Category: Євросоюз

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of engaging in “deliberate terror” with mortar and artillery strikes on residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, while Ukrainian forces in the southern city of Mariupol defied a Russian deadline to lay down their arms.  Zelenskyy, in a video address late Sunday, said he expects Russia to launch an offensive in the eastern Donbas region “in the near future.”  Russia’s withdrawal of its forces from areas around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other parts of the north in recent weeks prompted assessments from Western military officials that Russia was reinforcing and redeploying those assets to eastern …

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On a quiet street lined with walnut trees was a cemetery with four bodies that hadn’t yet found a home. All were victims of Russian soldiers in this village outside Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Their temporary caskets were together in a grave. Volunteers dug them up one by one Sunday — two weeks after the soldiers disappeared. This spring is a grim season of planting and replanting in towns and villages around Kyiv. Bodies given hurried graves amid the Russian occupation are now being retrieved for investigations into possible war crimes. More than 900 civilian victims have been found so far. …

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Manning checkpoints and patrolling towns and cities: the reservists of Ukraine’s territorial defense force are the last line standing between ordinary civilians and Russian troops. Standing 2.07 meters (6 feet, 9.5 inches) and dressed in camouflage fatigues that reveal only his eyes under a hood, “Buffalo” quit his job in construction and signed up for the force when the Russians invaded. A cheerful young man in his 20s, he is one of the hundreds of thousands to answer President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for reservists. He was posted to Svyatohirsk, a village about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Kramatorsk, the …

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The party of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon gave no voting instructions for the French presidential runoff after its internal consultations showed most people would abstain or vote blank on April 24, adding to the uncertainty over the outcome. President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are looking to attract voters who chose Melenchon, after he came in third in the first round April 10 with about 22% of the vote. With the electorate fragmented and undecided, the election will likely be won by the candidate who can reach beyond his or her camp to convince voters that …

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Unrest broke out in southern Sweden late Saturday despite police moving a rally by an anti-Islam far-right group, which was planning to burn a Quran among other things, to a new location as a preventive measure. Scuffles and unrest were reported in the southern town of Landskrona after a demonstration scheduled there by the Danish right-wing Stram Kurs party was moved to the nearby city of Malmo, some 45 kilometers (27 miles) south. Up to 100 mostly young people threw stones, set cars, tires and dustbins on fire, and put up a barrier fence that obstructed traffic, Swedish police said. …

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned a British plan to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the East African country of Rwanda, saying the policy did not stand “the judgment of God.” Delivering a sermon on Easter Sunday at Canterbury Cathedral, Justin Welby said the strategy announced last week by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posed “serious ethical questions.” Anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since Jan. 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under the deal. Johnson’s government said it would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, but it drew …

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Ukraine’s prime minister said Sunday that the strategic port city of Mariupol remains under Ukrainian control. “The city still has not fallen,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told ABC’s “This Week,” hours after the expiration of a Russian deadline for holdout Ukrainian fighters in the besieged port city to surrender their weapons. “There’s still our military forces, our soldiers. So, they will fight to the end,” he said. Asked about reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes Moscow is winning the war, Shmyhal noted that while several cities are under siege, only Kherson in the south has fallen under Russian control. …

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On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus, the victor over sin, fear and death, called on the world not to surrender to evil and violence. He made an impassioned plea for an end to the war in Ukraine and urged the faithful to appeal for peace and the end to cruelty and senseless destruction. For the crowds this Easter was a true resurrection after two years of pandemic that brought Holy Week events to a standstill. Pope Francis made a strong plea for peace in what he called this “Easter of war.” Tens of thousands turned out in a sunny …

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Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war” in an Easter vigil homily in St. Peter’s Basilica attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three Ukrainian lawmakers. The pontiff noted that while “many writers have evoked the beautify of starlit nights, the nights of war, however, are riven by streams of light that portend death.” Francis did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but he has called for an Easter truce in order to reach a negotiated peace. That call appeared in vain Saturday, …

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The Russian defense ministry on Saturday announced it had cleared the entire urban area of Mariupol of Ukrainian forces and said only a few fighters remained in the Azovstal steelworks, the scene of repeated clashes. In an online post, the ministry said that as of April 16, Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city had lost more than 4,000 people, RIA, the state-owned news agency added. Russian forces have been trying for several weeks to take the port, which is on the Sea of Azov, a body of water to the northeast of the Black Sea. “The entire urban area …

