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Tag: War and unrest

  • Russia says it downed 3 drones outside Moscow, suspects it was attack by Ukraine

    Russia says it downed 3 drones outside Moscow, suspects it was attack by Ukraine

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    Two drones were brought down outside Moscow as they approached the warehouses of a local military unit, Russian authorities said Wednesday, in what could be the latest attempt by Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia during the early stages of Kyiv’s most recent counteroffensive.

    The drones came down near the village of Lukino, administratively part of the city of Moscow, Russian media reported. The wreckage of a third drone was reportedly found about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. No damage or casualties were reported.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it was “an unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist attack” by “the Kyiv regime” on its facilities in the Moscow region, adding in a statement that all three drones were brought down by electronic jamming.

    Ukraine, which doesn’t usually confirm attacks on Russian soil, made no immediate comment. Previously, Ukrainian officials have emphasized the country’s right to strike any target in response to Russia’s invasion and war that started in February 2022.

    Last month, two drone attacks jolted the Russian capital, in what appeared to be Kyiv’s deepest and most daring strikes into Russia. The first one, on May 3, targeted the Kremlin itself but the Russian authorities announced the devices were shot down before they could do any damage. The second one, on May 30, brought the war home to Muscovites, although the actual damage was minimal.

    At the time of the attack on the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s air defense “worked in a satisfactory way,” but added it was “clear what we need to do to plug the gaps” in the system.

    Other drones have reportedly flown deep into Russia multiple times. Since February, when a UJ-22 crashed 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Ukrainian drones have repeatedly approached the Russian capital.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, confirming Wednesday’s drone attack, said only that “the means of combatting drones did their job.”

    Meanwhile, train traffic was disrupted on the Crimean Peninsula on Wednesday, according to its Russian-installed governor Sergei Aksyonov.

    Aksyonov didn’t say what caused the disruption, but some Russian media outlets reported that the rail lines were blown up overnight in apparent sabotage operations. Rail lines through Crimea are crucial for supplying Russian forces at the front line in southern and eastern Ukraine.

    Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world considers illegal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that his country aims to reclaim the peninsula in a counteroffensive that began in recent weeks.

    In response to Ukraine’s military threat using advanced weapons supplied by Western allies, Russia has in recent weeks expended “significant effort” on assembling “elaborate” defensive lines on the approaches to Crimea, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.

    For the Kremlin, ensuring control of Crimea is “a top political priority,” the ministry said in a tweet Wednesday. There is “intense fighting” in parts of southern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces are testing Russian defenses, it added.

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

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  • Once starved by war, millions of Ethiopians go hungry again as US, UN pause aid after massive theft

    Once starved by war, millions of Ethiopians go hungry again as US, UN pause aid after massive theft

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    NAIROBI, Kenya — An Orthodox Christian priest, Tesfa Kiros Meresfa begs door-to-door for food along with countless others recovering from a two-year war in northern Ethiopia that starved his people. To his dismay, urgently needed grain and oil have disappeared again for millions caught in a standoff between Ethiopia’s government, the United States and United Nations over what U.S. officials say may be the biggest theft of food aid on record.

    “I have no words to describe our suffering,” Tesfa said.

    As the U.S. and U.N. demand that Ethiopia’s government yield its control over the vast aid delivery system supporting one-sixth of the country’s population, they have taken the dramatic step of suspending their food aid to Africa’s second-most populous nation until they can be sure it won’t be stolen by Ethiopian officials and fighters.

    Almost three months have passed since the aid suspension in parts of the country, and reports are emerging of the first deaths from starvation during the pause. At the earliest, aid to the northern Tigray region will return in July, the U.S. and U.N. say, and to the rest of the country at some point after that when reforms in aid distribution allow.

    Tesfa, who lives in a school compound with hundreds of others displaced by the war in Tigray, laughed when asked how many meals he eats a day. “The question is a joke,” he said. “We often go to sleep without food.”

    In interviews with The Associated Press, which first reported the massive theft of food aid, officials with U.S. and U.N. aid agencies, humanitarian organizations and diplomats offered new findings on the countrywide diversion of aid to military units and markets. That included allegations that some senior Ethiopian officials were extensively involved.

    The discovery in March of enough stolen food aid to feed 134,000 people for a month in a single Tigray town is just a glimpse of the scale of the theft that the U.S., Ethiopia’s largest humanitarian donor, is trying to grasp. The food meant for needy families was found instead for sale in markets or stacked at commercial flour mills, still marked with the U.S. flag.

    The implications for the U.S. are global. Proving it can detect and stop the theft of aid paid for by U.S. taxpayers is vital at a time when the Biden administration is fighting to maintain public support for aid to corruption-plagued Ukraine.

    At a private meeting last week in Ethiopia, U.S. aid officials told international partners that this could be the largest-ever diversion of food aid in any country, aid workers said. In an interview with the AP, a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development said the exact amount of food aid stolen may never be known.

    Donated medical supplies also were stolen, according to a Western diplomat and U.N. official who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

    With USAID giving Ethiopia’s government $1.8 billion in humanitarian assistance since 2022, a delay in providing food aid causes widespread pain. Millions of people went hungry during the war while food stocks were looted, burned and withheld by combatants, and U.N. investigators have warned of possible starvation-linked war crimes.

    Now the hunger is being traced to corruption.

    Preliminary findings released this month by Tigray regional authorities said they have tracked the theft of more than 7,000 metric tons of donated wheat — or 15 million pounds — in their region, taken by federal and regional authorities and others. The findings did not specify the time period. Other regions have yet to report amounts.

    Ethiopia’s government dismisses as harmful “propaganda” the suggestion that it bears primary responsibility for the disappearance of aid in Tigray and other regions, but it has agreed to a joint investigation with the U.S. while the U.N.’s World Food Program carries out a separate probe.

    The way that Western aid officials “distance themselves from the accusations by linking the alleged problem only to government institutions and procedures is absolutely unacceptable and very contrary to the reality on the ground,” government spokesman Legesse Tulu told reporters earlier this month. He and other government spokespeople did not immediately respond to messages from the AP.

    Aid workers say humanitarian agencies have long tolerated a degree of corruption by government officials. Provision of aid in Ethiopia has been heavily politicized for decades, including during the devastating famine of the 1980s, when the then-communist regime blocked assistance to areas controlled by rebel groups.

    The senior USAID official told the AP that the latest theft of U.S. and U.N. food aid included the manipulation of beneficiary lists that the Ethiopian government has insisted on controlling, looting by Ethiopian government and Tigray forces and forces from neighboring Eritrea, and the diversion of massive amounts of donated wheat to commercial flour mills in at least 63 sites.

    A former Tigray official said government workers often inflate beneficiary numbers and take the extra grain for themselves, a practice that two officials with international organizations working in Ethiopia called widespread elsewhere in the country.

    Numerous officials accused WFP of simply dropping off rations in the middle of towns, where much of the aid was looted by forces from Eritrea.

    There were also signs that people whom the USAID official described only as “market actors” were forcing hungry families to surrender food aid they received — something that WFP suspects as well.

    In Ethiopia, which has a history of deadly hunger, “zero” of the 6 million people in Tigray received food aid in May after the pause in donations by the U.S. and U.N., according to a U.N. memo seen by the AP. That’s unprecedented, it said.

    With 20 million people across Ethiopia dependent on such aid, plus more than 800,000 refugees from Somalia and elsewhere, independent humanitarian groups warn that even a quick resolution to the dispute could see many people starve to death.

    In the U.N. food agency’s first extensive public comments, the WFP regional director for East Africa, Michael Dunford, acknowledged possible “shortcomings” in its monitoring of aid distribution.

    “We accept that we could have done better,” he told the AP this week. But until now, Dunford said, “it’s been very much the Ethiopian government that was managing” the process.

    For USAID’s part, the senior agency official cited a range of reasons that U.S. officials missed the extent of the aid theft for so long. The war blocked the agency’s ground access to the Tigray region for 20 months. Elsewhere in the country, COVID restrictions and security concerns limited USAID’s oversight, the official said.

    Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers said the rare countrywide suspension of aid showed USAID is taking the theft of U.S. aid with appropriate seriousness. Asked if he was concerned about USAID oversight, a senior Democrat, Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, said, “I’m concerned about the ways in which the Ethiopian military and government may have systematically diverted food that was meant for hungry Ethiopians.”

