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The war in Ukraine has provoked an economic crisis in Germany, which was heavily dependent on Russian energy. Not only are small businesses concerned about their survival, economists also say the crisis will force a redirection of the entire German economy. Jacob Russell has this report from Berlin
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Multiple explosive-laden drones hit Ukraine’s capital during the Monday morning rush, a week after Russian missile strikes broke a period relative calm in Kyiv. 

Ukrainian officials said the drones were Iranian-made Shahed drones, which Russia has used to carry out so-called kamikaze attacks in which the drone are intentionally crashed into a target. 

“All night and all morning, the enemy terrorizes the civilian population,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine. The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us.” 

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klichko said among the areas hit was the central Shevchenko district, the same area where Russian missiles struck last week as part of widespread airstrikes across the country.    

Klichko said Monday’s attack killed at least one person, while damaging several apartment blocks and sparking a fire in a non-residential building. He said rescue workers pulled 18 people from the rubble of an apartment building and that two others remained trapped. 

Andrii Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, said Ukraine needs more air defense systems as soon as possible. 

“More weapons to defend the sky and destroy the enemy,” Yermak tweeted. 

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv called Monday’s attacks against civilians “desperate and reprehensible.” 

“We admire the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people. We will stand with you for as long as it takes,” the embassy tweeted.    

Last week’s attacks interrupted a long stretch of relative quiet in Kyiv.    

Russian President Vladimir Putin said those strikes and the ones elsewhere were in retaliation for an attack on a key bridge linking Crimea to Russia.    

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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For their first trip to a celebrated robotics contest for high school students from scores of countries, a team of Ukrainian teens had a problem. 

With shipments of goods to Ukraine uncertain, and Ukrainian customs officers careful about incoming merchandise, the group only received a base kit of gadgetry on the day they were set to leave for the event in Geneva. 

That set off a mad scramble to assemble their robot for the latest edition of the “First Global” contest, a three-day affair that opened Friday, in-person for the first time since the pandemic. Nearly all the 180-odd teams from countries across the world had been preparing their robots for months.

“We couldn’t back down because we were really determined to compete here and to give our country a good result — because it really needs it right now,” said Danylo Gladkyi, a member of Ukraine’s team. He and his teammates are too young to be eligible for Ukraine’s national call-up of all men over 18 to take part in the war effort. 

Gladkyi said an international package delivery company wasn’t delivering into Ukraine, and reliance on a smaller private company to ship the kit from Poland into Ukraine got tangled up with customs officials. That logjam got cleared last Sunday, forcing the team to dash to get their robot ready with adaptations they had planned — only days before the contest began. 

The event, launched in 2017 with backing from American innovator Dean Kamen, encourages young people from all corners of the globe to put their technical smarts and mechanical know-how to challenges that represent symbolic solutions to global problems. 

This year’s theme is carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere is sucked out of the skies and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming. 

Teams use game controllers like those attached to consoles in millions of households worldwide to direct their self-designed robots to zip around pits, or “fields,” to scoop up hollow plastic balls with holes in them that symbolically represent carbon. Each round starts by emptying a clear rectangular box filled with the balls into the field, prompting a whirring, hissing scramble to pick them up. 

The initial goal is to fill a tower topped by a funnel in the center of the field with as many balls as possible. Teams can do that in one of two ways: either by directing the robots to feed the balls into corner pockets, where team members can pluck them out and toss them by hand into the funnel or by having the robots catapult the balls up into the funnels themselves. 

Every team has an interest in filling the funnel: the more collected, the more everyone benefits. 

But in the final 30 seconds of each session, after the frenetic quest to collect the balls, a second, cutthroat challenge awaits: Along the stem of each tower are short branches, or bars, at varying levels that the teams — choosing the mechanism of their choice such as hooks, winches or extendable arms — try to direct their robots to ascend. 

The higher the level reached, the greater the “multiplier” of the total point value of the balls they will receive. Success is getting as high as possible, and with six teams on the field, it’s a dash for the highest perch. 

By meshing competition with common interest, the “First Global” initiative aims to offer a tonic to a troubled world, where children look past politics to help solve problems that face everybody. 

The opening-day ceremony had an Olympic vibe, with teams parading in behind their national flags, and short bars of national anthems playing, but the young people made it clear this was about a new kind of global high school sport, in an industrial domain that promises to leave a large footprint in the 21st century. 

The competition takes many minds off troubles in the world, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the fallout from Syria’s war, to famine in the Horn of Africa and the recent upheaval in Iran. 

While most of the world’s countries were taking part, some – like Russia – were not. 

Past winners of such robotics competitions include “Team Hope” — refugees and stateless others — and a team of Afghan girls.  
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A Sweden Democrats official was suspended by the far-right party for making degrading comments about Jewish teenage diarist Anne Frank.

In an Instagram posting that has now been deleted, Rebecka Fallenkvist called Anne “immoral” among other things, according to Swedish media.

Anne, who wrote a diary while in hiding in Amsterdam before she was captured, died at age 15 in Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945.

The posting by Fallenkvist, a 26-year-old head of television programming for the Sweden Democrats, prompted strong reactions from Jewish groups and Israeli Ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman, who in a tweet said: “I strongly condemn this despicable insult, disrespectful of the memory of Anne Frank.” His posting included what appeared to be a screen shot of Fallenkvist’s Instagram post.

The Sweden Democrats’ media director, Oskar Cavalli-Bjorkman, told the Swedish news agency TT late Saturday that the party would take Fallenkvist’s “insensitive and inappropriate” comments seriously and launch an internal investigation on the matter.

While it remained unclear what kind of point Fallenkvist wanted to make with her comments on Anne’s diary, later she sent a text message to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter saying she had been misinterpreted.

“The book is a moving depiction of human good and evil,” Fallenkvist said in her message to the newspaper. “The good Anne, who in the first chapters is like any other young girl living her life in peace and finding an interest in boys (which I highlighted), is contrasted with the evil of Nazism. My story was aimed at the good and human in Anne while not playing down the evil to which she was subjected.”

Sweden Democrats was founded in the 1980s by people who had been active in right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazis. The party emerged as Sweden’s second-largest party in the Sept. 11 election under the leadership of Jimmie Akesson.

On Friday, three Swedish center-right parties agreed to form a coalition government with the support of the Sweden Democrats that has moved toward mainstream politics but retains a hard line on immigration.
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Turkish officials Sunday shot back at Greek allegations that Turkey forced 92 naked migrants into Greece, calling it “fake news” and accusing Greece of the mistreatment.

Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi was “sharing false information” after the official tweeted a photo of the naked migrants Saturday and blamed Turkey, said Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of Turkey’s president.

Altun tweeted in Turkish, Greek and English that this was to “cast suspicion on our country,” while calling on Athens to abandon its “harsh treatment of refugees.”

“Greece has shown once again to the entire world that it does not respect the dignity of refugees by posting these oppressed people’s pictures it has deported after extorting their personal possessions,” he said.

Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli tweeted that the photo showed Greece’s cruelty. “Spend your time to obey human rights, not for manipulations & dishonesty!”

Greek police said Saturday that police officers found the migrants stark naked Friday, “some with bodily injuries” who had entered the country using plastic boats to cross the Evros River, which forms a border between the two countries.

Relations between the two neighboring countries have been tense over a variety of issues, including migration.

Turkey regularly accuses Greece of violently pushing back migrants entering the country by land and sea. Turkey’s coast guard frequently shares videos of such pushbacks.

Greece accuses Turkey, which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, of “pushing forward” migrants to put pressure on the EU.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was “deeply distressed by the shocking reports,” condemning the “degrading treatment” and calling for an investigation.
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Rocket fire inflicted new damage in Ukraine Sunday, with pro-Kremlin officials blaming Kyiv for an attack that hit the mayor’s office in separatist-controlled Donetsk, while Ukrainian authorities said Russian missiles hit a city across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, wounding six people.

The mayor’s building in Donetsk, part of the Ukrainian region Russia recently claimed as its own, was seriously damaged, with rows of blown-out windows and a partially collapsed ceiling. Nearby cars were burned out.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. The Kyiv government did not claim responsibility for the attack or comment on it.

Ukraine said the attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, aside from the injuries, also damaged five power lines, gas pipelines, and several civilian businesses and residential buildings.

Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of firing at and around the plant. It is controlled by Russia but continues to be operated by Ukrainian technicians.

Fighting continued elsewhere as well, with Kyiv saying that Moscow shelled civilian settlements along the front line in the eastern Kharkiv and Luhansk regions. Ukraine said “active hostilities” continued in the southern Kherson region, another key area where Ukraine has advanced in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, Russia said its air defenses in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine shot down “a minimum” of 16 Ukrainian missiles, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Britain Questions Russia’s Ability to Continue to Produce Munitions

With the continuing hostilities nearing the eight-month mark, Britain’s defense ministry cast doubt on Russia’s ability to continue to produce weapons during its invasion of Ukraine.

In an intelligence update posted to Twitter on Sunday, the ministry estimated that Russia fired more than 80 cruise missiles into Ukraine on Oct. 10, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was in retaliation for the bombing of the bridge that links Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula earlier this month. There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast.

“Russia’s defense industry is probably incapable of producing advanced munitions at the rate they are being expended,” Britain said. “These attacks represent a further degradation of Russia’s long-range missile stocks, which is likely to constrain their ability to strike the volume of targets they desire in future.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his daily address Saturday, thanked the U.S. for its $725 million assistance package, enabling Ukraine to purchase ammunition, artillery, anti-tanks weapons and anti-radar missiles.

Russian strikes continue

Russian forces carried out more sporadic missile strikes Saturday in Ukraine, targeting facilities that provide power to the country and its residential areas.

Kyiv regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said the attack damaged a key energy facility in Ukraine’s capital region, but no causalities were reported, and the location was not disclosed.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, urged Kyiv-area residents and people in three neighboring regions to conserve energy during the evening hours of peak demand.

The attack on the power transmission facility came hours after Ukrainian officials said Russia fired artillery into residential areas of Nikopol, southeast of Zaporizhzhia. Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of the Nikopol district military administration, said five people were wounded in the Saturday morning attack on the city. He said the attacks were focused on “maximum damage to civilians.”

Russians killed at firing range

At least 11 Russian troops were killed and 15 more were wounded Saturday when two Russian volunteer soldiers opened fire at a military firing range in the southwest Belgorod region near Ukraine, according to the Russian defense ministry.

The defense ministry said the pair of volunteers were from a former Soviet nation and were killed by return fire, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.

“During a firearms training session with individuals who voluntarily expressed a desire to participate in the special military operation (against Ukraine), the terrorists opened fire with small arms on the personnel of the unit,” RIA cited a defense ministry statement as saying.

Some Russian independent media outlets were reporting higher casualties.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview that the attackers were from Tajikistan and had opened fire after an argument over religion, Reuters reported.

Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim nation in Central Asia. About half of Russians follow various branches of Christianity. The Russian ministry had said the attackers were from a nation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which includes Tajikistan.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm Arestovych’s comments or independently verify the casualty numbers or other details of the incident.

Information from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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At least 18 migrants died last week in a deadly sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. It was one of the deadliest in recent years and experts fear more may follow as tension between Greece and Tukey soars in the Aegean Sea that divides them. Anthee Carassava travelled to the island of Lesbos and tracked some of the Somali women who survived the shipwreck.

When monster waves flipped the boat over, thrusting it onto the rocky shores of this craggy island, Ismahan, like scores of other Somali women crammed in the rubber dinghy, struggled to stay alive.

“I was tossed in the sea. But within seconds, people around me were dead and drowning. I reached for a rubber tire that was keeping one the dead woman afloat and clasped on to it, remaining in the rough sea for about an hour until Greek police and authorities came to pull us out.”

“I never thought I would make it. These visions now haunt my head… dead bodies scattered in the sea… I close my eyes but I can no longer sleep,” she said.

She peels off her long purple scarf and reveals bumps and bruises on her head… Scars left behind from her traumatic sea crossing from Turkey.

The journey was the final leg of an escape, as she calls it, from Somalia that began in early August… a risky odyssey for which she paid $900, fleeing the country’s drought and humanitarian crisis, but also the abuse, she confesses, of her husband and his family.

Now, though, a week after the near-death crossing, Ismahan says she would do it again.

“I was left with no other option. I want get asylum here and bring over my eight children — two boys and six girls,” she said.

Scrunched, now, in an Isobox hut in a refugee camp on Lesbos, Ismahan and five other Somali women who survived the sinking, will put in their requests to local authorities on Monday.

And while it is unlikely that strict migration rules here will grant them asylum status, experts here are bracing for more migrant crossings.

Already this year, Greece has seen more than a 150 percent increase in migrant sea crossings from Turkey compared to 2021. Much of this has been linked to the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the political crisis in Somalia and renewed unrest in Lebanon and other pockets of the Middle East.

But it also comes amid renewed tension between longtime rivals but NATO allies Greece and Turkey, as both their leaders face key election years.

