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Tag: War and unrest

  • Ukraine’s Kostyuk booed at French Open after no handshake with Belarus’ Sabalenka because of war

    Ukraine’s Kostyuk booed at French Open after no handshake with Belarus’ Sabalenka because of war

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    PARIS — Unable to sleep the night before her first-round match at the French Open against Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the Grand Slam tournament’s No. 2 seed, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine checked her phone at 5 a.m. Sunday and saw disturbing news back home in Kyiv.

    At least one person was killed when the capital of Kostyuk’s country was subjected to the largest drone attack by Russia since the start of its war, launched with an invasion assisted by Belarus in February 2022.

    “It’s something I cannot describe, probably. I try to put my emotions aside any time I go out on court. I think I’m better than before, and I don’t think it affects me as much on a daily basis, but yeah, it’s just — I don’t know,” Kostyuk said, shaking her head. “There is not much to say, really. It’s just part of my life.”

    That, then, is why Kostyuk has decided she will not exchange the usual postmatch pleasantries with opponents from Russia or Belarus. And that is why she avoided a handshake — avoided any eye contact, even — after losing to Australian Open champion Sabalenka 6-3, 6-2 on Day 1 at Roland Garros.

    What surprised the 20-year-old, 39th-ranked Kostyuk on Sunday was the reaction she received from the spectators in Court Philippe Chatrier: They loudly booed and derisively whistled at her as she walked directly over to acknowledge the chair umpire instead of congratulating the winner after the lopsided result. The negative response grew louder as she gathered her belongings and walked off the court toward the locker room.

    “I have to say,” Kostyuk said, “I didn’t expect it. … People should be, honestly, embarrassed.”

    Kostyuk is based now in Monaco, and her mother and sister are there, too, but her father and grandfather are still in Kyiv. Perhaps the fans on hand at the clay-court event’s main stadium were unaware of the backstory and figured Kostyuk simply failed to follow usual tennis etiquette.

    Initially, Sabalenka — who had approached the net as if anticipating some sort of exchange with Kostyuk — thought the noise was directed at her.

    “At first, I thought they were booing me,” Sabalenka said. “I was a little confused, and I was, like, ‘OK, what should I do?”

    Sabalenka tried to ask the chair umpire what was going on. She looked up at her entourage in the stands, too. Then she realized that while she is aware Kostyuk and other Ukrainian tennis players have been declining to greet opponents from Russia or Belarus after a match, the spectators might not have known — and so responded in a way Sabalenka didn’t think was deserved.

    “They saw it,” she surmised, “as disrespect (for) me.”

    All in all, if the tennis itself was not particularly memorable, the whole scene, including the lack of the customary prematch photo of the players following the coin toss, became the most noteworthy development on Day 1 in Paris.

    The highest-seeded player to go home was No. 7 Maria Sakkari, who lost 7-6 (5), 7-5 to 42nd-ranked Karolina Muchova in what wasn’t necessarily that momentous of an upset. Both have been major semifinalists, and Muchova has won her past four Slam matches against players ranked in the top 10 — including beating Sakkari at the French Open last year. Also out: No. 21 Magda Linette, a semifinalist at the Australian Open, who lost 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 to 2021 U.S. Open runner-up Leylah Fernandez, and No. 29 Zhang Shuai.

    The first seeded men to bow out were No. 20 Dan Evans and No. 30 Ben Shelton, an Australian Open quarterfinalist and 2022 NCAA champion from Florida making his French Open debut. No. 11 Karen Khachanov, a semifinalist at the past two majors, came all the way back after dropping the opening two sets to beat Constant Lestienne, a French player once banned for gambling, by a 3-6, 1-6, 6-2, 6-1, 6-3 score in front of a boisterous crowd at Court Suzanne Lenglen. Two-time Slam finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas came within a point of being forced to a fifth set, too, but got past Jiri Vesely 7-5, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (7). No. 24 Sebastian Korda, who missed three months after hurting his wrist at the Australian Open, was a straight-set winner in an all-American matchup against Mackenzie McDonald, the last player to face — and beat — Rafael Nadal. The 14-time French Open champion has been sidelined with a hip injury since that match in January.

    Sabalenka called Sunday “emotionally tough” — because of mundane, tennis-related reasons, such as the nerves that come with any first-round match, but more significantly because of the unusual circumstances involving the war.

    “You’re playing against (a) Ukrainian and you never know what’s going to happen. You never know how people will — will they support you or not?” explained Sabalenka, who went down an early break and trailed 3-2 before reeling off six consecutive games with powerful first-strike hitting. “I was worried, like, people will be against me, and I don’t like to play when people (are) so much against me.”

    A journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka what her message to the world is with regard to the war, particularly in this context: She can overtake Iga Swiatek at No. 1 in the rankings based on results over the next two weeks and, therefore, serves as a role model.

    “Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody. How can we support the war? Nobody — normal people — will never support it. Why (do) we have to go loud and say that things? This is like: ‘One plus one (is) two.’ Of course we don’t support war,” Sabalenka said. “If it could affect anyhow the war, if it could like stop it, we would do it. But unfortunately, it’s not in our hands.”

    When a portion of those comments was read to Kostyuk by a reporter, she responded in calm, measured tones that she doesn’t get why Sabalenka does not come out and say that “she personally doesn’t support this war.”

    Kostyuk also rejected the notion that players from Russia or Belarus could be in a tough spot upon returning to those countries if they were to speak out about what is happening in Ukraine.

    “I don’t know why it’s a difficult situation,” Kostyuk said with a chuckle.

    “I don’t know what other players are afraid of,” she said. “I go back to Ukraine, where I can die any second from drones or missiles or whatever it is.”

    ___

    AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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  • Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger celebrates 100th birthday, still active in global affairs

    Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger celebrates 100th birthday, still active in global affairs

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    Former diplomat and presidential adviser Henry Kissinger marks his 100th birthday on Saturday, outlasting many of his political contemporaries who guided the United States through one of its most tumultuous periods including the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

    Born in Germany on May 27, 1923, Kissinger remains known for his key role in American foreign policy of the 1960s and 1970s including eventual attempts to pull the U.S. out of Vietnam, but not before he became inextricably linked to many of the conflict’s most disputed actions.

    David Kissinger, writing in The Washington Post on Thursday, said his father’s centenary “might have an air of inevitability for anyone familiar with his force of character and love of historical symbolism. Not only has he outlived most of his peers, eminent detractors and students, but he has also remained indefatigably active throughout his 90s.”

    The elder Kissinger will celebrate this week with visits to New York, London and his hometown of Fürth, Germany, David Kissinger wrote.

    In recent years Kissinger has continued to hold sway over Washington’s power brokers as an elder statesman. He has provided advice to Republican and Democratic presidents, including the White House during the Trump administration, while maintaining an international consulting business through which he delivers speeches in the German accent he has not lost since fleeing the Nazi regime with his family when he was a teenager.

    As recently as this month, Kissinger opined that the war in Ukraine is reaching a turning point with China entering negotiations. He told CBS News that he expects negotiations to come to a head “by the end of the year.” He has called for peace through negotiation to end the conflict.

    Kissinger also coauthored a book about artificial intelligence in 2021 called “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.” He has warned that governments should prepare for the potential risks associated with the technology.

    During eight years as a national security adviser and secretary of state, Kissinger was involved in major foreign policy events including the first example of “shuttle diplomacy” seeking Middle East peace, secret negotiations with China to defrost relations between the burgeoning superpowers and the instigation of the Paris peace talks seeking an end to the Vietnam conflict and the U.S. military’s presence there.

    Kissinger, along with Nixon, also bore the brunt of criticism from American allies when North Vietnamese communist forces took Saigon in 1975 as the remaining U.S. personnel fled what is now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

    Kissinger additionally was accused of orchestrating the expansion of the conflict into Laos and Cambodia, enabling the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians.

    Among his endorsements, Kissinger was recognized as a central driver in the period of detente, a diplomatic effort between the U.S. and the Soviet Union beginning in 1967 through 1979 to reduce Cold War tensions with trade and arms negotiations including the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaties.

    Kissinger remained one of Nixon’s most trusted advisers through his administration from 1969 to 1974, his power only growing through the Watergate affair that brought down the 37th president.

    Gerald Ford, who as vice president ascended to the Oval Office following his predecessor’s resignation, awarded Kissinger the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, saying Kissinger “wielded America’s great power with wisdom and compassion in the service of peace.”

