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Russia is not happy with the comments the French president made in a newspaper interview.

Emmanuel Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche that France wanted to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, but not crushed.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the French leader’s comments were “priceless” and showed that the West was talking about regime change in Russia.

Macron also told the newspaper that he did not see an alternative to Russia’s current leader.

“All the options other than Vladimir Putin in the current system seem worse to me,” the French leader told the newspaper.

Russia, led by Putin, invaded Ukraine a year ago.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber, the English composer who created the scores for blockbuster musicals such as “Cats,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Evita,” has written the anthem for King Charles III’s coronation, adapting a piece of church music that encourages singers to make a “joyful noise.”

The work by Webber is one of a dozen new pieces Charles commissioned for the grand occasion taking place May 6 at Westminster Abbey. It includes words adapted from Psalm 98 and is scored specifically for the abbey’s choir and organ.

“I hope my anthem reflects this joyful occasion,” Webber said in a statement distributed by Buckingham Palace. 

The program for the king’s coronation ceremony includes older music and new compositions as the palace seeks to blend traditional and modern elements that reflect the realities of modern Britain. New pieces were composed by artists with roots in all four of the United Kingdom’s constituent nations, as well as in the Commonwealth and foreign countries that have sent so many people to its shores.

The service will include works by William Byrd (1543–1623), George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Edward Elgar (1857–1934), Henry Walford Davies (1869–1941), William Walton (1902–1983), Hubert Parry (1848–1918) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), whose music has featured in previous coronations, along with a piece from the contemporary Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.

There will also be new works by Sarah Class, Nigel Hess, Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Shirley J. Thompson, Judith Weir, Roderick Williams and Debbie Wiseman.

“The decision to combine old and new reflects the cultural breadth of the age in which we live,” said Andrew Nethsingha, the organist and master of choristers at Westminster Abbey.

“Coronations have taken place in Westminster Abbey since 1066. It has been a privilege to collaborate with his majesty in choosing fine musicians and accessible, communicative music for this great occasion,” Nethsingha said.

In all, six orchestral commissions, five choral commissions and one organ commission — spanning the classical, sacred, film, television and musical theater genres — were created for the coronation.

The program will also include personal touches, including a musical tribute to Charles’ late father, Prince Philip, who was born a Greek prince. The new monarch requested Greek Orthodox music, which will be performed by the Byzantine Chant Ensemble.

Though specifics on some of the material are being kept under wraps, one hymn will definitely be part of the service: Handel’s “Zadok the Priest.”

The hymn, with its robust chorus of “God Save the King,” has been played at every coronation since it was commissioned for the coronation of King George II in 1727. 
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Ukraine shot down at least six balloons over Kyiv on Wednesday, according to the British Defense Ministry’s daily intelligence update on Ukraine posted on Twitter.

The report said the Ukrainian armed forces spotted the balloons with radar reflectors suspended from them over Kyiv.

On Feb. 12, Ukraine’s air force said it spotted balloons over eastern Dnipropetrovsk, according to the report.

“It is likely that the balloons were Russian,” the ministry said, adding that the aircraft “likely represent” a new Russian information-gathering tactic to gain information about Ukrainian air defense systems that could “compel the Ukrainians to expend valuable stocks of surface to air missiles and ammunition.”

The British Defense Ministry said Moldovan airspace was closed Tuesday for several hours because of a balloon-shaped object. “There is a realistic possibility that this was a Russian balloon that had drifted from Ukrainian airspace,” the ministry said.

The Defense Ministry did not say whether the balloons resembled the balloons recently spotted and shot down over North America.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Saturday that almost all of Ukraine ended the day with power which he said was “another confirmation of our resilience.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Turkey on Sunday to observe firsthand the devastating aftermath of of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has killed more than 46,000 and left millions homeless in Turkey and neighboring Syria.

While in Turkey, he is expected to meet with Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan and Mevlut Cavusoglu, Blinken’s Turkish counterpart.

The top U.S. diplomat’s meetings in Turkey follow a visit to Washington by Cavusoglu last month. The two NATO allies have tried to mend fences over disagreements on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, plus Sweden’s and Finland’s bids to enter NATO.

Against all odds, rescue workers have continued to recover people from the rubble of the February 6 earthquake, but the head of the country’s disaster response agency has said their efforts would end Sunday.
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In a dusty workshop in northern Lithuania, a dozen men are transforming hundreds of wheel rims into potbelly stoves to warm Ukrainians huddled in trenches and bomb shelters. As the sparks subside, one welder marks the countertop: 36 made that day. Hours later, they’ve reached 60.

People from across Lithuania send old wheel rims to the volunteers gathering weekly in Siauliai, the Baltic country’s fourth-largest city. Two cars loaded with wood stoves wait outside the workshop ahead of the long night drive south.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — three states on NATO’s eastern flank scarred by decades of Soviet-era occupation — have been among the top donors to Kyiv.

Linas Kojala, director of the Europe Studies Center in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, said Ukraine’s successful resistance “is a matter of existential importance” to the Baltic countries, which share its experience of Russian rule.

“Not only political elites, but entire societies are involved in supporting Ukraine,” Kojala told the AP.

In Siauliai, Edgaras Liakavicius said his team has sent about 600 stoves to Ukraine.

“Everybody here … understands the situation of every man, every soldier, the conditions they live in now in Ukraine,” Liakavicius, who works for a local metal processing plant, told the AP.

Jaana Ratas, who heads an effort in Tallinn, Estonia, to make camouflage nets for Ukrainian soldiers, echoed his words.

“My family and most Estonians, they still remember (the Soviet occupation),” she said.

Ratas chose a symbolic location for her project. Five days a week, Estonian and Ukrainian women gather at Tallinn’s Museum of Occupations and Freedom to weave the nets from donated fabrics.

Lyudmila Likhopud, a 76-year-old refugee from Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, said the work has lifted her out of depression.

“I started feeling that I can be useful,” she told the AP.

In Latvia’s capital of Riga, Anzhela Kazakova — who ran a furniture store in the Black Sea port of Odesa — is one of 30 Ukrainian refugees working for Atlas Aerospace, a drone manufacturer that has supplied more than 300 kits to the Ukrainian army.

Ivan Tolchinsky, Atlas Aerospace’s founder and CEO, grew up in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, held by Kremlin-backed separatists since 2014. He had long petitioned both the EU and Ukraine to supply drones to Kyiv’s forces fighting the separatists. Final permission arrived a day before Moscow’s full-scale invasion, he said.

Atlas Aerospace has since increased production 20-fold, Tolchinsky said, and is planning to open a site in Ukraine despite withering Russian strikes on infrastructure.

