Rights activists in Azerbaijan say the government’s recent sentencing to prison of an opposition party leader on charges of slander is another sign of how defamation laws are being used against political opponents and civil society activists in the country.

Last month the Baku Appellate Court upheld the five-month prison sentence given to Ali Aliyev, the chairman of the opposition Citizens and Development Party on defamation charges under a lawsuit filed by a border guard.

Ali Aliyev and his lawyer, Javad Javadov, say his imprisonment is a violation of his freedom of expression and retaliation for his political activities.

Border guard Emil Jafarov filed the lawsuit against Ali Aliyev in response to his comments in a YouTube interview in which Aliyev expressed his doubts about Jafarov’s chances of surviving a deadly helicopter crash on November 30 of last year during training flights at the Garaheybat airfield in the Khizi region. Some 14 servicemen died in the crash and two were injured, one of whom was Lieutenant Colonel Emil Jafarov.

Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office blamed the helicopter crash on pilot error. However, Ali Aliyev had suggested the possibility Russia was involved, speculating it could have been sabotage. In his interview, Aliyev argued that it was impossible for someone to survive a deadly helicopter crash with no burns and only minor injuries. So he suggested that Jafarov’s presence on the flight was staged to back up the government’s explanation.

Aliyev’s lawyer complained of unfair treatment by the court and said his client was not given the chance to defend himself.

Human rights defender Zafar Ahmadov told VOA that defamation in Azerbaijan has reached unbearable levels, but high-profile slander cases like Aliyev’s are highlighting the issue and leading to more public discussion.

“There is no criminal act here. Of course, he should have been released. It has been proved once again that this is a political order. But in any case, Ali Aliyev, with his arrest, has served a sacred cause, which today has probably given a great impetus to the fight against defamation in the world, including Azerbaijan.”

Debate over criminalizing defamation

Independent lawyers and human rights activists believe that articles criminalizing defamation and insult in the media should be removed from the Criminal Code, which carries a penalty of more than $500 and maximum imprisonment of 3 years.

In addition, Article 323 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the dissemination of defamatory statements against the president of Azerbaijan, carries a punishment of imprisonment for up to five years.

Lawyer Khalid Agaliyev says that the issue of abolishing criminal liability for libel and insult has been on the government’s agenda several times.

“Relevant laws and drafts have been developed, particularly with the support of the OSCE,” he said. “But in the end, the government has not approved them.”

The media legal expert believes that the criminal liability for defamation intimidates the media, journalists, and those who exercise the right to freedom of expression, in the first place, and discourages criticism.

“The abolition of accountability will further encourage people to express themselves freely. Apparently, the government does not see the need for this and is delaying the adoption of the law,” Agaliyev said.

Azerbaijan committed to removing or changing its libel and insult laws upon its accession to the Council of Europe. But it has not yet done so.

Zahid Oruj, a member of the Azerbaijani parliament and chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Committee, told VOA that not all Council of Europe member states have adopted legislation on defamation.

He said that the Azerbaijani government has been actively working to include the project on defamation to be considered in its legislative system. According to him, under the new law, journalists will not be punished in a criminal court, but they could still face administrative liabilities.

“The Azerbaijani government, especially with collaboration of OSCE and the relevant structures of the Council of Europe, has been actively lobbying, promoting, advocating, holding joint meetings, raising awareness and doing other activities to include this project in our legislative system, especially since 2012. In other words, journalist’s actions would not be treated at the level of criminal law, and sanctions against them would be removed from the relevant law. But the journalists administrative liability would remain,” Oruj said.

In his view, finding consensus on the issue is a challenge.

“In other words, it is not so easy to find a trilateral agreement between the media, relevant government agencies and society, which is necessary for the adoption of such a law.”

Local and international organizations report that defamation charges against citizens, public and political figures, and especially journalists, have increased in Azerbaijan in recent years.

Lawyer Agaliyev says that between 2017 and 2019, journalists were sued 72 times for slander and insult.

Azerbaijan is among 56 countries included in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report in the “non-free” category. Azerbaijan, along with 15 other countries, had the worst score in the category of political rights and civil liberties.

This story was originated in VOA’s Azerbaijani Service.
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The emergence of thousands of foreigners volunteering to fight for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion has drawn sharply differing responses from the governments of those pro-Ukraine fighters, some of whom are from Russia itself and its ally Belarus.

The three main types of responses identified by VOA include Western governments giving tacit or explicit permission to citizens to help Ukraine defend itself; Asian governments ordering citizens not to enter the fight; and Russian and Belarusian authorities denouncing citizens who are fighting on Ukraine’s side and threatening them with severe reprisals.

In its latest estimate, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said March 6 that “almost 20,000 … experienced [military] veterans and volunteers” had applied to join its International Legion of Defense of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not said how many of those applicants are in the country, but its defense ministry said those who had arrived by March 11 were from more than 50 countries.

A Ukrainian government website has identified eight of those countries as Britain, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland.

A Ukrainian Embassy official in Washington told VOA earlier this month that 3,000 Americans were among the applicants for the international legion. The official said most of the others were from post-Soviet states such as Georgia and Belarus.

VOA cannot independently confirm the Ukrainian legion’s size or composition. Multiple reports have said an unknown number of foreigners seeking to fight alongside Ukrainian forces also have crossed into the country without going through its procedures for enlisting in the legion.

Among the pro-Ukraine fighters involved in the war are Russian and Belarusian citizens who have been helping to defend Ukraine for years.

They include exiled fighters from the Russian republic of Chechnya who have opposed Moscow since it crushed their separatist campaign in Chechnya after two wars in the 1990s and 2000s.

Chechen fighters have been in Ukraine since 2014, resisting Russian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, according to Britain-based Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev. The Chechen fighters have not disclosed their numbers.

Exiled Belarusian fighters opposed to Russia and its close ally, longtime Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, also have been active in Ukraine’s defense since 2014, according to independent Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva.

Earlier this month, the fighters — whose “Kastus Kalinouski” battalion is named after a 19th century Belarusian nationalist — posted images on Telegram channel @belwarrior, showing themselves helping their Ukrainian allies in the current war. Lithuania-based exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya tweeted a video of the battalion on March 13.

The Russian government has been labeling the pro-Ukraine Chechen fighters as terrorists for years. In recent weeks, the Moscow-appointed leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has used his Telegram channel and TV appearances to warn the pro-Ukraine Chechen “traitors” that his own forces in Ukraine will hunt down and kill them and harm their family members.

While Lukashenko has not publicly threatened violence against the Belarusian fighters defending Ukraine, he used a March 15 meeting with his security chiefs to call them “crazy” and accused them of fighting only for money.

The Belarusian foreign ministry did not respond to a VOA email asking whether the pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighters could face penalties or punishment if they ever return to Belarus.

Unlike Russia and Belarus, Georgia has been relatively quiet about the years-long presence in Ukraine of some of its citizens who have been part of a pro-Kyiv legion. The Georgian government did not respond to a VOA request for comment about its position on the legion joining Ukraine’s fight against the current Russian invasion. Georgia has had two of its own regions occupied by Russian invaders since a 2008 war.

Former Georgian military officer Mamuka Mamulashvili founded the legion in 2014 to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion of Donbas that year. He told the British newspaper The Independent earlier this month that he was expecting hundreds of new recruits, including around 400 Georgians, 100 Britons and 50 Americans.

The legion’s involvement in Ukraine has intensified a dispute between Georgia’s government and opposition about how much Tbilisi should support Kyiv in resisting the Russian invasion.

Some other countries in Asia, however, have been unequivocal about their opposition to their citizens fighting in Ukraine.

