Moscow pressed the West on Thursday to lift sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, seeking to shift the blame for a growing food crisis that has been worsened by Kyiv’s inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the conflict.

Britain immediately accused Russia of “trying to hold the world to ransom,” insisting there would be no sanctions relief, and a top U.S. diplomat blasted the “sheer barbarity, sadistic cruelty and lawlessness” of the invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Moscow “is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizer on the condition that politically motivated restrictions imposed by the West are lifted,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call.

Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but the war and a Russian blockade of its ports has halted much of that flow, endangering world food supplies. Many of those ports are now also heavily mined.

Russia also is a significant grain exporter, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said the West “must cancel the unlawful decisions that hamper chartering ships and exporting grain.” His comments appeared to be an effort to lump the blockade of Ukrainian exports with what Russia says are its difficulties in moving its own goods.

Western officials have dismissed those claims. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted last week that food, fertilizer and seeds are exempt from sanctions imposed by the U.S. and many others — and that Washington is working to ensure countries know the flow of those goods should not be affected.

With the war grinding into its fourth month, world leaders have ramped up calls for solutions. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said about 25 million tons of Ukrainian grain is in storage and another 25 million tons could be harvested next month.

European countries have tried to ease the crisis by moving grain out of the country by rail — but trains can carry only a small fraction of what Ukraine produces, and ships are needed for the bulk of the exports.

At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry proposed corridors to allow foreign ships to leave ports along the Black Sea, as well as Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

Mikhail Mizintsev, who heads Russia’s National Defense Control Center, said 70 foreign vessels from 16 countries are in six ports on the Black Sea, including Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv. He did not specify how many might be ready to carry food.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country was ready to agree on safe corridors in principle — but that it was not sure it could trust that Russia “will not violate the agreement on the safe passage and its military vessels will not sneak into the harbor and attack Odesa.”

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Putin was “trying to hold the world to ransom” by demanding some sanctions be lifted before allowing Ukrainian grain shipments to resume.

“He’s essentially weaponized hunger and lack of food among the poorest people around the world,” Truss said on a visit to Sarajevo. “What we cannot have is any lifting of sanctions, any appeasement, which will simply make Putin stronger in the longer term.”

Putin said “it’s impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world” to isolate Russia. Speaking via video to members of the Eurasian Economic Forum, which is comprised of several ex-Soviet nations, he said those who try would “primarily hurt themselves,” citing broken food supply chains.

Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, urged its members to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself against Putin’s “revanchist delusions.”

If Russia achieved “success” in Ukraine, “there would be more horrific reports from filtration camps, more forcibly displaced people, more summary executions, more torture, more rape and more looting,” Carpenter said in Vienna. 
…

The reign of new Islamic State terror group leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi may be over, less than three months after it began. 

The Turkish website OdaTV first reported the arrest of Abu al-Hassan Thursday, saying Turkish police captured him without firing a single bullet during a raid on a house in Istanbul last week.  

The website further reported the IS leader was being questioned and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to formally announce the arrest and share additional details in the coming days. 

Separately, two senior Turkish officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrest to Bloomberg News, adding that Erdogan has been informed. 

U.S. officials, however, remained cautious. 

“[We] can’t confirm the reports about al-Qurashi,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Thursday. “Obviously we’ve been looking at this all day, but we’re just not in a position where we can actually confirm that press reporting.” 

IS named Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as the terror group’s third leader in March, saying he took over shortly after the death of his predecessor during a raid by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria in February. 

 IS followers quickly lined up behind the new leader, with the terror group’s media division sharing photos and videos of fighters from Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Philippines and elsewhere pledging their allegiance to Abu al-Hassan.  

Yet despite the show of support, there are still questions about the new leader’s true identity, which may be making it more difficult to verify Turkey’s claims. 

Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is a nom-de-guerre meant to indicate the new leader is a descendant of the Hashemite clan of the Qurashi tribe, which by bloodline would link him to Prophet Muhammed — an IS requirement for any would-be caliph. 

And so far, Western counterintelligence officials have yet to form a firm consensus about who is really leading IS. 

There are, however, several theories. 

New Lines Magazine in February identified Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaidai as next in line to lead the terror group. 

“Known by numerous noms de guerre, including Ustath Zaid (Teacher or Professor Zaid), Abu Khattab al-Iraqi, Abu al-Moez al-Iraqi and Abu Ishaq, he returned to Syria from Turkey about a year ago,” New Lines said, adding that al-Sumaidai had become increasingly popular in jihadist circles. 

But Iraqi and Western officials told Reuters in March that the new leader was actually Juma Awad al-Badri, the brother of former IS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 

Still, no matter who it is that Turkey ultimately captured, some analysts say as long as Turkish officials have a senior IS leader, it could help further weaken IS operations. 

“It could end up being an intelligence boon once he’s interrogated and questioned,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA. 

“We’ve long known that the organization’s financiers and logisticians had strong networks in Turkey, but now it seems like senior leadership is active there as well,” Clarke said.  

“A country like Turkey is a double-edged sword for groups like ISIS,” he added, using another acronym for the terror group.  

“On the one hand, Turkey has capable security forces,” Clarke said. “On the other hand, unlike a country like Afghanistan that is somewhat isolated, Turkey can serve as a safe haven for terrorists, and it’s connected to the illicit financial system, communications, [and] transportation.” 

 
…

China and Russia vetoed on Thursday a U.S.-led push to impose more U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its renewed ballistic missile launches, publicly splitting the Security Council for the first time since it started punishing Pyongyang in 2006.

The remaining 13 council members all voted in favor of the U.S.-drafted resolution that proposed banning tobacco and oil exports to North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong Un is a chain smoker. It would also blacklist the Lazarus hacking group, which the United States says is tied to North Korea.

The vote came a day after North Korea fired three missiles, including one thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile, following U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Asia. It was the latest in a string of ballistic missile launches this year, which are banned by the Security Council. 

Citing the council’s silence on North Korea, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said this month that “it is time to stop providing tacit permission and to start taking action.” 

Over the past 16 years the Security Council has steadily, and unanimously, stepped up sanctions to cut off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It last tightened sanctions on Pyongyang in 2017. 

Since then, China and Russia have been pushing for an easing of sanctions on humanitarian grounds. While they have delayed some action behind closed doors in the Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee, the vote on the resolution on Thursday was the first time they have publicly broken unanimity. 

Not ‘helpful’

“We do not think additional sanctions will be helpful in responding to the current situation. It can only make the situation even worse,” China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun told reporters earlier Thursday ahead of the vote. 

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told Reuters on Wednesday that he did not believe U.N. action would be “very conducive” to engagement with North Korea.

