United Nations sanctions on Mali will end on Thursday after Russia vetoed a renewal of the measures me that targeted anyone violating or obstructing a 2015 peace deal, hindering aid delivery, committing rights abuses or recruiting child soldiers.

Independent U.N. sanctions monitors reported to the Security Council this month that Mali’s troops and its foreign security partners, believed to be Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, are using violence against women and other “grave human rights abuses” to spread terror.

Thirteen Security Council members voted in favor of a resolution, drafted by France and the United Arab Emirates, to extend the U.N. sanctions and independent monitoring for another year. Russia cast a veto, while China abstained from the vote.

Russia then instead proposed extending U.N. sanctions in Mali for one final year, but immediately ending the independent monitoring now. It was the only country to vote yes, while Japan voted no and the remaining 13 members abstained.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council that Russia wanted to eliminate the independent monitoring “to stifle publication of uncomfortable truths about Wagner’s actions in Mali, which require attention.”

In response, Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told Reuters that was speculation and resembled “paranoia,” adding that Russia was “upholding the interests of the affected country — Mali, as the council is supposed to do.”

The U.S. has also accused Wagner, which has about 1,000 fighters in Mali, of engineering an abrupt request by the junta for a 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force to leave. The decade-long operation is due to shutdown by the end of the year.

Mali’s junta, which seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, teamed up with Wagner in 2021 to fight an Islamist insurgency. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash in Russia last week and President Vladimir Putin then ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.

Mali’s military junta wrote to the Security Council earlier this month to ask for the sanctions to be lifted.

The current annual mandate for the U.N. sanctions regime and independent monitoring will expire Thursday. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia made clear that Russia would not discuss the issue any further after the two votes Wednesday.

The council established the Mali sanctions regime in 2017, which allowed it to impose travel bans and asset freezes. There are currently eight people subjected to the U.N. sanctions measures. The independent monitors reported to the council twice a year on implementation and potential new designations. 
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Millions of children across Ukraine and in seven neighboring asylum countries are being deprived of an education and the skills needed to help Ukraine recover from the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion of their country, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.

“Inside Ukraine, attacks on schools have continued unabated, leaving children deeply distressed and without safe spaces to learn,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF’s regional director for Europe and Central Asia.

“Not only has this left Ukraine’s children struggling to progress in their education, but they are also struggling to retain what they learned when their schools were fully functioning,” she said at a Tuesday briefing.

De Dominicis visited Ukraine last week and met several teachers there who she said were injured in an attack on a civilian area in the northern city of Romny.

“The attack ripped through a school where teachers were preparing lessons for the new school year. On the same day, a kindergarten in Kherson city was hit in another attack,” she said, noting that such attacks are not anomalies.

An assessment by UNICEF and the Ukrainian Ministry of Education reports that Russian attacks have destroyed more than 1,300 schools, and that others are damaged and not ready to open for the academic year, which begins this week.

“These senseless and reckless attacks have left many of Ukraine’s children deeply distressed and without a safe space to learn,” De Dominicis said. “As a result, children in Ukraine are showing signs of widespread learning loss, including a deterioration in learning outcomes of the Ukrainian language, reading and mathematics.”

According to the latest UNICEF survey data, up to 57% of teachers report a deterioration in students’ Ukrainian language abilities; up to 45% report a reduction in mathematics skills; and up to 52% report a reduction in foreign language abilities.

Another UNICEF survey finds that just one in three schoolchildren in Ukraine are learning in person full time, and that three-quarters of children of preschool age in front-line areas are not attending kindergarten.

“This war is layering crisis upon crisis,” De Dominicis said. “It is leaving children grappling with mental health problems. It is denying millions a chance to be educated.”

As for Ukraine’s refugee children, UNICEF reports that they, too, are missing out on an education, noting that more than half of children from preschool to secondary school age are not enrolled in the national education systems of their host countries.

De Dominicis cited language difficulties as one of the main reasons children do not attend school.

“In Poland, in Czech Republic, in Moldova — very often, the family were hoping to go back after a couple of months,” she said. “So, they prefer to be hooked to the online Ukrainian language system. Unfortunately, we see that they will reside in these countries for longer, because the war is still ongoing. Many of them are facing difficulty in not having teachers to support their children” in preparing them to attend classes in their host countries.

De Dominicis said that children are resilient and can learn multiple languages, even at a young age.

“So, we hope they will see a richness in actually being included in host country education without losing their right to their culture, to their language,” she said.

UNICEF said schools provide far more than a place of learning in times of crisis or war. They can provide a safe space where children can escape violence, make friends and create a sense of normalcy in an otherwise uncertain environment.

“The war in Ukraine has become a war on children,” De Dominicis said.

When the war ends and the children grow up, they will be essential to the country’s recovery and future. This will require a workforce that is both highly educated and healthy, she said.