The Uzbek justice ministry posted a February 28 warning on the social media app Telegram, four days after Russia began the invasion, saying any Uzbek citizen who enlists in a foreign military or security service may commit a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, responding this month to a VOA Urdu Service question, said Islamabad does “not want any Pakistani to be involved” on either side of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Such responses are typical of Asian nations where citizens have significant ties to both Russia and the West and may be motivated to fight for either the Russian or Ukrainian side, said Canadian historian and legal scholar Tyler Wentzell of the University of Toronto in a VOA interview.

“Saying ‘no one can fight on any side of this [foreign] conflict’ is likely a policy you would see in a country where citizens’ participation in one side of a conflict or the other needs to be stamped out to avoid citizens ending up fighting each other and exacerbating schisms at home,” he said.

In Uzbekistan’s case, former U.S. ambassador to the Central Asian nation and Atlantic Council analyst John Herbst said its public emphasis on a law against fighting for foreign governments is part of a traditional Uzbek desire to keep security matters under control.

“It is a fear of Uzbek citizens [in Ukraine] making decisions with geopolitical implications that might complicate Uzbekistan’s foreign policy, and a fear of what might happen after they come back to Uzbekistan,” Herbst said.

Western nations also have laws barring citizens from certain foreign military enlistments that could drag their governments involuntarily into foreign conflicts. But officials either have been silent on applying such laws to citizens seeking to defend Ukraine, given mixed messages on the issue or explicitly encouraged citizens to join the fight against the Russians.

The Biden administration has discouraged Americans from volunteering to fight for Ukraine. But it has issued no public warnings about such volunteers risking U.S. prosecution or penalties.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters earlier this month that if Americans want to help Ukraine, they should donate to relief agencies.

“We still do not believe Ukraine is a safe place for Americans. We urge them not to go,” he said.

U.S. officials have not said whether they would take action under the Neutrality Act against Americans who ignore that advice. The law applies fines or imprisonment to any U.S. citizen who, within U.S. jurisdiction, “accepts and exercises a commission [payment]” to serve another country in a war against any foreign entity with whom the U.S. is at peace.

In a March 15 op-ed for U.S. online forum Just Security, Ohio State University law professor Dakota Rudesill said Americans joining Ukraine’s fight against Russian invaders risk violating the Neutrality Act because the U.S. is in a state of peace with Moscow, albeit a strained one. But Rudesill noted that the law has ambiguous terms, for example not addressing whether Americans can fight for another country without being paid. He also said it has not been consistently enforced.

Canada, home to the world’s third largest Ukrainian community after Ukraine and Russia, has been less ambiguous than the U.S. in its approach to the issue. In a February 27 news conference, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly expressed understanding for Canadians of Ukrainian descent who make an “individual decision” to defend Ukraine.

“Let me be clear: We are all very supportive of any form of support to Ukrainians right now,” she said.

Canadian officials have made no mention of invoking a foreign enlistment law making it an offense for citizens to join the armed forces of a country at war with another state “friendly” to Ottawa.

“We’re not friendly with Russia,” said University of Toronto’s Wentzell. “So I don’t think the Canadian government is going to use this law against Canadians who volunteer to defend Ukraine,” he said.

Britain’s Foreign Office advised its citizens on March 9 that “if you travel to Ukraine to fight, or to assist others engaged in the conflict, your activities may amount to offenses against U.K. legislation, and you could be prosecuted on your return to the U.K.”

But in a report published the same day, the BBC said many of the hundreds of former British soldiers who expressed a desire to defend Ukraine had told the British news outlet that they were getting mixed messages from the government about whether they should do so. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss had told the BBC in a February 27 interview that she would “absolutely” support British citizens going to Ukraine to fight “if that is what they want to do.”

Latvia, a post-Soviet state bordering Russia and a member of the NATO alliance of Western nations, has been one of Europe’s most vocal supporters of citizens who want to fight for Ukraine’s defense. Its parliament approved a February 28 law allowing Latvians to do so.

Reuters cited Juris Rancanis, a Latvian lawmaker who led the drafting of the measure, as saying: “Our citizens who want to support Ukraine and volunteer to serve there to defend Ukraine’s independence and our common security must be able to do so.”

One reason Western governments have not unequivocally forbidden their citizens from fighting the Russians, as some in Asia have done, is that the populations of those Western nations are overwhelmingly supportive of the Ukrainian people, said Wentzell.

“There will be pockets of people in the West who support Russian policy, but they will be the minority. And for the most part, they will stay silent or out of the way,” he said.

This story was a collaboration involving VOA’s English News Center and VOA’s Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Uzbek and Urdu Services. Myroslava Gongadze, Cevdet Seyhan, Jaleel Akhtar, Ia Meurmishvili, Igor Tsikhanenka and Fatima Tlis contributed. Some information came from Reuters.
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With Russia’s ground invasion largely stalled and stuttering, a minority view is emerging among some Kremlin watchers that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s days are numbered.  

“Whatever Putin does, he does not look as if he can survive for long,” tweeted Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and former economic adviser to the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine. 

Aslund believes a major power struggle is already evident inside the Kremlin. Others who hazard that Putin’s position is becoming precarious point to the public opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine by Arkady Dvorkovich, a veteran Russian government official and a former Russian deputy prime minister. 

Dvorkovich last week told the American magazine Mother Jones, “My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians,” he said, adding, “Wars are the worst things one might face in life… including this war.”

“Wars do not just kill priceless lives,” Dvorkovich was quoted as saying. “Wars kill hopes and aspirations, freeze or destroy relationships and connections,” he explained.

Other seasoned Kremlin watchers are not yet persuaded Putin is at any immediate risk, saying the opposition is mainly coming from Yeltsin-era oligarchs who have little political sway and are intimidated by the security strongmen around Putin. The strongmen are nicknamed “siloviki” and, like Putin, came into politics from the security, intelligence or military services.

They share Putin’s revanchist aim of reversing the territorial losses suffered when the Soviet Union splintered apart.

“There is a general feeling that, objectively, a split is already happening among the elites: former Yeltsin oligarchs versus Putin’s conservative elites. This isn’t a confrontation or a political struggle; it is simply a case of two camps exhibiting opposing views about how to proceed in the current situation,” according to Tatiana Stanovaya, an independent analyst and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

“The former has the economy in their hands and the latter control politics. The oligarchs are intimidated and under pressure, while the conservative elites are on horseback with drawn swords.”

Dvorkovich’s voice has been a very rare one from within Russia’s political upper echelons to express criticism of Putin’s war on Ukraine. And he appears already to have been punished for the dissent. He was immediately labeled a traitor for his remarks by Russian lawmakers. And a few days after he expressed his opposition, he stepped down as chair of the Skolkovo Foundation, a high-tech fund set up to help diversify Russia’s economy and to build a Russian rival to Silicon Valley outside Moscow. 

The Skolkovo Foundation also published a recanting statement from Dvorkovich, in which he condemned Western sanctions on Russia and derided a world order in which “Nazism and the domination of one nation over others is possible,” a reference to the United States. 

Aside from Dvorkovich, no senior Kremlin-associated figure has stepped out of line. On Monday Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, who served as Russian president from 2008 to 2012 and as Putin’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020, became noticeably more bellicose.

Medvedev has presented himself at various times as a modernizer and technocrat and might have been regarded as someone likely to harbor reservations about the invasion. But he has ratcheted up his support for the war and Monday launched veiled threats against Poland in an essay that dubbed “imbecilic” Polish leaders as “vassals” of the United States. He described Poland as the “most evil, vulgar and shrill critic of Russia.”

