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Ukrainian women from all walks of life have joined the armed forces to fight for their homes and country. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some near Bakhmut. Video: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Russia’s military acknowledged that a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its warplanes caused a powerful blast in a Russian city not far from Ukraine’s border, injuring two and scaring local residents.

Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia’s current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.

The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.

It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined avenue flanked by apartment blocks, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third person was later hospitalized with hypertension, authorities said.

Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers were abuzz with theories about what weapon Ukraine had used for the attack. Many of them called for strong retribution.

But about an hour later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that a weapon accidentally released by one of its own Su-34 bombers caused the blast. The ministry did not provide any further details, but military experts said the weapon likely was a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.

Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been set to explode with a small delay after impact that would allow it to hit underground facilities.

Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said local authorities decided to temporarily resettle residents of a nine-story apartment building while it was inspected to make sure it hadn’t suffered structural damage that rendered it unsafe to live in.

In an editorial gaffe, an anchor on Russian state television followed the news about the local authorities dealing with the explosion’s aftermath by declaring that “modern weapons allow Russian units to eliminate extremists in the area of the special military operation from a minimal distance.” The anchor looked visibly puzzled by the text that he had just read.

Russian commentators questioned why the warplane flew over Belgorod and urged the military to avoid such risky overflights in the future.

Some alleged that the bomb that was accidentally dropped on Belgorod could be one of a batch of modified munitions equipped with wings and GPS-guided targeting system that allows them to glide to targets dozens of kilometers (miles) away. The Russian air force has started using such gliding bombs only recently, and some experts say that they could be prone to glitches.

In October, a Russian warplane crashed next to a residential building in the port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov, killing 15 people. Yeysk hosts a big Russian air base with warplanes that fly missions over Ukraine.

Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights have increased sharply during the fighting, so have crashes and misfires.

In another deadly incident in the Belgorod region, two volunteer soldiers fired at Russian troops at a military firing range, killing 11 and wounding 15 others before being shot dead.
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Germany’s train system came to a standstill Friday when railway workers went on strike for eight hours. 

EVG, the union representing the state-owned Deutsche Bahn workers, says its members need a raise to counter inflation.  

Long distance and regional trains were affected by the strike, which lasted from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m.  

The railway strike coincided with a walkout at four major German airports, affecting hundreds of flights. Reuters news agency reports 700 flights were canceled.
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U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks will arrive in Germany in May, and Ukrainians will start training on them soon after, according to senior military officials.

Thirty-one Abrams tanks will arrive at a base in Grafenwöhr, Germany next month so that Ukrainians can start a 10-week course on how to operate the tanks. Additional force-on-force training and maintenance courses will be held at either Grafenwöhr or another base in Hohenfels, Germany, the officials said.

The U.S.-led training will involve about 250 Ukrainians, and officials say 31 Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine by the end of this year.

The news comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is hosting another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, where military leaders from more than 50 nations are focusing on the Ukrainian military’s armor, air defense and ammunition needs.

Austin is expected to announce that the Abrams will arrive in Germany in the coming weeks during a Friday press conference.

Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he first convened the group last April, Austin said the groups’ members had provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine.

“More than a year later, Ukraine is still standing strong. Our support has not wavered, and I’m proud of the progress that we have made together,” he said.

In the past few months, members of the group have provided enough equipment and training to support nine additional armored brigades, according to Austin.

Abrams tanks, in particular, have been a long-awaited addition to the fight. The tank’s thick armor and 1,500-horsepower turbine engine make it much more advanced than the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine has been using since the war’s beginning.

The Biden administration announced in January that it would send a newer version of the Abrams tanks, known as M1A2, to Ukraine after they were procured and built, a process that could potentially take years.

In March, the administration pivoted to provide M1A1 Abrams tanks instead, in order to get the tanks “into the hands of the Ukrainians sooner rather than later,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at the time.

The U.K. was the first to promise Western-style tanks for Ukraine, sending its Challenger 2 tanks to aid in the fight. After the U.S. Abrams announcement in January, Germany announced it would provide Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow other allies with German tanks, such as Poland, to do the same.

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov spoke to members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Friday in order to update leaders on the state of the battlefield and Ukraine’s most urgent military needs. Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.

The U.S. has now provided more than $35 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, which Austin called “an unprovoked and indefensible war of aggression.”

Some countries, including Estonia and Latvia, have donated more than 1% of their GDP to Ukraine’s defense.

Ahead of the meeting, Austin addressed the massive Pentagon leak of classified documents detailing sensitive intelligence on the war in Ukraine, Russian intelligence and intelligence gleaned from spying on allies.

Austin said he took the issue very seriously and would continue to work with “our deeply valued allies and partners.”

“I’ve been struck by your solidarity and your commitment to reject efforts to divide us. And we will not let anything fracture our unity,” he said.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group has worked better than predicted in terms of maintaining supplies for Ukraine, showing Western resolve to face down Russian aggression and having “Ukraine’s back even without having forces on the battlefield,” according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The U.S. and allies have vowed to support Ukraine in defending its sovereign territory for “as long as it takes,” which O’Hanlon says may extend through all of 2024.

