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Tag: War and unrest

  • Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack

    Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack

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    PRZEWODOW, Poland — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people did not appear to be an intentional attack, and that air defenses in neighboring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile against a Russian bombardment that savaged its power grid.

    “Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings, saying: “We have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.”

    The initial assessments of Tuesday’s deadly missile landing appeared to dial back the likelihood of the strike triggering another major escalation in the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, that could have risked drawing NATO into the conflict.

    Still, Stoltenberg and others laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

    “This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” Stoltenberg said.

    Before the Polish and NATO assessments, U.S. President Joe Biden had said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”

    Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

    That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted information earlier Tuesday from a senior U.S. intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

    Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

    Ukrainian air defenses worked furiously against the Russian assault Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine’s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.

    Russia said it didn’t launch the missile. A Defense Ministry spokesman said no Russian strike Tuesday was closer than 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Ukraine-Poland border. The Kremlin denounced Poland’s and other countries’ initial response and, in rare praise for a U.S. leader, hailed Biden’s “restrained, much more professional reaction.”

    “We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russo-phobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    Still, Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the initial picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

    The Polish president said the projectile was “most probably” a Russian-made S-300 missile dating from the Soviet era.

    “It was a huge blast, the sound was terrifying.” said Ewa Byra, the primary school director in the eastern village of Przewodow, where the missile struck. She said she knew both men who were killed — one was the husband of a school employee, the other the father of a former pupil.

    In Europe, NATO members Germany and the U.K. laced calls for a through investigation with criticism of Moscow.

    “This wouldn’t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

    U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “This is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a very significant escalation.” On the other end of the spectrum, China called for calm and restraint.

    Damage in Ukraine from the aerial assault was extensive and swaths of the country were without power. Zelenskyy said about 10 million people lost electricity but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, with repair crews laboring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure.

    The Russian bombardment also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.

    Tuesday’s assaults killed one person in a residential building in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

    With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.

    ———

    AP journalists Vanessa Gera and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw; Lorne Cook in Brussels; John Leicester in Kyiv, Ukraine; Zeke Miller in Nusa Dua, Indonesia; Michael Balsamo and Lolita Baldor in Washington, James LaPorta in Wilmington, North Carolina, contributed.

    ———

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

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  • Poland, NATO say missile landing wasn’t Russian attack

    Poland, NATO say missile landing wasn’t Russian attack

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    PRZEWODOW, Poland — Poland said Wednesday there is “absolutely no indication” that a missile which came down in Polish farmland, killing two people, was a intentional attack on the NATO country, and that neighbor Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile as it fended off a Russian air assault that savaged its power grid.

    “Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the military alliance in Brussels, agreed with the assessment.

    “An investigation into this incident is ongoing and we need to await its outcome. But we have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

    The preliminary findings came after U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western backers of Ukraine had thrown their weight behind the investigation and amid repeated assertions from Russia that it didn’t fire the missile.

    Biden said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”

    The missile came down Tuesday near Poland’s border with Ukraine. Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

    That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted information earlier Tuesday from a senior U.S. intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

    Former Soviet-bloc country Ukraine maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

    Ukrainian air defenses worked furiously against the Russian assault Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine’s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.

    The Kremlin on Wednesday denounced Poland’s and other countries’ initial reaction to the missile incident and, in rare praise for a U.S. leader, hailed the response of the U.S.

    “We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russophobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. He added that “immediately, all experts realized that it could not have been a missile linked to the Russian armed forces,” and pointed to a “restrained, much more professional reaction” of the U.S. and its president, Joe Biden.

    In Brussels, NATO countries were coming together Wednesday for emergency talks. There was no immediate proof that Tuesday’s blast was a deliberate, hostile attack on NATO member Poland that could trigger the alliance’s provisions for a collective military response.

    Russia denied any involvement. But Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

    In Europe, NATO members Germany and the U.K. were among those stressing the need for a full investigation. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned against jumping to conclusions “in such a serious matter.”

    Still, Scholz and others also laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “This wouldn’t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,” Scholz said.

    U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak echoed that assessment, saying: “This is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a very significant escalation.” On the other end of the spectrum, China was among those calling for calm and restraint.

    Former Soviet-bloc country Ukraine maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

    Damage from the aerial assault in Ukraine was extensive and swaths of the country were plunged into darkness. Zelenskyy said about 10 million people lost power but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, with repair crews laboring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the meeting in Brussels of the alliance’s envoys. The U.N. Security Council also planned to meet Wednesday for a previously scheduled briefing on the situation in Ukraine.

    If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, it would risk drawing NATO into the conflict.

    Polish media reported that the strike took place in an area where grain was drying in Przewodow, a village near the border with Ukraine.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry denied being behind “any strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” and said in a statement that photos of purported damage “have nothing to do” with Russian weapons.

    The Russian bombardment also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.

    The assault killed at least one person in a residential building in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

    With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.

    ———

    Zeke Miller and Michael Balsamo in Washington, D.C., contributed.

    ———

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

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  • UN envoy: Delaying elections could risk partition of Libya

    UN envoy: Delaying elections could risk partition of Libya

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    UNITED NATIONS — The new U.N. special envoy for Libya warned Tuesday that the first anniversary of Libya’s postponed elections is quickly approaching and that further delaying a vote could lead the troubled north African nation to even greater instability, putting it “at risk of partition.”

    Abdoulaye Bathily told the U.N. Security Council that the October 2020 cease-fire continues to hold despite escalating rhetoric and a buildup of forces by rival governments in the country’s east and west.

    Oil-rich Libya plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. In the chaos that followed, the county split with the rival administrations backed by rogue militias and foreign governments.

    The country’s current political crisis stems from the failure to hold elections on Dec. 24, 2021, and the refusal of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah — who led a transitional government in the capital of Tripoli — to step down. In response, the country’s east-based parliament appointed a rival prime minister, Fathy Bashagha, who has for months sought to install his government in Tripoli.

    Bathily, a former Senegalese minister and diplomat who arrived in Libya in mid-October and has been traveling to all parts of the country, told the council that he has found Libyans hope “for peace, stability and legitimate institutions.”

    “However, there is an increasing recognition that some institutional players are actively hindering progress towards elections,” he said.

    He warned that further prolonging elections “will make the country even more vulnerable to political, economic and security instability” and could risk partition. And he urged Security Council members to “join hands in encouraging Libyan leaders to work with resolve towards the holding of elections as soon as possible.”

    Bathily urged the council “to send an unequivocal message to obstructionists that their actions will not remain without consequences.”

    He said the council make clear that ending the cease-fire and resorting to violence and intimidation “will not be accepted and that there is no military solution to the Libyan crisis.”

    Russia called for the briefing, and its deputy ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, described the situation in the country as “very tense” and “rather unstable,” with no sign of an end to the rival governments anytime soon.

    That “means no inclusive nationwide elections or unification of Libyan state organs in the short term,” he said.

    Polyansky warned that “the situation risks spiraling out of control under the influence of divergent interests of external stakeholders.”

    He accused Western nations, singling out the United States, of prolonging the Libyan crisis by using the turbulent situation in the country to pursue their own interests — namely unhindered access to Libyan oil.

    Polyansky claimed Western governments set a goal “to turn Libya into a `gas station’ to meet their energy needs.” And he claimed the U.S. administration “still considers the Libyan political process only through the lens of American economic interest … with a view to preventing the growth of prices for the `black gold.’”

    U.S. Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills shot back saying: “The United States rejects accusations that somehow access to Libyan oil reserves is the cause of the political impasse in Libya today.”

    Referring to Russia, he said the U.S. is dismayed that a council member that violated the U.N. Charter by invading and occupying its neighbor continues “to shift the focus of this council with unfounded conspiracy theories.”

    “It is simply a failed attempt to shield themselves from legitimate criticism,” Mills said. “Libya’s leaders must shoulder the responsibility of achieving sustainable peace, good governance, and ultimately prosperity for the people of Libya. And the United States stands to support them.”

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  • Strike on Kyiv as Ukraine probes reports of Russian torture

    Strike on Kyiv as Ukraine probes reports of Russian torture

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Strikes hit residential buildings in the heart of Ukraine‘s capital Tuesday, authorities said. Further south, officials announced probes of alleged Russian abuses in the newly retaken city of Kherson, including torture sites and enforced disappearances and detentions.

    Video published by a presidential aide showed a five-story, apparently residential building on fire in Kyiv. The city mayor said three residential buildings were struck and that air defense units shot down other missiles. Vitali Klitschko added on his Telegram social media channel that medics and rescuers are being scrambled to the sites of the attacks.

    The strikes followed air raid sirens in the capital and break what had been a period of comparative calm since previous waves of drone and missile attacks several weeks ago.

    The strikes also follow what have been days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by the retaking of Kherson. The southern city, however, is without power and water and the head of the U.N. human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday decried a “dire humanitarian situation” there.

    Reports of abuses are also emerging in newly liberated Kherson areas now that Russian troops have gone.

