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Zelenskyy: Russia ‘Is Killing for the Sake of Intimidation and Pleasure’

Russia is “killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure,” Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on Telegram Saturday after a Russian strike killed at least five people and wounded twenty in the recently liberated city of Kherson.

Photos of the strike – burning cars and what appeared to be corpses – were on the president’s Telegram account. 

“Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’,” Zelensky wrote.  “But this is not sensitive content – it is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

Earlier Saturday, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia is facing a munitions shortage in its invasion of Ukraine.

The ministry said in an intelligence update Saturday that, “Despite the easing of its immediate personnel shortages, a shortage of munitions highly likely remains the key limiting factor on Russian offensive operations.”

“Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles,” the ministry said. “Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.”

The British defense ministry said the munitions shortage made Russia vulnerable. “A vulnerability of Russia’s current operational design is that even just sustaining defensive operations along its lengthy front line requires a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets.”

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine. The measure, part of a $1.66 trillion government funding bill that passed the Senate a day earlier, will now go to U.S. President Joe Biden for signing into law. This package follows U.S. aid worth about $50 billion sent to Ukraine previously this year.

The move comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wartime visit to Washington this week.

Upon his return to Kyiv, Zelenskyy defiantly said that Ukrainian forces “are working toward victory” despite Russia’s relentless artillery, rocket and mortar fire and airstrikes on Ukraine.

Zelenskyy pledged on Telegram, “We will overcome everything.” He also said, “We are coming back from Washington with … something that will really help.”

The U.S. promised Patriot missiles to help Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy has long asked for Patriot missiles to help counter Russian airstrikes, which have destroyed cities, towns and villages during 10 months of conflict and knocked out power and water supplies across the country over the past three months.

Zelenskyy thanked Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

U.S. officials say, however, that the single Patriot battery that Biden promised to supply to Ukraine will not change the course of the war.

Washington and its allies have been unwilling to supply Kyiv with modern battle tanks and long-range missiles called ATACMS, which can reach far behind front lines and into Russia itself.

Both Kyiv and the Biden administration are wary that retaining U.S. congressional support for aid could become more complicated once Republicans take a slim majority in the House in the new year: A few right-wing Republicans oppose aid, and other lawmakers have called for tighter budget oversight.

During a Friday visit to Tula, Russia, a center for arms manufacturing, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the country’s defense industry chiefs to do more to ensure that the Russian army quickly receive all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs to fight in Ukraine.

“The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and front-line forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible time frames,” he said.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

20 Die in Russian Nursing Home Fire

Russian officials say at least 20 people have died in a fire in a nursing home in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

State media said the building was not officially registered as a nursing home.

The cause of the fire and how many people lived at the facility were not immediately clear.

Kemerovo is 3,600 kilometers east of Moscow.

UK: ‘Russia’s Munitions Shortage Makes It Vulnerable’

Russia is facing a munitions shortage in its invasion of Ukraine, according to the British defense ministry.

The ministry said in an intelligence update Saturday that, “Despite the easing of its immediate personnel shortages, a shortage of munitions highly likely remains the key limiting factor on Russian offensive operations.”

“Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles,” the ministry said. “Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.”

The British defense ministry said the munitions shortage made Russia vulnerable. “A vulnerability of Russia’s current operational design is that even just sustaining defensive operations along its lengthy front line requires a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets.”

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine. The measure, part of a $1.66 trillion government funding bill that passed the Senate a day earlier, will now go to U.S. President Joe Biden for signing into law. This package follows U.S. aid worth about $50 billion sent to Ukraine previously this year.

The move comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wartime visit to Washington this week.

Upon his return to Kyiv, Zelenskyy defiantly said that Ukrainian forces “are working toward victory” despite Russia’s relentless artillery, rocket and mortar fire and airstrikes on Ukraine.

Zelenskyy pledged on Telegram, “We will overcome everything.” He also said, “We are coming back from Washington with … something that will really help.”

The U.S. promised Patriot missiles to help Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy has long asked for Patriot missiles to help counter Russian airstrikes, which have destroyed cities, towns and villages during 10 months of conflict and knocked out power and water supplies across the country over the past three months.

Zelenskyy thanked Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

U.S. officials say, however, that the single Patriot battery that Biden promised to supply to Ukraine will not change the course of the war.

Washington and its allies have been unwilling to supply Kyiv with modern battle tanks and long-range missiles called ATACMS, which can reach far behind front lines and into Russia itself.

Both Kyiv and the Biden administration are wary that retaining U.S. congressional support for aid could become more complicated once Republicans take a slim majority in the House in the new year: A few right-wing Republicans oppose aid, and other lawmakers have called for tighter budget oversight.

During a Friday visit to Tula, Russia, a center for arms manufacturing, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the country’s defense industry chiefs to do more to ensure that the Russian army quickly receive all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs to fight in Ukraine.

“The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and front-line forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible time frames,” he said.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

‘Armed with English’: Ukraine Soldiers Take Language Lessons

When Olena Chekryzhova followed in her grandmother’s footsteps and began teaching English, she never dreamed the job would lead to a monthslong stay at a front-line military base.

But that has become her new reality as Ukrainian soldiers scramble to learn English – military terms especially – so they can make the most of combat aid from Washington and elsewhere against Russian forces.

Donated supplies like HIMARS rocket systems have been a battlefront game-changer, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s lightning visit to Washington this week yielded further pledges, including, for the first time, the Patriot missile defense system.

Soldiers have found, however, that training materials for this equipment are available mainly in English, which is often also necessary to communicate with foreign volunteer fighters they encounter in the field.

To help topple the language barrier, Chekryzhova, 35, has traded in her quiet life of classroom conjugation to give crash courses to the armed forces.

‘Small contribution’ for her nation

The work included a five-month stint at a base in the eastern industrial Donetsk region, where she lived alongside soldiers and took part in training sessions.

“Some people think I’m crazy,” she told AFP at the facility in Kyiv where she is stationed.

But she added, “I think that teaching English in this case is the small contribution that I can do for my country, for the people of my country and for the military, who are protecting us from this terrorist attack.”

Nearly all Ukrainian soldiers had at least some English instruction in school, but it was not always useful, especially for the older ones.

“It was back in Soviet times, and this English I learned at school is like nothing, basically,” said Igor Soldatenko, 50, one of Chekryzhova’s students in Kyiv.

“The whole system was inadequate, as I see now. We were just learning texts without understanding them. … Nobody could use it in real life.”

The recent lessons, by contrast, have been more practical, giving him words like “wounded,” “semiautomatic” and “cache” as well as phrases such as “killed in action.”

The learning goes both ways, with Chekryzhova gleaning a new understanding of tactics and strategy — and an appreciation of the trials of military life.