China has also been urging the United States to take action to entice Pyongyang to resume talks that have been stalled since 2019, after three failed summits between Kim and then-U.S. President Donald Trump. 

“The United States, as a direct party, should really take meaningful and practical actions to resume their dialog with DPRK [North Korea],” Zhang said, noting that included Washington lifting some unilateral sanctions. 

Pyongyang had put testing on hold during the past few years, but in the past few months has resumed long-range ballistic missile launches. The United States and South Korea have warned that North Korea is preparing for a seventh nuclear test.
…

Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine, already pushed back to near the Russian border, appeared Thursday to be launching a new counteroffensive as the three-month-old war morphed into what some Western officials described as a “scrap” with no end in sight.

Authorities in Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, said Russian shelling had killed at least seven civilians and wounded 17 others, while heavy fighting raged north and east of the city.

Witnesses in Kharkiv also reported hearing repeated explosions as Russian forces appeared to try to fortify positions north of the city.

Russian forces near Kharkiv had been steadily pushed from the city to close to the Russian border following a Ukrainian counteroffensive earlier this month. But officials said it appeared Moscow had decided to push back.

“It’s too early to relax,” said Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Synehubov. “The enemy is again insidiously hitting the civilian population, terrorizing them.”

Russian officials have not yet commented on the developments near Kharkiv, though the Russian military’s social media feeds touted continued success against Ukrainian forces, including in the Donbas region.

A senior U.S. defense official said Thursday that despite reports of increased fighting around Kharkiv, there had been “no major changes” on the ground.

“We still assess that Ukrainian forces have continued to push Russian forces further away [from the city],” the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence.

“It’s a range of a few kilometers to more than 10 kilometers within the Russian border,” the official added.

But in other parts of eastern Ukraine, Russia was able to make what the official described as “incremental gains,” including in the city of Popasna and in Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city under Ukrainian control.

“We believe that Russian forces have been able to seize most of northeastern Sievierodonetsk,” the U.S. defense official said. “But they haven’t been able to cut it completely off because the Ukrainians are still fighting over it.”

Ukrainian officials on Thursday acknowledged Russia was making a push to surround its troops fighting in the east with advances both on Sievierodonetsk and the nearby city of Lysychansk.

“Russia has the advantage, but we are doing everything we can,” General Oleksiy Gromov, with Ukraine’s general staff, told Reuters.

“It is clear that our boys are slowly retreating to more fortified positions — we need to hold back this horde,” added Luhansk province Governor Serhiy Gaidai.

In a show of support Thursday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin visited Kyiv, plus the towns of Irpin and Bucha, the scene of alleged Russian war crimes.

“We, Finland, support all the actions of the International Criminal Court to consider these crimes, collect evidence for future proceedings and convict Russia,” Marin said following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy, in a post on social media, thanked Finland for its support.

“Finland’s military assistance is very valuable,” he wrote. “Weapons, sanctions policy and the unity of our partners in the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the EU — this is what can provide strength in the defense of our land.”

Despite the back-and-forth nature of the fighting and Russia’s superior numbers, Western officials continue to laud Kyiv for mounting a stiff resistance and for making good use of security assistance that continues to pour into the country.

Ukraine’s military has likewise shared some optimism about its ability to counter Russian forces, claiming it has killed 29,600 Russian forces since the start of the February 24 invasion.

U.S. estimates of Russia’s material losses, shared Thursday, are slightly more conservative than those coming from Kyiv. But the senior U.S. defense official said Russia has lost about 1,000 tanks, almost 40 aircraft, more than 50 helicopters and 350 pieces of artillery.

The official declined to share any estimates on Russian casualties but said the losses have not been insignificant, though things have changed since the start of the war.

“The Russians lose soldiers every day, but it’s a different … number based on the kind of fighting we’re seeing,” the official said. “The fighting is now largely over smaller pieces of turf with smaller units.”

Russia’s military Thursday issued its own estimates of Ukraine’s losses, saying its forces had so far destroyed 179 planes, 127 helicopters, more than 1,000 drones, hundreds of anti-aircraft systems, and more than 1,600 Ukrainian artillery and mortar systems.

In the meantime, key Western leaders Thursday emphasized the need to continue backing Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “must not win his war, and I am convinced he will not win,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He also said Russia should not be allowed to dictate the terms of a peace agreement. 

“Ukraine will not accept this, and neither will we,” Scholz said.

Separately, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told the forum Ukraine was the “key for freedom in the world.”

“We’re defending not just our family and our children, we’re defending you, because we have the same values,” Klitschko said, adding that Russia would go as far as it was allowed to go.

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

Turkey‘s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pledging to return as many as one million Syrians amid growing public animosity against the refugees. Their presence is a potential political liability for Erdogan but as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, his plan for the refugees’ repatriation is already drawing criticism Producer: Rob Raffaele
…

Calling Ukraine the “key for freedom in the world,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged support Thursday for his country in the face of what he called “this senseless war” with Russia.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Klitschko said Ukraine is a peaceful country that was not aggressive to anyone, and that Ukrainians want to be “part of the European family” with a priority on human rights, press freedom and “democratic standards of life.”

He said the Russian government wants to rebuild the Soviet Union and would not stop with a takeover of Ukraine.

“We’re defending not just our family and our children, we’re defending you because we have the same values,” Klitschko said, adding that Russia will go as far as it is allowed to go.

He thanked those who have supported Ukraine politically, economically and by sending weapons, and those who have taken in Ukrainians refugees.

Noting that it has been more than 90 days since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Klitschko said it feels to him like “one long, long day.”

In an address late Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the idea of ceding parts of Ukraine to Russia to reach a peace agreement.

Zelenskyy said those who make such suggestions disregard “the millions of those who actually live on the territory that they propose exchanging for an illusion of peace.”

“We always have to think of the people and remember that values are not just words,” he said.

Fighting in recent weeks has been focused in the eastern Donbas region where Russia has been trying to seize control after failing to topple Zelenskyy or capture Kyiv.

The Ukrainian governor of the eastern region of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, described the situation around the industrial hub of Severodonetsk as “very difficult” and said there was “already fighting on the outskirts.”

“Russian troops have advanced far enough that they can already fire mortars” on the city, he said.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin issued an order that would fast-track Russian citizenship to people living in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. There is already a program to fast-track citizenship for people living in the Donbas.

Meanwhile, the European Union, Britain and the United States announced the creation of what they called the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group to coordinate with Ukraine on investigations of possible Russian war crimes during the three months of fighting.

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

For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

1 a.m.: Russian troops continue to attack eastern Ukraine, reports The Guardian. Ukrainian military, says the report, say 40 towns in the Donbas region are under fire. 

