Month: March 2022

Thousands of people have been detained at protests in dozens of cities across Russia against President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, the Russian Interior Ministry and an independent protest monitor said on Sunday. The monitor OVD-Info said 3,895 people were detained during protests in 53 cities. It added that police departments may have more detainees than appear on their published lists. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said 1,700 people were detained in Moscow and 750 were detained in St. Petersburg. The people arrested in Moscow were among around 2,500 people who took part in an “unauthorized rally,” Volk said, …

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A day after many of them spoke with Ukraine’s president, U.S. lawmakers are pledging to provide additional military aid to Kyiv as the government there continues to fight for its survival amid the invasion by Russia. Congress will soon approve emergency funding, putting “$10 billion into both defensive equipment for Ukraine, but also humanitarian assistance to get civilians out,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, on “Fox News Sunday.” Despite generally bipartisan and robust support for Kyiv, members of the U.S. Congress are drawing the line at another Ukrainian request: a no-fly zone for the country’s airspace to deter Russian …

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Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita urged the United States on Sunday to provide more humanitarian support as the number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine to the small European country hit 120,000. At the beginning of a meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, she said her country of 2.6 million, one of Europe’s poorest, was straining under the weight of those fleeing Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. “As of this morning, we had more than 230,000 people who have crossed the border from Ukraine, and 120,000 stayed in Moldova. 96,000 of them are Ukrainian citizens. For …

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Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi dismissed suggestions his country’s “neutral” stance in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is straining Islamabad’s relationship with the United States or the West at large, in an interview Sunday with VOA. The South Asian nuclear-armed Muslim country has resisted Western pressure to condemn Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, instead advocating dialogue and diplomacy to end the crisis. Pakistan has argued that it needs to step back from global bloc politics to improve ties with all countries, including Russia, and to tackle its own domestic economic challenges. “We do not want to be part of any …

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When Russia invaded her home country of Ukraine, Maria decided she had to get there and help defend it — even if it meant leaving her fiancé behind in Chicago days after getting married. Maria and her fiancé, David, married Saturday before about 20 people in the backyard of an Oak Park home — the venue offered last minute after Maria asked for advice in a neighborhood Facebook group. The couple met last year and got engaged in October. On Monday, she plans to fly to Poland, then make her way to the Ukrainian border, ultimately aiming to volunteer to …

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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine    …

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Iran has agreed to supply answers long sought by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Tehran and the U.N. agency said Saturday, as talks in Vienna over its tattered atomic deal with world powers appear to be coming to an end. A joint statement by Mohammad Eslami, the head of the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy, came hours after the two met in Tehran. It envisions the issue of the discovery of uranium particles at former undeclared sites in the country being wrapped up by June — a move that is …

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