    Others have accused Kissinger of more concern with power than harmony during his tenure in Washington, enacting realpolitik policies favoring American interests while assisting or emboldening repressive regimes in Pakistan, Chile and Indonesia.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Patrick Whittle contributed to this report.

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  • Sudan military ruler seeks removal of UN envoy in letter to UN chief, who is ‘shocked’ by the demand

    Sudan military ruler seeks removal of UN envoy in letter to UN chief, who is ‘shocked’ by the demand

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    CAIRO — Sudan’s military ruler demanded in a letter to the U.N. secretary general that the U.N. envoy to his country be removed, officials said Saturday. The U.N. chief was “shocked” by the letter, a spokesman said.

    The envoy, Volker Perthes, has been a key mediator in Sudan, first during the country’s fitful attempts to transition to democracy and then after worsening tensions between military rivals exploded into open fighting last month.

    The fighting pits troops loyal to military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan against a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, headed by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

    Burhan’s letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was received Friday.

    “The Secretary-General is shocked by the letter he received this morning,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “The Secretary-General is proud of the work done by Volker Perthes and reaffirms his full confidence in his Special Representative.”

    Dujarric didn’t reveal the contents of the letter. A senior Sudanese military official said Burhan’s letter asked Guterres to replace Perthes who was appointed to the post in 2021.

    According to the official, Burhan accused Perthes of “being partisan,” and that his approach in pre-war talks between the generals and the pro-democracy movement helped inflame the conflict. The talks had aimed at restoring the country’s democratic transition, which was derailed by a military coup in Oct. 2021.

    The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.

    Later Saturday, the U.S. State Department said it supports Perthes and that he “continues to have our confidence.” A statement by spokesman Matthew Miller said that “we express our concern over the letter from the Sudanese Armed Forces calling for his (Perthes’) resignation.”

    Perthes declined to comment on the letter.

    Burhan’s letter came after the U.N. envoy accused the warring parties of disregarding the laws of war by attacking homes, shops, places of worship, and water and electricity installations.

    In his briefing to the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, Perthes blamed the leaders of the military and the RSF for the war, saying they have chosen to “settle their unresolved conflict on the battlefield rather than at the table.”

    Burhan accused Perthes last year of “exceeding the U.N. mission’s mandate and of blatant interference in Sudanese affairs.” He threatened to expel him from the country.

    The ongoing fighting broke out in mid-April between the military and the powerful RSF. Both Burhan and Dagalo led the 2021 coup that removed the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

    The fighting turned the capital of Khartoum and the adjacent city of Omdurman into a battleground. The clashes also spread elsewhere in the country, including the war-wracked Darfur region.

    The conflict has killed hundreds of people, wounded thousands and pushed the country to near collapse. It forced more than 1.3 million out of their homes to safer areas inside Sudan, or to neighboring nations.

    Sexual violence including rape of women and girls, a common practice in Sudan’s wars and political upheavals, were reported in Khartoum and Darfur since the fighting began.

    The Combating Violence Against Women Unit, a government-run group, said Friday it received reports of at least 24 cases of sexual attacks in Khartoum, and 25 other cases in Darfur.

    The unit, which tracks violence against women, said most survivors reported that the attackers were in RSF uniform and in areas of Khartoum controlled by RSF checkpoints.

    The RSF did not respond to a request for comment.

    The warring parties have agreed on a weeklong cease-fire, brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. However, the truce, which is scheduled to expire Monday night, did not stop the fighting in parts of Khartoum and elsewhere in the county.

    Residents reported sporadic clashes Saturday in parts of Omdurman, where the army’s aircraft were seen flying over the city. Fighting was also reported in al-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur.

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  • Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger celebrates 100th birthday, still active in global affairs

    Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger celebrates 100th birthday, still active in global affairs

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    Former diplomat and presidential advisor Henry Kissinger marks his 100th birthday on Saturday, outlasting many of his political contemporaries who guided the United States through one of its most tumultuous periods including the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

    Born in Germany on May 27, 1923, Kissinger remains known for his key role in American foreign policy of the 1960s and 1970s including eventual attempts to pull the U.S. out of Vietnam, but not before he became inextricably linked to many of the conflict’s most disputed actions.

    David Kissinger, writing in The Washington Post on Thursday, said his father’s centenary “might have an air of inevitability for anyone familiar with his force of character and love of historical symbolism. Not only has he outlived most of his peers, eminent detractors and students, but he has also remained indefatigably active throughout his 90s.”

    The elder Kissinger will celebrate this week with visits to New York, London and his hometown of Fürth, Germany, David Kissinger wrote.

    In recent years Kissinger has continued to hold sway over Washington’s power brokers as an elder statesman. He has provided advice to Republican and Democratic presidents, including the White House during the Trump administration, while maintaining an international consulting business through which he delivers speeches in the German accent he has not lost since fleeing the Nazi regime with his family when he was a teenager.

    During eight years as a national security adviser and secretary of state, Kissinger was involved in major foreign policy events including the first example of “shuttle diplomacy” seeking Middle East peace, secret negotiations with China to defrost relations between the burgeoning superpowers and the instigation of the Paris peace talks seeking an end to the Vietnam conflict and the U.S. military’s presence there.

    Kissinger, along with Nixon, also bore the brunt of criticism from American allies when North Vietnamese communist forces took Saigon in 1975 as the remaining U.S. personnel fled what is now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

    Kissinger additionally was accused of orchestrating the expansion of the conflict into Laos and Cambodia, enabling the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians.

    Among his endorsements, Kissinger was recognized as a central driver in the period of detente, a diplomatic effort between the U.S. and the Soviet Union beginning in 1967 through 1979 to reduce Cold War tensions with trade and arms negotiations including the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaties.

    Kissinger remained one of Nixon’s most trusted advisers through his administration from 1969 to 1974, his power only growing through the Watergate affair that brought down the 37th president.

    Gerald Ford, who as vice president ascended to the Oval Office following his predecessor’s resignation, awarded Kissinger the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, saying Kissinger “wielded America’s great power with wisdom and compassion in the service of peace.”

    Others have accused Kissinger of more concern with power than harmony during his tenure in Washington, enacting realpolitik policies favoring American interests while assisting or emboldening repressive regimes in Pakistan, Chile and Indonesia.

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  • Austin hopes F-16 fight jet training for Ukrainian pilots will begin in coming weeks

    Austin hopes F-16 fight jet training for Ukrainian pilots will begin in coming weeks

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    WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday he hopes that training for Ukrainian pilots on American-made F-16 fighter jets will begin in the coming weeks, bolstering Ukraine in the long run but not necessarily as part of an anticipated spring counteroffensive against Russia.

    Austin spoke as defense leaders from around the world assembled for a virtual meeting to discuss the ongoing military support for Ukraine. They were expected talk about which countries will provide F-16s, and how and where the pilot training will be done.

    The officials will also get an update on the war effort from Ukrainian leaders, including preparation for that anticipated counteroffensive and how the allies, who have faced their own stockpile pressures, can continue to support Kyiv’s fight against Russia.

    “We’re going to have to dig deeper, and we’re going to have to continue to look for creative ways to boost our industrial capability,” Austin said before the military leaders began their closed session. “The stakes are high. But the cause is just and our will is strong.”

    European countries have said they are talking about which countries may have some of the F-16s available. The United States had long balked at providing the advanced aircraft to Ukraine, and only last weekend did President Joe Biden agree to allow other nations to send their own U.S.-made jets to Kyiv.

    “We hope this training will begin in the coming weeks,” Austin said. “This will further strengthen and improve the capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force in the long term. And it will complement our short-term and medium-term security agreements. This new joint effort sends a powerful message about our unity and our long-term commitment to Ukraine’s self-defense.”

    The leaders will also likely discuss Ukraine’s other continuing military needs, including air defense systems and munitions, artillery and other ammunition.

    It was not immediately clear whether they will make any firm decisions on the F-16 issue, but initial steps have begun.

    Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Tuesday that training for Ukrainian pilots had begun in Poland and some other countries, though Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said training was still in the planning phase. The Netherlands and Denmark, among others, are also making plans for training.

    “We can continue and also finalize the plans that we’re making with Denmark and other allies to start these these trainings. And of course, that is the first step that you have to take,” Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said, adding that initial discussions about who may have F-16s available to send is underway.