Tolchinsky’s drones are just some of the weapons flowing to Kyiv from its Baltic allies. Together with their southern neighbor Poland — another NATO and European Union member with a history of Soviet oppression — the three small states rank among the biggest donors per gross domestic product helping Ukraine.

Lithuania, with a mere 2.8 million inhabitants, was the first country to send Stinger air defense missiles, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

One of the latest Lithuanian initiatives is a crowdfunding drive to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian drones and missiles. Launched in late January, it initially aimed to raise 5 million euros by the Feb. 24 anniversary of the invasion. That goal was reached within weeks, and organizers have since doubled it as donations keep flowing.

One fundraising group has grown into a major player that participates in international trading, purchasing military equipment for Kyiv.

“We have expanded 10 times in less than a year. (We used to supply) five drones in one batch, but now it’s 50 or more,” said Jonas Ohman, founder of the nongovernmental organization Blue/Yellow. The group recently won a bid for military optics, edging out rivals including the Indian military, and clinched a contract with an Israeli company for multipurpose high sensitivity radars for Kyiv.

“It’s entirely another level now,” Ohman said.

In Poland, millions of zlotys have been raised to fund everything from advanced weapons to treating the wounded. Backed by over 220,000 contributors, journalist Slawomir Sierakowski was able to gather almost 25 million zlotys ($5.6 million) to buy an advanced Bayraktar drone for Ukraine.

Ohman, the head of the Lithuanian NGO, drew parallels between his compatriots’ readiness to help Kyiv and local partisan movements fighting Soviet rule after World War II.

“It is about personal responsibility in tough times,” he said. “Just like in 1945 when (the) Soviets returned, the government was gone, but the struggle for freedom continued in the woods for years.”
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On the deserted edge of a town near the front line in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier kneels in a firing position, a gloved finger on the trigger of his high-powered rifle.

“The Russians want to control this road,” says his commander, who goes by the call sign “Virus,” looking up and down a snow-covered residential street.

Dogs bark behind the garden walls and beyond as small-arms fire crackles in the near distance, in between the muffled sound of artillery shelling.

As the anniversary of Russia’s invasion approaches Friday, expectations are high that the fighting will intensify in Ukraine.

But for Virus and his “Witcher” unit, who have been deployed across the disputed eastern region of Donetsk, there has been no letup in Russian attacks for the last 12 months.

Up and down the front line, particularly in the city of Bakhmut, Russian forces have put Ukrainian troops under constant pressure, he said.

He insists that the Ukrainian line is holding — and that they are ready if the conflict escalates.

“If you ask me, for our unit the situation hasn’t changed,” he said before heading out into a blizzard, hoping to take advantage of the cover of gray skies and snow drifts to scout out positions.

“Some people can talk about a new offensive, but the Russians attack every day,” he told AFP.

‘Meat grinder’

The latest Western battle tanks are on their way to Ukraine, after weeks of hesitation by its allies for fear of escalating the conflict into a direct fight between NATO and Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s shopping list of urgently needed materiel now includes fighter jets, which has again given the alliance pause.

Virus, with a helmet-mounted camera, AR-15 assault rifle and warm, waterproof camouflage clothing to keep out the stinging cold, certainly does not appear to lack the latest kit.

But he agrees that on the ground, “aviation technology” would help defend against Russian airstrikes in his sector and stem the flow of attacks from waves of enemy troops.

Russian tactics, particularly the use of the Wagner mercenary group in Bakhmut, bolstered by inexperienced convicts, have come under scrutiny.

The heavy losses and monthslong war of attrition for control of the city has seen it dubbed graphically as “the meat grinder.”

But Virus says Russia is using similar tactics elsewhere on the eastern front, sending five groups of 10 men in quick succession to attack Ukrainian positions.

Ukrainian troops pick off the initial waves, he said.

But he added: “By the time we get to the fifth, they capture the trench because we don’t have time to reload our weapons, just because we have no time to kill them.”

“They don’t care about their soldiers’ lives.”

House for headquarters

The men from Witcher, fueled by dried noodles, biscuits, sweets and sugary tea, busy themselves at their base in a small, abandoned house that appears to have belonged to an elderly resident.

Open ammunition boxes lie on the floor, with semiautomatic weapons propped up against a living room cabinet of crockery and china ornaments, in a floral flock wallpapered room.

Nearly a year into the conflict, and with little sign of an end in sight, Virus and his men said high morale and a sense of common purpose had sustained the Ukrainian resistance.

One member of the unit, radio operator “Spider,” said he is prepared to turn his hand to anything to push Russia out of Ukraine to secure peace.

“If I’m needed to shoot a machine gun, I’ll do it,” he said. “If I’m needed to operate an anti-tank system, I’ll do that too.”
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The U.S. officially declared that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. 

In a landmark speech Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, offered a detailed account of the egregious crimes committed by Russia against Ukraine’s civilian population.  

Harris cited evidence, including the scores of victims found in Bucha shortly after Russia’s invasion last February; the March 9 bombing of a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people, including a child; and the sexual assault of a 4-year-old by a Russian soldier identified by a U.N. report. She condemned these actions as “barbaric and inhumane.”  

Harris said the U.S. will continue to help Ukraine further investigate such crimes. 

“And I say to all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors who are complicit in these crimes, you will be held to account,” Harris said. 

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is attending the conference, had praise for Harris’ words. 

“The vice president’s speech today was one of the most consequential speeches ever made in the Munich Security Conference,” Graham told reporters in Munich. 

“The Chinese said something today that was very important … they reject the idea of nuclear weapons being used in the conflict,” he said of the war in Ukraine. “Between what the Chinese said and what the vice president said, this is a bad day for Russia.” 

Ukraine Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova hailed Harris’ declaration during an interview Saturday with Tatiana Vorozhko of VOA’s Ukrainian service. 

“Whether it’s war crimes in Ukraine, whether it’s a crime of aggression, whether it’s the genocide and or other crimes that Russia committed in Ukraine, it’s very important for Ukraine to hold them accountable,” she said. “But I think it’s very important for all of us — and this is what Madam Vice President clearly said — that they have to be held accountable for these horrible crimes. And it’s important for everyone who believes in the same values.” 

In addition to the evidence Harris presented Saturday, The Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. Department of State, released an independent report detailing a network of Russia-run sites and processes used to relocate thousands of Ukraine’s children to areas under Russian government control.   

“Mounting evidence of Russia’s actions lays bare the Kremlin’s aims to deny and suppress Ukraine’s identity, history, and culture,” the statement read. “The devastating impacts of Putin’s war on Ukraine’s children will be felt for generations.  The United States will stand with Ukraine and pursue accountability for Russia’s appalling abuses for as long as it takes.”