    Speaking from Kyiv, Bogner said her teams are looking to travel to Kherson to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention it has turned up in the area and “understand whether the scale is in fact larger than what we have documented already.”

    The head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, said authorities are to start investigating reports from Kherson residents that Russian forces set up at least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated parts of the wider Kherson region and that “our people may have been detained and tortured there.”

    “Mine clearance is currently underway. After that, I think, today, investigative actions will begin,” he said on Ukrainian TV.

    The retaking of Kherson was one of Ukraine’s biggest successes in the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion and dealt another stinging blow to the Kremlin. But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control and fighting continues. Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday reported another civilian death, from Russian shelling, in eastern Ukraine — adding to the invasion’s heavy toll of many tens of thousands killed and wounded.

    The reports of abuse came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday likened the recapture of the Kherson to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying both were watersheds on the road to eventual victory.

    Speaking via video link to a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, Zelenskyy said Kherson’s liberation from eight months of Russian occupation was “reminiscent of many battles in the past, which became turning points in the wars.”

    “It’s like, for example, D-Day — the landing of the Allies in Normandy. It was not yet a final point in the fight against evil, but it already determined the entire further course of events. This is exactly what we are feeling now,” he said.

    The liberation of Kherson — the only provincial capital that Moscow had seized — has sparked days of celebration in Ukraine and allowed families to be reunited for the first time in months. But as winter approaches, the city’s remaining 80,000 residents are without heat, water or electricity, and short on food and medicine.

    Still, U.S. President Joe Biden called it a “significant victory” for Ukraine. Speaking on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, Biden added: “We’re going to continue to provide the capability for the Ukrainian people to defend themselves.”

    In his address to the G-20, Zelenskyy called for the creation of a special tribunal to try Russian military and political figures for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, and the creation of an international mechanism to compensate Kyiv for wartime deaths and destruction.

    Zelenskyy referred to the G-20 meeting as “the G-19 summit,” adhering to Kyiv’s line that Russia should be excluded from the grouping.

    “Everywhere, when we liberate our land, we see one thing — Russia leaves behind torture chambers and mass burials. … How many mass graves are there in the territory that still remains under the control of Russia?” Zelenskyy pointedly asked.

    Zelenskyy made a triumphant surprise visit on Monday to Kherson. He hailed the Russian retreat from the southern city as the “beginning of the end of the war,” but also acknowledged the heavy price Ukrainian soldiers are paying in their grinding effort to push back Russia’s invasion forces.

    ———

    Joanna Kozlowska in London, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this story.

    ———

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

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  • Qatar at World Cup pinnacle after years of Mideast turmoil

    Qatar at World Cup pinnacle after years of Mideast turmoil

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Hosting the World Cup marks a pinnacle in Qatar’s efforts to rise out of the shadow of its larger neighbors in the wider Middle East, where its politics and its upstart ambitions have brought both international attention and regional ire.

    The road to the tournament — and Qatar’s increased prominence on the global stage — has been fueled by the country becoming one of the top exporters of natural gas. That newfound wealth built the stadiums that fans will fill for the tournament, created the Arab world’s most recognized news network, Al Jazeera, and enabled Doha’s diplomatic outreach to the wider world.

    But that rise has not been without intrigue. A palace coup in 1995 installed a more assertive ruler in the country, who used Qatar’s wealth to back the Islamists who emerged stronger amid the 2011 Arab Spring protests — the same figures his fellow Gulf Arab leaders viewed as threats to their rule. A yearslong boycott of Qatar by four Arab nations that began in 2017 nearly sparked a war.

    And while the overt tensions have eased in the region, Qatar likely hopes the World Cup will serve to boost its standing as it balances its relations abroad to hedge against any danger to the country in the future.

    “They know there are these potential threats; they know they are very vulnerable,” said Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international relations and Gulf Arab studies at Georgetown University in Qatar. “Anything they can do to have an international network of if not allies, at least a sympathetic element, they will.”

    Qatar, a little larger than Jamaica or just smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, is a peninsular nation that sticks out into the Persian Gulf like a thumb. It shares just a 60-kilometers (37-mile) border with Saudi Arabia, a nation 185 times larger, and sits just across the Gulf from Iran.

    Through its sovereign wealth fund, Qatar owns London’s famed Harrods department store, Paris Saint-Germain soccer club and billions of dollars in real estate in New York City. That wealth comes from its sales of liquified natural gas through an offshore field it shares with Iran, most of it going to Asian nations such as China, India, Japan and South Korea.

    That spigot of wealth began flowing in 1997, just after two major events that shook Qatar. The first, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent 1991 Gulf War, saw Doha and other Gulf Arab nations realize the need for long-term American military presence as a hedge, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

    Qatar built its massive Al-Udeid Air Base, which is home to some 8,000 American troops and the forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command today.

    The second event that shook Qatar took place in 1995, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani seized power in a bloodless coup from his father who was in Switzerland. Sheikh Hamad later put down a 1996 coup attempt by his cousin.

    Under Sheikh Hamad and flush with cash, Qatar created Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel that became known worldwide for airing statements from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. railed against the channel after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, though it provided the Arab world something beyond tepid state-controlled television for the first time.

    In December 2010, Qatar won its bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Just two weeks later, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire in protest and ultimately died of his burns — lighting the fuse for what became the 2011 Arab Spring.

    For Qatar, it marked a crucial moment. The country double-downed on its support of Islamists across the region, including Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who would be elected president in Egypt after the fall of the longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Doha poured money into Syrian groups opposing the rule of Bashar Assad — with some funding going to those that America later described as extremists, like the Islamic State group.

    Qatar long has denied funding extremists, though it does maintain relations with the Palestinian militant group Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip, working as an interlocutor with Israel. But analysts say there was a recognition that things may have moved too fast.

    “They realize they stuck out their necks too far too soon … and they began to re-calibrate that,” Nonneman said.

    The Arab Spring soon chilled into a winter. A counterrevolution in Egypt supported by other Gulf Arab states saw the installation of military general turned President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013.

    A little over a week earlier, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Sheikh Hamad’s son, took over as ruler in Qatar in the ruling family’s own acknowledgment that a generational change was needed.

    Gulf Arab countries, however, remained angry. A 2014 dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamists saw Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates withdraw their ambassadors — only to bring them back eight months later.

    But in 2017 after then-President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, those three nations and Egypt began a yearslong boycott of Qatar, closing off air traffic and severing economic ties even as construction on the stadiums continued.

    Things grew so tense that Kuwait’s late ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, who at the time mediated the dispute, suggested that “military action” at one point was a possibility, without elaborating.

    The dispute ended as President Joe Biden stood poised to take office, though regional tensions remain. Still, Qatar has found itself hosting negotiations between American officials and the Taliban, as well as assisting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen European leaders come to Doha, hopeful for additional natural gas.

    “They are at the center of attention again,” Ulrichsen said. “It gives them a seat at the table when there’s decisions being taken.”

    ———

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

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  • CIA director Burns to meet Russian counterpart in Turkey

    CIA director Burns to meet Russian counterpart in Turkey

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    WASHINGTON — CIA Director Bill Burns will meet in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday with his Russian intelligence counterpart to underscore the consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, according to a White House National Security Council official.

    The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Burns and Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR spy agency, would not discuss settlement of the war in Ukraine. Burns is also expected to raise the cases of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, two Americans detained in Russia whom the Biden administration has been pressing to release in a prisoner exchange.

    The official said that Ukrainian officials were briefed ahead of Burns’ travel to Turkey.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he could neither confirm nor deny reports of U.S.-Russia talks in Turkey.

    Two Turkish officials said they had no knowledge about a meeting between U.S. and Russian delegations. A Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

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  • Biden, Xi seek to ‘manage our differences’ in meeting

    Biden, Xi seek to ‘manage our differences’ in meeting

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    NUSA DUA, Indonesia — President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their first in-person meeting Monday since the U.S. president took office nearly two years ago, aiming to “manage” differences between the superpowers as they compete for global influence amid increasing economic and security tensions.

    Xi and Biden greeted each other with a handshake at a luxury resort hotel in Indonesia, where they are attending the Group of 20 summit of large economies, before they sat down for what was expected to be a conversation lasting several hours.

    “As the leaders of our two nations, we share responsibility, in my view, to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues that require our mutual cooperation,” Biden said to open the meeting.

    Xi said he hoped they would “chart the right course for the China-US relationship” and that he was prepared for a “candid and in-depth exchange of views” with Biden.

    Both men entered the highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home. Democrats triumphantly held onto control of the U.S. Senate, with a chance to boost their ranks by one in a runoff election in Georgia next month, while Xi was awarded a third five-year term in October by the Communist Party’s national congress, a break with tradition.

    “We have very little misunderstanding,” Biden told reporters in Cambodia on Sunday, where he participated in a gathering of southeast Asian nations before leaving for Indonesia. “We just got to figure out where the red lines are and … what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years.”

    Biden added: “His circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home.” The president said of his own situation: “I know I’m coming in stronger.”