“I’m afraid that’s a distinct possibility,” he said.
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They are called mercenaries or contractors or volunteers, and they fight on both sides in the war in Ukraine. But whether they are regarded as villains or heroes, their presence is having an unquestionable impact on the battlefield.

The dark side of the irregular fighting forces assisting and resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion was driven home this week when two ex-convicts told a human rights group they had deliberately killed Ukrainian children and civilians while serving as commanders in Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group last year.

In videos posted online by Russia’s Gulagu.net, Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev described their brutality in graphic detail.

“I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” said Uldarov, describing how he fatally shot a 5- or 6-year-old girl.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company whose convict-bolstered ranks have been instrumental in the months-long battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, has denied those allegations and threatened retribution.

But Sean McFate, a former American officer and private military contractor who is now a professor at the National Defense University, said no one should be surprised to see atrocities committed by a military force staffed largely with convicts.

“When you are … opening 11 time zones of jails and dumping into Ukraine … you’re creating a labor pool of psychotic armed men who are running around Ukraine and that region and that doesn’t end well,” he said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian.

McFate added that the use of mercenaries often goes hand in hand with the arms trade and other illicit practices including human trafficking and narcotics.

Robert Young Pelton, a veteran war journalist who has covered more that four dozen conflicts around the world, argued in an interview that the Wagner Group has become an embarrassment not only to Russia’s regular forces but to their country as a whole.

“Russia has professional soldiers that have some of the finest spetsnaz, special operations people,” Pelton told VOA Ukrainian. But by unleashing the Wagner Group in Ukraine, Russia has created an especially dangerous precedent as they legally are “not answerable to anyone.”

“There’s no one going to investigate Wagner and judge them for being good or bad because they’re technically not a part of a state apparatus [or] any state-sanctioned organization,” said Pelton, whose reporting has taken him to Afghanistan, Chechnya and Liberia and brought him into contact with the Taliban and Blackwater security contractors in Iraq.

“We now have Russians murdering people inside Ukraine … and are not really held accountable, and yet they’ll integrate back into society inside Russia.”

On the other side of the paramilitary ledger, Ukraine is supported in its defense of its homeland by several outside groups, some playing a direct role in the fighting.

Among these are the American veteran-led donor-funded organization Project Dynamo that saves civilians from war zones in Ukraine and Afghanistan, and a now-disbanded international Mozart Group that was evacuating civilians and training Ukrainian soldiers.

Some of its former members reorganized under a new name, Sonata, and continue to operate in Ukraine more discreetly, coordinating both with Ukraine’s high-level military officers and battlefront units to understand operational issues and provide technical solutions.

Kyiv does not reveal the numbers but based on media estimates, roughly from 1,000 to 3,000 foreign volunteers are defending Ukraine now, most of them serving in three battalions of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.

The legion was formed shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for the help of “every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country.”

In a written statement to VOA Ukrainian, the legion said that multiple foreigners in the regiment fought bravely and earned high praise from their comrades and commanders, as well as state honors. Some foreign nationals who as part of other battalions served in the weekslong siege at the Azovstal steel plant and in Mariupol also received state honors.

But not all of the foreigners who have flocked to Kyiv’s defense have served so honorably.

The New York Times has reported that some foreign volunteers ended up undermining the war effort, wasting money or even defecting to Russia. The Kyiv Independent has also reported on misconduct within the International Legion leadership that included physical abuse, threats and sending soldiers on reckless “suicidal” missions.

“The problem is, during the war you get what we call ‘the ash and trash,’ people who don’t know what else to do in their life,” McFate said.

“The good ones tend to leave because they don’t want to get killed with the bad ones. And what you are left with are a refuse from the other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. And not all of them are bad, but this is a common problem of private warfare,” he said.

When asked how the Ukrainian Foreign Legion screens its volunteers, VOA Ukrainian was told that all the soldiers undergo an examination by recruiters, background checks by the government and training before being deployed to the battlefield.

But Pelton said that private contractors “always muddy the water” when brought into a war. “Within that very narrow segment of foreigners fighting in Ukraine, they’re more of a problem than a help because they bring international condemnation, confusion, and sort of a moral question to why these foreigners are here.”

Despite the moral and legal uncertainties, some experienced American warriors say they are still willing to fight for the right cause.

One of these is Dan Hampton, one of America’s most decorated combat pilots with 151 missions in F-16s. He is also the author of several books and the CEO of MVI International, a private military company based in the western U.S. state of Colorado.

“This is the pivotal issue of the Ukraine’s fight against Russia, this is a black and white conflict. … I’ll go myself, I’m – one, you can count me in,” Hampton said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian on March 9.

Hampton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart, suggested that American contractors could help Ukraine with one of its most vexing problems — its need for an enhanced air combat capability.

