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Tag: War and unrest

  • Using high-tech laser gear, UN-backed team scans Ukraine historical sites to preserve them amid war

    Using high-tech laser gear, UN-backed team scans Ukraine historical sites to preserve them amid war

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Under the plaintive painted eyes of the holy, a volunteer team of two United Nations-backed engineers watched as a whirling laser took a million measurements a second inside Kyiv’s All Saints Church.

    The laser swept quickly across the church, part of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, while taking a series of incredibly high-resolution photographs.

    Those images will be stitched together with navigational data to create a perfect three-dimensional rendering of the holy site, part of a project to protect and preserve historic places across Ukraine now in as much in danger as its people amid Russia’s war on the country.

    “It’s a critical moment,” said Chiara Dezzi Bardeschi, who oversees Ukraine for UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency. “If it’s not protected now, we really risk that this heritage is lost forever.”

    Since Russia launched the war in February 2022, at least 259 cultural and historic sites have been damaged by the fighting, according to UNESCO. They include religious sites, museums, monuments and libraries. It remains common to see statues across the country surrounded by sandbags or scaffolding to protect them from airstrikes or other attacks.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine is pouring money and the donations of Western nations backing it into its military as it tries to claw back more territory as the summer fighting months begin. That leaves little money for preservation of its historic sites, which already have faced cycles of destruction in the past from czarist Russia, the Nazis during World War II and the Soviet Union in the decades after.

    That’s where the work of Emmanuel Durand, a French engineer based in Geneva, and Serhii Revenko, a Ukrainian architect who has taken 3D models of other sites during the war, comes into play. In recent days, the two men, who volunteer through UNESCO, worked at All Saints Church, built between 1696 and 1698 at the Lavra, also known as the Monastery of the Caves.

    The men used a donated device called a Zoller & Fröhlich Imager 5010X, which has two rectangular boxes connected by a high-resolution, rapidly spinning camera in the center. The imager, as well as required software and supporting equipment, together cost about $70,000.

    The two placed the imager atop a tripod, then slipped away from it as the device measured the heights underneath the churches’ golden domes.

    The camera then whirled to life, spinning around to capture the inside so closely that even the textures of the brushstrokes will be recorded.

    “If due to the war, the church would be bombed in the next week or next month, it would be terrible, of course, but at least we would have this digitalization and it would help a lot in rebuilding the church,” Durand said.

    That danger is real. Revenko earlier shot 3D images of the Library of Youth in Chernihiv, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Kyiv. That library, opened in 1902 in a building bearing the style of the Gothic revival with pointed arches, was targeted by a Russian airstrike on March 11, 2022.

    The 3D image shows the massive hole torn into the side of the building, debris scattered everywhere. It also shows the depth and the power of the bomb that struck the site. That can be vital for historians — as well as for prosecutors or investigators — who later want to see such scenes long after any repairs.

    “This is important to preserve because what the enemy and the Russians are trying to destroy is who we are and what our identity is,” Revenko said. “Our identity really is the heritage and culture that we can preserve and give to the next generation.”

    The men began their work at the All Saints Church in part because of its relative safety during the war. The Lavra’s gates bear the blue shield emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention, in theory providing the protection of international law to the site.

    But the site on a hill overlooking the Dnieper River is only a few kilometers (a mile) from Ukraine’s presidency and other buildings in Kyiv that could be targets for Moscow. In recent weeks, Kyiv has come under repeated missile and drone attacks by Russia, raising the risks of a strike or damage from falling debris.

    Russia’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment about its targeting practices regarding historical sites.

    Durand and Revenko also traveled to the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, far closer to the front lines, to create images of other cultural sites.

    “As an architect, it’s like rediscovering your country, really, and rediscovering your culture,” Revenko said, gesturing toward the artworks within the All Saints Church.

    For Durand, who also volunteered at the 2020 Beirut port explosion and the recent earthquake that struck Turkey, doing the 3D scanning in Ukraine offers him a chance to use his talents when people are in need.

    “I’m not a doctor. I cannot go to Kherson or places and heal people. That’s not my skill,” Durand said. “I’m not a good cook. I cannot give food, but I’m an engineer. I have this 3D skill and other structural assessment skills that I give.”

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    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP

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  • Zelenskyy says ‘counteroffensive, defensive actions’ taking place in Ukraine

    Zelenskyy says ‘counteroffensive, defensive actions’ taking place in Ukraine

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that counteroffensive and defensive actions are underway against Russian forces, asserting that his top commanders are in a “positive” mindset as their troops engaged in intense fighting along the front line.

    The Ukrainian leader, at a Kyiv news conference alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, responded to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment a day earlier that Ukraine‘s counteroffensive had started — and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”

    Zelenskyy said that “counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine. I will not speak about which stage or phase they are in.”

    Top Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of announcing a full-blown counteroffensive was underway, though some Western analysts have said fiercer fighting and reported use of reserve troops suggests it was.

    “I am in touch with our commanders of different directions every day,” he added, citing the names of five of Ukraine’s top military leaders. “Everyone is positive. Pass this on to Putin.”

    Trudeau, the first foreign leader to visit Ukraine since devastating floods caused by a breach in a Dnieper River dam, offered up monetary, military and moral support. He pledged 500 million Canadian dollars ($375 million) in new military aid, on top of more than 8 billion Canadian dollars ($6 billion) that Canada has already provided since the war began in February 2022, and announced 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.5 million) for humanitarian assistance for the flood response.

    Trudeau said the dam’s collapse was “a direct consequence of Russia’s war,” but he didn’t blame Moscow directly.

    Ukraine’s General Staff said Saturday that “heavy battles” were ongoing, with 34 clashes over the previous day in the country’s industrial east. It gave no details but said Russian forces were “defending themselves” and launching air and artillery strikes in Ukraine’s southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

    Recent Western injections of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment — some of it high-tech and top-of-the-line — to Ukraine has raised expectations about when it would be used, and to what effect against dug-in Russian lines.

    For months, Ukrainian commanders in the eastern city of Bakhmut — which was largely devastated in a months-long fight that has been one of the bloodiest battles of the war — have used the language of counteroffensive and defensive operations to describe the activity there.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Friday that the epicenter of the fighting has been in the east, particularly in the Donetsk region, and cited “heavy battles” in Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka.

    Valerii Shershen, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s armed forces in Zaporizhzhia, told Radio Liberty that they were searching for weaknesses in Russia’s defense in that region, to the west.

    Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency Energoatom said the last operating reactor at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had been placed in “cold shutdown” mode. That’s a process in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure.

    The plant’s other five reactors already were in cold shutdown amid concerns about the plant’s exposure to the fighting.

    Energoatom said in a statement late Friday that there was “no direct threat” to the Zaporizhzhia plant because of the breach of the Kakhovka dam further down the Dnieper River, which has forced thousands of people to flee flooding and also sharply reduced water levels in a reservoir used to help cool the facility.

    Water levels in the Kakhovka reservoir, which feed the Zaporizhzhia plant, remained stable on Saturday, Energoatom said.

    The site’s power units have not been operating since September last year. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to visit Ukraine in the coming days.

    Ukrainian authorities reported Saturday that at least six civilians have died across the country as Russian forces launched Iranian-made Shahed drones, missiles, and artillery and mortar strikes.

    Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported that three people were killed and more than two dozen wounded overnight in an attack targeting the Black Sea port of Odesa. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern operational command, Natalia Humeniuk, said two children and a pregnant woman were among those wounded.

    Two people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Orekhova in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to governor Yuriy Malashko.

    In Ukraine’s northeast, a 29-year-old man was killed as more than 10 drones targeted the Kharkiv region, its governor, Oleh Syniehubov, reported Saturday. He added that at least three other civilians were wounded.

    The Ukrainian air force said that during the night, it had shot down 20 out of 35 Shahed drones and two out of eight missiles “of various types” launched by Russian forces.

    The fighting and civilian casualties took renewed attention as authorities in southern Ukraine said water levels have been declining in a vast area beneath the ruptured dam.

    Nearly one-third of protected natural areas in the Kherson region could be obliterated by flooding following the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the Ukrainian environment minister warned Saturday.

    The U.N.’s humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said in an Associated Press interview Friday that an “extraordinary” 700,000 people were in need of drinking water.

    In other developments:

    On Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he wants to continue speaking with Putin — whose order for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been criticized by many Western leaders — and plans to do so again “soon.” Scholz has spoken several times by phone with Putin since the invasion.

    The chancellor said the basis for a “fair peace” between Russia and Ukraine is the withdrawal of Russian troops. “That’s needs to be understood,” he said.

    The U.K. government said it will give 16 million pounds ($20 million) in humanitarian aid to those affected by the flooding. Most of the money is being channelled through international organizations such as the Red Cross and the United Nations, and the U.K. is also sending boats, community water filters, water pumps and waders to Ukraine.

    The U.K. has already given Ukraine 1.5 billion pounds in economic and humanitarian support since the war began, the government said, and has committed 4.6 billion pounds in military aid.

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    Jon Gambrell in Kyiv, Joanna Kozlowska and Jill Lawless in London, and Frank Jordans in Bonn, Germany, contributed to this story.

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

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  • Zelenskyy says ‘counteroffensive, defensive actions’ taking place in Ukraine

    Zelenskyy says ‘counteroffensive, defensive actions’ taking place in Ukraine

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that counteroffensive and defensive actions are underway against Russian forces, asserting that his top commanders are in a “positive” mindset as their troops engaged in intense fighting along the front line.

    The Ukrainian leader, at a Kyiv news conference alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, responded to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment a day earlier that Ukraine‘s counteroffensive had started — and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”

    Zelenskyy said that “counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine. I will not speak about which stage or phase they are in.”

    Top Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of announcing a full-blown counteroffensive was underway, though some Western analysts have said fiercer fighting and reported use of reserve troops suggests it was.

    “I am in touch with our commanders of different directions every day,” he added, citing the names of five of Ukraine’s top military leaders. “Everyone is positive. Pass this on to Putin.”

    Trudeau, the first foreign leader to visit Ukraine since devastating floods caused by a breach in a Dnieper River dam, offered up monetary, military and moral support. He pledged 500 million Canadian dollars ($375 million) in new military aid, on top of more than 8 billion Canadian dollars ($6 billion) that Canada has already provided since the war began in February 2022, and announced 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.5 million) for humanitarian assistance for the flood response.

    Trudeau said the dam’s collapse was “a direct consequence of Russia’s war,” but he didn’t blame Moscow directly.

    Ukraine’s General Staff said Saturday that “heavy battles” were ongoing, with 34 clashes over the previous day in the country’s industrial east. It gave no details but said Russian forces were “defending themselves” and launching air and artillery strikes in Ukraine’s southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

    Recent Western injections of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment — some of it high-tech and top-of-the-line — to Ukraine has raised expectations about when it would be used, and to what effect against dug-in Russian lines.