    Ukraine has long sought the sophisticated fighter to give it a combat edge as it battles Russia’s invasion, now in its second year.

    The Biden administration’s decision was a sharp reversal after refusing to approve any transfer of the aircraft or conduct training for more than a year because of worries that doing so could escalate tensions with Russia. U.S. officials also had argued against the F-16 by saying that learning to fly and logistically support such an advanced aircraft would be difficult and take months.

    Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said this week that the U.S. decision on the F-16 was part of a broader long-term commitment to meet Ukraine’s future military needs. He said the jets would not be relevant in any counteroffensive expected to begin shortly.

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  • Companies are finding it’s not so simple to leave Russia. Others are quietly staying put

    Companies are finding it’s not so simple to leave Russia. Others are quietly staying put

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    When Russia invaded Ukraine, global companies were quick to respond, some announcing they would get out of Russia immediately, others curtailing imports or new investment. Billions of dollars’ worth of factories, energy holdings and power plants were written off or put up for sale, accompanied by fierce condemnation of the war and expressions of solidarity with Ukraine.

    More than a year later, it’s clear: Leaving Russia was not as simple as the first announcements might have made it seem.

    Increasingly, Russia has put hurdles in the way of companies that want out, requiring approval by a government commission and in some cases from President Vladimir Putin himself, while imposing painful discounts and taxes on sale prices.

    Though companies’ stories vary, a common theme is having to thread an obstacle course between Western sanctions and outraged public opinion on one side and Russia’s efforts to discourage and penalize departures on the other. Some international brands such as Coke and Apple are trickling in informally through third countries despite a decision to exit.

    Many companies are simply staying put, sometimes citing responsibility to shareholders or employees or legal obligations to local franchisees or partners. Others argue that they’re providing essentials like food, farm supplies or medicine. Some say nothing.

    One is Italian fashion chain Benetton, whose store at Moscow’s now ironically named Evropeisky Mall — meaning “European” in Russian — was busy on a recent weekday evening, with customers browsing and workers tidying piles of brightly colored clothing. At Italian lingerie retailer Calzedonia, shoppers looked through socks and swimwear. Neither company responded to emailed questions.

    For consumers in Moscow, what they can buy hasn’t changed much. While baby products store Mothercare became Mother Bear under new local ownership, most of the items in the Evropeisky Mall shop still bear the Mothercare brand.

    That’s also what student Alik Petrosyan saw as he shopped at Maag, which now owns Zara’s former flagship clothing store in Moscow.

    “The quality hasn’t changed at all, everything has stayed the same,” he said. “The prices haven’t changed much, taking into account the inflation and the economic scenarios that happened last year.”

    “Overall Zara — Maag — had competitors,” Petrosyan said, correcting himself, “but I wouldn’t say that there are any now with whom they could compete equally. Because the competitors who stayed are in a higher price segment, but the quality doesn’t match up.”

    The initial exodus from Russia was led by big automakers, oil, tech and professional services companies, with BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Equinor ending joint ventures or writing off stakes worth billions. McDonald’s sold its 850 restaurants to a local franchisee, while France’s Renault took a symbolic single ruble for its majority stake in Avtovaz, Russia’s largest carmaker.

    Since the initial wave of departures, new categories have emerged: companies that are biding their time, those struggling to shed assets and others attempting business as usual. Over 1,000 international companies have publicly said they are voluntary curtailing Russian business beyond what’s required by sanctions, according to a database by Yale University.

    But the Kremlin keeps adding requirements, recently a “voluntary” 10% departure tax directly to the government, plus an understanding that companies would sell at a 50% discount.

    Putin recently announced that the government would take over the assets of Finnish energy company Fortum and Germany’s Uniper utility, barring a sale with an eye to offsetting any Western moves to seize more Russian assets abroad.

    Danish brewer Carlsberg announced its intention to divest its Russia business — one of Russia’s largest brewing operations — in March 2022 but faced complications clarifying the impact of sanctions and finding suitable buyers.

    “This is a complex process, and it has taken longer than we originally hoped for” but now is “almost completed,” said Tanja Frederiksen, global head of external communications.

    She called the Russia business a deeply integrated part of Carlsberg. Separating it has involved all parts of the company and more than 100 million Danish kroner ($14.8 million) in investment in new brewing equipment and IT infrastructure, Frederiksen said.

    Another beer giant, Anheuser-Busch InBev, is trying to sell a stake in a Russian joint venture to Turkey-based partner Anadolu Efes and has forgone revenue from it.

    Companies are lost in “a Bermuda Triangle between EU sanctions, U.S. sanctions and Russia sanctions,” said Michael Harms, executive director of the German Eastern Business Association.

    They must find a partner not sanctioned by the West. In Russia, major business figures are often people who are “well connected with the government,” Harms said. “For one thing, they have to sell at a large discount or almost give assets away, and then they go to people whom politically we don’t like — people who are close to the regime.”

    The 10% exit tax mandated by Russia is particularly tricky. American companies would have to get permission from the Treasury Department to pay it or run afoul of U.S. sanctions, said Maria Shagina, a sanctions expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin.

    Hundreds of companies quietly decided not to leave.

    In a rare, frank explanation, Steffen Greubel, CEO of German cash and carry firm Metro AG, said at this year’s shareholder meeting that the company condemns the war “without any ifs, ands or buts.”

    However, the decision to stay was motivated by a responsibility for 10,000 local employees and is “also in the interest of preserving the value of this company for its shareholders,” he said.

    Metro gets around 10% of its annual sales from Russia — more than 2.9 billion euros ($3.1 billion).

    Meanwhile, shelves are just as full as before the war at Globus superstores, a Germany-based chain with some 20 locations operating in Moscow.

    A closer look reveals that most Western beer brands have vanished, and many cosmetic brands have jumped in price by some 50% to 70%. There are more vegetables from Russia and Belarus, which cost less. Procter & Gamble products are still abundant — despite the company’s withdrawal from Russia.

    Globus says it has “drastically” cut new investment but kept its stores open to ensure food supply for people, noting that food has not been sanctioned and citing “the threat of confiscation of considerable asset value through a forced nationalization as well as severe consequences in criminal law for our local management.”

    Similarly, Germany’s Bayer AG, which supplies medicine, agricultural chemicals and seeds, argues that doing some business in Russia is the right move.

    “Withholding essential healthcare and agriculture products from the civilian populations — like cancer or cardiovascular treatments, health products for pregnant women and children as well as seeds to grow food — would only multiply the war’s ongoing toll on human life,” the company said in a statement.

    Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, head of the Yale database, said leaving was the only valid business decision, citing research showing company share prices rising afterward.

    “The companies that have pulled out have been rewarded for pulling out,” he said. “It is not good for shareholders to be associated with Putin’s war machine.”

    Marianna Fotaki, professor of business ethics at Warwick Business School, says business is “not just about the bottom line. … You don’t want to be an accomplice to what is a criminal regime.”

    Even if competitors stay, she said, “following the race to the bottom” is not the answer.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to show that the name of the head of the Yale database was misspelled. He’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, not Jeffrey Sonnenberger.

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  • Russia’s Wagner boss says more than 20,000 of his fighters died in Bakhmut battle

    Russia’s Wagner boss says more than 20,000 of his fighters died in Bakhmut battle

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 men in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut. He said about half of those who died in the eastern Ukrainian city were Russian convicts recruited to fight in the 15-month-old war.

    The figure stood in stark contrast to the widely disputed claims from Moscow that just over 6,000 of its troops were killed in the war as of January. That compares with official Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979-89. Ukraine hasn’t said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

    Analysts believe the nine-month fight for Bakhmut alone has cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, among them convicts who reportedly received little training before being sent to the front.

    Russia’s invasion goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine has backfired because Kyiv’s military has become stronger with the supply of weapons and training by its Western allies, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview published late Tuesday with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist.

    Prigozhin also said the Kremlin’s forces had killed civilians during the war, something Moscow has repeatedly and vehemently denied.

    Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is known for his bluster — often spiced with obscenities — and has previously made unverifiable claims, some of which he later backtracked on.

    Earlier this month, his spokespeople published a video of him shouting, swearing and pointing at about 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground, saying they were Wagner fighters who died in a single day. He claimed the Russian Defense Ministry had starved his men of ammunition and threatened to give up the fight for Bakhmut.

    He also said in Tuesday’s interview it was possible that Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive in coming weeks, given continued Western support, might push Russian forces out of southern and eastern Ukraine as well as annexed Crimea.