And he echoed Putin’s oft repeated grievances against the West for what the Russian leader sees as a minimizing by the West’s politicians of Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany.  Medvedev accused Warsaw of trying to scrub Soviet “liberators” out of history. 

“In Poland they dream of forgetting about the Second World War. Firstly, about those Soviet soldiers who defeated Fascism and expelled the invaders from Polish cities. The Fascist occupation is openly equated with the Soviet. It is difficult to come up with a more deceitful and disgusting rhetoric, but the Poles succeed,” he wrote.

Only a handful of Russia’s oligarchs and super-wealthy have spoken out against the invasion. Billionaire Mikhail Fridman, founder of the country’s largest private bank Alfa Bank, was the first, calling for an end to the “tragedy” and “bloodshed.” Metals mogul Oleg Deripaska wrote on Telegram earlier this month: “Peace is very important! Negotiations must begin as soon as possible!” And Oleg Tinkov, another billionaire banker, has described the conflict as “unthinkable and unacceptable.” 

Nonetheless, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has fueled speculation about the prospects of Putin being overthrown as a result of a Kremlin coup. On Facebook, the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine claimed it had information that a “group of influential people in opposition to Vladimir Putin is being formed among the Russian business and political elite.”

Angry at the personal financial losses of the war they are enduring thanks to Western sanctions and frustrated by the lack of military progress on the ground, “their goal is to remove Putin from power as soon as possible,” the agency claimed. It identified a top Russian spymaster, Alexander Bortnikov, who is one of five key members of Putin’s inner circle, as a potential successor. “It is known that Bortnikov and some other influential members of the Russian elite are considering various options for removing Putin from power. In particular, poisoning, sudden illness, or other ‘accident’ is not excluded,” the agency concluded. 

There have been unverified reports that Bortnikov’s star has been falling in the Kremlin and that Putin may be blaming him partly for the lack of military progress on the ground as the battle plans were likely drafted on the pre-war intelligence Bortnikov was feeding him. But that might also disqualify him as a potential successor for any in the elite who really want Putin out, a Western security official told VOA. 

He said he “can’t see any of the security people around Putin,” men like Bortnikov or Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, who worked with Putin closely for years in the KGB, turning on him. “If Putin goes down; they go down,” he said.

Other Western intelligence sources VOA spoke with also were skeptical of the Ukrainian coup claim, suggesting it may have been made to sow doubts about loyalty within the top echelons of Putin’s Kremlin. “Bortnikov has been a hawk, remember he has been a loyal intelligence apparatchik and is cut from very much the same Soviet cloth as Putin and has set about with relish suppressing dissent and has even justified Stalin’s Great Purge,” said one Western official.
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A court in Russia has found opposition politician Alexey Navalny guilty of embezzlement and contempt charges and sentenced him to nine years in prison.

Judge Margarita Kotova announced the verdict on Tuesday at the penal colony outside Moscow where Navalny is being held. Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of 13 years.

Navalny was also fined $11,500

It was not immediately clear whether the sentence would run concurrently with Navalny’s current 2 1/2-year sentence on a separate charge, or if the new sentence would commence only after his previous punishment ends.

Looking gaunt and dressed in his all-black prison outfit, Navalny stood with his lawyers in the makeshift courtroom filled with security officers as Kotova read out the accusations against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic.

The 45-year-old, who is a lawyer himself, seemed unfazed during the proceedings, often looking down while Kotova spoke as he perused court documents.

Navalny has spent the last year in the penal colony on a different charge after returning from abroad, where he was recovering from a near-fatal poison attack that he blames on the Kremlin. 

The corruption crusader reiterated his innocence during his final statement at the trial, noting the prosecution’s demands highlighted the corrupt nature of the trial.

Russian authorities have tried to cast Navalny and his supporters as Western-backed operatives trying to destabilize Russia. Many of Navalny’s allies have fled Russia rather than face restrictions on their freedom or even prison time at home.

His Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been labelled an “extremist” organization and banned.

The new case against Navalny was launched in December 2020 on allegations that the 45-year-old anti-corruption campaigner embezzled money from his now defunct and banned Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and for contempt of a Moscow court.

Investigators accused Navalny of taking around $33,770 in donations for his own personal use. Navalny and his supporters reject all the charges, calling them politically motivated.

The contempt charge stems from a separate case he was involved in last year.

Within weeks of returning from his convalescence in Germany in January 2021, Navalny was jailed for violating the terms of an earlier parole. His conviction is widely regarded as the result of a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning, which along with his arrest sparked widespread condemnation and sanctions from the West.
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A Russian court found jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny guilty of large-scale fraud on Tuesday, a move likely to see the time that President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic spends in jail extended by years. 

Navalny is already serving a two-and-a-half sentence at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were fabricated to thwart his political ambitions. 

In the latest criminal case against him, which he has also dismissed as politically-motivated, he could have up to 13 years added to that sentence. 

A gaunt Navalny stood besides his lawyers in a room filled with prison security officers as the judge read out the accusations against him. The 45-year-old seemed unfazed, looking down as he flipped through court documents. 

Prosecutors had asked the court to send him to a maximum-security penal colony for 13 years on charges of fraud and contempt of court. A ruling is expected later on Tuesday. 

Navalny was jailed last year when he returned to Russia after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poison attack with a Soviet-era nerve agent during a visit to Siberia in 2020. Navalny blamed Putin for the attack. 

The Kremlin said it had seen no evidence that Navalny was poisoned and denied any Russian role if he was. 

After the last court hearing into his case on March 15, Navalny struck a typically defiant tone, writing via Instagram: “If the prison term is the price of my human right to say things that need to be said … then they can ask for 113 years. I will not renounce my words or deeds.” 

Russian authorities have cast Navalny and his supporters as subversives determined to destabilize Russia with backing from the West. Many of Navalny’s allies have fled Russia rather than face restrictions or jail at home. 

Navalny’s opposition movement has been labeled “extremist” and shut down, although his supporters continue to express their political stance, including their opposition to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine, on social media. 
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Zelenskyy says he’s ready for negotiations with Putin  
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine    
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The European Union’s top diplomat said Monday that he has ordered the suspension of combat training for soldiers in Mali until he receives guarantees from the government there that the trainees will not be working with Russian mercenaries. 

Rebel Malian troops have launched two military coups in recent years. The junta has postponed elections meant to usher in civilian rule, and the EU is concerned that Mali’s leaders are working with mercenaries from the Wagner Group, which is accused of rights abuses in Africa and the Middle East. 

The 27-nation bloc has been training the Mali armed forces since 2013. It had planned to continue to do so despite the severe instability and political upheaval that has wracked the country since 2012. 

“Clearly, our training mission cannot be implicated, in any way, in activities that could call into question the European Union’s reputation,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters after chairing a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers. 

Borrell said he’s still waiting for guarantees from Mali’s junta, and until then he has ordered the commander in charge of the EU training “to adapt the activities of the mission to the circumstances they are facing.” 

“We should maintain training activities that are not directly related to training Malian troops in military combat,” Borrell said, but he added that the mission would not yet be cancelled. 

France announced last month that it all its troops would leave Mali by the summer amid tensions with the military junta, but Paris said it would maintain a military presence in neighboring West African nations. 

French President Emmanuel Macron has accused Mali’s authorities of neglecting the fight against Islamic extremists. 

More than 107 civilians have been killed in recent months in Mali in attacks by the army and jihadist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, Human Rights Watch said in a report last week. 

Mali’s soldiers were responsible for at least 71 of the deaths recorded since December 2021, the international rights organization said. Mali’s army has contested some of the report, while adding that it is investigating a number of the attacks and allegations. 