‘Double pain’

While in Donetsk, she grieved along with soldiers who lost comrades — some of whom she taught directly — in fighting in her hometown of Bakhmut, a target of incessant Russian assault in recent months.

“For me it’s a double pain. Because on the one hand it’s my hometown, and on the other hand it has now become the grave of my students,” she said.

During a recent one-hour conversation lesson in Kyiv, the only time Chekryzhova’s students slipped briefly into Ukrainian was when discussing those they have lost.

But despite fighting back tears, soldier Yuriy Kalmutskiy, 36, insisted on completing his idea in English, even if it was somewhat broken.

“I lose a lot of friends. … It was my circle of close people, and I lose … they. I lose they,” he said. “It’s very hard.”

As they work toward ultimately mastering English, Chekryzhova’s students told AFP they drew some inspiration from Zelenskyy’s journey with the language.

“A few years ago, he [had] awful English. Everybody knows this,” Kalmutskiy said. “But he learned.”

That progress came in handy on Wednesday when Zelenskyy addressed the U.S. Congress in English, declaring that “Ukraine is alive and kicking” while appealing for more aid.

Difficulty in expanding program

Yet while individual students have made similar strides, Chekryzhova told AFP she is struggling to scale up her program to reach even more.

International organizations have so far rebuffed her requests for funding, saying they can’t be seen giving money to the military.

“They say they would like to help children, they would like to help animals, the elderly, maybe some internally displaced people or people who are abroad,” she said.

Her students scoffed at this approach, and Chekryzhova said she has little interest in dealing with “puppies and kittens or some nice old ladies.”

All said they were convinced studying English would help them win the war while furthering Ukraine’s military integration with Western and other countries.

“So,” Chekryzhova said as the lesson ended, “Are you armed with English?”

“Yes,” Soldatenko responded. “Yes, I think so.”

Moldova Intel: Russia Could Invade Moldova 

Moldovan intelligence officials say Russian forces could launch a military offensive early next year in southern Ukraine in order to link Russian forces there to Russian-backed separatists in Moldova’s Transnistria region. Anna Kosstutschenko reports. Camera: Paviel Syhodolskiy . Note: Some interviewees withheld their names for security reasons.

Some of the people interviewed did not provide their last names because of security concerns.

Spain: No Evidence of Criminal Misconduct in Migrant Deaths

Spanish prosecutors have dropped their investigation into the deaths of more than 20 migrants last June at the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla, saying in a statement Friday they found no evidence of criminal misconduct by Spanish security forces.

Prosecutors said they spent six months investigating what happened when hundreds of migrants — some estimates say around 2,000 — stormed the Melilla border fence in northwest Africa from the Moroccan side in an attempt to reach European soil. At least 23 migrants were officially reported dead, though human rights groups say the number was higher.

“It cannot be concluded that the conduct of the (Spanish) security officers involved increased the threat to the life and well-being of the immigrants, so no charge of reckless homicide can be brought,” said the Spanish prosecutors.

The migrants, according to the prosecutors’ statement, were “hostile and violent.”

Hundreds of men, some wielding sticks, climbed over the fence from Moroccan territory and were corralled into a border crossing area. When they managed to break through the gate to the Spanish side, a stampede apparently led to the crushing of many people.

Moroccan police launched tear gas and beat men with batons, even when some were prone on the ground. Spanish guards surrounded a group that managed to get through before apparently sending them back.

The clash ended with African men, clearly injured or even dead, piled on top of one another while Moroccan police in riot gear looked on.

The Spanish prosecutors said that “at no point did (Spanish) security officers have reason to believe that there were people at risk who required help.”

Spanish security officers who turned 470 of the immigrants back to Morocco did so in accordance with their duty and in conformity with Spain’s immigration law, the statement said.

So-called “pushbacks” — the forcible return of people across an international border without an assessment of their rights to apply for asylum or other protection, violating both international and EU law — are a contentious issue in Europe.

The prosecutors did fault some security officers who threw rocks at the immigrants, recommending disciplinary procedures against them.

Amnesty International said earlier this month that the handling of the investigation by Spain and Morocco, which has remained mostly silent on the matter, “smacks of a cover-up and racism.”

US Patriot Missiles, New $45B Aid Package for Ukraine

Upon his return to Kyiv from his wartime visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy defiantly said Ukrainian forces “are working toward victory,” despite Russia’s relentless artillery, rocket and mortar fire and airstrikes on Ukraine.

“We will overcome everything,” Zelenskyy pledged on Telegram. “We are coming back from Washington with … something that will really help.”

The United States has promised Patriot missiles to help Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy has long asked for Patriot missiles to help counter Russian airstrikes, which have destroyed cities, towns and villages during 10 months of conflict and knocked out power and water supplies across the country over the past three months.

U.S. lawmakers are expected to approve on Friday a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine. This package follows U.S. aid worth about $50 billion sent to Ukraine previously this year.

Zelenskyy also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

During a Friday visit to Tula, a center for arms manufacturing, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russia’s defense industry chiefs to do more to ensure that the Russian army quickly received all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needed to fight in Ukraine.

“The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and front-line forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible time frames,” he said.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday in its intelligence update on Ukraine that Putin has been “presented with plans to expand the Russian military by around 30% to 1.5 million personnel.”

The ministry said the proposal was made Wednesday and that “Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu explained that the expansion would involve at least two brigades in northwestern Russia growing to divisional strength.”

The British defense minister explained the move by citing “the supposed threat from Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO.”

“This constitutes one of the first insights into how Russia aspires to adapt its forces to the long-term strategic challenges resulting from its invasion of Ukraine,” the ministry update said. “It remains unclear how Russia will find the recruits to complete such an expansion at a time when its forces are under unprecedented pressure in Ukraine.”

Visit sends message

In Western Europe, Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. Capital was seen as symbolic, a message to the world that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine intensely in its fight for survival.

Observers in the region were pleased to hear Biden point to the need to “maintain NATO unity” when it came to arms supplies.

“This strongly suggests that it is not the U.S., but other influential NATO states that are not convinced of the need to support Ukraine even more intensively,” Polish historian Lukasz Adamski of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw told VOA.

However, Putin said Zelenskyy’s trip only fueled the conflict.

“They say they may send Patriot there, fine, we will crack the Patriot, too,” Putin told reporters. He said the delivery of the battery “only drags out the conflict.”

In Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s Washington visit symbolizes the relationship between two countries honed by the war.

It was very important for Ukrainians and Zelenskyy to convey the appreciation of the Ukrainian people for the unwavering support the U.S. has shown to Ukraine, Ukrainian Mykola Davydiuk, a political analyst and director at Think Tank Politics, told VOA.