Ukraine has for months appealed for the United States and its allies to provide the country with F-16 fighters, but the U.S. has so far refused, arguing that the planes are so complex that it would take months if not years for Ukrainian pilots to become proficient in them.

Hampton suggested that if F-16s were provided, experienced foreign pilots could fly them while Ukrainian pilots train or continue to fly their existing aircraft.

This article originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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The outcome of Turkey’s presidential elections next month is growing more uncertain, with a populist outsider entering the race and threatening to split the opposition vote — something that would help longtime incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Before the war, before it was occupied by Russia, and before the bitter battle that ended with Ukraine retaking control of Lyman in October, locals called this city “The Gates of Donbas.” It was an export hub for regional commodities such as coal, salt and sand.

Now, it is bombed weekly. Residents say they often don’t bother trying to make home repairs because the violence never ceases.

Lida, 85, shows what’s left of her top-floor apartment after it was hit by bombs.

“This is my apartment,” she says, breathless after walking up four normal flights of stairs and the crumbled remains of the fifth flight. “There is nothing left. Fire destroyed everything. … I would not have believed it if I didn’t see it.”

Some residents say perhaps it is too late for Lyman to ever return to normalcy. Entire neighborhoods are flattened, factories are closed and the railway, where about 35% of the population used to work, is no longer operational.

“I regret not leaving,” says Anna, a 65-year-old former railway worker. “But still, there is no money, and where would I go? I know a lot of people, but no one offered me a safe place. People ask why I didn’t evacuate. But to where?”

Few left in Torske

About 15 kilometers from Lyman and only a few more from the front lines is the village of Torske, which is almost entirely abandoned. Ukrainian soldiers whizzing by in military vehicles say the town is still in full view of Russian fighters and frequently hit.

The Russian fighters left behind cars, uniforms and personal items when they moved out of Torske. There is almost no one left to clean up.

A man passes on a bicycle. He pauses but declines to explain why he remains alone in his destroyed home just outside of Torske. He says life here is a little better recently because the clamor of battle has moved a bit out of town.

“Things got really bad here,” he adds, remounting his bike.

Fighting continues nearby

In the nearby battle zones, Ukraine and Russia both engage in brutal fighting to take or retain Torske and other villages on the way to Lyman’s strategic crossroads. Besides being a critical transportation hub, it also sits between the areas occupied by Russia and the city of Kramatorsk, the regional capital under Ukrainian control.

Ukraine is expected to launch a massive counteroffensive this spring, and Russia has built up defenses on the borders of the territories it now occupies inside Ukraine. Lyman residents say if the battles return to their city, they have no resources left to help them survive.

A year and half ago, Lyman had more than 20,000 people. Now, the few thousand remaining survive only on aid brought in from out of town.

“I had to flee wearing my robe and slippers,” says Lida, after showing us the dark, underground shelter where she now lives. “I lost everything. I’ve now been living in the basement since last year.”
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In part three of our series on Ukraine’s battle zones, VOA travels to the formerly occupied city of Lyman, a strategic crossroad known locally as “Gates of Donbas.” Not far from towns that have been reduced to rubble, residents of the once-thriving city now sleep in the basements of abandoned factories and rail yards. Heather Murdock reports from Lyman with videographer Yan Boechat. 
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Sweden’s public radio said this week that it would stop being active on Twitter, but it did not blame new labels that Elon Musk ‘s social media platform has slapped on public broadcasters, leading some major North American outlets to quit tweeting.

Sveriges Radio said on its blog that Twitter has lost its relevance to Swedish audiences.

National Public Radio and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, meanwhile, have pointed to Twitter’s new policy of labeling them as government-funded institutions, saying it undermines their credibility.

“For a long time, Sveriges Radio has de-prioritized its presence on Twitter and has now made the decision to completely stop being active on the platform, at the same time that we are shutting down a number of accounts,” said Christian Gillinger, head of the broadcaster’s social media activities.

He cited a recent study showing only some 7% of Swedes are on Twitter daily and said the platform “has simply changed over the years and become less important for us.”

“The audience has simply chosen other places to be. And, therefore, Sveriges Radio now chooses to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts,” Gillinger said.

The broadcaster’s news service, SR Ekot, which has been labeled “publicly funded media,” will remain on Twitter but has been marked inactive.

Sveriges Radio, which has been active on Twitter since 2009, also noted the “recent turbulence” around Twitter’s operations and said it was worrying that the social media platform has reduced its workforce “dramatically.”

“We believe that it may in the long run affect the company’s capacity to handle, for example, fake accounts, bots and disinformation but also hate messages and threats,” Gillinger said.

The labels for public broadcasters have unleashed a new battle between reporters and Musk, who has said he wants to elevate the views and expertise of the “average citizen.”

Canada’s CBC said Monday that it would pause its activities on Twitter after it was labeled as “government-funded” because it “undermines the accuracy and professionalism” of its journalists’ work “to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way.”