    “A pessimistic scenario: the Ukrainians are given missiles, they prepare troops, of course they will continue their offensive, try to counterattack,” he said. “They will attack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge (to the Russian mainland), cut off (our) supply lines. Therefore we need to prepare for a hard war.”

    Prigozhin’s interview, posted in a Telegram channel that has only 50,000 followers, wasn’t picked up by Russia’s largest state-run or pro-Kremlin media and is unlikely to be widely seen. Nor did it appear to get any mentions among military bloggers, whose popular Telegram pages are important sources of information about the war to many Russians.

    The Ukrainian General Staff said Wednesday that “heavy fighting” was continuing inside Bakhmut, days after Russia said that it had completely captured the devastated city.

    Bakhmut lies in Donetsk province, one of four provinces Russia illegally annexed last fall and only partially controls.

    The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Kyiv’s forces “are continuing their defensive operation” in Bakhmut, and had achieved unspecified “successes” on the city’s outskirts. He gave no further details.

    A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Ukrainians had a plan to push the Russians out of all occupied territory.

    “But now we don’t need to fight in Bakhmut, we need to surround it from flanks and block it,” Yevhen Mezhevikin said. “Then we should ‘sweep’ it. This is more appropriate, and that’s what we are doing now.”

    Elsewhere, Russian forces shot down “a large number” of drones in Russia’s southern Belgorod region, a local official said Wednesday, a day after Moscow announced that its forces crushed a cross-border raid in the area from Ukraine.

    The drones were intercepted overnight, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a Telegram post, and another one was shot down Wednesday just outside the local capital, also called Belgorod. He said that no one had been hurt, but there was unspecified damage to property.

    Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

    Gladkov, the regional governor, said on Tuesday evening he had “questions for (Russia’s) Defense Ministry” following the attack that reportedly sowed alarm among locals and embarrassed the Kremlin.

    During a Q&A session with residents on social media, Gladkov agreed with a participant who said that the Russian military’s actions in Belgorod “raised some questions.”

    In Moscow, Russia’s defense chief, Sergei Shoigu, vowed to respond “promptly and extremely harshly” to such attacks in the future.

    On Tuesday, Russia said it had beaten back the cross-border raid, one of the most serious attacks of its kind during the war. The Defense Ministry said more than 70 attackers were killed in the battle, which lasted around 24 hours. It made no mention of any Russian casualties.

    Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that local troops, airstrikes and artillery routed the attackers.

    Twelve local civilians were wounded in the attack, officials said, and an older woman died during an evacuation.

    Details of the incident in the rural region, lying about 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and far from the front lines of the almost 15-month war, are unclear.

    Moscow blamed the incursion that began Monday on Ukrainian military saboteurs. Kyiv described it as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans. It was impossible to reconcile the two versions, to say with certainty who was behind the attack or to ascertain its aims.

    The region is a Russian military hub holding fuel and ammunition depots. Moscow officials declined to say how many attackers were involved or comment on why efforts to put down the assault took so long.

    The Belgorod region, like the neighboring Bryansk region and other border areas, has witnessed sporadic spillover from the war, which Russia started by invading Ukraine in February 2022.

    At least three civilians died and 18 others were wounded in Ukraine on Tuesday and overnight, the Ukrainian presidential office reported Wednesday, including in the southern Kherson region, where two elderly people died in air strikes.

    ___

    Kozlowska reported from London. Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report from Tallinn, Estonia.

    ___

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  • Russia claims it repelled one of war’s most serious cross-border attacks

    Russia claims it repelled one of war’s most serious cross-border attacks

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s military said Tuesday it quashed what appeared to be one of the most serious cross-border attacks from Ukraine since the war began, claiming to have killed more than 70 attackers in a battle that lasted around 24 hours.

    Moscow blamed the raid that began Monday on Ukrainian military saboteurs. Kyiv portrayed it as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans. It was impossible to reconcile the two versions, to say with certainty who was behind the attack or to ascertain its aims.

    The battle — which took place in southwest Russia’s Belgorod region, about 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine — was a fresh reminder of how Russia itself remains vulnerable to attack, along with Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

    The region is a Russian military hub holding fuel and ammunition depots and was included in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order last year to increase the state of readiness for attacks and improve defenses.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to say how many attackers were involved in the assault or comment on why efforts to put down the attackers took so long.

    Such cross-border attacks embarrass the Kremlin and highlight the struggles it faces in its bogged-down invasion of Ukraine.

    The Belgorod region, like the neighboring Bryansk region and other border areas, has witnessed sporadic spillover from the war, which Russia started by invading Ukraine in February 2022.

    Far from the 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) front line in southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian border towns and villages regularly come under shelling and drone attacks, but this week’s attack is the second in recent months that also appears to have involved an incursion by ground forces. Another difference from earlier cross-border attacks is that Russia’s effort to repel it continued into a second day for the first time.

    Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed local troops, air strikes and artillery routed the attackers.

    “The remnants of the nationalists were driven back to the territory of Ukraine, where they continued to be hit by fire until they were completely eliminated,” Konashenkov said, without providing evidence. He did not mention any Russian casualties.

    Russian forces destroyed four armored combat vehicles and five pickup trucks the attackers used, he said. Local officials alleged the invaders also used drones and artillery.

    The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said the raid targeted the rural area around Graivoron, a town about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the border. Twelve civilians were wounded in the attack, he said, and an older woman died during an evacuation.

    The Russian news portal RBK, quoting unidentified sources in the regional interior ministry and territorial police, said Graivoron came under heavy shelling that lasted about five hours early Monday. After that, tanks fired at the Graivoron border checkpoint while the adjacent village of Kozinka came under mortar and rocket fire, RBK said, citing the same sources. Gladkov later reported that a Koznika villager had been killed.

    The attacking force was made up of 10 armored vehicles and an unspecified number of troops, RBK said.

    Earlier Tuesday, the regional governor urged residents who had evacuated not to return home until they received official instructions to do so. He said a “counterterrorism operation” was completed by early Tuesday evening.

    Gladkov also said fire from the Ukrainian side of the border on Tuesday hit the Borisovka area, about 20 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of Graivoron. No casualties were reported, he said without elaborating on the incident.

    The regional governor complained in a video late Tuesday that federal authorities’ claims for the past year that “everything is under control” do not ring true in light of this attack and prior assaults. He appealed again to the Kremlin to strengthen defenses.

    Since the war began, drones, explosions and missiles have hit fuel and ammunition depots, railroad equipment, bridges and air bases on Russian territory and Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine. Assassinations of Russian-appointed government officials and other public figures have also taken place in those areas.

    Ukraine said Russian citizens belonging to murky groups called the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion were behind the assault.

    Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the attackers were Russian dissidents unhappy about Putin’s policies.

    “These are Russian patriots, as we understand it. People who actually rebelled against the Putin regime,” she said.

    The Freedom of Russia Legion said on Telegram the goal was to “liberate” the region.

    The Russian Volunteer Corps implied on Telegram that the attack was over, adding: “One day, we’ll come to stay.” The post went up at around the same time as the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have quashed the assault.

    The U.K. Defense Ministry said it was “highly likely” that Russian security forces were fighting partisans in at least three locations in Belgorod.

    “Russia is facing an increasingly serious multi-domain security threat in its border regions, with losses of combat aircraft, improvised explosive device attacks on rail lines and now direct partisan action,” it said Tuesday.

    Russia’s Investigative Committee, its top law enforcement agency, announced an investigation into alleged terrorism and attempted murder in connection with the raid.

    Belgorod officials earlier this year said they had spent nearly 10 billion rubles ($125 million; 116 million euros) on fortifications to protect the region.

    Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the raid “elicits deep concerns” and that a “bigger effort” was required to prevent future attacks.

    The Russian Volunteer Corps claimed to have breached the border in early March. The shadowy group describes itself as “a volunteer formation fighting on Ukraine’s side.” It’s not clear if it — or the Freedom of Russia Legion — has any ties with the Ukrainian military.

    Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces made minor progress against Russian forces on the edge of Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city that Moscow claims to have captured, according to Maliar, the Ukrainian deputy defense minister.

    She said Tuesday that Ukrainian troops still controlled the southwestern outskirts of the city and that fighting was continuing in the suburbs, on Russia’s flanks.

    Ukrainian military leaders say the fight in Bakhmut isn’t over.

