Environmental group Extinction Rebellion said Sunday it would no longer stage its infamous blockades of U.K. transport networks and will instead hold a major demonstration against government policy in April.

The activist network, formed in the U.K. in 2018, has regularly used civil disobedience to protest what it calls government inaction on climate change.

Activists gained notoriety for blockading train lines, airports and roads, causing chaos for commuters. At the end of August, they blockaded London’s iconic Tower Bridge.

“As we ring in the new year, we make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic,” the group said in a statement. 

“This year, we prioritize attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore,” it added.

While recognizing “the power of disruption to raise the alarm,” the activists said the group would now focus on disrupting “the abuse of power and imbalance” by demanding politicians end fossil-fuel use. 

It is calling for 100,000 people to demonstrate outside the U.K. parliament in London April 21.

The group’s actions have infuriated large sections of the public, the Conservative government and much of the media. 

Many activists have been arrested, and the government is pursuing plans to further outlaw its protest tactics.

But in its latest statement, the group argued: “The latest draconian attempt by the government to shut down and criminalize effective protest is only increasing public sympathy toward brave activists using their voices to stand up for justice and the loving protection of all humanity.”

Extinction Rebellion has been overtaken by even more radical groups such as Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, whose activists sprayed soup on Van Gogh’s masterpiece “The Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London in October.
…

There was no tolling of the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica, no solemn announcement by a Vatican monsignor to the faithful in the square. A fisherman’s ring did not get smashed and the diplomatic corps were not mobilized to send official delegations to Rome.

The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed in an entirely un-papal-like manner Saturday, with a two-sentence announcement from the Vatican press office, making clear once and for all that Benedict stopped being pope a decade ago. The rituals of his passing were less like the ones of a pontiff, monarch or Vicar of Christ on Earth and more akin to those of a retired bishop, even if he will be buried in the red vestments of a pope.

In a way it was fitting, and drove home that the new chapter in the history of the Catholic Church that Benedict began writing in 2013 when he became the first pope in 600 years to resign had ended, and that it’s now up to Pope Francis to follow up with how future popes might retire.

Will Francis issue new protocols to regulate the office of a retired pope, after Benedict largely winged it on the fly? Will he feel freer to consider his own retirement, now that the main impediment to resignation — having two emeritus popes at the same time — has been removed? How does a reigning pope celebrate the funeral of a retired one?

“I think that his death will open problems, not close problems,” said Massimo Franco, the author of “The Monastery,” a book about Benedict’s revolutionary retirement.

According to preliminary information released by the Vatican, Benedict’s funeral Thursday in St. Peter’s Square seems designed to be low-key, in keeping with his wishes for “simplicity” but also making clear that his status as an emeritus does not merit a pomp-filled papal send-off.

When John Paul II died in 2005, presidents, prime ministers and kings from more than 100 countries attended the funeral presided over by none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Benedict XVI after his election as pope 10 days later.

For Benedict’s funeral, the Vatican only invited Italy and Germany to send official delegations and advised foreign embassies that any other leaders who wished to attend could do so but only in their “private capacity.”

Benedict’s body will lie in state in St. Peter’s Basilica starting Monday, but the three-day window for the faithful to pay their respects suggests a limited outpouring is expected. After John Paul’s death, an estimated 2 million people lined up for four days and nights to say a final farewell, with some camping out on the cobblestones.

Italian security officials estimate some 60,000 people could attend the funeral, a fraction of the 300,000 who packed the piazza and surrounding streets in 2005.

Francis, for his part, offered a first word of tribute Saturday during his New Year’s Eve homily, after having paid his respects Saturday morning immediately after Benedict died with a visit to the converted monastery where his predecessor lived. Francis praised Benedict’s nobility and faithful prayers in his final years, but otherwise stuck to a previously prepared homily about the need for kindness and dialogue in today’s world.

Francis will have the final word Thursday, when he eulogizes Benedict, whom he has praised for his courage in “opening the door” to letting other popes retire.

But Francis himself has said protocols are needed to guide future papal retirements, saying the situation had worked out well enough in Benedict’s case because he was “saintly and discreet.” The death of Benedict now removes the key obstacle to any new law or procedures that could never be promulgated while he was still alive.

While a future pope could change any decree Francis issues, canonists, cardinals and even rank-and-file Catholics have argued new norms are needed because Benedict’s decisions in retirement impacted his successor from the very start.

From the title he chose (pope emeritus) to the cassock he wore (white) to the occasional public comments he made (on sex abuse and priestly celibacy), even Benedict’s supporters felt his choices left too much doubt about who was really in charge, especially for those Catholics nostalgic for his doctrinaire papacy.

Throughout Benedict’s 10-year retirement, many traditionalists continued to consider Benedict a point of reference, and some even refused to respect the legitimacy of Francis as pope.

“I am convinced that the most appropriate ways will be found so as not to engender confusion in the people of God, even though this doesn’t seem to me to be the right time for proclamations and clarifications,” Geraldina Boni, a professor of canon law at the University of Bologna, said.

Thanks to Benedict’s “meekness and discretion,” and Francis’ “strong and affable temperament,” any possible rivalry was avoided, she said. But that may not be the case in the future.

The work to clarify how things would work the next time there is both a sitting and a retired pope has already started. A team of canon lawyers launched a crowdsourcing initiative in 2021 to craft a new church law to govern how a retired pope lives out his final years.

The project, explained at progettocanonicosederomana.com, includes proposals on everything from his title to his dress, pension and activities to make sure they “don’t interfere directly or indirectly” with his successor’s governance.

According to the draft proposals, which were the subject of an academic conference in October, a future retired pope should be referred to as the “bishop emeritus of Rome” not a “pope emeritus.” While he could still wear the white cassock of the papacy, his fisherman’s ring must be destroyed, as Benedict’s was in 2013, and his insignia must remove “all symbols of his Petrine jurisdiction.”

He should promote the unity of the church but cannot participate in any meetings of bishops or cardinals and should consult the reigning pope before publishing anything on the doctrine and life of the church, social questions “or anything that can be considered as competing opinions with the pontifical magisterium.”

“There was a time when we were accused of having imprudently chosen a theme that was too controversial,” given Benedict was still alive, said Boni, who spearheaded the initiative. “On the contrary, the need for norms covering a pope who resigned has been affirmed repeatedly by high-level church figures.”

While it’s unclear if the proposals will be taken up by the Vatican, Francis regardless will find it easier to resign himself and to regulate the process for future popes since Benedict took the first step.

“We have to get used to the idea that popes will live long lives and that, in the end just like my grandfather or your grandfather and everyone’s grandfathers, they can’t continue,” Luis Badilla, who runs the popular Vatican blog Il Sismografo, said. “But they are still part of the family, and this is something beautiful. It gives us a normal church, not a Martian or other-worldly one.”
…

Russia launched new airstrikes across Ukraine on New Year’s Day, but Ukrainians cheered from their balconies in Kyiv as their forces shot down dozens of incoming Russian missiles and drones as the clock ticked into 2023.

Ukraine’s Air Force command said it had destroyed 45 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight, 13 late Saturday and another 32 in the first hours of the new year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed a renewed fight against Ukraine in a war that is now in its 11th month, with 31 missile attacks and 12 airstrikes across the country at the year’s end.

As sirens blared in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, some people shouted from their balconies, “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!”

In a New Year’s Eve address, a stern-faced Putin told a group of military officials in Moscow, “The main thing is the fate of Russia. Defense of the fatherland is our sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants. Moral, historical righteousness is on our side.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered his own address in near darkness, in front of a fluttering Ukrainian flag. He cast the past year as a time of Ukrainian resolve.

“We were told: you have no other option but to surrender,” Zelenskyy said. “We say: We have no other option than to win. This year has struck our hearts. We’ve cried out all the tears. We’ve shouted all the prayers.