The army has been accused of abuses against civilians in southwest and central Mali as soldiers try to stem violence from jihadist fighters who have been staging attacks for nearly a decade. 
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One million tickets for the 2024 Paris Olympics will be sold for $26.50 (24 euros) each with availability for all 32 sports, organizers said Monday.

The Paris proposal to the International Olympic Committee sets the basic price lower than that of the 2012 London Olympics, where the tickets cost more than $31.

“This is something important for us,” Paris organizing committee president Tony Estanguet said. “This is a very strong promise to offer accessibility of everyone to Olympic sports.”

A centralized global sales program unveiled by Paris Olympics organizers calls for pricing nearly half of the 10 million total tickets at no more than $55 (50 euros).

For the 2024 Paralympics, prices start at $15.60 (15 euros), and about half of the 3.4 million tickets will cost no more than $27.50 (25 euros).

Paris aims to raise $1.22 billion (1.1 billion euros) in revenue — about 30% of its budget — from ticket sales, Estanguet said.

Hitting that target would lift ticket income for Paris above the $1 billion raised by London from more than 8 million tickets sold.

Tokyo organizers aimed for $800 million from ticket sales before the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fans from attending nearly all the events at the 2020 Games, which were postponed to 2021.

Fans wanting to secure tickets for Paris events can start toward the end of this year in a process overhauled to include buyers worldwide. Previously, tickets were sold in the host country and a network of agents worldwide handled sales elsewhere.

Estanguet said the new system should “limit the frustration” of people who previously specified their preferred tickets with no guarantee of getting them.

Instead, a two-month registration period will let prospective buyers sign up for a lottery that will allocate the winners a time slot next February of several hours to choose the tickets they want for multiple sports sessions.

“We can then guarantee that if you buy those tickets, you will receive them,” Estanguet said.

Single tickets for events will go on sale in May 2023, and a third sales phase will start toward the end of next year.

Estanguet said a new ticketing portal managed by French companies would also offer a resale platform.

Asked if discussions were made about limiting portal access for residents of Russia and Belarus because of the invasion of Ukraine, Estanguet said no decision was needed for several months.
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As the Ukraine crisis continues, the West is rethinking its dependence on Russian energy, analysts say. 

According to Russian thinking, Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow would prevent it from interfering with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Yet on February 22, two days before the invasion, Germany halted the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project designed to double the flow of Russian gas to Germany. 

Large oil companies have announced that they would exit the Russian market, with BP leaving on February 27, Exxon on March 1, and Shell on March 8.   

As restricting energy trading with Russia becomes popular in the United States and Europe, according to CNN, Moscow faces challenges in shipping its oil and gas to alternative markets such as China and India.  

Analysts told VOA that the European Union’s transition to renewable energy would continue to offset Russia’s influence over European energy in the short term, and that the U.S. would increase supply from domestic producers and perhaps also expand on supply from less friendly foreign sources.  

Europe and America  

Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer behind the United States and Saudi Arabia, and its gas and oil account for about 40% and 25% of the imports respectively by the 27-member EU, according to the International Energy Agency.                                  

Europe needs to speed up the promotion of clean energy technology and decrease its dependence on Russian oil, coal and gas, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us,” she said March 8, as the European Commission unveiled the REPowerEU project, a road map for ending the EU’s reliance on Russian natural gas. The plan also features a key role for renewable energy.  

Yet experts note that building renewable energy infrastructure takes time, and European countries such as Italy and Germany also rely heavily on imported natural gas to transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar and other clean energy. 

Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard University, told VOA Mandarin that while reducing reliance on Russian gas was consistent with EU’s long-term goals, in the short term, people in Europe would feel the pain.  

“If Europe cuts off Russian gas and runs its liquefied natural gas stations at close to 100% of capacity, … they would still face a shortage in the 15-20% range next winter,” he said, even if the EU used all the natural gas now in storage and reduced consumption by 15%. 

“In the longer run, three to five years, the substitution options will be greater,” Lee added.  

Duncan Wood, interim director of the Global Europe Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank, argued that Russia’s political influence would significantly decrease as the EU forges ahead with its carbon-reduction plan. 

“In the long term, the energy transition will completely negate the power that Russia has over European energy, and Putin is painfully aware of that. Nord Stream 2 was always going to be the peak of Russian energy power over Europe, but Putin has hastened the decline of that power by his actions in Ukraine,” Wood told VOA Mandarin.  

The U.S., on the other hand, is much less dependent on Russian energy, with about 3% of its oil imports from Russia and no imports of its natural gas.  

“The U.S. has plenty of gas, so prices may go up slightly, but it is in a far better situation than Europe,” said Harvard’s Lee. Natural gas prices have not dramatically fluctuated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Lee pointed out, however, that oil is a globally traded commodity, “so the U.S. would face the same oil price increases experienced in Europe.”  

Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia was exporting about 5 million barrels daily, according to the IEA, of which 4.3 million were going to Europe and the U.S. Russia was not among the top 10 crude oil suppliers to the U.S. in 2020, according to EIA.

High U.S. energy costs can be addressed by increasing the supply, said Ehud Ronn, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “That increase can come from potentially friendly, and perhaps less friendly, foreign sources and from domestic producers,” he told VOA Mandarin.  

China and India 

While Europe relies heavily on Russia for energy supplies, Russia in turn depends on fossil fuel exports, which account for more than two-fifths of Russian government revenue. 

Being abandoned by the West will force Russia to seek new partners, and China is a possibility. Before the Ukraine crisis, China was one of Russia’s largest export markets for oil, gas and coal. China absorbed 20% of Russia’s oil, according to the IEA and 25% of Russia’s coal output, according to EIA. Russia exported 16.5 billion cubic meters of gas to China in 2021, and the two nations signed oil and gas deals worth an estimated $117.5 billion in early February, according to Al-Jazeera.  

Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an energy analyst at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told VOA Mandarin that while Russia was looking to strengthen its commercial tie-ups to countries in the East, “the continuation of that relationship also depends on the sanctions measures being imposed and how the crisis evolves.”  

The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia is now offering to export oil to India and China at prices 20% below global oil benchmark prices. 

Yet it remains to be seen how the parties will get around the U.S. financial sanctions to get the deals done. Logistics is also a problem because Russia currently does not have enough infrastructure to move energy easily to India and China, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.  

“In the case of gas, Russia quite simply doesn’t have the physical infrastructure to export anywhere else, as the gas comes to Europe by pipeline,” he told VOA Mandarin. “Similarly, most oil is shipped from ports on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. There is limited scope to divert these to the Pacific due to long transport distances and the fact that refineries in those markets aren’t configured to process Russian crudes.” 

 
…

Forced civilian deportations from Ukraine’s besieged port town of Mariupol to Russia are “unconscionable,” U.S. officials said Sunday after authorities in Kyiv and Mariupol’s mayor accused Moscow of transporting thousands of people against their will.

The claims are unverified so far but earlier this month Kyiv rejected an offer from Moscow to create “humanitarian corridors” allowing civilians to flee six heavily bombed Ukrainian cities when it emerged that Moscow expected the civilians to use the proposed safe routes to go to Russia or its ally, Belarus.

Only two of the corridors proposed by Russia would end up funneling civilians into safer Ukrainian-controlled territory. French president Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of “moral and political cynicism,” adding, “I do not know many Ukrainians who want to go to Russia.”

Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dismissed Moscow’s proposed routes for civilian evacuation to Russia as “completely immoral.”

The city council in Mariupol was the first to make the allegation about forced civilian deportations to Russia. The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, also accused Moscow of having “forcibly deported more than 1,000 inhabitants of Mariupol.”