    ___

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  • US to sign new security pact with Papua New Guinea amid competition with China

    US to sign new security pact with Papua New Guinea amid competition with China

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    PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — The United States is scheduled to sign a new security pact with Papua New Guinea on Monday as it continues to compete with China for influence in the Pacific.

    Papua New Guinea’s location just north of Australia makes it strategically significant. It was the site of fierce battles during World War II, and with a population of nearly 10 million people, it’s the most populous Pacific Island nation.

    The State Department said the new agreement would provide a framework to help improve security cooperation, enhance the capacity of Papua New Guinea’s defense force and increase regional stability.

    At a breakfast meeting on Monday, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said his country faced significant security challenges, from skirmishes within the country to illegal fishing boats that lit up the night like skyscrapers.

    “We have our internal security as well as our sovereignty security issues,” Marape said. “We’re stepping up on that front to make sure our borders are secure.”

    But the agreement sparked student protests in the second-largest city, Lae. And many in the Pacific are concerned about the increasing militarization of the region.

    Last year, the nearby Solomon Islands signed its own security pact with China, a move that raised alarm throughout the Pacific. The U.S. has increased its focus on the Pacific, opening embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga, reviving Peace Corps volunteer efforts, and encouraging more business investment.

    But some have questioned how reliable a partner the U.S. is in the Pacific, particularly after President Joe Biden canceled his plans to make an historic stop in Papua New Guinea to sign the pact. Biden would have become the first sitting U.S. president to visit any Pacific Island country, but he ended up canceling to focus on the debt limit talks back at home.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled in Biden’s place, arriving in Papua New Guinea early Monday. In response to news of Blinken’s impending visit, China warned against the introduction of “geopolitical games” into the region.

    The U.S. visit was timed to coincide with a trip by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was hosting a meeting with Pacific Island leaders to discuss ways to better cooperate.

    New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who met with Marape for breakfast was also due to meet with Blinken in Papua New Guinea, said he welcomed the greater U.S. interest in the region.

    But he also drew a distinction to his own nation’s efforts.

    “We are not interested in the militarization of the Pacific,” Hipkins said. “We are interested in working with the Pacific on issues where we have mutual interest. Issues around climate change. And we’re not going to be attaching military strings to that support.”

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  • Extremist Israeli Cabinet minister visits sensitive Jerusalem holy site

    Extremist Israeli Cabinet minister visits sensitive Jerusalem holy site

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    JERUSALEM — An extremist Israeli Cabinet minister visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site on Sunday at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians.

    The visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, his second known visit since becoming a member of Israel’s most right-leaning government ever, drew condemnations from the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbor Jordan, which acts as the custodian of the site.

    “I am happy to come up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the Israeli people,” Ben-Gvir said during his early morning visit to the site, with the golden Dome of the Rock in the background, according to video released by his office. He praised the police presence at the site, saying it “proves who is in charge in Jerusalem.”

    Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh called Ben-Gvir’s visit a “blatant attack” on the mosque. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called it “a provocative step that is condemned, and a dangerous and unacceptable escalation.” Neighboring Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, also issued a condemnation.

    The visit comes days after Israelis marked Jerusalem Day, which celebrates Israel’s capturing of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Flag-waving nationalists marched through the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City, some singing racist anti-Arab chants, while hundreds of Jews visited the sensitive hilltop shrine, including a low-level minister from Ben-Gvir’s party, but not Ben-Gvir himself.

    Later on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet held a special session to mark Jerusalem Day at an archaeological site near the main area of the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray and a remaining exterior wall of the biblical Temples. At the meeting, Netanyahu reasserted Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem, which it views as its eternal, undivided capital. He made no mention of Ben-Gvir’s visit.

    Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the hilltop site is the holiest in Judaism and home to the ancient biblical Temples. Today, it houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Since Israel captured the site in 1967, Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray there.

    The ultranationalist Ben-Gvir, along with a growing movement of activists, has long called for greater Jewish access to the holy site.

    Palestinians consider the mosque a national symbol and view such visits as provocative and as a potential precursor to Israel seizing control over the compound. Most rabbis forbid Jews from praying at the site, but there has been a growing movement in recent years of Jews who support worship there.

    Tensions at the disputed compound have fueled past rounds of violence. A visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon in September 2000 helped spark clashes that became the second Palestinian uprising. Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian demonstrators in and around the site fueled an 11-day war with Hamas in 2021.

    Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, with its sites holy to three monotheistic faiths, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move unrecognized by most of the international community and considers the city its undivided, eternal capital.

    Violence between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank has spiked in the last year, as Israel launched near-nightly raids in response to a spate of Palestinian attacks.

    More than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the spring of 2022. About 50 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

    Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants, but stone throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

    Earlier this month, fighting also erupted between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip. Israeli strikes killed 33, many of them militants but also women and children, and two people were killed in Israel by militant rocket fire.

    ___

    Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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  • Zelenskyy denies Ukrainian city of Bakhmut occupied by Russian forces

    Zelenskyy denies Ukrainian city of Bakhmut occupied by Russian forces

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    HIROSHIMA, Japan — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Russian forces weren’t occupying Bakhmut, casting doubt on Moscow’s insistence that the eastern Ukrainian city had fallen.

    Responding to a reporter’s question about the status of the city at the Group of Seven meeting in Japan, Zelenskyy said: “Bakhmut is not occupied by the Russian Federation as of today.”

    The fog of war made it impossible to confirm the situation on the ground in the invasion’s longest battle, and a series of comments from Ukrainian and Russian officials added confusion to the matter.

    Zelenskyy’s response in English to a question earlier at the summit about the status of Bakhmut was interpreted by many as saying the city had fallen to Russian forces.

    When asked if the city was in Ukraine’s hands, Zelenskyy said: “I think no, but you have to — to understand that there is nothing, They’ve destroyed everything. There are no buildings. It’s a pity. It’s tragedy.”

    “But, for today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing on this place, so — just ground and — and a lot of dead Russians,” he said.

    Zelenskyy’s press secretary later walked back those previous comments.

    Ukrainian defense and military officials said that fierce fighting was ongoing. Deputy Defense Minsiter Hanna Malyar even went so far as to say that Ukrainian troops “took the city in a semi-encirclement.”

    “The enemy failed to surround Bakhmut, and they lost part of the dominant heights around the city,” Malyar said. “That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still ongoing, greatly complicates the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”

    And the spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Serhii Cherevaty, said that the Ukrainian military is managing to hold positions in the vicinity of Bakhmut.

    “The president correctly said that the city has, in fact, been razed to the ground. The enemy is being destroyed every day by massive artillery and aviation strikes, and our units report that the situation is extremely difficult.

    “Our military keep fortifications and several premises in the southwestern part of the city. Heavy fighting is underway,” he said.

    It was only the latest flip-flopping of the situation in Bakhmut after eight months of intense fighting.

    Only hours earlier, Russian state new agencies reported that President Vladimir Putin congratulated “Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk,” which is Bakhmut’s Soviet-era name.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that Wagner and military units “completed the liberation” of Bakhmut.

    At the G-7 in Japan, Zelenskyy stood side by side with U.S. President Joe Biden during a news conference. Biden announced $375 million more in aid for Ukraine, which included more ammunition, artillery and vehicles.

    “I thanked him for the significant financial assistance to (Ukraine) from (the U.S.),” Zelenskyy tweeted later.

    The new pledge came after the U.S. agreed to allow training on American-made F-16 fighter jets, laying the groundwork for their eventual transfer to Ukraine. Biden said Sunday that Zelenskyy had given the U.S. a “flat assurance” that Ukraine wouldn’t use the F-16s jets to attack Russian territory.

    Many analysts say that even if Russia was victorious in Bakhmut, it was unlikely to turn the tide in the war.

    The Russian capture of the last remaining ground in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday. The Institute for the Study of War said that taking control of these areas “does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations,” nor to “to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks.”

    In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke surrounded by about a half-dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

    Russian forces still seek to seize the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

    It isn’t clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

    Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

    Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

    Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

    The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th-century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.

    When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

    After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

    The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

    Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut.”

    Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.

    “We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

    The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

    ___

    Elise Morton reported from London, and Susie Blann from Kyiv, Ukraine. Elaine Kurtenbach and Adam Schreck contributed to this report from Hiroshima.