“We fight and will continue to fight,” he declared. “For the sake of the key word: ‘victory.’”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said there was minimal damage from the latest attack on the capital, and no one was wounded or killed. One person was killed and another 20 injured in the Saturday attacks on residential buildings and a hotel.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said on Twitter: “Russia coldly and cowardly attacked Ukraine in the early hours of the new year. But Putin still does not seem to understand that Ukrainians are made of iron.”

For weeks now, Russia has focused its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, trying to destroy the country’s power grid and water supplies, inflicting pain on Ukrainians in the winter months. Russia has claimed to illegally annex about a fifth of Ukrainian territory but retreated from more regions it first captured during the fighting after Ukraine’s forces fought back with the assistance of Western-supplied weaponry, munitions and air defense systems.

The fighting for weeks has been centered in eastern Ukraine with something of a stalemate and seemingly no immediate chance for peace talks.

Western leaders have vowed to continue their support for Ukraine in the new year, with U.S. President Joe Biden recently welcoming Zelenskyy to Washington and the Ukrainian leader making an address before cheering lawmakers in Congress.

In a New Year’s Eve address, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “In the year that is starting, we will stand by you without fail.”

Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

More than 45,000 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK from mainland Europe in 2022, surpassing the previous year’s record by more than 17,000, according to government figures released Sunday.

The issue has become a huge political problem for the Conservative government, which has promised to bring down illegal immigration and break the smuggling gangs that carry out the crossings.

In total, 45,756 people made the dangerous small-boat crossing of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes last year, compared with 28,526 in 2021.

Four people died last month when a small boat packed with migrants capsized in freezing temperatures in the Channel.

A fishing boat in the area plucked 43 people from the frigid waters.

That incident occurred just over a year after at least 27 people drowned when their dinghy capsized, a disaster that sparked soul-searching on both sides of the Channel.

2022 also saw the highest ever single-day total of migrants making the crossing, with 1,295 making the journey on August 22.

 
…

Pope Francis marked the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional World Day of Peace on Sunday but the start of the new year at the Vatican was overshadowed by the death of his predecessor, Benedict.

Francis presided at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica as the body of Benedict, who died on Saturday at the age of 95, was being prepared for three day of public viewing in the same church starting Monday.

In accordance with Benedict’s wishes, his funeral on Thursday will be simple, solemn and sober. It will be the first time in many centuries that a sitting pope will preside at the funeral of his predecessor. Benedict, who stepped down in 2013, had been the first pontiff in 600 years to resign.

Jan. 1 is also the feast of the Mother of God and in his homily, Francis asked the Madonna to accompany “our beloved” Pope Emeritus Benedict “on his passage from this world to God.”

Benedict was also remembered in one of the prayers at the Mass.

Francis also appealed for peace, alluding to war-torn countries, including Ukraine, where Russia continued intense attacks on New Year’s Day.

“Let us pray to our Mother in a special way for her sons and daughters who are suffering and no longer have the strength to pray, and for our many brothers and sisters throughout the world who are victims of war, passing these holidays in darkness and cold, in poverty and fear, immersed in violence and indifference,” he said.

Francis urged his listeners to work actively for peace, and not “waste time glued to a keyboard in front of a computer screen” but to “dirty our hands and to do some good.”

On Saturday night the Vatican released Benedict’s two-page “spiritual testimony” written in 2006, a year after his election as pope. There was no explanation why Benedict did not update it as he became older and more frail.

In it, he asked in a general, spiritual way, that God would welcome him to internal life “despite all my sins and insufficiencies.”

Francis on Saturday called Benedict a noble, kind man who was a gift to the Church and the world.

While tributes to the former pope continued to be made by world leaders, and conservative members of the faithful, others were highly critical of his pontificate.

Some recalled the severe discipline he meted out to progressive theologians, particularly in Latin America, when he was head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department under Pope John Paul II. Those actions prompted liberal Catholics to dub then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger “God’s Rottweiler.”

And while some have credited Benedict with taking important steps to formalize the Vatican’s response to clergy sexual abuse, victims groups accused him of protecting the institution at all costs.

“In our view, the death of Pope Benedict XVI is a reminder that, much like John Paul II, Benedict was more concerned about the Church’s deteriorating image and financial flow to the hierarchy versus grasping the concept of true apologies followed by true amends to victims of abuse,” the anti-abuse group SNAP said.

Like many Vatican officials who worked with Benedict, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet said he believed the German pontiff had left behind “a great legacy” as a man of God and a man of culture.

“I believe this is also a task for the future, to deeply rethink the Christian faith in the face of the challenges of our time,” Ouellet told Reuters Television.
…

Analysts who study democratic and authoritarian regimes are taking special note of recent protest movements in Iran, China and Russia. They caution that the authoritarian regimes in these three countries are strong, and a certain set of circumstances must line up for dictators to fall. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.
…

Croatia on Sunday switched to the euro and entered Europe’s passport-free zone — two major milestones for the country after joining the EU nearly a decade ago.

At midnight local time (2300 GMT Saturday) the Balkan nation bid farewell to its kuna currency and became the 20th member of the eurozone.

It is the 27th nation in the passport-free Schengen zone, the world’s largest, which enables more than 400 million people to move freely around its members.

Experts say the adoption of the euro will help shield Croatia’s economy at a time when inflation is soaring worldwide after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent food and fuel prices through the roof.

But feelings among Croatians are mixed. While they welcome the end of border controls, some worry about the euro switch, with right-wing opposition groups saying it only benefits large countries such as Germany and France.

Many Croatians fear that the introduction of the euro will lead to a hike in prices, in particular that businesses will round up price points when they convert.

‘Elite club’

For tourist agency employee Marko Pavic, “Croatia joins an elite club.”

“The euro was already a value measure — psychologically it’s nothing new — while entry into Schengen is fantastic news for tourism,” he told AFP.

Use of the euro is already widespread in Croatia.

Croatians have long valued their most precious assets such as cars and apartments in euros, displaying a lack of confidence in the local currency.

About 80% of bank deposits are denominated in euros, and Zagreb’s main trading partners are in the eurozone.

Officials have defended the decision to join the eurozone and Schengen, with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic saying Wednesday that they were “two strategic goals of a deeper EU integration.”

Croatia, a former Yugoslav republic of 3.9 million people that fought a war of independence in the 1990s, joined the European Union in 2013.

“The euro certainly brings (economic) stability and safety,” Ana Sabic of the Croatian National Bank (HNB) told AFP.

Experts say the adoption of the euro will lower borrowing conditions amid economic hardship.

Croatia’s inflation rate reached 13.5% in November compared to 10% in the eurozone.

Analysts stress that eastern EU members with currencies outside of the eurozone, such as Poland or Hungary, have been even more vulnerable to surging inflation.

Borders gone

As some Croatians lamented the demise of the national currency, HNB governor Boris Vujcic said while it was a sentimental moment for him, it was the “only reasonable politics.”

The kuna was adopted in 1994, during the independence war. 

Kuna means marten, a weasellike carnivore whose fur was used as currency in the Middle Ages.

Early Sunday, Vujcic will symbolically withdraw euros from a cash machine in downtown Zagreb.

Interior and foreign ministers will attend brief ceremonies at border crossings with Croatia’s EU peers Slovenia and Hungary respectively while the bloc’s chief Ursula von der Leyen is to visit the country later Sunday.

Local papers hailed the two events on Saturday, with the best-selling Vecernji List daily labelling them the “crown of (Zagreb’s) EU membership.”

Croatia’s entry into the Schengen borderless area will also provide a boost to the Adriatic nation’s key tourism industry, which accounts for 20% of its GDP.

Previously long queues at the 73 land border crossings with Slovenia and Hungary will become history.

Border checks will end on March 26 at airports because of technical issues.

Croatia will still apply strict border checks on its eastern border with non-EU neighbors Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. 
…

Mourners lined up quietly in the gold-adorned Collegiate Church of Altoetting in Pope Benedict XVI’s Bavarian homeland to pay condolences to one of this German region’s most famous sons, who died Saturday.

Parents held their children’s hands tightly, older couples and nuns looked on in sorrow as they waited for their turn to write down their thoughts in a book of condolences, which was laid out next to a black-framed picture of the smiling pope in front of the altar.