Despite Putin’s assessment that the U.S. delivery of a Patriot missile battery would extend the conflict, he said Russia is ready for talks with Ukraine on ending the conflict.

“One way or another, all armed conflicts end with talks,” Putin said. “The sooner this understanding comes to those who oppose us the better. We never rejected the talks.

“We will strive for an end to this and the sooner the better, of course,” he added.

The White House quickly countered Putin’s comments.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said Putin had “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“Everything he [Putin] is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people [and] escalate the war,” Kirby told reporters, according to Reuters.

Shipment from North Korea

Also Thursday, Kirby said U.S. intelligence officers had determined that North Korea had completed an initial shipment of arms, including rockets and missiles, to private Russian military company the Wagner Group last month. The action was seen as a sign of the group’s expanding role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The British government also condemned the shipment.

Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said no effort had been made for North Korea to supply weapons to Russia and dismissed the talk as “gossip and speculation,” Reuters reported.

The Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment. North Korea’s foreign ministry denied the reports, calling them groundless.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

Two Dead, Several Wounded in Paris Shooting, Suspect Arrested

A shooter killed two people and wounded four others in a gun attack near a Kurdish cultural center in Paris on Friday, the prosecutor’s office said.

Multiple gunshots were fired in the Rue d’Enghien, a street lined with small shops and cafes in the capital’s 10th arrondissement, sowing panic. Armed police guarded a security cordon and several ambulances were at the scene, live television images showed.

“A gun attack has taken place. Thank you to the security forces for their swift action,” tweeted deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire. “Thoughts for the victims and those who witnessed this drama.”

An investigation into murder, manslaughter and aggravated violence has been opened, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

A 69-year-old man had been arrested and was in detention, the prosecutor’s office added. The incident was over, it said.

Police did not indicate the motives of the alleged shooter.

One witness told French news agency AFP that seven or eight shots had been fired. A second witness, speaking to BFM TV, said the suspected gunman was a white man who opened fire in silence.

 

Notorious French Serial Killer Freed from Nepal Prison

Confessed French serial killer Charles Sobhraj was freed from prison in Nepal on Friday after serving most of his sentence for the murders of American and Canadian backpackers.

Sobhraj was driven out of Central Jail in Kathmandu in a heavily guarded police convoy to the Department of Immigration, where he will wait for his travel documents to be prepared.

The country’s Supreme Court had ordered that Sobhraj, who was sentenced to life in prison in Nepal, be released because of poor health, good behavior and having already served most of his sentence. Life sentences in Nepal are 20 years.

The order also said he had to leave the country within 15 days.

Sobhraj’s attorney Gopal Siwakoti Chitan told reporters that the request for the travel documents must be made by the immigration department to the French embassy in Nepal, which could take some time. Offices are closed over the weekend for the Christmas holiday.

The court document said he had already served more than 75% of his sentence, making him eligible for release, and he has heart disease.

The Frenchman has in the past admitted killing several Western tourists and he is believed to have killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong during the 1970s. However, his 2004 conviction in Nepal was the first time he was found guilty in court.

Sobhraj was held for two decades in New Delhi’s maximum-security Tihar prison on suspicion of theft but was deported without charge to France in 1997. He resurfaced in September 2003 in Kathmandu.

His nickname, The Serpent, stems from his reputation as a disguise and escape artist.

Russia Mulls Early Return of Space Station Crew After Soyuz Capsule Leak

Russia’s space agency said it is considering a plan to send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring home three crew members ahead of schedule, after their Soyuz capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbiting outpost.

Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a news conference Thursday they continue to investigate how the coolant line of the capsule’s external radiator sustained a tiny puncture last week, just as two cosmonauts were preparing for a routine spacewalk.

No final decision has been made about the precise means of flying the capsule’s three crew members back to Earth, whether by launching another Soyuz to retrieve them or by the seemingly less likely option of sending them home in the leaky capsule without most of its coolant.

Last week, Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s chief of crewed space programs, said the leak could have been caused by a micrometeoroid strike. But he and his NASA counterparts have left open the possibility of other culprits, such as a hardware failure or an impact by a tiny piece of space debris.

The Dec. 14 leak prompted mission controllers in Moscow to call off the spacewalk as a live NASA webcast showed what appeared to be a flurry of snowflake-like particles spewing from the rear of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The leak lasted for hours and emptied the radiator of coolant used to regulate temperatures inside the crew compartment of the spacecraft.

NASA has said that none of the ISS crew was ever in any danger from the leak.

Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin, who were suited up for the spacewalk at the time, flew to the ISS aboard the now-crippled Soyuz MS-22 capsule along with U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio in September.

They were originally scheduled to fly back on the same spacecraft in March, but Krikalev and NASA’s ISS program manager, Joel Montalbano, said Roscosmos would return them to Earth two or three weeks early if Russian space officials decide to launch an empty crew capsule for their retrieval.

Four other ISS crew members — two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut — rode to the ISS in October via a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon and they also remain aboard, with their capsule parked at the station.

The leak has upended Russia’s ISS routines for the weeks ahead, forcing a suspension of all future Roscosmos spacewalks as officials in Moscow shift their focus to the leaky MS-22, a designated lifeboat for its three crew members if something goes wrong aboard the space station.

Two U.S. astronauts, Rubio and Josh Cassada, conducted a seven-hour spacewalk without incident on Thursday to install a new roll-out solar array outside the station, NASA said.

If MS-22 is deemed unsafe to carry crew members back to Earth, another Soyuz capsule in line to ferry Russia’s next crew to the station in March would instead “be sent up unmanned to have (a) healthy vehicle on board the station to be able to rescue crew,” Krikalev, Roscosmos’ executive director for human spaceflight, told reporters.

No mention was made of possibly sending a spare SpaceX Dragon for crew retrieval.

Pinpointing the cause of the leak could factor into decisions about the best way to return crew members.

The recent Geminid meteor shower initially seemed to raise the odds of a micrometeoroid strike as the origin, but the leak was facing the wrong way for that to be the case, Montalbano said, though a space rock could have come from another direction.

Sending the stricken MS-22 back to Earth unfixed with humans aboard appeared an unlikely choice given the vital role the coolant system plays to prevent overheating of the capsule’s crew compartment, which Montalbano and Krikalev said was currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.

Zelenskyy: Trip to US Delivered ‘Good Results’

A brief wartime trip to the United States delivered “good results,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his nation in a nightly video address on Thursday.

“We are returning from Washington with good results, with things that will really help,” Zelenskyy said on a video posted to his Telegram account and linked to YouTube.