    For months, Ukrainian commanders in the eastern city of Bakhmut — which was largely devastated in a months-long fight that has been one of the bloodiest battles of the war — have used the language of counteroffensive and defensive operations to describe the activity there.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Friday that the epicenter of the fighting has been in the east, particularly in the Donetsk region, and cited “heavy battles” in Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka.

    Valerii Shershen, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s armed forces in Zaporizhzhia, told Radio Liberty that they were searching for weaknesses in Russia’s defense in that region, to the west.

    Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency Energoatom said the last operating reactor at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had been placed in “cold shutdown” mode. That’s a process in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure.

    The plant’s other five reactors already were in cold shutdown amid concerns about the plant’s exposure to the fighting.

    Energoatom said in a statement late Friday that there was “no direct threat” to the Zaporizhzhia plant because of the breach of the Kakhovka dam further down the Dnieper River, which has forced thousands of people to flee flooding and also sharply reduced water levels in a reservoir used to help cool the facility.

    Water levels in the Kakhovka reservoir, which feed the Zaporizhzhia plant, remained stable on Saturday, Energoatom said.

    The site’s power units have not been operating since September last year. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to visit Ukraine in the coming days.

    Ukrainian authorities reported Saturday that at least six civilians have died across the country as Russian forces launched Iranian-made Shahed drones, missiles, and artillery and mortar strikes.

    Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported that three people were killed and more than two dozen wounded overnight in an attack targeting the Black Sea port of Odesa. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern operational command, Natalia Humeniuk, said two children and a pregnant woman were among those wounded.

    Two people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Orekhova in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to governor Yuriy Malashko.

    In Ukraine’s northeast, a 29-year-old man was killed as more than 10 drones targeted the Kharkiv region, its governor, Oleh Syniehubov, reported Saturday. He added that at least three other civilians were wounded.

    The Ukrainian air force said that during the night, it had shot down 20 out of 35 Shahed drones and two out of eight missiles “of various types” launched by Russian forces.

    The fighting and civilian casualties took renewed attention as authorities in southern Ukraine said water levels have been declining in a vast area beneath the ruptured dam.

    Nearly one-third of protected natural areas in the Kherson region could be obliterated by flooding following the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the Ukrainian environment minister warned Saturday.

    The U.N.’s humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said in an Associated Press interview Friday that an “extraordinary” 700,000 people were in need of drinking water.

    In other developments:

    On Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he wants to continue speaking with Putin — whose order for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been criticized by many Western leaders — and plans to do so again “soon.” Scholz has spoken several times by phone with Putin since the invasion.

    The chancellor said the basis for a “fair peace” between Russia and Ukraine is the withdrawal of Russian troops. “That’s needs to be understood,” he said.

    The U.K. government said it will give 16 million pounds ($20 million) in humanitarian aid to those affected by the flooding. Most of the money is being channelled through international organizations such as the Red Cross and the United Nations, and the U.K. is also sending boats, community water filters, water pumps and waders to Ukraine.

    The U.K. has already given Ukraine 1.5 billion pounds in economic and humanitarian support since the war began, the government said, and has committed 4.6 billion pounds in military aid.

    ___

    Jon Gambrell in Kyiv, Joanna Kozlowska and Jill Lawless in London, and Frank Jordans in Bonn, Germany, contributed to this story.

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

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  • Counteroffensive? Probing defenses? What’s playing out on Ukraine’s battlefields?

    Counteroffensive? Probing defenses? What’s playing out on Ukraine’s battlefields?

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    The video, released over the weekend by Ukraine, shows several of its soldiers in full combat gear raising a finger to their lips. “Plans love silence. There will be no start announcement,” say the words flashing on the screen afterward, followed by warplanes in flight.

    While Kyiv is keeping silent about the start of any counteroffensive, fighting is raging in several sections of the front line, signaling that the long-expected campaign could be getting underway.

    Moscow claims it successfully fended off a Ukrainian attempt to ram through Russia’s defenses, but some pro-Kremlin military bloggers painted a different picture, acknowledging that Kyiv’s troops made some quick gains.

    ‘SHAPING OPERATIONS’

    In recent weeks, Ukraine has intensified the shelling of Russian positions and successfully pushed back against Russia’s attempts to extend its gains outside the eastern city of Bakhmut that it reclaimed last month in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

    Pro-Kyiv paramilitary groups of Russians who have been fighting alongside Ukrainian armed forces also launched forays over the border into Russian territory, attacking the Belgorod region.

    The Ukrainian shelling and the cross-border incursions ravaged several towns and villages near the frontier and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents, angering Russian hawks who criticized the Kremlin for failing to strike back resolutely.

    And on May 30, a rare drone attack targeted Moscow, causing only minor damage but exposing glaring breaches in the capital’s air defenses and underlining its vulnerability.

    Military analysts describe the attacks as part of “shaping operations,” a series of moves intended to probe Russian defenses, force Moscow to spread its forces thin and draw attention from areas where Ukraine might focus its counteroffensive.

    The Russian military, in turn, has intensified strikes deep inside Ukraine, launching a barrage of near-daily drone and missile attacks against high-value military facilities.

    Russia declared it destroyed the U.S.-made Patriot missile defense systems in Kyiv, successfully struck the military intelligence headquarters, also in the Ukrainian capital, and hit air bases and weapons stockpiles in several regions. These claims couldn’t be independently verified. Ukrainian officials acknowledged some of the strikes but have remained cryptic about the damage.

    Russian military bloggers described them as part of Moscow’s efforts to derail the counteroffensive by softening Ukraine’s air defenses and destroying Western weapons and ammunition intended for the campaign.

    HYBRID WARFARE

    Both sides have sought to mislead and weaken each other through propaganda and disinformation.

    On Sunday, Ukraine hacked into some TV broadcasts in Crimea to air a menacing Ukrainian military statement about the counteroffensive.

    In an unprecedented move intended to undermine morale, broadcasts in several Russian regions were hacked Monday to carry a fake address by President Vladimir Putin in which a voice resembling his was heard declaring martial law, a nationwide mobilization and a massive evacuation of three border regions.

    Kyiv, in turn, accused Moscow of hybrid warfare. It said Russian claims of a major Ukrainian attempt to pierce Russian defenses was part of “information and psychological operations” intended to “demoralize Ukrainians and mislead the community.”

    Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak mocked the Russian claims as “virtual reality,” saying sardonically: “Moscow is already actively involved in repelling … a global offensive that does not yet exist.”

    THE MAIN STRIKE

    Military analysts say Ukraine has tried to hide its intentions by launching multiple attacks on several sectors of the front line to force Russia to scatter its resources and distract them from where the main strike would be launched.

    “The attacks in the Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk regions, the developments in Russia’s Belgorod region, and increasingly frequent strikes on Russian military depots in the rear are all part of preparations to the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” said Ukrainian military analyst Roman Svitan. “Kyiv is looking for Russia’s weak spots and trying to spread the front as wider as possible.”

    Many military experts expect Ukraine to try to ram through Russian defenses toward the Sea of Azov coast to break the land corridor to Crimea that Moscow created after capturing the key port of Mariupol in May 2022.

    Russian officials and military bloggers suggested the latest attacks in the southern part of the Donetsk region and the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region that began Sunday could herald the start of that big push.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine on Sunday sent several battalions to try to ram through the Russian defensive positions, which were pushed back after suffering significant losses.

    Some Russian military bloggers offered a less-optimistic view, saying Ukrainian troops managed to make some gains Sunday and were pouring more resources to exploit that success. Some said that, for the first time, German-made Leopard tanks were seen in significant numbers in the area.

    TASKS AND CHALLENGES

    Whether or not the latest fighting marks the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, many observers warned against expectations of a quick breakthrough that could end the war quickly.

    “We need to understand that what we’re calling the Ukraine counteroffensive is not like a football match,” said General Sir Richard Barrons, the former Commander of the U.K. Joint Forces Command. “You know, it’s not going to be done and dusted in 90 minutes with a halftime on an appointed day. It’s been nine months at least in the preparation in the sense that they’ve had to gather weapons and ammunition from NATO. Not enough, I think, so far.”

    Barrons, who is co-chair of the consulting group Universal Defence & Security Solutions, noted Russia has bolstered its forces, replenished some of its ammunition stockpiles and built complex defensive lines.

    “Russia has had time to lay out a textbook fixed defense,” he said, with three lines of trenches and held-down positions allowing tanks to come forward to fire at the attackers.

    “They will have rehearsed the artillery fire plan in support of defending those lines, and they will have rehearsed the crucial rapid counterattacks, which are so vital when you are trying to restore a line that’s being attacked,” Barrons added.

    He predicted Ukraine will try to focus its nine newly formed brigades armed with Western weapons to ram through Russian defenses in just one, two or three places, trying to concentrate their forces to have a significant numerical superiority “in order to smash their way through and then exploit and hold on to the ground that they’ve taken.”

    The offensive “is going to be, in a land sense, quite a narrow frontage,” he said.

    “I’d be surprised if it’s more than 20 miles, to be honest,” Barrons added. “The battlefield success has to be enough to show hope and prospect to bind in further strategic support.”

    He emphasized the Russian army has learned from its setbacks last fall when it retreated from large areas in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions under the brunt of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, noting it could be more challenging this time for Ukraine to push the Russians out.

    “The thing that is most important about this offensive is whenever it comes, however successful it is, it is simply not possible for it to throw every Russian out of Ukraine unless the Russians decided to give up and go,” Barrons said. “And they are not going to do that.”

    The West must mobilize its military industries to ramp up support for Ukraine to allow it to win, he said.

    “The key to this counteroffensive is to show enough battlefield success to show to the West that the right and reasonable thing to do is to get on with industrial mobilization,” Barrons said, estimating that Europe must spend about 100 billion euros ($107 billion) a year for the next three years.

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    Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

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  • ‘It was tough’: WWII veterans return to Utah Beach to commemorate D-Day

    ‘It was tough’: WWII veterans return to Utah Beach to commemorate D-Day

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    ON UTAH BEACH, France — Looking at the vastness of Utah Beach, its sand blowing in strong wind and bright sunshine, made Robert Gibson’s memory of D-Day even more vivid.

    “It was tough,” the 99-year-old veteran said of the moment when he landed there on June 6, 1944 alongside more than 150,000 other Allied troops.

    Gibson was among dozens of World War II veterans, mostly Americans and British, who traveled to Normandy this week to mark the 79th anniversary of D-Day, commemorating the decisive assault that led to the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi control.

    He remembered “lots of casualties. We had almost run over bodies to get in the beach. Never forget we were only 18, 19 years old. … I’m glad I made it.”

    Gibson landed on Utah Beach on D-Day in the second wave, after the assault troops. He survived to continue fighting in Normandy and eventually into Germany.