The emeritus pope died after a long illness at age 95 in Rome, but many Catholic Bavarians have always felt especially close to him because of their shared ancestry, dubbing him the “Bavarian Pope.”

Believers from across the southern German state headed to the Catholic pilgrimage town of Altoetting to share their grief. The town is famous for its statue of the Virgin Mary, who is said to have miraculous healing powers. Benedict — who was born in the nearby village of Marktl — came here many times, even as a child with his parents, to pray to the “black Madonna,” as locals call her affectionately.

“It’s a pity the pope died,” said Roslyn Scott, a Nigerian who lives in the Bavarian capital of Munich and had come to pray to the Virgin Mary statue in Altoetting when she heard the news of Benedict’s death. “He was just a quiet pope who was most loved by the Bavarian people.”

That love was returned.

In his “spiritual will,” released by the Vatican on Saturday, Benedict also wrote of his love for Bavaria, saying that he “would like to thank the Lord for the beautiful homeland in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps, in which I have seen again and again the splendor of the of the Creator Himself shining through.”

While many Bavarians expressed sadness at the loss, the mayor of Altoetting noted that Benedict “had been preparing for a long time to meet the eternal judge.”

“He has always expressed that and I think he is very calm and very serene about this encounter,” said Stephan Antwerpen.

When the church bells rang loudly in the afternoon, and dusk settled across the town square, people started filling the church pews for a requiem service held by the pastor, Klaus Metzl.

As the priest walked through the aisle, the organ roared, the altar boys and girls waved incense, and the faithful rose and sang.

“Man thinks, the Lord directs,” Metzl said to the crowd inside the church. “Who would have thought this morning that we would gather here later in front of the pope’s photo to commemorate him.”

“Death is the fulfillment of life,” the priest preached. “We all have one goal: heaven.”

Bavaria is considered one of the most Catholic and conservative regions in Germany, so elsewhere in the southern state, clergy were also preparing to pay their last respects to Benedict.

The diocese of Regensburg, where Benedict taught theology at a university in the 1960s and 1970s, ordered that the bells of all the churches will be rung for 15 minutes at noon Sunday.

The state government in Bavaria ordered flags on regional government buildings to be flown at half-staff Saturday and on the day of Benedict’s funeral.

“Benedict spent his life wanting to find the mystery of God and help others find it,” Metzl told The Associated Press.

“I am sure that he has found it now,” Metzl added. “And the mother of God, whom he so loved dearly, will now show him the way.”
…

In a video address on New Year’s Eve, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned Russia’s missile barrage in Ukraine. 

“Today, this Russian missile attack is not the end of the year, no matter how much the terrorists want it. It’s the outcome of Russia’s fate,” he said. 

Reacting to the Russian air assault on Ukraine skies nationwide Saturday, Zelenskyy said, “The terrorist state will not be forgiven. And those who give orders for such strikes, and those who carry them out, will not receive a pardon. To put it mildly.” 

On Saturday morning, Russian missiles pummeled Ukraine. One person was killed and at least 30 were wounded across the country. Eight massive explosions rocked the capital, Kyiv, and other areas.  

“At Easter, they made such attacks, at Christmas, at New Year … They call themselves Christians, they are very proud of their Orthodoxy. But they are following the devil. They support him and are together with him,” Zelenskyy said. 

He then addressed the Russian people: “Your leader wants to show that he has the troops behind him and that he is ahead. But he is just hiding. He hides behind the troops, behind missiles, behind the walls of his residences and palaces,” he said. 

“He hides behind you and burns your country and your future. No one will ever forgive you for terror. No one in the world will forgive you for this. Ukraine will never forgive,” he continued. 

Putin’s New Year’s address 

Earlier Saturday, in his own a video message broadcast on Russian state TV, Putin said Russia was fighting in Ukraine to protect its “motherland” and to secure “true independence” for its people.   

He accused the West of lying to Russia and of provoking Moscow to launch what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.   

“The West lied about peace,” Putin said. “It was preparing for aggression … and now they are cynically using Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia. We have never allowed this and will never allow anybody to do this to us,” Russian state-run news agencies quoted Putin as saying in a speech broadcast at midnight in Russia’s Far East.   

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu vowed victory in Ukraine was “inevitable” as he praised the heroism of Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines and those who had died during the 10-month war.   

However, a rift appears to be growing between the notorious Russian mercenary company, the Wagner Group, and the Russian military. As the front-line Donbas city of Bakhmut has become the site of some of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin took aim at Russia’s military leadership and the stalling war effort, chiding officials about the lack of ammunition in their battles against Ukrainian forces. 

“When you’re sitting in a warm office, it’s hard to hear about the problems on the front line, but when you’re dragging the dead bodies of your friends every day and seeing them for the last time — then supplies are very much needed,” he said in a video.  

New Year’s Eve toll 

Earlier Saturday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that during the missile strikes, one person was killed in the western Solomianskyi district of the city, and that a Japanese journalist was among the wounded in Kyiv. Another person was hospitalized in critical condition. Klitschko warned residents to remain in shelters.   

In downtown Kyiv, missiles hit residential buildings, including a hotel, as well as the National Palace of Arts in the theater district and a concert hall.   

Explosions were reported in other regions of Ukraine, including the eastern Donetsk oblast. Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko said that missiles hit targets in an industrial zone, but no casualties were reported.     

Mykolaiv oblast Governor Vitaliy Kim said at least six people were wounded in the southern city of Mykolaiv. Three of them were hospitalized, with one listed in critical condition.   

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said four people were wounded by a missile strike in the western city of Khmelnytskyi. In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, residential buildings were damaged, but information about casualties and destruction is being clarified, he added.  

On Saturday afternoon, explosions were heard at the Dzhankoi airport in Russian-occupied Crimea, according to local Telegram channels. The Dzhankoi airport is a military air base operated by Russian occupying forces. Ukrainian armed forces also reported explosions at the airport.  

Telegram channels monitoring launches of missiles reported that Dzhankoi was allegedly hit by a high-precision weapon.  

Ukrainian authorities didn’t comment on the incident, and occupation authorities didn’t either.  

Fighting elsewhere 

On the eastern front, Ukrainian forces said they killed or wounded up to 10 Russian troops, destroying two vehicles and damaging three more near the occupied city of Donetsk, according to the Ukrainian General Staff’s evening briefing on Telegram.    

Intense fighting continues in the region. A dozen towns near Bakhmut have been damaged by recent shelling. Russian forces are also continuing to hit the southern city of Kherson with multiple rocket launchers, aircraft and kamikaze drones.  

In the weeks following the liberation of Kherson in November, Russia has intensified its attacks on the front line in Donbas, particularly around Bakhmut, where it has made incremental gains supported by mass artillery bombardments.    

Some material for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.   
…

Even by the standards of Turkey’s and Greece’s frequently strained relations, it was a remarkable escalation. Speaking to youths in a Black Sea town, Turkey’s president directly threatened his country’s western neighbor: Unless the Greeks “stay calm,” he said, Turkey’s new ballistic missiles would hit their capital city.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment on an otherwise unremarkable December weekend followed repeated threats and warnings in recent months: Alleged violations of international treaties by Greece could throw the sovereignty of many inhabited Greek islands into doubt. Turkish troops, Erdogan warned on several occasions, could descend on Greece “suddenly one night.”

The striking rhetoric has led to questions about the reasons behind it, and whether it could be a prelude to more alarming developments, including potential armed conflict between Turkey and Greece, both NATO members.

Both countries face national elections in the first half of 2023, which is likely to ramp up the rhetoric still further, and Russia’s war in Ukraine has demonstrated that an invasion of a smaller European country by a larger neighboring power is no longer unthinkable.

But analysts on both sides of the Aegean Sea are cautious, noting an escalation in verbal barbs but still assessing a military conflict between neighbors Greece and Turkey as unlikely.