“Investing in education for Ukraine’s children, no matter where they reside, is the best investment we can make in the country’s future,” De Dominicis said.
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When Pope Francis travels to Mongolia this week, he will in some ways be completing a mission begun by the 13th-century Pope Innocent IV, who dispatched emissaries east to ascertain the intentions of the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire and beseech its leaders to halt the bloodshed and convert.

Those medieval exchanges between Roman pope and Mongolian khan were full of bellicose demands for submission and conversion, with each side claiming to be acting in the name of God, according to texts of the letters that survive.

But the exchanges also showed mutual respect at a time when the Catholic Church was waging Crusades and the Mongol Empire was conquering lands as far west as Hungary in what would become the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

Some 800 years later, Francis won’t be testing new diplomatic waters or seeking to proselytize Mongolia’s mostly Buddhist people when he arrives in the capital Ulaanbaatar Friday for a four-day visit.

His trip is nevertheless a historic meeting of East and West, the first-ever visit by a Roman pontiff to Mongolia to minister to one of the tiniest, newest Catholic communities in the world.

“In a way, what’s happened is that both sides have moved on,” said Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian and Chinese frontier and ethnic history at the University of Pennsylvania. “Once upon a time, it was either/or: Either the world was ruled by the pope, or the world was ruled by the Mongol Empire. And now I think both sides are much more tolerant.”

Officially, there are only 1,450 Catholics in Mongolia and the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence since 1992, after Mongolia shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution. Francis last year upped the Mongolian church’s standing when he made a cardinal out of its leader, the Italian missionary Giorgio Marengo.

“It is amazing [for the pope] to come to a country that is not known to the world for its Catholicism,” said Uugantsetseg Tungalag, a Catholic who works with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a nursing home in the capital. “When the pope visits us, other countries will learn that it has been 30 years since Catholicism came to Mongolia.”

The Mongol Empire under its famed founder Genghis Khan was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition of religious coexistence when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday. It was after all, one of Genghis Khan’s descendants, Kublai Khan, who welcomed Marco Polo into his court in Mongol-ruled China, providing the Venetian merchant with the experiences that would give Europe one of the best written accounts of Asia, its culture, geography and people.

Invited to Francis’ interfaith event are Mongolian Buddhists, Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives as well as members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which officially claims more than 12,500 members in Mongolia in 22 congregations.

In a message to Mongolians ahead of his visit, Francis emphasized their interfaith traditions and said he was travelling to the “heart of Asia” as a brother to all.

“It is a much-desired visit, which will be an opportunity to embrace a Church that is small in number, but vibrant in faith and great in charity; and also to meet at close quarters a noble, wise people, with a strong religious tradition that I will have the honor of getting to know, especially in the context of an interreligious event,” Francis said Sunday.

Aside from the historic first, Francis’ trip holds great geopolitical import: With Mongolia sandwiched between China and Russia, Francis will be travelling to a region that has long been one of the thorniest for the Holy See to negotiate.

Francis will fly through Chinese airspace in both directions, allowing him a rare opportunity to send an official telegram of greetings to President Xi Jinping at a time when Vatican-Chinese relations are once again strained over the nomination of Chinese bishops.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s crackdown on religious minorities grind on, Francis will be visiting a relatively neutral player but one that is striving to show its regional importance in the shadow of its two powerful neighbors, said Manduhai Buyandelger, a professor of anthropology at MIT and a Mongolia scholar.

“I think Mongolia is a very safe arena for the pope to land to demonstrate his outreach, as well as to show Mongolia’s belonging on equal stage with the rest of the world,” she said from Ulaanbaatar.

Mongolia’s environmental precariousness, climate shocks and the increasing desertification of its land are likely to be raised by the pope, given he has made combatting climate change and addressing their impacts on vulnerable peoples a priority of his 10-year pontificate.

Mongolia, a vast, landlocked country historically afflicted by weather extremes, is considered to be one of the most affected by climate change. The country has already experienced a 2.1-degree Celsius increase in average temperatures over the past 70 years, and an estimated 77% of its land is degraded because of overgrazing and climate change, according to the U.N. Development Program.

The cycles of dry, hot summers followed by harsh, snowy winters are particularly devastating for Mongolia’s nomadic herders, since their livestock are less able to fatten up on grass in summer before cold winters, said Nicola Di Cosmo, a Mongolian historian and professor of East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

“If these events become more and more common and more frequent … this change interferes with this very delicate pastoral economy, which is a delicate balance between the resources of the grassland and the animals using those resources,” Di Cosmo said.

Already, many of Mongolia’s herders, who comprised about a third of the population of 3.3 million, have abandoned their traditional livelihoods to settle around Mongolia’s capital, stressing social services in a country where already nearly 1 in 3 people live in poverty.

More recently, Mongolia has turned to extraction industries, particularly copper, coal, gold, to fuel the economy, which gets more than 90% of its export revenue from minerals. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis would likely refer to this trend in his remarks; Francis has frequently spoken out about the harm caused by extraction industries, particularly on the natural environment and local populations.

