The family of a German-Iranian political dissident sentenced to death in Iran is expressing concern over his condition after a phone conversation with him Sunday.

Ghazaleh Sharmahd, the daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd, wrote on Twitter “After five months, today we had our first phone call with my father, Jamshid Sharmahd. It is concerning that he was deprived of contact with his daughter for two years, and now he has been allowed to speak with me.”

“This greatly worries me. Could this be his farewell call,” she said.

Jamshid Sharmahd, a German-Iranian dual citizen and opposition figure was accused of masterminding a deadly 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz, charges his family strongly denies. He faces a death sentence.

 

Sharmahd, 68, had been living in the United States, where he served as the spokesperson for Tondar, a group that aims to restore the Western-backed monarchy that ruled Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. His family says Iranian authorities kidnapped Sharmahd during a stopover in Dubai in 2020.

Describing her father’s condition during the Sunday phone call, Ghazaleh Sharmahd said “His voice was feeble, he was severely ill, and he has spent over 1,000 days in solitary confinement, enduring pain and terror.”

Amnesty International said that he has been deprived of adequate health care and called for his immediate release.

Germany has condemned the death sentence that was handed down against Jamshid Sharmahd.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock questioned the proceedings in the case against him and said earlier this year that Sharmahd never had “even the semblance of a fair trial.” She asked Iran to reverse the death sentence immediately.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani accused Germany of “interfering in Iran’s internal and judicial affairs,” and said “Iran will not ask permission from anyone in the way of confronting terrorism and executing justice.”
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Elton John briefly testified Monday for the defense at Kevin Spacey ‘s sexual assault trial as the actor’s lawyer attempted to discredit a man who claimed the Oscar winner aggressively grabbed his crotch while driving to the singer’s summer ball.

John appeared in the London court by video link from Monaco after his husband, David Furnish, testified that Spacey did not attend the annual party at their Windsor home the year the accuser said he was attacked.

One of the alleged victims said he was driving Spacey to the White Tie & Tiara Ball in 2004 or 2005 when the actor grabbed him so forcefully he almost ran off the road.

Furnish supported Spacey’s own testimony that he only attended the event in 2001. Furnish said he had reviewed photographs taken at the party from 2001 to 2005 and Spacey only appeared in images that one year. He said all guests were photographed each year.

John said the actor attended the party in the early 2000s and arrived after flying in on a private jet.

Furnish said Spacey’s appearance was a surprise and he remembered it because it was a big deal.

“He was an Oscar-winning actor and there was a lot of buzz and excitement that he was at the ball,” Furnish said.

John said he only remembered Spacey coming once to the gala and said the actor spent the night at their house after the event. He also confirmed that Spacey bought a Mini Cooper at the auction held that night for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

The alleged victim said he may have gotten the year wrong, but that he would not have forgotten the incident because it took his breath away and he almost crashed the car.

The timeline, however, is important because the man testified that Spacey had fondled him over several years beginning in the early 2000s. The incident was the final occasion, he said, when he threatened to hit the actor and then avoided him.

Spacey said the two were friends and they engaged in some romantic contact but the man was straight, so the actor respected his wishes not to go further. He said he was crushed when he learned the man had complained to police about him and said the man had “reimagined” what had been consensual touching.

Furnish said he was familiar with the accuser and described him as “charming,” the same term Spacey used.

Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges that include sexual and indecent assault counts and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

Over two days of testimony last week, the two-time Academy Award winner insisted that he never sexually assaulted three of the four accusers who described disturbing encounters between 2001 and 2013. The acts allegedly escalated from unwanted touching to aggressive fondling to one instance of performing oral sex act on an unconscious man.

Spacey dismissed one man’s fondling claims as “pure fantasy” and said he shared consensual encounters with two others who later regretted it. He accepted the claims of a fourth man, saying he had made a “clumsy pass” during a night of heavy drinking, but he took exception to the “crotch-grabbing” characterization.

John’s testimony comes just over a week after he wrapped up his 50-year touring career with a show in Stockholm.

It’s the second time the “Rocket Man” star and Furnish have made appearances in a London courtroom this year. The two showed up at hearings in their phone hacking lawsuit with Prince Harry against the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper.

The couple, the Duke of Sussex and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost are among a group of claimants that allege Associated Newspapers Ltd. violated their privacy by intercepting voicemails and using unlawful methods to snoop on them.

A judge is deciding whether to throw out the case after the publisher said the group waited too long to bring their claims.
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Mikhail Nalivajko, a fighter with Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces, lost his right leg in an attack on his unit. His injuries defied treatment until a nonprofit brought him to the U.S. for medical care. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov, Natalia Latukhina.
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Leaders from the European Union and Latin America were gathering for a major summit of long-lost relatives starting on Monday. Whether it will be a joyful meeting of long-lost friends remains to be seen.

Their last such encounter was eight years ago. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic and Brazil’s three-year departure from the 33-nation Community of Latin American and Caribbean States — or CELAC — had made the Atlantic Ocean separating the two sides seem wider.

“The world has certainly changed during that time,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “So we need our close friends to be at our side in these uncertain times.” Yet, uncertainty still swirled around the two-day summit, too.

Division ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to trade, deforestation and slavery reparations has given extra spice to a meeting that will now already be considered a success if all agree to meet more frequently from now on.

The 27-nation EU certainly takes it share of the blame for the estrangement.

“For too many years, Europe has been turning its back on what is, without a doubt, by far the most Euro-compatible region on the planet,” said Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares of Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency.

Several EU nations have ties to the Americas going back centuries that were for so long based on exploitative colonialism and slavery. And even since the nations wrested independence from European powers, sometimes as long as 200 years ago, trade was seen for too long as a one-way street where Europeans stood to benefit first and foremost.

In the 21st century though, China has steadily been pushing its influence and trade outreach deep into Latin America, and the EU realizes it has a geo-strategic battle on its hands. 

In talks early Monday with Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, von der Leyen stressed how important it was to “de-risk” their economies, which is EU code-speak for taking distance from Beijing for fear the Chinese could become so powerful as investors as to control nations from afar.

Lula, for his part, said that as Brazil is developing further, “we want to share that intense econ activity with our partners in the EU.”

The balance in Latin America, however, is shifting.

“A lot of European companies have lost ground,” said Parsifal D’Sola, executive director of the Center of Chinese-Latin American Investigations.

“There is an overall interest in counterbalancing the economic influence that China has throughout the world, but in this particular case in Latin America,” D’Sola said.

The EU has called China a “systemic rival” for four years now, and has seen Beijing rapidly encroach on Europe’s age-old interests in Africa, and Central and South America. Up to a point that D’Sola now warns that China’s flexibility and heavy investment in a variety of sectors will make it difficult to truly pull influence away from Beijing in the way that EU nations may desire.

Still, there is no underestimating Europe’s continued clout in Latin America, especially when it comes to the economy. The latest figures show that annual trade between the two blocs has increased by 39% over the past decade to $414 billion. EU investment in the region stood at $777 billion, a 45% increase over the past decade. The EU already has trade deals with 27 of the 33 CELAC nations.

It is also why the elephant in the room will be the huge EU-Mercosur trade agreement between the EU bloc and Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, which has been foundering for five years just short of full ratification.

Unlock that deal, and shared prosperity would be the reward for all involved, insisted von der Leyen. “All of this is within reach if we get the Mercosur, EU agreement across the finishing line. Our ambition is to settle any remaining differences as soon as possible.” 

Several EU nations have powerful farm lobbies that seek to keep competition from beef producing nations like Brazil and Argentina at bay. And after then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro allowed Amazon deforestation to surge to a 15-year high, EU nations have been insisting on tougher environmental standards.

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who succeeded Bolsonaro this year, and took the presidency of Mercosur in early July, he called the threat of EU sanctions “unacceptable.” Before the summit, EU officials were at pains to insist that sanctions on countries that fail to comply with the 2015 international climate Paris Agreement weren’t on the table this week and lauded Lula’s efforts to turn back rampant deforestation.

“Brazil will meet its climate commitments,” insisted Lula, including those on deforestation. 

Russia and the war in Ukraine is now also a point of division instead of a natural unifier. CELAC has member nations like Cuba and Venezuela, whose views on Russia contrast with just about every EU nation. There was initially an expectation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would address the summit. That idea has now been shelved.

Such issues have seriously complicated drafting a joint summit statement, which was long expected to be a long and detailed text, but is now quickly turning into a “shorthand declaration,” a senior EU official involved in the drafting said. He spoke on condition of anonymity since talks were ongoing.

He also didn’t expect “any particular breakthrough” on the Mercosur deal or other outstanding trade agreements, but added that the summit could create momentum “that all of these trade agreements are coming together this year.”
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

Russia has a "sufficient stockpile" of cluster bombs and the right to use them if cluster munitions are used against its forces in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian TV Sunday. Ukraine has pledged to only deploy the munitions it received from the United States to repel enemy soldiers from Ukrainian territory. Cluster munitions are banned in more than 100 countries.





The Russian state has assumed control of the Russian subsidiary of French yogurt maker Danone and Danish beer company Carlsberg's stake in a local brewer as a retaliatory move after Western countries froze assets of Russian companies abroad.

 

Russia said Monday it has halted its participation in a nearly year-old agreement that facilitated grain exports from three Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea.

The United Nations and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative amid a global food crisis, seeking to facilitate the exports blocked by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ahead of the deal’s expiration on Monday, Russia had said it was not benefitting enough under the initiative.

A parallel memorandum of understanding between Moscow and the United Nations has sought to remove obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. While food and fertilizer are not sanctioned by the West, efforts have been made to ease concerns of anxious banks, insurers, shippers and other private sector actors about doing business with Russia.

One of Russia’s main demands has been for its agriculture bank to be reinstated in the Swift system of financial transactions.

“Unfortunately, the part of these Black Sea agreements concerning Russia has not been implemented so far, so its effect is terminated,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “As soon as the Russian part of the agreements is fulfilled, the Russian side will return to the implementation of this deal, immediately.”