Longtime foes

Traditional adversaries, the countries are no strangers to tension. Mock dogfights by fighter jets over the Aegean have taken place for decades as the two sides disagree on the limits of Greece’s national airspace.

They are at loggerheads over a broad variety of other issues, including the ethnically divided island of Cyprus, maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea and territorial claims in the Aegean Sea, through which their joint border runs. In 2021, Turkish and Greek warships shadowed each other and briefly collided during a heated dispute over exploration rights to potential offshore energy reserves.

Greece and Turkey have come close to war three times in the past half-century. The most recent was in January 1996, when a last-minute U.S. intervention averted an armed conflict over an obscure pair of uninhabited islets named Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish.

Few people in either country had ever heard of them before. But the tensions led to a dramatic military buildup in the Aegean and a Greek navy helicopter crash that killed three officers.

Even in the run-up to that crisis, the rhetoric, particularly from Turkey, was not as bellicose as it is now.

“It is unprecedented. This hasn’t happened before,” said Constantinos Filis, an international relations professor who directs the Institute of Global Affairs at the American College of Greece. “We’re talking of nearly 2 ½ months where we have nearly daily statements by Turkey against Greece. This hasn’t happened before in duration, and I certainly don’t remember there having been such direct threats.”

The factors fueling the escalation are complex. Along with the approach of elections, they include strains in Turkey’s relations with the United States and its exclusion from a fighter jet purchasing program among others, analysts say.

The U.S. removed Turkey from a program to produce F-35 fighter jets in 2019 after Ankara bought a Russian-made S-400 missile defense system, which Washington said was a threat to the stealth fighter jets. Ankara has since requested new F-16 jets and kits to modernize its existing fleet, but that purchase would require approval from the U.S. Congress.

Greece has lobbied Washington to block its larger, more powerful neighbor from purchasing F-16s while also pursuing its own military procurement and modernization program, which includes new fighter jets and new warships currently being built.

Speaking in the northern Turkish city of Samsun earlier this month, Erdogan said Turkey has begun making its own short-range ballistic missiles, which, he said, was “frightening the Greeks.”

“(The Greeks) say ‘it can’t hit Athens,’” said Erdogan. “Of course it will. If you don’t stay calm, if you try to buy things from the United States and other places (to arm) the islands, a country like Turkey … has to do something.”

“I think Erdogan’s (missile) statement is his way of telling Greece that actually there is no (military) balance, that Turkey is still superior and therefore Greece should act very cautiously,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Ankara office, said. “Nevertheless, if you take him at his word, it is a threat and should have no place in Turkish-Greek relations.”

Elections ahead

Unluhisarcikli said that apart from reminding Greece of Turkey’s military capabilities, Erdogan also hopes his tough words will help him in the presidential and parliamentary elections currently scheduled for June.

In power since 2003, Erdogan is seeking a third term in office as president amid an economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation that has eaten away at earnings and put even necessities out of reach for many.

Unluhisarcikli thinks threatening Greece will not make much of a difference in the races. “Past elections and also the polls suggest that national rhetoric does help a little bit in the beginning, but the impact is short-lived,” he said. “Its impact is not even nearly comparable to the economic situation.”

Filis agreed the Turkish elections were among the reasons for Erdogan’s verbal escalation. But, he noted, it was the first time Greece appeared so prominently in public discourse in the lead-up to a national vote.

Ankara recently has focused on the militarization of the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean Sea, saying international treaties prohibit the presence of armed forces. Greece counters that it is adhering to the treaties and needs to defend the islands against a potential attack from Turkey, which maintains a sizable military force on its nearby coast.

Turkey “is building a story, a narrative, so it can (potentially) attribute its own aggressive act against Greece to legitimate self-defense,” Filis said, a tactic that “has many similarities with what Russia did and is doing in Ukraine.”

Still, chances of open conflict — or of an accident or military incident triggering an unplanned escalation — remain slim, both analysts agreed. An armed conflict is “still a very, very low probability,” Unluhisarcikli said, noting that past accidents, such as collisions between navy vessels or jet crashes during island patrols, had not led Turkey and Greece to war.

A military incident or conflict “is a scenario that doesn’t have much probability,” said Filis. “But the climate that the Turkish leadership is cultivating could make something like that easier.”

 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s address to the nation usually is rather anodyne and backed with a soothing view of a snowy Kremlin. This year, with soldiers in the background, he lashed out at the West and Ukraine.

The conflict in Ukraine cast a long shadow as Russia entered 2023. Cities curtailed festivities and fireworks. Moscow announced special performances for soldiers’ children featuring the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus. An exiled Russian news outlet unearthed a video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now the Ukrainian president despised by the Kremlin, telling jokes on a Russian state television station’s New Year’s show just a decade ago.

Putin, in a nine-minute video shown on TV as each Russian time zone region counted down the final minutes of 2022 on Saturday, denounced the West for aggression and accused the countries of trying to use the conflict in Ukraine to undermine Russia.

“It was a year of difficult, necessary decisions, the most important steps toward gaining full sovereignty of Russia and powerful consolidation of our society,” he said, echoing his repeated contention that Moscow had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security.

“The West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia,” Putin said. “We have never allowed anyone and will not allow anyone to do this.”

The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its actions in Ukraine, shut independent media outlets, and criminalized the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including diverging from calling the campaign a special military operation. But the government has faced increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.

‘Sanctions war was declared on us’

Russia has justified the conflict by saying that Ukraine persecuted Russian speakers in the eastern Donbas region, which had been partly under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukraine and the West says these accusations are untrue.

“For years, the Western elites hypocritically assured all of us of their peaceful intentions, including the resolution of the most difficult conflict in the Donbas,” Putin said.

Western countries have imposed wide sanctions against Russia, and many foreign companies pulled out of the country or froze operations after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

“This year, a real sanctions war was declared on us. Those who started it expected the complete destruction of our industry, finances, and transport. This did not happen, because together we created a reliable margin of safety,” Putin said.

Year-end celebrations tempered

Despite such reassurances, New Year’s celebrations this year were toned down, with the usual fireworks and concert on Red Square canceled.

Some of Moscow’s elaborate holiday lighting displays made cryptic reference to the conflict. At the entrance to Gorky Park stand large lighted letters of V, Z and O – symbols that the Russian military have used from the first days of the military operation to identify themselves.

“Will it make me a patriot and go to the front against my Slavic brothers? No, it will not,” park visitor Vladimir Ivaniy said.

Moscow also announced plans to hold special pageant performances for the children of soldiers serving in Ukraine.

The Russian news outlet Meduza, declared a foreign agent in Russia and which now operates from Latvia, on Saturday posted a video of Zelenskyy, who was a hugely popular comedian before becoming Ukraine’s president in 2019, performing in a New Year’s Day show on Russian state television in 2013.

Zelenskyy jokes that the inexpensive sparkling wine Sovietskoe Shampanskoye, a popular tipple on New Year’s, is in the record books as a paradox because “the drink exists but the country doesn’t.”

Adding to the irony, the show’s host was Maxim Galkin, a comedian who fled the country in 2022 after criticizing the military operation in Ukraine.
…

Pope Emeritus Benedict served for just eight years before making history by stepping down in 2013, saying he didn’t have the mental or physical strength to run the church. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has more.
…

For millions of Ukrainians, many of them under Russian bombardment and grappling with power and water shortages, New Year’s celebrations will be muted as Russia’s 10-month war rumbles on with no end in sight.

But for some families, it is a chance to reunite, however briefly, after months apart.

At Kyiv’s central railway station on Saturday morning, Mykyta, still in his uniform, gripped a bouquet of pink roses tightly as he waited on platform 9 for his wife Valeriia to arrive from Poland. He hadn’t seen her in six months.

“It actually was really tough, you know, to wait so long,” he told The Associated Press after hugging and kissing Valeriia.

Nearby, another soldier, Vasyl Khomko, 42, joyously met his daughter Yana and wife Galyna who have been living in Slovakia because of the war, but they returned to Kyiv to spend New Year’s Eve together.

