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Swedish police said Monday that the riots that have shaken several cities and towns in the Nordic country are extremely serious crimes against society and suspect some protesters are linked to criminal gangs that intentionally target police. 

Sweden, a nation of 10 million, has seen unrest, scuffles, arson and violence since Thursday that has left some police officers and protesters injured. It was triggered by Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan’s meetings and planned Quran burnings across the country. 

“We suspect that those involved (in the riots) have links to criminal gangs,” National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg told a news conference on Monday, adding that some of those “criminal individuals” are known to police. “I have been in touch with the public prosecutor to prosecute these individuals.” 

Sweden’s National Police Commander Jonas Hysing said Monday that 26 police officers and 14 individuals — protesters or other people — have been injured in the riots, and 20 police vehicles have been destroyed or damaged. 

The latest riots broke out Sunday night in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, as an angry crowd of mainly young people set fire to car tires, debris and garbage cans in the Rosengard district. Protesters threw stones, and police responded by firing tear gas into the crowd. A school and several cars were set on fire, but the situation calmed down early Monday. 

A total of 11 people were detained, and three people were arrested in Malmo. No serious injuries were reported. 

Since Thursday, in addition to Malmo, riots, unrest and violent clashes have been reported in Stockholm, the central city of Orebro, the eastern cities of Linkoping and Norrkoping and the southern town of Landskrona. 

Police have been forced to use weapons in self-defense, Hysing said. Three people were hurt in Norrkoping on Sunday as they were hit by ricochets as police fired warning shots into a crowd of protesters. 

“There is a lot to suggest that the police were targeted,” Hysing said, adding that some protesters were suspected of attempted murder, aggravated assault and violence against an official. 

Both Thornberg and Hysing stressed that the main target for the rioters was Swedish police and society, not Paludan — seen by many Swedes merely as an agent provocateur — and his Stram Kurs (Hard Line) Party, which runs on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam agenda. 

Thornberg, Sweden’s supreme police chief, said “criminal individuals” who took advantage of the situation with Paludan’s Swedish Easter tour and joined the riots, were the main suspects for the violent flare-ups of violence. The unrest escalated quickly after Paludan’s first demonstrations, which were met by counter-protesters in many places last week. 

“We must put an end to this early. What we see here is a very serious crime,” Thornberg said, referring to the riots. 

Justice Minister Morgan Johansson said Monday that he continues to have great confidence in the Swedish police, despite the unrest over the weekend, and pledged more resources to law enforcement. 

“When you end up in these critical and aggressive situations, there’s nothing else police officers can do but to put up a hard fight,” Johansson told Swedish news outlets. “We cannot accept that perpetrators commit this type of violence.” 

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday summoned Sweden’s charge d’affaires over Paludan’s planned Quran burnings, reportedly saying that such activity could seriously endanger Sweden’s relations with the Muslim world. 

In Iran, dozens of students gathered Monday at Sweden’s embassy to protest Paludan’s planned Quran burnings. Chanting “Insulters of Quran must be condemned!” they also repeated slogans such as “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” 
…

A group of Catalan separatists, including several members of the European Parliament, other politicians, lawyers and activists from Spain’s northeastern region, had their phones hacked with a controversial spyware called Pegasus, a cybersecurity firm said Monday.

Citizens Lab, which is associated with the University of Toronto, said at least 65 people were targeted using the Israeli-made software that is only available to governments.

The maker of the software, NSO, said the allegations were “false.”

The spyware infections allegedly took place between 2017 and 2020 after a failed Catalan independence bid.

The movement for an independent Catalonia dates back more than a century and has been a problem for Spain’s central government. Catalonia enjoys some regional autonomy under the Spanish constitution. 

Citizens Lab said it could not pinpoint the source of the hacking but said on its website that “a range of circumstantial evidence points to a strong nexus with one or more entities within the Spanish government.” 

The Spanish government declined a request for comment by Reuters.

On Twitter, Catalonian government President Pere Aragones called the hacks an “unjustifiable disgrace.” 