    White House aides have repeatedly sought to play down any notion of conflict between the two nations and have emphasized that they believe the countries can work in tandem on shared challenges such as climate change and health security.

    But relations have grown more strained under successive American administrations, as economic, trade, human rights and security differences have come to the fore.

    As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine. Chinese officials have largely refrained from public criticism of Russia’s war, although Beijing has avoided direct support, such as supplying arms.

    Taiwan has emerged as one of the most contentious issues between Washington and Beijing. Multiple times in his presidency, Biden has said the U.S. would defend the island — which China has eyed for eventual unification — in case of a Beijing-led invasion. But administration officials have stressed each time that the U.S.’s “One China” policy has not changed. That policy recognizes the government in Beijing while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei, and its posture of “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would respond militarily if the island were attacked.

    Tensions flared even higher when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan in August, prompting China to retaliate with military drills and the firing of ballistic missiles into nearby waters.

    The Biden administration also blocked exports of advanced computer chips to China last month — a national security move that bolsters U.S. competition against Beijing. Chinese officials quickly condemned the restrictions.

    And though the two men have held five phone or video calls during Biden’s presidency, White House officials say those encounters are no substitute for Biden being able to meet Xi in person. That task is all the more important after Xi strengthened his grip on power through the party congress, as lower-level Chinese officials have been unable or unwilling to speak for their leader.

    Before the meeting, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning had said China was committed to peaceful coexistence but would firmly defend its sovereignty, security and development interests.

    “It is important that the U.S. work together with China to properly manage differences, advance mutually beneficial cooperation, avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation, and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of sound and steady development,” she said at a daily briefing in Beijing.

    Xi has stayed close to home throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic, where he has enforced a “zero-COVID” policy with mass lockdowns that have roiled global supply chains.

    He made his first trip outside China since start of the pandemic in September with a stop in Kazakhstan and then onto Uzbekistan to participate in the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Putin and other leaders of the Central Asian security group.

    White House officials and their Chinese counterparts have spent weeks negotiating details of the meeting, which was held at Xi’s hotel with translators providing simultaneous interpretation through headsets.

    U.S. officials were eager to see how Xi approaches the Biden sit-down after consolidating his position as the unquestioned leader of the state, saying they would wait to assess whether that made him more or less likely to seek out areas of cooperation with the U.S.

    Biden and Xi each brought small delegations into the discussion. U.S. officials expected Xi would bring newly elevated government officials and expressed hope that it could lead to more substantive engagements down the line.

    Before meeting with Xi, Biden held talks with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the G-20 host, to announce a range of new development initiatives for the archipelago nation, including investments in climate, security, and education.

    Many of Biden’s conversations and engagements during a three-country tour — which took him to Egypt and Cambodia before he landed on the island of Bali on Sunday — were, by design, preparing him for the meeting with Xi and sending a signal that the U.S. would compete in areas where Xi has also worked to expand his country’s influence.

    The two men have a history that dates to their service as their country’s vice president. The U.S. president has emphasized that he knows Xi well and wants to use the meeting to better understand where they stand.

    Biden has tucked references to his conversations with Xi into his remarks as he traveled around the U.S. before the Nov. 8 elections, using the Chinese leader’s preference for autocratic governance to make his own case to voters for why democracy should prevail.

    The president’s view was somewhat validated on the global stage, as White House aides said several world leaders approached Biden during his time in Cambodia — where he was meeting with Asian allies to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to the region in the face of China’s assertive actions — to tell him they watched the outcome of the midterm elections closely and that the results were a triumph for democracy.

    —-

    Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Baltimore and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Today in History: November 14, crash kills Marshall team

    Today in History: November 14, crash kills Marshall team

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    Today in History

    Today is Monday, Nov. 14, the 318th day of 2022. There are 47 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Nov. 14, 1970, a chartered Southern Airways DC-9 crashed while trying to land in West Virginia, killing all 75 people on board, including the Marshall University football team and its coaching staff.

    On this date:

    In 1851, Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale” was published in the United States, almost a month after being released in Britain.

    In 1910, Eugene B. Ely became the first aviator to take off from a ship as his Curtiss pusher rolled off a sloping platform on the deck of the scout cruiser USS Birmingham off Hampton Roads, Virginia.

    In 1915, African-American educator Booker T. Washington, 59, died in Tuskegee, Alabama.

    In 1940, during World War II, German planes destroyed most of the English town of Coventry.

    In 1965, the U.S. Army’s first major military operation of the Vietnam War began with the start of the five-day Battle of Ia Drang. (The fighting between American troops and North Vietnamese forces ended on Nov. 18 with both sides claiming victory.)

    In 1969, Apollo 12 blasted off for the moon.

    In 1972, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 1,000 level for the first time, ending the day at 1,003.16.

    In 1973, Britain’s Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey. (They divorced in 1992, and Anne remarried.)

    In 1996, singer Michael Jackson married his plastic surgeon’s nurse, Debbie Rowe, in a ceremony in Sydney, Australia. (Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.)

    In 1997, a jury in Fairfax, Virginia, decided that Pakistani national Aimal Khan Kasi (eye-MAHL’ kahn KAH’-see) should get the death penalty for gunning down two CIA employees outside agency headquarters. (Five years later on this date, Aimal Khan Kasi was executed.)

    In 2013, former Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger was led off to prison to begin serving a life sentence at 84 for his murderous reign in the 1970s and ’80s. (Bulger was killed Oct. 30, 2018, hours after arriving at a federal prison in West Virginia.)

    In 2020, Donald Trump supporters unwilling to accept Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory gathered in cities across the country including Washington, D.C., where thousands rallied; after night fell in the nation’s capital, demonstrators favoring Trump clashed in the streets with counterprotesters, resulting in injuries to demonstrators and police officers and charges against nearly two dozen people.

    Ten years ago: President Barack Obama, in his first news conference since winning a second term, challenged congressional Republicans to let taxes rise on the wealthiest Americans, saying that would ease the threat of another recession as the nation faced a “fiscal cliff.” Israel said it had killed the leader of Hamas’ military wing in a wave of airstrikes launched in response to days of rocket fire out of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Baseball’s Cy Young Awards went to Tampa Bay’s David Price in the American League and R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets in the National League.

    Five years ago: Three UCLA basketball players who’d been detained in China on suspicion of shoplifting returned home; they were then indefinitely suspended from the team. Papa John’s Pizza apologized for comments made by CEO John Schnatter (SHNAH’-tur), who had blamed sluggish pizza sales on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the House would require anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training for all members and their staffs; the announcement came hours after two female lawmakers spoke about sexual misconduct involving sitting members of Congress.

    One year ago: A 9-year-old Dallas boy became the youngest person to die from injuries sustained during a crowd surge at the Astroworld music festival in Houston nine days earlier; a family attorney said Ezra Blount died at a Houston hospital, where he’d been placed in a medically induced coma after he suffered serious injuries in the crush of fans during a performance by rapper Travis Scott. (The crowd surge left 10 people dead.) Libya’s election agency said Seif al-Islam, the son and one-time heir apparent of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, had announced his candidacy for the country’s December presidential election.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Kathleen Hughes is 94. Former NASA astronaut Fred Haise is 89. Composer Wendy Carlos is 83. Britain’s King Charles III is 74. Rock singer-musician James Young (Styx) is 73. Singer Stephen Bishop is 71. Blues musician Anson Funderburgh is 68. Pianist Yanni is 68. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is 68. Former presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett is 66. Actor Laura San Giacomo (JEE’-ah-koh-moh) is 61. Actor D.B. Sweeney is 61. Rapper Reverend Run (Run-DMC) is 58. Actor Patrick Warburton is 58. Rock musician Nic Dalton is 58. Country singer Rockie Lynne is 58. Pop singer Jeanette Jurado (Expose) is 57. Retired MLB All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling is 56. Rock musician Brian Yale is 54. Rock singer Butch Walker is 53. Actor Josh Duhamel (du-MEHL’) is 50. Rock musician Travis Barker is 47. Contemporary Christian musician Robby Shaffer is 47. Actor Brian Dietzen is 45. Rapper Shyheim is 45. Rock musician Tobin Esperance (Papa Roach) is 43. Actor Olga Kurylenko is 43. Actor-comedian Vanessa Bayer is 41. Actor Russell Tovey is 41. New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor is 29. Actor Cory Michael Smith is 36. Actor Graham Patrick Martin is 31. NHL forward Taylor Hall is 31.

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  • Kherson celebrates Russian exit yet faces huge rebuilding

    Kherson celebrates Russian exit yet faces huge rebuilding

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    KHERSON, Ukraine — Residents of Kherson celebrated the end of Russia’s eight-month occupation for the third straight day Sunday, even as they took stock of the extensive damage left behind in the southern Ukrainian city by the Kremlin’s retreating forces.

    A jubilant crowd gathered in Kherson’s main square, despite the distant thumps of artillery fire that could be heard as Ukrainian forces pressed on with their effort to push out Moscow’s invasion force.