    U.S. and U.N. officials said they were working to limit — or end — Ethiopian government officials’ role in the aid system.

    “We’re taking back all the control over the commodities,” Dunford said. “The entire supply chain, from the time that we receive the food in the country to the time it’s in the hands of the beneficiaries.” Plans include third-party distribution, real-time third-party monitoring and biometric registration of beneficiaries, he said.

    The U.S. government wants Ethiopia’s government to remove itself from the compilation of beneficiary lists and the transport, warehousing and distribution of aid, according to a briefing memo by donors seen by the AP.

    The senior USAID official said Ethiopia’s government has committed to cooperate on reforms, but “we have not yet seen the specific reforms in place that would allow us to resume aid.”

    Civilians, again, are suffering.

    Ethiopia’s harvest season is over and the lean season is approaching. The U.N. humanitarian agency has privately expressed fears of “mass starvation” in remote parts of Tigray, according to an assessment made in April and seen by the AP. Another assessment in May cited reports of 20 people dying of starvation in Samre, a short drive from the Tigray capital, Mekele.

    Tigray’s main hospital reported a 28% increase in the number of children admitted for malnutrition from March to April. At the hospital in Axum town, the increase was 96%.

    “It is a good day if we manage to eat one meal,” said Berhane Haile, another of the thousands of war-displaced people going hungry.

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    Knickmeyer reported from Washington.

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  • UN: International donors promise $1.5 billion in aid to Sudan

    UN: International donors promise $1.5 billion in aid to Sudan

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    CAIRO — International donors promised almost $1.5 billion in additional aid for conflict-stricken Sudan on Monday as the United Nations warned that the African country’s humanitarian crisis is worsening.

    Sudan has been rocked by fighting for more than two months as the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces battle for control of the country. Sudan’s Health Ministry said Saturday that more than 3,000 have been killed in the conflict, which has decimated the country’s fragile infrastructure and sparked ethnic violence in the western Darfur region.

    The donations were pledged following a U.N.-sponsored meeting co-hosted by Egypt, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the African Union in the Swiss city of Geneva.

    “The scale and speed of Sudan’s descent into death and destruction is unprecedented,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said during the meeting’s opening session.

    Prior to the meeting, the U.N.’s emergency aid program for Sudan, launched after the fighting broke out April 15, had received less than 17% of the required $3 billion, Guterres said.

    As the meeting progressed, numerous state representatives pledged contributions. Qatar’s foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the Gulf kingdom would be giving $50 million to the program.

    Katja Keul, minister of state at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, said Berlin would pledge 200 million euros (nearly $219 million) of humanitarian assistance to Sudan and the region.

    Speaking by a web link, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s administrator, Samantha Power, said Washington would be donating an additional $171 million for Sudan.

    The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths, said the United Nations would inject a further $22 million into the program.

    It remained unclear if Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two of the conflict’s key mediators, would provide further financial contributions to the humanitarian initiative.

    The international aid group Mercy Corps expressed concern that the nearly $1.5 billion fell well short of the needed $3 billion.

    “Despite some generous pledges and shows of solidarity made today, I am disheartened to see donors failing the people of the greater Horn of Africa yet again,” said Sibongani Kayola, the group’s director for Sudan,

    Around 24.7 million people, more than half of Sudan’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, the U.N. says. More than 2.2 million people have fled their homes to safer areas elsewhere in Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to the latest U.N. figures.

    On Sunday morning, the country’s warring forces began a three-day cease-fire, brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It’s the ninth truce since the conflict began, although most have foundered.

    The conflict has turned the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas into battlefields. The paramilitary force, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties, according to residents and activists. The army, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, has staged repeated airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas.

    The province of West Darfur has experienced some of the worst violence. with tens of thousands of residents fleeing to neighboring Chad. The Rapid Support Forces and affiliated Arab militias have repeatedly attacked the province’s capital, Genena, targeting the non-Arab Masalit community, rights groups say.

    The province’s former governor, Khamis Abdalla Abkar, a Masalit, was abducted and killed last week after he appeared in a televised interview and accused the Arab militias and the paramilitary force of attacking Genena. The U.N. and Sudan’s military blamed the Rapid Support Forces for the killing. It has denied that.

    Last week, Griffiths described the situation in West Darfur as a “humanitarian calamity.”

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  • UN complains Russia won’t let aid workers into area of Ukraine dam collapse, Moscow says it’s unsafe

    UN complains Russia won’t let aid workers into area of Ukraine dam collapse, Moscow says it’s unsafe

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The Kremlin’s spokesman said Monday that U.N. aid workers who want to visit areas ravaged by the recent Kakhova dam collapse in southern Ukraine can’t go there because fighting in the war makes it unsafe.

    The United Nations rebuked Moscow on Sunday for allegedly denying aid workers access to Russia-occupied areas where residents are stranded amid “devastating destruction.”

    The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said in a statement that her staff were engaging with both Kyiv and Moscow, which control different parts of the area, in a bid to reach civilians in need. They face a shortage of drinking water and food and a lack of power.

    Brown urged Russian authorities “to act in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law” and let them in.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t explicitly admit that Russia had blocked U.N. access, but told a conference call with reporters that Ukrainian attacks made a visit too risky.

    “There has been constant shelling, constant provocations, civilian facilities and the civilian population have come under fire, people have died, so it’s really difficult to ensure their security,” Peskov said.

    His comments came amid varying accounts by survivors of the quality of assistance that Russia is providing in areas it controls. The dam lies on the Dnieper River, which forms the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces on the eastern and western banks, respectively.

    Many evacuees and residents accuse Russian authorities of doing little or nothing to help. Some civilians said that evacuees were sometimes forced to present Russian passports if they wanted to leave.

    On the Ukrainian side, rescuers are braving Russian snipers as they rush to ferry Ukrainians out of Russia-occupied flood zones.

    Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday that the Kherson region affected by the flooding endured 35 Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours.

    Exclusive drone photos and information obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Moscow had the means, motive and opportunity to blow up the dam, which was under Russian control, earlier this month.

    The explosion occurred as Ukraine mustered for a counteroffensive. Kyiv’s forces have intensified attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line recently.

    Some analysts saw the dam breach as a Russian effort to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kherson region.

    The U.K. Defense Ministry said Monday that Russia has recently redeployed several thousand troops from the banks of the Dnieper to buttress its positions in the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut sectors, which reportedly have seen heavy fighting.

    The move “likely reflects Russia’s perception that a major Ukrainian attack across the Dnieper is now less likely” following the dam’s collapse, the ministry said in a tweet.

    Ukrainian forces have advanced up to seven kilometers (four miles) into territory previously held by Russia, she said. Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t confirm losing any ground to the Ukrainian forces.

    It wasn’t possible to independently verify battlefield claims by either side.

    Russia is also pursuing offensive actions, according to Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar.

    Russia has concentrated a significant number of its military units, and particularly airborne assault troops, in Ukraine’s east, she said. They are stepping up Moscow’s offensive around Kupiansk in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province and Lyman in the eastern Donetsk province, Maliar said on Telegram.

    Ukrainian forces may have put their counteroffensive operations on hold as they review their tactics, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

    It noted that Kyiv “has not yet committed the majority of its available forces to counteroffensive operations and has not yet launched its main effort.”

    Russia attacked south and southeast Ukraine overnight with cruise missiles and self-exploding drones, Ukraine’s air force reported Monday. Four Kalibr missiles and four Iranian-made Shahed drones were shot down, it said.

    According to regional officials, the southern province of Odesa and the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region were targeted by the attack. No casualties or damage were immediately reported.

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  • UN complains Russia won’t let aid workers into area of Ukraine dam collapse, Moscow says it’s unsafe

    UN complains Russia won’t let aid workers into area of Ukraine dam collapse, Moscow says it’s unsafe

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The Kremlin’s spokesman said Monday that U.N. aid workers who want to visit areas ravaged by the recent Kakhova dam collapse in southern Ukraine can’t go there because fighting in the war makes it unsafe.

    The United Nations rebuked Moscow on Sunday for allegedly denying aid workers access to Russia-occupied areas where residents are stranded amid “devastating destruction.”

    The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said in a statement that her staff were engaging with both Kyiv and Moscow, which control different parts of the area, in a bid to reach civilians in need. They face a shortage of drinking water and food and a lack of power.