The mood contrasted starkly with that from 10 months ago when families were torn apart by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Back in February, fathers, husbands and sons had to stay behind as their wives, mothers and daughters boarded trains with small children seeking safety outside the country. Scenes of tearful goodbyes seared television screens and front pages of newspapers across the world.

But on the last day of the year marked by the brutal war, many returned to the capital to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones.

As Russian attacks continue to target power supplies leaving millions without electricity, no big celebrations are expected, and a curfew will be in place as the clock rings in the new year. But for most Ukrainians being together with their families is already a luxury.

Valeriia first sought refuge from the conflict in Spain but later moved to Poland. Asked what their New Year’s Eve plans were, she answered simply: “Just to be together.”

The couple declined not to share their family name for security reasons as Mykyta has been fighting on the front lines in both southern and eastern Ukraine.

On platform 8, another young couple reunited. University student Arseniia Kolomiiets, 23, has been living in Italy. Despite longing to see her boyfriend Daniel Liashchenko in Kyiv, Kolomiiets was scared of Russian missiles and drone attacks.

“He was like, ‘Please come! Please come! Please come!’” she recalled. “I decided that (being) scared is one part but being with beloved ones on the holidays is the most important part. So, I overcome my fear and here I am now.”

Although they have no electricity at home, Liashchenko said they were looking forward to welcoming 2023 together with his family and their cat.

In an attempt to ensure residents have light during their celebrations, the regional government of Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa province is planning to limit the work of the most energy-intensive industries on Dec. 31 and Jan 1.

Regional head Maksym Marchenko made the announcement on Friday via Telegram and said that power engineers in the province had used all means possible to “eliminate the consequences” of Russia’s barrage of attacks on Ukraine on Thursday and reinstate the power supply.

In Kyiv, recent attacks have left many on edge, unsure about whether the skies will be peaceful on the last day of the year.

“We are hoping there will be no surprises today,” said Natalya Kontonenko who had traveled from Finland. It was the first time she had seen her brother Serhii Kontonenko since the full-scale invasion began on February 24. Serhii and other relatives traveled from Mykolaiv to Kyiv to meet Natalya.

“We are not concerned about the electricity, because we are together and that I think is the most important,” he said.
…

As the old year gives way to the new, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a heartfelt appeal to the citizens of the world to put peace at the center of their words and actions in 2023.

Every new year is a moment of rebirth and hope. It is a time for reflection and for resolve to make things better in the year to come than they were in the year gone by.

In reviewing the events of 2022, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres considered the difficulties and the heartbreak of the past year.  In his New Year’s message, he said millions of people around the world have literally swept out the ashes of the old year.

He said they are preparing for a new dawn and a brighter day in the year ahead.

“From Ukraine to Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and beyond, people left the ruins of their homes and lives in search of something better.  Around the world, one hundred million people were on the move, fleeing wars, wildfires, droughts, poverty, and hunger.  In 2023, we need peace, now more than ever,” said Guterres.

He said conflicts can end and peace can be assured through dialogue.  He said a more sustainable world can be achieved by making peace with nature and climate.  He appeals for peace in the home, so women and girls can live in dignity and safety.

Guterres said peace on the streets and communities, peace in places of worship, and freedom from hate speech and abuse online depend upon the full protection of human rights.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Tuerk echoes those sentiments. He said the shape of the New Year will be determined by the individual and collective actions people take.

His hope for the next year, he said, is for people to lead their lives with kindness, empathy, unity, and protection of human rights.

“We must ensure women’s rights, for example, are respected at home and in public, that women and girls have full equality and freedom from discrimination.  We must open our children’s eyes to the mistakes of the past, we can inspire them to write a story of hope and unity and instill in them a commitment to creating a better world,” said Guterres.

The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be celebrated in 2023.  The core message inherent in this document – that there cannot be progress and peace without human rights – is as relevant now as it was in 1948.

U.N. rights chief Tuerk appeals to all nations and peoples to strive to make the world more dignified, to create a world where everyone’s rights are respected.
…

Congress has signed off on the Congressional Gold Medal for the chief prosecutor in what was regarded as “the biggest murder trial in history.”

South Floridian Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old in 1948 when he had secured enough evidence to prosecute 22 members of Nazi killing squads responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million Jewish, Roma, Soviet, and others in shooting massacres in occupied Soviet territory.

“Mr. Ferencz is a hero of the Jewish community who has dedicated decades of his life to combatting antisemitism, prosecuting those who act on their hatred, and keeping the lessons of the Holocaust alive,” said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents most of Palm Beach County and co-led the bipartisan effort. “It is a privilege to recognize his remarkable, lifelong commitment to justice, peace, and human dignity with the Congressional Gold Medal — Congress’s highest expression of honor.”

The award was included in the $1.66 trillion government funding bill that provides assistance for victims of natural disasters, funding for those struggling with drug addiction, and sends emergency aid to Ukraine, approved hours before a midnight deadline Friday to avoid a partial shutdown of federal agencies.

Ferencz was born on March 11, 1920, in Transylvania, in what is now Hungary. That same year his family fled to “Hell’s Kitchen” on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews by Romania.

“The neighborhood was known for having one of the highest crime rates in America. I decided early on that if my choices were to either be a crook or be a lawyer, I would choose law,” he once said in a newspaper interview.

In 1940 he received a scholarship to Harvard Law School. With the onset of World War II, he enlisted in the United States Army in 1943, eventually transferring to a newly created War Crimes Branch of the Army to gather evidence that could be used in court.

Ferencz documented Nazi Germany’s crimes and visited concentration camps as they were liberated.

In 1946, the United States government recruited him to work on the Nuremberg tribunals.

In his role as a war crimes investigator, Ferencz visited concentration camps as they were liberated to gather evidence of atrocities carried out by the Nazis. They kept death registries, and Ferencz was assigned to collect these registries which contained victims’ names.

He became the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg’s Einsatzgruppen Trial, where he tried Nazi defendants for perpetrating the worst crimes against humanity. Einsatzgruppen was the ninth of 12 trials held by the U.S. government in occupied Germany.

“The defendants were commanders and officers of special SS groups known as Einsatzgruppen-established for the specific purpose of massacring human beings because they were Jews, or because they were for some other reason regarded as inferior peoples,” he said in his opening remarks presented before the trial.

The court found 20 defendants guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and two guilty of a lesser charge. Fourteen defendants were sentenced to death, more than in any other of the Nuremberg proceedings.

In the decades since the Nuremberg Trials, Ferencz has dedicated his life to ending war and promoting justice.

“I fought for compensation for victims and survivors of the Holocaust, the return of stolen assets, and other forms of restitution for those who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis,” he said in a newspaper interview earlier this year.

And since the 1970s, he contributed to the establishment of the International Criminal Court and to the recognition of aggression as an international crime.

In April, right after his 102nd birthday, in an interview with the Florida Jewish Journal, Ferencz said when he publicly presents his life story, he always tells his audience, “There are three important lessons I wish to transmit: One, never give up, Two, never give up, and three, never give up.”

Images the Delray Beach resident saw during the Holocaust are still vivid, he told the newspaper.

“Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind’s eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget,” he said.

He was honored by Florida’s Palm Beach County commissioners last year, who declared Nov. 5, 2021, as “Benjamin Ferencz Law Not War Day,” a shout-out to his motto: “Law. Not War.”

And in April, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis awarded him the governor’s medal of freedom.
…

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who led the Catholic Church for nearly eight years before becoming the first pope to resign in six centuries, died Saturday at the age of 95.

Benedict’s death followed an appeal by Pope Francis to pray for his predecessor, with the Vatican announcing the former pontiff’s health had worsened due to “advanced age.”

When he made the shock announcement in 2013 that he would be stepping down, Benedict said he no longer had the physical and mental strength to serve as pope.

He rarely made public appearances in his retirement, dedicating the last years of his life to prayer and meditation as he lived in a former convent in the Vatican.

In a 2018 letter to Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, Benedict described “the slow withering of my physical forces,” saying he was “on an interior pilgrimage towards home.”