Greece has linked the rising rate of refugee flows to Turkish designs to destabilize Greece, accusing it of turning a blind eye to human smugglers making a mint out of migrant misery. It has also slammed NGOs like Aegean Boat Watch for facilitating illegal migrant transfers.

VOA spoke with Tommy Olsen, the head of the group, by phone from Norway, days after the deadly sinking that Turkish smugglers organized.

“To put out these boats out in such weather… it is amazing they even thought of it. And that shows how little human traffickers care about human lives. They just care about the money,” he said.

Olsen said migrants were being used as pawns, as he put it, in a bigger power play, especially as elections near in Greece and Turkey.

Both sides are trying to win and to get votes, so, they need to spike nationalism to appear as defenders against the bad guy on the other side. But in doing so they are using innocent people as tools to reach their goals.

Olsen says the situation in Turkey is becoming so difficult for refugees there, that many are already on the move because they either fear fresh orders to be deported to the countries they escaped, or because a new leader that may succeed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to be less tolerant of the 5 million refugees Turkey has been hosting for nearly a decade now.

“If more people are trying to leave Turkey, more people will be on the move. But what options do they really have? They must cross the Aegean Sea. There is no other option,” he said.

That prospect has Greece bolstering its sea and land patrols to block illegal crossings. It is also appealing to Turkey to do the same. But the U.N. refugee agency fears more sinkings may result from tougher border controls and illegal pushbacks Greece and Turkey have been waging in recent months.

Reyhaneh Shakibaie, head of the UNHC office in Lesbos explains.

“We are very concerned about the loss of lives in the Aegean. We are advising governments to facilitate safe pass ways to asylum that do not require migrants to travel illegally,” he said.

Whether governments, and refugees themselves, will heed such advice is uncertain. Ismahan and others, though, vow to continue their journey to safety at whatever cost.
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Pope Francis said the need to reform the United Nations was “more than obvious” after the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war exposed its limits, in an extract of his new book published Sunday.

The Argentine pontiff said Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine highlighted the need to ensure the current multilateral structure — especially the UN Security Council — finds “more agile and effective ways of resolving conflicts.”

“In wartime, it is essential to affirm that we need more multilateralism and a better multilateralism,” but the UN is no longer fit for “new realities,” he added in an extract published by La Stampa daily.

The organisation was founded to prevent the horrors of two World Wars from happening again, but although the threat represented by those conflicts was still alive, “today’s world is no longer the same,” said Francis.

“The necessity of these reforms became more than obvious after the pandemic” when the current multilateral system “showed all its limits,” he added.

Francis denounced the unequal distribution of vaccines as a “glaring example” of the law of the strongest prevailing over solidarity.

The 85-year-old advocated “organic reforms” aimed at allowing international organisations to rediscover their essential purpose of “serving the human family” and said international institutions must be the result of the “widest possible consensus.”

The pope also proposed guaranteeing food, health, economic and social rights on which international institutions would base their decisions.

Francis’s new book, “I ask you in the name of God: Ten prayers for a future of hope”, is due to come out in Italy Tuesday.
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Britain’s defense ministry has cast doubt on Russia’s ability to continue to produce weapons during its invasion of Ukraine.

In an intelligence update posted to Twitter on Sunday, the ministry estimated that Russia fired more than 80 cruise missiles into Ukraine on Oct. 10, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was in retaliation for the bombing of the bridge that links Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula earlier this month.  There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast.

“Russia’s defense industry is probably incapable of producing advanced munitions at the rate they are being expended,” Britain said. “These attacks represent a further degradation of Russia’s long-range missile stocks, which is likely to constrain their ability to strike the volume of targets they desire in future.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his daily address Saturday, thanked the U.S. for its $725 million assistance package, enabling Ukraine to purchase ammunition, artillery, anti-tanks weapons and anti-radar missiles.

Russian strikes continue

Russian forces carried out more sporadic missile strikes Saturday in Ukraine, targeting facilities that provide power to the country and its residential areas.

Kyiv regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said the attack damaged a key energy facility in Ukraine’s capital region, but no causalities were reported, and the location was not disclosed.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, urged Kyiv-area residents and people in three neighboring regions to conserve energy during the evening hours of peak demand.

The attack on the power transmission facility came hours after Ukrainian officials said Russia fired artillery into residential areas of Nikopol, southeast of Zaporizhzhia. Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of the Nikopol district military administration, said five people were wounded in the Saturday morning attack on the city. He said the attacks were focused on “maximum damage to civilians.”

Russians killed at firing range

At least 11 Russian troops were killed and 15 more were wounded Saturday when two Russian volunteer soldiers opened fire at a military firing range in the southwest Belgorod region near Ukraine, according to the Russian defense ministry.

The defense ministry said the pair of volunteers were from a former Soviet nation and were killed by return fire, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.

“During a firearms training session with individuals who voluntarily expressed a desire to participate in the special military operation (against Ukraine), the terrorists opened fire with small arms on the personnel of the unit,” RIA cited a defense ministry statement as saying.

Some Russian independent media outlets were reporting higher casualties.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview that the attackers were from Tajikistan and had opened fire after an argument over religion, Reuters reported.

Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim nation in Central Asia. About half of Russians follow various branches of Christianity. The Russian ministry had said the attackers were from a nation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which includes Tajikistan.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm Arestovych’s comments or independently verify the casualty numbers or other details of the incident.

Information from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Elon Musk said Saturday his rocket company, SpaceX, would continue to fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, citing the need for “good deeds,” a day after he said it could no longer afford to do so.

Musk tweeted: “the hell with it … even though starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding ukraine govt for free.”

Musk said Friday that SpaceX could not indefinitely fund Starlink in Ukraine. The service has helped civilians and military stay online during the war with Russia.

Although it was not immediately clear whether Musk’s change of mind was genuine, he later appeared to indicate it was. When a Twitter user told Musk “No good deed goes unpunished,” he replied “Even so, we should still do good deeds.”

The billionaire has been in online fights with Ukrainian officials over a peace plan he put forward which Ukraine says is too generous to Russia.

He had made his Friday remarks about funding after a media report that SpaceX had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations of Starlink.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.
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U.S. President Joe Biden says he thought British Prime Minister Liz Truss’ original economic plan was a mistake and that he wasn’t alone. Truss’ plan led to a steep dive in the value of the British pound.

“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said to reporters during a stop at an ice cream shop in Oregon where he was helping campaign for Tina Kotek, who is running for Oregon governor.