    Brown urged Russian authorities “to act in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law” and let them in.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t explicitly admit that Russia had blocked U.N. access, but told a conference call with reporters that Ukrainian attacks made a visit too risky.

    “There has been constant shelling, constant provocations, civilian facilities and the civilian population have come under fire, people have died, so it’s really difficult to ensure their security,” Peskov said.

    His comments came amid varying accounts by survivors of the quality of assistance that Russia is providing in areas it controls. The dam lies on the Dnieper River, which forms the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces on the eastern and western banks, respectively.

    Many evacuees and residents accuse Russian authorities of doing little or nothing to help. Some civilians said that evacuees were sometimes forced to present Russian passports if they wanted to leave.

    On the Ukrainian side, rescuers are braving Russian snipers as they rush to ferry Ukrainians out of Russia-occupied flood zones.

    Exclusive drone photos and information obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Moscow had the means, motive and opportunity to blow up the dam, which was under Russian control, earlier this month.

    The explosion occurred as Ukraine mustered for a counteroffensive. Kyiv’s forces have intensified attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line recently.

    Some analysts saw the dam breach as a Russian effort to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kherson region.

    The U.K. Defense Ministry said Monday that Russia has recently redeployed several thousand troops from the banks of the Dnieper to buttress its positions in the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut sectors, which reportedly have seen heavy fighting.

    The move “likely reflects Russia’s perception that a major Ukrainian attack across the Dnieper is now less likely” following the dam’s collapse, the ministry said in a tweet.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Kyiv’s forces have liberated a total of eight settlements in the course of two weeks on the Berdyansk and Melitopol axes of their counteroffensive in the country’s southeast.

    Ukrainian forces have advanced up to seven kilometers (four miles) into territory previously held by Russia, she said.

    It wasn’t possible to independently verify battlefield claims by either side.

    Ukrainian forces may have put their counteroffensive operations on hold as they review their tactics, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

    It noted that Kyiv “has not yet committed the majority of its available forces to counteroffensive operations and has not yet launched its main effort.”

    Russia attacked south and southeast Ukraine overnight with cruise missiles and self-exploding drones, Ukraine’s air force reported Monday. Four Kalibr missiles and four Iranian-made Shahed drones were shot down, it said.

    According to regional officials, the southern province of Odesa and the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region were targeted by the attack. No casualties or damage were immediately reported.

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  • Europe defense ministers are holding talks in Paris on how to better defend the continent’s airspace

    Europe defense ministers are holding talks in Paris on how to better defend the continent’s airspace

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    Defense ministers and other representatives of about 20 European countries will hold a conference in Paris on how to better defend Europe’s airspace

    BySYLVIE CORBET Associated Press

    French President Emmanuel Macron listens to Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, right, at the International Paris Air Show at the Paris Le Bourget airport, Monday, June 19, 2023. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP)

    The Associated Press

    PARIS — Defense ministers and other representatives of about 20 European countries will hold a conference in Paris on Monday on how to better defend Europe’s airspace, a long-divisive issue that takes on new urgency because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    The talks will include anti-drone combat and ballistic missile defense, French organizers said, noting that Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown the importance and effectiveness of such equipment. Nuclear weapons deterrence will also be on the agenda.

    The list of countries taking part in the conference, including the exact number, hasn’t been made public by the French Defense Ministry.

    With the help of Western weapons and growing experience, Ukraine’s air defense systems have made great strides since the war started last year, saving infrastructure and lives and preventing Russia from achieving air superiority.

    “There is therefore a need for Europeans to think collectively and strategically about the threats coming from the skies,” a French official said on condition of anonymity in accordance with the government’s customary practices.

    The one-day meeting is taking place on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show, the world’s largest event focusing on aviation and space industry that is opening Monday. French President Emmanuel Macron will make the closing speech of the conference in the evening.

    France has been openly critical of German-led plans for improved European air defense capabilities. The so-called European Sky Shield project, launched at the end of last year, is made up of 17 European nations including the U.K. — but not France. It’s meant to be integrated within NATO air and missile defense systems.

    The French government believes the project doesn’t adequately preserve European sovereignty, because it’s expected to be largely based on U.S. and Israeli industry. Berlin notably said it would purchase U.S.-made Patriot missiles.

    The German-led plan “has limitations,” the French official said, adding that Monday’s conference would propose a “more global approach.” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius will attend the meeting.

    The French Mamba system is already part of NATO’s integrated air and missile defense.

    Defense has been a recurrent bone of contention between the two countries, with France complaining that Germany wasn’t doing enough in the area for years — until the war in Ukraine led Berlin to announce a major boost to military spending.

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  • Both sides suffer heavy casualties as Ukraine strikes back against Russia, UK assessment says

    Both sides suffer heavy casualties as Ukraine strikes back against Russia, UK assessment says

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine are suffering high numbers of military casualties as Ukraine fights to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas in the early stages of its counteroffensive, British officials said Sunday.

    Russian losses are probably at their highest level since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March, U.K. military officials said in their regular assessment.

    According to British intelligence, the most intense fighting has centered on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia province, around Bakhmut and further west in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province. While the update reported that Ukraine was on the offensive in these areas and had “made small advances,” it said that Russian forces were conducting “relatively effective defensive operations” in Ukraine’s south.

    The Ukrainian military said in a regular update Sunday morning that over the previous 24 hours Russia had carried out 43 airstrikes, four missile strikes and 51 attacks from multiple rocket launchers. According to the statement by the General Staff, Russia continues to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Lyman in the country’s Donetsk province, with 26 combat clashes taking place.

    Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that two civilians were killed, with a further three wounded in the past day.

    Ukrainian officials said Russian forces also launched airstrikes on other regions of the east and south of the country.

    One civilian was killed and four more wounded in Kherson province as a result of Russia’s attacks, said regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin, while Zaporizhzhia regional Gov. Yurii Malashko said one person was wounded in Russian attacks that hit 20 settlements in the province.

    Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region, said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of the village of Piatykhatky on the Zaporizhzhia battlefront.

    Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson of the regional government in the southwestern Odesa province, said Ukrainian forces destroyed a “very significant” ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk in nearby Kherson province.

    “Our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning,” Bratchuk said in a video message on Sunday morning, posted to his Telegram channel.

    Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line could last a long time.

    A group of African leaders have carried out a self-styled “peace mission” to both Ukraine and Russia in recent days to try to help end their nearly 16-month-old war, but the visit ended on Saturday with no immediate signs of progress.

    In other developments:

    — The death toll from flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam has risen to 16 in Ukrainian-held territory, Ukraine’s interior ministry said late Saturday, while Russian officials said 29 people died in territories controlled by Moscow.

    Massive flooding from the destruction of the dam on June 6 devastated towns along the lower Dnieper River in the Kherson region, a front line in the war. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of causing the breach.

    — As the deadline for all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry approaches, widely seen as targeting Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Wagner leader and regular Kremlin critic Yevgeny Prigozhin said Sunday that 32,000 former prisoners had returned home after the end of their contracts with Wagner in Ukraine.

    According to Prigozhin, 83 crimes were committed by those who had returned home, which he claimed was “80 times less” than the number committed by those released from prison over the same period without having served with Wagner.

    Prigozhin toured Russian prisons to recruit fighters, promising pardons if they survived a half-year tour of front-line duty with Wagner. In an interview last month, Prigozhin said he had recruited 50,000 convicts, about 10,000 of whom were killed in Bakhmut.

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  • Sudan begins a cease-fire ahead of a pledging conference to raise funds for humanitarian assistance

    Sudan begins a cease-fire ahead of a pledging conference to raise funds for humanitarian assistance

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    CAIRO — Sudan’s warring parties began a cease-fire Sunday morning after two months of fighting pushed the African nation into chaos.

    Residents in the capital, Khartoum, and its neighboring city of Omdurman reported “relative calm” in the first hours of the cease-fire Sunday morning, after fierce clashes were reported the previous day.

    The three-day truce came ahead of a pledging conference the U.N. and other nations will organize Monday to raise funds to cover Sudan’s humanitarian needs.

    The U.N. says it received less than 16% of the $2.57 billion required to help those in need in Sudan in 2023. Another $470 million is needed to support refugees in the Horn of Africa region, it said.