U.S. broadcasters NPR and Public Broadcasting Service made similar decisions earlier this month for related reasons.

CBC received C$1.24 billion ($925.86 million) in government funding in the 2022 financial year, compared with revenue from advertising, subscriptions and other sources of C$651.4 million ($485,000,000) according to its annual report, Reuters reported this week.

Reuters quoted Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon as saying, “The real issue is that Twitter’s definition of government-funded media means open to editorial interference by government. As the editor-in-chief of CBC News has said, the government has no — zero — involvement in our editorial content or journalism.”
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By day, Jessica Wade spends her time in a laboratory at Imperial College London surrounded by spectrometers, oscilloscopes — and men.

At night, she writes biographies on Wikipedia about women researchers like her who don’t have an online presence.

“We can’t just do the shouting about how we need more women in science. We have to do the point of honoring and celebrating the women scientists that we have,” she told AFP.

“And I think writing their stories, making sure the world recognizes what they’ve done is a really important way to do that.”

Wade, 34, has worked at Imperial’s imposing campus in west London since 2016.

As a physicist, she is involved in developing new generations of carbon-based semi-conductors to make optical and electronic devices such as televisions and solar panels more energy efficient.

She leads a team of five people in a wider team of about 15. Of them, only one other scientist is a woman.

Science “is very male dominated,” Wade said, lamenting the lack of interest in it among girls whose parents are not scientists.

“As soon as I walked into a physics department that had a majority of men and a majority of people from white privileged backgrounds, I suddenly realized that not everyone’s getting the opportunity to study physics, not everyone’s getting excited about it,” she added.

“That lack of diversity impacts the science we do, the questions we ask, the directions we go in, the way we translate our innovations into society, where those kinds of devices are actually used in the world and who they benefit.”

Visibility

Wade now seeks to “take science to more people” but came across “knowledge gaps” in the internet’s free, multilingual, collaborative encyclopedia.

“Wikipedia is an amazing platform because it’s used by everyone in society,” she said.

“It’s used by 15 billion access points a month. Parents, teachers, policymakers, journalists, scientists, Amazon, Alexa, Google Home, they all use Wikipedia when they’re looking for information.”

But there is one big problem, she added: “About 90% of Wikipedia contributors and editors are men, and about 19% of the biographies on English language Wikipedia are about women.”

Wade set out to redress the imbalance in 2018 and has since written almost 2,000 pages by herself at the rate of one a night, at home, after dinner.

“They take more than one hour each, so that’s already too many hours of my life,” she laughed.

But she is undeterred by the daunting task.

“I don’t see it stopping anytime soon,” she said.

In fact, the research itself creates more work, as she often discovers more women scientists when writing another biography.

Wades’ first Wikipedia biography entry was the American climatologist Kim Cobb.

She saw her at a conference but after looking her up on Wikipedia found there was nothing on her oceanographic research.

Acknowledgement

Wade, who is now part of a network of women editors and leads workshops on how to write for Wikipedia, says a person’s presence and their work on the internet means they are discoverable.

“Little girls who are googling something, let’s say about sea urchins, will click through and then land on a Wikipedia page about an awesome woman scientist who had contributed to that,” she said.

“If you’re trying to nominate someone for an award or to become a fellow or to invite someone to give a lecture, you always google them and if they’ve got a biography nicely summarized on somewhere like Wikipedia, it’s so much easier to write someone’s citation or reference.”

That happened for Gladys West, a 92-year-old black American mathematician, whose profile was one of Wade’s first.

Starting in 1956, when racial segregation was still imposed in the United States, she worked for 42 years on navy navigation systems. Her calculations eventually led to the development of GPS.

“I researched Gladys to write her page and there was so little about her online, she was almost 90 and no one had celebrated her,” she said.

“I put her Wikipedia page online in February 2018 and in May 2018 she was in the BBC top 100 women in the world.

“And then she was inducted to the US Air Force Hall of Fame, and she won the Royal Academy of Engineering Prince Philip medal, which had never before gone to a woman.”
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Russia’s invading forces are deliberately using rape, torture and kidnapping to try to sow terror among civilians in Ukraine, the top prosecutor in Ukraine told U.S. lawmakers in graphic testimony Wednesday.

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

Focusing on just one area of the country that has felt the brunt of the war, Kostin described some of the discoveries made when the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson last November. He said about 20 torture chambers were found and more than 1,000 survivors have reported an array of abuses, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, being forced to strip naked and threats of mutilation and death.

Kostin said more than 60 cases of rape were documented in the Kherson region alone. In areas still controlled by Russian forces, residents, including children, are being forcefully relocated to other occupied territories or to Russia.

“Such evil cannot let be,” Kostin said.

He was asked about the motivations behind Russia’s tactics, but said he struggles to understand the brutality of the Russian forces in targeting civilians.

“The only possible explanation is that they just want to erase Ukraine and Ukrainians from the land,” Kostin said. “Maybe because they want to really kill all of us.”