12:02 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that Russia has promised to allow foreign ships to leave ports in the Black Sea. A defense ministry official says 70 foreign vessels from 16 countries are currently in six ports in the Black Sea.
…

Piano music wafted from an apartment block on a recent spring evening in Kramatorsk, blending with distant artillery fire for a surreal soundtrack to a bomb-scarred neighborhood in the eastern Ukrainian city.

Everywhere in Ukraine, the 3-month-old war never seems to be far away.

Those in towns and villages near the front lines hide in basements from constant shelling, struggling to survive with no electricity or gas — and often no running water.

But even in regions out of the range of the heavy guns, frequent air raid sirens wail as a constant reminder that a Russian missile can strike at any time — even for those walking their dogs, riding their bicycles and taking their children to parks in cities like Kyiv, Odesa and Lviv.

Curfews, checkpoints and fortifications are commonplace. So are fresh cemeteries, uprooted villagers and war-scarred landscapes, as Moscow intensifies its attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“City residents are trying to return to regular life, but with every step, they stumble upon either a crater or a ruined house or a grave in the yard,” said Andriy Pustovoi, speaking by phone to The Associated Press from the northern city of Chernihiv. “No one is cooking food over a bonfire or drinking water from a river anymore, but there’s a long way to go to a normal life.”

Chernihiv was in the way of Russian forces as they advanced toward Kyiv early in the war. It was heavily bombarded, and Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko said about half of its buildings were damaged or destroyed. At least 700 residents were killed, and part of a city park now holds a cemetery, where some of them are buried.

Its streets are mostly empty now, half of the shops have not reopened and public transportation is not working properly, said Pustovoi, a 37-year-old engineer.

Rail service to Kyiv was only restored this month, but people who fled are in no rush to return.

“The scariest thing is that neighboring Russia and Belarus are not going away from Chernihiv, which means that some of the residents that left when the war started may not come back,” Atroshenko said sadly.

Few people are seen on the streets of Kramatorsk, where storefront windows are boarded up or protected by sandbags, and it’s no wonder.

The eastern city has been hit several times, with the deadliest attack April 8, when a missile struck near its train station where about 4,000 people had gathered to be evacuated before fighting intensified. In an instant, the plaza was turned into a scene of horror, with bodies lying on bloodstained pavement amid discarded luggage. A total of 57 people were killed, and more than 100 wounded.

Kramatorsk is one of the largest in the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that has not been taken over by Russian forces. The region has been the site of battles between Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces since 2014.

Elsewhere in the Donbas, the picture is even bleaker.

Ryisa Rybalko fled the village of Novomykhailivka, where she had been living first in a basement and then a bomb shelter at a school because of frequent shelling.

“We haven’t been able to see the sun for three months. We are almost blind because we were in darkness for three months,” Rybalko said. She arrived with her family in the town of Kiurakhove, driven by a fellow villager, and waited on Monday for a westbound bus.

Her son-in-law, Dmytro Khaliapin, said their village was pounded by artillery.

“Houses are ruined. It’s a horror,” he said.

In neighboring Luhansk province, 83-year-old Lida Chuhay left the hard-hit town of Lyman, also near the front line.

“Ashes, ruins. The northern parts, the southern parts, all are ruined,” she said Sunday as she sat on a train heading west from the town of Pokrovsk. “Literally everything is on fire: houses, buildings, everything.”

Chuhay and others from Lyman said much of the town was reduced to rubble by the bombardment. Anyone still there is hiding in shelters because it is too dangerous to venture out.

“They ruined everything,” said Olha Medvedeva, sitting opposite Chuhay on the train. “The five-story building where we were living, everything flew away — the windows, the doors.”

In cities farther from the front lines, air raid sirens sound so often that few pay attention and continue their daily business.

After Russian forces failed to capture Kyiv in the opening weeks of the invasion and withdrew to the east, residents started to flow back into the capital. The nightly curfew has been cut by an hour, and public transportation started running longer to accommodate passengers.

Residents face long lines at gas stations, and the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnya, has weakened from 27 to the dollar at the start of the war to 37.

“Ukraine is being destroyed — not just by Russian bombs and missiles,” said Volodymyr Sidenko, an analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank. “The fall in GDP (gross domestic product) and the sharp reduction in the revenue side of the budget have already been felt by every Ukrainian today. And this is just the beginning.”

But the National Opera resumed performances last week in Kyiv, with the audience advised how to reach the air raid shelter. No Russian operas are on the program.

And some restaurants, cafes and shops in cities such as Odesa and Zaporizhzhia have reopened.

Lviv, the city in western Ukraine about 70 kilometers from the Polish border, has been inundated with more than 300,000 people fleeing the war. About 1,000 arrive at its railway station daily.

“We judge the intensity of the fighting in the east not by (what) the news says but by waves of refugees, which have been growing in recent weeks again,” said Alina Gushcha, a 35-year-old chemistry teacher who volunteers at the rail station to help arrivals.

Hotels, campgrounds, universities and schools ran out of space long ago, and the city has built temporary housing that resembles shipping containers in city parks.

“In the months of the war, I’ve learned to be happy about every day without shelling and bombardment,” said Halyna Shcherbin, 59, outside her container-like home in Stryiskyi Park, where she lives with her daughter and two granddaughters. That gratitude is perhaps linked to the fact that they left Kramatorsk the day before the deadly missile attack.

Lviv also comes under regular Russian bombardment because it’s the gateway for Western military aid. Its Old Town architectural treasures, including the Boim Chapel and the Latin Cathedral, are protected by either metal shielding or sandbags.

In cities and towns of southern Ukraine, not far from the Crimean Peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014, the war continues to flare with regularity.

Parts of the city of Mykolaiv often come under attack, and its streets are mostly empty and businesses closed. In some neighborhoods, the scars of war are clear, with blast marks on sidewalks, burned-out stores and shrapnel embedded in walls. The Russian-occupied city of Kherson is only 58 kilometers to the east.

In the village of Velyka Kostromka, south of the city of Kryvy Rih, the remaining residents try to go on with life despite the occasional shelling. At least 20 houses were damaged on a recent morning, including three that were destroyed. A woman and her three children narrowly escaped with their lives.

Hours later, a farmer was back in his potato field, surveying a small crater left behind. With barely a shrug, he raked over it.
…

Greece will send Iranian oil from a seized Russian-flagged tanker to the United States at the request of the U.S. judiciary, Greek port police said Wednesday, a decision that angered Tehran.

Last month the Greek authorities seized the Pegas, which was said to have been heading to the Marmara terminal in Turkey.

The ship was moored at Karystos anchorage with its crew, said to be Russians, on board. The Greek coast guard said the vessel had been renamed “Lana.”

Authorities seized the ship in accordance with EU sanctions introduced after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

According to information at the time, the tanker was carrying 115,000 tons of Iranian oil.