Early years

Born Joseph Ratzinger in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Germany, he spent his youth in southeastern Germany near the Austrian border. He entered a seminary a year before the outbreak of World War II and would eventually be drafted into the German army, where he served in an anti-aircraft unit before eventually deserting in the late days of the war.

He returned to his theological studies, and in 1951 became an ordained priest. After years of teaching and serving as an adviser to the Second Vatican Council, in 1977 Pope Paul VI appointed Ratzinger archbishop of Munich and Freising and later made him a cardinal.

Ratzinger spent more than 20 years serving as the prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and he was a close friend and adviser of Pope John Paul II.

He presided over the April 2005 funeral mass for John Paul II, and that same month was elected the 265th pontiff.

Papal legacy

Benedict’s time as pope included the fallout from child sex-abuse scandals involving clergy that emerged during John Paul II’s papacy. His response included expelling priests and both apologizing to and meeting with victims.

A January 2022 report accused him of failing to act in four cases during his time as archbishop of Munich.  In a letter released by the Vatican, Benedict acknowledged what he called “errors” in handling allegations of sexual abuse and said he could “only express to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness.”

In 2006, Benedict prompted protests from the Muslim world after a speech in Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor stating what for some Muslims was seen as an attack on Islam.

In 2013, his butler was convicted of taking sensitive and confidential documents from the papal chambers and leaking them to journalists.

At the time of Benedict’s retirement, Brennan Pursell, one of Benedict’s biographers, told VOA he will be remembered first and foremost as a teacher.

“His legacy as pope will survive in his writings, above all, and his catechesis [religious/faith instruction], his encyclicals [papal letters], his various documents,” he said. “And for people who just read what’s online, they can get a sense of the awesome extent of this man’s contribution to church teaching.”

The Rev. Thomas Reece at Georgetown University said Benedict “had very strong ideas about church doctrine, orthodoxy, church traditions. He was not afraid to go after priests and religious and theologians who disagreed with him — basically try to silence them.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

Behind the frontline near Kreminna, a strategically located Russian-controlled city in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops say they are facing a tough enemy.

“We fight them every day, in any weather. We attack in the direction of Kreminna, but they are not easy to defeat,” said a 24-year-old Ukrainian soldier who goes by the call sign “Kulak” or “Fist.”

“They are good, they are tough,” he told Agence France-Presse in Yampil, a village some 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Kreminna and recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late September.

The city in the eastern Luhansk region — which Moscow claimed to have annexed along with three other Ukrainian regions — has been the scene of intense fighting in recent days.

“We had some successes on the Ukrainian side, but nothing huge. The enemy is not giving up,” Kulak said with a smile.

For the past few days, the region’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, has been posting encouraging — if slightly contradictory — messages on social media.

On Thursday, he wrote that Ukraine’s troops advanced 2.5 kilometers in the direction of Kreminna in a week.

A day earlier, he said Russians had sent reinforcements to the area, while adding that the city could be retaken early next year.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian forces “appear to be preparing for a decisive effort” in the Luhansk region.

‘Get it over with’

Yampil looks like a hive of wartime activity.

Military vehicles crisscross the main street of this largely destroyed village. There are nearly as many soldiers as there are civilians.

In a field behind several half-abandoned houses, soldiers are busy keeping two tanks — nicknamed Natalya and Salvador — in fighting shape. The tanks were captured during the Russian army’s retreat.

“If we liberate Kreminna, we will cut off the Russians’ supply route in Rubizhne, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk,” said one of the soldiers, Vlad, referring to other occupied towns in the region.

“We don’t want the situation to be put on ice. We want to push them back, get it over with,” said Vlad, who hails from Kyiv.

‘Nowhere better than home’

Although Yampil was liberated by Ukrainian forces during a sweeping counteroffensive in the fall, it is still within reach of Russian artillery.

A few kilometers up north, battles are raging in the village of Torske, and the shelling has intensified in recent days.

“It’s more or less fine. It would be better if it weren’t for these deafening noises,” said Olga, a 69-year-old retired teacher, declining to give her last name.

Every day, she meets with other residents of Yampil outside the only operating store.

The convenience store is both a collection point for humanitarian aid and a place to gather for a chat.

Despite the cold, they sit around a table in front of the store, talking and arguing as military vehicles drive by.

“We come here to talk; it’s our living room,” Olga said, smiling while a woman sitting next to her lamented the power cuts and lack of aid in the village.

“They don’t care about us!” she said.

Humanitarian aid dominates conversations here.

Not far away, an 84-year-old woman wearing a blue head scarf bursts into tears as she points to the people gathered round the table.

“When help arrives, they take everything, they don’t share anything. Why?” she asked tearfully, standing in front of her heavily damaged home.

But local official Yulia Rybalko insists that “nobody is starving” in Yampil.

She said she organizes the distribution of food, clothing and firewood delivered by NGOs.

Only some 600 civilians remain in the village that used to have a population of 2,500 people before Russia invaded on February 24.

But according to Olga, the former math teacher, many of those who leave choose to eventually return.

“Nowhere is better than home,” she said.
…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that Ukraine continues to endure and repel waves of Russian air attacks and that Ukrainian air defenses have been made “stronger than ever.” 

“In the new year,” he added, “Ukrainian air defense will become even stronger, even more effective.”

The Ukrainian leader said Ukrainian air defense “can become the most powerful in Europe,” a guarantee of security “not only for our country, but for the entire continent.”

The United States last week announced nearly $2 billion in additional military aid, including the Patriot Air Defense System, which offers protection against aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on NATO member states to supply more weapons to Ukraine.

“I call on allies to do more. It is in all our security interests to make sure Ukraine prevails and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin does not win,” Stoltenberg told German news agency DPA on Friday.

Stoltenberg said the need for ammunition and spare parts was “enormous.” He told DPA that military support for Ukraine was the fastest way to peace, Reuters reports.

“We know that most wars end at the negotiating table — probably this war too — but we know that what Ukraine can achieve in these negotiations depends inextricably on the military situation,” he said.

Russia’s ongoing offensive

Russia shelled Ukrainian towns across a long stretch of the front line from north to south, Ukrainian officials said Friday, a day after Moscow fired dozens of missiles in its latest barrage against critical infrastructure.

In an evening report Friday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russian forces had tried to advance near Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the east, while firing on several towns and villages, and shelled settlements further west in the Donetsk region, including the town of Vuhledar.

Zelenskyy said the nation’s forces were holding their positions in the eastern Donbas region.

“There are also some areas of the front where we are advancing a bit,” he noted.

Russian forces shelled several towns near Kupiansk, in the northeast Kharkiv region recaptured by Ukraine in September, the General Staff report said, as well as settlements in the Luhansk region, where Ukrainian forces hope to advance after the gains of recent weeks.

Areas of the Zaporizhzhia region, to the south, also came under heavy Russian shelling, including the contested town of Hulyaipole. Additionally, there was also shelling in and around Ukrainian-held Nikopol, on the opposite side of the Kakhovka reservoir from the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. 

On the southern front, there were renewed Russian strikes targeting infrastructure in the city of Kherson, which Russian forces abandoned last month, and Kachkarivka, further north on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

Air attack sirens blared overnight into Friday in the capital, Kyiv, and Reuters reported several explosions and the sound of anti-aircraft fire south of the city, as Russian forces launched 16 Iranian-made Shahed drones, the officials said.

The Ukrainian military said all of the drones had been destroyed. Seven had targeted Kyiv, where an administrative building was damaged, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Putin-Xi deepen ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed Friday to strengthen their bilateral cooperation. During their opening remarks on a publicly broadcast videoconference, the two leaders welcomed strengthening ties between Moscow and Beijing amid what they called “geopolitical tensions” and a “difficult international situation,” with Putin expressing his wish to extend military collaboration.

“In the face of increasing geopolitical tensions, the significance of the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership is growing as a stabilizing factor,” he said.