Munkh-Erdene Lkhamsuren, a professor of anthropology at the National University of Mongolia, said he hoped Francis would speak out about “predatory” Western mining companies which, he said, together with Mongolian officials, are robbing Mongolia of its natural wealth.

In December, hundreds of people braved freezing cold temperatures in the capital to protest corruption in Mongolia’s trade with China over the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal.

The government has declared 2023 to be an “anti-corruption year” and says it is carrying out a five-part plan based on Transparency International, the global anti-graft watchdog that ranked Mongolia 116th last year in its corruption perceptions index.

“It is well known fact that most common Mongolians now see their country as a victim of a neo-colonialism,” Lkhamsuren said.
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The European Union’s fossil fuel energy production hit a record low the first half of the year, think tank Ember Climate reported Wednesday, although green sources are struggling to fill the gap. 

The decline in coal and gas generation was driven by a drop in electricity consumption across the bloc of 4.6% amid high power prices, which surged after Russia invaded Ukraine, upending gas supplies. 

“The decline in fossil fuels is a sign of the times,” said Ember analyst Matt Ewen.  

Coal generation was down 23%, accounting for less than 10% of the EU’s total electricity production for the first time ever in May, Ember reported. 

While gas prices have fallen from “crisis highs” last year, they remain double the cost compared with the first half of 2021, the report said.  

The drop in electricity consumption resulted from emergency measures implemented by nearly all EU members between November and March to combat rising prices.  

Industrial demand, notably in Germany, had also declined over the period, the report said.  

Fossil fuels now make up the “lowest share ever of the power mix” at 33%, Ember said.  

The greatest declines in fossil fuel use year-over-year at more than 30% were seen in Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland.  

But reduced demand being the driver for the decline in fossil fuel use is not “sustainable or desirable,” Ember warned.  

With demand expected to rise in the future, replacing fossil fuels with alternative sources needs to happen faster, Ewen said.  

Solar power generation was up 13% in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2022, while wind was up a more modest 4.8%.  

Denmark and Portugal saw renewables account for more than 75% of the electricity mix while in Greece and Romania renewables for the first time exceeded 50% of the share of supply.  

However the growth in clean energy was still not enough to compensate for the gap left by the fall in fossil fuels, the report found.  

“A massive push, especially on solar and wind, is urgently needed to underpin a resilient economy across Europe,” Ewen said.  
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Historic rivals Greece and Turkey are stepping up efforts to improve ties after the two countries’ leaders received strong election mandates this year. Next week, Turkish and Greek foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Turkey, but analysts warn substantial obstacles remain between the neighbors. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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While it might be too early to assess the effects the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and other leaders on the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa, some analysts say there will be short-term disruptions.

Given Prigozhin’s reach on the continent the past few years, it will take time to replace Wagner’s top man, said Steven Gruzd, head of the Africa Russia Project at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg.

“There’s going to be a period of uncertainty; of people jockeying for position, of seeing who wants to take over,” Gruzd said. “There’s also the talk of Russia incorporating it into the army, taking it out of private hands.”

But the International Crisis Group’s Charles Bouessel told VOA the private mercenary group’s activities in Africa will be disrupted because of the relationships the Wagner boss and some of his associates, including Valery Chekalov and Dmitry Utkin, who all died with him in a plane crash — were able to cultivate the past few years.

“Prigozhin and Utkin especially had deep knowledge,” Bouessel said, “and they had all the connections with the African regimes where Wagner is working. It will take time for Russia to take it over and to rebuild relations with these countries.”

Wagner’s influence stretches across the continent, Gruzd said.

“The Wagner presence in Africa is large,” he said. “Reportedly over 5,000 soldiers [are] spread across the various countries, embedded in countries like Central African Republic and Mali, less so in Libya and Sudan. Even as late as last week, it looked like Niger and Burkina Faso, the countries that have undergone coups in West Africa across the Sahel, are targets for Wagner.”

The U.S. Treasury Department accused the Wagner Group of mass executions, rape and physical abuse in Mali and the Central African Republic, or CAR, and designated it a “criminal organization.”

In the CAR, in particular, it’s too early to assess the impact Prigozhin’s death will have, but it’s important to remember the role the group had under its leader, said Bouessel.

“The Central African Republic signed a deal with Russia in late 2017,” he said. “This deal included the arrival of Wagner and assistance of Wagner toward the president. Since then, Wagner was able to oust the former colonizer France out of the country and out of the decision-making part of the country. They also managed to secure [Faustin] Touadera’s power and make him re-elected. They managed to deter rebel groups from attacking the capital again. And they managed to weaken the armed groups.”

In the CAR, Bouessel said, the group controlled businesses in the mining of gold and diamonds. They are also present in the timber industry and beverage sector.

Dr. Edgar Githua, a lecturer at the United States International University in Nairobi and Strathmore University who specializes in international relations, peace and conflict, said that Prigozhin’s death will affect the group’s finances, and that its global influence might take a hit.

“Prigozhin is the one who had the financial streams of the Wagner Group,” Githua said. “He’s the one with the international connections. He’s the one who was getting all the international contracts.

