Month: April 2023

NATO allies have delivered almost all promised combat vehicles to Ukraine, including more than 1550 armored vehicles and 230 tanks. Russia has canceled this year’s Russian International Army Games.  The British Defense Ministry said Russia “has likely canceled the games mainly because it is concerned the event would be seen as frivolous in wartime.” Russia launched missile attacks early Friday on cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv, the capital. At least five people were killed in the strikes, a mother and her 3-year-old in Dnipro, plus three people in the central city of Uman, where eight people were wounded. The damage …

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Reports emerged this week that the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group could be supplying weapons to one of the warring parties in the conflict in Sudan. Salem Solomon has the story with Patsy Widakuswara contributing. …

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 A Ukrainian journalist working with an Italian newspaper was shot dead by suspected Russian snipers in southern Ukraine on Wednesday. His Italian colleague was injured, the paper reported. “Our correspondent Corrado Zunino and his fixer Bohdan Bitik were victims of an ambush near the bridge in Kherson by Russian snipers on the outskirts of Kherson, in southern Ukraine,” the daily newspaper La Repubblica reported Wednesday in an article on its website. “Bitik unfortunately did not make it and died; he leaves behind his wife and a son. Corrado, who was wounded in the shoulder, is in the civil hospital in …

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Pakistan said Thursday that it is buying discounted Russian crude oil with the implicit approval of the United States and the first shipment is expected to arrive in the country soon. Masood Khan, the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., made the remarks at a conference in Washington organized by the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute on the future of relations between the two countries. “We have placed the first order for Russian oil, and this has been done in consultation with the United States government. There’s no misunderstanding between Washington and Islamabad on this count,” Khan said. The top diplomat …

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Germany is condemning as “unacceptable” the death sentence handed down in Iran against Jamshid Sharmahd, an Iranian-German dual citizen and opposition figure accused of masterminding a deadly 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz. Sharmahd’s U.S.-based family vehemently denies the charges. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock questioned the proceedings in the case and wrote in a tweet that Sharmahd never had “even the semblance of a fair trial.” She asked Iran to reverse the death sentence immediately. Iran’s Supreme Court this week upheld the death sentence that was issued by a lower court. Baerbock said Germany’s ambassador to Iran had …

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A new poll shows that the war in Ukraine has hurt not only Russian efforts on the front lines but also the country’s reputation worldwide. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Aleksandr Bergan. …

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