    The first job of his battalion, he said, was “to guard an ammunition dump and the first night it got struck. You didn’t know where you were to go. Bullets were going all over the place. But we ducked it.”

    Andrew Negra also landed on Utah Beach. That was on July 18, 1944. He returned for the first time this year and was “amazed” by the warm welcome from local French people.

    “Every place we went, people are cheering, clapping, and they’ve been doing this for I don’t know how many years,” he said.

    At age 99, Negra is the only member of his battalion who is still alive. Braving the wind to walk on the beach for a few minutes, he said, “So many we lost. And here I am.”

    Negra participated in combat operations until his division reached eastern Germany in April 1945.

    On Sunday, over 40 American veterans of World War II formed a parade, using wheelchairs, along the streets of the small town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where thousands of paratroopers jumped not long after midnight on June 6, 1944.

    Cheerful crowds applauded, calling out “Merci” and “Thank you.” Children waved, and many families asked for a photo with the men.

    Donnie Edwards, president of the Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps World War II veterans visit former battlefields, said, “For us, every year is a big one.”

    Given the ages of the soldiers who fought more than seven decades ago, Edwards observed, “Nothing is guaranteed. So we want to make sure that we do everything we can to get them an incredible and enjoyable experience.”

    The veterans then headed to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont for a brief ceremony at a monument honoring the U.S. Navy that overlooks Utah Beach.

    “The fallen will never be forgotten. The veteran will ever be honored,” an inscription in the stone reads.

    Some of the almost-centenarians asked volunteers to accompany them on the wide stretch of sand.

    Matthew Yacovino, 98, became emotional as he remembered what happened there to his older brother, who almost died after his jeep blown up during the landings.

    “The driver got killed and my brother fell on the beach unconscious,” Yacovino said with tears in the eyes.

    His brother eventually recovered. Yacovino himself served as a combat air crewman during the war.

    Like others who come to Normandy for historical reenactments of what transpired there, Valérie and Lionel Draucourt, visitors from the Paris region, dressed in khaki uniforms. They wanted to pay their respects to the veterans.

    “Frankly, I don’t think we can quite fathom what they lived through. We can’t understand it, it’s so big, it’s crazy,” Lionel Draucourt said.

    Veterans were due to take part in official ceremonies of the 79th anniversary on Tuesday, including at the Normandy American Cemetery.

    On D-Day, Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.

    On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.

    U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, stressed the significance of the commemorations “for memorializing the efforts that they did and what they did.”

    “They were fighting to make sure that fascism and Nazism didn’t stay in control of Europe. Ultimately, we all know that they were successful,” Milley said.

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    Nicolas Garriga contributed to the story.

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  • Ukrainian father rushes home after Russian airstrike to find 2-year-old daughter dead in rubble

    Ukrainian father rushes home after Russian airstrike to find 2-year-old daughter dead in rubble

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    KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian man rushed to his home outside the central city of Dnipro in hopes of rescuing his family, only to find his 2-year-old daughter dead and wife seriously wounded as he helped pull them from the rubble of their apartment destroyed in one of Russia’s latest airstrikes of the war, authorities reported Sunday.

    Writing on Telegram after the body of Liza was recovered, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that at least 500 Ukrainian children have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. The United Nations says that around 1,000 other Ukrainian children have been wounded, and thousands of others have been forcibly deported to Russia.

    Zelenskyy, who on Thursday had noted International Children’s Day, said “Russian weapons and hatred continue to take and destroy the lives of Ukrainian children every day,” adding that “many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history.”

    “We must hold out and win this war!” he said. “All of Ukraine, all our people, all our children, must be free from the Russian terror!”

    Liza was killed when a Russian missile landed Saturday night in a yard next to her apartment building while she was home with her mother, said Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk. The girl’s father rushed home from work.

    “The father was on duty, and as I was told, he personally cleared the rubble and pulled out his wife and his daughter. Just imagine the scale of this tragedy,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, reporting on the rescue that lasted until early Sunday. The girl’s mother was hospitalized under intensive care.

    Zelenskyy said five children were among 25 people wounded in Saturday’s attack, which damaged two residential buildings.

    The mother of one of the children sat amid broken concrete, twisted metal, children’s toys and clothes near her apartment building and described what happened.

    “I was running from the electrical station across the traffic,” Alyona Serednyak recalled. “I was running home. My child was alone at home. We tried to pull my child from under the cage on the window.”

    She said that they managed to free him and he’s now hospitalized in intensive care.

    Like Zelenskyy, his wife Olena focused Sunday on children’s suffering in the war, dedicating a monument to them in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.

    “Parents hold their children’s hand when they take their first steps, when they first take them to kindergarten, to school,” Ukraine’s first lady said. “The worst thing you can imagine is to hold the hand of a dead child. It just shouldn’t be like that. Children must live!”

    Russian drone and cruise missile strikes on Sunday targeted multiple areas of the country, including the capital, Kyiv.

    The Ukrainian air force updated earlier figures and said air defenses downed six of eight Shahed self-exploding drones and four of six cruise missiles fired.

    Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said that two missiles struck a military air base in Kropyvnytskyi in central Ukraine’s Kyrovohrad province. He didn’t report damage.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the military destroyed Ukrainian warplanes and ammunition depots in strikes on Ukrainian airfields, but didn’t give further specifics.

    The Russian military has reported attacks in recent days on Ukrainian air defense batteries, air bases, troop and ammunition depots, military production factories, command and observation points and other battlefield positions. The strikes come as Ukrainian officials refrain from announcing the launch of their much-anticipated counteroffensive to reclaim more Russian-occupied territory, although the pace of military activity suggests the operation may already be underway.

    Ukrainian forces maintained pressure on Russian forces in the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Moscow claimed control of last month after the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

    Elsewhere, Russians fighting alongside Ukrainian forces declared they had launched new attacks on Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine. One of the groups, the Russian Volunteer Corps, released videos Sunday showing a purported raid and offering to exchange prisoners with Russian authorities. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the videos’ authenticity.

    Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov responded to the prisoner exchange offer in a video of his own, saying he was skeptical that the captives are still alive, but that he was open to a meeting to discuss a swap. The Russian Volunteer Corps said in a video posted later that no meeting had occurred, and that the Russian prisoners would be turned over to Ukrainian forces, which have periodically swapped prisoners with Russia in one of the few areas of cooperation.

    Gladkov also reported more Ukrainian shelling Sunday of the border district of Shebekino and neighboring areas. He said at least two people were killed and multiple people wounded on Saturday and that several fires started. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the country’s forces repelled an attempted incursion in the town of Novaya Tavolzhanka.

    Some observers see attacks in Belgorod, which prompted Russian authorities to evacuate thousands of residents, as part of Ukraine’s efforts to distract Moscow and stretch its forces to help the counteroffensive succeed.

    In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, regional leader Sergei Aksenov reported a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Dzhankoi early Sunday. He claimed that five of the attacking drones were shot down and four others jammed and forced to land, adding that there were no casualties.

    The latest Russian raids on Ukrainian cities sparked concerns over civilian safety after officials announced that nearly a quarter of the 4,800 air raid shelters they inspected were locked or unfit for use.

    In Kyiv, 44% of 1,078 shelters were found closed up tight or unusable, Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin said Sunday.

    The official acknowledgments came after a 33-year-old woman in Kyiv reportedly died while waiting outside a shuttered shelter during a Russian missile barrage on Thursday.

    Prosecutors in the capital said that four people were detained as part of a criminal investigation into the woman’s death as she and others waited to enter a locked shelter. A security guard who allegedly failed to unlock the doors remained in custody. Three others, including a local official, were placed under house arrest.

    Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Saturday that city authorities received “more than 1,000” complaints regarding locked, dilapidated or insufficient air-raid shelters within a day of launching an online feedback service.

    ___

    Andrew Katell contributed to this report from New York.

    ___

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

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  • Ukraine keeps up pressure following Russian declaration of victory in Bakhmut

    Ukraine keeps up pressure following Russian declaration of victory in Bakhmut

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    OUTSIDE BAKHMUT, Ukraine — Watching imagery from a drone camera overhead, Ukrainian battalion commander Oleg Shiryaev warned his men in nearby trenches that Russian forces were advancing across a field toward a patch of trees outside the city of Bakhmut.

    The leader of the 225th Battalion of the 127th Kharkiv Territorial Defense Brigade then ordered a mortar team to get ready. A target was locked. A mortar tube popped out a loud orange blast, and an explosion cut a new crater in an already pockmarked hillside.

    “We are moving forward,” Shiryaev said after at least one drone image showed a Russian fighter struck down. “We fight for every tree, every trench, every dugout.”

    Russian forces declared victory in the eastern city last month after the longest, deadliest battle since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 15 months ago. But Ukrainian defenders like Shiryaev aren’t retreating. Instead, they are keeping up the pressure and continuing the fight from positions on the western fringes of Bakhmut.

    The pushback gives commanders in Moscow another thing to think about ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that appears to be taking shape.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russia sought to create the impression of calm around Bakhmut, but in fact, artillery shelling still goes on at levels similar to those at the height of the battle to take the city. The fight, she said, is evolving into a new phase.

    “The battle for the Bakhmut area hasn’t stopped; it is ongoing, just taking different forms,” said Maliar, dressed in her characteristic fatigues in an interview from a military media center in Kyiv. Russian forces are now trying — but failing — to oust Ukrainian fighters from the “dominant heights” overlooking Bakhmut.

    “We are holding them very firmly,” she said.

    From the Kremlin’s perspective, the area around Bakhmut is just part of the more than 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) front line that the Russian military must hold. That task could be made more difficult by the withdrawal of the mercenaries from private military contractor Wagner Group who helped take control of the city. They will be replaced with Russian soldiers.

    For Ukrainian forces, recent work has been opportunistic — trying to wrest small gains from the enemy and taking strategic positions, notably from two flanks on the northwest and southwest, where the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been active, officials said.

    Russia had envisioned the capture of Bakhmut as partial fulfillment of its ambition to seize control of the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Now, its forces have been compelled to regroup, rotate fighters and rearm just to hold the city. Wagner’s owner announced a pullout after acknowledging the loss of more than 20,000 of his men.

    Maliar described the nine-month struggle against Wagner forces in nearly existential terms: “If they had not been destroyed during the defense of Bakhmut, one can imagine that all these tens of thousands would have advanced deeper into Ukrainian territory.”

    The fate of Bakhmut, which is largely in ruins, has been overshadowed in recent days by near-nightly attacks on Kyiv, a series of unclaimed drone strikes near Moscow and the growing anticipation that Ukraine’s government will try to regain ground.

    But the battle for the city could still have a lingering impact. Moscow has made the most of its capture, epitomized by triumphalism in Russian media. Any slippage of Russia’s grip would be a political embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin.

    Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. research group, noted in a podcast this week that the victory brings new challenges in holding Bakhmut.