The U.N. said that since the exports began in August 2022, 32.9 metric tons of food commodities were exported to 45 countries. Experts said not renewing the deal would cause food prices to spike.

The last ship to depart Ukraine under the deal left a Ukrainian port on Sunday.

Crimea bridge

Russia said a Ukrainian attack Monday on a bridge linking Russia’s Krasnodar region to the Crimean Peninsula killed a civilian couple and their child, while damaging the bridge’s road decking and halting traffic.

Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee attributed the attack to two Ukrainian sea drones.

The bridge serves as a key link to supply Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine.

Russian authorities said the attack damaged a section of the bridge closer to Crimea, the region Russia annexed in 2014 in a move not recognized by the international community. There was no damage to the bridge’s piers, Russia said.

The bridge was previously damaged in an October explosion that Russia also blamed on Ukraine.

Ukrainian Security Service spokesman Artem Degtyarenko said in a statement that details of the incident would be revealed after Ukraine wins the war.

“In the meantime, we are watching with interest how one of the symbols of the Putin regime once again failed to withstand the military load,” Degtyarenko said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also alluded to the attack in a tweet Monday, saying: “Any illegal structures used to deliver Russian instruments of mass murder are necessarily short-lived… regardless of the reasons for the destruction.”

Ukrainian gains

A Ukrainian defense official said Monday the country’s military had retaken 18 square kilometers of territory during the past week, and 210 square kilometers from Russian forces since launching a counteroffensive last month.

The gains included 7 square kilometers in the Bakhmut area, in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have occupied the city of Bakhmut since May.

In southern Ukraine, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian fighters had retaken 11 square kilometers as they advance toward the cities of Berdyansk and Melitopol.

Maliar also said Russian forces have advanced toward Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine.

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information also came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

Russia has a "sufficient stockpile" of cluster bombs and the right to use them if cluster munitions are used against its forces in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian TV Sunday. Ukraine has pledged to only deploy the munitions it received from the United States to repel enemy soldiers from Ukrainian territory. Cluster munitions are banned in more than 100 countries.
The Russian state has assumed control of the Russian subsidiaries of French yogurt maker Danone's DANO.PA and Danish beer company Carlsberg's CARLb.CO as a retaliatory move after Western countries froze assets of Russian companies abroad.
The U.N.-brokered grain deal that has allowed Ukrainian exports through the Black Sea – is set to expire late Monday. The deal remains in limbo as Putin has not yet said if he will agree to renew it.

 

Russia-installed officials said traffic was halted Monday on a bridge linking Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region, amid reports of explosions on the bridge.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-installed governor of Crimea, said on Telegram that traffic was stopped due to an “emergency” and that authorities were working to handle the situation.

The bridge is a key supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine. It was previously damaged in an October explosion that Russia blamed on Ukraine.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in a move not recognized by the international community.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine “somewhat intensified” as Ukrainian and Russian forces clashed in at least three areas on the eastern front, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Sunday on the messaging app Telegram.

Ukrainian forces say they are making steady progress along the northern and southern flanks of the war-ravaged city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have occupied since May.

There was also fighting along the southern front in Zaporizhzhia, where Ukrainian forces are making minimal gains against formidable Russian fortifications.

Maliar recently claimed that Kyiv’s forces had destroyed six Russian ammunition depots in the space of 24 hours, a remark that hinted at Ukrainian tactics.

“We inflict effective, painful and precise blows and bleed the occupier, for whom the lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal,” she said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday in an interview with state television that Ukraine’s operation was “not succeeding” and that attempts to break through Russian defenses had failed.

In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” TV program, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Ukraine’s counteroffensive was never expected to be quick and easy. “We said before this counteroffensive started that it would be hard going, and it’s been hard going. That’s the nature of war. But the Ukrainians are continuing to move forward,” he said.

One man was killed, and several people were wounded Sunday in Russian shelling of a district of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine local officials said.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that seven people were injured in the shelling of the southern Osnovyanskyi district of the city. Reuters could not independently confirm details of the attack and casualty figures.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had shelled the Russian town of Shebekino about 5 kilometers from the Ukrainian border with Grad missiles, killing a woman riding her bike.

Both Russia and Ukraine have denied targeting civilians.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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European leaders and Tunisia’s president announced progress Sunday in the building of hoped-for closer economic and trade relations and on measures to combat the often-lethal smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

The leaders of Italy, the Netherlands and the European Commission made their second visit to Tunis in just over a month. They expressed hope that a memorandum newly signed with Tunisia during the trip would pave the way for a comprehensive partnership.

On their last visit in June, the leaders held out the promise of more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in financial aid to rescue Tunisia’s teetering economy and better police its borders, to restore stability to the North African country and to stem migration from its shores to Europe.

This time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte didn’t detail the full monetary value of the EU aid on offer to Tunisia, in statements they made after talks with Tunisian President Kais Saied.

But von der Leyen said the latest trip secured agreement on “a comprehensive package of measures that we will now put into practice swiftly.”

Saied, speaking through an interpreter, said that he expects the memorandum to be followed by “a set of binding agreements” — suggesting more negotiating work ahead.

Tunisia intends to implement the memorandum “in the nearest time possible,” he said.

Specific aid that von der Leyen announced included a 10-million-euro ($11 million) program to boost exchanges of students and 65 million euros ($73 million) in EU funding to modernize Tunisian schools.

On migration, von der Leyen said: “We need an effective cooperation more than ever.”

The EU will work with Tunisia on an anti-smuggling partnership, will increase coordination in search and rescue operations and both sides also agreed to cooperate on border management, she said. Von der Leyen pledged 100 million euros ($112 million) for those efforts — a figure she had already announced on the leaders’ previous visit.

Tunisia has faced an international outcry over the plight of hundreds of migrants who were deported to inhospitable desert areas on the Libya and Algeria borders. On the Tunisia-Algeria border, local reports have said as many as 30 migrants died.

Saied, however, insisted migrants are well treated.

“The Tunisian people have provided these migrants with everything possible, with unlimited generosity, while many organizations, supposed to play their humanitarian role, only manifested themselves in press releases,” he said.

Rutte described the new memorandum as the “promising start of a comprehensive strategic partnership” between the EU and Tunisia that will aim to boost economic growth.

He said that EU member countries now must approve the deal, adding: “I’m very confident that there will be broad support.”
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Russia has a “sufficient stockpile” of cluster bombs and the right to use them if cluster munitions are used against its forces in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian TV Sunday. Ukraine has pledged to only deploy the munitions it received from the United States to repel enemy soldiers from Ukrainian territory. Cluster munitions are banned in more than 100 countries.  
The Russian state has assumed control of the Russian subsidiaries of French yogurt maker Danone’s DANO.PA and Danish beer company Carlsberg’s CARLb.CO as a retaliatory move after Western countries froze assets of Russian companies abroad.
Since July 2022, the United Kingdom has trained 18,000 Ukrainian volunteer infantrymen under the Operation Interflex training program, the defense ministry said Saturday. Ukrainian soldiers have been trained to “survive and be lethal in their fight against the illegal invasion of their homeland,” it said.
President Putin could be arrested if he attends next month’s summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in South Africa. A warrant issued against him in March by the International Criminal Court accuses him of the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. It is not clear if Putin will attend the talks. South Africa is a signatory to the ICC and would be obliged to arrest him if he enters the country.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine “somewhat intensified” as Ukrainian and Russian forces clashed in at least three areas on the eastern front, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on the messaging app Telegram on Sunday.

Ukrainian forces claim they are making steady progress along the northern and southern flanks of the war-ravaged city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have been occupied since May.

Battles are also raging along the southern front in Zaporizhzhia, where Ukrainian forces are making minimal gains against formidable Russian fortifications.

Maliar recently claimed that Kyiv’s forces had destroyed six Russian ammunition depots in the space of 24 hours, a remark that hinted at Ukrainian tactics.

“We inflict effective, painful and precise blows and bleed the occupier, for whom the lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal,” she said.

British Admiral Tony Radakin, chief of the U.K.’s defense staff, said that Ukraine’s first goal is to starve Russian units of supplies and reinforcements by attacking logistic and command centers in the rear and then storm through when the front lines collapse.

“I would describe it as a policy of starve, stretch and strike,’’ Radakin told a British parliamentary committee.

Radakin said that Ukraine lacks vital air cover for its attacks. Kyiv has won pledges from its Western allies of F-16 fighter jets, but they aren’t expected to be seen over the battlefield until next year. Ukraine is also asking for long-range weapons and more ammunition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday in an interview with state television that Ukraine’s operation was “not succeeding” and that attempts to break through Russian defenses had failed.

In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” TV program, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Ukraine’s counteroffensive was never expected to be quick and easy. “We said before this counteroffensive started that it would be hard going, and it’s been hard going. That’s the nature of war. But the Ukrainians are continuing to move forward,” he said.

Watch related video by Veronica Balderas Iglesias:

 

Black Sea grain initiative

The last ship to travel under a U.N.-brokered grain deal that allows the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain left the port of Odesa early Sunday ahead of the initiative’s expiration deadline Monday. 

Putin is remaining silent about a possible extension of the deal.

In a phone call Saturday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Putin discussed “the need for a permanent and sustainable solution to the movement of grain from Russia and Ukraine to the international markets,” according to the South African president’s office. No further details were provided.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked Putin to extend the deal in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank, Rosselkhozbank, to the SWIFT international payment system, but he has not received a reply, according to a U.N. spokesperson Friday.

“Discussions are being had, WhatsApp messages are being sent, Signal messages are being sent and exchanged. We’re also waiting for a response to the letter,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters when asked about the negotiations.

Russia has said it would agree to extend the grain deal only if its conditions are met regarding implementation.

Wagner Group

 

Russia’s security apparatus experienced “a period of confusion and negotiations,” following the Wagner Group’s mutiny last month, the British defense ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update about Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, however, an interim arrangement for the mercenary group’s future is shaping up, according to the report posted on Twitter.