He also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress for supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia, which invaded the country nearly 10 months ago.

Zelenskyy visited the United States on Wednesday, meeting privately with Biden and later addressing a joint meeting of Congress.

During his visit, Biden announced a new $1.8 billion military aid package for Ukraine that included a Patriot missile battery, one of the most powerful weapons to be delivered to Kyiv yet.

In addition, the U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a $1.7 trillion spending bill, of which Ukraine could receive $44.9 billion in additional aid. The bill now goes to the House.

Visit sends message

In Western Europe, his visit was seen as symbolic, a message to the world that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine intensely in its fight for survival.

Observers in the region were pleased to hear Biden point to the need to “maintain NATO unity” when it came to arms supplies.

“This strongly suggests that it is not the U.S., but other influential NATO states, that are not convinced of the need to support Ukraine even more intensively,” Polish historian Lukasz Adamski of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw told VOA.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Zelenskyy’s trip only fueled the conflict.

“They say they may send Patriot there, fine, we will crack the Patriot, too,” Putin told reporters. He said the delivery of the battery “only drags out the conflict.”

In Ukraine, a country withstanding Russian aggression for more than 300 days, Zelenskyy’s Washington visit symbolizes the unbreakable relationship between two countries honed by the war.

It was very important for Ukrainians and Zelenskyy to convey the appreciation of the Ukrainian people for the unwavering support the U.S. showed to Ukraine during these difficult times, Ukrainian Mykola Davydiuk, a political analyst and director at Think Tank Politics, told VOA.

Illia Shvachko, 32, a computer specialist in Kyiv, told The Associated Press, “It’s an historical visit, the first one since the war began. … Getting weapons helps.”

On his return from Washington, Zelenskyy stopped in Rzeszow, Poland, on Thursday and met with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Duda said on Twitter that the two leaders had discussed “strategic plans for actions and cooperation in the upcoming 2023.”

Zelenskyy said he told Duda “about what I heard in the United States, about our strategic vision for the next year.”

Despite Putin’s assessment that the U.S. delivery of a Patriot missile battery would extend the conflict, he said Russia was ready for talks with Ukraine on ending the conflict.

“One way or another, all armed conflicts end with talks,” Putin said. “The sooner this understanding comes to those who oppose us, the better. We never rejected the talks.

“We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner, the better, of course,” he added.

The White House quickly countered Putin’s comments.

John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said Putin had “shown absolutely zero indication that he’s willing to negotiate” an end to the war that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

“Everything he [Putin] is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who wants to continue to visit violence upon the Ukrainian people [and] escalate the war,” Kirby told reporters, according to Reuters.

Shipment from North Korea

Also Thursday, Kirby said U.S. intelligence officers had determined that North Korea completed an initial shipment of arms, including rockets and missiles, to a private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, last month. The action was seen as a sign of the group’s expanding role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The British government also condemned the shipment.

Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said no effort had been made for North Korea to supply weapons to Russia and dismissed the talk as “gossip and speculation,” Reuters reported.

The Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment. North Korea’s foreign ministry denied the reports, calling them groundless.

Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

US Says Russia’s Wagner Group Bought North Korean Weapons for Ukraine War

The Wagner Group, the private Russian military company, took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, a sign of the group’s expanding role in that conflict, the White House said on Thursday.

Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the assertion as “gossip and speculation.”

John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said Wagner was searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine.

“We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for that equipment. Last month, North Korea delivered infantry rockets and missiles into Russia for use by Wagner,” he told reporters.

The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 after Russia seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and sparked a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

The United States estimates that Wagner has 50,000 personnel deployed in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts recruited from Russian prisons, Kirby said.

Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Kirby had a habit of making statements based on conjecture.

“Everyone knows that North Korea has not been supplying any weapons to Russia for a long time. And no such efforts have even been made,” he said in a statement.

“Therefore, the supply of weapons from North Korea is nothing but gossip and speculation.”

The U.S. assessment is that the amount of material delivered by North Korea will not change the battlefield dynamics, but that more military equipment is expected to be delivered by Pyongyang.

In November, after the White House said Pyongyang was covertly supplying Russia with a “significant” number of artillery shells, North Korea said it had never had arms dealings with Russia and had no plans to do so.

The Russian and North Korean U.N. missions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The United States accused Pyongyang and Moscow of violating U.N. sanctions on North Korea and will share its information with the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement.

Pyongyang has built ballistic missiles capable of striking almost anywhere on Earth, weapons experts say, as well as shorter-range weapons.

Kirby said Putin has increasingly turned to the Wagner Group for help in Ukraine, where Russian forces have stumbled. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the group, accusing it of clandestine operations on the Kremlin’s behalf.

Putin has said the group does not represent Russia, but that private military contractors have the right to work anywhere in the world as long as they do not break Russian law.

Sanctions on Wagner

The Biden administration on Wednesday unveiled new curbs on technology exports to the Wagner Group. More sanctions are coming in the weeks ahead against the company and its support group in countries around the world, Kirby said.

Prigozhin is spending more than $100 million per month to fund Wagner’s operations in Ukraine, but has encountered problems recruiting Russians to fight there, Kirby said.

The Wagner Group, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other countries.

U.S. intelligence indicates Wagner has played a major role in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and has suffered heavy casualties there with about 1,000 Wagner fighters killed in recent weeks, Kirby said.

Inside Russia, Prigozhin’s influence is expanding, and his group’s independence from the Russian Defense Ministry “has only increased and elevated over the course of the 10 months of this war,” Kirby said, without providing evidence.

Kirby said that in some instances, Russian military officials in Ukraine were subordinate to Wagner forces.

In addition, Prigozhin has criticized Russian generals and defense officials for their performance since the invasion.

Zelenskyy’s Surprise Visit to DC Was Months in the Making

The idea of a daring wartime trip by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington had percolated for some time before the surprise visit was revealed just hours ahead of the Ukrainian president’s arrival.

During an October summit in Zagreb, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed with her counterpart in the Ukrainian parliament the prospect of Zelenskyy addressing the U.S. Congress. Similarly, Biden administration officials had for months talked with Ukraine about a Zelenskyy visit to the White House, hoping for one before year’s end to send an unmistakable signal of support ahead of a brutal winter that could deepen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault.

In previous calls, Zelenskyy had indicated to President Joe Biden and other senior officials that the United States was the first country he wanted to visit when the time was right for him to travel, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the conversations. So, in a December 11 phone call between the two leaders, Biden reiterated the invitation.

This time, Zelenskyy told Biden, was the right time.

“I really wanted to come earlier. Mr. President knows about it, but I couldn’t do it because the situation was so difficult,” Zelenskyy said from the Oval Office on Wednesday. The trip could happen now, the Ukrainian leader said, because “we controlled the situation and … first of all, because of your support.”