“It was a one man show. Prigozhin had a lot of power and a lot of say within that group. With his demise, that group is going to find itself rudderless for some time,” he said.

Prigozhin died a couple of months after he staged an unsuccessful rebellion against top Russian military commanders. After that failed mutiny, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that operations in the CAR and Mali would not be affected.
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Dutch prosecutors demanded a 12-year prison sentence Tuesday for a former Pakistani cricketer accused of incitement to murder firebrand anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders.

The suspect, identified by Wilders as Khalid Latif, is accused of offering a bounty of some 21,000 euros ($23,000) to anybody who killed Wilders.

Latif did not appear in the high-security courtroom near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the trial. He is believed to be in Pakistan.

Prosecutors did not name Latif, but said in a statement that a video posted online in 2018 showed a famous Pakistan cricketer offering the money for killing Wilders. The lawmaker has lived under round-the-clock protection for years because of repeated threats to his life sparked by his fierce criticism of Islam.

The threat came after Wilders said he would organize a competition of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims consider any depictions of Muhammad to be blasphemous. Ultimately, the contest did not go ahead, but the plan sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

“The video message was extra toxic because it was issued during a period in which there was a lot of hatred and anger towards Geert Wilders,” the Public Prosecution Service in The Hague said in its written statement.

The prosecution office said that killing Wilders would not just have “caused unbearable pain to his loved ones. It would also have been an attack on the rule of law itself.”

Wilders said in court that a conviction would send a “powerful signal to all other others who issue threats: we won’t accept it.”

And in comments he addressed directly to Latif, he added: “As long as I’m living and breathing, you won’t stop me. Your call to kill me and pay money for it is abject and will not silence me.”

An international warrant has been issued for Latif’s arrest. Dutch prosecutors said they had been trying to contact him since 2018, first as a witness and then to answer the charges. However, they said they hadn’t received any reply from the Pakistani authorities.

In 2017, Latif, 37, was banned for five years from all forms of cricket for his role in a match-fixing scandal in the Pakistan Super League.

Tuesday’s case comes at a time when parts of the Muslim world have been angered by a series of Quran burnings in Sweden. Swedish police have allowed the demonstrations, citing freedom of speech, but have filed preliminary hate speech charges against a refugee from Iraq who has carried out a series of such desecrations.
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Ever since American Glenna Manchego joined the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine in April 2022, she has been risking her life to help Ukrainians. Manchego is a trained paramedic who traveled to Ukraine soon after Russia’s invasion. Anna Kosstutschenko met with her just a few kilometers from the front line. Camera – Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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President Vladimir Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin said, following reports that the mercenary chief who challenged the Russian leader’s authority would be buried Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn’t say where or when the chief of the Wagner Group military company would be buried, adding that he couldn’t comment on a private family ceremony.

St. Petersburg’s Fontanka news outlet and some other media said the 62-year-old Prigozhin could be laid to rest as early as Tuesday at the city’s Serafimovskoye cemetery, which has been used for high-profile military burials. Heavy police cordons encircled the cemetery, where Putin’s parents are also buried, but no service was immediately held and increased police patrols also were seen at some other city cemeteries.

Later in the day, a funeral was held at St. Petersburg’s Northern Cemetery for Wagner’s logistics chief Valery Chekalov, who died in the Aug. 23 crash alongside Prigozin. Several hearses were seen driving from a central hall used for memorial ceremonies to Beloostrovskoye cemetery on the city’s outskirts, but they later drove away.

The tight secrecy and confusion surrounding the funeral of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants reflected a dilemma faced by the Kremlin amid swirling speculation that the crash was likely a vendetta for his mutiny.

While it tried to avoid any pomp-filled ceremony for the man branded by Putin as a traitor for his rebellion, the Kremlin couldn’t afford to denigrate Prigozhin, who was given Russia’s highest award for leading Wagner forces in Ukraine and was idolized by many of the country’s hawks.

Putin’s comments on Prigozhin’s death reflected that careful stand. He noted last week that Wagner leaders “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine and described Prigozhin as a “talented businessman” and “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life” but “achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months.”

Although both were from St. Petersburg, Prigozhin and the Russian leader were not known to be particularly close.

Prigozhin, an ex-convict who earned millions and his nickname “Putin’s chef” from lucrative government catering contracts, served Kremlin political interests and helped expand Russia’s clout by sending his mercenaries to Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and other countries. Wagner, one of the most capable elements of Moscow’s forces, played a key role in Ukraine where it captured the Ukrainian eastern stronghold of Bakhmut in late May.

Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noted that Prigozhin has become a legendary figure for his supporters who are increasingly critical of the authorities.

“Prigozhin’s funeral raises an issue of communication between the bureaucratic Russian government system that doesn’t have much political potential and politically active patriotic segment of the Russian public,” Markov said.

The country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.

The committee didn’t say what might have caused Prigozhin’s business jet to plummet from the sky minutes after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg. Just before the crash, Prigozhin had returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to expand Wagner Group’s activities.

Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, a retired military intelligence officer who gave the mercenary group its name based on his own nom de guerre, was also among the 10 people who died in the crash.

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to crash, and Western officials have pointed to a long list of Putin’s foes who have been assassinated. The Kremlin rejected Western allegations the president was behind the crash as an “absolute lie.”

The crash came exactly two months after Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership. The brutal and profane leader ordered his mercenaries to take over the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then began a march on Moscow. They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen pilots.

Putin denounced the revolt as “treason” and vowed to punish its perpetrators but hours later struck a deal that saw Prigozhin ending the mutiny in exchange for amnesty and permission for him and his troops to move to Belarus.

The fate of Wagner, which until recently played a prominent role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is uncertain.

Putin said Wagner fighters could sign a contract with the Russian military, move to Belarus or retire from service. Several thousand have deployed to Belarus, where they are in a camp southeast of the capital, Minsk.
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The nightmare repeats itself every year: A towering wall of flames devours forests, farmland and homes, forcing animals and people to flee for their lives.

With their hot, dry summers, Greece and its southern European neighbors experience hundreds of devastating wildfires each year. Last week alone, wildfires killed 21 people in Greece. The country’s deadliest, in 2018, cost more than 100 lives. And experts warn climate change is likely to exacerbate extreme weather, fueling more wildfires.

This summer, a group of residents in a suburb of the Greek capital united in determination to prevent the nightmare from reaching their homes. 

In less than a week in early August, an initial group of three people with a shared concern grew to an online community of about 320 offering donations to hire a company using long-range drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras as a sophisticated early warning system to catch wildfires before they can spread.

It’s a tried and tested system. Designed and set up with the help of Grigoris Konstantellos, a commercial airline pilot and mayor of the southern Athens seaside suburbs of Vari, Voula and Vouliagmeni, the drones began operating there last year.

“We didn’t discover it, we created it,” Kontantellos said of the program. “We said, ‘Why shouldn’t this capability exist?'”

The system seemed the perfect solution for the concerned residents in the northern suburbs.

“We’re all worried, we’re all anxious,” said Melina Throuvala, a psychologist and one of the initial group of three. “We don’t want to mourn victims, or to see our environment and our forests burning or our homes threatened. That was the main incentive.”

And with wildfires, prevention is the key.

Operated by drone pilots with advanced training to fly beyond the visual line of sight and with permission from civil aviation authorities, the drones provide live images and detect changes in temperature, alerting their handlers in the critical early stages before a fire spreads. The drones run 24/7, with pilots working in six-hour shifts.

“The first few minutes are the most crucial for a fire,” said Giorgos Dertilis, who heads the local volunteer firefighting unit. “At the start it’s easier to put out the fire. The more the minutes go by, the harder our job becomes.”

Volunteer units are integrated into Greece’s Civil Protection system, working closely with professional fire departments. With no fire station in the wider Kifissia area, volunteers often can get to local blazes faster.

The drone company operates from the volunteer firefighters’ headquarters, so they can react immediately to any signs of a fire.

The drone program’s value was quickly apparent. In the first couple of days, it picked up the start of a fire near a shuttered hotel, “so when we were on our way … we knew, we were prepared to see a fire,” Dertilis said. They quickly extinguished the blaze. “It’s very important to know what to expect.”

The system’s innovation, said Emmanouil Angelakis, managing director of the company operating the drones, is that it includes specialized personnel, software, servers and satellite antenna so “drones, day and night, can scan all the forest areas with thermal cameras and sensors and give live images and coordinates of where a fire starts.”

The idea for the system came in June 2022, after a wind-whipped wildfire descended on Konstantellos’ municipality from a mountain ridge. As they coordinated the response, authorities realized they had a problem.

“We were chasing the fire,” the mayor said. With the flames moving rapidly, keeping track of where water trucks were needed was a challenge. “We couldn’t see basic things on the ground. We’d see them with a delay, because we weren’t right in front of them.”

An extensive review of the emergency response followed.

“We saw that what was missing is for us to not chase the fire, but to be able to have a live image of the fire, of where our assets are and where the threat is,” Konstantellos said. They thought of drones.

The fire department already uses drones during an active blaze, covering a small area. What was needed was to see a fire when it starts and stop it in its tracks.

Getting in touch with the drone company, the fire prevention program was born. In the year and a half it’s been operational, it’s given early warnings for fires 12 times, Konstantellos said.

“We’ve caught fires at 3:30 in the morning,” the mayor said. “When we sent the Civil Protection, they couldn’t even find the fire. We could see it on the drone.”

Then on Saturday, 270 lighting strikes sparked six blazes, starting at 5:30 a.m. The drones saw them immediately, Konstantellos said Monday. With live drone images relayed to his cellphone, “we had amazing coordination, and in less than 40 minutes we had put out six fires in hard-to-reach places.”

The drones have a range of 15 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) and are equipped with loudspeakers and searchlights to warn off people doing banned outdoor work on high fire-risk days — or to frighten off potential arsonists. The municipality is even running a pilot program to prevent drownings, whereby drones can drop lifejackets to swimmers in distress.