“Following a request from the U.S. justice system, the oil is to be transferred to the United States at the expense of that country,” a spokeswoman for the Greek port police told AFP on Wednesday.

Tehran strongly protested the decision, calling it “international robbery,” the Iranian maritime authority said.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not waive its legal rights and expects the Greek government to adhere to its international obligations in the field of seafaring and shipping,” the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran added, in a statement posted on its website.

Iran’s foreign affairs ministry late Tuesday called on the Greek government, via the International Maritime Organization, to release the tanker and its crew, adding that “Americans unloaded the cargo of the ship.”

Athens did not respond immediately to the Iranian protests and provided no further details about the oil or how it would be transferred to the United States. 
…

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday fast-tracked citizenship for residents of two regions of Ukraine, prompting protests from Kyiv that the move violated its sovereignty.

Putin signed a decree affecting residents of the southern region of Kherson, which is under the full control of Russian troops, and the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, which is partially controlled by Moscow.

Moscow and pro-Moscow officials have said both regions could become part of Russia.

“The simplified system will allow all of us to clearly see that Russia is here not just for a long time but forever,” the Moscow-appointed deputy leader of Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, told Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency.

“We are very grateful to Russian President Vladimir Putin for all he is doing for us, for protecting Russian people in historically Russian lands that have now been liberated,” he added.

The new authorities want to help those wishing to “join the big family of Russia,” he said.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry swiftly protested against the “illegal issuing of passports.”

The move “is a flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as norms and principles of international humanitarian law,” it said in a statement.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price voiced concern that the plan was part of “Russia’s attempt to subjugate the people of Ukraine — to impose their will by force.”

“That is something that we would forcefully reject,” Price told reporters.

The official order published Wednesday came on the heels of a 2019 decree that allowed the same fast-track procedure for residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, eastern Ukraine’s breakaway regions.

Applicants are not required to have lived in Russia, do not need to provide evidence of sufficient funds or pass a Russian language test.

Applications will be processed within three months and the Kherson region has already begun work on launching centers to issue Russian passports, Stremousov said.

Several hundred thousand residents of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions have already received Russian passports.

On Monday, the authorities in Kherson introduced the ruble as the official currency alongside the Ukrainian hryvnia. On Wednesday, officials installed by Moscow announced the same measure in parts of the region of Zaporizhzhia.
…

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Western nations have sidelined a raft of Russian artists, dancers and musicians with links to President Vladimir Putin. That includes star opera singer Anna Netrebko, who was dropped by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Netrebko, however, is making a comeback of sorts with an appearance Wednesday night in Paris — underscoring a broader debate over the limits of cultural boycotts.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska received a standing ovation starring earlier this month in Puccini’s Turandot. The Ukrainian singer took her curtain call at New York’s Metropolitan Opera draped in her country’s flag. 

Celebrated Russian sorprano Anna Netrebko was originally tapped for the role. But the war in Ukraine changed that. Netrebko has condemned the conflict, but not Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

She publicly endorsed Putin’s reelection in 2012, although not in 2018. In 2014, she was photographed alongside a Russian-backed separatist leader from Ukraine’s Donbas region. She recently told Le Monde newspaper her intentions hadn’t been political, and said she was uninformed about the area’s history. 

Now Netrebko is back on stage — singing at the Paris Philharmonic with another Russian, mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova. Beyond a last-minute appearance in Monaco, the event is considered her formal return to the Western stage.

The Paris Philharmonic declined an interview request. But in a statement, it said that while it has canceled artists formally linked to the Russian government, it aims to keep ties whenever possible with those who are not. After Netrebko’s criticism of the war, it noted, Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, called her a traitor. 

The Paris institution has a different position from the Metropolitan’s, where Netrebko will not be singing for the foreseeable future. 

Russian singers aren’t the only ones under Western scrutiny. Dancers and other Russian artists are being boycotted for their ties to Moscow. It’s a very different situation from Cold War days, when artists from the United States and the former Soviet Union were often welcomed on each other’s stages. 

“The two superpowers were in a competition for hearts and minds the world over, and they were attempting to demonstrate to the world and to one another’s populations that theirs was the superior system,” said Kenneth Platt, a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “So from the perspective of each of the superpowers, it was their interest to showcase their culture and to engage their cultural exchanges.”

Today, it will be hard for Russia to overcome Western revulsion over its reported atrocities in Ukraine. Still, Platt is one who does not support a blanket boycott of Russian artists.  

“My basic position on canceling and national identities is if you want to cancel people, cancel them because they are in support of the war, or aligned with this inimical Russian state or because their books and films are pro-war.  Not because they are Russians, or their books are Russian,” he said.

That’s also the position of Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, who spoke to France 24 TV at the Cannes Film Festival going on now. The festival has banned Russians with official ties to the Kremlin and slotted time for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak at the venue via video link. 

“Yet I do not agree with excluding those Russian authors, artists, filmmakers who are against this war, who are just like the rest of the civilized world — just trying to fight against the evil,” he said. 

Loznitsa is not in lockstep with some of his compatriots who back a broader ban of Russian artists. 

Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania’s Platt has his doubts about Netrebko’s operatic return. 

“I think Ms. Netrebko has a prominent public voice,” he said. “I would want her to see her using that voice far more vociferously to condemn this war and Putin’s dictatorial regime in the strongest possible terms — much more so than she has done — before welcoming her back into the limelight.” 

The Paris Philharmonic has also welcomed Ukrainian musicians who fled the war in their homeland, It’s working with the head of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra to place them in various French orchestras. Some have already performed in concerts in recent weeks.
…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be having an unanticipated impact in cyberspace — a decrease in the number of ransomware attacks. 

“We have seen a recent decline since the Ukrainian invasion,” Rob Joyce, the U.S. National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, told a virtual forum Wednesday. 

Joyce said one reason for the decrease in ransomware attacks since the February 24 invasion is likely improved awareness and defensive measures by U.S. businesses. 

He also said some of it is tied to measures the United States and its Western allies have taken against Moscow in response to the war in Ukraine. 

“We’ve definitively seen the criminal actors in Russia complain that the functions of sanctions and the distance of their ability to use credit cards and other payment methods to get Western infrastructure to run these [ransomware] attacks have become much more difficult,” Joyce told The Cipher Brief’s Cyber Initiatives Group. 

“We’ve seen that have an impact on their [Russia’s] operations,” he added. “It’s driving the trend down a little bit.” 

Just days after Russian forces entered Ukraine, U.S. cybersecurity officials renewed their “Shields Up” awareness campaign, encouraging companies to take additional security precautions to protect against potential cyberattacks by Russia itself or by criminal hackers working on Moscow’s behalf. 

And those officials caution Russia still has the capability to inflict more damage in cyberspace. 