Some information in this report comes from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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Turkish military forces using planes, helicopters and drones attacked Kurdish rebel positions inside northern Iraq, the Turkish Defense Ministry said Monday.

The targets included camps and ammunition depots in the regions of Metina, Zap, and Avashin-Basyan, the military said.

Kurdish rebels have launched attacks in Turkey from northern Iraq, and Ankara said they were planning another attack in Turkey.

The Associated Press reported 19 Kurdish rebels were killed and four Turkish military members were wounded.

“Our operation is continuing successfully as planned,” the state-owned Anadolu news agency quoted Defense Minister Hulusi Akar as saying. “The targets identified in the first phase have been captured.”

Turkish military forces have repeatedly attacked Kurdish groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara considers terrorist organizations.

The PKK has been active since 1984. It has bases in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.

Kurdish people are spread throughout a region covering parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

(Some information in this report comes from Reuters and The Associated Press.)

 
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Cyprus authorities on Monday made traveling to the east Mediterranean island nation easier as the summer tourist season kicks into gear by rescinding the need to undergo any COVID-19 tests prior to boarding a flight or on arrival.

According to the new regulations, only unvaccinated people who haven’t contracted and recovered from the coronavirus must undergo a PCR test 72 hours prior to boarding or a rapid test 24 hours before departure.

All Cyprus-bound passengers are no longer required to fill in a form — also known as a Cyprus Flight Pass — providing information that enables authorities to trace them if they do test positive for COVID-19 during their stay.

Vaccinated and recovered passengers will need a valid European Union health certificate. Health certificates from third countries are accepted if they’ve joined the EU’s COVID certificate system.

All adults are considered vaccinated for nine months after receiving their second dose or have received a 3rd booster shot. Individuals are designated as recently recovered from COVID-19 seven days after testing positive and for six months thereafter.

Tourism directly accounts for 13% of the island nation’s economy and authorities are keen to attract new markets to make up for the significant loss of Russian and Ukrainian tourists in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of engaging in “deliberate terror” with mortar and artillery strikes on residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, while Ukrainian forces in the southern city of Mariupol defied a Russian deadline to lay down their arms. 

Zelenskyy, in a video address late Sunday, said he expects Russia to launch an offensive in the eastern Donbas region “in the near future.” 

Russia’s withdrawal of its forces from areas around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other parts of the north in recent weeks prompted assessments from Western military officials that Russia was reinforcing and redeploying those assets to eastern Ukraine. 

Capturing the Donbas region, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the port city of Mariupol to the south, would allow Russia to control a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula, which it seized in 2014. 

Zelenskyy, in an interview with CNN taped Friday and aired Sunday, said for Ukraine the battle for Donbas will be critical, and that if Russia captures the area it could once again try to seize Kyiv. 

“…It is very important for us to not allow them, to stand our ground, because this battle … can influence the course of the whole war,” Zelenskyy said.  

Russia has called on the remaining fighters in Mariupol to surrender, saying it controlled urban areas of the city, while an estimated 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers and 400 mercenaries remaining at the sprawling Azovstal steel mill. 

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday the country’s forces will “fight to the end” in Mariupol. 

“The city still has not fallen,” he said, hours after the expiration of Russia’s declared deadline. 

Asked about reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes Moscow is winning the war, Shmyhal noted that while several cities are under siege, only Kherson in the south has fallen under Russian control.    

“More than 900 cities, towns and villages…are freed from Russian occupation,” Shmyhal said, adding Ukraine has no intention of surrendering in the eastern Donbas region.   

 The prime minister added that Ukraine wants a diplomatic solution “if possible.”  

 “We won’t leave our country, our families, our land,” he said.  

Zelenskyy said in his Sunday night address that Western nations should increase their sanctions against Russia, including actions targeting Russia’s oil and banking sectors. 

“Everyone in Europe and America already sees Russia openly using energy to destabilize Western societies,” Zelenskyy said. “All of this requires greater speed from Western countries in preparing a new, powerful package of sanctions.” 

Earlier Sunday, the Ukrainian leader tweeted that he had discussed ensuring Ukraine’s financial stability and preparations for post-war reconstruction with International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.   