While crimes against humanity are not officially codified in an international treaty, they are still adjudicated in the International Criminal Court and other global bodies, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention.  

“In contrast with genocide, crimes against humanity do not need to target a specific group,” the U.N. said. “Instead, the victim of the attack can be any civilian population, regardless of its affiliation or identity.”  

In the U.S. on Friday, the U.S. senators from the state of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, introduced on Friday a bipartisan resolution recognizing Russia’s war in Ukraine as genocide. 

“Putin’s unprovoked invasion and terrible acts of war have amounted to a genocide against the Ukrainian people,” Manchin said.  “It is our responsibility as a world power and democratic leader to support our allies in times of need and we must hold Russia accountable for its continued atrocities against Ukraine. Our bipartisan resolution is an important step towards recognizing the depths of Russia’s war crimes and reaffirming America’s commitment to support the Ukrainian people as they defend their country from tyranny.”  

Bakhmut offensive  

Ukrainian soldiers holding off a Russian offensive on the small eastern city of Bakhmut are pleading for more weapons. 

“Give us more military equipment, more weapons, and we will deal with the Russian occupier, we will destroy them,” said Dmytro, a serviceman standing in the snow near Bakhmut, Reuters reported. 

Russian rockets and artillery pummeled a residential district in the city Thursday, killing three men and two women and wounding nine, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said. 

Russian troops have been trying to take Bakhmut for months, and the city, which once had 70,000 inhabitants, is under near-constant shelling.  

“If you are rational, law-abiding and patriotic citizens, you should leave the city immediately,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. She made the appeal via the Telegram messaging app Friday to what is believed to be about 6,000 people still in the city, in the Donetsk region.    

EU urges speedy munitions delivery

In his speech to the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged world leaders to provide additional arms and security guarantees to protect Ukraine and the rest of Europe from Russian aggression now and in the future. 

“Now is the moment to double down on our military support,” Sunak said.  

The European Union is urgently exploring ways for its member countries to team up to buy munitions to help Ukraine, following warnings from Kyiv that its forces need more supplies quickly, diplomats and officials said. 

EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the idea of joint procurement of 155-millimeter artillery shells — badly needed by Kyiv — at a meeting in Brussels on Monday. 

“It is now the time, really, to speed up the production, and to scale up the production of standardized products that Ukraine needs desperately,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. 

According to Reuters, the war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions from their homes, pummeled the global economy and made Putin a pariah in the West. 

The governor of Luhansk, one of two provinces in what is known as the Donbas, said ground and air attacks were increasing. 

“Today it is rather difficult on all directions,” Serhiy Haidai told local TV. “There are constant attempts to break through our defense lines,” he said of fighting near the city of Kreminna. 

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily intelligence update about Ukraine that it has become “increasingly difficult” for the Kremlin to insulate the Russian population from the war in Ukraine.  

 “A December 2022 Russian poll reported that 52% had either a friend or relative who had served in the so-called Special Military Operation,” the ministry said.   

Tatiana Vorozhko of VOA’s Ukrainian service contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A group of exiled Iranians will increase support for opposition movements in the country so they can continue to pressure the authorities there amid a crackdown on protests, the last heir to the Iranian monarchy said Saturday.

Iran has been rocked by unrest since the death in police custody of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in September after she was detained for flouting a strict Islamic dress code. The protests are among the strongest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the revolution.

‘Maximum pressure’ and ‘maximum support’

Eight Iranian exiled dissidents, including Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the toppled Shah, discussed ways of uniting a fragmented opposition earlier this month amid pro-government events marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution inside the country.

“We have to have a component of domestic pressure on the regime because external pressure by sanctions weakens the system, but it is not enough to do the job,” Pahlavi told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

“We are looking at means on how we can support the movement back home,” Pahlavi said. “There is a lot of discussion on maximum pressure and more sanctions, but parallel to maximum pressure there needs to be maximum support.”

The Washington-based Pahlavi said the immediate focus would be to ensure Iranians had access to the internet, help finance labor strikes through a fund, and find ways to ease money transfers to Iran.

‘The good, bad and ugly’

Unlike in previous years, the Iranian government was not invited to Munich this year as a result of its crackdown, but also due to its support of Russia in the war in Ukraine.

Instead, opponents to the Iranian governments were invited, while anti-government rallies took place in Munich.

Pahlavi has lived in exile for nearly four decades, since his father, the U.S.-backed shah, was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Opposition to Iran’s clerical government is atomized, with no clear recognized leader. Pahlavi said the priority now was for unity, and in the end, a democratic system decided by Iranians.

It remains unclear how much support Pahlavi has on the ground, but there have been some pro- and anti-slogans in demonstrations. Many Iranians remember the Shah’s secret police, Savak, and Pahlavi said he condemned what had happened then.

“We have to look at the good, bad and ugly, and that’s the only way we can progress in [the] future,” he said, adding that Iran’s young population was savvy and knew that any future political system would need strong institutions to ensure the past was not repeated.

Western powers have been reluctant to speak to opponents to the ruling authorities, fearing a rupture in ties would harm efforts to release dozens of Western nationals held in Iran, but also kill any chance of reviving a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. However, that has begun to change.

French President Emmanuel Macron was filmed in Munich Friday with U.S.-based women’s rights advocate Masih Alinejad.

“I would be very happy to meet you all together because this message of unity is very important,” Macron said.
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Bulgarian prosecutors have charged six people with human trafficking after 18 Afghan migrants were found dead Friday inside a truck dumped on a dirt road near the capital Sofia.

Prosecutors said the truck was abandoned near the village of Lokorsko after the driver and his companion found that many of the 52 migrants in the hidden compartments of the truck, which were isolated with foil, were dizzy and some had already died.

The truck driver and his companion were also charged over the deaths of the migrants, prosecutors said.

Despite strong and prolonged banging on the cabin, the driver refused to stop the truck earlier, the head of the National Investigative Service and deputy chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov told reporters.

The deaths have shocked Bulgaria, in what is one of the worst incidents of its kind on the overland route across the Balkans into Europe.

Thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia make the journey and Bulgaria has been trying to cope with an increased inflow of migrants from neighboring Turkey in the past year.

The 18 victims died of a combination of lack of oxygen in an enclosed space and difficulty breathing as they had been crammed into the truck “like in a tin can,” Sarafov said. “The victims died slowly and painfully.” 

“This case shows an extreme callousness and demonstrates that migrants are seen only as goods that should be shipped from one place to another, irrespective of whether they are alive or dead,” Sarafov said.

The other 34 migrants, who were rushed to hospitals Friday, remain in stable condition, officials said.