    “It’s a new year for us now,” said Karina Zaikina, 24, who wore on her coat a yellow-and-blue ribbon in Ukraine’s national colors. “For the first time in many months, I wasn’t scared to come into the city.”

    “Finally, freedom!” said 61-year-old resident Tetiana Hitina. “The city was dead.”

    But even as locals rejoiced, the evidence of Russia’s ruthless occupation was all around, and Russian forces still control some 70% of the wider Kherson region.

    With cellphone networks knocked out, Zaikina and others lined up to use a satellite phone connection set up for everyone’s use in the square, enabling them to swap news with family and friends for the first time in weeks.

    Downtown stores were shuttered. With many people having fled the city during the Russian occupation, the city streets were thinly populated. Many of the few people venturing out Sunday carried yellow and blue flags. On the square, people lined up to ask soldiers to autograph their flags and rewarded them with hugs. Some wept.

    More bleakly, Kherson is also without electricity or running water, and food and medical supplies are short. Residents said Russian troops plundered the city, carting away loot as they withdrew last week. They also wrecked key public infrastructure before retreating across the wide Dnieper River to its east bank. One Ukrainian official described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

    “I don’t understand what kind of people this is. I don’t know why they did it,” said resident Yevhen Teliezhenko, draped in a Ukrainian flag.

    Still, he said, “it became easier to breathe” once the Russians had gone.

    “There is no better holiday than what’s happening now,” he declared.

    Ukrainian authorities said the demining of critical infrastructure is under way in the city. Reconnecting the electricity supply is the priority, with gas supplies already assured, Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.

    The Russian pullout marked a triumphant milestone in Ukraine’s pushback against Moscow’s invasion almost nine months ago. In the past two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have retaken dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to keep up the pressure on Russian forces, reassuring the people in Ukrainian cities and villages that are still under occupation.

    “We don’t forget anyone; we won’t leave anyone,” he said.

    Ukraine’s retaking of Kherson was a significant setback for the Kremlin and the latest in a series of battlefield embarrassments. It came some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine — in breach of international law — and declared them Russian territory.

    The U.S. embassy in Kyiv tweeted comments Sunday by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who described the turnaround in Kherson as “an extraordinary victory” for Ukraine and “quite a remarkable thing.”

    The reversal came despite Putin’s recent partial mobilization of reservists, raising troop numbers by some 300,000. That has been hard for the Russian military to digest.

    “Russian military leadership is trying and largely failing to integrate combat forces drawn from many different organizations and of many different types and levels of skill and equipment into a more cohesive fighting force in Ukraine,” commented the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that tracks the conflict

    British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the Kremlin will be “worried” by the loss of Kherson but warned against underestimating Moscow. “If they need more cannon fodder, that is what they’ll be doing,” he said.

    Ukrainian police called on residents to help identify collaborators with Russian forces. Ukrainian police officers returned to the city Saturday, along with public broadcasting services. The national police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes.

    In what could perhaps be the next district to fall in Ukraine’s march on territory annexed by Moscow, the Russian-appointed administration of the Kakhovka district, east of the city of Kherson, announced Saturday it was evacuating its employees.

    “Today, the administration is the No. 1 target for Ukrainian attacks,” said the Moscow-installed leader of Kakhovka, Pavel Filipchuk. “We, as an authority, are moving to a safer territory, from where we will lead the district.”

    Kakhovka is located on the east bank of the Dnieper River, upstream of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station.

    ———

    John Leicester contributed to this story from Kyiv, Ukraine.

    ———

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

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  • After Kherson success, Kyiv vows to keep pushing out Russia

    After Kherson success, Kyiv vows to keep pushing out Russia

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    MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president vowed to keep pushing Russian forces out of his country after they withdrew from Kherson, leaving behind devastation, hunger and booby traps in the southern Ukrainian city.

    The Russian retreat from Kherson marked a triumphant milestone in Ukraine’s pushback against Moscow’s invasion almost nine months ago. Kherson residents hugged and kissed the arriving Ukrainian troops in rapturous scenes.

    “We will see many more such greetings” of Ukrainian soldiers liberating Russian-held territory,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Saturday.

    He pledged to the people in Ukrainian cities and villages that are still under occupation: “We don’t forget anyone; we won’t leave anyone.”

    Ukraine’s retaking of Kherson was a significant setback for the Kremlin and the latest in a series of battlefield embarrassments. It came some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in breach of international law and declared them Russian territory.

    As Ukrainian forces on Sunday consolidated their hold on Kherson, authorities contemplated the daunting task of clearing out explosive devices and restoring basic public services in the city.

    One Ukrainian official described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe.” The remaining residents in the city are said to lack water, medicine and food. There are shortages of key basics such as bread because of a lack of electricity.

    Ukrainian police called on residents to help identify collaborators with Russian forces during the eight-month occupation. Ukrainian police officers returned to the city Saturday, along with public broadcasting services, following the departure of Russian troops.

    The national police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said Saturday on Facebook that about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes.

    In what could perhaps be the next district to fall in Ukraine’s march on territory illegally annexed by Moscow, the Russian-appointed administration of the Kakhovka district, east of Kherson city, announced Saturday it was evacuating its employees.

    “Today, the administration is the number one target for Ukrainian attacks,” said the Moscow-installed leader of Kakhovka, Pavel Filipchuk.

    “Therefore, by order of the government of the Kherson region, we, as an authority, are moving to a safer territory, from where we will lead the district,” he wrote on Telegram.

    Kakhovka is located on the left bank of the River Dnieper, upstream of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station.

    Meanwhile, the city of Nikopol, further upstream, was heavily shelled overnight, Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council chair Mykola Lukashuk reported Sunday.

    Writing on Telegram, he said that two women were wounded but are in a stable condition in hospital. One private house and two farm buildings were destroyed, while over 40 residential buildings, more than 24 commercial buildings, a college, a register office and electricity networks were damaged.

    According to Lukashuk, the city of Marhanets also came under fire. Two private houses were damaged, but no injuries were reported. Nikopol and Marhanets lie across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.

    In Kherson, photos on social media Saturday showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities. A Telegram post by Yellow Ribbon, the Ukrainian resistance movement in the occupied territories, showed two people in a park taking down plaques picturing Soviet-era military figures.

    Moscow’s announcement that Russian forces were withdrawing across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine as a whole, followed a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south. In the past two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have retaken dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, and the military said that’s where stabilization activities were taking place.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement over the Russian retreat from Kherson.

    “We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists Sunday that a joint statement on the results of the summit was not adopted, since “the American side and its partners insisted on an unacceptable assessment of the situation in Ukraine and around it.”

    The Kremlin is angered by the support Ukraine receives from its Western allies, including the United States.

    ———

    Leicester reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

    ———

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

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  • Biden-Xi summit: What Biden wants, what Xi wants

    Biden-Xi summit: What Biden wants, what Xi wants

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    PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — There won’t be concessions from the U.S. side. No real deliverables, which is government-speak for specific achievements. Don’t expect a cheery joint statement, either.

    During President Joe Biden’s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, the leaders will be circling each other to game out how to manage a relationship that the U.S. has determined poses the biggest economic and military threat.

    At the same time, U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed that they see the two countries’ interactions as one of competition — and that they want to avoid conflict.

    Here’s a look at what each side is hoping to achieve out of the leaders’ first in-person encounter as presidents, to be held on the island of Bali in Indonesia:

    FOR THE UNITED STATES

    Essentially, Biden and other U.S. officials are trying to understand where Xi really stands.

    In a news conference shortly before leaving Washington, Biden said he wanted to “lay out … what each of our red lines are, understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States.”

    That mission has become all the more imperative since the conclusion of the Community Party congress in Beijing, during which Xi secured a norm-breaking third term as leader, empowering him even further.

    It’s a goal that will be much more readily achieved in person, White House officials say, despite Biden and Xi’s five video or phone calls during the U.S. president’s term.

    Biden told reporters on Sunday that he’s “always had straightforward discussions” with Xi, and that has prevented either of them from “miscalculations” of their intentions.

    “I know him well, he knows me,” Biden said. “We’ve just got to figure out where the red lines are and what are the most important things to each of us, going into the next two years.”

    The U.S. president will want to send a message to Xi on White House concerns about China’s economic practices. Taiwan is sure to come up, and Biden will want to emphasize to Xi that the U.S. will stand ready to defend the self-governing island should it come under attack by China. Biden also will seek to make clear his concerns about Beijing’s human rights practices, as he has in their previous interactions.

    Biden will also use the meeting to press for a more aggressive posture from Xi on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese leader has largely refrained from public criticism of Vladimir Putin’s actions while declining to actively aid Moscow by supplying arms.

    “We believe that, of course, every country in the world should do more to prevail upon Russia, especially those who have relationships with Russia, to end this war and leave Ukraine,” said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

    Finally, U.S. officials say they’re eager to see where the two superpowers could actually collaborate. Though there are numerous areas in which Biden and Xi won’t see eye to eye, the White House has listed several issues where they conceivably could, including health, counternarcotics and climate change.