The municipality pays 13,000-14,000 euros ($14,000-$15,000) per month for 24/7 coverage. “For a municipality, it’s a viable number to have peace of mind from the fires,” Konstantellos said.

The drone company’s Angelakis said the Kifissia residents’ privately funded initiative “was the first time this happened on a volunteer basis and not by a state body.”

Kifissia’s nearby municipality of Dionysos followed, with its privately funded operation working out of the town hall.

Residents of less affluent areas would be less able to afford private funding. But other municipal and regional authorities are interested, said Konstantellos, who noted the system can be used to coordinate responses to other events such as floods, earthquakes or traffic accidents.

“As we say in aviation, ‘A well-trained pilot is the best safety device,'” he said. “We convert this to the civil protection, and we say: ‘A well-prepared city is the best defense of a city against crisis.'”
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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will visit Russia soon to discuss the collapsed United Nations deal that had allowed Black Sea exports of Ukrainian grain, a spokesperson for Turkey’s ruling AK Party said Monday.

The U.N. and Turkey-brokered deal lasted a year but ended last month after Moscow quit. Ankara is seeking to persuade Russia to return to the agreement, under which Odesa’s seaports shipped tens of millions of tons of grain.

Since the grain-export deal collapsed, Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian ports with volleys of missiles and kamikaze drones.

Omer Celik, the AK Party spokesperson, said Erdogan would visit Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi “soon” but did not specify whether he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“After this visit there may be developments and new stages may be reached regarding” the grain deal, he told reporters.

The Kremlin said Friday there was an understanding the two leaders will meet in person soon.

Bloomberg cited two anonymous sources in reporting that Erdogan is expected to meet Putin in Russia next week, possibly on Sept. 8, before he travels to a G20 meeting in India.
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Leading officials within the Spanish Football Federation asked suspended president Luis Rubiales to resign Monday because of his behavior at the Women’s World Cup, including kissing a player on the lips after Spain won the championship match.

The heads of the regional bodies that make up the federation (RFEF) made the request in a collective statement.

“After the latest developments and the unacceptable behavior that has caused great damage to the image of Spanish soccer, the presidents’ request that Luis Rubiales resign immediately as president of the RFEF,” the statement said.

Earlier Monday, the federation asked UEFA to suspend it from international competitions because of government interference related to Rubiales. However, in their statement, the heads of the regional bodies urged interim federation president Pedro Rocha to withdraw that request immediately.

The federation’s request for a suspension was widely seen as an attempt to silence some of Rubiales’ critics, including government ministers who have asked for his removal. Such a suspension would ban Spanish teams from competitions like the Champions League and could sway public opinion in favor of letting him keep his job.

Soccer’s governing bodies have longstanding rules barring national governments from interfering with the running of domestic soccer federations. However, UEFA will not comply with the Spanish federation’s request for a sanction, a person familiar with the issue told The Associated Press on Monday. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision-making process was confidential.

Rubiales has faced a torrent of criticism from around the globe over his behavior at the Women’s World Cup final, including kissing Spain player Jenni Hermoso on the lips without her consent during the on-field trophy ceremony. He was suspended from office Saturday by soccer’s governing body FIFA, which is investigating his conduct.

Rubiales’ mother started a hunger strike Monday in a church in southern Spain in defense of her son, demanding an end to “the bloody and inhumane hounding” of him.

Rubiales is also a UEFA vice president.

Spain’s top clubs are due to take part in Thursday’s Champions League group-stage draw being made by UEFA, and the men’s national team has games on Sept. 8 and 12 in qualifying for the 2024 European Championship.

FIFA opened a disciplinary case against Rubiales on Thursday after taking control of the process because it organized the Women’s World Cup. Rubiales’ behavior during and after Spain’s 1-0 win over England in the final on Aug. 20 in Sydney, Australia, has focused intense scrutiny on him and his five-year management of the federation.

FIFA, however, did not invoke its version of the rules against government interference to protect Rubiales.

The Spanish federation then urged UEFA to act, reportedly in a letter sent Friday, the same day its embattled president defiantly refused to resign at an emergency meeting.

The FIFA suspension prevents Rubiales taking part in official business and having contact with other officials, including in Spain’s bid to co-host the 2030 World Cup with Portugal, Morocco and possibly Ukraine.

FIFA disciplinary judge Jorge Palacio also ordered Rubiales and the federation not to contact Hermoso. She has said the federation pressured her to publicly back Rubiales.

Newly crowned as world champions, though drawn into a national scandal they did not seek and has distracted from their triumph, the Spain players have said they will not play any more games for as long as Rubiales is in charge.
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Russia’s top domestic security agency said Monday that a detained former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok is accused of collecting information about Russia’s action in Ukraine and related issues for U.S. diplomats. 

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Robert Shonov is suspected of “gathering information about the special military operation, mobilization processes in Russian regions, problems and the assessment of their influence on protest activities of the population in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.” 