“Russia is continuing to explore options for potential cyberattacks,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Matthew Hartman told a meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week. 

“We are seeing glimpses into targeting and into access development,” Hartman said, noting Russia has for now held back from launching any major cyberattacks against the West. “We do not know at what point a calculus may change.” 

FBI cyber officials have likewise voiced concern that it could be a matter of time before the Kremlin authorizes cyberattacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, including against the energy, finance and telecommunication sectors. 

U.S. and NATO officials on Wednesday also cautioned that it would be a mistake to think that just because there have been few signs of “catastrophic effects” that Russia has not tried to leverage its cyber capabilities to its advantage. 

“It has been happening and it’s still happening,” said Stefanie Metka, head of the Cyber Threat Analysis Branch at NATO. “There’s a lot of cyber activity that’s happening all the time and probably we won’t know the full extent of it until we turn the computers back on.”  

Said the NSA’s Joyce: “If you look at Ukraine, they have been heavily targeted. What we’ve seen are a number of wiper viruses, seven or eight different or unique wiper viruses that have been thrown into the ecosystem of Ukraine and its near abroad.” Wiper viruses are viruses that erase a computer’s memory.

These included a cyberattack against a satellite communications company, which hampered the ability of Ukraine’s military to communicate and had spillover effects across Europe. 

But with help from the U.S. and other allies, Ukraine was able to mitigate the impact, Joyce said. 

“The Ukrainians have been under threat and under pressure for a number of years, and so they have continued to adapt and improve and develop their tradecraft to the point where they mount a good defense and, equally as important, they mount a great incident response,” he said.  

Some cybersecurity experts say that ability to respond might be one of the biggest take-aways, so far, from the invasion. 

“Resiliency matters,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator and the former chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, at Wednesday’s virtual forum. “The Ukrainians have gotten really, really good at rebuilding networks, quickly mitigating damage.” 

Another key lesson, he said, is the limitations of cyber. 

“If you’ve got kinetic options, if you can create a crater somewhere, take out a substation, take out a communication system, that’s what you’re going to prefer to use,” Alperovitch said. “That’s what’s easiest [to do] to get lasting damage.” 

 
…

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior officials bear responsibility for a culture of rule-breaking that resulted in several parties that breached the U.K.’s COVID-19 lockdown rules, a report into the events said Wednesday.

Revelations that Johnson and his staff repeatedly flouted the rules they imposed on others have elicited outrage in Britain and led to calls from opponents for the prime minister to resign.

Johnson said he took “full responsibility for everything that took place” but that he would not step down.

In her report into the “partygate” scandal, senior civil servant Sue Gray said the “senior leadership team … must bear responsibility” for a culture that allowed events to take place that “should not have been allowed to happen.”

Gray investigated 16 gatherings attended by Johnson and his staff in 2020 and 2021 while people in the U.K. were barred from socializing, or even from visiting sick and dying relatives, because of coronavirus restrictions.

Gray said there had been “failures of leadership and judgment in No. 10,” a reference to the address of the prime minister’s office.

“Those in the most junior positions attended gatherings at which their seniors were present, or indeed organized,” she said.

A separate police investigation resulted in 83 people getting hit with fines, including Johnson — making him the first British prime minister ever found to have broken the law while in office.

Speaking to lawmakers after the report was published, Johnson said he was sorry but again insisted again that he did not knowingly break any rules.

The prime minister said he was “humbled” and had “learned a lesson” but that it was now time to “move on” and focus on the government’s priorities.

Critics, some of them inside Johnson’s Conservative Party, have said the prime minister has lied to Parliament about the events. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament are expected to resign.

Johnson said Wednesday that when he told Parliament last year that no rules were broken and there were no parties, “it was what I believed to be true.”

The British media and opposition politicians have found that hard to square with staff member’s accounts of “bring your own booze” parties and regular “wine time Fridays” in the prime minister’s 10 Downing St. office at the height of the pandemic.

Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said Gray’s report was a “catalogue of criminality.” Starmer said Johnson’s government had “treated the sacrifices of the British people with utter contempt.”

Much of Gray’s 37-page report was devoted to a detailed account of the events, including a May 2020 party in the Downing Street garden to which “the Prime Minister brought cheese and wine from his flat” and a party the following month at which “one individual was sick” and “there was a minor altercation between two other individuals.”

At another party — held the night before the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip — revelers in the garden broke a swing belonging to Johnson’s toddler son Wilf and partied until 4 a.m.

“Many will be dismayed that behavior of this kind took place on this scale at the heart of government,” Gray wrote. “The public have a right to expect the very highest standards of behavior in such places and clearly what happened fell well short of this.”

Johnson has clung on to power so far, partly because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine diverted public and political attention. Some Conservatives who considered seeking a no-confidence vote in their leader decided it would be rash to push Johnson out in the middle of the war, which is destabilizing Europe and fueling a cost-of-living crisis.

The prime minister got a further reprieve when the Metropolitan Police told him last week that he wouldn’t be getting any more fines even though he attended several events under investigation.

But Gray’s conclusions could revive calls from Conservative lawmakers for a no-confidence vote in the leader who won them a big parliamentary majority just over two years ago. Under party rules, such a vote is triggered if 15% of party lawmakers — currently 54 people — write letters calling for one.

If Johnson lost such a vote, he would be replaced as Conservative leader and prime minister. It’s unclear how many letters have been submitted so far.

Environment Secretary George Eustice defended the prime minister on Wednesday but acknowledged that the “boundary between what was acceptable and what wasn’t got blurred, and that was a mistake.”

“The prime minister himself has accepted that and recognizes there were of course failings and therefore there’s got to be some changes to the way the place is run,” Eustice told Times Radio.
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Pope Francis on Wednesday said he was “heartbroken” by the shooting at a school in Texas that killed at least 19 children and two teachers, calling for greater controls on weapons.

The crowed in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience applauded his appeal, made a day after worst school shooting in the United States in nearly a decade.

“I am heartbroken by the massacre at the elementary school in Texas. I pray for the children and the adults who were killed and for their families,” Francis said of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

“It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons. Let us all make a commitment so that tragedies like this cannot happen again,” he said.

Speaking from the White House hours after the shooting, a visibly shaken President Joe Biden urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms safety laws.

Francis has often taken on the weapons industry. In 2015 he said people who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday he would be open to negotiations with Russia, but only direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking by video link to the World Economic Forum, Zelenskyy said there is a potential for finding a diplomatic way out of the conflict if Putin “understands reality.”

Zelenskyy added that a first step toward talks with Russia would be for Russian forces to withdraw back to the lines that were in place before Russia launched its invasion in late February.