    FOR CHINA

    Xi has yet to give a wish list for talks with Biden, but Beijing wants U.S. action on trade and Taiwan.

    Perhaps most importantly, the Group of 20 gathering in Bali and the meeting with Biden give China’s most powerful leader in decades a stage to promote his country’s image as a global player and himself as a history-making figure who is restoring its rightful role as an economic and political force.

    China pursues “increasingly assertive foreign and security policies aimed at changing the international status quo,” Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who is president of the Asia Society, wrote in Foreign Affairs. That has strained relations with Washington, Europe and China’s Asian neighbors, but Xi is unfazed and looks set to be more ambitious abroad.

    The meeting is “an important event of China’s head-of-state diplomacy toward the Asia Pacific,” said a foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian. He said Xi will “deliver an important speech” on economic growth.

    Zhao called on the Biden administration to “stop politicizing” trade and embrace Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, the self-ruled island democracy that split with the mainland in 1949 and never has been part of the People’s Republic of China.

    Beijing wants Washington to lift tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and to pull back on increasing restrictions on Chinese access to processor chips and other U.S. technology. Biden has left most of those in place and added curbs on access to technology that American officials say can be used in weapons development.

    “The United States needs to stop politicizing, weaponizing and ideologizing trade issues,” Zhao said.

    Xi’s government has stepped up efforts to intimidate the elected government of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen by flying fighter planes near the island and firing missiles into the sea.

    Beijing broke off talks with Washington on security, climate cooperation and other issues after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August in a show of support for its government.

    “The United States needs to stop obscuring, hollowing out and distorting the ‘one-China principle,’” said Zhao, referring to Beijing’s stance that Taiwan is obligated to join the mainland under Communist Party leadership.

    Another goal for Xi: Don’t get COVID-19.

    The G-20 will be only Xi’s second foreign trip in 2 1/2 years while his government enforces a severe “Zero COVID” strategy that shut down cities and kept most visitors out of China.

    Xi broke that moratorium by attending a September summit with Putin and Central Asian leaders. But he skipped a dinner and photo session where Putin and others wore no masks.

    ———

    McDonald reported from Beijing.

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  • Auschwitz hero’s son seeks millions for dad’s 1948 execution

    Auschwitz hero’s son seeks millions for dad’s 1948 execution

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    WARSAW, Poland — The son of World War II Auschwitz death camp hero Witold Pilecki is seeking millions in compensation from the Polish government for his father’s post-war arrest and 1948 execution by the country’s communist authorities of the time.

    The case opened Thursday before a Warsaw court and the next session is scheduled for January. Andrzej Pilecki, aged 90, argues that 26 million zlotys ($5.7 million) compensation would be due to his father by Poland’s law that redresses communist-era wrongs.

    His father, Cavalry Capt. Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance member, volunteered in 1940 to be caught by the Nazi Germans and held at Auschwitz in order to organize resistance there and gather evidence of German atrocities. He escaped in 1943 and wrote a report that was the first direct account from Auschwitz made available to the Allies.

    After the war he was arrested, tortured and executed by the Moscow-appointed authorities on charges of spying for Poland’s government-in-exile in London. His remains have not been found.

    In 1990, Poland’s democratic government paid Pilecki’s widow and two children compensation for the material support that they lost due to his execution.

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  • Body with gunshot found in search for Tulsa massacre victims

    Body with gunshot found in search for Tulsa massacre victims

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    A second body of a possible victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre has been found to have a gunshot wound, according to the city.

    “Forensic anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield discovered that one of the three sets of remains exhumed last week contained one victim with a gunshot wound,” according to a statement late Friday from city spokesperson Carson Colvin.

    In an effort to eventually confirm the remains are those of massacre victims, investigators are seeking signs of trauma, such as gunshot wounds, based on accounts at the time.

    A portion of the bullet was removed the the head of the remains, according to the statement. The person’s race and whether the remains are those of a massacre victim are not yet known.

    Stubblefield did not immediately return a phone call to The Associated Press on Saturday.

    The remains were in a plain casket and are believed to be that of an adult male, matching information in reports from 1921, and were in the area in Oaklawn Cemetery where 18 massacre victims were reportedly buried.

    The first remains with gunshot wounds were found in June 2021 and are now with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Forensics where DNA analysis is ongoing.

    The current excavation of the cemetery in the search for victims of the 1921 Race Massacre began Oct. 26 and has uncovered 26 unmarked graves. The work is expected to continue through Nov. 18.

    Four sets of the newly found remains have been exhumed and taken to an on-site lab for analysis.

    A search for the graves of massacre victims began in 2020 and resumed last year with nearly three dozen coffins recovered.

    Fourteen sets of the previously recovered remains were sent to Intermountain Forensics for testing, and two of those have been found to have enough DNA to begin sequencing and start developing a genealogy profile.

    None of the remains have been identified or confirmed as victims of the massacre, one of the worst known examples of white mob violence against Black Americans in U.S. history.

    More than 1,000 homes were burned, hundreds more were looted, and a thriving business district known as Black Wall Street was destroyed in the racist violence.

    Historians have estimated the death toll at between 75 and 300, with generational wealth being wiped out.

    ———

    Read more coverage of the Tulsa Race Massacre: https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre

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  • Ukrainian police, TV broadcasts return to long-occupied city

    Ukrainian police, TV broadcasts return to long-occupied city

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    MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian police officers returned Saturday, along with TV and radio services, to the southern city of Kherson following the withdrawal of Russian troops, part of fast but cautious efforts to make the only regional capital captured by Russia livable after months of occupation. Yet one official still described the city as “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

    People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating after the Kremlin announced its troops had withdrawn to the other side of the Dnieper River from Kherson. The Ukrainian military said it was overseeing “stabilization measures” around the city to make sure it was safe.

    The Russian retreat represented a significant setback for the Kremlin some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three others provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in breach of international law and declared them Russian territory.

    The National Police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said Saturday on Facebook that about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes. Police teams also were working to identify and neutralize unexploded ordnance and one sapper was wounded Saturday while demining an administrative building, Klymenko said.

    Ukraine’s communications watchdog said national TV and radio broadcasts had resumed in the city, and an adviser to Kherson’s mayor said humanitarian aid and supplies had begun to arrive from the neighboring Mykolaiv region.

    But the adviser, Roman Holovnya, described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe.” He said the remaining residents lacked water, medicine and food — and key basics like bread went unbaked because a lack of electricity.

    “The occupiers and collaborators did everything possible so that those people who remained in the city suffered as much as possible over those days, weeks, months of waiting” for Ukraine’s forces to arrive, Holovnya said. “Water supplies are practically nonexistent.”

    The chairman of Khersonoblenergo, the region’s prewar power provider, said electricity was being returned “to every settlement in the Kherson region immediately after the liberation,”

    Despite the efforts to restore normal civilian life, Russian forces remain close by. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday that the Russians were fortifying their battle lines on the river’s eastern bank after abandoning the capital. About 70% of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.

    Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on down chave autioned that while special military units had reached the city of Kherson, a full deployment to reinforce the advance troops still was underway. Ukraine’s intelligence agency thought some Russian soldiers may have stayed behind, ditching their uniforms for civilian clothes to avoid detection.

    “Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemy’s presence, the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson from the streets and buildings,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

    Zelenskyy said the first part of the stabilization work includes de-mining operations. He said the entry of “our defenders” — the soldiers — into Kherson would be followed by police, sappers, rescuers and energy workers, among others.

    “Medicine, communications, social services are returning,” he said. “Life is returning.”

    Photos on social media Saturday showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities the Kremlin installed to run the Kherson region. A Telegram post on Yellow Ribbon, a self-described Ukrainian “public resistance” movement, showed two people in a park taking down plaques picturing Soviet-era military figures.

    Moscow’s announcement that Russian forces were withdrawing across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south.

    In the last two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, and the millitary said that’s where stabilization activities were taking place.

    Russian state news agency Tass quoted an official in Kherson’s Kremlin-appointed administration on Saturday as saying that Henichesk, a city on the Azov Sea 200 kilometers southeast of Kherson, would serve as the region’s “temporary capital.”

    Ukrainian media derided the announcement, with the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper saying Russia “had made up a new capital” for the region.

    Across much of Ukraine, moments of jubilation marked the exit of Russian forces, since a retreat from Kherson and other areas on the Dnieper’s west bank would appear to shatter Russian hopes to press an offensive west to Mykolaiv and Odesa to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

    In Odesa, the Black Sea port, residents draped themselves in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flags, shared Champagne and held up flag-colored cards with the word “Kherson” on them.

    But like Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement.

    “We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

    Kuleba brought up the prospect of the Ukrainian army finding evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, just as it did after previous Russian pullbacks in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.

    “Every time we liberate a piece of our territory, when we enter a city liberated from Russian army, we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by Russian army in the course of the occupation,” Ukraine’s top diplomat said. “It’s not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy and Russia has to approach talks in good faith.”