Ensuring a swift, safe journey

The behind-the-scenes details of Zelenskyy’s surprise visit to Washington were described by an aide to Pelosi, a U.S. official and a senior administration official, all of whom requested anonymity to describe planning for the secret trip. Once the wheels of planning started to roll, Zelenskyy’s 10-hour visit — which packed in an Oval Office meeting with Biden, a joint news conference at the White House and an address to a largely supportive Congress — came together quickly.

What came about Wednesday was an elaborately executed plan by U.S. and Ukrainian officials to swiftly and safely route Zelenskyy to Washington, his first known trip outside the country’s borders since Russia’s invasion in February.

The Ukrainian president crossed into Poland early Wednesday, according to Poland’s private broadcaster, TVN24, arriving at a train station in Przemysl, a border town and the arrival point for many refugees fleeing the war. Accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, Zelenskyy was transported in a U.S. Embassy vehicle to an airport in Rzeszow, where he boarded a nonstop flight that landed at Joint Base Andrews shortly after noon Wednesday.

Carrying Zelenskyy to Andrews was a U.S. Air Force jet — a government plane typically used for Cabinet secretaries and other dignitaries below the president and vice president. The White House didn’t publicly announce the impending Zelenskyy visit until 1 a.m. Wednesday — waiting until they felt Zelenskyy was safely out of Ukraine.

Once Zelenskyy landed, Secret Service protection kicked in, as is typically done for visiting heads of state.

Paving the way

The senior administration official said the U.S. consulted closely with Zelenskyy on his security, and that the Ukrainian president felt it was sufficient for him to travel to the United States briefly.

Meanwhile, Pelosi had been planting the seeds for months for a Zelenskyy address to Congress.

She had been at the Zagreb summit in October at the invitation of Zelenskyy and Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament. There, Zelenskyy spoke to the audience of “the importance of the free world’s unshakable solidarity with Ukraine” — an address that Pelosi emphasized in her invitation to the Ukrainian president.

The U.S. House speaker returned from Croatia and began discussing the idea of a Zelenskyy address, informing other congressional leaders — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — about her conversations abroad and asking for their support for the Ukrainian leader to come to the Capitol.

On Wednesday, Pelosi — just days away from handing over her gavel to Republican control — welcomed Zelenskyy to the Capitol, which she called a “profound privilege” and a “great pride,” coming at a moment when Capitol Hill is about to greenlight an additional $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine.

Before he left Ukraine, there were clues in Zelenskyy’s own words that a surprise trip abroad could be in the works.

In a visit Tuesday to Bakhmut, located in Ukraine’s contested Donetsk province, Zelenskyy was handed a Ukrainian flag. He pledged then that he would pass on the flag “from the boys to the Congress, to the president of the United States.”

Standing before the U.S. Congress on Wednesday night, Zelenskyy produced the flag — covered in signatures by Ukrainian troops battling on the front lines.

“They asked me to bring this flag to you, to the U.S. Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people,” Zelenskyy said in his final words to lawmakers. “So let these decisions be taken. Let this flag stay with you. Ladies and gentlemen, this flag is a symbol of our victory in this war.”

France Planning AI-Assisted Crowd Control for Paris Olympics

French authorities plan to use an AI-assisted crowd control system to monitor people during the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Thursday.

The system is intended to allow the security services to detect disturbances and potential problems more easily, but will not use facial recognition technology, the bill says.

The technology could be particularly useful during the highly ambitious open-air opening ceremony  with Olympians sailing down the river Seine in front of a crowd of 600,000 people.

French police and sports authorities faced severe criticism in May after shambolic scenes during the Champions League final in Paris when football fans were caught in a crowd crush and teargassed.

The draft law, which was presented to the cabinet on Thursday, proposes other security measures including the use of full-body scanners and increases the sentences for hooliganism.

Organizers and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin have both argued in favor of using so-called “intelligent” security camera software that scans images for suspect or dangerous behavior.

The use of such a system during the Olympics is an “experimentation”, the draft law says, but could be applied for future public events which face terrorism-related or crowd control risks.

“No biometric data is used, nor facial recognition technology and it does not enable any link or interconnection or automatic flagging with any other personal data system,” the bill states.

The games’ organizing committee said on November 21 that it needed to lift its budget estimate by 10 per cent from 3.98 billion euros to 4.48bn euros, partly as a result of inflation.

Rather than opening the games in an athletics stadium as is customary, organizers have planned a ceremony on July 26, 2024 with a flotilla of some 200 boats sailing down the river Seine.

The banks of the river can accommodate 100,000 people who will have to buy tickets, while another 500,000 are set to watch for free from the street level, according to government estimates.

The draft law is expected to be debated in parliament in January where the minority government of President Emmanuel Macron will need support from opposition groups to pass it.

Germany Arrests Foreign Intelligence Employee Suspected of Spying for Russia

Germany arrested a foreign intelligence service agent on Wednesday on suspicion of sharing state secrets with Russia this year, raiding his home and workplace as well as that of another person.

“The accused is suspected of state treason,” the federal prosecutors’ office said in a statement. “In 2022, he shared information that he came by in the course of his work with a Russian intelligence agency. The content is considered a state secret.”

The federal intelligence service (BND) had started its own internal investigation as soon as it became aware of the possibility of treason within its own ranks, BND head Bruno Kahl said. When these suspicions hardened up, it called in federal prosecutors.

Discretion was key going forwards, as any detail of the investigation that was made public could give the “opponent an advantage in its intent to harm Germany,” he said.

“With Russia, we are dealing with an actor where we must reckon with its ruthlessness and willingness to be violent.”

Senate Confirms New US Ambassador to Russia 

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to confirm the new U.S. ambassador to Russia.

Hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington for a historic visit, senators voted to 93-2 to confirm veteran diplomat Lynne M. Tracy as the new ambassador to Russia. Some viewed it as a signal of the American commitment to war-torn Ukraine as it confronts the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the chamber’s session by saying that Wednesday’s passage of a fresh $45 billion military aid package for Ukraine and confirmation of the new U.S. ambassador to Russia would send a strong signal that Americans stand “unequivocally” with the Ukrainian people.

Tracy, a career member of the Foreign Service who previously served as ambassador to Armenia, “will be tasked with standing up to Putin,” Schumer said. The only two votes against Tracy came from GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both of whom have been skeptical of the administration’s support for Ukraine.

Tracy will oversee an embassy in Moscow that has been decimated in terms of staffing as U.S.-Russia ties have plummeted over the war in Ukraine along with several long-standing and unrelated diplomatic disputes over personnel and facilities and compounded by disagreements over arms control.