Five of those charged are in custody, while one of the suspected traffickers, who had managed to flee the country, is being sought with a European arrest warrant.

Prosecutors said the ring had trafficked migrants from the border with Turkey across Bulgaria to Serbia, from where they continued their journey mainly to Britain, Germany and France.
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The Biden administration formally concluded that Russia has committed “crimes against humanity” during its nearly year-long invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday.

“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: these are crimes against humanity,” Harris, a former prosecutor, said at the Munich Security Conference.

“And I say to all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors who are complicit in these crimes, you will be held to account.”

The official determination, which came at the end of a legal analysis led by the U.S. State Department, carries with it no immediate consequences for the ongoing war.

But Washington hopes that it could help further isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin and galvanize legal efforts to hold members of his government accountable through international courts and sanctions.

Harris’ speech comes as senior Western leaders meet in Munich to assess Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.  

She said Russia was now a “weakened” country after Biden led a coalition to punish Putin for the invasion, but Russia is only intensifying assaults in Ukraine’s east. Meanwhile, Ukraine is planning a spring counteroffensive, for which it is seeking more, heavier and longer-range weapons from its Western allies.

The nearly year-long war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions from their homes, pummeled the global economy and made Putin a pariah in the West.

Washington already had concluded that Russian forces were guilty of war crimes, as has a U.N.-mandated investigation, but the Biden administration conclusion that Russia’s actions amount to “crimes against humanity” implies a legal analysis that acts from murder to rape are widespread, systematic and intentionally directed against civilians. In international law, it is seen as a more serious offense.

The U.N.-backed Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has not yet concluded that the war crimes it says it has identified amount to crimes against humanity.

‘Barbaric and inhumane’

In her remarks, Harris cited as “barbaric and inhumane” the scores of victims found in Bucha shortly after Russia’s invasion last February; the March 9 bombing of a Mariupol maternity hospital, that killed three people, including a child; and the sexual assault of a four-year-old by a Russian soldier that was identified by the U.N. report.

Organizations supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have documented more than 30,000 war crimes incidents since the invasion, according to the U.S. government.  

Ukrainian officials said they were investigating the shelling of the city of Bakhmut just this week as a possible war crime.  

Russia, which says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine to eliminate threats to its security and protect Russian speakers, has denied intentionally targeting civilians or committing war crimes.  

“Let us all agree: on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown, justice must be served,” Harris said.

The Biden administration has sought to bring alleged war criminals to justice, including training Ukrainian investigators, imposing sanctions, blocking visas and hiking penalties under U.S. war crimes laws.

Washington has spent some $40 million on the efforts so far and says it is working with Congress to secure an additional $38 million for the efforts.

But the Biden administration’s ability to enforce any such efforts beyond its borders – and certainly within Russia – is limited. Collecting evidence in the war-torn country, too, has proven difficult.

International legal bodies also are constrained. At the International Criminal Court, for instance, jurisdiction extends only to member states and states that have agreed to its jurisdiction, such as Ukraine but not Russia. Kyiv has been pushing for a new international war crimes organization to focus on the Russian invasion, which Moscow has opposed.

“If Putin thinks he can wait us out, he is badly mistaken,” Harris said. “Time is not on his side.”
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Human Rights Watch said Saturday that the monthlong refusal of Russian officials to provide information about the whereabouts of a political prisoner has raised concerns that he has been “forcibly disappeared.  

Andrey Pivovarov’s family and lawyer have not been in contact with him since January 18, when he sent a letter informing them that he was being transferred from a St. Petersburg prison to a prison colony.  

HRW said in a statement, “The authorities should immediately quash his politically motivated imprisonment and unconditionally release Pivovarov and, in the meantime, urgently allow his family and lawyer to meet with him.”

In July, Pivovarov received a four-year sentence for leading an “undesirable organization.”  He had headed up the now-defunct pro-democracy Open Russia Civic Movement.

He has been shuffled from one detention center to another since December and his family and lawyer have not been notified of his locations.  

Damelya Aitkhozhina, HRW’s Europe and Central Asia researcher, said, “Both Pivovarov and his family, who suffer not knowing his whereabouts, are being punished for his peaceful criticism of the government.”
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“There is no alternative to Ukrainian victory,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said via video link Friday to the Munich Security Conference. “We have to liberate Ukraine – and Europe. Because when the Russian weapon shoots at us, it is already pointed at our neighbors.”

Also attending the gathering was a delegation of about 50 U.S. lawmakers to affirm bipartisan support for U.S. aid to Ukraine. Four delegations of Democratic and Republican leaders and members of the Senate and House joined hundreds of politicians, military officers, and diplomats from around the world at the event.

The U.S. delegation is one of the largest since the creation of the conference in 1963, U.S. officials said. The Russian invasion on Ukraine has fortified the NATO alliance and the European Union, and it has unified members of the U.S. Congress.

“We are here to send a clear message to this conference and everyone around the world: the U.S. is on a bipartisan basis totally behind the effort of help Ukraine,” Mitch McConnell, the Democratic-controlled Senate’s Republican minority leader, told Reuters after meeting with conservative German politicians.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing President Joe Biden directly to send F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. Five House members argued in a letter sent Thursday to Biden and obtained by Politico that modern jets that Kyiv has sought, but the administration has so far not agreed to, “could prove decisive for control of Ukrainian airspace this year.”

“The provision of such aircraft is necessary to help Ukraine protect its airspace, particularly in light of renewed Russian offensives and considering the expected increase in large-scale combat operations,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter was composed by Maine Democrat Jared Golden. Also signing on were Democrats Jason Crow of Colorado and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Republicans Tony Gonzales of Texas and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.

The lawmakers contend that either the Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-16 or something similar would give Ukrainian forces greater capability than ground-based artillery provided by the U.S. and other nations.

Ukrainian air force spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ignat told VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze that “modern multipurpose fighter jets are urgently needed to obtain advantages in the air and land fire support of Ukraine’s troops.

“Given that the F-16 is one of the most common multirole aircraft in the world, which can engage both ground and air targets with a wide range of weapons, this aircraft is the most likely candidate for the progressive rearmament of the air force of Ukraine to this type of fighter,” he said.

Ignat added that these aircraft would become part of Ukraine’s air defense, as they are capable of effectively destroying enemy cruise missiles and Iranian attack drones.

“We have dozens of pilots with the appropriate level of training and knowledge of the English language,” he said.

Bakhmut offensive

Ukrainian soldiers are pleading for more weapons as they fight to hold off a Russian offensive on the small eastern city of Bakhmut. Russian rockets and artillery pummeled a residential district in the city on Thursday, killing three men and two women and wounding nine, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said, adding it was being investigated as a war crime.

