Month: May 2022

Dozens of Ukrainians were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb leveled a school sheltering about 90 people in eastern Ukraine. The governor of the disputed Luhansk province where intense fighting has raged for weeks between Russian and Ukrainian forces said 30 people were rescued at the site in Bilohorivka but that the others in the school probably did not survive. “Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. He said Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of …

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting virtually Sunday with the Group of 7 leaders, who head the world’s largest economies. The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and the United States are meeting with the Ukrainian leader to show their support for Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion that began in February. The G-7 has pledged billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Sunday’s meeting is a day ahead of Russia’s annual Victory Day celebration, commemorating the 77th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. The holiday is celebrated across Russia with military parades. …

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Red Soviet flags and orange-and-black striped military ribbons are on display in Russian cities and towns. Neighborhoods are staging holiday concerts. Flowers are being laid by veterans’ groups at monuments to the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in the country. At first glance, preparations for Monday’s celebration of Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, seem to be the same as ever. But the mood this year is very different, because Russian troops are fighting and dying again. And this battle, now in its 11th week, is going on in neighboring Ukraine, against …

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Food prices around the world have soared to record levels this year as the Russia-Ukraine war slashes key exports of wheat and fertilizer from those countries, at the same time as droughts, floods and heat fueled by climate change claim more harvests. Wheat prices hit a 14-year peak in March, and maize prices reached the highest ever recorded, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) said in a report released on Friday. That has made basic staples more expensive – or harder to find – for families in many countries, especially the poorest. Climate change, widespread poverty …

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A deadly fire at an aerospace research institute in Tver, northwest of Moscow. Another blaze at a munitions factory in Perm, more than 1,100 kilometers to the east. And fires in two separate oil depots in Bryansk, near Belarus. Coincidences, or a sign that Ukrainians or their supporters are mounting a campaign of sabotage inside Russia to punish Moscow for invading their country? Since the blaze at the Central Research Institute of the Aerospace Defense Forces in Tver on April 21, which killed at least 17 people, social media has leapt on every report of a fire somewhere in Russia …

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Ukrainians are finding different ways to leave the areas under heavy fire along the southern front line of the Russian-Ukrainian war. …

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Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, hailed its first election win in Northern Ireland’s history as a “defining moment” for the British-controlled region and called for a debate on the creation of a united Ireland. Sinn Fein secured 29% of first-preference votes for the regional parliament, way ahead of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party’s 21.3%, official results showed. While the final seat count has not been declared, analysts said no one could catch Sinn Fein. “Today represents a very significant moment of change. It’s a defining moment in our politics and for our people,” the head of …

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The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says global food prices stabilized last month at a very high level but were slightly lower than in March, which saw the highest ever jump in food prices. FAO officials see little prospect of a significant decrease in the price of food as long as the Russian-Ukrainian war goes on. Both countries combined account for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports and up to 80% of sunflower seed oil shipments. The FAO’s deputy director in the markets and trade division, Josef Schmidhuber, said disruption in the export of those …

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