The White House has refrained from commenting on Truss’ problems and when asked about the strength of the U.S. dollar, Biden said, “I’m not concerned about the strength of the dollar. I’m concerned about the rest of the world.”

Earlier Saturday, Britain’s new finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, said some taxes would go up and tough spending decisions were needed, saying the prime minister had made mistakes as she battles to keep her job just more than a month into her term.

In an attempt to appease financial markets that have been in turmoil for three weeks, Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor of the exchequer on Friday and scrapped parts of their controversial economic package.

Biden also told reporters in Oregon something he’d said a day earlier in California: that he was surprised by the courage of the people taking to the streets in protest in Iran. He was commenting on the weeks of unrest in Iran since a young woman was killed in police custody. 
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Greek police have rescued a group of 92 illegal migrants who were discovered naked, and some with injuries, close to its northern border with Turkey, police said Saturday.

The migrants, all men, were discovered close to the Evros river that marks the border between Greece and Turkey on Friday, Greek police said in a statement.

An investigation by Greek police and officials from the EU border agency Frontex, found evidence that the migrants crossed the river into Greek territory in rubber dinghies from Turkey, police said.

“Border policemen…discovered 92 illegal migrants without clothes, some of whom had injuries on their bodies,” the statement said. It was not clear how and why the men had lost their clothes.

Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said in a tweet that Turkey’s treatment of the migrants was a “shame for civilization.” He said Athens expected Ankara to investigate the incident.

Turkish authorities were not immediately available for comment.

Greece was on the front line of a European migration crisis in 2015 and 2016, when around a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in the country, mainly via Turkey.

The number of arrivals has fallen since then. But Greek authorities said they had recently seen an increase in attempted arrivals through the Turkish land border and the Greek islands.

Greece has urged Turkey to respect a 2016 deal with the European Union in which Ankara agreed to contain the flow of migrants to Europe in exchange for billions of euros in aid.

Turkey says it has ramped up measures to prevent people smuggling. 
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Britain’s new Treasury chief Saturday acknowledged mistakes made by his predecessor and suggested that he may reverse much of Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss’ tax-cutting plans in order to bring stability to the country after weeks of economic and political turbulence. 

Jeremy Hunt, who was brought in Friday to replace Kwasi Kwarteng as Treasury chief and restore order in Truss’ administration, warned of “difficult decisions” to come. He said taxes could rise and public spending budgets would likely be squeezed further in the coming months. 

Truss on Friday fired Kwarteng and ditched her pledge to scrap a planned increase in corporation tax as she sought to hang on to her job — after just six weeks in office. 

Truss, a free-market libertarian, had previously insisted that her tax-cutting plans were what Britain needs to boost economic growth. But a “mini-budget” that she and Kwarteng unveiled three weeks ago, which promised 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts without explaining how the government would pay for them, sent the markets and the British pound tumbling and left her credibility in tatters. 

The policies, which included cutting income tax for those on the highest incomes, were also widely criticized for being tone-deaf in the face of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis. 

Hunt said Truss recognizes her mistakes and he is going to put them right. Hunt is expected to meet with Treasury officials later and with Truss on Sunday. 

“It was wrong to cut the top rate of tax for the very highest earners at a time where we’re going to have to be asking for sacrifices from everyone to get through a very difficult period,” Hunt told the BBC Saturday. 

“And it was wrong to fly blind and to announce those plans without reassuring people with the discipline of the Office for Budget Responsibility that we actually can afford to pay for them,” he added. “We have to show the world we have a plan that adds up financially.” 

Hunt also indicated that taxes could rise and warned “it’s going to be difficult,” though he declined to give details about how he plans to balance the books ahead of a full fiscal statement expected Oct. 31. 

“Spending will not rise by as much as people would like and all government departments are going to have to find more efficiencies than they were planning to. And some taxes will not be cut as quickly as people want,” he said. 

Hunt, who twice ran in the Conservative Party’s leadership contests, is an experienced lawmaker who previously served in top government posts including as foreign secretary. 

His comments Saturday suggested he may dismantle many of the economic pledges that Truss campaigned for and tried to implement during her first weeks in office. 

Truss’ U-turn on her pledge to stop a planned rise in corporation tax came after an earlier climbdown on her plans to cut the top rate of income tax for the highest earners. 

Her position remains fragile. She has faced heavy pressure from across the political spectrum, including reports that senior members of her Conservative Party were plotting to force her from office. 

On Friday she avoided repeated questions about why she should remain in office when she and Kwarteng were equally responsible for the government’s economic plan and the fallout it triggered. 

“I am absolutely determined to see through what I have promised,” she said. 

Asked Saturday how long Truss would remain as leader, Hunt said, “what the country wants now is stability” and she would be judged by what she delivers until the next general election in 2024. 

“She has been prime minister for less than five weeks and I would just say this – I think that she will be judged at an election,” he said. 
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Egypt’s energy minister says gas supplies in the Mediterranean region are probably sufficient to meet Europe’s need if investments are made to exploit gas fields in the area.   

Egyptian TV reported Saturday that Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades thanked Egypt for its efforts to jointly coordinate the exploitation of regional undersea natural gas resources by putting together the East Mediterranean Gas Forum last June.  

Arab media also reported Saturday that Egypt’s energy minister, Tarek el Molla, who attended the one-day conference bringing together several nations in Cyprus Friday, said that gas supplies in the East Med region will be what he called “a life-saver for Europe at a time of crisis,” and “could eventually meet Europe’s gas needs if the proper investments are made.”  

Egypt has been critical in the past of European and international finance institutions for being unwilling or unenthusiastic about making investments in regional oil fields to share the burden of bringing gas production in several undersea fields online, which is frequently very costly.

Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA that the current international crisis resulting from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could eventually subside and “if Russian gas was again pumped to Europe, it would make some East Med gas fields less profitable to exploit.”  

Sadek pointed out that a number of East Mediterranean gas fields are fraught with problems linked to regional rivalries and conflicts between Egypt and Turkey — over fields near Libya and Greece — and Turkey over fields in Cypriot territorial waters, and in fields between Greece and Turkey.  

“The Mediterranean is full of gas …enough to export, but the trouble is the struggle, especially the problem with Libya is problematic and it will take time, [and] the Cana field in Lebanon was not ready,” he said. “Turkey wants a piece of the pie and they tried to harass Greece (in a variety of ways).”  

Sadek noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly told his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, when the latter visited Moscow recently, that he should “extend the TurkStream natural gas pipeline going from Russia to Turkey into Eastern Europe.” Sadek added that such a move “angered a number of countries and that it would take several years to do, in any case.”  