Nearly one year into the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops are intensifying assaults in the east. The Ukrainian government has urged all remaining residents in the city to leave, as heavy fighting is expected to continue.

Russian troops have been trying to take Bakhmut for months, and the city, which once had 70,000 inhabitants, is under virtually constant shelling.

“If you are rational, law-abiding and patriotic citizens, you should leave the city immediately,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. She made the appeal via the Telegram messaging app Friday, to what is believed to be about 6,000 people still in the city, in the Donetsk region.

Vereshchuk said those who stay would endanger themselves and their families, but also hinder the work of those who are trying to help them, such as defense and security forces or volunteers.

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily intelligence update about Ukraine that it has become “increasingly difficult” for the Kremlin to insulate the Russian population from the war in Ukraine.

“A December 2022 Russian poll reported that 52% had either a friend or relative who had served in the so-called Special Military Operation,” the ministry said.  
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They fought on the same side and together won Olympic gold, young men from Russia and a newly independent Ukraine, joined for one last medal-winning hurrah on a short-lived post-Soviet Unified Team at the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Now, former fencers Vadym Guttsait and Stanislav Pozdnyakov are on opposite sides of the war that Russia is waging on Ukraine. Both have risen to become senior sports administrators, respectively heading the Ukrainian and Russian Olympic committees. The nearly year-old invasion has utterly shredded what was left of their friendship and they’re now fighting each other in a divisive and growing split within the Olympic movement over whether Russia and ally Belarus should be barred from next year’s Paris Games.

Guttsait, who is also Ukraine’s sports minister as well as its Olympic committee president, now has only contempt for his former teammate. Guttsait calls Pozdnyakov “my enemy” and says their friendship began to collapse when Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Moscow’s full-scale invasion, which enters its second year next week, was the last straw. Guttsait blames the Russian Olympic Committee president for making supportive comments of the assault.

“I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to know him at all. He is my enemy, who supports this war, who considers it an honor for athletes to take part in the war against Ukrainians, to kill Ukrainians,” Guttsait said. “Therefore, for today and forever, this person does not exist for me.”

The issue of whether athletes from Russia and Belarus should be allowed to compete is shaping up as the biggest potential spoiler of next year’s Paris Olympics. Guttsait is threatening a Ukrainian boycott if Russians and Belarusians are there and he is mobilizing support from other countries, backed by the wartime star power of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Russia and Belarus, on the other hand, are clinging to a lifeline thrown to them by the International Olympic Committee, which says some of their athletes may be able to return to international competition despite the war. The IOC suggests that their athletes who have not actively supported the war could try to qualify and compete as “neutral athletes,” stripped of national team uniforms, flags and anthems. Pozdnyakov has said Russia is preparing as if its athletes are going to Paris.

In an interview late Tuesday with The Associated Press, Guttsait laid out the process that could lead to a Ukrainian boycott of Paris if that happens. The minister said his own personal opinion is that “we need to boycott” if Russians and Belarusians attend. But he added that the decision isn’t his alone to make and said the Ukrainian Olympic Committee will convene an extraordinary meeting and “we will decide together whether we will participate or not.”

“This is a very important question, it is a very serious question and difficult for every athlete, for every coach who prepares all his life to go to the Olympic Games,” he said. “But while our people are dying, women and children are being killed, our cities are being destroyed, we stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. In my opinion, this is more important than going to the competition. But we need to make this political decision together with our Olympic family.”

Before any decision for a full boycott, Ukrainian athletes could also show opposition by withdrawing from Olympic qualifying competitions that allow Russian and Belarusian entrants. Guttsait cited the example of the European wrestling championships in Croatia in April. If Russian and Belarusian athletes compete, Ukrainian wrestlers will either not attend “or they will come and not take part,” Guttsait said.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach is facing a widespread backlash from Ukraine and its allies for opening a door for some athletes from Russia and Belarus to return to international competition. Bach argues that the Olympic movement has a “unifying mission of bringing people together” and a proven track record of opening lines of communication between nations divided by conflict. He cites the example of North and South Korea, which fielded a joint women’s hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Guttsait noted, however, that there are also Olympic precedents for keeping nations out. Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 London Olympics after they were the aggressors in World War II and South Africa was excluded from 1964-1988 because of its racist Apartheid laws.

The minister said support among Russian athletes for the invasion makes their presence at the Paris Olympics unthinkable while the war rages. He also noted that Russian athletes are often enrolled in the country’s armed forces.

Ukrainian athletes, on the other hand, are facing the miseries of war as they try, as best they can, to ready themselves for Paris.

“I really want all people to understand how we prepare, how our athletes live, that our athletes train while cruise missiles are flying, bombs are flying,” Guttsait said. “The Olympic Games are great, they unite the whole world, but not those athletes who support this war and this aggression.” 
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President Joe Biden will mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a speech Tuesday in Poland, where he is expected to reiterate the United States’ commitment to support the defense of Ukraine “for as long as it takes” despite growing Republican reticence and softening overall support among Americans.

Scheduled to arrive in Warsaw on Tuesday morning, Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda to discuss “collective efforts to support Ukraine and to bolster NATO’s deterrence,” said John Kirby, National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson in a briefing to reporters Friday.

Biden also will meet with NATO leaders from the so-called Bucharest Nine (B-9), the countries on NATO’s easternmost flank, which include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

B-9 countries feel the Russian threat more acutely and are pushing for a more robust military response compared with other European nations including France and Germany, whose citizens are more concerned about ways to end the conflict and are questioning the war’s impact on their own economies.

The White House said there are no plans for Biden to visit Ukraine nor to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during this trip. Observers say Biden may not cross the border to avoid provoking Putin, but it’s likely that Zelenskyy will meet him in Poland in a summit that would not be revealed until the last minute for security reasons. The pair last met in person in late December when Zelenskyy made a surprise visit to Washington.

Meanwhile Vice President Kamala Harris is in Germany to attend the annual Munich Security Conference, in which the Ukraine war dominates conversations among world leaders.

War of attrition

Despite repeated public confirmation that the U.S. will support Zelenskyy for “as long as it takes,” observers note that time is not on Kyiv’s side as Moscow turns the conflict into a war of attrition in a bid to grind down Ukrainian resolve and exhaust the West’s patience. Ukraine has the advantage of Western high-tech weapons and intelligence support, but Russia is favored by the sheer size of its economy, manpower and defense production capacity.

The U.S. wants Ukraine to make battlefield progress rapidly without dragging NATO into a direct military confrontation with Moscow, said George Beebe, director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute.

