Month: August 2023

Several explosions were heard across Kyiv early Friday. Earlier, Mayor Vitali Klitschko had urged residents to go to air raid shelters and Ukrainian officials had issued a nationwide air raid alert. Ukraine shot down a missile near a children’s hospital in the city Friday. Debris from the missile fell near the hospital in Kyiv, but there were no reported injuries. Meanwhile, the airspace over two Russian airports – Vnukovo and Kalugo – was temporarily closed Friday due to drone flights. The airports have since reopened. In its daily intelligence report Friday about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry …

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China, Iran and Russia are engaged in foreign interference in New Zealand, the nation’s domestic intelligence agency said Friday after making its threat assessment report public for the first time. In the report, Director-General of Security Andrew Hampton said the Security Intelligence Service sees enormous value in sharing more of its insights publicly. The agency had previously taken a secretive approach. It decided to change course after it and other agencies were criticized for focusing too much on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism and being blindsided when a white supremacist shot and killed 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques …

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The U.S. and its European allies are importing vast amounts of nuclear fuel and compounds from Russia, providing Moscow with hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed revenue as it wages war on Ukraine. The sales, which are legal and unsanctioned, have raised alarms from nonproliferation experts and elected officials who say the imports are helping to bankroll the development of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal and are complicating efforts to curtail Russia’s war-making abilities. The dependence on Russian nuclear products — used mostly to fuel civilian reactors — leaves the U.S. and its allies open to energy shortages if Russian …

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The Biden administration on Thursday asked Congress to provide more than $13 billion in emergency defense aid to Ukraine and an additional $8 billion for humanitarian support through the end of the year, another massive infusion of cash as the Russian invasion wears on and Ukraine pushes a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s deeply entrenched forces. The request also includes $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home after a deadly climate season of heat and storms, and funds to bolster enforcement at the border with Mexico, including money to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl. All told, it’s …

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They are talented, smart, and ambitious, and live in the middle of a war. But 84 Ukrainian high school students aren’t letting the war short circuit their dreams and are preparing to apply to top U.S. colleges and boarding schools with the help of a non-profit group. VOA’s Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw. …

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China’s “friendship without limits” with Russia may be tested in Africa, where Beijing’s long-established economic interests are at risk of clashing with the growing footprint of Moscow’s paramilitary Wagner Group. The most recent point of potential friction is Niger, where leaders of a July 26 military coup are reported by The Associated Press to have reached out to Wagner for help in cementing their hold on power. That news is unlikely to have been welcomed in Beijing, where a foreign ministry spokesman last week described the deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, as “a friend of China” and said the country hoped …

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