Kirilenko said deported civilians were being processed at Russian “filtration camps” where their mobile phones were checked and then their identity documents confiscated “Then they are sent to Russia,” he said on Facebook, adding “their fate on the other side is unknown.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Sunday: “I’ve only heard it. I can’t confirm it.” She added: “But I can say it is disturbing. It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.”

According to some reports the deported civilians are being sent to remote Russian towns and given identity documents that indicate they can work where they are sent and are not allowed to relocate for two years.

The reports of the involuntary deportations have drawn scathing criticism from authoritative historians, who label them a distressing echo of the Soviet era when Communist autocrat Josef Stalin ordered deportations of entire nationalities, forced labor transfers and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill ethnically cleansed territories.

Stalin evicted 1.8 million kulaks from their homes and relocated them to labor camps and remote parts of Russia in 1930–31. A further estimated 1 million peasants and ethnic minorities were involuntarily relocated between 1932–39. Under Stalin’s rule 3.5 million ethnic minorities were forcibly relocated between 1930 to 1952.

In May 1944, over three days, nearly 200,000 Tatars, mostly women and children, were deported on cattle trains from Crimea and dispatched to Uzbekistan. Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 Tatars still living on the peninsula have not been permitted to commemorate the event.

“If we’d paid attention to what Putin did to the Crimean Tatars after the 2014 annexation we’d hardly be surprised by his forced deportations in Mariupol today. Russian occupation forces are not merely committing war crimes in Ukraine, they’re committing crimes against humanity,” tweeted Jasmin Mujanović, the author of Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans.

“Plumbing yet more depths of evil, deportations from Mariupol to Russia, and according to Ukraine human rights spokesperson, deprived of passports and forced to work at specified Russian locations for at least 2 years — essentially deported slave labour,” tweeted Simon Schama, author of The Story of the Jews Volume Two: Belonging.”

Schama’s own family’s history included deportations and forced migrations which had among other relatives, his own parents passing through Turkey, Lithuania, Moldova and Romania.

“When Putin says that there is no Ukrainian nation and no Ukrainian State, he means that he intends to destroy the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian State. Everyone gets that, right?” tweeted Timothy Snyder, who specializes in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust.

Snyder was referencing Putin’s frequently repeated view that Ukrainians are basically Russians. The Russian leader has long pushed a narrative that Ukraine is part of Russia.

He famously declared to then-U.S. President George W. Bush in 2008: “You have to understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a country.” In 2014, after annexing Crimea and using armed proxies, later backed by the Russian military, to seize part of Ukraine’s Donbas region, Putin said: “Russians and Ukrainians are one people.”
…

A critical week for diplomacy, as US President Joe Biden heads to Europe for a special NATO summit aimed at defusing the conflict in Ukraine and imposing more consequences on Russia for invading their Western neighbor. European nations fear this conflict could spread into their territory. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington, with reporting from Bill Gallo in Seoul.
…

…

Anhelina sat and prayed in the basement of her home in Bucha after Russian forces overran her small town north of Kyiv this month after fierce fighting. “There was no light, water, or gas. It was impossible to go out because they shoot. People were being shot around the house, which is a terrible sound, even scarier than the bombs,” said the mother of a three-year-old daughter.

That day Russian soldiers had broken into her home and inspecting the mobile phones of her father and husband found text messages to the local Ukrainian territorial defense forces. “They were taken away for interrogation. And I just sat and prayed in the dark for their return,” she told VOA in a text message.

Anhelina was lucky. The men were returned and a Russian commander who “loves children” told his men not to scare the toddler. “They brought food, water and candy for the little one,” she says. That was the only glimmer of hope in the terrifying days she spent under Russian occupation.

Chechen fighters “miraculously passed our house” one day. The friendly commander told her if they had entered, they probably would have killed her in revenge for the deaths of many of their men in a Ukrainian ambush.

Her story isn’t dissimilar to the testimony of others trapped in occupied towns and villages. Ukrainians disparagingly refer to their invaders as “orcs,” a reference to the malevolent goblin-like beasts’ author JRR Tolkien portrayed in his trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Abductions, shots, threats

It wasn’t how Russian soldiers expected to be greeted. Russian POWs have told their Ukrainian captors their commanders told them they’d be welcomed as liberators. But they’re being met with civilian protests and surliness, even in predominantly Russian-speaking regions, to the surprise of the shunned intruders.

And the occupying forces are responding harshly — with threats, intimidation, shootings. At checkpoints men are brusquely examined to see if their chests or backs display signs of chaffing caused by wearing flak jackets. There have been allegations of torture, and so far, unverified reports of rapes. Last week Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko said women in some occupied towns near Kyiv had been subjected to barbaric sexual assaults.

Russian soldiers, many dispirited and demoralized, are looting, say locals.

“Orcs are hungry,” a woman in the southern town of Kherson told VOA. “At first they would go house to house and ask for food, now they just take it, and they steal food from passers-by and stores,” she said. “They also take cars, trucks, and daub Z on them,” she added, in reference to the Russian army invasion marking that’s become a pro-war Russian symbol.

Locals are split on the reasons for the looting. Some say it is a tactic of terror aimed at breaking their will to resist; others suspect it is plain hooliganism by ill-disciplined and hungry troops.

In Bucha, Veronika, who managed to flee the town after living under Russian occupation for three days, told VOA: “They use people’s houses like their own. Eat and charge up their walkie-talkies and clean their guns. And when they leave, they steal a lot of things also, they steal everything, even food blenders, do you understand? Even blenders, carpets, everything. They’re taking everything from our houses and sometimes they burn houses for no reason.”

She added: “Sometimes they kill people. I don’t know why. At the house of a friend, when the husband went to the outhouse they killed him with three shots, one to the back, another one to the stomach. I don’t remember where the third one was. They never gave a reason.”

Veronika said it got worse with the second wave of soldiers who entered Bucha. The first wave seemed to be more professional, more disciplined, but the soldiers who came later, many of whom were from Chechnya, “really were beasts.”

“The Russians disperse peaceful protests with their guns. When people stand up to them, they often shoot,” the woman in Kherson said. “One time they fired at the ground, causing ricochet injuries. About five people were wounded,” she added. “A blogger, a girl, was broadcasting live near them. She was stuffed into a car. Until now, nothing is known about this girl,” she added.

Kherson was encircled on February 27 and endured a brief siege before Russia captured it on March 3, the first major Ukrainian town to fall to Russian forces. The mayor, Igor Kolykhaiev, urged troops who stormed a town hall meeting not to shoot civilians; he counseled residents to heed the rules he managed to negotiate with the Russians. He managed to persuade the invaders to allow the Ukrainian flag to remain flying above the town hall.

The Russians may have seized Kherson, but the town has not kowtowed. There is still episodic peaceful civil resistance in the form of protests, which the Russians respond to stony-faced or with shots, threats and abductions.

And that is how it is playing out in other Ukrainian towns as the Russians install new political knyaz, or masters, and puppet administrations, according to locals in occupied towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. On Sunday thousands of protesters rallied in Kherson and in occupied Enerhodar, where they demanded the release of the town’s deputy mayor, who has been abducted. Video posted on social-media sites show Russian soldiers in Berdyansk, a port town on the Sea of Azov, beating protesters as they lay on the ground.

The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was abducted on March 11 by Russian troops. Local residents protested. He was released last week in exchange for nine Russian POWs. Fedorov told Current Time TV, a Russian-language television channel overseen by Radio Free Europe and VOA: “It is a rather difficult ordeal when they take you for seven hours with a bag on your head, not knowing where, and you don’t trust the people who took you.”