“We are trying to essentially achieve a balance here to give the Ukrainians enough military wherewithal that they can bring this war to a successful conclusion but to do so without recklessly raising the risk of World War III as President Biden is fond to say,” Beebe told VOA. “That’s not an easy balance to strike.”

With the U.S. and Russia having most of the world’s nuclear weapons, escalation could be catastrophic.

Amid reports of Russia ramping up its ground and air attacks, administration officials would not say whether Biden will announce another security package or offensive weaponry including jet fighters that Kyiv says it needs to make significant gains on the battlefield.

No pathways to peace

White House officials are quick to point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin can end the war immediately by halting his offensive. Instead, Moscow is mobilizing and ramping up long-term defense production.

“At the same time, Ukrainians are absolutely not ready to give up any of their territory, not that that would stop the war because Putin would just be encouraged by this,” said Michal Baranowski, managing director for German Marshall Fund East.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians believe the country should get back all its territory, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed illegally in 2014.

Baranowski told VOA that Biden is unlikely to force Zelenskyy into a premature compromise, however it remains unclear how much Western support can be sustained long term. Already NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is saying that Ukraine is using up ammunition faster than the West can provide, straining its weapons industries.

Another contentious element is Ukraine’s future geostrategic alignment. Moscow is adamant that Kyiv does not join NATO or have a separate military alliance with the U.S. even if it doesn’t become a NATO member.

“Unless there’s some understanding reached with the Russians on that, I think their fallback position is going to be simply to wreck Ukraine to the point where it’s in no condition to ally with anybody,” Beebe said.

Beebe points to cease-fires where neither side recognizes territorial changes and simply accepts them as unsettled issues, at least at first. “That may be where we want to go into here,” he said.

Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will vote on a draft resolution co-sponsored by the U.S. that stresses “the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.

“We are also urging countries to support the resolution,” a National Security Council spokesperson told VOA.

Republican questions

While there is still broad support for Ukraine in Congress, some Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, where their party now holds a slim majority, are increasingly questioning the massive flow of American funds to Kyiv — $40 billion in security, economic and humanitarian aid since the invasion.

“This war is being fought on the backs of U.S. taxpayers,” said Ryan Zinke, a Republican congressman from Montana. “And what’s our plan, Mr. President? Is it an endless war? Are we going to continue to feed armament that we don’t know where it’s going exactly, or how it’s going to be used? To what extent?” he said to VOA following Biden’s State of the Union remarks earlier this month.

Traditionally, Republicans are more likely to support foreign military spending. But former President Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine has motivated a small but vocal non-interventionist faction in the party.

Earlier this month a group of House Republicans who support Trump introduced the “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution that calls for an end to U.S. military and financial aid to Ukraine and urges combatants to reach a peace agreement.

Although the group represents a minority even within the Republican Party, its members could jeopardize future Ukraine aid packages since the January adoption of a new House rule where only one member is needed to bring a “motion to vacate” to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a concession McCarthy agreed to in exchange for support to secure his speakership.

Nearly half of Americans (47%) now say Washington should urge Kyiv to settle for peace as soon as possible.
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US President Joe Biden is gearing up to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a speech in neighboring Poland on Tuesday, where he will reiterate the US commitment to support the defense of Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes.’ This despite growing Republican reticence and softening overall support among Americans. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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A Belarusian blogger arrested after Minsk diverted the commercial flight he was on in 2021 went on trial in the country’s capital Thursday.

Raman Pratasevich, who ran the news channel Nexta, is facing charges including organizing mass unrest and plotting to overthrow the government.

One of Nexta’s founders, Stsiapan Putsila, and a site administrator, Yan Rudzik — both of whom no longer live in Belarus — are being in tried in absentia.

The Nexta channel, which ran via a messaging app, gained popularity as a way to share news and information in 2020 during the contested reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko and the mass protests that followed.

Authorities in November 2020 issued an arrest warrant for Pratasevich and Putsila, both of whom were already living outside the country.

Pratasevich was arrested in May 2021 when a bomb hoax was used to divert the Ryanair passenger jet he was traveling on from Greece to Lithuania.

The U.S. and the European Union denounced the move as a hijacking and imposed sanctions against Lukashenko’s government.

A U.N. investigation into the diverted flight determined in 2022 that the purported threat used to divert the plane was “deliberately false and endangered its safety.”

The report by the International Civil Aviation Organization concluded that Belarus committed “an act of unlawful interference,” in diverting the flight.

The U.N. agency oversees rules on civil air space but has no power to impose sanctions, AFP reported.

Since his arrest, Pratasevich has appeared on state television in what analysts have described as forced confessions. The blogger has been held under house arrest while awaiting trial.

Last year, a court convicted his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, who was also on the diverted flight, for inciting social hatred. She was sentenced to six years in prison.

The Belarus Embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s email requesting comment.

‘Crackdown on free speech’

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Belarus to drop the charges against Pratasevich and his absent co-defendants.

In a statement, Gulnoza Said of CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program said the charges are “a cynical display of the vindictive nature of the Belarusian government, which is determined to retaliate against those who covered the 2020 protests.”

In an email Friday, Said told VOA, “My observation is that the authorities stopped even pretending that it’s not a crackdown on free speech and free media. The masks are off. Lukashenko doesn’t seem to bother with his image in the West anymore.”

Belarus is one of the worst jailers of journalists globally, after mass arrests of media workers who covered the protest movement, according to the CPJ and other rights organizations.

More than 30 journalists are behind bars, either awaiting trial or serving sentences, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists. Two of those detained contributed to VOA sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Speaking about the mass arrests, Volha Khvoin, who is on the board of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, told VOA last month, “This is their sacrifice for freedom of speech.”

Said told VOA that the CPJ is concerned about the plight of journalists in Belarus, adding that “lengthy prison sentences have also become a norm.”

“The trials are mostly held behind closed doors. Lawyers are forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement so [they] cannot reveal any information,” she said. “The authorities seem to want to teach a lesson to the Lukashenko regime’s critics by showing that anybody voicing dissent will face a very harsh punishment.”

Belarus has a poor record for media freedom. The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders describes it as “Europe’s most dangerous country for journalists until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The country ranks 153rd out of 180 countries on the RSF Press Freedom Index, where No. 1 signals the best environment for media.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Nearly 50 lawmakers from both major political parties of the United States on Friday attended the start of Europe’s premier annual security conference to affirm bipartisan support for U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Four delegations of Democratic and Republican leaders and members of the Senate and House converged as one of the largest groups of U.S. lawmakers to attend the Munich Security Conference since its inception in 1963, U.S. officials said.

Hundreds of politicians, military officers and diplomats from around the world gathered in Munich a week before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging allies to speed up weapons deliveries.