    The United States and Saudi Arabia, announced the cease-fire agreement Saturday. Both led concerted diplomatic efforts to stop the war over the past two months.

    The U.S. and Saudi Arabia said in a joint statement that the military and its rival paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, agreed to halt fighting and “refrain from seeking military advantage during the ceasefire.”

    Sudan plunged into chaos after months of worsening tensions between the rival generals exploded into open fighting, in mid-April, across the country with the capital, Khartoum and the western Darfur region bearing the brunt of the armed conflict.

    The fighting turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlegrounds. More than 3,000 people lost their lives and over 6,000 others were wounded, according to Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim. It forced more than 2.2 million people to flee their homes to safer areas inside Sudan and to neighboring nations.

    The cease-fire was the latest in a series of attempted truces, brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, all of which failed to stop fighting, with the meditators blaming the two warring sides for repeated violations.

    The humanitarian situation in the war-ridden country has been worsening. At least 24.7 million people – more than half of the country’s population- need humanitarian assistance. And over 100,000 children are projected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition with medical complications by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned on Friday.

    The U.N. health agency said it needs $145 million to meet the increasing health needs of those impacted by the conflict inside Sudan and assist those who fled to neighboring countries.

    “The scale of this health crisis is unprecedented,” Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. He added that funds are urgently needed to avert a looming collapse of Sudan’s healthcare system.

    The conflict has wrecked the country’s infrastructure. It also left about 60% of health facilities across the country nonfunctional, amid a drastic decrease in medical supplies, which were either destroyed or looted, according to the WHO.

    The UN agency said it confirmed at least 46 attacks on health facilities between April 15 and June 8.

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  • Putin meets with African leaders in Russia to discuss Ukraine peace plan, but no visible progress

    Putin meets with African leaders in Russia to discuss Ukraine peace plan, but no visible progress

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday met with a group of leaders of African countries who traveled to Russia on a self-styled “peace mission” the day after they went to Ukraine, but the meeting ended with no visible progress.

    The seven African leaders — the presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s prime minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda — visited Ukraine on Friday to try to help end the nearly 16-month-old war.

    The African leaders then traveled to St. Petersburg on Saturday to meet with Putin who was attending Russia’s showpiece international economic forum.

    Details about the delegation’s proposals were thin.

    Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the three-hour meeting that the Africans’ peace plan consisted of 10 elements, but “was not formulated on paper.”

    “The peace initiative proposed by African countries is very difficult to implement, difficult to compare positions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. But ”President Putin has shown interest in considering it.”

    “He spoke about our position. Not all provisions can be correlated with the main elements of our position, but this does not mean that we do not need to continue working,” Peskov said.

    “The main conclusion, in my opinion, from today’s conversation is that our partners from the African Union have shown an understanding of the true causes of the crisis that was created by the West, and have shown an understanding that it is necessary to get out of this situation on the basis of addressing these underlying causes,” Lavrov said.

    Russia says that it was effectively forced to send troops into Ukraine because it was threatened by Ukraine’s desire to join NATO and by the country’s support from the United States and Western Europe.

    Speaking at the economic forum on Friday, Putin declared that the first Russian tactical nuclear weapons have been deployed to Belarus, describing the move as a deterrent against Western efforts to defeat Russia in Ukraine. He previously said that the deployment would begin in July.

    Asked if he could order the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin said that there was no need for that but noted that Moscow could use its nuclear arsenals in case of a “threat to the Russian statehood.”

    “In that case, we will certainly use all the means that the Russian state has. There should be no doubt about that,” he said.

    The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, comes in the wake of other peace initiatives — such as one by China — and carries particular importance for Africa, which relies on food and fertilizer deliveries from Russia and Ukraine. The war has impeded exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.

    “This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a news conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and four other African leaders after their closed-door talks on Friday.

    Ramaphosa and others acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities but insisted all wars must come to an end and emphasized their willingness to help expedite that.

    “I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” he said, adding that “there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”

    The delegation, including Presidents Macky Sall of Senegal and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, represent a cross-section of African views on the war.

    South Africa, Senegal and Uganda have avoided censuring Moscow over the conflict, while Egypt, Zambia and Comoros voted against Russia last year in a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion.

    Many African nations have long had close ties with Moscow, dating back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union supported their anti-colonial struggles.

    Speaking during Friday’s news conference, Comoros President Azali Assoumani floated the idea of a “road map” to peace, prompting questions from Zelenskyy who sought a clarification and insisted he didn’t want “any surprises” from their visit with Putin.

    Chances for peace talks look dim as Ukraine and Russia take sharply different stands. Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws its troops from all its occupied territories as a condition for peace talks. The Kremlin, in turn, wants Ukraine to recognize the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as part of Russia and acknowledge other land gains it has made.

    China presented its own peace proposal at the end of February. Ukraine and its allies largely dismissed the plan, as the warring sides look no closer to a cease-fire.

    The African peace mission comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks in several sections of more than the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

    In the village of Blahodatne, taken by Ukrainian forces in the counteroffensive six days ago, soldiers said they have orders to keep advancing and not retreat, indicating long grueling battles ahead in the direction where Russians have built up dense lines of fortifications.

    “Morale is really strong because the guys know they’re moving forward to liberate their lands,” said a Ukrainian soldier with the callsign Skripal (Violinist). “We have an order not to retreat and to move forward, so we’re trying.”

    Village roads are punctured with craters, buildings are caved in and bullet holes peppered nearly every residence. Inside a cultural center, a Ukrainian commander with the call sign “Lermontov” said that they’d captured many Russian soldiers during the liberation of the village and showed journalists four bodies whom he said were Russian fighters who had been recruited from prisons.

    ___

    Sam McNeil in Blahodatne, Ukraine, and Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this story.

    ___

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  • Sudan officials say airstrike kills 17 people, including 5 children, in capital Khartoum

    Sudan officials say airstrike kills 17 people, including 5 children, in capital Khartoum

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    CAIRO — An airstrike in Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Saturday killed at least 17 people, including five children, health officials said, as fighting continued between rival generals seeking to control the country.

    The attack was one of the deadliest of the clashes in urban areas of Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan between the military and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.

    There was no immediate comment Saturday from either side of the conflict on the strike, and it was not clear whether the attack was by warplanes or a drone. The military’s aircraft have repeatedly targeted RSF troops and the RSF has reportedly used drones and anti-aircraft weapons against the military.

    The fighting broke out in mid-April, capping months of increasing tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF.

    Saturday’s strike hit the Yormouk neighborhood in southern Khartoum, where clashes have centered in recent weeks, according to Sudan’s Ministry of Health. The area houses a military facility controlled by the army. At least 25 houses were destroyed, the ministry wrote in a Facebook post.

    The dead included five children and an unknown number of women and elderly people, and some wounded people were hospitalized, the ministry said.

    A local group that calls itself The Emergency Room and helps organize humanitarian aid in the area, said at least 11 people were wounded in the strike. It posted images it said were of houses damaged in the attack and people searching through rubble. Other images claimed to show a wounded girl and man.

    The conflict has plunged the African country into chaos and turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. The paramilitary force has occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties since the onset of the conflict, according to residents and activists.

    The clashes have killed hundreds of civilians and wounded thousands of others. More than 2.2 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries.

    Activists and residents have reported widespread looting in the capital. Diplomatic missions, including residences belong to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, have been stormed and looted, allegedly by armed men wearing RSF uniforms. Almost all diplomatic missions in Sudan were evacuated in the first weeks of the war.

    “Looting was fairly extensive at some of the residences,” the U.S. Department of State told The Associated Press. “The damage was discovered during routine checks of the residences. There is some damage to the structures and personal property.”

    Sexual violence, including the rape of women and girls, has been reported in Khartoum and the western Darfur region, which have seen some of the worst fighting in the conflict. Almost all reported cases of sexual attacks were blamed on the RSF, which hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment.

    The Darfur city of Genena has experienced some of the worst battles, with tens of thousands of its residents fleeing to neighboring Chad. The RSF and allied Arab militias have repeatedly attacked the city, especially areas of the non-Arab Masalit community, since late April, according to residents and activists.

    The attacks intensified earlier this month. Volker Perthes, the U.N envoy in Sudan, said last week that the fighting in Genena has taken on “an ethnic dimension,” with Arab militias and armed men in RSF uniforms showing “an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities.”