Russian officials have consistently denied committing war crimes in what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

The United States House Foreign Affairs Committee invited Kostin to testify. The chairman, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, believes that spotlighting the brutality of Russia’s actions will show lawmakers and voters why the U.S. is in the right in supporting Ukraine.

“This is happening right now. They are monsters and they need to be brought to justice,” McCaul said. “These are more than war crimes. These are more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide.”

McCaul also issued a challenge to fellow lawmakers, saying “history will judge us by what we do here and now.”

“No country can remain neutral in the face of such evil,” McCaul said.

US leader pushes to provide F-16 jets

Congress approved about $113 billion in economic, humanitarian and military spending in 2022 to assist Ukraine. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel the Russian invasion, though support for that aid has softened, polling shows.

Congressional leaders anticipate that Ukraine will need billions of dollars in additional assistance in the months ahead.

Ukraine is preparing to launch a counteroffensive in an attempt to regain territory lost to Russian troops. McCaul said he would like to see the U.S. back Ukraine’s efforts to retake Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014, so it could negotiate for a cease-fire from a stronger position. He is pushing for the U.S. and its allies to provide Ukraine with long-distance artillery and F-16 fighter jets for the counteroffensive.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that he spoke by telephone with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, and thanked him for bipartisan support from Congress. Zelenskyy also outlined the “situation at the front” and Ukraine’s “urgent defense needs in armored vehicles, artillery, air defense & aircraft.”

The House committee also heard from a war crimes survivor, a 57-year-old woman, who said she was taken to a torture chamber for five days, beaten, forced to strip and endured threats of rape and murder. At one point, she was forced to dig her own grave. She said her house was looted. She has escaped, but other Ukrainians still experience such treatment in Russian-controlled territories, she said.

“These terrible crimes need to be stopped,” she told lawmakers. Her identity was not revealed out of concerns about retribution.

Prosecutor calls for reparations

Kostin said exposing atrocities is not enough.

“Only with discovering and determining truth, bringing perpetrators to responsibility and providing adequate reparations to victims and survivors, we can say justice has been done,” Kostin said.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last month for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. But the practical implications are limited as the chances of Putin facing trial at the court are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.

McCaul told The Associated Press he will press for the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI agents to assist prosecutors in Ukraine, even as he doubts there will ever be a full reckoning for the war crimes.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, how this is going to end,” McCaul said. “But at least there’ll be historical documentation about what they did, for generations to read about the atrocities.”
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his Swedish counterpart outside Stockholm Wednesday, a rare visit intended to show Washington’s support for Sweden’s bid to join NATO. VOA’s Pentagon correspondent, Carla Babb, is traveling with the secretary and has this report from a Swedish naval base.
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Leaked documents provided to VOA’s sister network RFE/RL confirm reports that Russia and China collaborate on censorship and internet control tactics.

The materials detail documents and recordings said to be from closed-door meetings in 2017 and 2019 between officials from the Chinese and Russian agencies charged with policing the internet in both countries.

In those documents and recordings — reported on by RFE/RL — officials from both countries share strategies for tracking dissent and controlling the internet, including requests for help to block “dangerous” news articles and advice on beating circumvention technology.

RFE/RL said its Russian Investigative Unit obtained the recordings and documents from a source who had access to the materials. DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked and hacked documents, provided software to search the files.

VOA has not seen the files.

While there have been previous reports about Moscow and Beijing collaborating on tactics related to censorship and other forms of repression, the content of these specific conversations had never before been reported.

Neither the Russian Embassy nor the Chinese Embassy in Washington responded to VOA’s emails requesting comment.

In some of the leaked materials, Chinese officials appear to ask Russia for advice on dealing with popular dissent and regulating media, the report said. Meanwhile, Russian officials asked for advice from Beijing on issues such as how to impede circumvention tools like virtual private networks and how to regulate messaging platforms.

The revelations underscore how repression is much more sophisticated in China than Russia, according to Yaxue Cao, founder of China Change, a website that covers human rights in China.

“China’s censorship and China’s suppression of access to information is total. Russia has a lot more to learn from China,” Cao told VOA.

“The whole system is propped up by their narratives, their revisionist history, their total control of the media, their total control of the opinion field,” Cao said, referring to China.

Other materials showed that in 2017, Aleksandr Zharov, the former head of Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor, asked China’s internet regulator to arrange a visit for Russian officials to China to study China’s Great Firewall censorship and surveillance system.

Two years later, officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), China’s internet regulator, asked Russia to block links to a variety of China-related news articles and interviews that they had deemed to be “of a dangerous nature and harmful to the public interest.”

At the 2019 World Internet Conference in the eastern Chinese city of Wuzhen, the CAC and Roskomnadzor signed a deal on counteracting the spread of “forbidden information.” Documents obtained by RFE/RL showed that some requests made by the CAC later that year to block information in Russia were made under that agreement.