Meanwhile, some social media groups associated with Wagner restarted their postings, focusing on Wagner’s activities in Africa. The ministry said recent announcements from Russian officials indicate that Russia is “likely prepared” to accept “Wagner’s aspirations to maintain its extensive presence on the continent.”

Both Ukraine and Poland Saturday confirmed the arrival of Wagner forces in Belarus, one day after Minsk said the mercenaries were training its troops.

“There may be several hundred of them at the moment,” Stanislaw Zaryn, Poland’s deputy minister coordinator of special services, said on Twitter.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, has not been spotted in Belarus or been seen in public since June 24.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Despite not advancing on its goal to join NATO, Ukraine did receive security assurances by the military alliance’s members during their summit last week in Vilnius. And as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, the Biden administration emphasized this Sunday again, that its’ support for Kyiv, remains strong.
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British-born actress and singer Jane Birkin, a 1960s wildchild who became a beloved figure in France, has died in Paris aged 76.

The French Culture Ministry said the country had lost a “timeless Francophone icon.”

Local media reported she had been found dead at her home, citing people close to her. Birkin had a mild stroke in 2021 after suffering heart problems in previous years.

Birkin was best known overseas for her 1969 hit in which she and her then-lover, the late French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, sang the sexually explicit “Je t’aime…moi non plus”.

She had lived in her adopted France since the late 1960s and apart from her singing and roles in dozens of films, she was a popular figure for her warm nature, stalwart fight for women’s and LGBT rights.

The “most Parisian of the English has left us,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. “We will never forget her songs, her laughs and her incomparable accent which always accompanied us.”

Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in December 1946, daughter of British actress Judy Campbell and Royal Navy commander David Birkin.

She first took to the stage aged 17 and went on to appear in the 1965 musical “Passion Flower Hotel” by conductor and composer John Barry, whom she married shortly after. The marriage ended in the late 1960s.

Before venturing across the Channel aged 22, she achieved notoriety in the controversial 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film “Blow-Up,” appearing naked in a threesome sex scene.

But it was in France that she truly shot to fame, as much for her love affair with tormented national star Gainsbourg, as for her tomboyish style and endearing British accent when speaking French, which some said she cultivated deliberately.

Following the breakup of that relationship in 1981, she continued her career as a singer and actress, appearing on stage and releasing albums such as “Baby Alone in Babylone” in 1983, and “Amour des Feintes” in 1990, both with words and music by Gainsbourg.

She wrote her own album “Arabesque” in 2002, and in 2009 released a collection of live recordings, “Jane at the Palace.”

“It’s unimaginable to live in a world without you,” said French singer Etienne Daho, who produced and composed Birkin’s last album in 2020.

It was on the set of the film “Slogan” in 1969 that Birkin first met Gainsbourg, who was recovering from a break-up with Brigitte Bardot, and the two quickly began a love affair that captivated the nation.

That same year they released “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” (“I Love You… Me Neither”), a song about physical love originally written for Bardot in which Gainsbourg’s explicit lyrics are punctuated with breathy moans and cries from Birkin.

The song was banned by the BBC and condemned by the Vatican.

Gainsbourg’s drinking eventually got the better of the relationship, and Birkin left him in 1981 to live with film director Jacques Doillon. However she remained close to the troubled singer until his death in March 1991.

It was around this time that she inspired the famous Birkin bag by French luxury house Hermes, after chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas saw her struggling with her straw bag on a flight to London, spilling the contents over the floor.

She is survived by two daughters the singer and actress Charlotte, born in 1971, and Lou Doillon, also an actress, born in 1982. She also had a daughter, Kate, who was born in 1967 and died in 2013.
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A Chinese naval flotilla set off on Sunday to join Russian naval and air forces in the Sea of Japan in an exercise aimed at “safeguarding the security of strategic waterways,” according to China’s defense ministry.

 

Codenamed “Northern/Interaction-2023,” the drill marks enhanced military cooperation between China and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is taking place as Beijing continues to rebuff U.S. calls to resume military communication.

 

The Chinese flotilla comprised of five warships and four ship-borne helicopters, left the eastern port of Qingdao and will rendezvous with Russian forces in a “predetermined area.” the ministry said on its official WeChat account on Sunday.

 

On Saturday, the ministry said Russian naval and air forces would participate in the drill taking place in the Sea of Japan.

 

This would be the first time both Russian forces take part in the drill, state newspaper Global Times cited military observers as saying.

 

Gromkiy and Sovershenniy, two Russian warships taking part in the Sea of Japan drill, had earlier this month conducted separate training with the Chinese navy in Shanghai on formation movements, communication and sea rescues.

 

Before making port at the financial hub of Shanghai, the same ships had sailed passed Taiwan and Japan, prompting both Taipei and Tokyo to monitor the Russian warships.

 

Days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a “no limits” partnership they said was aimed at countering the influence of the United States.

 

One notable area of the partnership is military cooperation.

 

When China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu met with the head of the Russian navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, in Beijing this month, both sides reiterated pledges to strengthen military ties.

 

Chinese military Chief of Joint Staff Liu Zhenli and Russia’s top soldier, Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov made the same pledge during a video call in June.
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Tourists are waiting more than two hours to visit the Acropolis in Athens. Taxi lines at Rome’s main train station are running just as long. And so many visitors are concentrating around St. Mark’s Square in Venice that crowds get backed up crossing bridges — even on weekdays.

After three years of pandemic limitations, tourism is expected to exceed 2019 records in some of Europe’s most popular destinations this summer, from Barcelona and Rome, Athens and Venice to the scenic islands of Santorini in Greece, Capri in Italy and Mallorca in Spain.

While European tourists edged the industry toward recovery last year, the upswing this summer is led largely by Americans, boosted by a strong dollar and in some cases pandemic savings. Many arrive motivated by “revenge tourism” — so eager to explore again that they’re undaunted by higher airfares and hotel costs.

Lauren Gonzalez, 25, landed in Rome this week with four high school and college friends for a 16-day romp through the Italian capital, Florence and the seaside after three years of U.S. vacations. They aren’t concerned about the high prices and the crowds.

“We kind of saved up, and we know this is a trip that is meaningful,” said Gonzalez, who works at a marketing agency. “We are all in our mid-20s. It’s a (moment of) change in our lives. … This is something special. The crowds don’t deter us. We live in Florida. We have all been to Disney World in the heat. We are all good.”

Americans appear equally unperturbed by recent riots in Paris and other French cities. There was a small drop in flight bookings, but it was mainly for domestic travel.

 

“Some of my friends said, ‘It’s a little crazy there right now,’ but we thought summer is really a good time for us to go, so we’ll just take precautions,” Joanne Titus, a 38-year-old from Maryland, said while strolling the iconic Champs-Elysees shopping boulevard.

The return of mass tourism is a boon to hotels and restaurants, which suffered under COVID-19 restrictions. But there is a downside, too, as pledges to rethink tourism to make it more sustainable have largely gone unheeded.

“The pandemic should have taught us a lesson,” said Alessandra Priante, director of the regional department for Europe at the U.N. World Tourism Organization.

Instead, she said, the mindset “is about recuperating the cash. Everything is about revenue, about the here and now.”

“We have to see what is going to happen in two or three years’ time because the prices at the moment are unsustainable,” she said.

The mayor of Florence is stopping new short-term apartment rentals from proliferating in the historic center, which is protected as a UNESCO heritage site, as mayors of Italy’s other art cities call for a nationwide law to manage the sector.

Elsewhere, the anti-mass tourism movements that were active before the pandemic have not reappeared, but the battle lines are still being drawn: graffiti misdirected tourists in Barcelona away from — instead of toward — the Gaudi-designed Park Guell.

Despite predictable pockets of overtourism, travel to and within Europe overall is still down 10% from 2019, according to the World Tourism Organization. That is partly due to fewer people visiting countries close to the war in Ukraine, including Lithuania, Finland, Moldova and Poland.

In addition, Chinese visitors have not fully returned, with flights from China and other Asia-Pacific countries down 45% from 2019, according to travel data company ForwardKeys.

Tourism-dependent Greece expects 30 million visitors this year, still shy of 2019’s 34 million record. Still, the number of flights are up so far, and tourist hotspots are taking the brunt.

The Culture Ministry will introduce a new ticketing system for the Acropolis this month, providing hourly slots for visitors to even out crowds. But no remedy is being discussed for the parking line of cruise ships on the islands of Mykonos and Santorini on busy mornings.

Spain’s tourism minister, Hector Gomez, called it “a historic summer for tourism,” with 8.2 million tourists arriving in May alone, breaking records for a second straight month. Still, some hotel groups say reservations slowed in the first weeks of summer, owing to the steep rise in prices for flights and rooms.

Costs are growing as flights from the U.S. to Europe are up 2% from 2019 levels, according to ForwardKeys.

 

“The rising appetite for long-haul travel from America is the continued result of the ‘revenge travel’ boom caused by the pandemic lockdowns,” said Tim Hentschel, CEO of HotelPlanner, a booking site. “Big cities within these popular European countries are certainly going to be busy during the summer.”

Americans have pushed arrivals in Italian bucket-list destinations like Rome, Florence, Venice and Capri above pre-pandemic levels, according to Italy’s hotel association, Federalberghi.

They bring a lot of pent-up buying power: U.S. tourists in Italy spent 74% more in tax-free indulgences in the first three months of the year, compared with same period of 2019.

“Then there is the rest of Italy that lives from Italian and European tourism, and at the moment, it is still under 2019 levels,” Federalberghi president Bernabo Bocca said.

He expects it will take another year for an across-the-board recovery. An economic slowdown discouraged German arrivals, while Italians “are less prone to spending this year,” he said.

And wallets will be stretched. Lodging costs in Florence rose 53% over last year, while Venice saw a 25% increase and Rome a 21% hike, according to the Italian consumer group Codacons.

Even gelato will cost a premium 21% over last year, due to higher sugar and milk prices.

Perhaps nothing has encouraged the rise in tourism in key spots more than a surge in short-term apartment rentals. With hotel room numbers constant, Bocca of Federalberghi blames the surge for the huge crowds in Rome, inflating taxi lines and crowding crosswalks so that city buses cannot continue their routes.