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Russia’s foreign ministry said Saturday it had barred entry to the country for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and 10 other British government members and politicians. The move was taken “in view of the unprecedented hostile action by the British Government, in particular the imposition of sanctions against senior Russian officials,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it would expand the list soon. The Kremlin has described Johnson, who has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers, as “the most active participant in the race to be anti-Russian.” A week ago, …

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Russia’s warplanes bombed Lviv and its missiles struck Kyiv as Moscow followed through on a threat to launch more long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities after the sinking of its Black Sea Fleet flagship. Fighting * Russia destroyed production buildings of an armored vehicle plant in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and a military repair facility in the city of Mykolaiv, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s defense ministry as saying. * Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN on Friday that between 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died so far in the war and another 10,000 have been injured. Diplomacy …

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Russia’s warplanes bombed Lviv and its missiles struck Kyiv on Saturday, as Moscow followed through on a threat to launch more long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities after its Black Sea Fleet’s flagship was sunk. In besieged Mariupol, scene of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, Russian troops pressed recent advances, hoping to make up for their failure to capture Kyiv by finally seizing their first big prize of the war. Moscow said its planes had struck a tank repair factory in the capital, where an explosion was heard and smoke was seen in the southeastern Darnytskyi district. Its …

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The free flow of information about Russia’s war on Ukraine was a focus of this year’s TED – Technology, Environment and Design – conference in Vancouver, Canada. It was the first such gathering of esteemed speakers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and architect Alison Killing was among the eclectic group of speakers opening the conference. She won the journalism award for using satellite imagery and open-source information to help uncover detention and forced labor camps in China’s Xinjiang region. Killing spoke days after reports emerged of satellite imagery showing possible war crimes being committed by …

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A Frenchman and a Moroccan received heavy prison terms on appeal Friday for an attack plot that was foiled after an intelligence agent posing as a jihadi infiltrated their cyber network. Yassine Bousseria, 42, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for participation in a terrorist conspiracy to prepare terrorist acts, the same term he had been handed by a lower court in February. The other man, Hicham El-Hanafi, 31, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, also in line with the lower court ruling. A third person convicted in the case, Frenchman Hicham Makran, was sentenced to 22 years …

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The only surviving member of the Islamic State attack team that terrorized Paris in 2015 asked Friday for forgiveness and expressed condolences for the victims, wiping away tears during court testimony as he pleaded with survivors to “detest me with moderation.” For years, Salah Abdeslam was silent about what happened November 13, 2015, in the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and the national stadium, and the 130 people who were killed. After his trial opened last year, he had a few outbursts of extremist bravado, but for months he refused to answer most questions. Then this week, his words started flowing, …

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It is more than 10,000 kilometers from Medyka, the Polish border city that is a first stop for many Ukrainian refugees, to Tijuana, Mexico, where more than 1,700 Ukrainians are waiting for a chance to cross into the United States. “They’re arriving as tourists,” says Enrique Lucero Vásquez, the municipal director of migrant care in Tijuana, with whom I spoke in a sports complex that has been repurposed to receive the Ukrainian families. About 400 people are already housed at the center, where they spend one to two nights before being escorted to the border crossing and admitted by the …

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A criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website had published content critical of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, Russian media reported on Thursday. Mikhail Afanasyev, chief editor of Novy Fokus in the Russian region of Khakassia, was arrested by security forces Wednesday over the website’s reporting on 11 riot police who allegedly refused deployment to Ukraine as part of Russia’s military action there. Afanasyev was accused Thursday of disseminating “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offense which carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence under a law passed last month. Afanasyev has published …

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The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has sunk after what Kyiv said was a Ukrainian missile strike, dealing one of the heaviest blows yet to Moscow’s war effort and providing a stunning symbol of Kyiv’s resistance against a better-armed foe. Kyiv says it hit the cruiser Moskva with missiles fired from the coast. Russia did not confirm the attack but said the ship sank while being towed in stormy seas after a fire caused by an explosion of ammunition. Moscow said more than 500 sailors had been evacuated. There was no independent confirmation of the fate of the crew. …

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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch. Impacts of Ukraine war reverberate globally U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the developing world is facing a “perfect storm” threatening to devastate many of its economies. He said 1.7 billion people could be affected by disruptions in food, energy and finance systems. UN Chief: Ukraine War Fallout Threatens Economic Crisis in Developing World   Sexual violence, trafficking growing in Ukrainian conflict The United Nations said Monday …

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