In one request, Chinese officials asked Russia to censor a Chinese-language BBC story about a government campaign launched in 2015 to improve the country’s sanitation. In another request, Chinese officials asked Russia to block a blog post about rumors that President Xi Jinping had injured his back.

The Kremlin has grown even more restrictive over the past year since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to Eto Buziashvili, who researches Russian disinformation at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

“Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been trying to double down on censorship in Russia, and the reason is to prevent factual information on the war from spreading in Russia,” Buziashvili told VOA.

The RFE/RL report on the leaked information confirms how Beijing and Moscow work together on censorship and propaganda, according to Buziashvili.

For example, she said, Chinese state media representatives and outlets have previously amplified Russian propaganda narratives on social media. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chinese state media have echoed Russian disinformation about the war.

“This report just confirms the collaboration between the two states and their entities,” Buziashvili said.

It makes sense that the two authoritarian states would work together on influence operations, she added, and the state-controlled media ecosystems in both countries naturally facilitate this kind of collaboration.

“If they are cooperating in offline spheres, why not cooperate online and have stronger narratives and reach broader audiences?” Buziashvili said.
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The U.S. Justice Department is asking Congress for additional authority to funnel seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

In December, Congress authorized the Justice Department to transfer the proceeds of forfeited Russian assets to the State Department for Ukrainian reconstruction.

But the power applies only to assets seized in connection with violating U.S. sanctions under certain presidential executive orders. 

As a result, millions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets seized and forfeited in violation of U.S. export controls and other economic countermeasures cannot be transferred.

Now, the Justice Department is urging Congress to expand the range of seized assets that it can transfer for Ukrainian rebuilding. 

“We’re leaving money on the table if we don’t expand our ability to use the forfeited assets that we gain from enforcement of our export control violations and expanding the sanctions regimes that that transfer authority is applicable to,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. “So I urge the Congress to give us the additional authority so we can make the oligarchs pay for rebuilding Ukraine as well.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has cracked down on Russian oligarchs and investigated war crimes.

The law enforcement agency set up a task force shortly after the invasion to enforce sweeping U.S. sanctions and export controls. 

Task Force Kleptocapture has since seized more than $500 million in assets owned by Russian oligarchs and others who support Moscow and dodge U.S. sanctions, Monaco said.

The seized assets include a $300 million super yacht owned by Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, and a $90 million yacht belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch. 

The Justice Department is believed to have used its congressionally granted authority to transfer seized Russian funds only once. 

In February, Garland authorized the transfer of $5.4 million seized from a Denver-based bank account of sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.

In the more than one year since Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the Justice Department has charged more than 30 individuals with sanctions evasion, export control violations, money laundering and other crimes, and arrested defendants in more than a half-dozen countries, Monaco said. 
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The Baltic countries have remained an important source of support for Ukraine as Russia’s assault drags on. In Latvia, people have kept up efforts to assist the Ukrainian military, while accepting Ukrainian refugees and making them feel welcome in an exile that for many, seems to have no end. Marcus Harton narrates this report by Ricardo Marquina in the Latvian capital, Riga.
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New developments:

Black Sea grain deal inspections resume in Turkey
Hungary adds honey, wine, bread, sugar to temporary ban on imports from Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says like-minded countries should oppose “illegal unilateral pressure of the West”

 

Ukraine on Wednesday reported overnight drone attacks by Russian forces in the Odesa region of southern Ukraine.

Yuri Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s military command in the Odesa region, said the drones caused a fire at an infrastructure facility, but that there were no casualties.

Russia has made widespread use of drones to carry out attacks in Ukraine, including against infrastructure targets.

Sweden NATO

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin voiced support Wednesday for Sweden’s bid to join the NATO alliance.

Speaking during a visit to Sweden’s Musko Naval Base, Austin said the United States looks forward to “continuing to advocate for your swift admission to NATO and we’ll work hard to get that done before the summit.”

Austin said Swedish forces will “add a lot of value to NATO, our overall effort, you have a very, a highly professional military and you’ve invested a lot in modernization over the last several years.”

Sweden applied for NATO membership along with Finland in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

Finland formally joined the military alliance in early April. Sweden’s bid has been held up by objections from Hungary and Turkey, which says Sweden has not done enough to crack down on groups that Turkey considers terror organizations.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Polish and Ukrainian officials say convoys of Ukrainian grain transiting Poland for export abroad will be sealed, guarded and monitored to ensure the produce stops flooding the Polish market and playing havoc with prices.

Tuesday’s announcement came after two days of intensive talks following protests by Polish farmers, who said much of the Ukrainian grain was staying in Poland and creating a glut that caused them huge losses.

The deal will also end a temporary prohibition issued by Poland on Saturday to address the protests on the entry of grain from Ukraine. Hungary and Slovakia, which are also affected by the transit of Ukrainian farm produce, later took similar measures. These moves drew the anger of the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission, which manages trade for the 27 member countries.

Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus told a press conference on Tuesday that Warsaw and Kyiv “have worked out mechanisms that mean that not a single ton of (Ukraine) grain will remain in Poland, that it will all be passing in transit.”