    With Wagner fighters withdrawing, Russian forces are “going to be increasingly fixed to Bakhmut … and will find it difficult to defend,” Kofman told “War on the Rocks” in an interview posted Tuesday.

    “And so they may not hold on to Bakhmut, and the whole thing may have ended up being for nothing for them down the line,” he added.

    A Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Russian airborne forces are heavily involved in replacing the departing Wagner troops — a step that is “likely to antagonize” the airborne leadership, who see the duty as a further erosion of their “previously elite status” in the military.

    Ukrainian forces have clawed back slivers of territory on the flanks — a few hundred meters (yards) per day — to solidify defensive lines and seek opportunities to retake some urban parts of the city, said one Ukrainian analyst.

    “The goal in Bakhmut is not Bakhmut itself, which has been turned into ruins,” military analyst Roman Svitan said by phone. The goal for the Ukrainians is to hold on to the western heights and maintain a defensive arc outside the city.

    More broadly, Ukraine wants to weigh down Russian forces and capture the initiative ahead of the counteroffensive — part of what military analysts call “shaping operations” to set the terms of the battle environment and put an enemy in a defensive, reactive posture.

    Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, said the strategic goal in the Bakhmut area was “to restrain the enemy and destroy as much personnel and equipment as possible” while preventing a Russian breakthrough or outflanking maneuver.

    Analyst Mathieu Boulègue questioned whether Bakhmut would hold lessons or importance for the war ahead.

    Military superiority matters, he said, but so does “information superiority” — the ability “to create subterfuge, to create obfuscation of your force, to be able to move in the shadows.”

    Boulègue, a consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London, said those tactics “could determine which side gains an advantage that catches the other side by surprise, and turns the tide of the war.”

    ___

    Jamey Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Jill Lawless in London, contributed to this report.

    ___

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

    ___

    A previous version of this story was corrected to show that Oleg Shiryaev is the leader of the 225th Battalion, not the 228th Battalion.

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  • Ukrainian father rushes home after Russian airstrike to find 2-year-old daughter dead in rubble

    Ukrainian father rushes home after Russian airstrike to find 2-year-old daughter dead in rubble

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    KYIV, Ukraine — A Ukrainian man rushed to his home outside the central city of Dnipro in hopes of rescuing his family, only to find his 2-year-old daughter dead and wife seriously wounded as he helped pull them from the rubble of their apartment destroyed in one of Russia’s latest airstrikes of the war, authorities reported Sunday.

    Writing on Telegram after the body of Liza was recovered, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that at least 500 Ukrainian children have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. The United Nations says that around 1,000 other Ukrainian children have been wounded, and thousands of others have been forcibly deported to Russia.

    Zelenskyy, who on Thursday had noted International Children’s Day, said “Russian weapons and hatred continue to take and destroy the lives of Ukrainian children every day,” adding that “many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history.”

    “We must hold out and win this war!” he said. “All of Ukraine, all our people, all our children, must be free from the Russian terror!”

    Liza was killed when a Russian missile landed Saturday night in a yard next to her apartment building while she was home with her mother, said Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk. The girl’s father rushed home from work.

    “The father was on duty, and as I was told, he personally cleared the rubble and pulled out his wife and his daughter. Just imagine the scale of this tragedy,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, reporting on the rescue that lasted until early Sunday. The girl’s mother was hospitalized under intensive care.

    Zelenskyy said five children were among 25 people wounded in Saturday’s attack, which damaged two residential buildings.

    The mother of one of the children sat amid broken concrete, twisted metal, children’s toys and clothes near her apartment building and described what happened.

    “I was running from the electrical station across the traffic,” Alyona Serednyak recalled. “I was running home. My child was alone at home. We tried to pull my child from under the cage on the window.”

    She said that they managed to free him and he’s now hospitalized in intensive care.

    Like Zelenskyy, his wife Olena focused Sunday on children’s suffering in the war, dedicating a monument to them in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.

    “Parents hold their children’s hand when they take their first steps, when they first take them to kindergarten, to school,” Ukraine’s first lady said. “The worst thing you can imagine is to hold the hand of a dead child. It just shouldn’t be like that. Children must live!”

    Russian drone and cruise missile strikes on Sunday targeted multiple areas of the country, including the capital, Kyiv.

    The Ukrainian air force updated earlier figures and said air defenses downed six of eight Shahed self-exploding drones and four of six cruise missiles fired.

    Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said that two missiles struck a military air base in Kropyvnytskyi in central Ukraine’s Kyrovohrad province. He didn’t report damage.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the military destroyed Ukrainian warplanes and ammunition depots in strikes on Ukrainian airfields, but didn’t give further specifics.

    The Russian military has reported attacks in recent days on Ukrainian air defense batteries, air bases, troop and ammunition depots, military production factories, command and observation points and other battlefield positions. The strikes come as Ukrainian officials refrain from announcing the launch of their much-anticipated counteroffensive to reclaim more Russian-occupied territory, although the pace of military activity suggests the operation may already be underway.

    Ukrainian forces maintained pressure on Russian forces in the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Moscow claimed control of last month after the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

    Elsewhere, Russians fighting alongside Ukrainian forces declared they had launched new attacks on Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine. One of the groups, the Russian Volunteer Corps, released videos Sunday showing a purported raid and offering to exchange prisoners with Russian authorities. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the videos’ authenticity.

    Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov responded to the prisoner exchange offer in a video of his own, saying he was skeptical the captives are still alive, but that he was open to a meeting to discuss a swap.

    Gladkov also reported more Ukrainian shelling Sunday of the border district of Shebekino and neighboring areas. He said at least two people were killed and multiple people wounded on Saturday and that several fires started. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the country’s forces repelled an attempted incursion in the town of Novaya Tavolzhanka.

    Some observers see attacks in Belgorod, which prompted Russian authorities to evacuate thousands of residents, as part of Ukraine’s efforts to distract Moscow and stretch its forces to help the counteroffensive succeed.

    In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, regional leader Sergei Aksenov reported a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Dzhankoi early Sunday. He claimed that five of the attacking drones were shot down and four others jammed and forced to land, adding that there were no casualties.

    The latest Russian raids on Ukrainian cities sparked concerns over civilian safety after officials announced that nearly a quarter of the 4,800 air raid shelters they inspected were locked or unfit for use.

    In Kyiv, 44% of 1,078 shelters were found closed up tight or unusable, Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin said Sunday.

    The official acknowledgments came after a 33-year-old woman in Kyiv reportedly died while waiting outside a shuttered shelter during a Russian missile barrage on Thursday.

    Prosecutors in the capital said that four people were detained as part of a criminal investigation into the woman’s death as she and others waited to enter a locked shelter. A security guard who allegedly failed to unlock the doors remained in custody. Three others, including a local official, were placed under house arrest.

    Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Saturday that city authorities received “more than 1,000” complaints regarding locked, dilapidated or insufficient air-raid shelters within a day of launching an online feedback service.

    ___

    Andrew Katell contributed to this report from New York.

    ___

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

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  • Ukraine keeps up pressure following Russian declaration of victory in Bakhmut

    Ukraine keeps up pressure following Russian declaration of victory in Bakhmut

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    OUTSIDE BAKHMUT, Ukraine — Watching imagery from a drone camera overhead, Ukrainian battalion commander Oleg Shiryaev warned his men in nearby trenches that Russian forces were advancing across a field toward a patch of trees outside the city of Bakhmut.

    The leader of the 228th Battalion of the 127th Kharkiv Territorial Defense Brigade then ordered a mortar team to get ready. A target was locked. A mortar tube popped out a loud orange blast, and an explosion cut a new crater in an already pockmarked hillside.

    “We are moving forward,” Shiryaev said after at least one drone image showed a Russian fighter struck down. “We fight for every tree, every trench, every dugout.”

    Russian forces declared victory in the eastern city last month after the longest, deadliest battle since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 15 months ago. But Ukrainian defenders like Shiryaev aren’t retreating. Instead, they are keeping up the pressure and continuing the fight from positions on the western fringes of Bakhmut.

    The pushback gives commanders in Moscow another thing to think about ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that appears to be taking shape.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russia sought to create the impression of calm around Bakhmut, but in fact, artillery shelling still goes on at levels similar to those at the height of the battle to take the city. The fight, she said, is evolving into a new phase.

    “The battle for the Bakhmut area hasn’t stopped; it is ongoing, just taking different forms,” said Maliar, dressed in her characteristic fatigues in an interview from a military media center in Kyiv. Russian forces are now trying — but failing — to oust Ukrainian fighters from the “dominant heights” overlooking Bakhmut.

    “We are holding them very firmly,” she said.

    From the Kremlin’s perspective, the area around Bakhmut is just part of the more than 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) front line that the Russian military must hold. That task could be made more difficult by the withdrawal of the mercenaries from private military contractor Wagner Group who helped take control of the city. They will be replaced with Russian soldiers.

    For Ukrainian forces, recent work has been opportunistic — trying to wrest small gains from the enemy and taking strategic positions, notably from two flanks on the northwest and southwest, where the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been active, officials said.

    Russia had envisioned the capture of Bakhmut as partial fulfillment of its ambition to seize control of the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Now, its forces have been compelled to regroup, rotate fighters and rearm just to hold the city. Wagner’s owner announced a pullout after acknowledging the loss of more than 20,000 of his men.

    Maliar described the nine-month struggle against Wagner forces in nearly existential terms: “If they had not been destroyed during the defense of Bakhmut, one can imagine that all these tens of thousands would have advanced deeper into Ukrainian territory.”

    The fate of Bakhmut, which lays largely in ruins, has been overshadowed in recent days by near-nightly attacks on Kyiv, a series of unclaimed drone strikes near Moscow and the growing anticipation that Ukraine’s government will try to regain ground.

    But the battle for the city could still have a lingering impact. Moscow has made the most of its capture, epitomized by triumphalism in Russian media. Any slippage of Russia’s grip would be a political embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin.

    Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. research group, noted in a podcast this week that the victory brings new challenges in holding Bakhmut.

    With Wagner fighters withdrawing, Russian forces are “going to be increasingly fixed to Bakhmut … and will find it difficult to defend,” Kofman told “War on the Rocks” in an interview posted Tuesday.

    “And so they may not hold on to Bakhmut, and the whole thing may have ended up being for nothing for them down the line,” he added.

    A Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Russian airborne forces are heavily involved in replacing the departing Wagner troops — a step that is “likely to antagonize” the airborne leadership, who see the duty as a further erosion of their “previously elite status” in the military.

    Ukrainian forces have clawed back slivers of territory on the flanks — a few hundred meters (yards) per day — to solidify defensive lines and seek opportunities to retake some urban parts of the city, said one Ukrainian analyst.

    “The goal in Bakhmut is not Bakhmut itself, which has been turned into ruins,” military analyst Roman Svitan said by phone. The goal for the Ukrainians is to hold on to the western heights and maintain a defensive arc outside the city.