The FSB, the top KGB successor, said it has served summonses to question two U.S. diplomats who allegedly instructed Shonov to collect the information. 

Shonov’s arrest was first reported in May, but Russian authorities provided no details at the time. The U.S. State Department has condemned his arrest. 

Shonov was charged under a new article of Russian law that criminalizes “cooperation on a confidential basis with a foreign state, international or foreign organization to assist their activities clearly aimed against Russia’s security.” Kremlin critics have said that the formulation is so broad that it could be used to punish any Russian who had foreign connections. It carries a prison sentence of up to eight years. 

The U.S. State Department has said Shonov worked at the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok for more than 25 years. The consulate closed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened. 

The State Department has said that after a Russian government order in April 2021 required the dismissal of all local employees in U.S. diplomatic outposts in Russia, Shonov worked at a company the U.S. contracted with to support its embassy in Moscow. 

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in May that Shonov’s only role at the time of his arrest was “to compile media summaries of press items from publicly available Russian media sources” and argued that his arrest “highlights the Russian Federation’s blatant use of increasingly repressive laws against its own citizens.” 

Russian news reports have said that Shonov was being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. 

Also held in Lefortovo is Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Gershkovich has been in custody since his March 29 arrest by Russia’s security service on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government have denied. 

Gershkovich’s arrest rattled journalists in Russia and drew outrage in the West. The United States has declared Gershkovich to be “wrongfully detained” and demanded his immediate release. 
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The thunder of mortar fire echoes in the distance as 5-year-old David approaches his mother with an innocent request: Can he play with the baseball bat a relative gave him as a gift?

Valeria Pototska rolls her eyes and tells her son no for the umpteenth time. It’s a toy for big kids, she scolds. The boy, who doesn’t so much as flinch when the weapons not far from their town in northeast Ukraine shoot off more rounds, pouts and pedals away on his bicycle.

Other neighborhood children frolic in a playground in Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, seemingly immune to the war unfolding 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away. Ukrainian authorities this month ordered a mandatory evacuation of the village and three dozen other populated areas as war returned to Kharkiv province. So far, most residents have refused to go as the battle inches closer to their backyards.

“It’s normal,” Pototska said of the soundtrack of weapons that punctuates the monotony of their daily lives. Olena Kanivets, a friend sitting beside her, nods and takes a drag on a cigarette. “It’s the strong who took the decision to leave,” Kanivets said.

The August 10 evacuation directive applies to 37 settlements that Russian soldiers occupied early in the 18-month-old war. A Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated them in September, lifting the invaded country’s spirits. Citing a Russian attempt to push back into the area, the Kupiansk district military administration told roughly 12,000 residents to seek safety elsewhere.

Only a few hundred heeded the warning. Many others signed documents stating they were staying at their own risk.

Their reasons range from the existential to the routine: fear of encountering poverty and loneliness in expensive faraway cities. Reluctance to give up homes in which they invested their life savings for a crowded shelter. Needing more time to tidy the garden or to tend to livestock.

The city of Kupiansk, which also was occupied by the Russians for more than six months last year, is under a partial evacuation order now. Katarina Chesta, a school administrator there, said she plans to stay put even if the order is extended citywide because she is tired of running away from war.

When Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, Chesta fled the port city of Mariupol under fire and ended up in Kupiansk, where her parents lived. The 39-year-old refuses to pack up and move again.

Russian airstrikes frequently target Kupiansk and hit the city’s main school building in October and December, so Chesta is preparing an online curriculum for the new academic year.

“Maybe it’s just the way I am,” she said, sitting in her office wearing an immaculate white dress and her hair styled in an elegant updo. “Some people must stay here to be patriots for the city, to develop it, to survive.”

Kharkiv province, which borders Russia, reemerged as a combat hot spot in mid-July. That’s when the Russian military began assembling assault troops, tank units and other resources in the direction of Kupiansk, hoping to pressure Ukrainian troops fighting further south and to recapture the territory Ukraine won back, according to Ukrainian military officials.

Ukrainian military officials say their forces have kept the Russians from advancing but there is intense fighting on the outskirts of Synkivka, a village which is 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) from Kupiansk.

Illustrating the dangers for the local population, they said Russian units have shelled civilian infrastructure and homes while hunting for Ukrainian soldiers, who fight concealed in the wooded and agricultural landscape. The near-constant shelling kills several residents a week, according to the Kupiansk military administration.

Evacuees are taken to a shelter in Kharkiv, the provincial capital and Ukraine’s second-largest city. Red Cross volunteers say the number requesting to relocate spiked in places that received more intense bombing, but many locals still linger.

“Until the moment shelling hits close, people refuse to leave,” volunteer Volodymyr Fedulenko said.

For Oleksandr Ivanovich, 70, that moment came when a shell hit his house in the village of Hryshivka and left the roof in tatters. He was plucking weeds from the front porch at the time. “What to say, it is very painful to leave my home,” Ivanovich said.