Georgieva tweeted in response, saying that support was “essential to lay the foundations for rebuilding a modern competitive #Ukraine.”  

Russia initially described its aims as disarming Ukraine and defeating nationalists there. Kyiv and its Western allies say those are bogus justifications for an unprovoked war of aggression that has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes.    

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

A migrant was killed by gunfire at the Greece-Turkey border while she and several others attempted to cross a river separating the two countries, Greek police said on April 17. 

It wasn’t immediately clear who fired the shot that killed the woman the night before. An autopsy showed that the victim was shot in the back with a small-caliber weapon. 

Greek police were patrolling the area where the Evros River, which is called Meric in Turkish, narrows to about 60 to 70 meters (around 200 feet) wide and through which many migrants attempt to cross, according to a police statement and additional information provided to The Associated Press by a police officer on condition of anonymity. The officers spotted numerous migrants on the Turkish side shortly before 9 p.m. on April 16.

Police said 11 people embarked on an inflatable dinghy, and officers directed flashlights at the boat and started shouting “Police. Go back.” 

In response, said the police officer, a “barrage” of shots erupted from the Turkish side.  

The Greek police patrol couldn’t detect the source of the shots in the darkness and fell to the ground to protect themselves, shooting warning shots in the air, according to the statement which the officer corroborated. 

The dinghy came close to the Greek shore and five people disembarked — four made it to the shore while a fifth person was seen floating in the water. Police reached the body with some difficulty, according to the statement, and when they pulled it to the shore they determined that it belonged to a woman and that she was dead. 

Police questioned the four survivors — three Pakistani males, one of them a minor (17 years old), and a woman from Eritrea. It wasn’t known what happened to the other six people who tried to cross, but authorities don’t believe they entered Greece. 

Coroner Pavlos Pavlidis, who performed the autopsy on the woman in the northeastern city of Alexandroupolis, told the AP that the victim was between the ages of 20 and 25 and that she was most likely from one of the Horn of Africa countries. 

She had a wound “in the upper right (back) area. She was shot from close distance and died almost instantly from post-hemorrhagic (blood loss) shock,” Pavlidis said. 
…

Manning checkpoints and patrolling towns and cities: the reservists of Ukraine’s territorial defense force are the last line standing between ordinary civilians and Russian troops.

Standing 2.07 meters (6 feet, 9.5 inches) and dressed in camouflage fatigues that reveal only his eyes under a hood, “Buffalo” quit his job in construction and signed up for the force when the Russians invaded.

A cheerful young man in his 20s, he is one of the hundreds of thousands to answer President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for reservists.

He was posted to Svyatohirsk, a village about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Kramatorsk, the capital of the Donbas region in the east of the country.

The front lines are just 10 kilometers to the north and northwest, where fighting rages and the sound of intense bombardments can be heard daily.

Fighting is particularly fierce around the town of Izyum. Victory there for the Russian troops would open the way toward Kramatorsk.

“I’m sure you can hear the artillery,” Buffalo told AFP. “And how our villages are disappearing from the face of the Earth.”

He proudly shows a video on his mobile phone that shows him with his comrades deployed for combat in the snow, Kalashnikov in his hand.

But his mission also includes protecting and helping the local civilians.

“The civilians have learned what war is,” he said. “They stay in the basements and it’s all they can do to stay alive.

“Any time we can, we bring them food and water. There are a lot of elderly people there who have no place to go.”

There are still a good number left in the village of Svyatohirsk, which had a population of 5,000 before the war, and was then best known for its Orthodox monastery.

Behind the counter of his little cafe Andriy is kept busy. Local people mix with soldiers and reservists as they line up for a hot dog, a hamburger or a hot drink.

“Some people have left and others have stayed,” he said.

“The people are here. Everybody is walking around, shopping — one way or another they have to eat.”

Dressed in fatigues with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, reservist Andriy, 35, is among the customers.

For him, the territorial defense force is unique.

“We have people of all ages and from different backgrounds who all came together because they had only one goal. Teachers, engineers, workers, artists, it’s extremely important,” said the young man, a civil servant before the war.