    More broadly, Ukraine wants to weigh down Russian forces and capture the initiative ahead of the counteroffensive — part of what military analysts call “shaping operations” to set the terms of the battle environment and put an enemy in a defensive, reactive posture.

    Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, said the strategic goal in the Bakhmut area was “to restrain the enemy and destroy as much personnel and equipment as possible” while preventing a Russian breakthrough or outflanking maneuver.

    Analyst Mathieu Boulègue questioned whether Bakhmut would hold lessons or importance for the war ahead.

    Military superiority matters, he said, but so does “information superiority” — the ability “to create subterfuge, to create obfuscation of your force, to be able to move in the shadows.”

    Boulègue, a consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London, said those tactics “could determine which side gains an advantage that catches the other side by surprise, and turns the tide of the war.”

    ___

    Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

    ___

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

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  • Death toll from Senegal protests rises to 15 as opposition supporters clash with police

    Death toll from Senegal protests rises to 15 as opposition supporters clash with police

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    DAKAR, Senegal — The number of people killed in days of clashes between Senegalese police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko has now risen to 15, including two security officers, the government said on Saturday.

    While Dakar was calmer on Saturday, clashes continued into the evening. In residential neighborhoods, protesters threw rocks at police, barricaded roads and set tires on fire. The army patrolled the streets as police fired tear gas at the demonstrators, inspecting and detaining people deemed to be causing trouble.

    Residents peered over the rooftops of buildings, both shielding for cover and watching the clashes.

    The clashes first broke out on Thursday, after Sonko was convicted of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her. Sonko, who didn’t attend his trial in Dakar, was sentenced to two years in prison. His lawyer said a warrant hadn’t yet been issued for his arrest.

    Sonko came third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

    Sonko is considered President Macky Sall’s main competition and has urged Sall to state publicly that he won’t seek a third term in office.

    The international community has called on Senegal’s government to resolve the tensions. France’s ministry for Europe and foreign affairs said it was “extremely concerned by the violence” and called for a resolution to this crisis, in keeping with Senegal’s long democratic tradition.

    Rights groups have condemned the government crackdown, which has included arbitrary arrests and restrictions on social media. Some social media sites used by demonstrators to incite violence, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have been suspended, for nearly two days.

    The U.S. State Department issued a statement deploring the violence.

    “Senegal’s strong record of democratic governance, rule of law, and peaceful coexistence is something for which the Senegalese people can be rightfully proud. We urge all parties to voice their views in a peaceful manner,” departmental spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

    Senegalese are blaming the government for the violence and the loss of lives.

    One woman, Seynabou Diop, told The Associated Press on Saturday that her 21-year-old son, Khadim, was killed in the protests, shot by a bullet to the chest.

    “I feel deep pain. What’s happening is hard. Our children are dying. I never thought I’d have to go through this,” she said.

    This was the first time her son, a disciplined and kind mechanic, had joined in the protests, rushing out of the house as soon as he heard Sonko was convicted, she said.

    “I think Macky Sall is responsible. If he’d talked to the Senegalese people, especially young people, maybe we wouldn’t have all these problems,” said Diop. The Associated Press cannot verify the cause of death. The family said an autopsy was underway.

    Corrupting young people, which includes using one’s position of power to have sex with people under the age of 21, is a criminal offense in Senegal, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $6,000.

    Under Senegalese law, Sonko’s conviction would bar him from running in next year’s election, said Bamba Cisse, another defense lawyer. However, the government said that Sonko could ask for a retrial once he was imprisoned. It was unclear when he would be taken into custody.

    If violence continues, it could threaten the country’s institutions, say analysts.

    “Never in their worst forms of nightmare (would) Senegalese have thought of witnessing the prevailing forms of apocalyptic and irrational violence,” said Alioune Tine, founder of Afrikajom Center, a West African think tank.

    “The most shared feeling about the current situation is fear, stress, exhaustion and helplessness. Thus what the people are now seeking for is peace,” he said.

    The West African country has been seen as a bastion of democratic stability in the region.

    Sonko hasn’t been heard from or seen since the verdict. In a statement Friday, his PASTEF-Patriots party called on Senegalese to “amplify and intensify the constitutional resistance” until President Sall leaves office.

    Government spokesman Abdou Karim Fofana said the damage caused by months of demonstrations had cost the country millions of dollars. He argued the protesters themselves posed a threat to democracy.

    “These calls (to protest), it’s a bit like the anti-republican nature of all these movements that hide behind social networks and don’t believe in the foundations of democracy, which are elections, freedom of expression, but also the resources that our (legal) system offers,” Fofana said.

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  • Clashes in Senegal kill at least 9; government bans social media platforms and closes university

    Clashes in Senegal kill at least 9; government bans social media platforms and closes university

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    DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Clashes between police and supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko left nine people dead, the government said Friday, with authorities issuing a blanket ban on the use of several social media platforms in the aftermath of the violence.

    The deaths occurred mainly in the capital, Dakar, and the city of Ziguinchor in the south, where Sonko lives and serves as mayor, Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said in a statement.

    Some social media sites used by demonstrators to incite violence, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have been suspended, he said.

    “The state of Senegal has taken every measure to guarantee the safety of people and property. We are going to reinforce security everywhere in the country,” Diome said. On Friday, the government deployed the military to parts of the city as clashes continued between police and Sonko supporters.

    Sonko was convicted Thursday of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her. Sonko, who didn’t attend his trial in Dakar, was sentenced to two years in prison. His lawyer said a warrant hadn’t been issued yet for his arrest.

    Sonko came in third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

    Sonko is considered President Macky Sall’s main competition and has urged Sall to state publicly that he won’t seek a third term in office.

    Since the verdict was announced, clashes have erupted throughout the country, with protesters throwing rocks, burning vehicles and in some places erecting barricades while police fired tear gas. Associated Press reporters saw plumes of black smoke and tear gas being fired throughout the city.

    The clashes forced the closure of the main university in Dakar. On Friday, Associated Press reporters watched students streaming out carrying luggage on their heads, walking past the shells of burnt-out cars in the university compound.

    “I blame the students for the vandalism. As for the situation in the country, I blame the government,” said Saliou Bewe, a 25-year-old master’s student.

    Bewe said it was the second time the university had closed because of protests related to Sonko. In 2021, at least 14 people were killed during clashes when authorities arrested Sonko for disturbing public order on the way to his court hearing. This time, the student said, it was much worse.

    “Buses have been damaged, the administration, too. The classrooms have been damaged. There was a lot of vandalism and that’s deplorable,” he said. He doubts he’ll be able to sit his exams scheduled to take place in 10 days’ time.

    Security forces patrolled the streets Friday and stood guard outside some supermarkets and shops, anticipating more unrest. Tight security remained around Sonko’s house with police preventing anyone from getting close to the premises. Sonko has not been heard from since the verdict. However, his PASTEF-Patriots party has called for people to take to the streets in protest.

    Rights groups have condemned the government crackdown, which has included arbitrary arrests and restrictions on social media.

    “These restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and information constitute arbitrary measures contrary to international law, and cannot be justified by security reasons,” Amnesty International said in a statement.

    France’s ministry for Europe and foreign affairs said it was “extremely concerned by the violence” and called for a resolution to this crisis, in keeping with Senegal’s long democratic tradition.

    Corrupting young people, which includes using one’s position of power to have sex with people under the age of 21, is a criminal offense in Senegal, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $6,000.

    Under Senegalese law, Sonko’s conviction would bar him from running in next year’s election, said Bamba Cisse, another defense lawyer. However, the government said that Sonko could ask for a retrial once he was imprisoned. It was unclear when he would be taken into custody.

    “The court decision and the prospect of Sall’s bid for a third term in the election next year will fuel fierce criticism around erosion of judicial independence and democratic backsliding” in Senegal, said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst at global risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

    Government spokesman Abdou Karim Fofana said the damage caused by months of demonstrations had cost the country millions of dollars. He argued the protesters themselves posed a threat to democracy.

    “These calls (to protest), it’s a bit like the anti-republican nature of all these movements that hide behind social networks and don’t believe in the foundations of democracy, which are elections, freedom of expression, but also the resources that our (legal) system offers,” Fofana said.

    ————

    Associated Press reporter Angela Charlton in Paris, France contributed

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  • Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites

    Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites

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    PALMYRA, Syria — At the height of the Islamic State group’s rampage across Syria, the world watched in horror as the militants blew up an iconic arch and temple in the country’s famed Roman ruins in Palmyra.

    Eight years later, IS has lost its hold but restoration work on the site has been held up by security issues, leftover IS land mines and lack of funding.

    Other archaeological sites throughout Syria face similar problems, both in areas held by the government and by the opposition. They were damaged by the war or, more recently, by the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck a wide area of neighboring Turkey and also Syria in February.

    Youssef Kanjou, a former director of Syria’s Aleppo National Museum, said the situation of heritage sites in his country is a “disaster.”

    Without a coordinated preservation and restoration effort, said Kanjou, now a researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, “We will lose what was not destroyed by the war or the earthquake.”

    Before the war, Palmyra — one of Syria’s six UNESCO world heritage sites — was the country’s archaeological crown jewel, a tourist attraction that drew tens of thousands of visitors each year. The ancient city was the capital of an Arab client state of the Roman Empire that briefly rebelled and carved out its own kingdom in the third century, led by Queen Zenobia.

    In more recent times, the area had darker associations. It was home to the Tadmur prison, where thousands of opponents of the Assad family’s rule in Syria were reportedly tortured. IS demolished the prison after capturing the town.

    The militants later destroyed Palmyra’s historic temples of Bel and Baalshamin and the Arch of Triumph, viewing them as monuments to idolatry, and beheaded an elderly antiquities scholar who had dedicated his life to overseeing the ruins.

    Today, the road through the desert from Homs to Palmyra is dotted with Syrian army checkpoints. In the town adjacent to the ancient site, some shops have reopened, but signs of war remain in the form of charred vehicles and burned-out or boarded-up stores and houses.

    The Palmyra Museum is closed, and the much-loved lion statue that used to stand in front of it has been moved to Damascus for restoration and safekeeping.

    Nevertheless, Syrian and foreign tourists have begun to trickle back.

    “We thought it was impossible that foreigners would return to Palmyra,” said Qais Fathallah, who used to run a hotel there but fled to Homs when IS took over. Now he is back in Palmyra, operating a restaurant, where he said he serves tourists regularly.

    On a recent day, a group of tourists from countries including the United Kingdom, Canada and China, and another, with Syrian university students, were wandering through the ruins.

    Some of the Syrian tourists had visited in better days. For communication engineering student Fares Mardini, it was the first time.

    “Now I’ve finally come, and I see so much destruction. It’s something really upsetting,” he said. “I hope it can be restored and return to what it was.”

    In 2019, international experts convened by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, said detailed studies would need to be done before starting major restorations.