There has been no sign of movement toward a negotiated end to the conflict in recent weeks with both sides accusing the other of not being willing to engage in talks.

Zelenskyy also used part of his address to express his condolences to the family members of those killed Tuesday in a mass shooting at a U.S. elementary school.

“As far as I know, 21 people were killed, including 19 children. This is terrible, to have victims of shooters in peaceful time,” he said.

The key to peace

As Russian forces bombarded eastern Ukraine, including Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region, Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak pushed foreign governments to take action to pressure Russia to end its fighting in Ukraine.

“Today, the future of Europe is not formed in Brussels or Davos. It is formed in the trenches near Severodonetsk and Bakhmut. The duration of this war depends on the speed of imposing energy sanctions and weapons supply. Want to end the war? The key to peace is in your capitals,” Podolyak tweeted.

That followed a Zelenskyy message late Tuesday in which he said sending Ukraine rocket-propelled grenades, tanks, anti-ship missiles and other weapons is “the best investment” to prevent future Russian aggression.

Economic pressure

The United States said it will not extend a waiver, set to expire Wednesday, that allowed Russia to pay back its debts to international investors.

The Treasury Department had let Russia use U.S. banks to make the payments, saying that was a temporary measure meant to provide an “orderly transition” and allow for the investors to sell their stakes.

Closing that pathway raises the prospect that Russia may default on its debt.

NATO expansion

Delegations from Sweden and Finland were in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Wednesday for talks with Turkish officials about the two nations’ applications to join NATO, which have been met with opposition from Turkey.

Turkey accused Sweden and Finland of harboring people linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and followers of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey says orchestrated a 2016 coup attempt.

NATO bids need approval from all of the alliance’s current members. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said he is confident any objections will be overcome and both Sweden and Finland will be welcomed into the alliance.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

12:15 a.m.: Reuters reports that Russian-born tennis star Daria Saville, who plays for Australia, says she cannot return to Russia because she spoke publicly against its invasion of Ukraine.

In a social media post, Saville urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict and encouraged Russian soldiers to leave Ukraine.

Even though her parents still live in Ukraine, “I can’t really go back,” she said.
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Prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigners say they have seen no signs that their armed forces are misusing Western military supplies in the three months since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a country long perceived as among the world’s most corrupt.

The head of the Ukrainian government’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), Oleksandr Novikov, told VOA in a May 17 interview that his counterparts at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a sister agency, had not opened any new investigations into high level corruption in the Ukrainian military since the full-scale Russian invasion started on February 24.

Novikov’s NACP, one of Ukraine’s three main official anti-corruption bodies, develops regulations aimed at preventing corruption and seeks to ensure compliance. NABU investigates corruption and prepares cases for prosecution, while the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) charges and prosecutes suspects.

Novikov appointed NABU’s last chief, Artem Sytnyk, as his deputy earlier this month. Asked if there have been any recent government investigations of high-level corruption in the military, Novikov said, “I know NABU did not have any new cases since February 24.”

Asked for a comment, NABU emailed VOA to say that its acting director, Gizo Uglava, who replaced Sytnyk last month, could not discuss the matter “due to its sensitivity.”

Novikov said each delivery of Western military aid is monitored by a separate intelligence officer of the Security Service of Ukraine. He said the SSU monitoring is part of Kyiv’s “rigorous process that guarantees the integrity” of those supplies.

Ukraine’s handling of the Western military aid is under increasing scrutiny in the U.S., which last week approved sending more weapons and equipment to Kyiv after supplying several billion dollars’ worth of security assistance in recent months to help it repel the Russian invaders.

Corruption had been rampant in the Ukrainian defense industry until 2014, leaving the military unable to function effectively that year as Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and helped pro-Russian separatists seize parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

U.S. Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served as U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017 to 2019, told VOA there was an improvement after 2014 as the U.S., Canada and other nations advised Kyiv in fighting corruption within its defense establishment.

But Ukraine still had much work to do to improve its global reputation prior to February 24. It ranked a lowly 122 out of 180 countries in the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International, a Berlin-based research group whose annual corruption rankings are among the world’s most influential. Ukraine’s CPI ranking had been even lower at 144 in 2013.

In an article published last month, CNN cited U.S. defense officials and analysts as saying the lack of U.S. military personnel inside Ukraine means Washington has few ways to track how Kyiv uses Western military supplies, which they fear could be trafficked in the long run.

There are no indications of Western military supplies in Ukraine being diverted in recent months, according to a former U.S. official involved in training and equipping Ukraine’s armed forces after 2014. The source spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue.

The executive director of Transparency International’s Ukraine branch, Andrii Borovyk, told VOA that he also has not seen any concrete reports of recent corruption in the Ukrainian military.

His group had appealed to Ukrainians in an April 29 statement to report such activity to relevant authorities.

Speaking via Zoom on May 18, Borovyk said one reason for the lack of corruption reporting is Ukraine’s martial law, under which the government has stopped publishing details about what it is buying and for what prices. “I’m not saying there is no corruption. In this uncertain situation, I’m sure there are people who want to profit from government procurement processes,” he said.

The SSU reported on May 19 that it busted a scheme by local officials to illegally sell more than 1,000 bulletproof vests that had been produced by a Ukrainian company for provision to Ukrainian security personnel at no cost. The SSU said the vests were worth $407,000.

The rarity of such public reporting about military-related corruption, Borovyk said, also reflects a shift in priorities for Ukraine’s independent and governmental anti-corruption campaigners.

“We all work only toward one aim, which is for a victory against Russia,” Borovyk said. “If we will not have a country, where are we going to fight corruption? We want to build up the rule of law here in Ukraine.”

Yuri Nikolov, another Ukrainian anti-corruption researcher who co-founded independent group Nashi Groshi (Our Money), told VOA in a May 19 interview that he believes Russia’s full-scale invasion has effectively forced corrupt actors in the Ukrainian military to stop illicit behavior.

“That [Western] military hardware is the only thing that will protect our lives,” Nikolov said. “That’s why we are not interested in stealing it. It is more needed in the battlefields.”

Volker, now a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said theft of Western military supplies under such circumstances would be viewed by many Ukrainians as treason, a much more serious offense than the petty or systemic corruption that existed before.

The assertion that wartime pressures have stamped out military corruption in Ukraine is viewed skeptically by former U.S. diplomat James Wasserstrom, who served as an anticorruption advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and led a U.S. government oversight team that reported on corruption in Afghanistan.

Wasserstrom later worked in Ukraine from 2016 to 2019 as an international expert for an independent committee monitoring defense sector corruption. That committee evolved into Ukraine’s Independent Anti-Corruption Commission, known by its Ukrainian acronym NAKO, and is a partner organization of Transparency International.