    On Wednesday, West Darfur Gov. Khamis Abdalla Abkar, who hails from the Masalit, was abducted and killed hours after he accused the RSF and allied Arab militias in a televised interview of attacking Genena. His slaying was blamed on the RSF, a charge the paramilitary force denied.

    Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for bringing those responsible for Abkar’s slaying to justice, “including those who bear command responsibility.”

    “Alongside liability of the direct perpetrator, Gov. Abkar was in the RSF’s custody, and it was the RSF’s responsibility to keep him safe,” Shamdasani told a news briefing in Geneva on Friday.

    Abkar was the second high-profile official killed in Genena within a few days. The older brother of the traditional chief of the Masalit, Tariq Abdelrahman Bahreldin, was also killed, Shamdasani said.

    Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official, decried the fighting in Darfur on Thursday, especially in Genena where trapped residents “are living a nightmare.”

    “Babies dying in hospitals where they were being treated; children and mothers suffering from severe malnutrition; camps for displaced persons burned to the ground; girls raped; schools closed; and families eating leaves to survive,” he said.

    Griffiths urged the international community to intervene to avert another cycle of violence such as the one Darfur experienced in the early 2000s when it was the scene of genocidal war. Ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination. Former dictator Omar al-Bashir’s government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes, known as Janjaweed, who targeted civilians. The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF.

    “Darfur is rapidly spiraling into a humanitarian calamity. The world cannot allow this to happen. Not again,” Griffiths said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington.

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  • Some Democrats are already warning of a government shutdown as budget battle with GOP takes shape

    Some Democrats are already warning of a government shutdown as budget battle with GOP takes shape

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    WASHINGTON — Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid to appease Republican hard-liners and get the House moving again after a recent party rebellion on the floor has some Democrats warning of a difficult road ahead when it comes to passing legislation that will keep the government running.

    Republicans teed up votes this past week on guns and on censuring one of former President Donald Trump‘s most prominent critics, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Those votes helped get the House moving again, though the latter effort failed, with Schiff helped by some 20 Republicans.

    The most consequential move of the week, however, was an announcement from GOP leadership that arrived with little fanfare. Republicans said they plan to pursue appropriations bills, which fund government programs and agencies, with less spending than the top-line numbers they agreed to in a deal with the White House last month. That compromise avoided what would have been an unprecedented federal default.

    McCarthy argued that the numbers he negotiated with the White House amount to a cap and “you can always do less.” GOP Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, who leads the House Appropriations Committee, followed with a statement that said she would seek to limit nondefense spending at 2022 budget levels, saying the debt agreement “set a top-line spending cap -– a ceiling, not a floor.”

    The announcements delighted Republicans who had criticized McCarthy, R-Calif., and opposed the debt ceiling legislation because they felt that agreement allowed too much spending. But it drew immediate pushback from Democrats who say an attempt to circumvent the debt ceiling agreement’s top-line numbers effectively guarantees a standoff with the Senate and White House and possibly even a damaging government stoppage when funding expires this fall.

    “It is a prelude to a shutdown — what they are engineering,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

    The emerging dynamic raises the potential for another round of economy-rattling brinkmanship in Washington just months after lawmakers narrowly avoided a damaging federal default.

    Partial government shutdowns have become increasingly common in the modern era, with the longest coming under President Donald Trump as he demanded money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. With President Joe Biden facing down the Republican-controlled House as he runs for reelection in 2024 and some conservatives openly dismissive of the damage a shutdown can cause, the spending fight appears nearly certain to escalate.

    The tension created by the GOP’s pursuit of more non-defense spending cuts was evident during hearings held Wednesday and Thursday of the House Appropriations panel.

    Democrats accused House Republicans of going back on their word. “Do you think any of us would have made a deal if we thought your ‘22 number was the deal?” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. “What kind of deal is that? What kind of respect for yourselves is that?

    “You knew that wasn’t a ceiling,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. “Traditionally, that’s where we are starting. Caps are not ceilings in our world. They are a starting point and then we negotiate from those numbers we have agreed to. That’s how it has always been.”

    But Republicans said McCarthy was clear during negotiations that spending had to come down from current levels.

    “We can try to fool the American people with smoke and mirrors and pretend, but the speaker was clear. We are in a debt crisis in this country,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.

    Under the debt ceiling agreement, the White House said nondefense spending was expected to be roughly flat in the next budget year and increase by 1% the following year. Defense spending would increase by about 3.3% next year and 1% the following year. The agreement to curb discretionary spending does not include programs like Medicare and Social Security, which are considered mandatory spending.

    A few Republicans have urged leadership not to bend to a minority within the conference.

    “I think we’ve just got to be really careful not to allow, you know, a small portion of our conference to continually be chipping away at previously agreed upon issues,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark. “That top-line number was agreed to in the (debt-ceiling bill.) They may not like it. They voiced their displeasure last week. They kind of shut the House down, but we’ve got work to do. We need to be doing it.”

    Republicans only have a five-seat majority in the House, which magnifies the power that a small bloc can have. It took just 11 members, mostly members of the House Freedom Caucus, to stall House votes on legislation in early June and send lawmakers home early. One of those 11, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said moving to 2022 spending levels for nondefense programs will be good for Republican candidates in next year’s general election because that’s what voters are demanding.

    “Democrats have no interest in cutting spending,” Good said. “They have to be forced to do so. We should have used the debt ceiling to force them to cut spending. We should use the appropriations process to force them to cut spending. We shouldn’t fear a government shutdown. Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”

    Many senators, Democrat and Republican, did not seem as concerned about the possibility of a shutdown.

    “This crowd that is giving McCarthy trouble is irrelevant for purposes of getting appropriations bills passed,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “When it comes to appropriations bills, you have to create a coalition that doesn’t include the Freedom Caucus.”

    “In the end, I think we’ll resolve these issues,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

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  • African leaders visit Russia to discuss their peace plan with Putin, after Ukraine trip

    African leaders visit Russia to discuss their peace plan with Putin, after Ukraine trip

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday is set to host a group of African leaders who traveled to Russia on a self-styled “peace mission” after their trip to Ukraine.

    Seven African leaders — presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s prime minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda — visited Ukraine on Friday to try to help end their nearly 16-month-old war.

    The African leaders traveled to St. Petersburg Saturday to meet with Putin who attended a business forum in Russia’s second-largest city.

    The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, comes in the wake of other peace initiatives — such as one by China — and carried particular importance for Africa that relies on food and fertilizer deliveries from Russia and Ukraine. The war has impeded exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.

    “This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a news conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and four other African leaders after their closed-door talks on Friday.

    Ramaphosa and others acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities but insisted all wars must come to an end and emphasized their willingness to help expedite that.

    “I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” he said, adding that “there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”

    The delegation, including Senegal’s President Macky Sall and Presidents Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, represented a cross-section of African views on the war.

    South Africa, Senegal and Uganda have avoided censuring Moscow over the conflict, while Egypt, Zambia and Comoros voted against Russia last year in a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion.

    Many African nations have long had close ties with Moscow, dating back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union supported their anti-colonial struggles.

    Speaking during Friday’s news conference, Comoros President Azali Assoumani floated the idea of a “road map” to peace, prompting questions from Zelenskyy who sought a clarification and insisted he didn’t want “any surprises” from their visit with Putin.

    Chances for peace talks look dim as Ukraine and Russia take sharply different stands. Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws its troops from all its occupied territories as a condition for peace talks. The Kremlin, in turn, wants Ukraine to recognize Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as part of Russia and acknowledge other land gains it has made.

    China presented its own peace proposal at the end of February. Ukraine and its allies largely dismissed the plan, as the warring sides look no closer to a cease-fire.

    The African peace mission comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks in several sections of more than the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

    __

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  • Zelenskyy urges African leaders to press Putin on release of political prisoners

    Zelenskyy urges African leaders to press Putin on release of political prisoners

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to a group of African leaders to ask his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to free political prisoners from Crimea and beyond — saying it could be an important part of their trip to Russia on Saturday.

    Seven African leaders — presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s prime minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda — visited Ukraine on Friday as part of a self-styled “peace mission” to both Ukraine and Russia to try to help end their nearly 16-month-old war.

    The African leaders were traveling to meet with Putin on Saturday in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

    The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, comes in the wake of other peace initiatives such as one by China, and it carried extra importance for the African countries: They rely on food and fertilizer deliveries from Russia and Ukraine, whose war has impeded exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.