U.S.-based energy analyst Paul Sullivan concurs with Sadek, pointing out that “there is a lot of gas in the eastern Mediterranean region [but] it takes a long time to develop gas fields and transport infrastructure to get the gas to market.” He stressed that “over time the East Mediterranean gas fields could bring much more gas to Europe and other places.”

“Investing in these fields,” he added, “includes financial and even political and physical risks,” as well.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Saturday called for reforms of the European Union to make it fit for the admission of new countries as well as more military autonomy of the 27-country bloc.

Speaking at the Congress of the Party of European Socialists in Berlin, Scholz advocated for gradually abolishing the principle of unanimity for decisions in foreign policy, but also in other areas such as tax policy.

“I know that we still have a lot of convincing to do there,” the chancellor said. “But I also say clearly: if a geopolitical Europe is our aspiration, then majority decisions are a gain and not a loss of sovereignty.”

Currently, many EU decisions can only be made if all countries vote unanimously.

Scholz also supports more military autonomy of the EU. He called for coordinated procurement of weapons and equipment, the establishment of an EU rapid reaction force by 2025, and for an EU headquarters for European armed forces.

“In Europe, we need better interplay between our defense efforts,” he said. “In the future, Europe will need a coordinated increase in capabilities … we must confidently and jointly advance European defense.”
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Two women have been charged with criminal damage after climate change protesters threw soup on Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery, British police said Saturday.

A video posted by the Just Stop Oil campaign group, which has been holding protests for the last two weeks in the British capital, showed two of its activists on Friday throwing tins of Heinz tomato soup over the painting, one of five versions on display in museums and galleries around the world.

The gallery said the incident had caused minor damage to the frame, but the painting was unharmed. It later went back on display.

Police said two women, aged 21 and 20, would appear later at Westminster Magistrates’ Court charged with “criminal damage to the frame of van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting”.

Another activist will also appear in court, accused of damaging the sign outside the New Scotland Yard police headquarters in central London.

Police said in total 28 people had been arrested during protests on Friday.
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Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons “to be used in the war in Ukraine”, its foreign ministry said Saturday.

Kyiv and many of its Western allies have accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones in attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks. The topic is expected to be discussed by European Union foreign ministers in a meeting in Luxemburg on Monday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian “emphasized that the Islamic republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“We believe that the arming of each side of the crisis will prolong the war,” the Iranian foreign minister said in a call with his Portuguese counterpart Joao Gomes Cravinho.

“We have not considered and do not consider war to be the right path either in Ukraine or in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.”

In a separate phone call with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday, Amir-Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s official stance of neutrality over the war that started nearly eight months ago.

“We have defense cooperation with Russia, but our policy regarding the war in Ukraine is not sending weapons to the conflicting parties, stopping the war and ending the displacement of people,” he said.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Iranian drones were used in Russian attacks on energy infrastructure in several Ukrainian cities.

Last month, Kyiv decided to significantly reduce its diplomatic relations with Tehran over alleged arms deliveries to Russia.

Iran said the decision was “driven by baseless information provided by foreign media propaganda”.

In September, the United States slapped sanctions on a company it accused of helping deliver Iranian drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.
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Beside an abandoned Russian military camp in eastern Ukraine, the body of a man lay decomposing in the grass — a civilian who had fallen victim to a tripwire land mine set by retreating Russian forces.

Nearby, a group of Ukrainian deminers with the country’s territorial defense forces worked to clear the area of dozens of other deadly mines and unexploded ordnance — a push to restore a semblance of safety to the cities, towns and countryside in a region that spent months under Russian occupation.

The deminers, part of the 113th Kharkiv Defense Brigade of Ukraine’s territorial defense forces, walked deep into fallow agricultural lands on Thursday along a muddy road between fields of dead sunflowers overgrown with high weeds.

Two soldiers, each with a metal detector in hand, slowly advanced up the road, scanning the ground and waiting for the devices to give a signal. When one detector emitted a high tone, a soldier knelt to inspect the mud and grass, probing it with a metal rod to see what might be buried just below the surface.

The detector’s hit could indicate a spent shell casing, a piece of rusting iron or a discarded aluminum can. Or it could be an active land mine.

Oleksii Dokuchaev, the commander of the demining brigade based in the eastern Kharkiv region, said that hundreds of mines have already been discharged in the area around the village of Hrakove where they were working, but that the danger of mines across Ukraine will persist for years to come.

“One year of war equals 10 years of demining,” Dokuchaev said. “Even now we are still finding munitions from World War II, and in this war they’re being planted left and right.”

Russian forces hastily fled the Kharkiv region in early September after a rapid counteroffensive by Ukraine’s military retook hundreds of square miles of territory following months of Russian occupation.

While many settlements in the region have finally achieved some measure of safety after fierce battles reduced many of them to rubble, Russian land mines remain an ever-present threat in both urban and rural environments.

Small red signs bearing a white skull and crossbones line many of the roads in the Kharkiv region, warning of the danger of mines just off the pavement. Yet sometimes, desperation drives local residents into the minefields.

The local man whose body lay near the abandoned Russian camp was likely searching for food left behind by the invading soldiers, Dokuchaev said, an additional danger posed by the hunger experienced by many in Ukraine’s devastated regions.

The use of the kind of tripwire land mines which killed him is prohibited under the 1997 Ottawa Treaty — of which Russia is not a signatory — which regulates the use of anti-personnel land mines, he said.

“There are rules of war. The Ottawa Convention says that it’s forbidden to place mines or any other munitions with tripwires. But Russians ignore it,” he said.

The deminers had cleared the road of anti-personnel mines the previous day, allowing them to search for anti-tank mines hidden beneath the ground that could destroy any vehicles driving over them.

They hoped to bring vehicles deep enough into the area to retrieve an abandoned Russian armored personnel carrier, the engine of which they planned to salvage. A vehicle would also need to be brought in by local police to retrieve the body.

The deminers reached the abandoned camp, set in a grove of trees and strewn with the remains of the months the Russian soldiers had spent there: rotting food rations in wooden ammunition boxes, strings of high-caliber bullets, a stack of yellowing Russian newspapers and trenches filled with refuse.

After a thorough scan of the area, the servicemen recovered two Soviet-made TM-62 anti-tank mines and six pneumatically armed fuses and placed them in a depression on the edge of the camp, taped into a bundle along with 400 grams of TNT.

Dokuchaev placed an electric detonator into the explosive charge and connected it to a long length of wire before taking cover with his men at a distance of more than 100 meters.