“We will hold on until the last breath,” he said.

Many bridges in the region have been destroyed by the Ukrainians to slow down any advance by the Russians as Moscow turns the focus of its offensive toward the Donbas region.

The one in Svyatohirsk is still standing, even though mines are ready to blow it up.

Previously guarded by the territorial force, regular soldiers now keep watch over it.

“The bridge is under the protection of both the Ukrainian armed forces and the territorial defense,” said Volodymyr Rybalkin, a civilian journalist and head of territorial defense in the town.

Like many members of the territorial defense, he already had combat experience during the Donbas war in 2014-2015.

“Above us there are professional military commanders, who coordinate. Our task is to communicate with the civilians so that there is understanding and support between the two,” he explained.

Asked about Moscow’s announced offensive, he appears confident.

“The front line is less than 10 kilometers away. The artillery is firing at full strength and pushing the enemy back,” he said.

“I can’t predict what will happen tomorrow. Today (Russian) planes didn’t fly. We don’t know if tomorrow they will be back. We’ll react to all their actions.”

Behind him, “Buffalo” leads a refrain addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Glory to Ukraine!” he bellows.

“Glory to the heroes!” his comrades reply.
…

On a quiet street lined with walnut trees was a cemetery with four bodies that hadn’t yet found a home.

All were victims of Russian soldiers in this village outside Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Their temporary caskets were together in a grave. Volunteers dug them up one by one Sunday — two weeks after the soldiers disappeared.

This spring is a grim season of planting and replanting in towns and villages around Kyiv. Bodies given hurried graves amid the Russian occupation are now being retrieved for investigations into possible war crimes. More than 900 civilian victims have been found so far.

All four bodies here were killed on the same street, on the same day. That’s according to the local man who provided their caskets. He bent and kissed the cemetery’s wrought-iron crosses as he walked to the makeshift grave.

The volunteers tried digging with shovels, then gave up and called an excavator. As they waited, they recounted their work secretly burying bodies during the monthlong Russian occupation, then retrieving them. One young man recalled being discovered by soldiers who pointed guns at him and told him “Don’t look up” as he dug a grave.

The excavator arrived, rumbling past the cemetery’s wooden outhouse. Soon there was the smell of fresh earth, and the murmur, “There they are.”

A woman appeared, crying. Ira Slepchenko was the wife of one man buried here. No one told her he was being dug up now. The wife of another victim arrived. Valya Naumenko peered into the grave, then hugged Ira. “Don’t collapse,” she said. “I need you to be OK.”

The two couples lived next to each other. On the final day before the Russians left the village, soldiers knocked at one home. Valya’s husband, Pavlo Ivanyuk, opened the door. The soldiers took him to the garage and shot him in the head, apparently without any explanation.

Then the soldiers shouted, “Is anyone else here?”

Ira’s husband, Sasha Nedolezhko, heard the gunshot. But he thought the soldiers would search the homes if no one answered. He opened the door and the soldiers shot him too.

The men’s caskets were lifted out with the others, then pried open. The four bodies, wrapped in blankets, were placed in body bags. The lace-edged white lining of each casket was stained red where the head had been.

Ira watched from afar, smoking, but stood by the empty caskets as the others left. “All this land is in blood, and it will take years to recover,” she said.

She had known her husband was here. Nine days after his temporary burial, she came to the cemetery scattered with picnic tables, following the local custom of spending time with the dead. She brought coffee and cookies.

“I want this war to end as soon as possible,” she said.

The other bodies were a teacher and a local man who lived alone. No one came for them Sunday.

In the house next to the cemetery, 66-year-old Valya Voronets cooked homegrown potatoes in a wood-warmed room, still getting by without water, electricity or gas. A small radio played, but not for long because the news gets too depressing. A plate of freshly cut radishes rested near the window.

A Russian soldier once came running and pointed his gun at her husband after spotting him climbing onto the roof to get a cellphone signal. “Are you going to kill an old man?” 65-year-old Myhailo Scherbakov replied.