    Youmna Tabet, program specialist at the Arab states unit of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, said restoration work often involves difficult choices, particularly if there isn’t enough original material for rebuilding.

    “Is it worth it to rebuild it with very little authenticity or should we rather focus on having 3D documentation of how it was?” she said.

    Missions to the site were held up at first by security issues, including land mines that had to be cleared. IS cells still occasionally carry out attacks in the area.

    Money is also a problem.

    “There is a big lack of funding so far, for all the sites in Syria,” Tabet said, noting that international donors have been wary of breaching sanctions on Syria, which have been imposed by the United States, the European Union and others.

    U.S. sanctions exempt activities related to preservation and protection of cultural heritage sites, but sanctions-related obstacles remain, such as a ban on exporting U.S.-made items to Syria.

    Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, has begun restoring Palmyra’s triumphal arch, the largest-scale project underway to date at the site.

    “We have some funding from some friends in some places, but it is not sufficient in relation to the disaster that occurred,” said Mohammad Nazir Awad, director general of Syria’s department of Antiquities and Museums.

    It doesn’t have to be this way, said Maamoun Abdulkarim, who headed the antiquities department at the time of the IS incursion. Abdulkarim pointed to the international push to recover damaged heritage sites in the city of Mosul in neighboring Iraq, also controlled by the militants for some time, as an example of a successful restoration.

    “We need to make some separation between political affairs and cultural heritage affairs,” said Abdulkarim, now a professor at the University of Sharjah. He warned that damaged structures are in danger of deteriorating further or collapsing as the rehabilitation work is delayed.

    The deadly Feb. 6 earthquake caused further destruction at some sites already damaged by the war. This includes the old city of Aleppo, which is under the control of the government, and the Byzantine-era church of Saint Simeon in the Aleppo countryside, in an area controlled by Turkish-backed opposition forces.

    About one-fifth of the church was damaged in the earthquake, including the basilica arch, said Hassan al-Ismail, a researcher with Syrians for Heritage a non-governmental organization. He said the earthquake compounded earlier damage caused by bombings and vandalism.

    The group tried to stabilize the structure with wooden and metal supports and to preserve the stones that fell from it for later use in restoration.

    Ayman al-Nabo, head of antiquities in the opposition-held city of Idlib, appealed for international assistance in stabilizing and restoring sites damaged by the earthquake.

    Antiquities should be seen as “neutral to the political reality,” he said. “This is global human heritage, which belongs to the whole world, not just the Syrians.”

    ___

    Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press reporters Omar Sanadiki in Palmyra, Syria, and Omar Albam in Deir Semaan, Syria, contributed to this report.

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  • Air Force picks Colorado for more Space Force missions as politics loom over headquarters decision

    Air Force picks Colorado for more Space Force missions as politics loom over headquarters decision

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    WASHINGTON — The Air Force announced the permanent location for many more U.S. Space Force units Wednesday — and none of them are in Huntsville, Alabama, suggesting the service may be moving ahead with at least part of the design it originally sought for the new force before it became entangled in politics.

    Four more Space Force missions will now be based in Colorado Springs, a notable choice during a larger and now politicized battle over where to locate the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command. Colorado Springs, which is housing Space Command’s temporary headquarters, was the Air Force’s preferred location, but Donald Trump, in the final days of his presidency, selected Alabama instead.

    While the Pentagon and White House have said the decisions are not directly linked, Alabama has strict anti-abortion laws, and its Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville earlier this year announced he would hold up all military nominations until the Department of Defense rescinds a new policy that would allow female service members to be reimbursed for travel costs if they have to go out of state for reproductive care.

    Tuberville’s office was not immediately available for comment Wednesday evening.

    The Space Force announcement came as President Joe Biden left for Colorado Springs to speak during Thursday’s commencement ceremony at the nearby U.S. Air Force Academy.

    Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet said he’ll be using the president’s visit as another opportunity to press for the command.

    “As President Biden and his administration near a final basing decision for Space Command, we urge them to restore the integrity of this process and make a decision in the interest of our national security — to keep Space Command in Colorado Springs,” his office said in a statement.

    Meanwhile, the Air Force has been moving forward with getting fully dug in at Colorado Springs, where more than 20 of the military’s space missions are now based. The Air Force Academy now has a space curriculum and graduates Space Force Guardians alongside its Air Force cadets.

    “Colorado Springs continues to prove itself as the premier location for our nation’s space defense operations,” Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn said in a statement announcing the selection.

    The Space Force, founded in December 2019, is the smallest of the military branches, with just under 8,400 personnel. But it has seen its budget rapidly rise as the U.S. has scrambled to defend against a rapid militarization of space, such as North Korea’s failed Wednesday launch of a ballistic missile believed to be carrying a spy satellite.

    The four new missions in Colorado Springs include Delta 15, a headquarters unit for the service’s space operations command; Space Delta 12, a test and evaluation unit; and two surveillance squadrons.

    Other locations announced Wednesday as new permanent homes for Space Force missions are in Florida and New Mexico.

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  • Staff at Ukraine’s experimental nuclear site pick up pieces from Russian strikes

    Staff at Ukraine’s experimental nuclear site pick up pieces from Russian strikes

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    KHARKIV, Ukraine — There is activity at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, but it’s not what scientists at its cutting-edge nuclear laboratory trained for.

    Staff at the U.S.-funded atomic research lab in northeastern Ukraine spend their days patching up the facility, which has been badly damaged by repeated Russian strikes.

    More than a year after missiles first hit, the wind batters boarded-up windows and exposed insulation flaps. When the Associated Press visited this month, debris had been heaped in piles, and rocket parts sat near craters up to 2.5 meters (8 feet) deep. Staff say the site was struck some 100 times with rockets and bombs during the first months of the war, and attack remains a constant threat. Kharkiv, near the war’s front line and the Russian border, is shelled almost daily from the neighboring Belgorod region of Russia.

    Before Russia’s invasion, the institute was a jewel in the crown of Ukraine’s highly developed nuclear research sector. Its experimental reactor had opened only six months earlier, designed to offer training and research facilities and to make medical isotopes used in cancer treatment.

    While those fearing a nuclear accident have focused their attention on Ukraine’s huge Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is under Russian control, the Kharkiv lab’s small reactor also poses a risk, though so far there have been no leaks.

    Mykola Shulga, general director of the institute’s National Science Center, said the damage is “significant — but we are doing repairs on our own.”

    “The strikes on this installation were intentional,” Shulga said, in front of a modern gray building whose panels have been ripped off or are pocked with shrapnel holes. “This wall here was hit with seven missiles.”

    The International Atomic Energy Agency has also accused Russia of “sustained targeting” of the research lab. A delegation from the agency visited in November and found nearly all buildings on the site were damaged, “many of them probably beyond repair.” IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi called the extent of the damage “shocking” and worse than expected.

    The one positive note, IAEA inspectors said, was that there had been no release of radiation from the lab’s small experimental reactor.

    Ukraine’s nuclear inspectorate said shelling last year damaged the facility’s heating, cooling and ventilation systems. An electrical substation and diesel generators were destroyed, leaving the site without electricity for a time.

    The Prosecutor’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine have opened criminal cases for alleged war crimes and “ecocide” — one of several proceedings accusing Russia of environmental destruction.

    “Have a look,” said Galyna Tolstolutska, head of the department of radiation damage and radiation materials science.

    “Here, you see. It used to be control panel. Most certainly it’s of no use anymore,” she said, looking around a room of equipment wrecked when the ceiling was shattered by a bomb. “This entire place was exposed to rain, snow, anything.”

    In communist times, the Kharkiv facility’s research helped develop nuclear weapons, making it a Soviet equivalent of Los Alamos in the United States. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the U.S. agreed to fund Ukrainian nuclear research in exchange for Ukraine getting rid of its stockpiles of nuclear bomb-making material.

    The U.S. government says the Kharkiv nuclear facility, built in collaboration with the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, is the first of its kind in the world, “designed to produce medical isotopes, train nuclear professionals, support the Ukrainian nuclear industry and provide experimental capabilities for performing reactor physics, materials, and basic science research.” It started operation in August 2021.

    Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the lab was “a unique facility” whose damage in the war is a loss to world science.

    “It was on the threshold of being able to be operated as a research tool, and then the war came,” he said.

    Russia’s invasion reawakened Europe’s fear of nuclear war, and nuclear accident. Fighting has erupted intermittently around Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, sparking fears of a catastrophic radiation leak like the disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, where a reactor exploded in 1986, sending radiation over a vast area.

    Kharkiv does not pose the same level of risk. The Kharkiv reactor was put into a “deep subcritical state” — essentially sent into hibernation — on the first day of the war, and it contains far less nuclear fuel than a power plant anyway. Paddy Regan, professor of nuclear physics at the University of Surrey, said research reactors are typically 100 times smaller than civilian nuclear power reactors.

    “These accelerator-driven systems are nothing like civilian nuclear reactors,” Regan said. “They’re futuristic design ideas” aimed at creating “an inherently safe reactor system” without the potential for meltdowns of existing power reactors.

    “There’s much more danger from the bombs than from any radiation material,” Regan said.

    Still, the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has warned of potential “severe radiation consequences and contamination of the surrounding territories,” should the reactor be damaged. Institute staff say radiation could spread for 6 miles (10 kilometers), covering an area home to 640,000 people.

    Depending on weather conditions, the pollution could also reach Belgorod, across the border in Russia, said the center’s deputy director, Ivan Karnaukhov.

    “They can blow it all up, but it will also affect their Belgorod region, the radioactivity,” he said. “It won’t be Chernobyl, but there will be significant pollution.” ___

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

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  • Biden marks Memorial Day nearly 2 years after ending America’s longest war, lauds troops’ sacrifice

    Biden marks Memorial Day nearly 2 years after ending America’s longest war, lauds troops’ sacrifice

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden lauded the sacrifice of generations of U.S. troops who died fighting for their country as he marked Memorial Day with the traditional wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

    Biden was joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, for the 155th National Memorial Day Observance. He had a moment of contemplation in front of the wreath, which was adorned with flowers and a red, white and blue bow, and then bowed his head in prayer.

    “We must never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy,” Biden said later in an address at Memorial Amphitheater. “We must never forget the lives these flags, flowers and marble markers represent.”

    ”Every year we remember,” he said. “And every year it never gets easier.”

    Monday’s federal holiday honoring America’s fallen service members came a day after Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached final agreement on a deal that would raise America’s debt limit and that now awaits approval by Congress.

    As it stands, the agreement would keep nondefense spending roughly flat in the 2024 fiscal year and increase it by 1% the following year. The measure would allow for 3% defense growth in fiscal 2024, to $886 billion, and then another 1% in fiscal 2025, to $895 billion.

    Biden has taken pride that his Democratic administration has overseen a time of relative peace for the U.S. military after two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    It’s been nearly 21 months since Biden ended the United States’ longest war in Afghanistan, making good on a campaign promise to end a 20-year-old “forever war” that cost the lives of more than 2400 U.S. service members.