When the charge was detonated — something the servicemen laughingly called “bada-boom” — the immense blast ripped through the air, causing a cascade of autumn leaves to fall from the surrounding trees and emitting a tall plume of gray smoke.

After the mines had been destroyed, Dokuchaev — a former photographer who enlisted with the territorial defense forces after the outbreak of war — said the work his brigade is doing is essential to keep civilians safe as they pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

Despite the dangers, he said, he enjoys his work.

“I don’t know what I’ll do after our victory,” Dokuchaev said. “Life is boring without explosions.” 
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In the days since Dane Partridge was fatally wounded while serving as a volunteer soldier in Ukraine, his sister has found moments of comfort in surprising places: first, a misplaced baseball cap discovered in her laundry room, then in a photo of a battered pickup truck with only one tire intact.

The 34-year-old Idaho man died Tuesday from injuries suffered during a Russian attack in Luhansk.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed the recent death of a U.S. citizen in Donbas without naming them, The Washington Post reported.

A former U.S. Army infantryman, Partridge felt “spiritually called” to volunteer with the Ukranian military as they defend the country from invading Russian forces, his sister Jenny Corry said. He flew to Poland on a one-way ticket in April, his rucksack packed with body armor, a helmet and other tactical gear.

“Made it to the embassy, getting on a bus for the border,” Partridge wrote on his Facebook page on April 27. “From this point on I will not likely be giving locations or actions for opsec reasons. I will let you all know I’m alive.”

Partridge joined a military unit that included several volunteers from other countries, Corry said, the men mostly relying on interpreters to communicate. Partridge and his fellow soldiers were in Severodonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region, when he was hit in the head with shrapnel during an attack by Russian fighting vehicles, Corry said.

The unit had no stretchers and was still under attack, Corry said, but Partridge’s fellow soldiers carried him out on a blanket and loaded him and other injured colleagues into a pickup truck to rush them to safety.

“I have a picture of the truck,” Corry said in a phone interview Friday. The photo shows a drab-painted pickup with shredded rubber hanging off the wheel hubs. All but one of the tires were destroyed in the rush to safety.

“As a family, we really like that picture of the vehicle — it speaks to the bravery of how they tried to save their men, and the way they pushed that vehicle to its last leg just to get to the hospital,” she said. “It speaks volumes.”

Partridge leaves behind five young children. Corry deflected questions about the children and some other parts of Partridge’s life, saying the family had jointly agreed to focus on his military service out of respect to those “who are still living and still affected by his personal life.”

Military service had been a large part of Partridge’s life. He was the youngest of five kids, and his father was a member of the U.S. Air Force. As a child, Partridge liked to dress up in his dad’s oversized camouflage uniform and play “army guy” in the dirt, Corry said.

By the time he had graduated from high school, Partridge had grown into a gregarious man with a booming voice and a joking personality, she said.

“When he showed up, you knew he was there. He had a bigger personality,” she said. “If somebody was sad, he was going to make sure he cheered them up. He liked to spend quality time with people.”

He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2006 and served in Baghdad as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2007-09 before leaving the military in 2012.

He didn’t talk a lot about his experiences in Iraq, but she knew some of it weighed heavily on him throughout his life.

Still, it was the battlefield where Partridge thrived. Corry believed the adrenaline, the sense of purpose and the heightened feeling of service were what drew him in.

“It was almost as if he could tell he had a greater purpose to fulfill,” she said. “Sometimes it was harder for him to mesh in the civilian world.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Partridge felt a need to help the Ukrainians.

Partridge was in a coma and on life support for eight days before he died. Family members had a chance to say goodbye, long distance, before he passed, she said.

The family is raising money to bring Partridge’s remains home to be buried in Blackfoot, Idaho. They also hope to raise money to replace the truck his unit used to bring Partridge to the hospital, and to purchase other vital supplies for his unit, she said.

At least four other U.S. citizens have been killed while fighting in Ukraine, based on reports from their families and the U.S. State Department. The Ukrainian government has recruited people with military experience to join the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine. 
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The United States will send $725 million in military assistance to Ukraine, the White House said Friday, the latest U.S. security package to help Kyiv and the first since Russia’s widespread missile attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population.

U.S. officials said the aid package does not include significant new capabilities or counterair defenses. Instead, it focuses on resupplying Ukraine with ammunition and weapons that Kyiv has been successfully using in its counteroffensive against Russia.

“The capabilities we are delivering are carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield for Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Friday.

Russian forces continued to bombard Ukrainian cities Friday, launching at least four missile strikes on Kharkiv, the second-largest city, as Ukraine fought back by firing artillery inside Russia and hitting an ammunition depot.

Multiple explosions were reported Friday at the facility in the Belgorod region of Russia. The regional governor announced the attack on the social media site Telegram. Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for the attack.

The fighting in Ukraine comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin defended recent moves to escalate the war by deploying more troops in the country.

Putin said Friday there was no need for massive new strikes on Ukraine and that Russia was not looking to destroy the country. At the same time, the Russian leader maintained he had “no regrets” about the war in Ukraine and the recent mobilization of 222,000 Russians reservists to fight in the conflict.

At a news conference Friday in Astana, Kazakhstan, Putin said Russia should be finished calling up reservists in two weeks. The Russian Defense Ministry set a goal last month of mobilizing 300,000 reservists, sparking opposition in Russia and leading to tens of thousands of men leaving the country.

Putin said 33,000 of the new recruits have joined military units, and 16,000 are deployed for combat.

Russian media reported at least seven deaths among the recently drafted recruits. The casualties come as Russia’s Defense Ministry faces criticism from prominent pro-war Russian military analysts for deploying untrained recruits into combat.

Despite the rising death toll, Putin told reporters his actions to launch what he calls a military offensive in Ukraine was “timely and right.”

Hours before Putin spoke, Russian missiles and drones targeted more Ukrainian cities and towns for a fourth consecutive day. At least five people in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv were killed, officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday that Russia was in an “atmosphere of hopelessness.”

“Yes, they still have people to throw on the battlefield, they have weapons, missiles and ‘shaheds’ [Iranian drones], which they use against Ukraine.”

But despite its resources, “Russia is already in the atmosphere of its defeat, already in the atmosphere of hopelessness for itself,” Zelenskyy said, and Moscow has no chance to win because “Ukraine is moving forward.”

On the battlefield, Ukraine’s military said it had recaptured more than 600 settlements from Russian forces over the past month, according to the country’s Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories.

About 500 settlements have been liberated in the northeast Kharkiv region, where Ukrainian forces last month advanced deep behind Russian lines, and 75 localities were recaptured in the highly strategic Kherson region, the ministry said late Thursday.