Speaking to VOA on May 18, Wasserstrom was unimpressed by NACP chief Novikov’s assertion that SSU intelligence agents were safeguarding Western military supplies. He noted a 2017 NAKO study citing Ukrainian media accusations that Ukrainian security service personnel were involved in illegal trading of goods between government-controlled territory and regions run by pro-Russian separatists.

“I’ve heard nothing that would indicate any change in SSU behavior in the last three years,” Wasserstrom said, adding that assigning the agency to monitor Western military aid is “like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Wasserstrom also was skeptical about independent campaigner Borovyk’s assertion that Ukraine’s anti-corruption organizations have been so pre-occupied with helping their armed forces to fight Russian invaders that investigating corruption within those Ukrainian forces is not a priority. He noted that his former investigative committee had worked in Kyiv while the Ukrainian military was fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east.

“Just because you’re fighting a war does not mean that you have to tolerate corruption. You don’t need to. It’s a false choice,” he said.

Wasserstrom said he believes the lack of public reporting about corruption in Ukraine’s military is a result of many Ukrainians feeling that speaking out about corrupt activity would be as treasonous to their nation’s war effort as engaging in the activity itself. “So I’d be shocked if you found anybody who would admit to any of this,” he said.

Borovyk said whoever may have engaged in corruption in the past three months will be investigated eventually. “These people should understand that when we get the victory against Russia, we will find all of them.”

He also vowed that his group will keep pressing the Ukrainian government for stronger reforms, including the appointment of a credible new leader for the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. “Regarding those who are against these reforms or are trying to slow them down, how else can I describe them as internal enemies,” he said.
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The U.S. will close the last avenue for Russia to pay its billions in debt back to international investors on Wednesday, making a Russian default on its debts for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution all but inevitable.

The Treasury Department said in a notification that it does not plan to renew the license to allow Russia to keep paying its debtholders through American banks.

Since the first rounds of sanctions, the Treasury Department has given banks a license to process any bond payments from Russia. That window expires at midnight May 25.

There had already been signs that the Biden administration was unwilling to extend the deadline. At a press conference heading into the Group of Seven finance minister meetings in Koenigswinter, Germany, last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the window existed “to allow a period of time for an orderly transition to take place, and for investors to be able to sell securities.”

“The expectation was that it was time-limited,” Yellen said.

Without the license to use U.S. banks to pay its debts, Russia would have no ability to repay its international bond investors. The Kremlin has been using JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup as its conduits to pay its obligations.

Jay Auslander, a prominent sovereign debt lawyer who previously litigated other debt crises like the one in Argentina, said at this point most of the institutional investors in Russian debts have likely sold their holdings, knowing this deadline was coming. Those who are still holding the debts are either distressed debt investors or those willing to wait to litigate it over the next few years.

“The majority who wanted out have gotten out. The only issue is finding buyers,” he said. 

The Kremlin appears to have foreseen the likelihood that the U.S. would not allow Russia to keep paying on its bonds. The Russian Finance Ministry prepaid two bonds on Friday that were due this month to get ahead of the May 25 deadline.

The next payments Russia will need to make on its debts are due on June 23. Like other Russian debt, those bonds have a 30-day grace period — which would cause default by Russia to be declared by late July, barring the unlikely scenario that the Russia-Ukraine war would come to an end before then.

Investors have been almost certain of Russia going into default for months now. Insurance contracts that cover Russian debt have priced a 80% likelihood of default for weeks, and rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have placed the country’s debt deep into junk territory.

Russia has not defaulted on its international debts since the 1917 Revolution, when the Russian Empire collapsed and the Soviet Union was created. Russia defaulted on its domestic debts in the late 1990s during the Asian Financial Crisis but was able to recover from that default with the help of international aid.
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Two blocks from a casino and Burger King is a medium-sized room covered with a blue carpet that until four months ago was occasionally used to welcome personnel starting their jobs at the U.S. European Command headquarters.

The fourth-floor room in the General Bernard Rogers Conference Center on a U.S. Army base in Germany has become the center of Western efforts to give billions of dollars in weapons and nonlethal aid to Ukrainian forces to help Kyiv push back against Russia’s invasion of the country.

Two text journalists accompanying U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks were given access to the U.S- and British-led weapons transfer center for the first time on Tuesday.

The room, which operates 24 hours a day and holds about 100 military personnel from two dozen countries, is lined with television monitors attached to the ceiling, with small teams working on different parts of the mammoth operation to move weapons into Europe and eventually into Ukrainian hands.

The United States alone has rushed $3.9 billion worth of armaments to Ukraine since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden signed a bill to send $40 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian aid to Kyiv.

None of the weapons are physically located at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart; the room acts as a logistics hub for coordinating the flow of weapons.

One group of soldiers, sitting next to British, American and Ukrainian flags, is responsible for intelligence on Russia’s operations in Ukraine.

Another group sitting close by a “Secret” sign on the wall tracks weapons and nonlethal aid moving into and around Europe from more than 40 countries.

Other troops log onto a newly created computer system that allows Ukrainian forces to put in requests for weapons.

In a sign of how the United States and its allies are preparing for the conflict to continue well into the future, a new team was recently created to try to anticipate Ukraine’s future needs.

Fewer than five Ukrainian service members work in the center as liaisons, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“(It) probably began as simple deconfliction, but now I think really in terms of optimizing the capability that the international community can bring to bear,” Hicks told the reporters after visiting the coordination room.

As it became evident in November that Russia was putting troops in place to potentially invade Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official struggled to give Kyiv speedboats.

“(I) had to make 5,000 phone calls,” the official said. “Since then, it has become better organized.”

When the coordination center first began its work in March, British and U.S. officials said, it was relatively easy to move smaller weapons like Javelin anti-tank missiles.

As the war has progressed and the fighting has largely moved to eastern Ukraine, longer-range and heavier weapons like howitzer artillery systems have become the primary focus.

“It has become more complex. At first it was ‘give us anything,’ and now we’re more focused on the capabilities,” a British official said.
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A Moscow court has upheld a nine-year prison term for opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who is already behind bars for a previous conviction he and his supporters have called politically motivated.

Navalny took part in the Tuesday hearing via a video link from a prison in the Vladimir region.

The Kremlin critic used his final statement in court to condemn the Russian authorities for launching the ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and reiterated his previous statements that all of the charges against him are politically motivated.

Navalny was handed the sentence on March 22 after the court found him guilty of embezzlement and contempt charges that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.

Navalny was arrested in January last year upon his arrival to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.

He was then handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole because of his convalescence abroad. The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

Navalny has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning with a Novichok-style chemical substance. The Kremlin has denied any role in the attack.

International organizations consider Navalny a political prisoner.