Tracy, who speaks Russian, previously served as a senior adviser for Russian affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She also held several posts in Central and South Asia.

The previous U.S. ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, left Russia in early September in a departure that had been expected but was accelerated by the failing health of his wife, who died a day after his return to the United States.

Tracy is well-regarded within diplomatic circles and received a State Department heroism award from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009.

While leading the U.S. consulate in Peshawar in Pakistan’s insurgency-ridden border regions, Tracy survived an attack on her by a gunman that left her vehicle riddled with bullets, but insisted on going to work that day and staying on post, even as security concerns compelled the consulate to trim its staff.

Tracy also received the State Department’s distinguished honor award for her work as the embassy deputy in Moscow.

Spain’s Constitutional Crisis Raises Concerns Over Polarization

Spain was plunged into an unprecedented constitutional crisis this month after judges blocked a law for the first time since the return of democracy.  

This young democracy was facing its first major upheaval since the illegal Catalan independence referendum in 2017 caused the deepest political crisis in decades.  

Growing political polarization ahead of elections next year meant Spain was embroiled in the same problems which have beset the United States and Britain, observers said.   

Lawmakers last week approved a government bill to change how the judiciary’s governing council, known as General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), operates, paving the way for the leftist government’s two nominees to get onto the Constitutional Court. 

But judges in the Constitutional Court Monday voted by six votes to five to grant an order sought by the opposition People’s Party (PP) which paralyzed the bill. The PP had argued that the way the law had been framed was not legal.   

Legislative process interrupted 

It is the first time the legislative process has been interrupted by the court since Spain returned to democracy in 1978, three years after the death of longtime ruler General Francisco Franco.   

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he respected the court’s ruling but was determined to push through a change to alter the way the CGPJ is made up. He did not specify what this would be. 

“These events are unprecedented in the democratic history of our country but also in the history of any other country in the European institutional area,” he said Tuesday.  

Opposition parties countered that the government had tried to rush through emergency reforms of an institution which was key to the country’s democracy.  

“Sanchez and his supporters are presenting this as an attack on parliament (but) it’s actually a defense,” said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the PP leader.  

Known as Spain’s legal watchdog, the CGPJ has 20 members made up of 12 judges and eight lawyers, who are elected by both chambers of the Spanish parliament.  

The mandates of one-third of the constitutional court’s judges, three conservatives and one liberal, have expired. Political disagreements over their replacements have dragged on for four years as the main political parties cannot agree on how this should take place.  

The government’s proposed reforms would have renewed the mandates of the four members of the constitutional court in a move which Sanchez said was necessary to end the deadlock and free up a court system which was hamstrung because of the dispute.   

However, the PP accused the government of trying to fill the courts with leftist allies and it argues that judges, not politicians, should vote on new judges.  

Concern in the region 

The stalemate over a key body controlling the judiciary has prompted criticism from the European Commission, or EC. The commission has urged Spain to find a solution because it believes a key democratic institution has been damaged.  

The bill passed last week also seeks to lower jail terms for crimes of sedition and misuse of public funds. Opponents in the PP and far-right Vox party claim this will benefit the leaders of Catalan separatist parties who backed a failed independence declaration in 2017. 

Sanchez relies on the votes of the separatist Catalan Esquerra Republicana (ERC) party to pass legislation and may depend on the party at next year’s election.  

Last year, the Spanish prime minister pardoned nine Catalan separatists for their role in the illegal referendum which caused the deepest crisis in Spain for decades.  

Camino Mortera, of the Center for European Reform, a research institution, said the Spanish government’s attempts to interfere in the composition of the judiciary had worrying overtones of events in Poland and Hungary. 

Warsaw and Budapest have muzzled the independent judiciary in moves which have concerned the European Commission and civil rights groups. 

“Given what is happening with Poland and Hungary, just a mere suspicion that a government is trying to intervene in any way in the composition of a court through emergency legislation raises suspicions,” she told VOA.  

She said Brussels has been concerned that after the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have tried to use emergency legislation to make important changes, as happened in Spain over the constitutional court. 

Growing polarization 

“Polarization in Spain is very worrying. This has happened in other countries. I am talking about the U.S. and the U.K. It worries me because we are not a country that deals with drama well,” she said.  

“When (this translates) to the political world, you have (the far-right) Vox and (far-left) Podemos. I worry what is going to happen if the Socialist government loses the next election. Feijoo is a calming figure, but I don’t think he will be able to govern on his own. The most radical thing you can be in Spain is to be centrist and moderate.”   

Polls have shown that the PP is expected to win the election, but Feijoo will not be able to govern without the help of Vox.   

Pablo Simon, a political expert at the University Carlos III in Madrid, said the fallout from the clash between parliament and the court showed how fractured Spain’s political life had become.  

“Polarization is damaging the democracy in Spain as is happening in the U.S.,” he told VOA.   

Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse.

Russia Criticizes Zelenskky’s US Visit

Russia said Thursday there were no signs of readiness for peace from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington. 

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Zelenskyy for talks at the White House and later the Ukrainian leader addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, where he said Ukraine “will never surrender” in its battle against the invasion Russia launched 10 months ago. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Zelenskyy’s visit showed the United States is fighting an indirect war against Russia. 

The United States has provided extensive military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and on Wednesday announced a new package that includes Patriot air defense missiles.  Zelenskyy said the more advanced system will help Ukraine deal with Russian missile attacks that have hit his country’s cities and critical infrastructure. 

Peskov said the Patriot missiles will not help resolve the conflict nor deter Russia from its goals.   

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters .

Alleged Kingpin Dubbed ‘Asia’s El Chapo’ Extradited to Australia

The alleged boss of Asia’s biggest crime syndicate and one of the world’s most wanted men has been extradited to Australia and arrested on drug trafficking charges, police said Thursday.    

Chinese-born Canadian Tse Chi Lop, 59, is suspected of being the leader of an Asian mega-cartel known as Sam Gor, a major global producer and supplier of methamphetamines.   

He is expected to appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court Thursday to answer a charge of “conspiracy to traffic commercial quantities of controlled drugs” after being extradited from the Netherlands.    

 

Tse, dubbed Asia’s “El Chapo” in reference to Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman’s nickname, faces life imprisonment if convicted.    

Australian police hailed it as “one of the most high-profile arrests in the history” of the country.   

The Sam Gor organization — or “The Company” — is believed to launder billions in drug money through casinos, hotels and real estate in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region.    

Tse was detained at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in January 2021 after a decade-long hunt.   

He had been the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.    

Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Krissy Barrett said the arrest came after a “very complex investigation.”    