The war has tested not only the unity of the NATO alliance and European Union, but the ability of the U.S. parties to overcome deep policy differences.

“We are here to send a clear message to this conference and everyone around the world: The U.S. is on a bipartisan basis totally behind the effort of help Ukraine,” Mitch McConnell, the Democratic-controlled Senate’s Republican minority leader, told Reuters after meeting conservative German politicians.

Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder said McConnell’s unequivocal support for Ukraine was welcome after the uncertainty of the former President Donald Trump administration’s isolationist America First policy.

“Today is a very good signal,” he said.

Other prominent U.S. lawmakers in Munich included Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Republican chairmen of the House foreign relations and intelligence committees and their Democratic Senate counterparts.

The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in last year’s mid-terms raised questions about the future of the U.S. aid on which Kyiv depends to halt a new offensive by Russia in a war that has killed thousands and displaced millions.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy declared there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine and far-right Republicans hold that resources are needed to address other pressing problems.

Some senators share that view. On Thursday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley had urged an end to U.S. military aid to Ukraine until the European allies increased their backing, saying sending arms to Kyiv was threatening the ability of the U.S. to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

But Lindsey Graham, a leading advocate of aiding Ukraine, said in Munich that China would be encouraged to invade Taiwan if the U.S. and its European allies failed to back Ukraine.

“If you care about China and you don’t get the connection between Russia, Ukraine and China, you are missing a lot,” Graham told Reuters.

But Republicans and some Democrats also say President Joe Biden’s administration should better explain its Ukraine policy.

The United States is Ukraine’s leading military aid supplier at some $30 billion, including long-range artillery, air defense systems and advanced armored vehicles.

There are now calls on both sides of the Atlantic for Ukraine to receive advanced Western fighter jets.
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Russians who fear persecution due to their opposition to Moscow’s war on Ukraine continue to seek asylum in the U.S. after the White House announced its new policy in September. Many are coming through Mexico. Nina Vishneva reports on a mother and her three children who made that journey. Anna Rice narrates the story.
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Kosovo feted 15 years of independence with a parade of soldiers and police cheered by thousands in Pristina on Friday with an eye to a normalization deal with Serbia, key to stability in a region still scarred from ethnic wars in the 1990s.

Crowds waving Kosovo and Albanian flags lined a main street in the capital as police and troops marched past, but there were no celebrations in the country’s north where minority Serbs have long resisted Pristina’s authority.

“Our independence was achieved through struggle and sacrifice, but our independence will only grow through work,” Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said ahead of the parade.

Tensions with Serbia linger as Belgrade continues to support the refusal of 50,000 minority Serbs in north Kosovo to accept the country’s independence, declared almost a decade after an uprising against repressive Serbian rule.

Serbia, whose forces were driven out of ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo by NATO bombing to stop a brutal security crackdown by Belgrade, still deems its former southern province an integral part of its territory.

U.S. and European Union envoys are pressing the countries to approve a peace plan presented in mid-2022 under which Belgrade would stop lobbying against Kosovo having a seat in international organizations including the United Nations.

The office of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced that Kurti would meet Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Brussels on February 27 to discuss the 11-point plan.

Under it, Kosovo would commit to forming a semi-autonomous association of Serb-majority municipalities in the north, where nationalist Serbs have clashed repeatedly with police trying to apply the Pristina government’s writ.

Belgrade and Pristina have both accepted the EU plan in principle, though they have said further negotiations would be needed.

Resolving their volatile standoff is a major condition for Serbia and Kosovo to progress toward EU membership.

“We welcome your endorsement of the EU proposal on normalization, with the eventual goal of mutual recognition which would help secure a more peaceful and prosperous future for the people of both Kosovo and Serbia,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a letter to Kosovo counterpart Vjosa Osmani on Thursday evening.

Ali Reshani, 73, among thousands of Kosovars gathering in Pristina’s streets for the February 17 independence anniversary, told Reuters: “Thanks to God we have our own police, we also have our own army. I expect better days.”

He added: “I hope God will give good things to the Americans for helping us.”

The anniversary was ignored in the Serb-majority town of North Mitrovica in north Kosovo.

Local Serb taxi driver Lazar Kostic, 58, said he had ethnic Albanian friends but was in touch only by phone. “[Kosovo] doesn’t mean anything to me personally. It is not a state and for me it never will be,” he told Reuters.

Alluding to the former federal, multinational Yugoslavia torn apart by ethnic wars in the 1990s, he said: “We grew up during times when it was not important who or what you were or what your name was. Those were the happy times. But, when politics got involved in our lives, it became another story.”
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Turkish rescuers pulled a teenage boy alive from the rubble of a collapsed building 260 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southeast Turkey and Syria, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported Friday.  

Fourteen-year-old Osman Halebiye was taken to a hospital in Antakya.  

Later, two men, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, and Mustafa Avci, 33, were rescued from the same building’s rubble, news agency DHA said.   

After he was rescued, Avci saw his newborn baby on a cellphone call with his parents, according to Reuters.  

The rescue efforts in Turkey have come amid criticism about unenforced building codes. Thousands of buildings collapsed in the February 6 earthquake, leaving massive amounts of rubble for rescue teams to search through.

More than 41,000 people in Turkey and Syria have been killed in the earthquake and hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes. 
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Joint naval exercises including South Africa, Russia, and China get underway in waters off South Africa’s east coast Friday, despite U.S. concerns and Ukrainian condemnation. Critics say the 10-day military drills will do little to benefit South Africa and act as a propaganda boost for Moscow on the one-year anniversary of its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

While the West is upping its arms shipments to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion, South Africa begins wargames today with Russian warships that proudly support the offensive.  

Russia’s “Admiral Gorshkov,” which arrived in Cape Town this week, is marked with the Kremlin’s pro-war symbol, the letter ‘Z.’   

Critics say the optics of South African servicemen aboard the frigate near the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion would be a coup for Moscow and a shame to the country of freedom fighter Nelson Mandela.

Ukrainian Ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova told VOA she condemns the drills.

“It is very disturbing that South Africa will be hosting the military exercise with the country, aggressor, invader, that is using its military force against peaceful country, bringing destruction and trying to eliminate Ukrainian nation,” Abravitova said.

South Africa has repeatedly defended its neutral stance on the conflict in Ukraine and its right to relations with Russia, a fellow member of the BRICS trade bloc with Brazil, India, and China.  

South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, last month welcomed her visiting Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov and said Pretoria wouldn’t be bullied into choosing sides.  

The opposition Democratic Alliance  though, says Pretoria’s hosting the drills shows it has dropped any pretense at neutrality.  