Putin added that he expected Xi to visit Moscow in the spring. Such a trip “will demonstrate to the whole world the strength of the Russian-Chinese ties on key issues, will become the main political event of the year in bilateral relations,” he said.

Xi said through a translator that “in the face of a difficult and far from straightforward international situation,” Beijing was ready “to increase strategic cooperation with Russia, provide each other with development opportunities, be global partners for the benefit of the peoples of our countries and in the interests of stability around the world.”

But an official Chinese transcript of the video summit between the two leaders highlighted differences in their approach to their developing alliance, making no mention of Xi’s visit to Moscow and stressing that Beijing, which has declined to back or condemn the invasion, would maintain its “objective and fair” stance.

The U.S. expressed concern about the Russian-China rapprochement.

“We are monitoring Beijing’s activity closely,” a State Department spokesperson said. “Beijing claims to be neutral, but its behavior makes it clear, it is still investing in close ties to Russia.”

U.S. officials have repeatedly said they have yet to see Beijing provide material support to Russia on its invasion on Ukraine, a move that could provoke sanctions against China.

Some material for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.  

 
…

The condition of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI remains stable, the Vatican said Friday, as Catholics prayed for the 95-year-old former pontiff whose health has seriously deteriorated.

The German, who in 2013 was the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign as head of the worldwide Catholic Church, has become increasingly frail over the years.

Pope Francis said Wednesday his predecessor, whose birth name is Joseph Ratzinger, was “very ill.”

On Friday, the Vatican said his condition was “stable,” adding that Benedict had rested well overnight and taken part in a mass held in his bedroom.

Benedict moved out of the papal palace and into a former convent within the Vatican when he retired.

Francis called Wednesday for people to pray for him, before visiting him at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery.

The Vatican later confirmed the former pope’s health had worsened “due to advancing age,” while a Vatican source told Agence France-Presse it had begun deteriorating “about three days ago.”

“It is his vital functions that are failing, including his heart,” the source said, adding that no hospital admission was planned, as he has the “necessary medical equipment” at home.

The Rome diocese celebrated a special mass for Benedict at the Basilica of St. John Lateran Friday. In his homily, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis said as “priest, theologian, bishop, pope,” Benedict “expressed at the same time, the strength and the sweetness of faith.”

Gratitude

In Germany, in the church of St. Oswald in Marktl am Inn, where the former pope was baptized, a photo of Benedict was set up on a tripod next to a baptistery.

Photos from his 2006 trip to the town line the walls. A red candle burns on the floor of the white building, which is topped by a black bell tower.

One visitor, Tobias Ferstl, 43, prayed with his eyes closed for several minutes in front of the photograph of Benedict.

“I was passing through, so I decided to stop by the birthplace of the Pope Emeritus,” the devout Catholic, an altar server at Regensburg Cathedral, told AFP.

“I don’t feel any great sadness or astonishment, but rather gratitude,” he said, despite a few tears filling his eyes. Benedict was “a gentle person,” he said.

At Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican, tourists and pilgrims taking selfies in front of the Christmas tree and Nativity scene contrasted with the few journalists on standby in case of a death announcement.

“He was a great pope,” Italian Carmelo Dellisanti told AFP. “Perhaps misunderstood by some in the Catholic world, but he served the Church. He produced extraordinary homilies and writings.”

A difficult time

Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005.

His eight-year pontificate was marked by multiple crises, including the global clerical sex abuse scandal, which has dogged him in retirement as well.

A damning report for the German church in January 2022 accused him of personally having failed to stop four predatory priests in the 1980s, when he was archbishop of Munich.

Benedict has denied wrongdoing, but in a letter released after the report, asked “for forgiveness.”

“I think he had a difficult time as pope, because of the pedophilia scandal, and he never really wanted to be pope, so it would be nice if he went to heaven,” said 30-year-old German Annika Hafner.

Benedict has appeared increasingly frail in recent months, using a wheelchair, but was still receiving visitors. He appears frail in photos taken December 1.

The last public video of him, released by the Vatican in August, shows a thin man with a hearing aid who can no longer speak, but whose eyes are still bright.
…

Romanian authorities have arrested divisive social media personality Andrew Tate on suspicion of human trafficking and rape.
 

Prosecutors in Bucharest asked a court Friday to extend by 30 days Tate’s detention.

Tate, a former professional kickboxer, was detained along with his brother and two other men.  

Tate did not comment but his attorney confirmed he had been detained.

Tate has been barred from some media platforms because of his misogynistic comments and hate speech.  

Reuters reports that prosecutors say they found six sexually exploited women when they detained the four men.   

Tate recently was involved in an online exchange with 19-year-old environmentalist Greta Thunberg, after he said he owned 33 cars.  

 
…

As the person who dressed the Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, who died Thursday at 81, was synonymous with 1970s punk rock, a rebelliousness that remained the hallmark of an unapologetically political designer who became one of British fashion’s biggest names.

“Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better,” her fashion house said on Twitter.

Climate change, pollution and her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were all fodder for protest T-shirts or banners carried by her models on the runway.

She dressed up as then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for a magazine cover in 1989 and drove a white tank near the country home of a later British leader, David Cameron, to protest fracking.

The rebel was inducted into Britain’s establishment in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth, who awarded her the Order of the British Empire medal. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear — a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt.

“The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity,'” Westwood said in her 2014 biography. “Nothing is interesting to me unless it’s got that element.”

Instantly recognizable with her orange or white hair, Westwood first made a name for herself in punk fashion in 1970s London, dressing the punk rock band that defined the genre.

Together with the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, she defied the hippie trends of the time to sell rock ‘n’ roll-inspired clothing.

They moved on to torn outfits adorned with chains as well as latex and fetish pieces that they sold at their shop in London’s King’s Road variously called “Let It Rock,” “Sex” and “Seditionaries,” among other names.

They used prints of swastikas, naked breasts and, perhaps most well-known, an image of the queen with a safety pin through her lips. Favorite items included sleeveless black T-shirts, studded, with zips, safety pins or bleached chicken bones.

“There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in the biography. “And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast.”

‘Buy less’

Born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8, 1941, in the English Midlands town of Glossop, Westwood grew up at a time of rationing during and after World War II.

A recycling mentality pervaded her work, and she repeatedly told fashionistas to “choose well” and “buy less.” From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work.

When she was a teenager, her parents, a greengrocer and a cotton weaver, moved the family to north London where she studied jewelry-making and silversmithing before retraining as a teacher.

While she taught at a primary school, she met her first husband, Derek Westwood, marrying him in a homemade dress. Their son, Ben, was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966.

Now a single mother, Westwood was selling jewelry on London’s Portobello Road when she met art student McLaren, who would go on to be her partner romantically and professionally. They had a son, Joe Corre, co-founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

After the Sex Pistols split, the two held their first catwalk show in 1981, presenting a “new romantic” look of African-style patterns, buccaneer trousers and sashes.

Westwood, by then in her 40s, began to slowly forge her own path in fashion, eventually separating from McLaren in the early 1980s.

Often looking to history, her influential designs have included corsets, Harris Tweed suits and taffeta ballgowns.

Her 1985 “Mini-Crini” line introduced her short puffed skirt and a more fitted silhouette. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair.

“My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have character and a purpose,” Westwood said.

“That’s why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.”

The Westwood brand flourished in the 1990s, with fashionistas flocking to her runway shows in Paris, and stores opening around the world selling her lines, accessories and perfumes.

She met her second husband, Andreas Kronthaler, teaching fashion in Vienna. They married in 1993, and he later became her creative partner.

Westwood used her public profile to champion issues including nuclear disarmament and to protest anti-terrorism laws and government spending policies that hit the poor. She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors.

“I’ve always had a political agenda,” Westwood told L’Officiel fashion magazine in 2018.

“I’ve used fashion to challenge the status quo.”
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Georgiy Yatsenko was hiding in the basement trying to comfort his anxious grandchildren on Thursday morning when an explosion rocked his normally sleepy street in southern Kyiv.