The ministry said 43 settlements were liberated in the Donetsk region and seven in the Luhansk region.

“The area of liberated Ukrainian territories has increased significantly,” the ministry said in a statement on its website. The report could not be independently verified.

Russian-backed authorities in Ukraine’s occupied southern region of Kherson urged residents on Friday to evacuate to Russia. Vladimir Saldo, the region’s Russian-appointed leader, has asked Russia for evacuation assistance. The move is an indication that Ukraine’s forces are advancing closer to the illegally annexed region.

In other developments, the United States warned it can impose sanctions on people, countries and companies that provide ammunition to Russia or support its military-industrial complex, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, at a gathering of officials from 32 countries to discuss sanctions on Russia, said the department is issuing guidance to make clear that Washington is willing and able to impose such a crackdown.

Information from RFE/RL, Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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At a bookshop in Kyiv, 33-year-old Yulia Sydorenko was dumping an entire collection of old books — some gifts from childhood friends — that have recently lost their appeal.

Why? They were written in Russian.

“Since February 24, Russian books have no place in my house,” Sydorenko said, referring to the day Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

“I got them for my 20th birthday with inscriptions from my friends. I took pictures of them,” she said of the books she once treasured.

Showing a collection of children’s books, she said she was convinced her children “will never read Russian tales now.”

Sydorenko is among a steady stream of people hauling piles of books, sometimes by the suitcase or carload, to the Siayvo bookshop.

Inspired by customers who wanted to clear out unwanted sections of their home libraries, the bookstore decided to recycle Russian-language books, giving the paper a new lease of life and helping the army.

“In two months, we collected 25 tons of books. Their recycling brought in 100,000 hryvnias (2,700 euros),” Iryna Sazonova, the shop’s owner, told AFP.

Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the Donbas war in 2014, Ukraine embarked on dismantling Soviet-era monuments and changing place names.

But since February, Ukrainians are contemplating the presence of Russian in private and public spaces, even though 19% of Ukrainians say their native language is Russian.

Nuances are essential

The Bulgakov Museum, where famed Kyiv-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov lived for 13 years, has come under pressure, with the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine moving to close it down.

Bulgakov is accused of being an imperialist and anti-Ukrainian, notably in his novel The White Guard, which is at the heart of the museum’s main exhibition.

“War is black and white, but in art, nuances are essential,” the museum’s director, Lyudmila Gubianuri, told AFP.

“There are many nuances with Bulgakov’s works, but people tend to ignore them,” she said.

Gubianuri accepts that the museum must adapt to reflect the challenges of the situation.

“Our team is working on a new concept which will be established in dialogue with the public,” she said.

People passing the museum are divided.

For Anton Glazkov, a 27-year-old teacher, closing the museum would be wrong because “war and works of art are not always linked.”

But Dmytro Cheliuk, 45, who runs a nearby clothes store, said “the time has come for us to de-Russify ourselves and remove the Russian empire from our streets.”

Oleg Slabospitsky, an activist, takes a hands-on approach to removing Russian from public spaces.

Several times a week since Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, the 33-year-old dons a high-visibility vest and hauls a stepladder around the city taking down overly Russian street signs like “Moscow Street.”

Language of the enemy

“These kinds of initiatives must come from the people themselves,” he told AFP before setting out with a friend to unbolt three plaques on Moscow Street.

In Kyiv, famous for its long avenues, the team sometimes spend whole days “de-Russifying” city streets.

Kyiv City Hall recently voted to rename 142 streets which contained references to Russia. Another 345 streets await the same fate.

The street formerly known as “Moscow” now honors the Ostrozky Princes, a dynasty of 16th century Ukrainian politicians.

At Shevchenko University — damaged by a recent salvo of Russian missiles — management took down a plaque last August that honored Bulgakov, who studied there a hundred years ago.

Oleksandr Bondarenko, who heads a Slavic studies department, said the measure is “understandable” as the plaque could offend passersby who had lost loved ones in the war.

Ukraine’s school curricula no longer feature Russian language courses, nor works of Russian writers. Instead, a new course on the war with Russia has been added.

The history of the USSR is also now presented through the prism of imperialism.

Bondarenko’s faculty did not enroll new Russian students this year because the literature and language programs are currently being adapted.

“Courses on information warfare meanwhile are now at the heart of the curriculum,” said Bondarenko.

“In a hybrid war, like this, you have to learn the language of the enemy to know him well. Sworn translators will be in high demand at war crimes trials.”
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An explosion Friday inside a coal mine in northern Turkey killed at least 22 people, Turkey’s health minister announced, while rescuers were trying to bring dozens of others trapped inside the mine to the surface. 

The explosion occurred at 6:45 p.m. at the state-owned TTK Amasra Muessese Mudurlugu mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin. 

Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said a preliminary assessment indicated the explosion was likely caused by firedamp — a reference to flammable gases found in coal mines. 

There were 110 people in the mine at the time of the explosion, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who traveled to Amasra to coordinate the rescue operation, told reporters. Most of the workers were able to evacuate following the blast, but 49 were trapped in a higher-risk area of the facility, the minister said. 

Soylu would not provide a number for those still trapped, saying some among the 49 had been lifted to safety. 

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Twitter that 22 people were killed in the blast. He did not say how many people were taken out of the mine with injuries but said eight were in serious condition. 

Several rescue teams were dispatched to the area, including from neighboring provinces, Turkey’s disaster management agency, AFAD, said. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced he was canceling a planned visit to the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and would travel to Amasra instead to coordinate the rescue operation. 

The private DHA news agency quoted one worker as telling Bartin Governor Nurtac Arslan that he came out of the mine by his own means. He described feeling a “pressure” but said he could not see anything because of the dust and dirt. 

People rushed to the mine for news of trapped friends or colleagues, DHA reported. 

In Turkey’s worst mine disaster, 301 people died in 2014 in a fire inside a coal mine in the town of Soma, in western Turkey.
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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

UNGA declares Russian ‘annexation’ of Ukrainian territories invalid

In its strongest show of support for Ukraine since Moscow’s February 24 invasion, the U.N. General Assembly voted 143-5 on a resolution condemning and rejecting Russia’s move to annex Ukrainian territory. The only countries supporting Russia in Wednesday’s vote were Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua and Syria. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield says the resolution means in the eyes of the world “Ukraine remains Ukraine.”

UN General Assembly Rejects Russia’s ‘Referendums,’ ‘Annexation’ in Ukraine

Separately, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says missile attacks by Russia’s armed forces against civilian targets and infrastructure across several cities this week in Ukraine could amount to war crimes.