In Rome and Florence, “walking down the street, out of every building door, emerges a tourist with a suitcase,” he said.

While Florence’s mayor is limiting the number of short-term rentals in the historic center to 8,000, no action has been taken in Venice. The canal-lined city counts 49,432 residents in its historic center and 49,272 tourist beds, nearly half of those being apartments available for short-term rental.

Inconveniences are “daily,” said Giacomo Salerno, a researcher at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University focusing on tourism.

It difficult to walk down streets clogged with visitors or take public water buses “saturated with tourists with their suitcases,” he said.

Students cannot find affordable housing because owners prefer to cash in with vacation rentals. The dwindling number of residents means a dearth of services, including a lack of family doctors largely due to the high cost of living, driven up by tourist demand.

Venice has delayed plans to charge day-trippers a tax to enter the city, meant to curb arrivals. But activists like Salerno say that will do little to resolve the issue of a declining population and encroaching tourists, instead cementing Venice’s fate as “an amusement park.”

“It would be like saying the only use for the city is touristic,” Salerno said.
…

Ukrainians have quickly learned how to counter Russian information attacks since Russia’s invasion in the country, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on her official Telegram channel Saturday.
Since last July, the U.K. has trained 18,000 Ukrainian volunteer infantrymen under the Operation Interflex training program, the Defense Ministry said Saturday. Ukrainian soldiers have been trained to “survive and be lethal in their fight against the illegal invasion of their homeland” it said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin could be arrested if he attends the BRICS summit scheduled in South Africa because of an arrest warrant issued against him last March by the International Criminal Court, which accused him of the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.

 

Russia’s security apparatus experienced “a period of confusion and negotiations,” following the Wagner Group’s mutiny last month, the British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update about Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, however, an interim arrangement for the mercenary group’s future is shaping up, according to the report posted on Twitter.

Meanwhile, some social media groups associated with Wagner restarted their postings, focusing on Wagner’s activities in Africa. The ministry said recent announcements from Russian officials indicate that Russia is “likely prepared” to accept “Wagner’s aspirations to maintain its extensive presence on the continent.”

Both Ukraine and Poland Saturday confirmed the arrival of Wagner forces in Belarus, one day after Minsk said the mercenaries were training its troops.

“There may be several hundred of them at the moment,” Stanislaw Zaryn, Poland’s deputy minister coordinator of special services, said on Twitter.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, has not been spotted in Belarus – he has not been seen in public since June 24.

Black Sea Grain Initiative

Russian President Vladimir Putin is remaining silent about a possible extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative that is set to expire Monday.

In a phone call Saturday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Putin discussed “the need for a permanent and sustainable solution to the movement of grain from Russia and Ukraine to the international markets,” according to the South African president’s office. No further details were provided.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked Putin to extend the Black Sea deal in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s Agricultural Bank, Rosselkhozbank, to the SWIFT international payment system, but he has not received a reply, according to a U.N. spokesperson Friday.

“Discussions are being had, WhatsApp messages are being sent, Signal messages are being sent and exchanged. We’re also waiting for a response to the letter,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters when asked about the negotiations.

Russia has said it would agree to extend the deal only if its conditions are met regarding implementation.

Ukraine-South Korea

In a display of support for Ukraine, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol made a surprise visit to Saturday to Kyiv, announcing that Seoul will increase aid to Ukraine to $150 million this year, following an $100 million aid package last year. Yoon also said that Seoul will cooperate with Kyiv on infrastructure projects in Ukraine.

In a press conference Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Yoon said South Korea aims to provide “a larger scale of military supplies” to Ukraine this year, after last year supplying nonlethal military inventory, such as body armor and helmets. He did not provide details. Zelenskyy thanked the South Korean president for his country’s support.

Earlier this month, Yoon told The Associated Press that supplies of de-mining equipment, ambulances, and other nonmilitary materials “are in the works” after a request from Ukraine, adding that South Korea already provided support to rebuild the Kakhovka Dam, destroyed last month.

South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia, has joined in the international sanctions against Russia and has provided Ukraine with humanitarian and financial support. So far, it has not provided weapons, in line with its long-standing policy of not supplying arms to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Yoon’s visit to Ukraine, his first, comes on the heels of NATO’s two-day summit in Lithuania this week.

Yoon and his wife toured Bucha and Irpin, two small cities near Kyiv where mass graves were discovered after Russian troops retreated last year. He laid flowers at a monument to the country’s war dead.

In his address Saturday, Zelenskyy called Yoon’s visit to Ukraine very important and “a very important direction of our international work.” He also thanked several countries, leaders and organizations for supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Zaporizhzhia shelling

Russia and Ukraine traded blame Saturday for shelling that injured three civilians in a village the Zaporizhzhia region. The region is one of four Moscow said it annexed last year, but it does not control it.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, said Russian forces shelled the village of Stepnohirske, where the three people were injured. The city of Zaporizhzhia was also targeted and 16 buildings were damaged, said Anatoliy Kurtiev, secretary of the city council. Both men spoke via the Telegram messaging app.

Meanwhile, the Moscow-installed official who oversees the parts of Zaporizhzhia Russia controls said Ukrainian forces destroyed a school in the village of Stulneve, while air defense intercepted a drone over the city of Tokmak.

Reuters could not independently verify either report.

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

Thousands of participants of the Budapest Pride march wound through the streets of the Hungarian capital on Saturday with marchers voicing their anxiety over the increasing pressure on the LGBTQ+ community from the country’s right-wing government.

The 28th annual event comes as the country’s laws, which ban the depiction of homosexuality or gender transition, to minors under 18 have begun to be applied with increasing regularity, resulting in fines and other penalties for those who disseminate LGBTQ+ content.

Before the march, which began in Budapest’s city park, Pride organizer Jojo Majercsik said that while the laws, passed in 2021, didn’t have immediate practical effects, they are now increasingly being used to crack down on LGBTQ+ visibility.

“You can now see how the propaganda law passed two years ago is being applied in practice and how the public discourse has become more angry,” Majercsik said, referring to the 2021 law. “It is now apparent how they are trying to limit the rights of LGBTQ people in the media world, in the world of movies, films and books.”

Majercsik pointed to a number of recent instances of media content that depicted LGBTQ+ people being restricted. This week, a national bookseller was fined around $36,000 for placing a popular LGBTQ+ graphic novel in its youth literature section, and for failing to place it in closed packaging as required by law.

Additionally, a 30-second animated campaign video produced by Budapest Pride — in which two female characters meet and touch foreheads — was ruled unsuitable for audiences under 18 by Hungary’s media authority, and may therefore only be broadcast between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Such policies, enacted by the governing party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, have led rights groups to warn that the rights of sexual minorities are being rapidly drawn back in the Central European country.

Orban’s government portrays itself as a champion of traditional family values, and a defender of Christian civilization from what it calls “gender madness.” It has repeatedly said its laws were designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”

But some Hungarians see the policies as deliberate attempts to stigmatize the LGBTQ+ community for political gain.

David Vig, director at Amnesty International Hungary, said that in contrast to some countries in Western Europe and North America where Pride events are celebrations of LGBTQ+ history and culture, Budapest Pride is a way of protesting increasing crackdowns on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“Unlike Pride marches in more happy countries of the world, this is really a human rights demonstration,” Vig told The Associated Press. “This is for social acceptance and this is for equal rights, because in Hungary, these are not secured. We are second-class citizens in many spheres of public life.”

Vig recounted a conflict that ensued this week after Amnesty International Hungary painted a city bench in rainbow colors to celebrate Pride month. The bench was defaced several times throughout the week by a white supremacist group of soccer fans, and anti-LGBTQ+ slogans were spraypainted in the vicinity.

“It is really a clear political message of stopping the LGBTQI community of the country from coming into public spaces, to showing who we are,” Vig said.

On Saturday, a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack struck Budapest Pride’s official webpage shortly before noon. It was unavailable throughout the day. Several small groups of counterprotesters lined the streets on the Pride march route, waving banners with anti-LGBTQ+ slogans.

But despite such opposition, Kristof Steiner, an emcee at Budapest Pride, said there were signs that younger generations of Hungarians are increasingly tolerant of the LGBTQ+ community.

“There are new laws that are making it nearly impossible for an LGBTQ person to live normally. We are being very much marginalized,” he said. “But at the same time, there is a very positive change. I see that the new generation is completely different.”

Nimrod Dagan, a Pride march participant, said he thinks LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary and in his home country of Israel are being “taken away,” and that he feels a responsibility to stand up for his community by taking part in the march.

“I don’t think it’s a celebration. It’s clear for everybody here that, unlike in other countries … of the world, there is a bigger meaning to this,” Dagan said. “I would say that it’s a happy protest.”
…

Tens of millions were battling dangerously high temperatures in the United States on Saturday as record heat forecasts hung over Europe and Japan, in the latest example of the threat from climate change.

A powerful heat wave stretching from California to Texas was expected to peak as the National Weather Service warned of an “extremely hot and dangerous weekend.”

Daytime highs were forecast to range between 10- and 20-degrees Fahrenheit above normal in the U.S. Southwest.

In Arizona, one of the hardest-hit states, residents face a daily endurance marathon against the sun.

The state capital, Phoenix, recorded 16 straight days above 43 degrees Celsius (109F), with temperatures hitting 44C (111F) on Saturday en route to an expected 46C (115F).

California’s Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth, is also likely to register new peaks on Sunday, with the mercury possibly rising to 54C (130F).

Temperatures reached 48C (118F) by midday on Saturday and even overnight lows could exceed 38C (100F).

Authorities have been sounding the alarm, advising people to avoid outdoor activities in the daytime and to be wary of dehydration.

At a construction site outside Houston, Texas, a 28-year-old worker who gave his name only as Juan helped complete a wall in the blazing heat.

“Just when I take a drink of water, I get dizzy, I want to vomit because of the heat,” he told AFP.  

The Las Vegas weather service warned that assuming high temperatures naturally come with the area’s desert climate was “a DANGEROUS mindset! This heat wave is NOT typical desert heat.”