His interrogators didn’t manhandle him — they didn’t need to as there was a constant air of menace. “Or there was someone being tortured in the next cell over — and you could hear the screams, which absolutely pressured you, psychologically, so that it could definitely be compared with intimidation, with torture, and so on. So all of these six days were quite difficult,” he said. The mayor of the small southern Ukrainian town of Dniprorudne, was also abducted last week, according to Ukrainian authorities. His fate is unknown.

Protests

Kherson’s mayor hasn’t been dragged off. But on Thursday the Russians announced a new governing authority for the town, using the same name as used for other puppet administrations, the Rescue Committee for Peace and Order. In Kherson the new knyaz are pro-Russian politicians with links to the party of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014 by the Maidan uprising. Most of the town’s residents remain uncooperative. “Kherson’s attitude to the Russian world had been neutral before the war,” said a local woman, who asked not to be named.

“But after the events of February 24, it changed. Numerous demonstrations show this. People show remarkable courage and bravery during these protests,” she said. “The city is full of [pro-Russian] separatists. These separatists are despised. Most are corrupt officials from previous city administrations. They try to cajole people. They promise benefits; they blackmail; they intimidate,” she added. Another said: “You can’t complain, or they’ll put you on an enemies list.”

Homes of suspected political activists are raided. There are checkpoints across Kherson and frequent Russian patrols stop, search and interrogate residents, checking mobile phones. “We are seeing it a lot,” a Kherson resident said. “A lot of people have deleted their social-media accounts or they clean up their messages in Viber or Telegram before leaving home,” they added.

Igor Kolykhaiev, Kherson’s legal mayor, has been trying to oversee emergency repairs and get some rudimentary basic services functioning. The new knyaz are at a loss and issue half-baked orders, locals say. That is reminiscent of what happened eight years ago in Donetsk, one of the two eastern Ukrainian oblasts seized in 2014 by pro-Moscow separatists, as this correspondent witnessed when reporting from the city.

The Moscow-backed insurrectionists who seized control of Donetsk were ignorant of the basic mechanics of practical politics. When they stormed the local city treasury to seize money, the treasurer had to explain that tax proceeds were not stored in actual cash in the building.

According to locals, pharmacies are almost empty, and so. too, food stores. Despite shortages, most people won’t accept Russian humanitarian aid that’s trucked in. “The Russians just wanted a pretty propaganda picture,” said a local. Ukrainian humanitarian aid conveys have been rebuffed by the Russians.

Trying to escape from occupation isn’t easy. On March 10 Anhelina and her family heard a humanitarian corridor was being opened up for Bucha. On the journey out, she spent a night with her relatives and others in another basement, where a sewer broke. “and so in the stench, cold, sitting, we waited for the morning.”

“Wheelchair, white flag, a minimum of things and we set off. We walked past the corpses of civilians [how many of them there were]. I didn’t explain anything to the child, because I didn’t know what to say,” she says.

“Every few meters Russians ordered us to stop and put our hands up. Later we noticed my three-year-old was also raising her hands,” she says. At a checkpoint a civilian car sped by and hit a mine. “There was almost nothing left,” she says.

Anhelina then explained what happened next: “You can’t go back, only forward, men in front, I’m with the wheelchair behind. Passed mines, corpses, shattered military equipment, we made our way to freedom.”

“We are safe now, but nothing will be the same. We try to talk normally, even joke a little, but when I close my eyes, I see a road of dead people, and how we stood with our hands up, waiting for the Russians to decide about us.”
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OSLO — Norway’s Equinor has shut its Snorre B oil platform as a precautionary measure following an earthquake in the North Sea, although no damage has been reported so far, the company said Monday. 

It was not yet clear when Snorre B, which produces between 30,000-35,000 barrels per day of oil, could resume normal operation, Equinor spokesperson Gisle Ledel Johannessen said. 

“Our focus now is on the safety,” he said. 

Remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, have been deployed to scan the seabed for any damage, Equinor said. 

The quake, which took place early on Monday, had an estimated magnitude of 4.6, according to the Norwegian National Seismic Network. 

The tremor was noticed at the Snorre field, which has several platforms, Johannessen said. 

“At Snorre B, the production has been shut down as a precaution,” he said. 

“Snorre is the closest in proximity to the earthquake and on the installations they felt the earthquake … But (there are) no reports of any damages to installations or on the seabed,” he added. 

While small earthquakes are common along Norway’s coast, a tremor of the magnitude seen on Monday happens only once a decade on average, University of Bergen seismology Professor Lars Ottermoller told newspaper Bergens Tidende. 

Norway is Europe’s second largest petroleum producer after Russia, producing around 4 million barrels of oil equivalents per day, roughly equally divided between oil and natural gas. 

The Nordic country has said it will do its utmost to maintain high output of oil and gas at a time when Western nations are seeking to wean themselves off Russian petroleum following last month’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Operator Equinor has a stake of 33.3% in Snorre, while state oil firm Petoro holds 30%, Vaar Energi holds 18.5%, INPEX Idemitsu 9.6% and Wintershall DEA 8.6% according to Norwegian government data. 
…

VIENNA, AUSTRIA — Ukraine has managed to rotate staff working at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for the first time since Russia seized it last month as it invaded its neighbor, the U.N.’s nuclear agency said.

Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency that around half of the staff were “finally” able to return to their homes on Sunday after working at the Russian-controlled site for nearly four weeks, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said.

Those who left were replaced by other Ukrainian staff, Grossi said in a statement late Sunday. 

“It is a positive — albeit long overdue — development that some staff at the Chernobyl NPP have now rotated and returned to their families,” Grossi said. 

“They deserve our full respect and admiration for having worked in these extremely difficult circumstances. They were there for far too long. I sincerely hope that remaining staff from this shift can also rotate soon.”

On February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow’s troops seized the Chernobyl compound, the site of the 1986 core meltdown that sparked the worst nuclear reactor catastrophe in history. 

Around 100 technicians have been working under armed guard to maintain the site since then.

Grossi, who had expressed deep concern about the well-being of the Ukrainian staff at the site, “welcomed the news about the partial rotation of personnel,” the IAEA said. 

“Before today’s rotation, the same work shift had been on-site since the day before the Russian forces entered the area,” it continued. 

It is unclear why Russian soldiers seized Chernobyl, where the destroyed reactor is kept under close supervision within a concrete and lead sarcophagus, and the three other reactors are being decommissioned. 

In 2017, the site was one of several Ukrainian targets hit by a massive cyberattack thought to have originated in Russia, which briefly took its radiation monitoring system off-line.  
…

Zelenskyy says he’s ready for negotiations with Putin   
…

Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
…

Russia has given Ukraine until the early hours of Monday to surrender the besieged city of Mariupol, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is ready for peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

However, a short time later, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk rejected the ultimatum. “There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda.

According to a Russian state news agency RIA, Russia’s defense ministry wanted a response from Ukraine’s military by 5 a.m. Moscow time/4 a.m. in Kyiv (0200 GMT). Moscow referred to refusing to surrender as siding with “bandits.”

The ultimatum came hours after Zelenskyy told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview broadcast Sunday that failure to reach a negotiated agreement with Russia “would mean that this is a third World War.”

Zelenskyy has called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow that restore the territorial integrity and provide justice for Ukraine. Russia’s lead negotiator has said in recent days the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting neutral status.

Zelenskyy told CNN that Russian forces entered Ukraine “to exterminate us, to kill us,” but he vowed that Ukraine would not concede its sovereignty or its integrity.

“Russians have killed our children. You cannot reverse the situation anymore. You cannot demand from Ukraine to recognize some territories as independent republics. These compromises are simply wrong,” said Zelenskyy.

