, there was dismay and accusations it could never work.

    The commission set a threshold for a “safety price ceiling” to kick in if prices exceed 275 euros per megawatt hour for two weeks and if they are 58 euros higher than the price for liquefied natural gas on world markets.

    In political language, it means that such a system might not even have averted hikes as high as in August.

    “Setting a ceiling at 275 euros is not actually a ceiling,” said Greek Energy Minister Konstantinos Skrekas, who called for a cap that could go as low as 150 euros.

    “We are losing valuable time without results,” he added.

    In comparison, the price stood at 125 euros per megawatt-hour on Europe’s TTF benchmark Thursday. Since the price has fallen since the summertime peaks, diplomats have said the urgency has abated somewhat, even though it could pick up quickly again if the weather is colder than normal and supplies get tight.

    Some 15 nations are united around these views, but Germany and the Netherlands lead another group wanting to ensure that gas supply ships would not bypass Europe because they could get better prices elsewhere.

    “Security of supply is paramount. Europe still has to be an attractive gas market,” Estonian Economy Minister Riina Sikkut said.

    No decisive breakthrough was expected at Thursday’s meeting.

    Czech Industry Minister Jozef Síkela, who chaired the emergency meeting, said he was well aware of the “emotional reactions” the commission proposal had sparked and predicted that talks would be “rather spicy.”

    As a result of trade disruptions tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine, EU nations have reduced the overall share of Russian natural gas imports to the EU from 40% before the invasion to around 7%. And gas storage has already far exceeded targets and stand nearly at capacity.

    The EU has relied on increased imports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, including from the United States, to help address the fall in Russian supplies.

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  • UK PM Sunak makes surprise trip to Kyiv, boosts defense aid

    UK PM Sunak makes surprise trip to Kyiv, boosts defense aid

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    KYIV, Ukraine — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised 125 anti-aircraft guns and other air-defense technology as he made an unannounced visit Saturday — his first — to Ukraine’s snow-blanketed capital for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

    The air-defense package, which Britain valued at 50 million pounds ($60 million), comes as Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power grid and other key infrastructure from the air, causing widespread blackouts for millions of Ukrainians amid frigid weather.

    The package includes radar and other technology to counter the Iran-supplied exploding drones that Russia has used against Ukrainian targets. It comes on top of a delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles that Britain announced earlier this month.

    The U.K. has been one of the staunchest Western backers of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Speaking alongside Zelenskyy, Sunak noted that the U.K. has given 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in military aid and pledged: “We will do the same again next year.”

    “Your homes, your hospitals, your power stations are being destroyed,” Sunak said in announcing the new air-defense package. “You and your people are paying a heavy price in blood.”

    Speaking through a translator, Zelenskyy said Russian strikes have damaged around half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

    As snowflakes fell, Zelenskyy greeted Sunak at a presidential palace for their talks. He called the two countries “the strongest of allies.” Walking in the snow, they also inspected captured Russian tanks and other destroyed and rusting military hardware used by the invasion forces that are displayed in a Kyiv square.

    “With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom,” the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.

    Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who stepped down in July amid ethics scandals, won wide praise in Ukraine for his backing and made repeated visits to Kyiv. Sunak is keen to reassure Ukraine’s leaders that there will be no change of stance under his leadership, although when he was U.K. Treasury chief under Johnson he was considered resistant to demands for higher defense spending.

    “The courage of the Ukrainian people is an inspiration to the world,” Sunak said. “In years to come, we will tell our grandchildren of your story.”

    He pledged that Britain “will stand with you until Ukraine has won the peace and security it needs and deserves and then we will stand with you as you rebuild your great country.”

    Sunak also laid flowers at a memorial for the war dead, lit a candle at a memorial for victims of a deadly Soviet-era famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, and met first responders at a fire station, his office said.

    Sunak’s visit came in the wake of a major recent battlefield success for Ukraine: the recapture of the southern city of Kherson.

    The restoration of rail connections brought further joy Saturday to Kherson’s residents, who excitedly waited for the first train from Kyiv.

    “This is the beginning of a new life,” said 74-year-old Ludmila Olhouskaya, who didn’t have anyone to meet off the train but went to the station to show support. “Or rather, the revival of a former one.”

    On the battlefield, Russian forces launched 10 airstrikes, 10 missile strikes and 42 rocket attacks on Ukraine in the last day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday.

    Russia is pressing an offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, and Ukraine reported heavy fighting around the city of Bakhmut, the town of Avdiivka and the village of Novopavlivka.

    Russian forces claimed to have repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to take back the settlements of Pershotravneve, Kyslivka and Krokhmalne in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province.

    Ukrainian forces said they killed or wounded scores of Russian soldiers during an attack on the village of Mykhailivka in the southern Kherson region, and the wounded were taken to hospitals in Crimea. The claim could not be independently verified.

    Ukrainian forces also reported they conducted deadly strikes on the ​​Kinburn Spit in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv province, a key site for Russian electronic warfare.

    Russia kept up its strikes on critical infrastructure, with a rocket attack overnight causing a fire at a key industrial facility in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to the region’s chief. Some parts of the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia were left without heat.

    The head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm told the BBC that Ukrainians who can afford it should consider leaving the country to relieve pressure on its war-damaged power system.

    “If they can find an alternative place to stay for another three or four months, it will be very helpful to the system,” said Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK. “If you consume less, then hospitals with injured soldiers will have a guaranteed power supply.”

    In Poland, a funeral was held Saturday for one of the two men who died when a missile landed there this week, according to the state news agency PAP. A military honor guard and Polish and Ukrainian representatives joined the man’s family and members of the community.

    NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance have both said that the missile strike in an eastern farming region appeared to be unintentional and was probably launched by air defenses in neighboring Ukraine. Russia had been bombarding Ukraine at the time.

    The U.K. Ministry of Defense noted Saturday that Russia conducted its largest ever-debt issuance in a single day, raising $13.6 billion on Wednesday. It said debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defense spending, which has increased significantly in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February.

    ———

    Lawless reported from London. Elise Morton in London and Sam Mednick in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this story.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories about the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

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