He said that for an unspecified length of time, all Ukrainian produce in transit will be sealed, with traceable devices attached, and ferried in special, guarded convoys to Polish ports and border crossings, on its way to other countries.

The transit is to ease the accumulation of grain and other produce intended for export to needy countries that’s blocked in Ukraine by Russia’s invasion.

Telus said the weekend’s temporary ban was partly intended to draw the EU’s attention to the acute problem. He alleged that the EU, while supporting the idea of the transit, has done nothing to facilitate it and prevent the glut.

The issue led to the talks between Poland and Ukraine’s agriculture ministers, with the participation of Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. The transit measures will be introduced Friday, when the temporary ban on grain — mainly wheat — will be lifted.

“We pay attention to the problems of our Polish colleagues with the same attention as Poland treats our problems. Therefore, we have to respond promptly and constructively to this crisis situation,” Svyrydenko said in Warsaw.

It was not clear when a ban on the entry of other Ukraine goods such as sugar, eggs, meat, milk and other dairy products and fruits and vegetables would be lifted.

Farmers in Poland and neighboring countries say that Ukrainian grain and farm produce, apart from flooding their markets, has filled their own storage areas, leaving no room for their own crops from this year.

After Russia blocked traditional export sea passages amid the war in Ukraine, the European Union lifted duties on Ukrainian grain to facilitate its transport to Africa and the Middle East and offered to pay some compensation, which the farmers said was insufficient.

Much of the grain ends up staying in transit countries, and some Polish unions and opposition politicians accuse government-linked companies of causing the problem by buying up cheap, low-quality Ukrainian grain, and then selling it to bread and pasta plants as high-quality Polish produce.

Poland’s main ruling party, Law and Justice, is seeking to ease the discontent of farmers — the party’s voter base — ahead of fall parliamentary elections.

In Romania, another country affected by Ukraine produce overflow, the ruling Social Democrat Party said Tuesday that it will ask its governing coalition partners to urgently look to issue a temporary suspension of imports of food products from Ukraine.

“Such a measure is necessary to protect Romanian farmers, in the context in which compensation received from the European Commission cannot cover the total value of the damage,” the party said in a statement.
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Afghans living in Sweden say that iftar — or breaking fast during the month of Ramadan — is an opportunity to get together and learn about their cultural heritage. Abdul Wali Arian has the story, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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A Russian court has refused to release U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich from jail while he awaits trial on accusations that he spied on Russia while on a reporting assignment last month. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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The Chinese defense chief vowed Tuesday to take military cooperation with Moscow to a new level, a statement that reflects increasingly close Russia-China ties amid the fighting in Ukraine. 

Chinese Defense Minister General Li Shangfu held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu after attending a meeting Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. 

“The armed forces of China and Russia will implement the agreements reached by the heads of state and expand military cooperation, military-technical ties and arms trade,” Li said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s meeting with Shoigu. “We will certainly take them to a new level.”

Li’s trip follows last month’s three-day state visit to the Russian capital by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, reflecting China’s strengthening engagement with Russia. Moscow and Beijing have closely aligned their policies in an attempt to reshape the world order to diminish the influence of the United States and its Western allies.

China has refused to criticize Russia’s actions in Ukraine and blamed the U.S. and NATO for provoking Moscow. Xi’s visit to Moscow gave a strong political boost to Putin, sending a message to Western leaders that their efforts to isolate Russia have fallen short.

After the talks, Putin and Xi issued joint declarations pledging to further bolster their “strategic cooperation,” develop cooperation in energy, high-tech industries and other spheres and expand the use of their currencies in mutual trade to reduce dependence on the West.

After more than a year of fighting in Ukraine and bruising Western sanctions, Russia’s dependence on China has increased significantly. Facing Western restrictions on its oil, gas and other exports, Russia has shifted its energy flows to China and sharply expanded other exports, resulting in a 30% hike in bilateral trade.

Last month, Putin and Xi also vowed to further develop military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing and conduct more joint sea and air patrols. There was no mention of any prospective Chinese weapons supplies to Russia, however, that the U.S. and other Western allies feared, and the Chinese foreign minister reaffirmed Friday that Beijing wouldn’t sell weapons to either side in the conflict in Ukraine. 
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With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan languishing in many polls ahead of May elections, his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is promising to mend strained ties with Turkey’s Western allies. Analysts say that could be bad news for Moscow. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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With Turkey and Hungary continuing to block Sweden’s application to join the NATO military alliance, the Swedish government hopes for a swift ratification soon by both countries after Turkish elections scheduled for May 14.  

Sweden and Finland lodged a joint application to join NATO just weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  

The alliance welcomed Finland earlier this month – NATO’s 31st member state – after Turkish and Hungarian lawmakers finally voted through the ratification in March. Sweden’s application has yet to be approved by the same two NATO members.  