Mariupol

A Mariupol art school where about 400 people had found shelter was bombed by Russian forces early Sunday.

Mariupol’s city council said that the building was destroyed in the attack. Information about survivors was not immediately available.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he thinks Russian forces are resorting to these brutal civilian attacks because its military “campaign is stalled.”

“This is really disgusting,” Austin said.

Just a few days earlier a Russian airstrike targeted a theater where hundreds of people had been sheltering. The word “CHILDREN” had been written in Russian in big letters visible from the sky on the ground just outside the theater, to alert Russian forces of who was inside.

More than 100 have been rescued from the theater, and it is still unclear how many casualties and fatalities the attack caused.

The city continues to resist Russian military forces, who are having to engage in attrition tactics and urban fighting that requires going from building to building.

“Mariupol has not yet fallen. It is out of food, fuel, water, everything except for heart. They are still fighting very hard,” retired Gen. David Petraeus told CNN Sunday.

Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been forcibly taken from their homes to Russian territory, according to a Mariupol city council statement on its Telegram channel.

“The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhny district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing,” the statement said.

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis forcibly captured people,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said.

Russia still stalled

Austin said that Russian forces across the country have been ineffective as Ukrainian forces continue to attrit Russian troops with weapons provided by the U.S. and NATO allies.

“It’s had the effect of him (Putin) moving his forces into a woodchipper,” Austin told CBS.

U.S. officials have estimated that Ukrainians have killed more than 3,000 Russian troops since the invasion began.

At least five of those have been senior Russian officers, according to the Ukrainian government.

Petraeus said Sunday at least four of the five Russian generals’ deaths “are absolutely confirmed,” adding that Ukrainian snipers “have just been picking them off left and right.”

Russian troops have failed to seize control of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, a major objective of the Kremlin, even as the invasion enters its fourth week.

Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement Saturday on Telegram that Russia was attacking the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv, while the regional Kyiv government reported the city of Slavutych, north of Kyiv was “completely isolated.”

Mykolaiv

Meanwhile, officials in Ukraine have yet to release the death toll following a Russian missile attack Friday on a military base where soldiers were sleeping in barracks, now destroyed, in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.

One soldier told AFP that 50 bodies have been found, while another said there could be as many as 100 dead under the rubble.

Mykolaiv is located 130 kilometers from the strategic military port of Odesa.

Russia said Saturday that its hypersonic missiles had destroyed an underground depot for missiles and ammunition Friday in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region. Russian news agencies said it was the first time it used the advanced weapons system in Ukraine since it invaded February 24.

U.S Defense Secretary Austin said Sunday he could not confirm or dispute whether Russia had used those types of weapons in Ukraine but added he would not see it as a gamechanger if they had.

A Ukrainian air force representative verified the attack in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, but said Ukraine had no information on the type of missiles used.

Meanwhile, neighboring Slovakia’s defense minister said Sunday that Patriot air defense systems started arriving in Slovakia from NATO partner countries.

The systems will be operated by German and Dutch troops to help reinforce the defense of NATO’s eastern flank, in a move prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) reports that at least 902 civilians have been killed and upward of 1,459 have been wounded as of Saturday, while warning the actual count likely is higher. Most of the deaths were from explosions caused by shelling from heavy artillery and multiple missiles and airstrikes, OHCHR said. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said 112 of those killed were children.

Millions of people have fled their homes since the Russian invasion. “The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grande tweeted Sunday.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Some information also came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The Russian editor who protested Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine during a state TV news broadcast called Sunday for other Russians to speak out against the “gruesome war.”

While working for Channel One television in Moscow, Marina Ovsyannikova barged onto the set of an evening newscast Monday, holding a poster reading “No War.”

She was subsequently detained, fined 30,000 rubles ($280), and then freed pending possible further prosecution, but has turned down a French offer of asylum.

On Sunday she described to US media her decision to protest as “spontaneous,” but said a sense of deep dissatisfaction with her government had been building for years — a feeling she said many of her colleagues shared.

“The propaganda on our state channels was becoming more and more distorted, and the pressure that has been applied in Russian politics could not leave us indifferent,” she told ABC News program “This Week.”

“When I spoke to my friends and colleagues, everyone until the last moment could not believe that such a thing could happen — that this gruesome war could take place,” she said from Moscow, speaking through an interpreter.

“As soon as the war began, I could not sleep, I could not eat. I came to work, and after a week of coverage of this situation, the atmosphere on [Channel One] was so unpleasant that I realized I could not go back there.”

Ovsyannikova said she considered joining a protest in a public square, but saw that protesters were being arrested and faced jail time.

“I decided that maybe I could do something else, something more meaningful… and I could show to the rest of the world that Russians are against the war, and I could show to the Russian people that this is just propaganda.”

She said she hoped to “maybe stimulate some people to speak up against the war.”

The sign she held up behind a news reader said: “Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”

Ovsyannikova, who has resigned her job, told France 24 television on Thursday that her protest had “broken the life of our family,” with her young son particularly anxious.

“But we need to put an end to this fratricidal war.”
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Alona Fartukhova has been coming to Berlin’s Ukrainian Orthodox Christian community every day since she arrived in Germany five days ago from war-torn Kyiv. The 20-year-old refugee has been attending daily prayers for peace and helped organize donations for her compatriots back home.

On Sunday, Fartukhova joined dozens of other Ukrainian worshippers at a red brick stone church in the German capital who sang together, lit candles, and received blessings from the head of the community, Father Oleh Polianko. Later they put medical crutches, sleeping bags, diapers, big boxes of gummi bears and countless jars of pickles — which were piling up everywhere inside the church — into big cardboard boxes to be sent to Ukraine.

“It’s some help for our army, and it is … a lot of things for children” said the university student, who fled by herself and is now living at a hotel in Berlin, as she stacked boxes onto the church pews. “It is so good that a lot of people support us, we really appreciate it.”

Across Europe, Ukrainians gathered for church services Sunday to pray for peace in their war-torn country. Newly arrived refugees mingled with longtime members of Europe’s 1.5 million-strong Ukrainian diaspora at houses of worship all over the continent from Germany to Romania to Moldova.

Since Russia attacked Ukraine more than three weeks ago, over 3.38 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Altogether, 10 million people have fled their homes — more than 6 million of them have been displaced internally, the UNHCR said Sunday.

Most have escaped to neighboring Poland, Romania or Moldova, but as the war continues many are moving farther west.

Germany has registered more than 200,000 Ukrainian refugees but the real numbers are expected to be much higher as Ukrainians don’t need a visa to come to Germany, and federal police only register refugees entering Germany by train or bus. Ukrainians coming to Germany from Poland by car are normally not registered.

Members of Germany’s Ukrainian immigrant community, which counts around 300,000 people, have not only been raising money and collecting donations, but also driven the goods to the border and beyond and on their way back to Germany have taken along refugees. Families already living in Germany have squeezed together to accommodate refugees and are helping them find jobs and get their kids into schools.

The diaspora Ukrainians’ religious communities — mostly Christian Orthodox, but also some Catholic and Jewish communities — have been leading refugee initiatives and have also become an anchor for those worrying about their families back in the war.

Polianko, who heads the 500-member-strong Orthodox Christian community in Berlin, held some one-on-one prayers on Sunday with worshippers who were especially distressed. He then gave blessings “for the souls of our soldiers who are fighting in Ukraine, and also for the souls of our soldiers who have died in Ukraine.”

Because the Berlin community has been so overwhelmed by donations, they temporarily moved from their small church building in the city’s Hermsdorf neighborhood to the bigger church of the Lutheran Philippus Nathanael community in Berlin-Friedenau. Here, they have plenty of space to organize donation drives and a wide driveway for trucks picking up the boxes, says Andriy Ilin, the deputy head of the community.