Southern California is fighting numerous wildfires, including one in Riverside County that has burned more than 1,214 hectares (3,000 acres) and prompted evacuation orders.

Further north, the Canadian government reported that wildfires had burned a record-breaking 10 million hectares (25 million acres) this year, with more damage expected as the summer drags on.  

Historic highs forecast

In Europe, Italy faces weekend predictions of historic highs, and the health ministry issued a red alert for 16 cities including Rome, Bologna and Florence.

The weather center warned Italians to prepare for “the most intense heat wave of the summer and also one of the most intense of all time.”

The thermometer is likely to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rome by Monday and even 43C (109F) on Tuesday, smashing the record of 40.5C set in August 2007.

The islands of Sicily and Sardinia could wilt under temperatures as high as 48C (118F), the European Space Agency warned — “potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe.”

The Acropolis in Athens, one of Greece’s top tourist attractions, will close during the hottest hours on Sunday, the third day running.

In France, high temperatures and resulting drought are posing a threat to the farming industry, earning Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau criticism from climatologists on Saturday for having brushed aside conditions as “normal enough for summer.”  

This June was the second hottest on record in France, according to the national weather agency, and several areas of the country have been under a heat wave alert since Tuesday.  

There is little reprieve ahead for Spain, as its meteorological agency warned Saturday that a new heat wave Monday through Wednesday will bring temperatures above 40C (104F) to the Canary Islands and the southern Andalusia region.  

Killer rains

Parts of eastern Japan are also expected to reach 38 (100F) to 39C (102F) on Sunday and Monday, with the meteorological agency warning temperatures could hit previous records.

Relentless monsoon rains have reportedly killed at least 90 people in northern India, after burning heat.

The Yamuna River running through the capital, New Delhi, has reached a record high, threatening low-lying neighborhoods in the megacity of more than 20 million people.

Major flooding and landslides are common during India’s monsoons, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and severity.

Morocco was slated for above-average temperatures this weekend with highs of 47C in some provinces — more typical of August than July — sparking concerns for water shortages, the meteorological service said.  

River Tigris shrinking

Water-scarce Jordan was forced to dump 214 metric tons of water on a wildfire that broke out in the Ajloun forest in the north amid a heat wave, the army said.  

In Iraq, where scorching summers are common, Wissam Abed usually cools off from Baghdad’s brutal summer by swimming in the Tigris River.

But as rivers dry up, so does the age-old pastime.  

With temperatures near 50C (122F) and wind whipping through the city like a hairdryer, Abed stood in the middle of the river, but the water only came up to his waist.

“Year after year, the water situation gets worse,” the 37-year-old told AFP.

While it can be difficult to attribute a particular weather event to climate change, scientists insist global warming, linked to dependence on fossil fuels, is behind the multiplication and intensification of heat waves.

The EU’s climate monitoring service said the world saw its hottest June on record last month.
…

When Marketa Vondrousova punched away a volley and fell to the ground after completing one of the most unexpected runs to the Wimbledon title, a jumble of thoughts must have been running through her head.

After all, Saturday was meant to be the day when Tunisian sixth seed Ons Jabeur would finally become the first Arab and first African woman to win a Grand Slam title.

Instead, a distraught Jabeur was left with tears streaming down her face as her Wimbledon dream was wrecked in the final for the second year running with a 6-4 6-4 drubbing.

In stark contrast, Vondrousova knelt down on the grass in her moment of triumph — staring at the turf that until this fortnight had not brought her much joy.

The Czech left-hander had won only one match at the All England Club before this year and 12 months ago she had come to London as a tennis tourist with her arm and elbow in a plaster cast as she recovered from a second bout of wrist surgery.

Her time out from the sport meant that she fell so far off the tennis radar that she no longer even had a clothing sponsor.

But the 42nd-ranked Czech put those problems behind her to become the first unseeded woman to lift the Venus Rosewater Dish as she completed her own phenomenal comeback story.

“I don’t know what’s happening right now,” Vondrousova said during the presentation ceremony as she was given a standing ovation by a 15,000-strong capacity Centre Court crowd that included tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova.

“Ons, you are such an inspiration for all of us and I hope you will win this one day; you are an amazing person.

“This time last year I had a cast on so it’s amazing that I can now stand here and hold this [trophy], it’s crazy,” added the Czech, whose husband Stepan Simek had flown in from Prague especially for the final after being relieved of his cat-sitting duties at home.

“It’s amazing as tomorrow is the first anniversary of our wedding. I am exhausted but I am so proud. I am going to have a beer as it’s been an exhausting two weeks,” said Vondrousova.

While the clearly elated Czech began her victory lap to show off the Rosewater Dish to all corners of Centre Court, Britain’s Princess of Wales was left to console a sobbing Jabeur who could not fathom how she had messed up her chance of holding aloft the most famous trophy in women’s tennis.

The truth of the matter was that she was the architect of her own downfall, with the 31 unforced errors she produced telling their own story.

“This is very, very, tough. I am going to look ugly for those photos,” the 28-year-old Jabeur told the crowd.

After the hollering fans gave the crowd favorite a prolonged ovation, she added: “This is the most painful loss of my career.

“Today is going to be a tough day for me but I’m not going to give up and I am going to come back stronger. It’s been a tough journey, but I promise I will come back and one day win this tournament.”

Only time will tell if she can fulfill that promise but on Saturday, she was ruing all the chances she had missed during the opening exchanges of a contest that was effectively being played in an indoor arena after the roof was closed to block out the howling winds blowing through the grounds.

Jabeur knows she could have won the first set 6-0, having had game points in each of the opening six games. But the variety, imagination and mental fortitude she had shown to knock out four Grand Slam champions en route to the final simply deserted her on Saturday.

She let a 2-0 opening-set lead slip through her fingers, with Vondrousova breaking back and then saving four break points in the fourth game.

It still seemed like Jabeur had the match on her racket when she leapt to a 4-2 lead by breaking her 24-year-old opponent to love.

But then inexplicably the wheels fell off Jabeur’s game as she lost 16 of the next 18 points, with a sloppy service return handing Vondrousova the set.

While the Czech was on a roll, winning five games on the trot, the crowd did their best to wake up Jabeur who appeared to be trapped in her own personal nightmare, albeit in front of a global audience.

The Tunisian, who also lost the 2022 U.S. Open final to Iga Swiatek, finally responded to take a 3-1 lead in the second set but that respite proved to be a false dawn.

The racket she had used as a wand to bamboozle six other rivals during these championships had lost its magical powers and she conceded five of the next six games in a hail of unforced errors, leaving Vondrousova to bask in the glory of following in the footsteps of fellow Czech-born Wimbledon champions Navratilova, Jana Novotna and Petra Kvitova.
…

Germany released its first China strategy this week, which calls Beijing a “systemic rival” and stresses the need for Europe’s largest economy to reduce economic dependence on its largest trading partner. 

 

Analysts tell VOA the policy shift outlined in the 64-page report that notes “China has changed” highlights Germany’s attempt to be more “prudent” in its economic relations with Beijing. They also assert that the plan’s focus on the Indo-Pacific and the need to step up military cooperation shows Germany’s recognition of the link between security in Asia and Berlin’s interests.  

 

Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, said the strategy is “a reflection of some of Germany’s thinking following the war in Ukraine,” and he said it shows Berlin has learned economic interests can’t necessarily help to maintain peaceful relations with certain countries.   

Geopolitical risks 

In the Strategy on China, which was released Thursday, Berlin calls on German businesses to include geopolitical risks in their decision-making process and warns that companies that are particularly reliant on the Chinese market will have to “carry the financial risk more heavily themselves” in the future.  

Berlin says it wants to ensure its economic relationship with Beijing becomes “fairer, more sustainable and more reciprocal.” Germany is also looking to adjust export control lists to safeguard new key technologies.  

Speaking at a news conference Thursday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock emphasized that while Germany needs to pursue economic diversification, it doesn’t plan to hamper China’s economic development or its own.  

China’s Foreign Ministry Friday said Berlin’s call for reducing dependency on China is a form of protectionism and the two countries are “partners rather than rivals.”  

“We believe that to engage in competition and protectionism in the name of de-risking and reducing dependency, and to overstretch the concept of security and politicize normal cooperation will only be counterproductive and create artificial risks,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin during the daily press conference.  

From Trans-Atlantic to Indo-Pacific 

Aside from economic ties with China, the strategy also highlights the impact Beijing’s relationship with Moscow has had on Berlin’s position, especially since the war in Ukraine.  

In its report, Germany notes that “China’s decision to further its relations with Russia has direct security implications for Germany.” 

One place that will have implications is the Indo-Pacific. 

The report says Germany will expand its “security policy and military cooperation with close partners in the Indo-Pacific,” adding that the move underscores its commitment to preserving the rules-based international order.  

“It is in Germany’s interest to protect global public goods in the Indo-Pacific in the long term,” the strategy states. 

In recent years, Germany already has begun to boost its security commitments to the Indo-Pacific. In 2021, Germany deployed its first warship to the South China Sea in almost 20 years, and in 2022, it sent 13 military aircraft to join military exercises held in Australia.  

According to Reuters report earlier this week, Germany will send troops to participate in a joint military exercise in Australia for the first time.  

“It is a region of extremely high importance for us in Germany as well as for the European Union due to the economic interdependencies,” Germany’s Army Chief Alfons Mais told Reuters in an interview published on July 10. The interview was released just before troops were to leave for Australia. 

National University of Singapore’s Chong said the commitments Germany has made in its strategy reflect its understanding of the link between security in Asia and Germany’s interests. “As part of this recognition, Germany has been trying to demonstrate that it’s an active and interested partner that provides security benefits,” he said.  

Taiwan Strait’s importance  

One key issue in the Indo-Pacific region referenced in the strategy is maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, one of the region’s biggest flashpoints. In its report, Germany emphasized it is working for de-escalation around Taiwan because security in the Taiwan Strait is “of crucial importance for peace and stability in the region and far beyond.”  