    U.S. assessments this week showed Russia’s war in Ukraine may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

    Elsewhere, Russia continued its grinding offensive in Ukraine’s industrial east, targeting the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

    Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported Saturday that two civilians were killed and four wounded over the last day as battles heated up around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city that has remained in Ukrainian hands.

    Russia’s continued push for Bakhmut demonstrates the Kremlin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of setbacks. It would also pave the way for a possible push onto other Ukrainian strongholds in the heavily contested Donetsk region.

    In the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk, Russia again shelled communities near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the Ukrainian regional governor said.

    ———

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

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  • Ukraine works to stabilize Kherson after Russian pullout

    Ukraine works to stabilize Kherson after Russian pullout

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    MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military carried out “stabilization measures” near the southern city of Kherson on Saturday following the end of an eight-month occupation by Russian forces, a retreat that cast a further pall on President Vladimir Putin’s designs to take over large parts of Ukraine.

    People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating after the Kremlin announced its troops had withdrawn to the other side of the Dnieper River from Kherson, the only regional capital captured by Russia’s military during the ongoing invasion.

    In a regular social media update Saturday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian forces were fortifying their battle lines on the river’s eastern bank after abandoning the capital. About 70% of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.

    Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on down cautioned that while special military units had reached Kherson city, a full deployment to reinforce the advance troops still was underway. On Friday, Ukraine’s intelligence agency said it thought some Russian soldiers stayed behind, ditching their uniforms for civilian clothes to avoid detection.

    “Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemy’s presence, the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson from the streets and buildings,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Friday.

    Photos circulating Saturday on social media showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities the Kremlin installed to run the Kherson region. A Telegram post on the channel of Yellow Ribbon, a self-described Ukrainian “public resistance” movement, showed two people in a park taking down plaques picturing what appeared to be Soviet-era military figures.

    Moscow’s announcement that Russian forces planned to withdraw across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south.

    In the last two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of Kherson city, and the Ukrainian General Staff said that’s where the stabilization activities were taking place.

    The Russian retreat represented a significant setback for the Kremlin some six weeks after Putin annexed the Kherson region and three others provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in breach of international law and in the face of widespread condemnation. The Russian leader unequivocally asserted the illegally claimed areas as Russian territory.

    Russian state news agency TASS quoted an official in Kherson’s Kremlin-appointed administration on Saturday as saying that Henichesk, a city on the Azov Sea some 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Kherson city, would serve as the region’s “temporary capital” after the withdrawal across the Dnieper.

    Ukrainian media derided the announcement, with daily newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda saying Russia “had made up a new capital” for the region.

    Like Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement over the invaded nation’s latest morale boost. “We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

    Kuleba also brought up the prospect of the Ukrainian army finding evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, just as it did after the Russian Defense Ministry pulled back its forces in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions earlier in the way.

    “Every time we liberate a piece of our territory, when we enter a city liberated from Russian army, we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by Russian army in the course of the occupation of these territories,” Ukraine’s top diplomat said. “It’s not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy and Russia has to approach talks in good faith.”

    U.S. assessments this week showed Russia’s war in Ukraine may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

    Despite the advances in Kherson, other parts of Ukraine continued to face civilian casualties, energy shortages and other fallout from Russian military attacks and Putin’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

    The state-owned electricity grid operator, Ukrenergo, announced emergency blackouts — which could go on indefinitely — in eight regions that included Kyiv, where a Russian military strike hit an energy facility critical to supplies to the capital.

    Ukrenergo said scheduled one-hour blackouts, which are temporary and limited in time, also would continue daily in central and northern Ukraine.

    Moscow has admitted targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with drone and rocket strikes since early October. Ukrainian officials reported said last month that 40% of the country’s electric power system had been severely damaged.

    While much of the focus was on southern Ukraine, Russia continued its grinding offensive in Ukraine’s industrial east, targeting in particular the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

    Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported Saturday that two civilians were killed and four wounded over the last day as battles heated up around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city that has remained in Ukrainian hands throughout the war.

    Russia’s continued push for Bakhmut demonstrates the Kremlin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks. Taking the city would open the way for a possible push onto other Ukrainian strongholds in the heavily contested Donetsk region. A reinvigorated eastern offensive could also potentially stall or derail Kyiv’s ongoing advances in the south.

    Kyrylenko, in a Facebook post Saturday, also pointed to “intense shelling” by Russia overnight of two other Ukrainian-held cities: Lyman, near the border with the neighboring Luhansk region, and Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk’s separatist-controlled capital of the same name.

    Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai said Ukrainian forces had recaptured 11 unnamed settlements in his province but their advance was “not as rapid as in other regions.”

    “We congratulate Kherson on its homecoming!” Haidai posted on Telegram. In Luhansk, the “occupiers continue to dig in and gather reinforcements, mine everything around them.”

    In the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk, Russia kept up its shelling of communities near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the Ukrainian regional governor said. Russia and Ukraine have long traded blame for shelling in and around the plant, Europe’s largest.

    Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, reemphasized that the United States would defer to Ukrainian authorities on whether or when to negotiate with Russia about a possible end to the conflict.

    “Russia invaded Ukraine,” Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One en route to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as part of a trip by President Joe Biden to international summits in southeast Asia.

    “If Russia chose to stop fighting in Ukraine and left, it would be the end of the war,” Sullivan said. “If Ukraine chose to stop fighting and give up, it would be the end of Ukraine.”

    ———

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

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  • Ethiopia hosts UN internet meeting after cutting off Tigray

    Ethiopia hosts UN internet meeting after cutting off Tigray

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    GENEVA — A U.N. body devoted to promoting broader and better access to the internet is about to hold its annual meeting in Ethiopia, whose government has cut off internet access in its northern Tigray region during a two-year war there.

    Critics say Ethiopia stands out as an egregious example of a government preventing citizens from getting online — jeopardizing family ties, human rights and information flows.

    The Internet Governance Forum, whose annual gathering has drawn top leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merke in the past, scheduled this year’s Nov. 28-Dec. 2 meeting in Ethiopia well before the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spearheaded a military campaign in Tigray against regional fighters in November 2020.

    Since then, fighting has impeded humanitarian access into the region as Ethiopia’s federal authorities try to isolate Tigray’s rebellious leaders by impeding humanitarian aid deliveries, isolating its beleaguered residents and shutting down banking and telecommunications services — leaving them largely incommunicado from the rest of the world.

    Ethiopian authorities, however, insist they haven’t deliberately targeted the Tigrayan people.

    Under a widely praised cease-fire deal agreed on Nov. 2, Ethiopia’s government is to continue restoring basic communications, transport and banking services for Tigray’s more than 5 million people, and both sides promised to allow unfettered access for humanitarian aid.

    Ethiopia’s government in the past has said it needed security guarantees for workers sent in to repair communications infrastructure.

    The government of Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, has promoted the upcoming IGF gathering in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, as it strives to promote Ethiopia’s status as a regional economic power and African diplomatic hub.

    Organizers of the meeting seek concrete steps to achieve “universal and meaningful internet connectivity.”

    The Geneva-based forum laments that 2.7 billion people worldwide remain unconnected. It will focus this year’s meeting on “connecting all people and safeguarding human rights,” and avoiding internet fragmentation. It decries government policy that “limits uses of the internet or affects the open and interoperable character of the internet.”

    Chengetai Masango, the forum’s program and technology manager, said Addis Ababa was a “prime place” to hold the annual meeting as Ethiopia is fast-developing country, home to a “large youth base” and a diplomatic hub — with many embassies, international institutions and the headquarters of the African Union.

    “Ethiopia is a UN member state and as such is entitled to host U.N. meetings,” Masango wrote, adding: “The IGF and UN’s position on shutdowns everywhere has been consistent; they are incompatible with human rights.”

    Even before the Tigray conflict began, the U.N. human rights office expressed concern about internet access and communications in Ethiopia, citing a “communications blackout” that began in January 2020 in areas under federal military control — namely western Oromia — during military operations against an armed faction there.

    Fighting in the Oromia region this week led to several dozen casualties, witnesses said.

    The rights office noted that Ethiopia is far from the only country to impose restrictions on the internet.

    A U.N. report published in June noted internet shutdowns or clampdowns on social media in places including Myanmar, Sudan and Russia. It said shutdowns often occurred in places where governments carry out armed operations — and some may have been aimed to cover up human rights violations.

    “The U.N. as a whole has been outspoken about the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia, and also about the alleged violations of human rights, humanitarian and refugee law,” Masango saiad.

    Many Tigrayans have told The Associated Press they have been unable to contact loved ones in the region since the conflict began, and don’t know whether they are still alive.

    The #KeepItOn coalition — which brings together over 280 organizations from 105 countries to promote open internet access — says it’s petitioning the African Union “to condemn the Ethiopian government’s prolonged shutdown, which has had devastating impacts on people living through a conflict, and to help reestablish internet access in the region and across Ethiopia.”

    Access Now, another advocacy group, has launched a campaign to highlight Tigray’s two years without internet. It says the meeting in Addis Ababa offers an opportunity to focus on internet shutdowns and “to urge governments, particularly in Africa, to put an end to the practice.”