    ___

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  • Zelenskyy says ‘Bakhmut is only in our hearts’ after Russia claims controls of Ukrainian city

    Zelenskyy says ‘Bakhmut is only in our hearts’ after Russia claims controls of Ukrainian city

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Bakhmut was “only in our hearts,” hours after Russia’s defense ministry reported that forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, had seized the city in eastern Ukraine.

    Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden at the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelenskyy said the Russians had destroyed “everything.” “You have to understand that there is nothing,” he said.

    “For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts,” he said. “There is nothing in this place.”

    The Russian ministry statement on the Telegram channel came about eight hours after a similar announcement by Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin. Ukrainian authorities at that time said that fighting for Bakhmut was continuing.

    The eight-month battle for Bakhmut has been the longest and probably most bloody of the conflict in Ukraine.

    Zelenskyy’s comments came as Biden announced $375 million more in aid for Ukraine, which included more ammunition, artillery, and vehicles.

    “I thanked him for the significant financial assistance to (Ukraine) from (the U.S.),” Zelenskyy tweeted later.

    Analysts said that a Russian victory in Bakhmut was unlikely to turn the tide in the war.

    The Russian capture of the last remaining ground in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday. The Institute for the Study of War said that taking control of these areas “does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations,” nor to “to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks.”

    Using the city’s Soviet-era name, the Russian ministry said, “In the Artyomovsk tactical direction, the assault teams of the Wagner private military company with the support of artillery and aviation of the southern battlegroup has completed the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk.”

    Russian state news agencies cited the Kremlin’s press service as saying President Vladimir Putin “congratulates the Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk.”

    In a video posted earlier on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke flanked by about a half dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

    Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut for more than eight months.

    Russian forces will still face the massive task of seizing the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

    It isn’t clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

    Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

    Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

    Russian forces still face the enormous task of seizing the rest of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland where a separatist uprising began in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.

    Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

    The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th-century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.

    When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

    After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

    The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

    Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut.”

    Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.

    “We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

    The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

    ___

    Zeke Miller reported from Hiroshima, Japan.

    ___

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  • Ukraine’s Zelenskyy at center of last day of high-level diplomacy as G7 looks to punish Russia

    Ukraine’s Zelenskyy at center of last day of high-level diplomacy as G7 looks to punish Russia

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    HIROSHIMA, Japan — World leaders ratcheted up pressure Sunday on Russia for its war against Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the center of a swirl of diplomacy on the final day of the Group of Seven summit of rich-world democracies.

    Zelenskyy’s in-person attendance at one of the world’s premier diplomatic gatherings is meant to galvanize attention on his nation’s 15-month fight against Russia. Even before he landed Saturday on a French plane, the G7 nations had unveiled a slew of new sanctions and other measures meant to punish Moscow and hamper its war-fighting abilities.

    Ukraine is the overwhelming focus of the summit, but the leaders of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union, are also working to address global worries over climate change, AI, poverty, economic instability and nuclear proliferation.

    Two U.S. allies — South Korea and Japan — continued efforts Sunday to improve ties that have often been hurt by lingering anger over issues linked to Japan’s brutal 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a memorial to Korean victims, many of them slave laborers, of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing.

    Washington wants the two neighbors, both of which are liberal democracies and bulwarks of U.S. power in the region, to stand together on a host of issues, including rising aggression from China, North Korea and Russia.

    Bolstering international support is a key priority as Ukraine prepares for what’s seen as a major push to take back territory seized by Russia in the war that began in February last year. Zelenskyy’s visit to the G7 summit closely followed the United States agreeing to allow training on potent American-made fighter jets, which lays the groundwork for their eventual transfer to Ukraine.

    “Japan. G7. Important meetings with partners and friends of Ukraine. Security and enhanced cooperation for our victory. Peace will become closer today,” Zelenskyy tweeted after his arrival.

    U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that President Joe Biden and Zelenskyy would have direct engagement at the summit. On Friday, Biden announced his support for training Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, a precursor to eventually providing those aircraft to Ukraine.

    “It is necessary to improve (Ukraine’s) air defense capabilities, including the training of our pilots,” Zelenskyy wrote on his official Telegram channel after meeting Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, one of a number of leaders he talked to.

    Zelenskyy also met on the sidelines of the summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, their first face-to-face talks since the war, and briefed him on Ukraine’s peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country before any negotiations.

    India, the world’s largest democracy, has avoided outright condemnation of Russia’s invasion. While India maintains close ties with the United States and its Western allies, it is also a major buyer of Russian arms and oil.

    Summits like the G7 are a chance for leaders to put pressure on one another to align or redouble their diplomatic efforts, according to Matthew Goodman, an economics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “Zelenskyy’s presence puts some pressure on G7 leaders to deliver more — or explain to him directly why they can’t,” he said.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the G7 summit for aiming to isolate both China and Russia.

    “The task has been set loudly and openly: to defeat Russia on the battlefield, but not to stop there, but to eliminate it as a geopolitical competitor. As a matter of fact, any other country that claims some kind of independent place in the world alignment will also be to suppress a competitor. Look at the decisions that are now being discussed and adopted in Hiroshima, at the G7 summit, and which are aimed at the double containment of Russia and China,” he said.

    The G7, however, has vowed to intensify the pressure.

    “Russia’s brutal war of aggression represents a threat to the whole world in breach of fundamental norms, rules and principles of the international community. We reaffirm our unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes to bring a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” the group said in a statement.

    Another major focus of the meetings was China, the world’s No. 2 economy.

    There is increasing anxiety that Beijing, which has been steadily building up its nuclear weapons program, could try to seize Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict. China claims the self-governing island as its own and regularly sends ships and warplanes near it.

    The G7 said they did not want to harm China and were seeking “constructive and stable relations” with Beijing, “recognizing the importance of engaging candidly with and expressing our concerns directly to China.”

    They also urged China to pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine and “support a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

    China’s Foreign Ministry said that “gone are the days when a handful of Western countries can just willfully meddle in other countries’ internal affairs and manipulate global affairs. We urge G7 members to … focus on addressing the various issues they have at home, stop ganging up to form exclusive blocs, stop containing and bludgeoning other countries.”

    The G7 also warned North Korea, which has been testing missiles at a torrid pace, to completely abandon its nuclear bomb ambitions, “including any further nuclear tests or launches that use ballistic missile technology,” the leaders’ statement said.

    The green light on F-16 training is the latest shift by the Biden administration as it moves to arm Ukraine with more advanced and lethal weaponry, following earlier decisions to send rocket launcher systems and Abrams tanks. The United States has insisted that it is sending weapons to Ukraine to defend itself and has discouraged attacks by Ukraine into Russian territory.

    “We’ve reached a moment where it is time to look down the road again to say what is Ukraine going to need as part of a future force, to be able to deter and defend against Russian aggression as we go forward,” Sullivan said.

    Biden’s decisions on when, how many, and who will provide the fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets will be made in the months ahead while the training is underway, Biden told leaders.

    The G7 leaders have rolled out a new wave of global sanctions on Moscow as well as plans to enhance the effectiveness of existing financial penalties meant to constrain President Vladimir Putin’s war effort. Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, but there are questions about the effectiveness.

    Russia had participated in some summits with the other seven countries before being removed from the then-Group of Eight after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

    The latest sanctions aimed at Russia include tighter restrictions on already-sanctioned people and firms involved in the war effort. More than 125 individuals and organizations across 20 countries have been hit with U.S. sanctions.

    Kishida has twice taken leaders to visit to a peace park dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in the world’s first wartime atomic bomb detonation. Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament, wants nuclear disarmament to be a major focus of discussions.

    The G7 leaders also discussed efforts to strengthen the global economy and address rising prices that are squeezing families and government budgets around the world, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

    The group reiterated its aim to pull together up to $600 billion in financing for the G7’s global infrastructure development initiative, which is meant to offer countries an alternative to China’s investment dollars.

    __

    Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Elaine Kurtenbach and Mari Yamaguchi in Hiroshima, Japan, and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.

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  • Russia says Wagner private army, with help from Russian troops, seized Bakhmut

    Russia says Wagner private army, with help from Russian troops, seized Bakhmut

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    MOSCOW — Russia’s defense ministry said early Sunday that forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, seized the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

    The ministry statement on the Telegram channel came about eight hours after a similar claim by Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin. Ukrainian authorities at that time said fighting for Bakhmut was continuing.

    The eight-month battle for the city in eastern Ukraine is the longest and probably most bloody of the conflict in Ukraine.

    THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

    The head of the Russian private army Wagner claimed Saturday that his forces have taken control of the city of Bakhmut after the longest and most grinding battle of the Russia-Ukraine war, but Ukrainian defense officials denied it.

    In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke flanked by about half a dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

    However, after the video appeared, Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said heavy fighting was continuing.

    “The situation is critical,” she said. “As of now, our defenders, control certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in this area.”

    Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command, told The Associated Press that Prigozhin’s claim “is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.” In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian General Staff said “heavy battles for the city of Bakhmut do not stop.”

    Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said “this is not the first time Prigozhin has said ‘we seized everything and are dominating’.” He also suggested that the Wagner chief’s statement was aimed at drawing attention away from Zelenskyy’s recent highly visible trips overseas, including to the Group of Seven summit in Japan on Saturday.

    Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut for more than eight months.

    If Russian forces have taken control of Bakhmut, they will still face the massive task of seizing the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

    It is not clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

    Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

    Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

    Russian forces still face the enormous task of seizing the rest of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland where a separatist uprising began in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.

    Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

    The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.

    When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

    After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

    The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

    Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut.”

    Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.

    “We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

    The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

    —-

    This story has been updated to correct Podolyak’s position as presidential adviser, not chief of staff.

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  • Remains of Marine veteran killed in Ukraine flown home to US

    Remains of Marine veteran killed in Ukraine flown home to US

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    The remains of a U.S. Marine veteran who was missing in Ukraine for more than a year have returned to the United States and are headed to his hometown in eastern North Carolina

    Marine First Sgt. Timothy La Sage, left, salutes as the remains of retired Marine Capt. Grady Kurpasi are transferred from a Turkish airlines plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Friday, May 19, 2023, in New York. The remains of a U.S. Marine veteran who had been missing in Ukraine for more than a year will be returned to his family in eastern North Carolina later Friday, according to the group bringing the remains back to the U.S. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

    The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — The remains of a U.S. Marine veteran who was missing in Ukraine for more than a year returned to the United States on Friday and were headed to his hometown in eastern North Carolina.

    A Turkish Airlines plane flying from Istanbul with the remains of retired Marine Capt. Grady Kurpasi landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in the early evening. They were loaded onto a private jet bound for Wilmington, North Carolina.

    Kurpasi, a 50-year-old Iraq War veteran, volunteered in February 2022 to help evacuate Ukrainian residents and later fought in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, according to the Weatherman Foundation, the group that located his remains and repatriated them.

    He was last seen in April 2022 after investigating the source of some gunfire with fellow volunteers in southern Ukraine and was declared dead last month by the U.S. State Department.

    “There is an unspoken bond between those who serve in uniform,” said Weatherman Foundation President Meghan Mobbs, who led the effort to retrieve Kurpasi’s remains. “If you give your life in combat, your fellow Americans will bear any burden to bring you home.”

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  • Pakistani police besiege Imran Khan’s home as deadline for him to hand over suspects is to expire

    Pakistani police besiege Imran Khan’s home as deadline for him to hand over suspects is to expire

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    LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistani police kept up their siege around the home of Imran Khan as a 24-hour deadline given to the former premier to hand over suspects allegedly sheltered inside was about to expire on Thursday.

    The siege and the authorities demand for the suspects, wanted in violent protests over Khan’s recent detention, has angered the former prime minister’s many followers and is raising concerns about more clashes between them and the security forces.

    Last week, Khan’s supporters attacked public property and military installations after he was dragged out of a courtroom and arrested. At least 10 people were killed in clashes with police across the country. The violence subsided only when Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered Khan’s release.

    The popular opposition leader was freed from custody over the weekend and returned to his home in an upscale district of Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city and the capital of the Punjab region. Dozens of his supporters have been staying there with him, along with private guards. Police, who on Wednesday surrounded the residence, say they want 40 suspects handed over.

    The ultimatum for Khan ends at 2 p.m. local time.

    Usually, between 200 to 300 of Khan’s supporters, holding sticks, guard his residence around the clock, but most disappeared overnight. Police have barricaded a key road leading to the house and asked residents to use an alternate route.

    “Probably my last tweet before my next arrest,” the 70-year-old popular opposition leader tweeted on Wednesday, after the siege started. “Police have surrounded my house.”

    Later, Khan addressed his supporters saying that the police can only search his house with a search warrant and “not barge in, creating chaos.”

    According to Amir Mir, a spokesman for the Punjab provincial government, police were ready to use firearms if attacked. He told a news conference Thursday that at least 3,400 suspects linked to the clashes have been arrested and that more raids are planned.

    Pakistani authorities have said they would prosecute civilians involved in recent anti-government protests in military courts.

    The announcement has drawn criticism from the advocacy group Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which oppose trials of civilians in the military courts. Military trials in Pakistan are usually held behind closed doors, depriving civilians of some of their basic rights, including contracting a lawyer of their choice.

    Khan was ousted by a non-confidence vote in Parliament last year. He has claimed the ouster was illegal and a Western conspiracy.

    He now faces more than 100 legal cases, mainly on charges of inciting people to violence, threatening officials, and defying a ban on rallies. He also faces a graft case along with his wife and was summoned by the National Accountability Bureau to answer questions in connection with the case on Thursday.

    However, Khan is likely to ignore the summons from the anti-corruption authority to show up for questioning in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. He is expected to address a rally of supporters on the outskirts of Lahore later in the day.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this story from Islamabad.

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  • Ecuador’s president ends impeachment proceedings against him by dissolving National Assembly

    Ecuador’s president ends impeachment proceedings against him by dissolving National Assembly

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    QUITO, Ecuador — President Guillermo Lasso escalated Ecuador’s political crisis Wednesday by dissolving the National Assembly just as it was forging ahead with impeachment proceedings to remove him from office on embezzlement allegations.

    In disbanding the assembly, Lasso made first use of the Ecuador presidency’s nuclear option under the constitution in conflicts with the legislative branch, turning his country into the latest in Latin America where rival constitutional powers come to a head.

    The conservative president, who has denied wrongdoing, can now govern for up to six months by decree under the oversight of Ecuador’s top court. While Lasso appeared to have the support of the country’s armed forces, his move swiftly drew pushback from critics who said his ouster had been imminent.

    In a televised message, Lasso accused the National Assembly of focusing “on destabilizing the government.” He called his move “democratic” and described it as a way to give Ecuadorians “the power to decide their future in the next elections.”

    “This is the best possible decision,” he said.

    Soon after Lasso’s announcement, the South American country’s top military leader warned that the armed forces would act “firmly” if any violence erupts. A strong contingent of military and police officers blocked access around the National Assembly building in Ecuador’s capital, Quito.

    Lawmakers had accused Lasso of not having intervened to end a contract between the state-owned oil transport company and a private tanker company. They argued Lasso knew the contract was full of irregularities and would cost the state millions in losses, something he has rejected as untrue.

    Known colloquially as the “death cross,” the option to disband the congress and temporarily rule by decree was established in Ecuador’s constitution in 2008 as a means of avoiding protracted periods of political paralysis.

    In neighboring Peru, conflicts between the opposition-led legislature and president also led to attempts to oust each other last year. Then-President Pedro Castillo tried to dissolve Congress and head off his own impeachment in December, but lawmakers quickly voted him out of power and law enforcement arrested him, which resulted in months of deadly protests carried out for the most part by Indigenous peoples and peasants.

    Ecuadorian legal analyst Ramiro Aguilar said a conflict between the assembly and the president can last years, and “it is a conflict that paralyzes the country.” He added, however, that if the president disbands the assembly, the country loses democratic debate during the interim.

    “There will be a unilateral voice of the executive branch imposing a course without the counterweight of the assembly and the country loses credibility, because it is left with a weak institutional framework,” Aguilar said.

    The National Electoral Council now has seven days to call presidential and legislative elections, which must be held within 90 days. Those elected will finish the terms of Lasso and the lawmakers he ousted, which had been set to end in May 2025. Lasso can choose to run in the election.

    Lasso, a former banker, was elected in 2021 and has clashed from the start with a strong opposition in the 137-member National Assembly. He defended himself before Congress on Tuesday, insisting there was no proof or testimony of wrongdoing.

    Lasso’s governing powers are now limited. Constitutional attorney Ismael Quintana explained that the president can only address economic and administrative matters, and the Constitutional Court will have to approve his decisions.