“The status quo in the Taiwan Strait may only be changed by peaceful means and mutual consent,” the Strategy on China said, adding that military escalation also would affect German and European interests.  

China claims democratically ruled Taiwan is part of its territory and has dramatically increased the frequency of fighter jet sorties and military exercises around the island over the past year.   

Since July 9, China has sent 131 military aircraft and 52 naval vessels to areas around Taiwan, and some came so close to the island’s shore that Taiwanese defense officials characterized the moves as “harassment.”  

Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told VOA that with Germany’s deep dependence on Chinese trade and supply chains, military escalation in the Indo-Pacific — specifically in the Taiwan Strait — would be a serious risk.  

“The status quo of supporting allies in the region is in Germany’s interests,” she said. 

NATO expansion?  

And while Germany doubles down on its commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, NATO has also been debating the prospect of increasing its presence in the region. This topic was front and center during the NATO Summit this week in Lithuania.   

The security alliance has floated the idea in recent months of opening a liaison office in Japan, and leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were all invited to attend the summit, the second time that leaders from four Indo-Pacific states took part in the event. Their presence and criticism of China that came up during the summit triggered an angry response from Beijing.   

Earlier this week, the Chinese mission to the European Union voiced Beijing’s opposition to what it called NATO’s expansion into “the Asia-Pacific region.” In response, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO Juliane Smith said, “We’re not adding members from the Indo-Pacific.”  

What NATO is doing, she said, is “breaking down barriers between America’s Atlantic allies and America’s Pacific allies to look at common challenges.” 

Some analysts told VOA there is a clear determination among NATO member states to strengthen cooperation and coordination with the four Indo-Pacific states that have become regular participants in NATO summits. 

“NATO members don’t shy away from strengthening cooperation with countries in the Indo-Pacific, and this is how the alliance contributes to maintaining peace and stability in the region,” said Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, an assistant professor at the National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan.  

Political Scientist Chong pointed out that Indo-Pacific countries can benefit from the increased presence of Germany and other NATO member states in the region because their engagement on security issues can provide regional states with more options as they try to navigate the intensifying U.S.-China competition. Additionally, Chong said NATO’s coordination with Japan and South Korea can help deter more risky actions by China. 
…

Even on the streets of London, Finn Lau does not feel safe from the reach of the Chinese Communist Party.

He is among the exiled pro-democracy activists facing arrest warrants issued by Hong Kong authorities last week, with a reward of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) offered for information that helps lead to their detention.

Since then, Lau said he has seen several menacing online messages from pro-Chinese groups.

“I got some screenshots coming from some Telegram groups, saying that ‘perhaps we should lure them with some kind of tactics, such that we could catch them or kill them,” he said.

Lau helped to organize the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. 

“I proposed different kinds of strategies, hosted different rallies and even did advocacy abroad,” Lau told VOA, “So that’s why they are accusing me of so-called collusion with foreign forces.”

Lau was arrested on January 1, 2020, but Hong Kong police failed to identify him as a ringleader, and he was released.

Soon after that he fled to Britain. China has since issued several arrest warrants for him but earlier this month was the first time Hong Kong authorities explicitly offered a bounty for his arrest.

“The head of the Hong Kong government, he said they will chase us until the end of the world,” Lau said. 

“To be honest I feel less safe in the U.K.. After all I faced different kinds of harassment, no matter whether it is virtual online harassment or physical harassment, for the last few years. I was attacked near my home in 2020.”  

That attack in London left Lau with severe injuries. He described the attackers as of East Asian origin and said he believes they were directed by the Chinese government, though Beijing denies involvement. British police have failed to identify the attackers.

Lau is demanding that British authorities take the latest threats more seriously.

“I request for assurance from the U.K. government that if there is anyone attempting to kidnap or to detain me under the so-called Hong Kong National Security Law, then they should be tried and charged under U.K. law for kidnapping.” 

“I have tried to contact the [British] Home Office as well as the police, several times. But there is no response at all,” he told VOA.

Lau said he believes Britain is reluctant to take a harder line as it does not want to jeopardize trade links with China.

“The U.K. government is one of the democratic countries that should hold China accountable, especially for what the Chinese Communist Party has been doing in Hong Kong. The U.K. government has signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration with the PRC back in 1984, which guaranteed – in theory – at least 50 years of autonomy, rule of law, civil liberties etc., to Hong Kongers after the 1997 Hong Kong handover,” Lau added.

The British government did not respond directly to VOA requests for comment. 

Foreign Office ministers have recently condemned the bounties offered for the arrest of the Hong Kong activists. They said it is a long-standing policy not to comment on operational matters regarding their protection in Britain.

Despite the reward for his arrest, Lau said he is not deterred.

“I should continue to fight on behalf of other Hong Kongers who cannot do so in Hong Kong. I’ve got friends sitting in the prison of Hong Kong. So that’s why I must continue to fight.”

Meanwhile, Hong Kong police this week called several family members of Nathan Law in for questioning. Law is another pro-democracy activist and former lawmaker living in London, also subject to an arrest warrant and bounty. They were released without charge.
…

The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers.

Many were forced to wear overlarge Russian military uniforms that could make them a target, and a former city administrator trudged around in boots five sizes too big. By the end of the day, their hands curled into icy claws.

Nearby, in the occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, other Ukrainian civilians dug mass graves into the frozen ground for fellow prisoners who had not survived. One man who refused to dig was shot on the spot — yet another body for the grave.

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it occupies, in centers ranging from brand-new wings in Russian prisons to clammy basements. Most have no status under Russian law.

And Russia is planning to hold possibly thousands more. A Russian government document obtained by The Associated Press dating to January outlined plans to create 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centers in occupied Ukraine by 2026.

In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in May allowing Russia to send people from territories with martial law, which includes all of occupied Ukraine, to those without, such as Russia. This makes it easier to deport Ukrainians who resist Russian occupation deep into Russia indefinitely, which has happened in multiple cases documented by the AP.

Many civilians are picked up for alleged transgressions as minor as speaking Ukrainian or simply being a young man in an occupied region, and are often held without charge. Others are charged as terrorists, combatants, or people who “resist the special military operation.” Hundreds are used for slave labor by Russia’s military, for digging trenches and other fortifications, as well as mass graves.

Torture is routine, including repeated electrical shocks, beatings that crack skulls and fracture ribs, and simulated suffocation. Many former prisoners told the AP they witnessed deaths. A United Nations report from late June documented 77 summary executions of civilian captives and the death of one man due to torture.

Russia does not acknowledge holding civilians at all, let alone its reasons for doing so. But the prisoners serve as future bargaining chips in exchanges for Russian soldiers, and the U.N. has said there is evidence of civilians being used as human shields near the front lines.

The AP spoke with dozens of people, including 20 former detainees, along with ex-prisoners of war, the families of more than a dozen civilians in detention, two Ukrainian intelligence officials and a government negotiator. Their accounts, as well as satellite imagery, social media, government documents and copies of letters delivered by the Red Cross, confirm a widescale Russian system of detention and abuse of civilians that stands in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Some civilians were held for days or weeks, while others have vanished for well over a year. Nearly everyone freed said they experienced or witnessed torture, and most described being shifted from one place to another without explanation.

“It’s a business of human trafficking,” said Olena Yahupova, the city administrator who was forced to dig trenches for the Russians in Zaporizhzhia. “If we don’t talk about it and keep silent, then tomorrow anyone can be there — my neighbor, acquaintance, child.”

Invisible prisoners

The new building in the compound of Prison Colony No. 2 is at least two stories tall, separated from the main prison by a thick wall.

This facility in Russia’s eastern Rostov region has gone up since the war started in February 2022, according to satellite imagery analyzed by the AP. It could easily house the hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who are believed detained there, according to former captives, families of the missing, human rights activists and Russian lawyers. Two exiled Russian human rights advocates said it is heavily guarded by soldiers and armored vehicles.

The building in Rostov is one of at least 40 detention facilities in Russia and Belarus, and 63 makeshift and formal in occupied Ukrainian territory where Ukrainian civilians are held, according to an AP map built on data from former captives, the Ukrainian Media Initiative for Human Rights, and the Russian human rights group Gulagu.net. The recent U.N. report counted a total of 37 facilities in Russia and Belarus and 125 in occupied Ukraine.

Some also hold Russian prisoners accused or convicted of a variety of crimes. Other, more makeshift locations are near the front lines, and the AP documented two locations where former prisoners say Ukrainians were forced to dig trenches.

The shadowy nature of the system makes it difficult to know exactly how many civilians are being detained. Ukraine’s government has been able to confirm legal details of a little over 1,000 who are facing charges.

At least 4,000 civilians are held in Russia and at least as many scattered around the occupied territories, according to Vladimir Osechkin, an exiled Russian human rights activist who talks to informants within Russian prisons and founded Gulagu.net to document abuses. Osechkin showed AP a Russian prison document from 2022 saying that 119 people ”opposed to the special military operation” in Ukraine were moved by plane to the main prison colony in the Russian region of Voronezh. Many Ukrainians later freed by Russia also described unexplained plane transfers.

In all, Ukraine’s government believes around 10,000 civilians could be detained, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Kononeko, based on reports from loved ones, as well as post-release interviews with some civilians and the hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers returned in prisoner exchanges. Ukraine said in June that about 150 civilians have been freed to Ukrainian-controlled territory, and the Russians deny holding others.

“They say, ‘We don’t have these people, it’s you who is lying,'” Kononeko said.

The detention of two men from the Kherson region in August 2022 offers a glimpse at how hard it is for families to track down loved ones in Russian custody.

Artem Baranov, a security guard, and Yevhen Pryshliak, who worked at a local asphalt plant with his father, had been friends for over a decade. Their relationship was cemented when both bought dogs during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Baranov’s common-law wife, Ilona Slyva. Their evening walks continued even after Russia seized their hometown of Nova Kakhovka — shy Baranov with a giant black Italian mastiff and Pryshliak with a toy poodle whose apricot fur matched his beard.