“We allege this male is the head of a large transnational organized crime syndicate,” she said.    

“By their very nature, these very senior figures within the syndicates obviously deliberately stay hands-off in terms of the business dealings.”   

“That’s why it’s such a significant arrest and why it has taken a fair amount of time.”    

Australian police said that the charges relate to a specific 2012-2013 operation transferring drugs from Melbourne to Sydney.    

A police sting at the time nabbed 27 people and netted 20 kilos of methamphetamine with a current street value of around $3 million.    

A second man has also been arrested after being extradited from Thailand.    

“The hard work of investigators, and the (Australian Federal Police) international network, has enabled these alleged offenders to be charged and face the justice system in Australia,” said Barrett.  

Zelenskyy Follows in Churchill’s Footsteps — to a Point

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday addressed the U.S. Congress as a wartime leader appealing for American support, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did more than 80 years before. 

Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington, much like Churchill’s in December 1941, came with his country under relentless attack and international aid essential to its ability to fight on. 

“Ukraine holds its lines and will never surrender,” Zelenskyy told Congress, echoing one of Churchill’s most famous phrases and earning a standing ovation. 

Zelenskyy earlier this year channeled Churchill in a video address to Britain’s House of Commons, pledging to “fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.” 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had told Zelensky “that where Winston Churchill stood generations ago, so too does he tonight not just as a president but as an ambassador for freedom itself.” 

The comparison between Churchill’s and Zelensky’s trips to the United States has its limits, however, including in the length of the Ukrainian leader’s stay. 

Churchill spent three weeks in Washington at the invitation of President Franklin Roosevelt, a lengthy visit that historians say wore on the nerves of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who did not enjoy the two men’s late-night cigar- and brandy-fueled conversations. 

Zelenskyy’s trip lasted only a few hours and included a meeting in the Oval Office, a joint press conference with President Joe Biden, and the speech to Congress. 

Churchill ventured across the Atlantic by ship despite the threat of submarines, while Zelenskyy made the journey via aircraft. 

When Churchill arrived in the United States, he found a country shaken by the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor and drawn into an international conflict it had sought to avoid. 

While Biden is willing to be compared to Roosevelt for his ambitious economic reforms, he does not want to be drawn into a third world war, making clear that he will not send troops to Ukraine, nor even certain types of weapons, in a bid to avoid escalation.

Americans ‘Have Stood Proudly’ With Ukrainians, Biden Tells Zelenskyy

U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House Wednesday, marking Zelenskyy’s first known visit outside Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion of the country in February.

“Ukrainian people continue to inspire the world,” Biden said. “Not just inspire us, but inspire the world, with their courage and how they chose their resilience and resolve for their future.”

The American people “have stood proudly” with Ukrainians, he said.

“Democrats and Republicans together with our allies in Europe and Japan and other places, to make sure you have the financial, humanitarian and security assistance that is needed,” Biden said, noting that it has been 300 days since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “brutal assault on Ukraine’s right to exist as a nation.”

Zelenskyy, who spoke in English, extended to Biden his appreciation for the bipartisan support “from my heart, the hearts of Ukrainians, all Ukrainians.”

“Thanks, from our just ordinary people, to your ordinary people, Americans,” he said.

Zelenskyy also gave Biden a Cross for Military Merit medal that belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, a captain of a HIMARS battery provided by the U.S. The soldier had asked Zelenskyy to give it to the “very brave president.” Accepting the medal, Biden said it was “undeserved, but much appreciated.”

Later, during a joint press conference, Zelenskyy thanked “the people of America. People who do so much for Ukraine. I am thankful for all of that.”

He also thanked Biden for the new package of aid, including a Patriot battery system, saying it “will strengthen our air defense significantly. This is a very important step to create secure airspace for Ukraine,” preventing Russia from attacking “our energy sector, our people and our infrastructure.”

In a briefing to reporters Tuesday evening, a senior administration official said Zelenskyy’s visit carries a symbolic importance, providing an opportunity to “underscore the United States’ enduring commitment to Ukraine.”

“This is about sending a message to Putin and sending a message to the world that America will be there for Ukraine for as long as it takes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as is customary for such briefings.

“President Putin badly miscalculated the beginning of this conflict when he presumed that the Ukrainian people would yield and that NATO would be disunited. He was wrong on both those counts. He remains wrong about our staying power. And that’s what this visit will demonstrate.”

The trip comes as U.S. lawmakers are debating another $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, which would bring the total American wartime assistance to more than $100 billion. Zelenskyy was set to speak before a joint meeting of Congress later Wednesday.

“Zelenskyy may want to make a strong public case for U.S. support at a time when some Republicans and some progressives in the House have expressed skepticism about aid to Ukraine,” said William Courtney, adjunct senior fellow at RAND.

A recent Chicago Council poll finds that 65% of Americans continue to support U.S. assistance to Ukraine. And 48% say the U.S. should support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” while 47% want Washington to urge Kyiv to settle for peace as soon as possible.

While Zelenskyy is not known to have left Ukraine since the invasion began in February, he has made visits outside of the capital, Kyiv, including going Tuesday to the eastern city of Bakhmut, where his forces have been engaged in heavy fighting. He made a stop in Poland on the way to Washington.

Patriot missile defense

As Zelenskyy touched down on U.S. soil, the U.S. Department of Defense announced $1.85 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine, which includes a Patriot air defense battery and munitions, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), missiles, artillery and other munitions. It’s the 28th such drawdown of equipment Biden has authorized since August 2021.

“This $1 billion drawdown will provide Ukraine with expanded air defense and precision-strike capabilities, as well as additional munitions and critical equipment that Ukraine is using so effectively to defend itself on the battlefield,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Blinken said the U.S. is also announcing an additional $850 million of security assistance, bringing the total to an unprecedented $21.9 billion since the beginning of the administration.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly urged the U.S. and others to provide air defense systems that could help Ukraine deal with missile and drone attacks by Russian forces that have hit cities across the country and battered its infrastructure.

The senior administration official said Ukrainian forces will be trained on how to use the Patriot system in a third country, adding that the process “will take some time.”

“Ukrainian soldiers are the fastest I’ve ever seen at learning new technology. They’ll do it somewhere in Germany, or Poland, I’m imagining,” said retired commanding general, United States Army Europe Ben Hodges in an interview with VOA Ukrainian.

The Patriot, designed to protect a limited area is “the best in the world for its purpose,” Hodges said, “to knock down cruise missiles, and advanced aircrafts” but is “not a silver bullet.”

At the joint press conference later Wednesday, when asked why Ukraine couldn’t be given all the weapons capabilities it was asking for, Biden said the U.S. was giving Ukraine what it needed to be able to defend itself and succeed on the battlefield.