    “This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a news conference alongside Zelenskyy and the four other African heads of state or government, after the leaders met for closed-door talks Friday afternoon.

    Ramaphosa and others acknowledged the intensity of the fight and the animosity between Russia and Ukraine, but insisted all wars must come to an end — and that the delegation wants to help expedite that.

    “I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” he said, adding that “there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”

    The delegation, including Senegal’s President Macky Sall and Presidents Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, represents a cross-section of African views about the war.

    South Africa, Senegal and Uganda have avoided censuring Moscow for the conflict, while Egypt, Zambia and Comoros voted against Russia last year in a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion. Many African nations have long had close ties with Moscow, dating back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union supported their anti-colonial struggles.

    The tenor of the press conference soured when Comoros President Azali Assoumani floated the idea of a “road map” to peace, prompting questions from Zelenskyy who sought a clarification and insisted he didn’t want “any surprises” from their visit with Putin.

    Zelenskyy then urged them to help free political prisoners from Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

    “Would you please ask Russia to liberate the political prisoners?” Zelenskyy said. “Maybe this will be an important result of your mission, of your ‘road map’.”

    Zelenskyy expressed thinly veiled frustration about their trip, saying they would have “conversations with the terrorists” on Saturday.

    International human rights organizations claim Russia has targeted the Crimean Tatar ethnic group with arbitrary detentions and unjustified prosecutions since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Many have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

    “The Russian Federation misuses its legislation for political purposes, in particular to suppress the nonviolent struggle of the Crimean Tatars and their protest against the occupation of Crimea,” the Crimean Tatar Resource Center said in a statement last year.

    Ramaphosa, who laid out 10 priorities to help pave the way to ending the war, said he planned to have a bilateral meeting with Putin in part to discuss the Russian leader’s possible attendance at a planned August summit, hosted by South Africa, of the so-called “BRICS” countries, which also include Brazil, China and India.

    The International Criminal Court in March issued an international arrest warrant against Putin over Russian abductions of Ukrainian children, which could complicate any trip by Putin to South Africa. Ramaphosa said he alone would decide whether to invite the Russian leader, saying it was still “under consideration.”

    Before meeting with Zelenskyy, the African leaders went to Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets last year after Russian troops abandoned a campaign to seize the capital and withdrew from the area.

    The delegation’s stop in Bucha was symbolically significant, because the town has come to stand for the brutality of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Russian occupation of Bucha left hundreds of civilians dead, with some showing signs of torture.

    While in Bucha, the visitors placed commemorative candles at a small memorial outside a church near where a mass grave was unearthed.

    On their way back to the capital, air raid sirens went off in Kyiv — prompting them to briefly return to their hotel as a “precautionary measure,” Ramaphosa spokesman Vincent Magwenya said.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: “Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace.”

    The Ukrainian air force said it shot down six Russian Kalibr cruise missiles, six Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles and two reconnaissance drones. It gave no details on where they were shot down.

    Germany will deliver another 64 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Friday, to help shield it against Russia’s relentless aerial attacks.

    Officials who helped organize the delegation’s talks said the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also to assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for fertilizer exports that Africa desperately needs.

    They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine, and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

    “Life is universal, and we must protect lives – Ukrainian lives, Russian lives, global lives,” Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema told The Associated Press. “Instability anywhere is instability everywhere.”

    The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that the campaign could last a long time.

    China presented its own peace proposal at the end of February. Ukraine and its allies largely dismissed the plan, and the warring sides look no closer to a cease-fire.

    Ukrainian troops have recorded successes along three stretches of the front line in the south and east, Andriy Kovalev, a spokesman for the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement Friday.

    According to Kovalev, Ukrainian forces moved forward south of the town of Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia province, in the direction of the village of Robotyne, as well as around Levadne and Staromaiorske, on the boundary between Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk province further east.

    Kovalev said Ukraine’s troops also advanced in some areas around Vuhledar, a mining town in Donetsk that was the site of a key tank battle.

    It wasn’t possible to independently verify the claims.

    Russian shelling on Thursday and overnight killed two civilians and wounded two others in southern Ukraine’s flood-hit Kherson region, where a major dam was destroyed last week, according to the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.

    Russian forces over the previous day launched 54 strikes across the province, using mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, drones, missiles and aircraft, Prokudin said.

    Floodwaters in the Kherson region have continued to recede, with the average level in flood-hit areas standing at 1.67 meters (about 5 feet) — down from 5 meters (16 feet) last Tuesday, the Ukrainian presidential office said.

    ___

    AP writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed

    ___

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  • Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers exposing Vietnam War secrets, dies at 92

    Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers exposing Vietnam War secrets, dies at 92

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    Daniel Ellsberg, the government analyst and whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has died at 92

    ByHILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

    NEW YORK — Daniel Ellsberg, the history-making whistleblower who by leaking the Pentagon Papers revealed longtime government doubts and deceit about the Vietnam War and inspired acts of retaliation by President Richard Nixon that helped lead to his resignation, has died.

    He was 92.

    Ellsberg, who announced in February that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, died Friday morning, according to a letter from his family released by a spokeswoman, Julia Pacetti.

    Until the early 1970s, when he revealed that he was the source for the stunning media reports on the 47-volume, 7,000-page Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina, Ellsberg was a well-placed member of the government-military elite. He was a Harvard graduate and self-defined “cold warrior” who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s, risked his life on the battlefield, received the highest security clearances and came to be trusted by officials in Democratic and Republican administrations.

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  • African leaders set to meet with presidents of Ukraine, Russia in bid to end war

    African leaders set to meet with presidents of Ukraine, Russia in bid to end war

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    KYIV, Ukraine — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in Ukraine on Friday as part of a delegation of African leaders and senior officials seeking ways to end Russia’s war, though an air raid in Kyiv during their visit was a grim reminder of the challenge they face.

    Ramaphosa’s press service said that he was met by a Ukrainian special envoy and South Africa’s ambassador at a rail station near Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets following Russian forces’ withdrawal last spring.

    The Bucha visit was symbolically significant, as its name has come to stand for the barbarity of Moscow’s military since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The brutal Russian occupation of Bucha left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves.

    The African delegation also includes senior officials from Zambia, Senegal, Uganda, Egypt, the Republic of the Congo and the Comoro Islands.

    Shortly after they placed commemorative candles at a small memorial outside St. Andrew’s Church in Bucha, a town on the northwestern outskirts of Kyiv, air raid sirens began to wail in the capital and Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in the Podilskiy district, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.

    “Missiles still flying at Kyiv,” Klitschko wrote on his Telegram channel.

    Ramaphosa said last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to separate meetings with the delegation.

    The delegation was set to travel to St. Petersburg later Friday, where Russia’s top international economic conference is taking place, and meet with Putin on Saturday.

    Officials who helped prepare the talks said the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for the fertilizer exports Africa desperately needs.

    They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine amid the war and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

    The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that the campaign could last a long time.

    China has also been working on a peace proposal, but it appears to have few chances of success as the warring sides appear no closer to a cease-fire.

    Ukrainian troops recorded successes along three stretches of the front line in the country’s south and east, a spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Friday.

    According to Andriy Kovalev, Ukrainian forces have moved forward south of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, in the direction of the village of Robotyne, as well as around Levadne and Staromaiorske, on the boundary between Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk province further east.

    Kovalev also said that Ukrainian troops advanced in some areas around Vuhledar, a mining town in Donetsk that was the site of one of the main tank battles in the war so far.

    It wasn’t possible to indepenently verify the claims.

    Russian shelling on Thursday and overnight killed two civilians and wounded two others in the southern Kherson region, its Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said.

    Russian forces over the previous day launched 54 strikes across the province, using mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, drones, missiles and aircraft, according to Prokudin.

    Ten people were wounded over that same period in the eastern Donetsk region, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

    ___

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  • African leaders set to meet with presidents of Ukraine, Russia in bid to end war

    African leaders set to meet with presidents of Ukraine, Russia in bid to end war

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    KYIV, Ukraine — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in Ukraine on Friday as part of a delegation of African leaders and senior officials seeking ways to end Kyiv’s 15-month war with Russia.

    Ramaphosa’s press service said that he was met by a Ukrainian special envoy and South Africa’s ambassador at a rail station near Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets following Russian forces’ withdrawal last spring.