    The war in Afghanistan, however, ended in chaotic and deadly fashion on Biden’s watch in August 2021 with critics blasting the administration’s handling of the evacuation of some 120,000 American citizens, Afghans and others as poorly planned and badly executed.

    The Biden administration last month released a review of the last days of the war, largely blaming his Republican predecessor, President Donald Trump, and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.

    The U.S. now finds itself leading a coalition of allies pouring tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid into Ukraine as it tries to repel the Russian invasion, which appears to have no end in sight.

    While making clear that he has no desire for U.S. troops to enter the conflict, Biden has maintained that he sees the Russian effort to grab territory as an affront to international norms and has vowed to help Kyiv win, sending artillery, tanks and drones and recently agreeing to allow allies to train Ukrainian military on American F-16 jets.

    During the Arlington ceremony, Biden also spoke of the need to care for U.S. service members on and off the battlefield.

    “We have only one truly sacred obligation: to prepare those we send into harm’s way and care for them and their families when they come home and when they don’t,” Biden said.

    The president noted legislation he had signed expanding federal health care services for millions of veterans who served at military bases where toxic smoke billowed from huge burn pits, commonly used by the military until several years ago to dispose of chemicals, tires, plastics and medical and human waste.

    Before Monday’s ceremony at the Arlington, Virginia, cemetery, the Bidens hosted a breakfast at the White House for members of veterans organizations, military service and military family organizations, surviving families of fallen U.S. troops, senior Department of Defense officials and other administration officials.

    The president and the first lady were scheduled to return to their home near Wilmington, Delaware, later Monday to spend the rest of the federal holiday.

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  • Biden marks Memorial Day nearly 2 years after ending America’s longest war, lauds troops’ sacrifice

    Biden marks Memorial Day nearly 2 years after ending America’s longest war, lauds troops’ sacrifice

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden lauded the sacrifice of generations of U.S. troops who died fighting for their country as he marked Memorial Day with the traditional wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

    Biden was joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, for the 155th National Memorial Day Observance. He had a moment of contemplation in front of the wreath, which was adorned with flowers and a red, white and blue bow, and then bowed his head in prayer.

    “We must never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy,” Biden said later in an address at Memorial Amphitheater. “We must never forget the lives these flags, flowers and marble markers represent.”

    ”Every year we remember,” he said. “And every year it never gets easier.”

    Monday’s federal holiday honoring America’s fallen service members came a day after Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached final agreement on a deal that would raise America’s debt limit and that now awaits approval by Congress.

    As it stands, the agreement would keep nondefense spending roughly flat in the 2024 fiscal year and increase it by 1% the following year. The measure would allow for 3% defense growth in fiscal 2024, to $886 billion, and then another 1% in fiscal 2025, to $895 billion.

    Biden has taken pride that his Democratic administration has overseen a time of relative peace for the U.S. military after two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    It’s been nearly 21 months since Biden ended the United States’ longest war in Afghanistan, making good on a campaign promise to end a 20-year-old “forever war” that cost the lives of more than 2400 U.S. service members.

    The war in Afghanistan, however, ended in deadly and chaotic fashion on Biden’s watch in August 2021 with critics blasting the administration’s handling of the evacuation of some 120,000 American citizens, Afghans and others as poorly planned and badly executed.

    The Biden administration last month released a review of the last days of the war, largely blaming his Republican predecessor, President Donald Trump, and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.

    The U.S. now finds itself leading a coalition of allies pouring tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid into Ukraine as it tries to repel the Russian invasion, which appears to have no end in sight.

    While making clear that he has no desire for U.S. troops to enter the conflict, Biden has maintained that he sees the Russian effort to grab territory as an affront to international norms and has vowed to help Kyiv win, sending artillery, tanks and drones and recently agreeing to allow allies to train Ukrainian military on American F-16 jets.

    Before Monday’s ceremony at the Arlington, Virginia, cemetery, the Bidens hosted a breakfast at the White House for members of veterans organizations, military service and military family organizations, surviving families of fallen U.S. troops, senior Department of Defense officials and other administration officials.

    The president and the first lady were scheduled to return their home near Wilmington, Delaware, later Monday to spend the rest of the federal holiday.

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  • UN agencies warn of starvation risk in Sudan, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali, call for urgent aid

    UN agencies warn of starvation risk in Sudan, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali, call for urgent aid

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    Two U.N. agencies are warning of rising food emergencies including starvation in Sudan due to the outbreak of war and in Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali due to restricted movements of people and goods

    People gather to collect water in Khartoum, Sudan, Sunday, May 28, 2023. The Sudanese army and a rival paramilitary force, battling for control of Sudan since mid-April, had agreed last week to the weeklong truce, brokered by the U.S. and the Saudis. However, the cease-fire, like others before it, did not stop the fighting in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere in the country. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

    The Associated Press

    ROME — Two U.N. agencies warned Monday of rising food emergencies including starvation in Sudan due to the outbreak of war and in Haiti,Burkina Faso and Mali due to restricted movements of people and goods.

    The four countries join Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen at the highest alert levels, with communities that are already facing or projected to face starvation or otherwise risk a slide “towards catastrophic conditions.”

    The report by the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization calls for urgent attention to save both lives and jobs. Beyond the nine countries rating the highest level of concern, the agencies said 22 countries are identified as “hotspots’’ risking acute food insecurity.

    “Business-as-usual pathways are no longer an option in today’s risk landscape if we want to achieve global food security for all, ensuring that no one is left behind.” said Qu Dongyu, FAO Director-General.

    He called for immediate action in the agricultural sector “to pull people back from the brink of hunger, help them rebuild their lives and provide long-term solution to address the root causes of food insecurities.”

    The report cited a possible spillover of the conflict in Sudan, deepening economic crises in poor nations and rising fears that the El Nino climatic phenomenon forecast for mid-2023 could provoke climate extremes in vulnerable countries.

    The report warns that 1 million people are expected to flee Sudan, while an additional 2.5 million inside Sudan face acute hunger in the coming months as supply routes through Port Sudan are disrupted by safety issues.

    WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain warned of “catastrophic”consequences unless there is clear action to “help people adapt to a changing climate and ultimately prevent famine.”

    “Not only are more people in more places around the world going hungry, but the severity of the hunger they face is worse than ever,” McCain said.

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  • ‘He’s home’: Missing 73 years, Medal of Honor recipient’s remains return to Georgia

    ‘He’s home’: Missing 73 years, Medal of Honor recipient’s remains return to Georgia

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    SAVANNAH, Ga. — Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment made a desperate retreat as North Korean troops closed in around them. A wounded, 18-year-old Army Pfc. Luther Herschel Story feared his injuries would slow down his company, so he stayed behind to cover their withdrawal.

    Story’s actions in the Korean War on Sept. 1, 1950, would ensure he was remembered. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, which is now displayed alongside his portrait at the National Infantry Museum, an hour’s drive from his hometown of Americus, Georgia.

    But Story was never seen alive again, and his resting place long remained a mystery.

    “In my family, we always believed that he would never be found,” said Judy Wade, Story’s niece and closest surviving relative.

    That changed in April when the U.S. military revealed lab tests had matched DNA from Wade and her late mother to bones of an unidentified American soldier recovered from Korea in October 1950. The remains belonged to Story, a case agent told Wade over the phone. After nearly 73 years, he was coming home.

    A Memorial Day burial with military honors was scheduled Monday at the Andersonville National Cemetery. A police escort with flashing lights escorted Story’s casket through the streets of nearby Americus on Wednesday after it arrived in Georgia.

    “I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” said Wade, who was born four years after her uncle went missing overseas. “I’m just glad he’s home.”

    Among those celebrating Story’s return was former President Jimmy Carter. When Story was a young boy, according to Wade, his family lived and worked in Plains on land owned by Carter’s father, James Earl Carter Sr.

    Jimmy Carter, 98, has been under hospice care at his home in Plains since February. Jill Stuckey, superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, said she shared the news about Story with Carter as soon as she heard it.

    “Oh, there was a big smile on his face,” Stuckey said. “He was very excited to know that a hero was coming home.”

    Story grew up about 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of Atlanta in Sumter County, where his father was a sharecropper. As a young boy, Story, who had a keen sense of humor and liked baseball, joined his parents and older siblings in the fields to help harvest cotton. The work was hard, and it didn’t pay much.

    “Momma talked about eating sweet potatoes three times a day,” said Wade, whose mother, Gwendolyn Story Chambliss, was Luther Story’s older sister. “She used to talk about how at night her fingers would be bleeding from picking cotton out of the bolls. Everybody in the family had to do it for them to exist.”

    The family eventually moved to Americus, the county’s largest city, where Story’s parents found better work. He enrolled in high school, but soon set his sights on joining the military in the years following World War II.

    In 1948, his mother agreed to sign papers allowing Story to enlist in the Army. She listed his birthdate as July 20, 1931. But Wade said she later obtained a copy of her uncle’s birth certificate that showed he was born in 1932 — which would have made him just 16 when he joined.

    Story left school during his sophomore year. In the summer of 1950 he deployed with Company A of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment to Korea around the time the war began.

    On Sept. 1, 1950, near the village of Agok on the Naktong River, Story’s unit came under attack by three divisions of North Korean troops that moved to surround the Americans and cut off their escape.

    Story seized a machine gun and fired on enemy soldiers crossing the river, killing or wounding about 100, according to his Medal of Honor citation. As his company commander ordered a retreat, Story rushed into a road and threw grenades into an approaching truck carrying North Korean troops and ammunition. Despite being wounded, he continued fighting.

    “Realizing that his wounds would hamper his comrades, he refused to retire to the next position but remained to cover the company’s withdrawal,” Story’s award citation said. “When last seen he was firing every weapon available and fighting off another hostile assault.”

    Story was presumed dead. He would have been 18 years old, according to the birth certificate Wade obtained.

    In 1951, his father received Story’s Medal of Honor at a Pentagon ceremony. Story was also posthumously promoted to corporal.

    About a month after Story went missing in Korea, the U.S. military recovered a body in the area where he was last seen fighting. The unidentified remains were buried with other unknown service members at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

    According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, more than 7,500 Americans who served in the Korean War remain missing or their remains have not been identified. That’s roughly 20% of the nearly 37,000 U.S. service members who died in the war.

    Remains of the unknown soldier recovered near Agok were disinterred in 2021 as part of a broader military effort to determine the identities of several hundred Americans who died in the war. Eventually scientists compared DNA from the bones with samples submitted by Wade and her mother before she died in 2017. They made a successful match.

    President Joe Biden announced the breakthrough April 26 in Washington, joined by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

    “Today, we can return him to his family,” Biden said of Story, “and to his rest.”