The blast blew out all of his windows, but the scene that greeted him when he stepped outside was even more frightening: half a dozen nearby houses were mostly destroyed by Russia’s latest missile barrage targeting Ukraine.

“The main thing is that people are alive,” he said as he watched excavators try to clear the resulting mess of bricks, wooden planks and power lines.

Missiles cities in Ukraine

Ukrainian officials said the air defense systems downed all 16 missiles that targeted Kyiv on Thursday, part of a broader assault that also hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the east and the western city of Lviv on the border with Poland.

Multiple witnesses said the explosion on Yatsenko’s street in Kyiv’s southern Bortnychi neighborhood was probably caused by a missile fragment, not a direct hit.

It made little difference to Tetiana Denysenko, who rushed to the scene after receiving a distressing call from her young granddaughter.

“She said, ‘Grandma, our house is on fire. We’ve been hit. My mother (Denysenko’s daughter) was thrown to the ground. She’s lying unconscious,'” the 62-year-old recalled.

“That’s all I could hear,” she said.

By the time Denysenko arrived, her daughter was being taken in an ambulance for emergency surgery.

“Thank God the children are alive,” Denysenko said through tears. “Thank God my granddaughter only had an injured leg.”

Siren, then explosions

Sergiy, who lives in the same neighborhood and gave only his first name, said that despite an air raid siren early Thursday morning, he had spent a leisurely few hours having breakfast and walking his dog.

Once he heard reports of explosions elsewhere in Kyiv, he decided to go to a local shelter for cover. But he and his wife had only reached their front door when the explosion occurred around 9 a.m., local time.

“We heard a bang, very strong, and there was a second explosion, but less powerful,” the 59-year-old said.

“We went outdoors and saw the windows in our house were broken and the house opposite ours was destroyed.”

He and his neighbors now must race to repair their houses as they prepare for the depths of winter amid persistent blackouts.

Nearly half of Kyiv’s population was left without power after the attacks on Thursday, as was 90% of Lviv, officials said.

Yatsenko said he planned to cover his window frames with plastic in an attempt to warm the house where he lives with nine other relatives.

It was unclear what the options would be for those whose houses suffered heavier damage.

At Denysenko’s daughter’s house, neighbors helped cart out salvageable items including a refrigerator, but the elderly woman had no answer when asked where the family would go.

“I don’t know,” Denysenko said, sobbing. “I don’t know.”
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A new wave of Russian missile strikes pounded cities throughout Ukraine on Thursday, damaging power stations and other critical infrastructure during freezing winter weather.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said a number of energy facilities were damaged and that “Russia is trying to deprive Ukrainians of light before the new year.”

However, the Ukrainian military said it had managed to neutralize most of the missiles, avoiding much larger damage.

“According to preliminary data, 69 missiles were launched in total. Fifty-four enemy cruise missiles were shot down,” said Ukraine’s top military general, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy.

“The enemy is attacking Ukraine from various directions with air- and sea-based cruise missiles from strategic aircraft and ships,” Ukrainian air defense said on social media, describing the scope of the attack as massive.

‘Senseless barbarism’

Officials earlier said more than 120 missiles were fired, according to Reuters. In addition to the cruise missiles, Ukraine’s military said anti-aircraft and S-300 ADMS (air defense missile system) were used.

Russia has repeatedly used missiles to target Ukrainian cities, including strikes that have destroyed critical infrastructure sites, though it denies targeting civilians.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the attacks “senseless barbarism.”

“These are the only words that come to mind seeing Russia launch another missile barrage at peaceful Ukrainian cities ahead of New Year,” he said.

Several people were wounded in the capital, as rescuers continued search-and-rescue operations.

“At the moment, there are three victims in Kyiv, including a 14-year-old girl. Everyone was hospitalized,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

He warned of potential electricity cuts and called on residents to stock up on water and to charge their electronic devices.

Kharkiv, other cities attacked

Russian kamikaze drones targeted infrastructure in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, where there were numerous explosions throughout the city.

“The Russian occupiers once again struck the energy infrastructure of Kharkiv, using 13 Iranian Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles in the attack. Ukrainian defense shot down 11 of these drones,” the Ukraine General Staff said.

Local officials said the attacks killed at least two people around Kharkiv.

The strikes also targeted Zaporizhzhia and the Dnipropetrovsk regions, but most of them were downed by the Ukrainian military, the General Staff said, and five drones were shot down around the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Additional strikes were aimed at the Black Sea port city of Odesa and Lviv, where Russian attacks are rare, which was left without power. There were power cuts in the Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions to reduce potential damage to the power infrastructure.

Andriy Sadovyi, mayor of Lviv, said the attack left his city near the Polish border about 90% without electricity.

Shelling on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia damaged electricity lines and gas pipelines and damaged houses.

Russia has attacked Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October while its ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance.

As heavy fighting in the Donbas region continued without significant advances on either side, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces rained scores of missile and rocket salvos along the whole front line in the east, while attempting to push ahead with their stalemated offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiyivka areas of Donetsk.

Ukraine leader promotes peace plan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been advocating a 10-point peace plan that calls for Russia to recognize Ukraine’s territory and withdraw its troops.

The Kremlin reiterated its dismissal of the proposal Wednesday, doubling down on its stance that Ukraine must accept the annexation Russia claimed in September after referendums rejected by Ukraine and most other nations as shams. The four Ukrainian regions include Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

“There can be no peace plan for Ukraine that does not take into account today’s realities regarding Russian territory, with the entry of four regions into Russia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. “Plans that do not take these realities into account cannot be peaceful.”

After the latest Russian air strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, “There can be no ‘neutrality’ in the face of such mass war crimes. Pretending to be ‘neutral’ equals taking Russia’s side.”

Some material for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Kosovo reopened the country’s main border crossing with Serbia on Thursday after a nearby barricade that led to its closure was removed, while Serbia’s president said more than a dozen other Serb roadblocks in northern Kosovo also would be dismantled. 

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Serbs would start removing their barricades on Thursday. The move could defuse weeks of tensions between Kosovo and Serbia that triggered fears of new clashes in the Balkans.

Kosovo had demanded that NATO-led peacekeepers remove the barricades or said its forces would do it. Serbia then raised combat readiness of its troops on the border with Kosovo, demanding an end to “attacks” against Kosovo Serbs.

The removal agreement was reached at a late-night crisis meeting with the leaders of Kosovo’s Serbs, Vucic said. 

It followed the release from jail of a former Kosovo Serb police officer, whose detention on a terrorism change triggered protests and clashes in northern Kosovo. A court ordered him placed under house arrest Wednesday.

The roadblocks, which consist mostly of loaded heavy trucks, other vehicles and tents, were still in place as of mid-morning Thursday. Unknown assailants set fire to two trucks on a roadblock in the northern town of Mitrovica, Kosovo police said.

The former police officer, Dejan Pantic, was detained Dec. 10 for “terrorism” after allegedly assaulting a Kosovo police officer during an earlier protest. 

Kosovo’s president and prime minister have criticized a Kosovo court’s decision to release Pantic from jail. 

“How is it possible for someone who is accused of terrorism to go from detention to house arrest,” President Vjosa Osmani said late Wednesday.

The main Merdare border crossing with Serbia closed down earlier this week because of a roadblock a few kilometers away, on the Serbian side of the border. 

Kosovo police told expatriates heading to Kosovo from European countries for the holidays that they could again use that route instead of going through North Macedonia or other entry points.

The unrest over Pantic’s detention sparked tense standoffs and gunshots but no major clashes. However, international concerns grew of a new conflict in the Balkans while the war in Ukraine is raging as well.

A separatist rebellion by Kosovo’s majority Albanians led to a 1998-99 war that featured a brutal Serbian crackdown in the territory that was its province at the time.

NATO intervened in 1999 to stop the onslaught and push Serbia out of Kosovo. But Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and has relied on Russia and China for backing.

Both Serbia and Kosovo have been told they must normalize relations in order to become members of the EU. Washington and Brussels recently have stepped up efforts to push forward EU-mediated dialogue between the former war foes. 
…