Not all the Russians were like that. Voronets said she cried together with another soldier, barely 21. “You’re too young,” she told him. Another soldier told her they didn’t want to fight.

Still, she feared them all. But she offered them milk from her only cow.

“I felt sorry for them in these conditions,” she said. “And if you’re nice to them, maybe they won’t kill you.” 
…

Shuffling down the corridor of a refugee center in Ukraine with his gray tracksuit sleeve rolled to his shoulder, 71-year-old Vladimir Lignov reveals the remains of a severed limb he says he can still feel.

“It was on the 21st of March, I went out to smoke. Then a shell hit. I lost my arm,” he says, recalling the strike on his home in Avdiivka, an industrial hub in east Ukraine and a military priority for invading Russian forces.

Now in relative safety in the central Ukraine city of Dnipro the former train conductor is among what aid workers say is a particularly vulnerable segment of the population — the elderly.

In the Dnipro maternity hospital, hastily opened to accommodate people fleeing Moscow’s forces, Lignov is struggling to come to terms with what happened and why — not to mention what might come next.

Medical staff at the Myrnorad hospital near ongoing fighting and where Lignov was treated after the strike say he should return for treatment in a week.

Staff in Dnipro, he says, told him he should return in three days.

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s better if I just go to the graveyard. I don’t want to go on living,” he says, as another elderly man hobbles past him in the corridor. 

A van arrives from the east ferrying three elderly people groaning in pain as volunteers lower them gingerly into wheelchairs.

Other passengers are erratic. One man, dazed, reaches for his cigarettes as soon as he gets out of the van and grabs his belongings as if he is rushing to safety.

“The hardest are the people who spent long stretches in cellars,” says Olga Volkova, the volunteer director of the center, that houses 84 residents, most of whom are elderly. “A lot of people were left on their own. We helped them before the war, but then they were left to fend for themselves.”

The elderly are “often forgotten, very vulnerable” in times of war says Federico Dessi, the Ukraine director of the NGO Handicap International, a group that provides equipment and will financially help the Dnipro home.

“Cut off from their families” and “sometimes unable to use telephones or communicate” they are particularly vulnerable in conflicts, Dessi said.

Leaving aside physical health, the elderly often require “additional help, which is often not available.”

Aleksandra Vasiltchenko, an 80-year-old ethnic Russian from Ukraine is luckier than most of the other new arrivals.

For one, she is sure on her feet, despite other ailments, and her grandson comes to pick her up as soon as she arrives at the Dnipro home.

She was relieved to have escaped after spending weeks alone in her three-room apartment in the eastern Ukraine city of Kramatorsk, where Russian strikes recently killed nearly 60 people trying to flee by rail.

“I was hiding all the time in the bathroom. I was constantly crying. I was imprisoned in my own flat,” she tells AFP, saying she wished death on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children.  

Perched on a bedside, her hands gripping a walking aid, Zoya Taran considers herself among the lucky ones — that’s despite having only one working kidney, precarious balance, diabetes and poor eyesight.

That’s because her rock musician son quit a career in “show business” two decades ago to care for her.

“I am that elderly babushka,” she says smiling. “My son is my eyes, my hands and my legs. I have nothing on my own.”

So as Russian strikes edged closer to Sloviansk, Taran, who had initially hesitated to leave, finally decided it was time in order to “save my son.”

“Why do we need this war? What do they want from us?” she says, sobbing.

Citing Ukrainian government figures, Handicap International estimates that 13,000 elderly Ukrainians or people with disabilities have arrived in the wider Dnipro region since Russia launched its invasion in late February.

Another hub, mainly for evacuees from the besieged and destroyed port city of Mariupol, and their children, has also offered shelter to elderly residents from the east. 

“Even if you open 10 places like this, they will all be full,” says Konstantin Gorshkov, who runs the center with his wife Natalia.

Among the 30 new arrivals joining the roughly 100 existing residents is 83-year-old Yulia Panfiorova from Lysychansk in the northwestern part of the Lugansk region, under attack by Russian forces.