Anti-terror law  

Ankara has accused Sweden of harboring what it considers pro-Kurdish terrorists, including members of the PKK militant group, which Sweden denies.  

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said he hoped next month’s presidential elections in Turkey could mark a turning point.

“Now we’re waiting for the Turkish elections. I think everyone realizes that there is a substantial role in this, which is about Turkish domestic politics and that is fully understandable, that’s how it is in most countries,” Kristersson said at a press conference March 31.  

Sweden is set to introduce a new anti-terrorism law, which it hopes will persuade Turkey to approve its NATO application. Speaking to reporters April 5, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, gave a measured response. “Of course, they have taken some steps but they are not enough. We are expecting additional efforts in the coming period,” he said.

NATO summit

NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said he hopes that Sweden’s application is ratified in time for the alliance’s annual summit, scheduled for July 11-12 in Lithuania.  

Alper Coşkun, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the former director general for international security affairs at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told VOA Turkish approval of Sweden’s application is not guaranteed.

“It will depend more on whether in the aftermath of the elections – irrespective of who wins – the Turkish authorities will be able to say to themselves and to the public at large, that some of Turkey’s expectations from Sweden have been met in terms of the implementation of that very law,” he said.  

“I do not believe that it is necessarily in Turkey’s interest after the election and post the implementation of that (anti-terror) law in Sweden, to prolong the matter. So I would assume that it is still a realistic expectation that Sweden will be able to join (NATO) by the summit in Vilnius.”

Election campaign

Foreign policy comes second to domestic concerns in Turkey’s election campaign – and that could benefit Sweden’s NATO application, Coşkun added.

“Especially now, in the aftermath of the earthquakes and the economic circumstances in Turkey, it has even decreased even more. In that sense, I don’t think as far as the public opinion is concerned, or as far as the interest of the political parties in Turkey is concerned, it’s a leading topic, that there is attention on it. And I think that alleviates the domestic political pressure on the issue, which should facilitate a solution post-election.”  

Turkish opposition parties have rallied behind a single candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, in an effort to unseat incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Coşkun believes an opposition win could benefit Sweden. “They’ve made it clear that they will underline Turkey’s place within NATO, within the Western security architecture,” he said.  

Hungary  

Meanwhile, Hungarian lawmakers say they are blocking Sweden’s NATO bid over its recent criticism of their country’s democratic credentials, part of a long-running dispute over the rule of law between Budapest and its European allies.   

Analysts say that Turkey’s approval of Sweden’s bid would likely pressure Hungary to do the same, citing Budapest’s approval of Finland’s NATO application, which came just days after Ankara had signaled it would ratify Helsinki’s bid to join the alliance.   

Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, told the Associated Press March 25 that his country deserves more respect. “When Finnish and Swedish politicians question the democratic nature of our political system, that’s really unacceptable… As we give respect to all countries, we expect respect as well. And this respect was not really given,” he said.  

Szijjártó did not elaborate on whether Hungary would approve Sweden’s NATO application, if Turkey were to do so after the May 14 election.
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Sweden is still waiting for Turkey to approve its application to join NATO. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Sweden hopes the upcoming Turkish elections scheduled for May 14 could be a turning point.

Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is “in good health and good spirits, considering the circumstances” after his arrest in Russia late last month.

Speaking to reporters in Japan, Blinken said the United States continues to “call for his immediate release from this unjust detention.”

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said Monday she visited Gershkovich, whom Russia has accused of spying.

“This is the first time we’ve had consular access to Evan since his wrongful detention over two weeks ago,” Tracy said in a short statement in Russian on Telegram. “He feels well and is holding up. We reiterate our call for Evan’s immediate release.”

Gershkovich was arrested in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, 1,800 kilometers east of Moscow, while on a reporting assignment. Russia claims, without producing evidence, that he was caught “red-handed” while spying, collecting what it claimed were state secrets about a military industrial complex.

His newspaper and the U.S. government have rejected the charge of espionage, which, if he were to be convicted, carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Two weeks ago, his parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, who fled the Soviet Union in 1979 and live in the eastern U.S. city of Philadelphia, received a two-page, hand-written note from him in Russian, the language the family speaks at home.

“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” Gershkovich said. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write.”

He also teased his mother about her cooking. “Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food,” he said. “For breakfast they give us hot creamed wheat, oatmeal cereal or wheat gruel. I am remembering my childhood.”

The parents said in a video interview with the Journal that they remain optimistic for their son’s release.

“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, you know, be optimistic, believe in a happy ending,” Milman said. “But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved.”

Milman said her son “felt like it was his duty to report” in Russia, even after most Western journalists left the country when President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last year. “He loves Russian people,” she said of her son.

U.S. President Joe Biden has called the journalist’s detention “totally illegal” and told the family he was working for Gershkovich’s release. The United States has officially declared that Gershkovich has been “wrongfully detained” and that he is being held as a hostage.

The U.S. has repeatedly told its citizens to leave Russia due to risk of arbitrary arrest.

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