The Lutherans are currently holding their own services in a nearby community center.

“Initially, they offered us the church for March, now they’ve extended it to April, and they kindly let us know that if we need it beyond that, they will allow that too.” Ilin said.Elsewhere in Europe, local worshippers also opened their churches to welcome Ukrainians.

In Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, locals and refugees alike assembled for an Orthodox prayer service on Sunday.

Angelica Gretsai, a refugee from the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, lit candles just before the religious service in Russian began at a small Sfintul Gheorghe church.

“(I pray) for peace of course, for peace in Ukraine, for these two peoples (Russians and Ukrainians ) to make up, for this war to be no more,” Gretsai said adding that she was yearning to go back home and be with friends and family.

“I’m basically alone here, it’s the first time I came to Moldova,” she said, adding that she was staying with some distant relatives she had never met before. Moldova has welcomed more than 360,000 refugees since Russia invaded Ukraine.

In Suceava, Romania, south of the Ukrainian border, locals and new arrivals from Ukraine held a service together at St. John’s church. Romania has welcomed more than half a million refugees from Ukraine since the beginning of the war and several of them found their way to the church service.

Ariadna Belciug, a local resident at the service, said she was praying “especially for the children, because no one deserves to go through these times.”

“I pray for them to be all right, to be safe and for better days for them to come,” Belciug added.
…

India is considering establishing a payment mechanism in local currencies to allow it to continue trade with Russia, which has been hit with Western sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

New Delhi is proceeding with purchases of Russian crude at discounted prices despite pressure from the United States.

The state-run Indian Oil Corp. has concluded a deal to buy 3 million barrels of Russian crude, according to local media reports.

Although it has not officially confirmed the deal, India has defended the country’s decision to look at purchasing Russian oil.

“A number of countries are importing energy from Russia, especially in Europe,” Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi told reporters earlier this week. He said India, which imports most of its oil, is “always exploring all possibilities in global energy markets.”

While the United States has banned Russian oil imports, several European countries, such as Germany, which are dependent on Russian imports of energy, continue to buy it. India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, imports only about 3% of its crude from Russia, but cheap Russian oil could help cushion its economy from spiraling international crude prices.

India will study the impact of Western sanctions against Russia while devising a payment mechanism to settle its trade with Moscow officials say.

“We will await details to examine the impact on our economic exchanges with Russia,” according to Bagchi.

As sanctions limit Russia’s ability to do business in major currencies such as the dollar or the euro, an Indian business body has asked the government to set up a rupee-ruble mechanism to facilitate trade.

“We have proposed that local currency trading may be explored in the given situation. It is one of the plausible options that are on the table,” according to Ajay Sahai, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations. Indian exporters say payments of about $500 million are stuck because Russian buyers cannot pay in foreign exchange.

Work was ongoing to set up a rupee-ruble trade mechanism to be used to pay for oil and other goods, an Indian official, who refused to be identified, has told Reuters.

The trade in local currencies could take place between Russian banks and companies with accounts in Indian state-run banks.

This is not the first time that such a mechanism is being considered — India and the former Soviet Union had a rupee-ruble exchange plan in place during the Cold War to bypass the U.S. dollar.

India has also used a similar program with Iran, under Western sanctions for its nuclear weapons program.

New Delhi has taken a neutral stance on the Russian invasion, calling for a cease-fire and diplomacy to resolve the crisis, but abstaining from condemning Moscow, with which it has longstanding ties.

It has been under pressure from Washington, which has been urging India to the U.S. and other countries’ tough stand on the invasion.

When asked if the U.S. plans to reach out to India for curbs on oil purchases from Russia, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Washington has been in touch with Indian leaders but added that countries have different “economic reasoning,” including some in Europe.

“But what we would project or convey to any leader around the world is that the world — the rest of the world is watching where you’re going to stand as it relates to this conflict, whether its support for Russia in any form as they are illegally invading Ukraine,” she told reporters.

New Delhi however has shown no indication that it will weaken trade or strategic ties to Russia — Moscow supplies India with more than 70% of its weapons, which are critical for New Delhi as it faces Chinese troops all along its Himalayan border. During a visit three months ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin to New Delhi, both countries pledged to increase trade in the defense and energy sectors.

Analysts in New Delhi are optimistic that differences over Russia will not harm ties with Washington, which have grown in recent years as both India and the United States look at how to contain a more assertive China.

“It is not as if U.S. and India are on the same page on every issue,” said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs at O.P. Jindal University. Pointing out that India’s focus is primarily Asia and Indo-Pacific region, he said, “We are really fearful of what China could do along our borders and that remains our primary concern. And New Delhi feels that whether or not we take a joint position on Ukraine with the U.S., the Europeans and others, they will still partner with us to counterbalance China.”

That is why India believes that it can navigate its partnerships with both Russia and the United States for the time being, analysts such as Chaulia say.

However, if the war in Ukraine does not wind down and the crisis drags on, he said “then we will have to readjust our position.”
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A car slammed at high speed into carnival revelers in a small town in southern Belgium early Sunday, killing six people and leaving 10 more with life-threatening injuries. Several dozen were more lightly injured.

“What should have been a great party turned into a tragedy,” said Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden.

The prosecutor’s office said that in the early stages of the investigation there were no elements to suspect a terror motive, and two locals in their thirties were arrested at the scene in Strépy-Bracquegnies, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Brussels.

In an age-old tradition, carnival revelers had gathered at dawn, intending to pick up others at their homes along the way, to finally hold their famous festivity again after it was banned for the past two years to counter the spread of COVID-19. Some dressed in colorful garb with bells attached, walking behind the beat of drums. It was supposed to be a day of deliverance.

Instead, said mayor Jacques Gobert, “what happened turned it into a national catastrophe.”

More than 150 people of all ages had gathered around 5 a.m. and were standing in a thick crowd along a long, straight road.

Suddenly, “a car drove from the back at high speed. And we have a few dozen injured and unfortunately several people who are killed,” Gobert said.

The driver and a second person were arrested when their car came to a halt a few hundred meters further on.

Since Belgium was hit with twin terror attacks in Brussels and Zaventem that killed 32 civilians six years ago, thoughts of a terror motive are never far away.

But prosecutor Damien Verheyen said “there is no element in the investigation at this time that allows me to consider that the motivations of the two could have been terror related.”

The prosecutor’s office also denied media reports that the crash may have been caused by a car that was being chased by police.

King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo were expected in Strépy-Bracquegnies later Sunday to express support for the families and victims.

Carnival is extremely popular in the area and the nearby version in Binche has even been declared UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
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One of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works, Azovstal, has been badly damaged as Russian forces lay siege to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, officials said Sunday.

“One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated,” tweeted Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko.

Vasylenko posted a video of explosions on an industrial site, with thick columns of grey and black smoke rising from the buildings. 

One of her colleagues, Serhiy Taruta, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces “had practically destroyed the factory.”

“We will return to the city, rebuild the enterprise and revive it,” Azovstal’s director general, Enver Tskitishvili, wrote on messaging app Telegram, without specifying the extent of the damage.

He said that when the invasion began on Feb. 24, the factory had taken measures to reduce the environmental damage in the event of being hit.

“Coke oven batteries no longer pose a danger to the lives of residents,” he wrote. “We have also stopped the blast furnaces correctly.”

Azovstal is part of the Metinvest group, which is controlled by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.

Considered pro-Moscow before the war began, Akhmetov has since accused Russian troops of committing “crimes against humanity against Ukrainians.”
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