    “Authorities have weaponized internet shutdowns against people in and outside of Tigray — disconnecting families, destroying business, and impeding humanitarian aid delivery,” it said. “This compounds the humanitarian crisis and provides cover for the human rights abuses.”

    ———

    Anna reported from Nairobi, Kenya.

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  • Russia claims all troops gone from city in southern Ukraine

    Russia claims all troops gone from city in southern Ukraine

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    MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Russia said its troops finished withdrawing Friday from the western bank of the river that divides Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, allowing Ukrainian forces to move cautiously toward reclaiming the country’s only Russian-occupied provincial capital in what would be a major victory.

    In a statement carried by Russian state news agencies, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the withdrawal was completed at 5 a.m. and not a single unit of military equipment was left behind. The retreat, which came two months after Russian forces withdrew from eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, represents another huge setback for Moscow in its 8 1/2-month war in Ukraine.

    Reports emerged of residents hoisting Ukrainian flags in places the Russians pulled out of, including the city of Kherson. A Ukrainian regional official, Serhii Khlan, said he heard the flags were “appearing en masse all over the place.” He disputed the Russian claim that retreating forces took all their equipment with them, saying he was told “a lot” of hardware got left behind.

    Khlan, who spoke to journalists from outside the city, said he heard that some Russian troops also were left behind and had dressed in civilian clothes, possibly with plans to engage in acts of sabotage.” He said their exact number was unclear.

    The Kremlin remained defiant Friday, insisting the development in no way represented an embarrassment for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow continues to view the entire Kherson region as part of Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

    He added that the Kremlin doesn’t regret holding festivities just over a month ago to celebrate the illegal annexation of Kherson and three other occupied or partially occupied regions of Ukraine. Despite abandoning their positions on the western bank, Russian forces still control about 70% of the Kherson region.

    Shortly before the Russian announcement, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the province as “difficult.” It reported Russian shelling of some of the villages and towns Ukrainian forces reclaimed in recent weeks during their counteroffensive in the Kherson region.

    The General Staff of Ukraine’s army said the Russian forces also left looted homes, damaged power lines and mined roads in their wake. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak predicted Thursday the departing Russians would seek to turn Kherson into a “city of death” and would continue to shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.

    Ukrainian officials were wary of the Russian pullback announced this week, fearing their soldiers could get drawn into an ambush in Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000. Military analysts also had predicted it would take Russia’s military at least a week to complete the troop withdrawal.

    Without referencing events unfolding in Kherson, Zelenskyy said in a video message thanking U.S. military personnel on Veterans Day that that “victory will be ours.”

    “Your example inspires Ukrainians today to fight back against Russian tyranny,” he said. “Special thanks to the many American veterans who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine and to the American people for the amazing support you have given Ukraine. With your help, we have stunned the world and are pushing Russian forces back.”

    However, some quarters of the Ukrainian government barely disguised their glee at the pace of the Russian withdrawal.

    “The Russian army leaves the battlefields in a triathlon mode: steeplechase, broad jumping, swimming,” Andriy Yermak, a senior presidential adviser, tweeted. Social media videos apparently filmed by soldiers on routes toward Kherson showed villagers hugging the Ukrainian troops.

    Recapturing the city could provide Ukraine a strong position from which to expand its southern counteroffensive to other Russian-occupied areas, potentially including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.

    From its forces new positions on the eastern bank, however, the Kremlin could try to escalate the war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

    A Russian S-300 missile strike overnight killed seven people in Mykolaiv, a city about 68 kilometers (42 miles) from Kherson’s regional capital, Zelenskyy’s office said Friday morning. Rescue crews sifted through the rubble of a five-story residential building in search of survivors.

    Standing in front of what used to be his family’s apartment, Roman Mamontov, 16, awaited news about his missing mother.

    Mamontov said he found “nothing there” when he opened an apartment door to look for his mother after the missile struck. Friday was her 34th birthday, the teenager said.

    “My mind was blank at that moment. I thought it could not be true,” he said. “The cake she prepared for the celebration is still there.”

    Zelenskyy called the missile strike “the terrorist state’s cynical response to our successes at the front.”

    “Russia does not give up its despicable tactics. And we will not give up our struggle. The occupiers will be held to account for every crime against Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said.

    The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t acknowledge striking a residential building in Mykolaiv, saying only that an ammunition depot was destroyed “in the area of the city.”

    The president’s office said Russian drones, rockets and heavy artillery strikes across eight regions killed at least 14 civilians between Thursday morning and Friday morning.

    The state of the key Antonivskiy Bridge that links the western and eastern banks of the Dnieper in the Kherson region remained unclear Friday. Russian media reports suggested the bridge was blown up following the Russian withdrawal; pro-Kremlin reporters posted footage of the bridge missing a large section.

    But Sergei Yeliseyev, a Russian-installed official in the Kherson region, told the Interfax news agency that “the Antonivskiy Bridge hasn’t been blown up, it’s in the same condition.”

    Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the retreat from Kherson as a “colossal failure” for Russia and said Russian military commanders should have pulled all their forces out of the city “weeks ago,” to put the Dnieper River between them and Ukraine’s advancing troops.

    Hodges, speaking in a phone interview with The Associated Press, said he expected Ukrainian commanders would work to keep the pressure on Russia’s depleted forces in the weeks ahead, ahead of a possible future push next year for Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014.

    Russia is “going to have a very difficult time over the next several months continuing to hold back a very confident Ukrainian military that has a strong wind in their back” in the wake of the offensive for Kherson, he said.

    ———

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

    ———

    Leicester reported from Kyiv.

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  • Today in History: November 11, World War I armistice signed

    Today in History: November 11, World War I armistice signed

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    Today in History

    Today is Friday, Nov. 11, the 315th day of 2022. There are 50 days left in the year. Today is Veterans Day.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Nov. 11, 1918, fighting in World War I ended as the Allies and Germany signed an armistice in the Forest of Compiegne (kohm-PYEHN’-yeh).

    On this date:

    In 1620, 41 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.”

    In 1831, former slave Nat Turner, who’d led a slave uprising, was executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.

    In 1921, the remains of an unidentified American service member were interred in a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.

    In 1938, Irish-born cook Mary Mallon, who’d gained notoriety as the disease-carrying “Typhoid Mary” blamed for the deaths of three people, died on North Brother Island in New York’s East River at age 69 after 23 years of mandatory quarantine.

    In 1942, during World War II, Germany completed its occupation of France.

    In 1966, Gemini 12 blasted off on a four-day mission with astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard; it was the tenth and final flight of NASA’s Gemini program.

    In 1972, the U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

    In 1987, following the failure of two Supreme Court nominations, President Ronald Reagan announced his choice of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, who went on to win confirmation.

    In 1992, the Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

    In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered warships, planes and troops to the Persian Gulf as he laid out his case for a possible attack on Iraq. Iraq, meanwhile, showed no sign of backing down from its refusal to deal with U.N. weapons inspectors.

    In 2004, Palestinians at home and abroad wept, waved flags and burned tires in an eruption of grief at news of the death of Yasser Arafat in Paris at age 75.

    In 2020, Georgia’s secretary of state announced an audit of presidential election results that he said would be done with a full hand tally of ballots because the margin was so tight; President-elect Joe Biden led President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes out of nearly 5 million votes counted in the state. (The audit would affirm Biden’s win.) Texas became the first state with more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases.

    Ten years ago: President Barack Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery and said the Sept. 11 generation had “written one of the greatest chapters” in the country’s military service, toppling a dictator and battling an insurgency in Iraq, pushing back the Taliban in Afghanistan and decimating al-Qaida’s leadership.

    Five years ago: The annual Pacific Rim summit stuck to its tradition of promoting free trade and closer regional ties, shrugging off the “America First” approach that was brought to the summit by President Donald Trump. After talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the summit, Trump told reporters that Putin had again insisted that Moscow had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections, and Trump said he believed Putin was sincere in making that claim; he accused Democrats of trying to sabotage relations between Washington and Moscow.

    One year ago: Facing a surge in coronavirus infections that threatened to overwhelm Colorado hospitals, Gov. Jared Polis defied federal guidance on COVID-19 booster shots by issuing an order allowing all state residents 18 and older to get them. President Joe Biden saluted the nation’s military veterans as “the spine of America” as he marked his first Veterans Day as president in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. A spokesman for his foundation confirmed that F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid leader, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, had died at 85.