    The Bucha visit was symbolically significant, as its name has come to stand for the barbarity of Moscow’s military since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The brutal Russian occupation of Bucha left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves.

    The African delegation also includes senior officials from Zambia, Senegal, Uganda, Egypt, the Republic of the Congo and the Comoro Islands.

    Ramaphosa said last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to separate meetings with the delegation.

    The delegation was set to travel to St. Petersburg later Friday, where Russia’s top international economic conference is taking place, and meet with Putin on Saturday.

    Officials who helped prepare the talks said the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for the fertilizer exports Africa desperately needs.

    They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine amid the war and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

    The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that the campaign could last a long time.

    China has also been working on a peace proposal, but it appears to have few chances of success as the warring sides appear no closer to a cease-fire.

    Ukrainian troops recorded successes along three stretches of the front line in the country’s south and east, a spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Friday.

    According to Andriy Kovalev, Ukrainian forces have moved forward south of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, in the direction of the village of Robotyne, as well as around Levadne and Staromaiorske, on the boundary between Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk province further east.

    Kovalev also said that Ukrainian troops advanced in some areas around Vuhledar, a mining town in Donetsk that was the site of one of the main tank battles in the war so far.

    It wasn’t possible to indepenently verify the claims.

    Russian shelling on Thursday and overnight killed two civilians and wounded two others in the southern Kherson region, its Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said.

    Russian forces over the previous day launched 54 strikes across the province, using mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, drones, missiles and aircraft, according to Prokudin.

    Ten people were wounded over that same period in the eastern Donetsk region, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

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  • Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no travel documents trapped on the border with Egypt

    Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no travel documents trapped on the border with Egypt

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    ASWAN, Egypt — When fighting in Sudan erupted in mid-April, Abdel-Rahman Sayyed and his family tried to hold out hiding in their home in the capital, Khartoum, as the sounds of explosions, gunfights and the roar of warplanes echoed across the city of 6 million people.

    They lived right by one of the fiercest front lines, near the military’s headquarters in central Khartoum, where the army and a rival paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, battled for control. Three days into the conflict, a shell hit their two-story home, reducing much of it to rubble.

    Luckily, Sayyed, his wife and three children survived, and they immediately fled the war-torn city. The problem was, their passports were buried under the wreckage of their home.

    Now they are among tens of thousands of people without travel documents trapped at the border with Egypt, unable to cross into Sudan’s northern neighbor.

    “We narrowly escaped with our lives,” the 38-year-old Sayyed said in a recent phone interview from Wadi Halfa, the closest Sudanese city to the border. He said he was stunned that Egyptian authorities wouldn’t let his family in. “I thought we would be allowed in as refugees,” he said.

    Two months in, clashes continue to rage between the two rival forces in Khartoum and around Sudan, with hundreds dead and no sign of stopping after talks on a resolution collapsed. People continue to flee their homes in droves: This week the total number of people displaced since fighting began April 15 rose to around 2.2 million, up from 1.9 million just a week earlier, according to U.N. figures. Of the total displaced, more than 500,000 have crossed into neighboring countries, while the rest took refuge in quieter parts of Sudan, according to the U.N.

    More than 120,000 Sudanese without travel documents are trapped in Wadi Halfa and surrounding areas, according to a Sudanese migration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief media. Among them are those who never had a passport or whose passport expired or was lost during the rush to escape.

    Wadi Halfa, which normally has a population of few tens of thousands, is also flooded by huge crowds of Sudanese men, women and children who do have their passports but must apply for visas at the Egyptian Consulate in the town to cross the border. Getting a visa can take days or even longer, leaving families scrambling for accommodation and food, with many sleeping in the streets.

    Calls are growing for Egypt to waive entry requirements. The Sudanese American Physician Association, a U.S.-based NGO, called on the Egyptian government to allow those fleeing the war to apply for asylum at the borders.

    Instead, the Egyptian government last week stiffened entry requirements. Previously, only Sudanese men aged 16-45 needed visas to enter Egypt. But on June 10, new rules require all Sudanese to get electronic visas. Ahmed Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said the measures are aimed at fighting visa forgery by groups on the Sudanese side of the borders.

    Sayyed described the June 10 decision as a “stab on the back” to all those trapped at the border. He was one of 14 Sudanese who fled Khartoum without passports and spoke to The Associated Press. All said they had thought that Egypt would ease the entry requirement for the fleeing Sudanese.

    “We’re forced to leave our homes,” Sayyed said. “It’s a war.”

    The passports of others were trapped in foreign embassies because they were applying for visas before fighting erupted. Embassies in Khartoum have almost all been evacuated, in which case procedures often require those passports be destroyed so they don’t fall into wrong hands. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it had destroyed passports left there “rather than leave them behind unsecured.”

    “We recognize that the lack of travel documentation is a burden for those seeking to depart Sudan,” it said. “We have and will continue to pursue diplomatic efforts with partner countries to identify a solution.”

    Sayyed and his family arrived in Wadi Halfa after a two-day journey from Khartoum. He took refuge in a school along with over 50 other families, all depending on humanitarian assistance from charities and the local community to survive, he said.

    Every day for the past five weeks, Sayyed visited the Sudanese immigration authority offices and Egyptian Consulate in Wadi Halfa, a ritual many others followed as well in hopes of getting travel documents or visas.

    But Sayyed has little chance, unless Egypt opens the border. New Sudanese passports are usually issued from the main immigration office in Khartoum, which stopped functioning since the onset of the war. The branch in Wadi Halfa doesn’t have access to computer records, so it can only renew expired passports manually, not issue new ones or replace lost ones, the migration official said.

    Al-Samaul Hussein Mansour, a Sudanese-British national, left his travel documents at his home amid his chaotic escape from the fighting in Khartoum, according to his younger brother, Ibn Sina Mansour.

    Al-Samaul, a 63-year-old pediatrician-turned-politician, didn’t get to the British Embassy in Khartoum to be evacuated with other British citizens. He thought that the clashes would stop “within a couple of days,” Ibn Sina said.

    He first went to the western Darfur region, where he stayed with a relative for about a week. But as fighting continued, he headed toward the Egyptian border. Unable to find a place to stay in Wadi Halfa, he went to the nearby town of Shandi.

    It was too dangerous to return to Khartoum and retrieve his documents, with continued street fighting and stray bombs and bullets hitting houses, said Ibn Sina, who is also a British citizen.

    “Returning to Khartoum means death for Samaul,” he said in a recent interview in Aswan, the closest Egyptian city to the border with Sudan. Ibn Sina, a retired aviation engineer, came to Aswan from London to be closer to his older brother.

    Also among those trapped were three brothers from Khartoum’s neighboring city of Omdurman, who either lost their passports or never had one. The three — ages 26, 21 and 18 years old – were separated from their parents and five sisters, who were all able to enter Egypt in early May.

    “This war displaced and separated many families like us,” their father, Salah al-Din al-Nour, said. “We have nothing to do with their struggle for power. They destroyed Sudan and the Sudanese people.”

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    Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington.

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  • South Sudan’s sluggish peace deal and unsteady road to elections

    South Sudan’s sluggish peace deal and unsteady road to elections

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    KOWACH, South Sudan (AP) — Martha Nyanguour didn’t have time to bury her husband, son or granddaughter when they were killed by gunfire in September. Instead, the 50-year-old paid her respects by throwing bits of grass over their bodies, grabbed her remaining children and fled.

    It had taken years for the mother of seven to muster the courage to return to South Sudan and trust its fragile peace deal ending a civil war. But weeks after she arrived in Atar town in Upper Nile state, fighting erupted between militias aligned with government and opposition forces.

    “I thought if there was peace I was supposed to go back to my land,” said Nyanguour, seated under a tree in Kowach village in Canal Pigi county where she now lives with thousands of other displaced people, five days’ walk through swamp water from her home village. “I thought maybe there would be peace in the future, but now, hearing gunshots daily, I think South Sudan will remain in war.”

    In 18 months, South Sudan is supposed to hold its first presidential elections, the culmination of the peace agreement signed nearly five years ago to pull the young nation out of fighting that killed some 400,000 people. While large-scale clashes have subsided, violence in parts of the country persists, killing 2,240 people last year, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Earlier this month at least 20 people were killed and more than 50 wounded during inter-communal clashes in a United Nations protection camp in the north of the country.