    After Lasso announced his decision Wednesday, the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, Gen. Nelson Proaño, called on Ecuadorians to maintain respect for the law and warned against rupturing the constitutional order through violence.

    If violence erupts, the armed forces and police “will act firmly,” he said.

    Lasso’s move quickly led to criticism from the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which in recent years has carried out protests that have virtually paralyzed the country. Its leader, Leonidas Iza Salazar, said Lasso “launched a cowardly self-coup with the help of the police and the armed forces, without citizen support” as he faced “imminent dismissal.”

    Will Freeman, fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Lasso’s decision signals that “he was aware the opposition had enough votes to impeach him, and maybe then some.” He said mass protests are likely in the coming days.

    “It’s also hard to imagine Lasso is making this move without the tacit support of top brass in the military,” he said. “In the past, protests have tended to turn destructive quickly — and security forces have also cracked down.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

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  • European nations back system to calculate damage Russia caused in Ukraine

    European nations back system to calculate damage Russia caused in Ukraine

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    REYKJAVIK, Iceland — More than 40 countries at a summit of European leaders have backed a system to estimate the damage Russia is causing during the war in Ukraine, in the hopes Moscow can be forced to compensate victims and help rebuild the nation once the conflict is over.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the dominant topic during the meeting in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavík, where delegations from Council of Europe member states discussed how the continent’s preeminent human rights organization could support Kyiv.

    France, Germany and the United Kingdom are among the countries that have signed on to the most tangible outcome of the meeting: a new office to set up a register of damages which will allow victims of the war to report the harm they have suffered.

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the register of damages “a significant contribution to international efforts to hold Russia to account for the consequences of its brutal actions.”

    Ten countries of the 46-member international body have not yet formally committed to the new organization, which will be based in The Hague where several major international judicial organizations are already based. A further three countries plan to participate but need time to meet national legal requirements.

    The United States, Japan and Canada have also joined. They participate in the Council of Europe as observer states.

    Scholz made clear that details of how Russia will pay for the damage to Ukraine remain to be resolved. “The register of damages is a register – that’s quite a bit, but that’s what it is, and this doesn’t resolve the question of how the damages will be paid for.”

    Asked to assess the chances of frozen Russian assets being used to pay for damages, Scholz sounded skeptical. He said there were “not many courses of action that are open and are compatible with current law.”

    The record is “intended to constitute the first component of a future international compensation mechanism,” according to a Council of Europe document. The running costs will be financed by the signatories.

    Such a register could be used to distribute reparations from a proposed tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression, another concept backed by the Council of Europe. In his address to the summit on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his country’s wish for such a court.

    “There will be no reliable peace without justice,” he said, speaking to the opening session via video link.

    The Council of Europe’s secretary general, Marija Pejčinović Burić said that the body intends to support the international effort to establish a judicial organ to prosecute the crime of aggression — the literal act of invading another country.

    The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another official for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. But the court lacks the ability to prosecute aggression.

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  • China says ready to ‘smash’ Taiwan self-rule as US prepares major arms package, sends advisers

    China says ready to ‘smash’ Taiwan self-rule as US prepares major arms package, sends advisers

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    BEIJING — China’ is prepared to “resolutely smash any form of Taiwan independence,” its military said Tuesday, as the U.S. reportedly prepares to accelerate the sale of defensive weapons and other military assistance to the self-governing island democracy.

    A recent increase in exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries is an “extremely wrong and dangerous move,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei said in a statement and video posted online.

    China’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to strengthen military training and preparations and will resolutely smash any form of Taiwanese independence secession along with attempts at outside interference, and will resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Tan said, in a reference to Taiwan’s closest ally, the United States.

    China claims the island of 23 million people as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

    With the world’s largest navy, latest-generation fighter jets and a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles, China has been upping its threats by sending planes and warships into waters and airspace around Taiwan. With more than 2 million members, the PLA also ranks as the world’s largest standing military, although transporting even a portion of the force in the event of an invasion is considered a huge logistical challenge.

    Along with daily air and sea incursions around Taiwan, Beijing has held military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides, seen in part as a rehearsal for a blockade or invasion that would have massive consequences for security and economies worldwide.

    Such actions seek to harass Taiwan’s military and intimidate politicians and voters who will choose a new president and legislature next year.

    The moves appear to have had limited effect, with most Taiwanese firmly in favor of maintaining their de facto independent status. Politicians and other public figures from Europe and the U.S. have also been making frequent trips to Taipei to show their support, despite their countries’ lack of formal diplomatic ties in deference to Beijing.

    Tan’s comments were prompted by a question from an unidentified reporter about reports that U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to approve the sale of $500 million in arms to Taiwan, as well as sending more than 100 military personnel to evaluate training methods and offer suggestions for improving the island’s defenses.

    Taiwan enjoys strong support from both the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties, which have called on the Biden administration to follow through on nearly $19 billion in military items approved for sale but not yet delivered to Taiwan.

    Administration officials have blamed the delayed deliveries on bottlenecks in production related to issues from the COVID-19 pandemic to limited capacity and increased demand for arms to assist Ukraine. Biden’s move would allow the export of items from existing U.S. military stockpiles, speeding up the delivery of at least some of the hardware Taiwan needs to deter or repel any Chinese attack.

    Among the items on backorder are Harpoon anti-ship missiles, F-16 fighter jets, shoulder-fired Javelin and Stinger missiles and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, a multiple rocket and missile launcher mounted on a truck that has become a crucial weapon for Ukrainian troops battling Russian invasion forces.

    Tan’s comments were in line with Beijing’s standard tone on what it calls the “core of China’s core interests.” The two sides split at the end of a civil war in 1949 and Beijing considers bringing Taiwan under its control as key to asserting its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

    Attempts to “seek independence by relying on the United States” and “seek independence by military might” are a “dead end,” Tan said.

    With China-U.S. relations at a historic low and Taiwanese unreceptive to Beijing’s demands for political concessions on unification, concerns are rising about the likelihood of an open conflict involving all three sides and possibly U.S. treaty allies such as Japan.

    China’s diplomatic and economic support for Russia following its invasion of Ukraine has also increased tensions with Washington. Beijing is believed to be closely studying Moscow’s military failures in the conflict, while the Western will to back Kyiv is seen by some as a test of its determination to side with Taiwan in the event of a conflict with China.

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  • Poland gets 1st U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers amid concerns over war in Ukraine

    Poland gets 1st U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers amid concerns over war in Ukraine

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    WARSAW, Poland — Poland has received its first shipment of U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers as part of a defense upgrade amid security concerns due to the war in neighboring Ukraine.

    Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak and military officials attended an acquisition ceremony at a Warsaw air base on Monday.

    Blaszczak said that combat in Ukraine had proven the value of the HIMARS and that NATO member Poland was seeking to procure additional launchers, with a goal of acquiring some 500 units.

    “We are watching the developments in Ukraine, and we know that artillery has a key role in the war, in repelling the Russian invasion,” he said.

    Under a 2019 contract, Poland is spending some $414 million (380 million euros) to buy 18 advanced combat HIMARS launchers and two HIMARS training launchers, with ammunition and related equipment. The deal includes logistics and training.

    The launchers will go to the 1st Artillery Brigade in northeastern Poland, Blaszczak said.

    “Their task will be to deter (an) aggressor and strengthen Poland’s armed forces on the nation’s and NATO eastern flank,” the minister said.

    A HIMARS academy is to be launched in the city of Torun to provide logistics, servicing and training, including for troops from other NATO countries that have or plan to get the launchers.

    Produced by American aerospace company Lockheed Martin, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System is a multiple rocket launcher with a range of up to some 300 kilometers (190 miles) developed in the late 1990s for the U.S. armed forces.

    Poland is buying billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, chiefly from the U.S. and South Korea, including fighter jets, to modernize its armed forces.

    Some of the equipment will replace weapons – including over a dozen Soviet-made MiG-29 jet fighters – that Poland agreed to give Ukraine for its defense against Russia.

    Poland’s right-wing government, which will be seeking a third term in a fall parliamentary election, is giving the purchases wide publicity, seeking to reassure Poles amid a military conflict across their eastern border.

    Last year, Poland received a number of U.S. Patriot missile systems, and deliveries of another battery are expected this year. The first deliveries of Abrams tanks have also arrived from the U.S., as well as deliveries of tanks and howitzers from South Korea.

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