    Today’s Birthdays: Country singer Narvel Felts is 84. Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is 82. Americana roots singer/songwriter Chris Smither is 78. Rock singer-musician Vince Martell (Vanilla Fudge) is 77. The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is 77. Rock singer Jim Peterik (PEE’-ter-ihk) (Ides of March, Survivor) is 72. Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is 71. Pop singer-musician Paul Cowsill (The Cowsills) is 71. Rock singer-musician Andy Partridge (XTC) is 69. Singer Marshall Crenshaw is 69. Rock singer Dave Alvin is 67. Rock musician Ian Craig Marsh (Human League; Heaven 17) is 66. Actor Stanley Tucci is 62. Actor Demi Moore is 60. Actor Calista Flockhart is 58. Actor Frank John Hughes is 55. TV personality Carson Kressley is 53. Actor David DeLuise is 51. Actor Adam Beach is 50. Actor Tyler Christopher is 50. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is 48. Actor Scoot McNairy is 45. Rock musician Jonathan Pretus (formerly with Cowboy Mouth) is 41. Actor Frankie Shaw is 41. Musician Jon Batiste is 36. Actor Christa B. Allen is 31. Actor Tye Sheridan is 26. Actor Ian Patrick is 20.

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  • UN: Taliban has plunged Afghanistan into `dire’ conditions

    UN: Taliban has plunged Afghanistan into `dire’ conditions

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    UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution Thursday accusing the Taliban of violating the human rights of Afghan women and girls, failing to establish a representative government, and plunging the country into “dire economic, humanitarian and social conditions.”

    The resolution also pointed to persistent violence in the country since the Taliban takeover 15 months ago and the presence of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State and their affiliates as well as the presence of “foreign terrorist fighters.”

    Germany’s U.N. ambassador, Antje Leendertse, had hoped the 193-member General Assembly would approve the German-facilitated resolution by consensus.

    But a vote was requested and it was adopted 116-0, with 10 countries abstaining — Russia, China, Belarus, Burundi, North Korea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Sixty-seven countries did not vote.

    General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, unlike Security Council resolutions, but they do reflect world opinion.

    The adoption came the same day that the Taliban, which already banned girls from middle school and high school, prohibited women from using gyms and parks.

    Before the vote, Leendertse told the assembly that since the Taliban came to power in August 2021 Afghanistan has seen “a massive economic contraction and humanitarian crisis” which has left half the population facing “critical levels of food insecurity.”

    “We expect a harsh winter and levels of needs that we have not seen in the last decades with little prospect for economic recovery and reduction of poverty,” she warned.

    Introducing the resolution, Leendertse told the assembly that the Taliban control the country but aren’t living up to their responsibility toward meeting the needs of the Afghan people.

    “The resolution is a clear call to respect, protect and fulfill human rights, develop inclusive governance and fight terrorism,” she said. “It contains a clear message that without that, there cannot be business as usual and no pathway toward recognition.”

    The resolution pledges continued U.N. support for the Afghan people “in order to rebuild a stable, secure and economically self-sufficient state, free of terrorism, narcotics, transnational organized crime, including trafficking in persons, and corruption, and to strengthen the foundations of a constitutional democracy as a responsible member of the international community.”

    It calls for improved access for aid workers and recognizes the need to help address Afghanistan’s economic challenges, including efforts to restore the banking and financial systems and enabling Central Bank assets — held mainly in the United States — to be used to help the Afghan people.

    The resolution expresses deep concern at human rights abuses against women and girls, including sexual violence, and calls on the Taliban to promote “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society.”

    It condemns all attacks, reprisals and violence against journalists and media workers and calls for their perpetrators to be brought to justice.

    The resolution reaffirms the assembly’s expectation that the Taliban will live up to its commitments to allow the safe departure of all Afghans and foreign nationals that want to leave the country.

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  • Russia withdrawing, Ukrainian official fears ‘city of death’

    Russia withdrawing, Ukrainian official fears ‘city of death’

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia said it began withdrawing troops from a strategic Ukrainian city Thursday, creating a potential turning point in the grinding war, while a Ukrainian official warned that Russian land mines could render Kherson a “city of death.”

    Ukrainian officials acknowledged Moscow’s forces had no choice but to flee Kherson, yet they remained cautious, fearing an ambush. With Ukrainian officials tight-lipped with their assessments, reporters not present and spotty communications, it was difficult to know what was happening in the port city, where the residents who remained after tens of thousands fled were afraid to leave their homes.

    A forced pullout from Kherson — the only provincial capital Moscow captured after invading Ukraine in February — would mark one of Russia’s worst war setbacks. Recapturing the city, whose pre-war population was 280,000, could provide Ukraine a launching pad for supplies and troops to try to win back other lost territory in the south, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.

    Ukrainian forces seem to be scoring more battlefield successes elsewhere in the Kherson region and closing in on the city. President Volodymyr Zelenskky said Thursday night the pace has increased so much that residents “are now checking almost every hour where our units have reached and where else our national flag was raised.”

    The armed forces commander-in-chief, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, said Kyiv’s forces have advanced 36.5 kilometers (22.7 miles) and retaken 41 villages and towns since Oct. 1 in the province, which the Kremlin has illegally annexed. That included 12 settlements on Wednesday alone.

    Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Russian troops laid mines throughout Kherson as they withdrew to turn it into a “city of death” and predicted they would shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.

    From these new positions, the Kremlin could try to escalate the 8 1/2-month war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

    Arkadiy Dovzhenko, who fled Kherson in June, said his grandparents still living there told him Thursday that “the Russians were bringing a lot of equipment into the town and also mining every inch of it.”

    Zelenskyy said Thursday night his forces were racing to remove land mines from 170,000 square meters (65,637 square miles) nationwide, and planned also to do so in Kherson. A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military, Natalia Humeniuk, said on Ukrainian television that resistance forces working behind enemy lines “carefully collect information” about critical infrastructure threatened by mines.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered a troop withdrawal from Kherson and nearby areas on Wednesday after his top general in Ukraine reported that a loss of supply routes during Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive made a defense “futile.”

    Shoigu’s ministry reported Thursday a “maneuver of units of the Russian group” to the Dnieper River’s eastern bank, also known as its left bank.

    On Thursday, Ukrainian officials appeared to soften the skepticism they had expressed over whether the Russians were really on the run or trying to trap Ukraine’s soldiers. “The enemy had no other choice but to resort to fleeing,” armed forces chief Zaluzhny said, because Kyiv’s army destroyed supply systems and disrupted Russia’s local military command.

    Still, he said the Ukrainian military could not confirm a Russian withdrawal.

    Alexander Khara, of the Kyiv-based think tank Center for Defense Strategies, echoed those concerns, saying he remained fearful that Russian forces could destroy a dam upriver from Kherson and flood the city’s approaches. The former Ukrainian diplomat also warned of booby traps and other possible dangers.

    “I would be surprised if the Russians had not set up something, some surprises for Ukraine,” Khara said.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, who just over a month ago celebrated the annexation of Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions and vowed to defend them by any means, has not commented on the withdrawal.

    A resident said Kherson was deserted Thursday and that explosions could be heard from ​​​around Antonivskiy Bridge — a key Dnieper River crossing that Ukrainian forces have repeatedly bombarded.

    “Life in the city seems to have stopped. Everyone has disappeared somewhere and no one knows what will happen next,” said Konstantin, a resident whose last name was withheld for security reasons.

    He said Russian flags have disappeared from the city’s administrative buildings, and no signs remain of the Russian military personnel who earlier moved into the apartments of evacuated residents. Russian state news agency Tass reported that emergency services such as police officers and medical workers would leave along with the last Russian troops.

    Halyna Lugova, head of the Ukrainian administration of Kherson city, told Ukrainian television Thursday that the Russian military was moving vehicles towards the Antonivskiy Bridge. Lugova, who is now based in Ukrainian-controlled territory, described conditions in the city as brutal.

    Kherson remains without power, heating and internet service, gas stations in the city are closed, and there is no fuel, she said. The city also has run out of medications for cancer and diabetes patients. Ukrainian news reports said the Russians blew up the local television center, some of the cellphone towers and energy infrastructure.

    Ukrainian officials have been cautious at other times in declaring victories against a Russian force that at least initially outgunned and outnumbered Ukraine’s armed forces.

    Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at international affairs think-tank Chatham House, said the reticence explains “why, until Ukrainians are in the city, they don’t want to declare that they have it (in) control.”

    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was similarly cautious. He spoke to Zelenskyy on Thursday, and his office said they agreed “it was right to continue to exercise caution until the Ukrainian flag was raised over the city.”

    Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday he believed a retreat was underway, but that Russia had amassed as many as 30,000 troops in Kherson and that a full withdrawal could take several weeks.

    One analyst noted that the Ukrainian army has destroyed bridges and roads as part of its counteroffensive, making a quick transfer of Russian troops across the Dnieper River impossible.

    “The main question is whether the Ukrainians will give the Russians the opportunity to calmly withdraw, or fire at them during the crossing to the left bank,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said. “The personnel can be taken out on boats, but the equipment needs to be taken out only on barges and pontoons, and this is very easily shelled by the Ukrainian army.”

    Putin’s allies rushed to defend the retreat as tough, but necessary. However, Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov broke ranks and described the move as “Russia’s biggest geopolitical loss since the collapse of the Soviet Union” and warned that “political consequences of this huge loss will be really big.”

    ———

    Karmanau reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Raf Casert contributed from Brussels. Jill Lawless contributed from London. Andrew Katell contributed from New York.

    ———

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

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