The European Union, U.S. President Joe Biden, and other international officials have demanded Russia release the 45-year-old Kremlin-critic.

Navalny is currently serving his term in a prison in the town of Pokrov, some 200 kilometers east of Moscow. He is expected to be transferred to a stricter regime prison for the new conviction.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba Tuesday urged other governments to send more weapons more quickly to aid Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces.

“Too early to conclude that Ukraine already has all the arms it needs,” Kuleba tweeted Tuesday. “Russian offensive in the Donbas is a ruthless battle, the largest one on European soil since WWII. I urge partners to speed up deliveries of weapons and ammunition, especially MLRS, long-range artillery, APCs.”

Britain’s defense ministry said Tuesday that Russian forces have increased the intensity of their operations in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine as they try to encircle multiple cities, including Severodonetsk.

“Russia’s capture of the Severodonetsk pocket would see the whole of Luhansk Oblast placed under Russian occupation. While currently Russia’s main effort, this operation is only one part of Russia’s campaign to seize the Donbas.”

Kuleba’s call for more military help came a day after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said about 20 countries are sending new security assistance packages for Ukraine.

“Many countries are donating critically needed artillery ammunition, coastal defense systems, tanks and other armored vehicles. Others came forward with new commitments for training Ukraine’s forces and sustaining its military systems,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon after concluding the second meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

Denmark said it would provide Ukrainian forces with a Harpoon launcher and missiles, while the Czech Republic donated attack helicopters, tanks and rocket systems.

Monday’s meeting included 47 nations that participated virtually, according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, the top U.S. military officer. Austria, Colombia and Ireland were among the new participants.

The group’s next meeting will be held June 15 in Brussels.

“Everyone here understands the stakes of this war, and they stretch far beyond Europe,” Austin said.

U.S. President Joe Biden had a similar message Tuesday as he met with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia, telling the group that the conflict in Ukraine “is more than just a European issue, it’s a global issue.”

Citing the widespread effects of the conflict, including on the global food supply, Biden pledged ongoing U.S. support, saying, “as long as Russia continues the war, the United States will work with our partners to help be the global response, because it’s going to affect all parts of the world.”

The American multinational chain of coffeehouses, Starbucks, became the latest company on Monday to announce it will stop operations in Russia, closing its 130 cafes. The move follows an announcement last week by U.S. multinational fastfood chain, McDonald’s, that it was leaving Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Monday that Russia has launched almost 1,500 missile strikes on Ukraine since the start of the war nearly three months ago. He said the majority of the 1,474 missile strikes were against civilian targets.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

1:00 a.m.: As Ukraine marks three months since the start of the Russian invasion, residents in capital Kyiv have commemorated those who have been lost since the start of the conflict, The Associated Press reported. 

A lawn in a square in the capital has been strewn with small Ukrainian flags, put out in tribute to those who have lost their lives since the fighting broke out on February 24. A monument displays the message “Ukrainians killed by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin” with the number 7,463 written below. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took part in a ceremony to launch the series which will see five million stamps in total put into circulation. 

12:30 a.m.: Analyst APK-Inform, an information and analytical agency, raised its forecasts for Ukraine’s 2022/23 grain crop and exports because of a better-than-expected winter harvest on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Ukraine could harvest 48.3 million tons of grain in 2022, including almost 17.1 million tons of wheat and 25.2 million tons of corn, the consultancy agency said in a statement.

APK-Inform said 2022/23 exports could also rise to 39.4 million tons versus the previous outlook of 33.2 million tons.

12:15 a.m.: About 20 countries are sending new security assistance packages for Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said after concluding the second meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

“Many countries are donating critically needed artillery ammunition, coastal defense systems, tanks and other armored vehicles. Others came forward with new commitments for training Ukraine’s forces and sustaining its military systems,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon Monday. VOA’s Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has the story.

12:01 a.m.: Through photos, videos, charts, and analysis, The Guardian documents “Russia’s use of illegal weapons” during the invasion of Ukraine.

“The Guardian has visited the small towns and villages north of Kyiv razed to the ground during the Russian occupation and reviewed evidence found there – as well as other materials from Ukrainian prosecutors – of imprecise munitions such as the FAB-250, metal dart shells and cluster bombs whose use led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians.”

 
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Turkey is vowing to crush the presence of the Kurdish militant group PKK in Iraq. The PKK has used neighboring Iraq as the main base in its war for greater minority rights in Turkey. But as the Turkish military closes in on the PKK, analysts warn that the Kurdish group could turn to Iran, with implications across the region, including US forces in Syria. Dorian Jones reports for VOA from Istanbul.
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At his swearing-in ceremony, new Education Minister Pap Ndiaye paid tribute to the nation’s teachers, singling out Samuel Paty, killed by an Islamist extremist in 2020.

Ndiaye described himself as a symbol of meritocracy and diversity. Rather than feeling proud, he said, he assumed his new job with a sense of duty and responsibility.

The 57-year-old Ndiaye is a longtime university professor and expert on the history of minorities and rights movements in both France and the United States. Last year, he was tapped to head France’s National Museum of the History of Immigration.

“It was unexpected, obviously, but it was very good news.”

Louis-Georges Tin is a Black rights activist and former head of the Representative Council of Black Associations, or CRAN. He salutes the new education minister.

“He’s a brilliant person,” Tin said. “He’s respected in the academy. He’s done quite a few actions in terms also of the fight against racism in the country.”

While Tin is not alone in praising Ndiaye’s appointment, some right-wing politicians are criticizing it.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who came second in last month’s presidential vote, described Ndiaye’s designation as an alarming signal for the future. She called him a defender of so-called “racialism” and woke-ism, which critics deride as a leftist protest ideology. Other critics describe Ndiaye as anti-police.

Interviewed on French radio, Ndiaye’s sister, award-winning author Marie Ndiaye, said she wasn’t surprised at the criticism — but called it absurd and stupid.

Some observers say the controversy over Ndiaye’s appointment reflects simmering discrimination in France, as the 2020 death of African-American George Floyd in police custody in the United States ignited similar Black rights protests here.

In interviews over the years, Pap Ndiaye has said France is reluctant to fully examine its history of colonialism and slavery. He has praised French police but also said police violence should be discussed.

Activist Louis-Georges Tin said much more needs to be done in teaching French students about discrimination. Tin said he fears Ndiaye’s efforts to change things during his tenure will result in pushback.

“Having a Black minister in France is not new,” Tin said. “And having racist attacks is not new either. It’s always the same story … so that’s why we are in a situation of state racism, systemic racism. People don’t want Black ministers in this country.”

Ndiaye is certainly different from his predecessor, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who criticized both the “Black Lives Matter” movement and so-called woke culture. Education unions, which clashed with Blanquer, have reacted positively to the country’s new education chief.
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