Democratic Alliance shadow defense minister Kobus Marais adds the drills, called Mosi II, won’t benefit South Africa’s depleted navy and the funds would be better spent elsewhere.

“Given our very limited naval capabilities, resources and other higher priorities, we can gain little or no value from Exercise Mosi II, especially from the presence and possible launch of the hypersonic missile,” Marais said.

The Gorshkov is equipped with hypersonic Zircon missiles, which Russian state media report could be fired in a training launch during the drills. 

South African officials have denied the missile launch will be part of the 10 days of exercises, which also include China’s navy.  

South Africa’s Defense Department said this is not the first war game with Russia and that it previously joined military drills with its Western allies as well. 

However, South Africa this year declined an invitation to join U.S.-led multinational maritime drills in the Gulf of Guinea.

South African Institute of International Affairs Russia expert Steven Gruzd says Pretoria is trying to straddle both sides.

“South Africa does see a future in which Russia and China are both very, very important partners, but it’s still also trying to balance its relations with Western states,” said Gruzd. “There may be some fallout, we’re not sure of what kind, but the U.S. is certainly not happy at all that South Africa is taking part in these exercises.”

Asked to comment on the drills, the U.S. State Department told VOA by email it noted them with concern “even as Moscow continues its brutal and unlawful invasion of Ukraine.”

The statement went on to say, “We encourage South Africa to cooperate militarily with fellow democracies that share our mutual commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”  

Since Russia’s invasion last February, U.S. officials estimate tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed along with as many as a hundred thousand troops or more on each side.  

The Russian Embassy in South Africa and South Africa’s Defense Ministry did not reply to requests for comment.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to address the annual Munich Security Conference on Friday via video link.

Last year, the conference attendees implored Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine.

This year the conference is opening just days ahead of the Feb. 24 anniversary of the invasion.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that 101 people had been released from Russian captivity Thursday.

“Keeping the situation on the frontline under control and preparing for any escalation steps of the enemy is a priority for the nearest future,” he said.

“Moving forward with the further liberation of our land is a priority that we are carefully preparing,” he added.

The British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update on Ukraine that the Russian Defense Ministry and its private contractor have “likely suffered” 175,000-200,000 casualties since the beginning of the invasion, with approximately 40,000-60,000 killed, representing “a high ratio of personnel killed.”

In addition, the update said that the Wagner Group’s convict recruits have “probably experienced a casualty rate of up to 50%.”
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The United States brought its most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, to India for the first time this week alongside F-16s, Super Hornets and B-1B bombers as Washington looks to woo New Delhi away from its traditional military supplier, Russia.

India, desperate to modernize its largely Soviet-era fighter jet fleet to boost its air power, is concerned about Russian supply delays due to the Ukraine war and faces pressure from the West to distance itself from Moscow.

The American delegation to the weeklong Aero India show in Bengaluru, which ends on Friday, is the biggest in the 27-year history of the show and underlines the growing strategic relationship between the United States and India.

In contrast, Russia, India’s largest weapons supplier since the Soviet Union days, had a nominal presence. Its state-owned weapons exporter Rosoboronexport had a joint stall with United Aircraft and Almaz-Antey, displaying miniature models of aircraft, trucks, radars and tanks.

At previous editions of the show, Rosoboronexport had a more central position for its stall, although Russia has not brought a fighter jet to Bengaluru for a decade after India began considering more European and U.S. fighter jets.

Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets have already entered the race to supply fighter jets for the Indian Navy’s second aircraft carrier and Lockheed Martin’s F-21, an upgraded F-16 designed for India unveiled at Aero India in 2019, are also being offered to the air force.

A $20 billion air force proposal to buy 114 multi-role fighter aircraft has been pending for five years, brought into sharp focus by tensions with China and Pakistan.

The F-35 is not being considered by India “as of now,” according to an Indian Air Force (IAF) source, but the display of two F-35s at Aero India for the first time was a sign of New Delhi’s growing strategic importance to Washington.

It was “not a sales pitch” but rather a signal to the importance of the bilateral defense relationship in the Indo-Pacific region, said Angad Singh, an independent defense analyst.

“Even if weapons sales aren’t the cornerstone of the relationship, there is a cooperation and collaboration at the military level between India and the U.S.,” he added.

The United States is selective about which countries it allows to buy the F-35. When asked if it would be offered to India, Rear Admiral Michael L. Baker, defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in India, said New Delhi was in the “very early stages” of considering whether it wanted the plane.

An IAF spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on its interest in F-35s.

Ahead of the show, Russian state news agencies reported that Moscow had supplied New Delhi with around $13 billion of arms in the past five years and had placed orders for $10 billion.

The United States has approved arms sales worth more than $6 billion to India in the last six years, including transport aircraft, Apache, Chinook and MH-60 helicopters, missiles, air defense systems, naval guns and P-8I Poseidon surveillance aircraft.

India also wants to manufacture more defense equipment at home in collaboration with global giants, first to meet its own needs and eventually to export sophisticated weapons platforms.
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The head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group said  Thursday that it could take months to capture the Ukraine city of Bakhmut and slammed Moscow’s “monstrous military bureaucracy” for slowing gains.

Russia has been trying to encircle and take over the battered industrial city before February 24, the first anniversary of what it terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“I think it’s [going to be in] March or in April,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in one of several messages posted online.

“To take Bakhmut you have to cut all supply routes. It’s a significant task,” he said. “Progress is not going as fast as we would like.”

“Bakhmut would have been taken before the new year,” he added, “if not for our monstrous military bureaucracy.”

Prigozhin has previously accused the Russian military of attempting to steal victories from Wagner, a sign of his rising clout and the potential for dangerous rifts in Moscow.

Wagner’s claims to have captured ground without help from the regular army, which Prigozhin regularly criticizes, have spurred friction with senior military leadership.

In Bakhmut, a deputy commander with a mortar unit of the State Border Guard of Ukraine said fighting remained intense.

“We have to acknowledge the enemy’s successes,” he said. “There’s a regular Russian army here and they also have regular artillery groups, and they shoot accurately as well.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed the Donetsk region where Bakhmut lies last year, but his forces are still fighting Ukrainian troops there.

The fierce fighting for the eastern city is now the longest-running battle of Russia’s campaign and Moscow’s key military objective.

Taking Bakhmut would be a major win for Moscow, but analysts say its capture would be mainly symbolic as the salt-mining town holds little strategic value.

Prigozhin, who is close to Putin, said the speed of Russian progress in the grinding battle would depend on whether Ukraine continued to send reserves.

Ukraine, determined not to cede any ground ahead of an anticipated counteroffensive in the spring, has been asking for more modern weapons from its allies.
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