Tatiyana Shapavalova, 59, who lives two doors away, boarded an evacuation van along with her neighbor. She thought their part of Ukraine would stay comparatively peaceful after the Russians withdrew from most of Kharkiv province last year, but the August 13 artillery attack proved her wrong.

“We had hoped the Ukrainian army would push the Russians further away, but every day we hear them coming closer and closer,” Shapavalova said.

In Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi, the long war has created an atmosphere that blends the placid and the deadly. The roar of artillery fire sporadically disturbs the soft rustle of leaves in the late summer breeze. Municipal workers diligently mow the lawn next to bombed-out school buildings.

Residents who lived under occupation for half a year said the experience was terrifying. “Russians acted like kings,” Pototska said. Many said they would evacuate if the return of Moscow’s troops appeared imminent but until then hold on to hope of Ukrainian forces defeating them.

Four months ago, Nataliia Rosolova’s son Dmytro, 14, begged her to leave after a night of heavy shelling. “We need to stay for a while longer,” she told him.

Rosolova, 38, recalled the conversation as an air raid alarm rang out in their neighborhood. She explained that she works as a medic and “there are very few of us left here.” If a time comes when the family must flee, their bags are packed and ready to grab from Dmytro’s bedroom.

“Maybe I’m not strong enough to make such difficult decisions,” the mother said, tears welling. “But I’m not an enemy for my children. If there will be a need to leave, we will leave.” 
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Sweden charged a man on Monday with spying on it and the United States on behalf of Russia and unlawfully transferring advanced technology to Russia’s armed forces over a nine-year period. 

Prosecutors indicted Sergej Skvortsov, a citizen of both Sweden and Russia, on charges of gross unlawful intelligence activity against the two countries between 2013 and 2022, according to the indictment. 

The 60-year-old’s lawyer said he denied any wrongdoing. “He reiterates that he denies all charges,” lawyer Ulrika Borg told Reuters.

Prosecutors said the suspect gathered information on behalf of Russia that could be detrimental to U.S. and Swedish security and provided Russia with technology it could not procure on the open market due to trade regulations and sanctions. 

“Skvortsov and his company have been a platform for the Russian military intelligence service GRU and part of the Russian state for illicit technology procurement from the West,” the indictment read. 

The security service said in a statement the alleged crimes could pose serious security threats to Sweden and other states.  

“The aim of the suspect’s business has been to provide Russia with in-demand and sensitive technology that can be used militarily, where the goal of the procurement has been to increase the Russian state’s military capabilities,” it said. 

Police arrested Skvortsov in November last year on the outskirts of Stockholm, together with a second individual who was released shortly after.
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NATO’s newest member Finland plans to spend 2.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense next year, its defense ministry said on Monday. 

In July, NATO’s 31 member-nations agreed to spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defense. Previously the 2% target had been a goal to aim for over time and only seven allies met the target in 2022, according to NATO. 

Finland joined the alliance in April, in a historic security policy U-turn in response to neighboring Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

It said it planned to spend 6 billion euros ($6.48 billion), or 2.3% of its GDP, on defense in 2024, which is some 116 million euros less than the estimate for 2023. 

Finland’s defense spending has increased significantly in recent years, even before it became a NATO member, because it is replacing its aging fleet of F/A-18 combat jets with F-35 fighter jets. 

Finland is also spending on military aid to Ukraine, with the total value of its military equipment donations reaching 1.3 billion euros last week. 

“From the point of view of the future security order of Europe and Finland, it is a core issue that Russia’s aggressive efforts can be dammed in Ukraine,” defense minister Antti Hakkanen said in a statement to announce the latest donation.  
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Poland has filed legal challenges attempting to annul three of the European Union’s main climate change policies, which the Polish government argues would worsen social inequality, document published on Monday showed.

The legal actions, brought by Warsaw to the EU Court of Justice in July, target policies including a law agreed this year which will ban the sale of new CO2-emitting cars in the EU from 2035.

“The contested regulation imposes excessive burdens connected with the transition towards zero-emission mobility on European citizens, especially those who are less well off, as well as on the European automotive companies sector,” Poland said in its challenge, which the European Commission published on Monday.

A second EU policy setting national emissions-cutting targets “threatens Poland’s energy security”, while a third law to reform the EU carbon market may reduce coal mining jobs and increase social inequality, Poland said.

Poland produces around 70% of its power from coal.

The government wants all three laws annulled. Each was passed by a reinforced majority of EU member states, but Poland said they should have been passed with unanimous approval given the impact they could have on countries’ energy mixes.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EU has among the most ambitious climate change policies in the world, and has urged governments to use EU money to help vulnerable communities invest in clean energy to bring down bills and cut health-harming air pollution.

A 17.5 billion euro EU “just transition fund” is designed to support communities affected by the shift away from fossil fuels, notably with help for retraining workers.

The biggest share of that fund is earmarked for Poland. But Brussels has warned that the Polish government’s plans to extend the life of a coal mine in Turow until 2040 could mean the region cannot access the money.
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