“The idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than what is already going there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world,” he said.

Biden said he had spent “several hundred hours” with European allies to urge them to continue to support Ukraine.

“They understand it fully, but they’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war,” he said.

No peace talks

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that new weapons deliveries to Ukraine would deepen the conflict, and that Russia saw no chance of peace talks with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy, asked to define what a “just peace” meant to him during the joint press conference, said it meant “no compromises” to the “sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity” of Ukraine.  

A pessimistic message on peace prospects is also coming out of the White House. Moscow has shown no intention in engaging in serious negotiations and Biden will not push for Ukraine to negotiate an ending to the war Russia started, said the senior administration official.

The official said Biden would instead “work with Congress and with our allies to put Ukraine in the best possible position on the battlefield, so that when the time is right they are in the best possible position at the negotiating table.”

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Nepal Court to Release Serial Killer Charles ‘The Serpent’ Sobhraj

Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release, due to his age, of Charles Sobhraj, a French national known as “the serpent” who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sobhraj, 78, has been linked to the murders of over 20 young Western backpackers across Asia, usually by drugging their food or drink. He had completed 19 years of his 20-year sentence.

Known as the “bikini killer,” Thailand issued a warrant for his arrest in the mid-1970s on charges of drugging and killing six women, all wearing bikinis, on a beach at Pattaya.

He was also called “the serpent” because of his ability to disguise himself following his escape from a prison in India in the mid-1980s, where he was serving 21 years on murder charges. He was later caught and jailed there until 1997.

Last year, the BBC and Netflix NFLX.O jointly produced a TV series dramatizing his crimes called “The Serpent.”

Sobhraj returned to France after his release from India and in 2003 was arrested from a casino in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and later charged there for murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich. He has been held in a high-security jail in Kathmandu since 2003.

On Wednesday, Supreme Court judges Sapana Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha ordered that Sobhraj be freed and deported from Nepal, after 19 years in prison.

“The court has ordered that if there is no other reason to keep him in jail, he should be released and sent back to his country within 15 days,” the Supreme Court’s spokesperson Bimal Paudel said.

Convicts sentenced to life imprisonment in Nepal usually serve 20 years in jail.

“He had already served 95% of his jail term and should have [been] released earlier due to his age,” Sobhraj’s laywer Ram Bandhu Sharma said, adding that Sobhraj could be released from prison by Thursday.

Drug Kingpin Trial ‘Ultimate Test’ for Dutch Rule of Law

With shootings and threats against a princess and the prime minister it sounds like a crime drama, but for the Dutch the growing menace from drug cartels is all too real.

The top-security trial of one alleged cocaine cartel leader, Ridouan Taghi, has captivated the Netherlands in recent months and shone a light on the shadowy “Mocro Maffia.”

The busting of a Dubai-based “super cartel” linked to Taghi, which used the Dutch port of Rotterdam as a hub, has further reinforced fears the liberal country could become a so-called narco-state.

Despite being behind bars in an ultra-secure prison, Taghi has been accused of pulling the strings of what prosecutors call his “killing machine” with secret messages to henchmen outside.

Commentators say the “Marengo” trial, named after a judicial codeword for the operation that saw Taghi charged with 16 others, is unprecedented for the Netherlands.

“The consequence of the Marengo trial, and the violence that was committed afterwards, that has simply caused a huge shock,” Jan Meeus, a Dutch journalist specializing in criminal matters, told AFP.

Speaking after a recent hearing, he described it as “the ultimate test of the Dutch judicial system of the rule of law.”

Extreme violence

Three people linked to a key prosecution witness in the trial, Nabil B., have already been killed in scenes that shocked the Netherlands.

His brother was murdered in 2018, his lawyer Derk Wiersum was shot dead outside his house in 2019, and the prominent Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries was killed in 2021.

Shot dead in broad daylight in central Amsterdam as he left a television studio, de Vries had said he was on the hit list of Taghi, who was arrested in Dubai in 2019.

The army is guarding the “Bunker” in Amsterdam, where Taghi is on trial, in a first for the Netherlands. Judges and prosecutors arrive for hearings inside armored cars.

Plans to spring Taghi from prison using “extreme violence” were uncovered, said Meeus. Taghi’s cousin and one of his lawyers are accused of helping him communicate with the outside world.

“The democratic rule of law is shaken and under pressure from organized crime,” Wim de Bruin, a spokesperson for the national prosecutor’s office, told AFP.

The threat has touched top levels of Dutch society.

Crown Princess Amalia, the daughter of King Willem-Alexander, was recently forced to give up plans to live in student accommodations for security reasons.

Both the 19-year-old royal and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were mentioned in messages by organized crime groups, raising fears of plans to kidnap or attack them, Dutch media reported.

Dogs

Prosecutors say the gangsters have “no respect for human life,” with members calling their victims “dogs” who must “sleep.”

Nicknamed “Mocro Maffia” because many are of Moroccan descent, the gang is notorious for both the youth and the merciless violence of its members.

The violence has forced Dutch authorities to confront their own naivety about the level of organized crime in the country, a parallel economy worth several billion dollars.

The main Dutch police union, the NPB, has sounded the alarm for several years, with its president, Jan Struijs, warning some years ago it was slowly becoming a narco-state.

Struijs told AFP that the Netherlands’ lenient policy on soft drugs was to blame.

The consumption and sale of cannabis have been decriminalized in the country, but the rest of the supply chain that stocks famed Dutch “coffeeshops” remains illegal, with gangs muscling in on them.

Tax paradise

But Marijn Schrijver, co-author of the bestselling book Mocro Maffia said that while the Netherlands’ neighbors like to blame its lax soft drug policies, “that is not the reason.”

“What we are is a tax paradise. We want to import as much as possible into the ports to transport it again, and that makes the Netherlands the perfect place logistically,” Schrijver told AFP.

The recent dismantling in Dubai of the “super-cartel,” which allegedly provided about one third of Europe’s cocaine, indicates that the kingpins may be moving out of the Netherlands.

A Taghi-linked Dutch “big fish” arrested in the Gulf emirate had reportedly formed an alliance with the leaders of Irish and Italian drug gangs.

Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth said the “fluid and creative” networks now collaborate and have their “kingpins sitting outside of the EU jurisdiction.”

“It’s not one group against the other anymore, which makes it extremely dangerous,” he told AFP.

Ukraine Prepares for Possible Military Offensive From Belarus

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Belarus Monday in what some see as an attempt to pressure dictator Alexander Lukashenko into joining a ground offensive. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports from the Ukrainian-Belarusian border with videographer Eugene Shynkar.