Their walk ran late the night of Aug. 15, and Pryshliak decided to stay at Baranov’s apartment rather than risk being caught breaking the Russian curfew. Neighbors later told the family that 15 armed Russian soldiers swooped in, ransacked the apartment and seized the men.

For a month, they were in the local jail, with conditions relaxed enough that Slyva was able to talk to Pryshliak through the fence. Baranov, he told her, couldn’t come out.

She sent in packages of food and clothes but did not know if they were reaching him. Finally, on Baranov’s birthday, she bought his favorite dessert of cream eclairs, smashed them up, and slipped in a scrap of paper with her new Russian phone number scrawled on it. She hoped the guards would have little interest in the sticky mess and just pass it along.

A month went by, and the families learned the men had been transferred to a new prison in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Then the trail went dark.

Four more months passed. Then a call came from the family of a man they had never met but would soon come to know well: Pavlo Zaporozhets.

Zaporozhets, a Ukrainian from the occupied Kherson region charged with international terrorism, was sharing a cell in Rostov with Baranov. Since he faced charges, he had a lawyer.

It was then that Slyva knew her gift of eclairs — and the phone number smuggled within them — had reached its destination. Baranov had memorized her number and passed it through a complex chain that finally got news of him to her on April 7.

Baranov wrote that he was accused of espionage — an accusation that Slyva scorned as falling apart even under Russia’s internal logic. He was detained in August, and Russia illegally annexed the regions only in October.

“When he was detained, he was on his own national territory,” she said. “They thought and thought and invented a criminal case against him for espionage.”

Baranov wrote home that he was transported across prisons with his eyes closed in two planes, one of which had about 60 people. He and Pryshliak were separated at their third transfer in late winter. Pryshliak’s family has received a form letter from the Rostov prison denying he is an inmate there.

The number of civilian detainees has grown rapidly over the course of the war. In the first wave early on, Russian units moved in with lists of activists, pro-Ukrainian community leaders, and military veterans. Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was taken when Russian forces seized control of his city but exchanged within a week for nine Russian soldiers, he said.

Then they focused on teachers and doctors who refused to work with the occupation authorities. But the reasons for apprehending people today are as mundane as tying a ribbon to a bicycle in the Ukrainian colors of blue and yellow.

“Now there is no logic,” Fedorov said.

He estimated that around 500 Ukrainian civilians are detained just in his city at any time — numbers echoed by multiple people interviewed by the AP.

A Ukrainian intelligence official said the Russian fear of dissidents had become “pathological” since last fall, as Russians brace for Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.

The AP saw multiple missing person notices posted on closed Ukrainian social media chats for young men seized off the streets. The messages, written in Ukrainian, describe detentions at gunpoint at home and on the street, with pleas to send information and emojis of hearts and praying hands.

The Geneva Conventions in general forbid the arbitrary detention or forced deportation of civilians, and state that detainees must be allowed to communicate with loved ones, obtain legal counsel and challenge allegations against them. But first they must be found.

After months writing letter after letter to locate Pryshliak, his sister-in-law Liubov thinks she knows why the prisoners are moved around: “So that the families cannot find them. Just to hide the traces of crimes.”

Slaves in the trenches

Hundreds of civilians end up in a place that is possibly even more dangerous than the prisons: the trenches of occupied Ukraine.

There, they are forced to build protection for Russian soldiers, according to multiple people who managed to leave Russian custody. Among them was Yahupova, the 50-year-old civil administrator detained in October 2022 in the Zaporizhzhia region, possibly because she is married to a Ukrainian soldier.

Under international humanitarian law, Yahupova is a civilian — defined as anyone who is not an active member of or volunteer for the armed forces. Documented breaches of the law constitute a war crime and, if widespread and systematic, “may also constitute a crime against humanity.”

But the distinctions between soldiers and civilians can be hard to prove in a war where Ukraine has urged all its citizens to help, for example by sending Russian troop locations via social media. In practice, the Russians are scooping up civilians along with soldiers, including those denounced by neighbors for whatever reason or seized seemingly at random.

They picked Yahupova up at her house in October. Then they demanded she reveal information about her husband, taping a plastic bag over her face, beating her on the head with a filled water bottle and tightening a cable around her neck.

They also dragged her out of the cell and drove her around town to identify pro-Ukrainian locals. She didn’t.

When they hauled her out a second time, she was exhausted. As a soldier placed her in front of a Russian news camera, she could still feel the dried blood on the back of her neck. She was going to give an interview, her captors told her.

Behind the camera, a gun was pointed at her head. The soldier holding it told her that if she gave the right answers to the Russian journalist interviewing her, she could go free.

But she didn’t know what the right answers were. She went back to the cell.

Three months later, without explanation, Yahupova was again pulled outside. This time, she was driven to a deserted checkpoint, where yet another Russian news crew awaited. She was ordered to hold hands with two men and walk about 5 meters (yards) toward Ukraine.

The three Ukrainians were ordered to do another take. And another, to show that Russia was freeing the Ukrainian civilians in its custody.

Except, at the end of the last take, Russian soldiers loaded them into a truck and drove them to a nearby crossroads. One put shovels into their hands.

“Now you will do something for the good of the Russian Federation,” he said.

And so Yahupova ended up digging trenches until mid-March with more than a dozen Ukrainian civilians, including business owners, a student, a teacher, and utility workers. She could see other crews in the distance, with armed guards standing over them. Most wore Russian military uniforms and boots, and lived in fear that Ukrainian artillery would mistake them for the enemy.

The AP confirmed through satellite imagery the new trenches dug in the area where Yahupova and a man on the Ukrainian crew with her said they were held. He requested anonymity because his relatives still live under occupation.

“Sometimes we even worked there 24 hours a day, when they had an inspection coming,” he said.

The man also spoke with other Ukrainian civilians digging mass graves nearby for at least 15 people. He said one civilian had been shot for refusing to dig. Satellite imagery shows a mound of freshly-dug earth in the spot the man described.

The man escaped during a Russian troop rotation, and Yahupova also made her way out. But both said hundreds of others are still in the occupied front lines, forced to work for Russia or die.

When Yahupova returned to her home after more than five months, everything had been stolen. Her beloved dog had been shot. Her head ached, her vision was blurred, and her children — long since out of the occupied territories — urged her to leave.

She traveled thousands of miles through Russia, north to the Baltics and back around to the front line in Ukraine, where she reunited with her husband serving with Ukrainian forces. Earlier married in a civil ceremony, the two got wed this time in church.

Now safe in Ukrainian territory, Yahupova wants to testify against Russia — for the months it stole from her, the concussion that troubles her, the home she has lost. She still reflexively touches the back of her head, where the bottle struck her over and over.

“They stole not only from me, they stole from half the country,” she said.

Torture as a policy

The abuse Yahupova described is common. Torture was a constant, whether or not there was information to extract, according to every former detainee interviewed by the AP. The U.N. report from June said 91% of prisoners “described torture and ill-treatment.”

In the occupied territories, all the freed civilians interviewed by the AP described crammed rooms and cells, tools of torture prepared in advance, tape placed carefully next to office chairs to bind arms and legs, and repeated questioning by Russian’s FSB intelligence agency. Nearly 100 evidence photos obtained by the AP from Ukrainian investigators also showed instruments of torture found in liberated areas of Kherson, Kyiv and Kharkiv, including the same tools repeatedly described by former civilian captives held in Russia and occupied regions.

Many former detainees spoke of wires linking prisoners’ bodies to electricity in field telephones or radios or batteries, in a procedure one man said the Russians dubbed “call your mother” or “call Biden.” U.N. human rights investigators said one victim described the same treatment given to Yahupova, a severe beating on the head with a filled water bottle.

Viktoriia Andrusha, an elementary school math teacher, was seized by Russian forces on March 25, 2022, after they ransacked her parents’ home in Chernihiv and found photos of Russian military vehicles on her phone. By March 28, she was in a prison in Russia. Her captors told her Ukraine had fallen and no one wanted any civilians back.

For her, like so many others, torture came in the form of fists, batons of metal, wood and rubber, plastic bags. Men in black, with special forces chevrons on their sleeves, pummeled her in the prison corridor and in a ceramic-tiled room seemingly designed for quick cleaning. Russian propaganda played on a television above her.

“There was a point when I was already sitting and saying: Honestly, do what you want with me. I just don’t care anymore,” Andrusha said.

Along with the physical torture came mental anguish. Andrusha was told repeatedly that she would die in prison in Russia, that they would slash her with knives until she was unrecognizable, that her government cared nothing about a captive schoolteacher, that her family had forgotten her, that her language was useless. They forced captives to memorize verse after verse of the Russian national anthem and other patriotic songs.

“Their job was to influence us psychologically, to show us that we are not human,” she said. “Our task was to make sure that everything they did to us did not affect us.”

Then one day, without explanation, it was over for her and another woman kept with her. Guards ordered them to pack up, cuffed them and put them in a bus. The weight Andrusha had lost in prison showed starkly in the cast-off jacket that hung from her shoulders.

They were soon joined by Ukrainian soldiers held captive elsewhere. On the other side, Andrusha saw three Russian soldiers. Although international law forbids the exchange of civilians as prisoners of war, the U.N. report on June 27 said this has happened in at least 53 cases, and Melitopol Mayor Fedorov confirmed it happened to him.

A man detained with Andrusha in March 2022 is in captivity still. She doesn’t know the fate of the others she met. But many former captives take it upon themselves to contact the loved ones of their former cellmates.

Andrusha recalled hours spent memorizing whispered phone numbers in a circle with other Ukrainians, on the chance one of them might get out. When she was freed, she passed them along to Ukrainian government officials.

Andrusha has since regained some of her weight. She talks about her six months in prison calmly but with anger.

“I was able to survive this,” she said, after a day back in the classroom with her students. “There are so many cases when people do not return.”

In the meantime, for loved ones, the wait is agony.

Anna Vuiko’s father was one of the earliest civilians detained, in March last year. A former glass factory worker on disability, Roman Vuiko had resisted when Russian soldiers tried to take over his home in suburban Kyiv, neighbors told his adult daughter. They drove a military truck into the yard, shattered the windows, cuffed the 50-year-old man and drove off.