    Implementation of the peace agreement has been sluggish. The elections, originally scheduled for this year, were postponed until December 2024. Other key elements of the deal have not been implemented, sparking concern that the country could see a return to war instead of a transfer of power.

    “We are going to go for (the) electoral process without meeting the benchmarks that create a conducive environment for the conduct of elections,” said Edmund Yakani, executive director for Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local advocacy group. “The return of the country to violence is more evident than the country staying in stability.”

    A permanent constitution still has not been drafted. A census has not been conducted. Security arrangements, considered the backbone of the agreement, are only partially complete. Some 83,000 soldiers from opposition and government forces are meant to unite in a national army, but so far 55,000 have graduated and are yet to be deployed.

    Others languish in training centers with poor conditions and little food. Soldiers say many are rarely paid. Locals involved with the security arrangements say there’s so little trust that the main parties have held back key fighters, sending less seasoned ones or new recruits.

    In addition, Joshua Craze, a researcher on South Sudan, says, “The peace agreement signed in 2018 has enabled the government to fragment the opposition by encouraging defections and setting commanders against each other, intensifying violent conflict.”

    The opposition accuses the government of lacking political will to hold elections so it can keep plundering the nation’s resources, which include oil. “They don’t have genuine political will to implement the peace agreement because they look at the agreement from the angle that it is crippling their powers,” said Puok Both Baluang, acting press secretary for the first vice president, head of the main opposition and former rebel leader Riek Machar.

    South Sudan has billions of dollars in reserves but there is little transparency on where the money goes. The country was voted the second most corrupt in the world last year by Transparency International.

    The international community is exasperated with South Sudan’s lack of progress.

    At a press conference in May, United Nations representative Nicholas Haysom cautioned that the conditions did not currently exist to hold transparent, free and fair elections. But some diplomats are concerned that another extension to the peace deal would send a negative message to South Sudanese citizens, investors and aid donors.

    The government says it’s serious about the peace process and will hold elections on time. During a conference in May on reconciliation and healing, President Salva Kiir vowed that “I will never take South Sudan and its people to war again.”

    The capital, Juba, appears peaceful. Billboards of Kiir and Machar shaking hands above the words “peace, unity, reconciliation and development” line the streets. Children of the political elites are returning with money and opening trendy restaurants, and construction is booming.

    But outside the capital is a different reality.

    The fighting that killed Nyanguour’s family last year also sent tens of thousands fleeing, part of the highest displacement levels since the peace agreement was signed, according to a report by a U.N. panel of experts. It said government and opposition forces played facilitating roles in the violence.

    The conflict in Upper Nile cut off access to healthcare, with some severely wounded people having to travel up to four days by canoe to the closest clinic, aid workers said. “The biggest issue was accessibility. It was hard to bring in supplies,” said Kudumreng David, a supervisor for the International Medical Corps in Kowach.

    Food has also become scarce as fighting worsens conditions after years of floods and cuts in food aid. In Kowach, some children rip leaves from trees into a pot for their only meal of the day.

    Many people outside Juba said they didn’t even know elections were set for next year.

    “We heard there’s peace but it hasn’t reached here,” said Roda Awel, a resident of Kowach. “People are still afraid.”

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  • France accuses Russia of faking websites to sow confusion and disinformation about Ukraine war

    France accuses Russia of faking websites to sow confusion and disinformation about Ukraine war

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    France’s government has accused Russia of a long-running online manipulation campaign that included impersonating the websites of leading French media and the French Foreign Ministry

    France’s government accused Russia on Tuesday of operating a long-running online manipulation campaign, including impersonating the websites of leading French media and the French Foreign Ministry, aimed at spreading confusion and false information about the war in Ukraine.

    The French agency responsible for fighting foreign digital interference, VIGINUM, said it has monitored the alleged operation since soon after Russia invaded its neighbor and that France was one of several European countries targeted. It said it traced the campaign to Russian individuals, companies and “state entities or entities affiliated to the Russian state.”

    Last month, the agency detected a mirror website mimicking the French Foreign Ministry’s and intervened with “protective and preventive measures,” VIGINUM said in a report published Tuesday.

    “France condemns these actions, which are unworthy of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. No attempt at manipulation will distract France from its support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s war of aggression,” the ministry said in a statement with unusually strong wording.

    The Russian Embassy in France did not immediately comment.

    VIGINUM said it identified 355 domain names usurping the identities of European media outlets, including those of French daily newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro. It said the content spread on the fake sites denigrated the Ukrainian armed forces and amplified criticism of sanctions against Russia and the impact of Ukrainian refugees on other European countries.

    French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre said it was the first time the government has “so clearly and explicitly” attributed blame for this kind of campaign.

    She said the fake ministry website was aimed at creating confusion about France’s support for Ukraine and undermining democratic debate. She said the government’s intervention limited the impact of the mirror site, which she described as an element of “the hybrid war that Russia is currently waging.”

    VIGINUM said the campaign has links to a sprawling disinformation network that Facebook parent Meta exposed last year, which sought to use fake social media accounts and sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points.

    Since Russia invaded Ukraine, pro-Russian players have used online disinformation and conspiracy theories in an effort to weaken international support for Ukraine. Social media platforms and European governments have tried to stifle Russian propaganda and disinformation, only to see the Kremlin shift tactics.

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  • Russian missile attack on Zelenskyy’s hometown kills at least 6; several others trapped in rubble

    Russian missile attack on Zelenskyy’s hometown kills at least 6; several others trapped in rubble

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    KYIV, Ukraine — At least six people were killed when Russian missiles hit civilian buildings in an overnight attack Tuesday in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said, as rescuers scrambled to retrieve people believed to be trapped under the rubble.

    The strike involving cruise missiles hit a five-story residential building, which was engulfed in fire, Gov. Serhiy Lysak of the Dnipropetrovsk region wrote on Telegram.

    After initial reports of three dead, Kryvyi Rih mayor Oleksandr Vilkul wrote on the social media app that the death toll had risen to a least six, and seven people were feared trapped under the rubble. Authorities initially said at least two dozen people were wounded.

    The devastation in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown is the latest bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, as Ukrainian forces are mounting counteroffensive operations using Western-supplied firepower to try to drive out the Russians.

    Images from the scene relayed by Zelenskyy on his Telegram channel showed firefighters battling the blaze as pockets of fire poked through multiple broken windows of a building. Charred and damaged vehicles littered the nearby ground.

    “More terrorist missiles,” he wrote. “Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people.”

    The aerial assault was the latest barrage of strikes by Russian forces that targeted various parts of Ukraine overnight.

    Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was attacked with Iranian-made Shahed drones, and the surrounding region was shelled, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. The shelling wounded two civilians in the town of Shevchenkove, southeast of Kharkiv.

    The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, separately reported early Tuesday that the drone strike damaged a utilities business and a warehouse in the city’s northeast. Neither Terekhov nor Syniehubov referenced any casualties within Kharkiv.

    The Kyiv military administration reported that the capital came under fire as well on Tuesday, but the incoming missiles were destroyed by air defenses and there were no immediate reports of any casualties there.

    Air defenses overnight shot down 10 out of 14 cruise missiles and one of four Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russian forces, Ukraine’s General Staff said on its Facebook page.

    Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s ground troops said the country’s forces were “moving forward” outside the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.

    Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on Telegram that Russian forces are “losing positions on the flanks,” while Ukrainian troops were conducting “defensive” operations in the area.

    For weeks, Ukrainian officials have been reporting small gains west of Bakhmut, which was largely devastated in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle before Moscow’s forces took control last month.

    Also Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry published a video showing what it said was a German-made Leopard 2 tank and U.S.-made Bradley fighting vehicle captured from Ukrainian forces. According to the ministry, the video was shot by Russian soldiers after fierce fighting in the southern Zaporizhzhia, and a soldier is seen pointing at the immobilized vehicles. It wasn’t immediately possible to verify the video’s authenticity.

    Like the Bakhmut area, battle zones in Zaporizhzhia are one of several places along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line where Ukrainian forces have been intensifying their counteroffensive operations.

    On Monday, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the country’s troops recaptured a total of seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of eastern Ukraine over the past week — small successes in the early phases of a counteroffensive.

    Russian officials didn’t confirm those Ukrainian gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war.

    The advance amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.

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