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  • What to stream this week: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

    What to stream this week: Foo Fighters, ‘The Idol,’ LeBron James and ‘American Gladiators’ doc

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    There’s new music from Foo Fighters, the buzzy HBO series “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd and a documentary about the breakthrough TV show “American Gladiators” among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a LeBron James’s origin story and a TV show where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — LeBron James’s origin story is dramatized in the new film “Shooting Stars,” debuting exclusively on Peacock on Friday, June 2. Based on the 2009 book, written by James and “Friday Night Lights” author Buzz Bissinger, the film looks at how he and his childhood friends (the self-anointed “fab four”) rose to basketball prominence on their high school team in Akron, Ohio. He and his friends would help lead their St. Vincent-St. Mary’s team to three state championships in four years. James is played by newcomer Marquis “Mookie” Cook, who co-stars with “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin as Lil Dru, Avery S. Wills Jr. as Willie McGee and Khalil Everage as Sian Cotton in the Chris Robinson-directed film.

    — Sydney Sweeney, of “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” takes a starring role in “Reality,” coming to HBO and Max on Monday, May 29. She plays former U.S. Air Force member and NSA contractor Reality Winner who was accused of leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The film is based on actual dialogue between Winner and the FBI agents (Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis) who showed up at her doorstep to interrogate her in 2017. It’s the directorial debut of Tina Satter, who adapted her 2019 play “Is This a Room?” and has gotten rave reviews since its debut at the Berlin Film Festival.

    — Method acting is in the spotlight in a new series debuting on The Criterion Channel on Thursday, along with a conversation between Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Isaac Butler, who wrote a book on the matter (“The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned How to Act.”) The films feature performances by noted disciples like Sidney Poitier, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. Included among the 25 titles are George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun,” Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men,” Elia Kazan’s “Splendor in the Grass,” Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” and “Carnal Knowledge,” Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces” and Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Foo Fighters have a new album, the first since the death of the band’s drummer, Taylor Hawkins. The rockers say the 10-track “But Here We Are” is “a brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year.” The lead, driving single is “Rescued,” with the lyrics “I’m just waiting to be rescued/Bring me back to life. Kings and queens and in-betweens/We all deserve the right.” The new album, out Friday, June 2, is produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters. Hawkins died last year during a South American tour.

    — Bob Dylan’s re-recordings of old songs, which first premiered on Alma Har’el’s 2021 film “Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan,” will be released on audio formats for the first time on Friday, June 2. The collection includes “Forever Young,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” The 14 tracks include “Watching the River Flow,” a bluesy jewel. The full-length “Shadow Kingdom feature” film will also be available for download and rental on June 6. (Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings)

    — The Revivalists return with their fifth full-length album, promising more of their spicy gumbo of horn-accented alt-rock, blues, folk and gospel. “Pour It Out Into the Night” is out Friday, June 2 and the New Orleans-based band offers three very different takes on their sound, with the driving anthem “Kid,” the folky “Down in the Dirt” and the political protest tune “The Long Con,” with the lyrics “Every day they take away/A little piece of you/a little piece of me.” The band this summer are performing at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. (Concord Records)

    — This week will offer a chance to honor Kenny Rogers with some rare songs he left behind. The 10-track “Life Is Like a Song” features eight never-before-heard recordings, spanning 2008-2011, including covers of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” and Lionel Richie’s “Goodbye,” as well as his duet with Dolly Parton, “Tell Me That You Love Me.” The collection is curated and executive produced by the late Country Music Hall of Famer’s widow, Wanda Rogers. Two bonus tracks include a cover of the Mack Gordon/Henry Warren standard, “At Last” and the Buddy Hyatt-penned “Say Hello to Heaven.” (UMe)

    — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson has a new gritty HBO series called “The Idol” starring Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye, also known as the recording artist The Weeknd, who is a co-writer and co-executive producer. Depp plays a recording artist in LA who, after a nervous breakdown, enters a disturbing relationship with a self-help guru/cult leader played by Tesfaye. “The Idol” has already garnered a lot of buzz for an alleged toxic work environment off camera and reportedly gratuitous sex scenes that are also violent, which the cast and Levinson have denied. The show premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where Levinson acknowledged at a press conference that while it is a “provocative” story, the media coverage has convinced him “we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.” “The Idol” premieres Sunday, June 4 on HBO.

    — A new miniseries offers a history lesson on the 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms in office. Co-executive produced by Bradley Cooper and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, “FDR” delves into some of the most pivotal times in Roosevelt’s life including when he contracted Polio disease and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down, when U.S. forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and his marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt who became a champion for human rights. The three-night miniseries premieres its first episode Monday, May 29 on History.

    — ESPN’s award-winning “30 for 30” series returns with “The American Gladiators Documentary,” a two-part film examining the history of the former syndicated reality-competition show. It also reveals “American Gladiators” had a dark underbelly, involving greed, addiction and blackmail. Former contenders and crew members are interviewed. It premieres Tuesday.

    — Gearheads will rev up for “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge,” where contestants compete to transform nostalgia cars into life-sized Hot Wheels. Hosted by auto expert Rutledge Wood and featuring celebrity guests including Anthony Anderson, Joel McHale and Terry Crews, the winner of each episode gets a $25,000 prize. Jay Leno, known for his own love of automobiles and rare car collection, appears in the finale episode where the winner is awarded $50,000 and have their creation turned into an actual Hot Wheels diecast model that the public can purchase. “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge” debuts Tuesday on NBC.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — As Mick Jagger once sang, summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street. For aficionados of Capcom’s venerable Street Fighter series, that time can’t come soon enough. Street Fighter 6 — the franchise’s first release since 2016 — brings back 18 fan-favorite brawlers for more one-on-one punching and kicking. The new edition also lets you create your own avatar from scratch and go cruisin’ for a bruisin’ in cities all over the world. And there’s a battle hub where you and your friends can start fight clubs, compete in tournaments and play old-school Capcom arcade games. The fists and feet start flying Friday, June 2, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment.

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  • Takeaways on debt ceiling: McCarthy’s balancing act, Biden’s choice and the challenges ahead

    Takeaways on debt ceiling: McCarthy’s balancing act, Biden’s choice and the challenges ahead

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    WASHINGTON — It’s a deal no one in Washington claims to really like. But after weeks of negotiations, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have struck an agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avert a potentially devastating government default.

    The stakes are high for both men — and now each will have to persuade lawmakers in their parties to vote for it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that the United States could run out of cash to pay the bills and default on its obligations if the debt ceiling is not raised by June 5.

    The ultimate agreement, hammered out by Biden, McCarthy and a small group of their deputies, is a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold spending flat for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and capping increases at 1% for 2025. It would suspend the debt limit until January 2025, after the next presidential election. Republicans had insisted on reducing spending and had passed their own bill with much larger cuts last month.

    The package would also make policy tweaks, including by adding work requirements for some food aid recipients and streamlining an environmental law that Republicans say has made it harder to build energy projects.

    Takeaways from the deal, and from the negotiations that led up to it:

    McCARTHY’S DELICATE BALANCING ACT

    Ever since McCarthy won the House speakership on the 15th ballot in January, it was clear that the debt ceiling negotiations would be his first and perhaps biggest test.

    Known more for strategy than policy, McCarthy has had a challenge that seemed almost insurmountable, with a narrow majority and a sizable group of hard-right conservatives certain to oppose anything he negotiated with Biden. And he could still find himself in the middle of a crisis if too many in his caucus revolt when the House votes on the package this week.

    Through it all, the Californian has exhibited his typical laid-back vibe, projecting confidence about the bill and its success. He said Sunday that he will win a majority of Republicans on the bill and some Democrats.

    In a conference call on Saturday night, McCarthy said, more than 95 percent of the members in his conference “were overwhelmingly excited about what they see.”

    But some House Republicans were publicly slamming the deal, arguing it did too little to cut the deficit. Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina tweeted a vomit emoji, complaining that some Republicans on the call were praising the speaker for getting what he said is “almost zippo in exchange” for the debt-ceiling hike.

    BIDEN’S RELUCTANT COMPROMISE

    For months, Biden and his aides had a mantra: There would be no negotiation on the debt limit. But then he negotiated anyway.

    It’s not where Biden, a veteran of the nasty 2011 debt-limit battle that saw the nation’s credit rating downgraded for the first time in history, wanted to be. But it was a likely scenario — with a Republican-controlled House that had made it clear from the start that it would not raise the borrowing authority under a Democratic president without extracting spending curbs or other policy concessions.

    There was no way Biden, who is running for re-election next year, would want a historic default on his watch.

    Biden has continued to insist that he was negotiating on the budget, not the debt ceiling. But pushed by a reporter Sunday evening who noted that was precisely what Republicans were seeking in exchange for lifting the debt limit, the president seemed to break from his talking point.

    “Sure, yeah,” Biden said, chuckling slightly. “Can you think of an alternative?”

    Now he will have to sell it to House Democrats, who must vote for it in big enough numbers to make up for defecting Republicans. Many progressive members in the House have appeared skeptical of the deal, but they remained mostly quiet over the weekend as they waited for more details.

    But the deal won early praise from another key Democratic group. The New Democrat Coalition, which has roughly 100 members, praised Biden as having negotiated “a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis.”

    LONG-SOUGHT GOP POLICY

    Republicans were able to win some policy changes they have sought for years, however modest, including on food aid. The bill would raise the age limit for existing work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. It would also create a new agency to develop and streamline environmental reviews that Republicans have complained about for decades.

    The new work requirements for able-bodied SNAP recipients without dependents would phase in by 2025 and expire by 2030. And a provision pushed by Biden would take some vulnerable recipients — like veterans and the homeless — off work requirements entirely. But Republicans made clear that pushing more people to work in exchange for government benefits was a major victory for them, even if mostly symbolic.

    The bill also would amend the National Environmental Policy Act and designate “a single lead agency” to develop environmental reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.

    Republicans had hoped for a much broader permitting package that would make it easier to build and develop energy projects. But Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, a McCarthy ally who was one of the negotiators, said the bill brings “transformational changes into the permitting and environmental review process” for the first time in four decades.

    SENATE QUIET, WAITING TO CLOSE

    McCarthy has said the House will vote on the package Wednesday. If passed, it will then head to the Democratic-led Senate where leaders will have to get agreement from all 100 members to speed up the process and avert a default by next Monday.

    The White House briefed Democratic senators Sunday and McCarthy briefed Republicans. But most senators remained quiet on the deal as they waited for the full text and to see if McCarthy can navigate it through the House.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky cut themselves out of the negotiating process early on, saying it should be a negotiation between the White House and McCarthy.

    McConnell issued a statement supporting the legislation on Sunday but some in his caucus have criticized it. The two leaders will have to navigate any potential objections over the coming week as they seek to win full support to move quickly on the deal.

    “With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?” tweeted Utah Sen. Mike Lee on Saturday, aligning himself with the House Republicans who say the deal is not conservative enough.

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