By May 2022, Vuiko was in a prison in Kursk, Russia, hundreds of kilometers (miles) away. All his daughter has gotten from him since is a handwritten letter, which arrived six months after he was taken away and four months after he wrote it. The standard phrases told his daughter nothing except that he was alive, and she suspects he has not received any of her letters.

“I think about it every day,” she said. “It’s been a year, more than a year. … How much more time has to pass?”
…

The United States took custody Friday of a Russian national extradited from Estonia and suspected of being an intelligence agent as the Biden administration pursues possible prisoner exchanges for U.S. detainees in Russia. 

Vadim Konoshchenok was arrested in Estonia late last year as he sought to cross the border into Russia carrying semiconductors and U.S.-made ammunition for sniper rifles, according to charges filed against him. 

He is alleged to be a central figure in a seven-person smuggling ring, which included five Russians and two Americans who operated “under the direction of Russian intelligence services” to obtain U.S. electronics and other goods restricted by U.S. export controls. 

U.S. officials said more than 450 kilograms of U.S.-origin ammunition was interdicted or seized from Konoshchenok’s operation. 

He faces up to 30 years in prison for conspiracy, violation of export controls, smuggling and money laundering.  

Konoshchenok “allegedly provided cutting edge, American-developed technologies and ammunition to Russia for use in their illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” said the Justice Department’s Andrew Adams. 

Konoshchenok’s extradition to the United States comes as Washington seeks to negotiate the return of U.S. citizens held by Moscow. 

They include Paul Whelan, a corporate security official convicted in a Russian court of espionage, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is facing charges of espionage. 

The United States denies either was involved in spying but has been in negotiations to see if they could be swapped for Russians that it holds. 

“I’m serious about a prisoner exchange,” Biden said Thursday in Finland. 

“I’m serious about doing all we can to free Americans who are being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter. And that process is underway,” he said. 

Last December, the United States traded jailed Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who was jailed in Russia months earlier on drug charges. 

In April 2022, Russia released Trevor Reed, a former Marine imprisoned two years earlier for assaulting Russian police officers. 

At the same time, the United States freed a Russian pilot jailed for drug trafficking. 

The U.S. also holds Alexander Vinnik, a Russian money launderer extradited from Greece last year, and Vladimir Dunaev, a malware and ransomware hacker extradited from South Korea in 2021. 

And Washington is seeking the extradition from Brazil of Sergey Cherkasov, an alleged Russian spy who attended graduate school in Washington under deep cover. 
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LATEST DEVELOPMENT:  

• France has posthumously awarded the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest award, to Arman Soldin, an Agence France-Presse journalist who was killed in Ukraine. 

“Through his strength of character, his journey and his drive,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a letter to AFP, Arman Soldin “embodied your editorial staff’s passion — a passion to convey the truth, tell stories and gather testimonies.”

The British Defense Ministry said Friday in its daily report on Ukraine that Russia’s recent announcement that the nuclear-powered submarines of Russia’s Northern Fleet will not participate in the Navy Day fleet review in St. Petersburg on July 30 is “likely primarily due to” maintenance and availability concerns. 

However, the ministry also said there is also “a realistic possibility that Internal security concerns since Wagner Group’s attempted mutiny have contributed to the decision.” 

Russian attacks killed at least three Ukrainian civilians and wounded another 38, Ukraine’s presidential office reported Thursday. 

The government in Kyiv said Russian forces targeted 13 cities and villages under Russian control in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region with air attacks, missiles and heavy artillery.  

In the Zaporizhzhia region, also partly Russian occupied, Ukraine said 21 people were injured by drone debris on Wednesday and that fires broke out in Kherson after Russian shelling.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said their air defenses shot down 20 Iranian-made drones fired by Russia that targeted the Kyiv region. But they said wreckage from the drones fell on four districts of the capital early Thursday, hospitalizing two people with shrapnel wounds and destroying several homes. 

The interior ministry said firefighters extinguished a blaze in a 16-story apartment building and another fire in a nonresidential building. Debris also smashed into the front of a 25-story apartment building. 

The latest wave was the third consecutive night in which the drones were used in attacks on Kyiv.

Elsewhere, Ukraine said one of its missile strikes killed a senior Russian officer, Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov, who was leading Moscow’s forces against Kyiv’s recent counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. 

Ukraine said Tsokov was killed when the Ukrainian military struck the city of Berdyansk on Tuesday with British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Russia’s defense ministry has not reported Tsokov’s death.

 

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

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the guest of honor at this year’s Bastille Day celebration Friday in Paris.

Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron will watch the spectacle together as French and Indian soldiers march down the Champs Elysee.

French-manufactured Rafale fighter jets that India purchased a few years ago will also participate in a flyover of the Arc de Triomphe.

Modi’s guest of honor status in the annual event marking France’s national holiday comes after India’s recent approval to purchase 26 Rafale jets and three Scorpene-class submarines from France for India’s military.

Macron said Thursday at a dinner for Modi held at the Elysee Palace that India is “a giant in the history of the world that will have a determining role in our future” and “is also a strategic partner and friend.”

Meanwhile, also on Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for “human rights to be integrated into all areas of the EU-India partnership, including in trade.” The resolution called on member states “to systematically and publicly raise human rights concerns” at the highest level.

In addition, an assortment of personalities urged Macron, in a commentary in Le Monde, not to forget Modi’s dismal human rights record and to “encourage Prime Minister Modi to end repression of the civil society, assure freedom of major media (outlets) and protect religious liberty.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Foreign ministers of two dozen countries meet in Indonesia on Friday with U.S.-China rivalry, the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles set to dominate roundtable talks in Southeast Asia’s annual security gathering.

Top diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those set to join Friday’s ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas are typically hijacked by the week’s geopolitical flare-ups, offering a theater for fierce rebukes, superpower squabbles and occasional walk-outs.

In opening remarks to foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), chairman Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the gathering aimed to seek solutions rather than exacerbate regional and global problems.

“We, the ASEAN members that are developing, need the understanding, wisdom, support from developed countries, from our neighboring countries, to leave the zero sum approach and take a win-win solution approach,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held “candid and constructive” talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi on Thursday in Jakarta, according to the State Department, the latest in a series of interactions it said are aimed at managing differences between the two superpowers.

U.S.-China sparring dominated last year’s ARF, which came a few days after then U.S. house speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, enraging Beijing, which launched live-fire drills around Taiwan and halted numerous channels of dialog with Washington.

Thursday’s meeting was part of ongoing efforts to keep channels of communication open and “responsibly manage competition by reducing the risk of misperception and miscalculation,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Wang told Blinken the key to bringing the relationship back on the right track was adopting “a rational and pragmatic attitude,” China’s foreign ministry said.

On Thursday, Chinese fighter jets monitored a U.S. Navy patrol plane that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, as China carried out military exercises south of the island, which it claims as one of its provinces.

Lavrov: Western ‘domination’

The 10-member ASEAN hosts an East Asia Summit on Friday morning before holding a separate meeting with Blinken.

They will be joined in the afternoon by foreign ministers of Russia, Australia, Japan, Britain, South Korea, and more, for the closed-doors ARF, which is expected to address Pyongyang’s launch this week of its latest Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile, which it defended on Thursday at the United Nations Security Council.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is also in Jakarta, where he gave an interview saying the war in Ukraine would not end until the West “gives up its plans to preserve its domination,” including its “obsessive desire” to defeat Russia strategically.

China’s Wang also met with Lavrov, and said the two sides would “strengthen strategic communication and coordination.”

Western nations are also expected to condemn Myanmar’s ruling military for its alleged atrocities against the civilian population, as the junta cracks down on its opponents and deploys fighter jets and heavy artillery to flush out an armed pro-democracy resistance movement.

ASEAN member Myanmar has been barred from the bloc’s meetings over the junta’s failure to honor a two-year-old deal with the grouping to end hostilities and start dialog. ASEAN’s unity has been tested over how to approach the crisis.

The bloc late on Thursday “strongly condemned the continued acts of violence, including air strikes, artillery shelling, and destruction of public facilities” in its customary communique, which was issued more than 30 hours after foreign ministers concluded their meeting, a delay that in previous years has indicated discord over its contents.
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered mercenary fighters with the Wagner Group the opportunity to remain serving together in Russia after their revolt, he said in an interview published late Thursday.

Putin, interviewed by the Russian daily Kommersant, said this was one of several offers he made at a meeting with around three dozen fighters and Wagner founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, late last month, five days after Wagner staged the abortive revolt against Russia’s military hierarchy.

Under the offer, the fighters would stay under their current commander, who the newspaper identified only by his call sign of “Grey Hair.”

Putin also said it was up to Russia’s government and parliament to work out a legal framework for private military formations.

Kommersant said Putin spoke of meeting 35 Wagner fighters and Prigozhin in the Kremlin and offering them options for the future, including remaining under their commander of 16 months.

“All of them could have gathered in one place and continued their service,” Kommersant quoted the president as saying. “And nothing would have changed. They would have been led by the same person who had been their real commander all that time.”

As Putin is the army’s commander-in-chief, he seemed to be implying that they would remain within the Russian military, although he did not say that explicitly.

“Many of them nodded when I said this,” Kommersant quoted Putin as saying.

However, Prigozhin disagreed, it reported.

“Prigozhin … said after listening: ‘No, the boys won’t agree with such a decision,” Kommersant quoted Putin as saying.

Wagner fighters played a key role in the Russian army’s advance into eastern Ukraine and were the driving force in the capture in May of the city of Bakhmut after months of battles.

But Prigozhin constantly accused the military of failing to back his men, and Wagner fighters unhappy with the Defense Ministry’s conduct of the war took control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don on June 23 and began moving toward Moscow.

They halted their advance the next day after being offered a deal under which they could resettle in Belarus, along with Prigozhin. Any notion of pressing charges against Prigozhin was dropped.

Putin told the newspaper there was no possibility of Wagner remaining in its current form.

“Wagner does not exist,” Putin told Kommersant. “There is no law on private military organizations. It just doesn’t exist.”
…