UN: Russian Missile Attacks on Ukraine’s Civilian Targets Could Amount to War Crimes

The International Atomic Energy Agency director general conducted shuttle diplomacy this week between Kyiv and Moscow in a bid to urgently establish a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The Russian-occupied facility has been repeatedly shelled during the conflict, raising fears of a nuclear incident or accident.

Haiti seeks international armed force to help curb gang violence

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community this week to respond to a request from Haiti’s government and urgently consider sending an international specialized armed force to the Caribbean island nation to address spiraling insecurity due to widespread gang violence. The request comes as humanitarian conditions further deteriorate. The Security Council has moved up to Monday a meeting to discuss the situation and the secretary-general’s recommendations.

UN Chief Backs Haitian Call for International Armed Force

The situation is exacerbating Haiti’s food insecurity. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase (IPC) report published Friday says an unprecedented 4.7 million Haitians — nearly half the population — are experiencing emergency levels of acute food insecurity, including 19,000 people in Phase 5 Catastrophic hunger. More from IPC here.

Possible vaccine trials for latest Ebola outbreak

Uganda and the World Health Organization are planning to try out two vaccines for the Ebola Sudan virus to try to curb the spread of the rare strain. The virus has so far killed 19 people and infected at least 54 people in five districts in Uganda. After meetings in Kampala on Wednesday, the WHO’s director general described the new outbreak as troubling. Both vaccines are in clinical trials, pending regulatory and ethics approvals from the Ugandan government. They are expected to arrive in the country next week.

Uganda, WHO to Try Two Vaccines for Rare Ebola Virus Strain

In brief

— U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned Monday that his agency urgently needs at least $700 million from donors between now and the end of this year or “severe cuts with negative and sometimes dramatic consequences” will have to be made affecting refugees and host communities. The UNHCR says the number of people forcibly displaced has grown to a record high of 100 million.

— The secretary-general sent a letter to the finance ministers and heads of the central banks of the G20 on Wednesday ahead of the group’s November summit in Indonesia. He told them that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis are wreaking havoc on economies worldwide. In developing countries, the impact of these shocks is compounded by what he said is “an unfair global financial system that relies on short-term cost-benefit analyses and privileges the rich over the poor.” Guterres called on them to reinforce the U.N.-proposed Sustainable Development Goals stimulus and to increase public sector commitments toward development, humanitarian and climate mitigation and adaptation by 2% of global gross domestic product (GDP).

— The General Assembly elected 14 countries to the Human Rights Council on Tuesday. With nearly all the 193-member states voting, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Chile, Costa Rica, Georgia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Morocco, Romania, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam were voted onto the 47-member Geneva-based rights body. South Korea and Venezuela lost their re-election bids and Afghanistan failed to win a seat, receiving only 12 votes.

— The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that the electricity supply from clean energy sources must double within the next eight years to limit a global temperature increase. If not, WMO warns there is a risk that climate change, more extreme weather and water stress will undermine energy security and possibly jeopardize renewable energy supplies. Currently, the energy sector is the source of around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Good news

On Thursday, the secretary-general welcomed announcements by the governments of Lebanon and Israel that they have formally agreed to settle their maritime boundary dispute, as mediated by the United States. Guterres said “this encouraging development” can promote increased regional stability and enhanced prosperity for both nations. The deal between the two enemies, who have fought multiple wars, removes a hurdle to each country being able to exploit hydrocarbon fields along the border.

What we are watching next week

On Monday afternoon, the Security Council will meet to discuss the secretary-general’s recommendations for an international force as requested by the Haitian government. The council is also considering imposing new sanctions on armed gangs in Haiti that are terrorizing civilians and making the movement of people and important commodities, like fuel, dangerous and difficult.
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Elon Musk said Friday his rocket company SpaceX cannot indefinitely fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, which has helped the country’s civilians and military stay online during the war with Russia.

Musk’s comment on Twitter came after a media report that SpaceX had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations of Starlink. The billionaire has been in online fights with Ukrainian officials over a peace plan he put forward that Ukraine says is too generous to Russia.

The billionaire who runs Tesla said that Starlink officials said they spend nearly $20 million a month for maintaining satellite services in Ukraine. Musk recently said that SpaceX had spent about $80 million to enable and support Starlink there.

“SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely and send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable,” Musk wrote Friday on Twitter.

“We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder,” Musk wrote.

CNN reported on Thursday that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it could not continue to fund the Starlink service in Ukraine, and it may have to stop funding it unless the U.S. military gives the company tens of millions of dollars a month.

A Pentagon spokesperson said the Defense Department “continues to work with industry to explore solutions for Ukraine’s armed forces as they repel Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression.”

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk activated Starlink, satellite broadband service, in Ukraine in late February after internet services were disrupted because of Russia’s invasion. SpaceX has since given it thousands of terminals.

Starlink has been a key communications tool for Ukrainian forces in their fight against Russian forces.

On the official Ukrainian defense ministry twitter feed, a video shows Ukrainian soldiers singing the praises of the technology. “Thank God we have Starlink. It’s a lifesaver,” one soldier said according to a translation posted with the video.

Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said this week that Starlink services helped restore energy and communications infrastructure in critical areas after more than 100 Russian cruise missile attacks. Russia calls its intervention in Ukraine a “special military operation” and says it does not target civilians.

Musk drew widespread criticism from Ukrainians over his peace plan, in which he proposed that Ukraine permanently cede the Crimea region to Russia, that new referendums be held under U.N. auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality.

Ukraine says it will never agree to cede land taken by force, and lawful referendums cannot be held in occupied territory where many people have been killed or driven out.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among those who criticized Musk’s proposal.

Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, also condemned the plan in tweet that told Musk in profane terms to go away.

Musk, responding to a post referring to the fate of the Starlink service and the ambassador’s remark, said: “We’re just following his recommendation.”

Republican U.S. Representative Adam Kingzinger cited Musk’s comments on Twitter, writing “if there was ever proof that @elonmusk is playing games this is it. I’m not sure someone like this can be trusted to any longer do business with our government.”

While extremely costly to deploy, satellite technology like Starlink can provide internet for people who live in rural or hard-to-serve areas where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach. The technology can also be a critical backstop when natural disasters disrupt communication.

SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, previously told Reuters that France and Poland were helping fund shipments of Starlink terminals to Ukraine. The U.S. Agency for International Development said in April it had bought some of the terminals from SpaceX, and that the internet service was made possible by a “range of stakeholders” that included SpaceX’s donations.
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