The former economics professor — now hard of hearing — was “very scared” by the sound of shooting in her town and the three shells that stuck close enough to her home to blow out her windows. 

“This is my third war,” she said, referring first to World War II, then the outbreak of fighting in 2014 between the Ukrainian army and pro-Kremlin separatists.

“Lysychansk was freed from the Nazis in 1943. I remember how we returned home. Of course, I have some memories about it.

“They were Nazis. Then our country was invaded, and now our country has been invaded by a foreign state. Then the freedom of our state was at threat. Now it is the same. We should fight… But the war is so scary.”
…

Ukrainian officials say their forces in the besieged city of Mariupol will not submit to Russian demands to surrender. They are also calling for more help from Western allies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
…

The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned a British plan to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the East African country of Rwanda, saying the policy did not stand “the judgment of God.”

Delivering a sermon on Easter Sunday at Canterbury Cathedral, Justin Welby said the strategy announced last week by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posed “serious ethical questions.”

Anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since Jan. 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under the deal.

Johnson’s government said it would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, but it drew immediate and heavy criticism from politicians and charities.

“The details are for politics and politicians. The principle must stand the judgment of God and it cannot,” Welby said.

“It cannot carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values, because sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures,” he said.

Welby is the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians.

Last year, more than 28,000 migrants and refugees made the crossing from mainland Europe to Britain.

The arrival of migrants on rickety boats has been a source of tension between France and Britain, especially after 27 migrants drowned when their dinghy deflated in November.
…

On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus, the victor over sin, fear and death, called on the world not to surrender to evil and violence. He made an impassioned plea for an end to the war in Ukraine and urged the faithful to appeal for peace and the end to cruelty and senseless destruction.

For the crowds this Easter was a true resurrection after two years of pandemic that brought Holy Week events to a standstill.

Pope Francis made a strong plea for peace in what he called this “Easter of war.” Tens of thousands turned out in a sunny but windy Saint Peter’s Square this year to attend Easter mass, hear the pope’s words and receive his blessing.

In his Urbi et Orbi [to the city and the world] Easter message the pope called for peace to return in war-torn Ukraine, so sorely tried by the violence and destruction of the cruel and senseless war into which it was dragged. Francis called on the world not to get used to war and said “may a new dawn of hope soon appear.”

Let there be a decision for peace, Francis said, may there be an end to the flexing of muscles while people are suffering. He urged everyone to commit tocall for peace from balconies and streets and expressed the hope that the leaders of nations will hear the people’s plea for peace.

The pope’s thoughts went to the many Ukrainian victims, the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons, the divided families, the elderly left to themselves, the lives broken and the cities razed to the ground. Francis added that amid the pain of war, there are also encouraging signs, many acts of charity as families and communities open their doors to welcome migrants and refugees throughout Europe.

On Easter Sunday believers mark the most joyful day in the Christian calendar which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus three days after his death on the cross.

Today, more than ever, the pope said, we hear echoing the Easter proclamation so dear to the Christian East: “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!” Today, more than ever, he added, we need him, at the end of a Lent that has seemed endless.

Francis said the conflict in Europe should also make the world more concerned about other situations of conflict, suffering and sorrow, situations in many areas of the world that cannot be overlooked or forgotten. He mentioned the Middle East, racked by years of conflict and division and specifically Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar. The pope also urged peace for the whole of the African continent and for assistance to be given to people suffering from social conditions in Latin America. 

Francis ended his Easter message with powerful words: “Peace is possible, peace is a duty, peace is everyone’s prime responsibility.” 
…

Pope Francis attended but did not preside at an Easter vigil service in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday night, presumably because of recurring leg pain that has forced him to curtail some activities.

Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re replaced the pope as the main celebrant at the service, which involved a procession in near-total darkness up the central nave of Christendom’s largest church.

The pope sat at the front of the basilica in a large white chair on the side and appeared to be alert. The Vatican said he read the homily for the Mass.

Presiding at the Mass, which was attended by 5,500 people, would have required long periods of standing during the chanting and gospel readings as well as genuflecting at the altar.

The 85-year-old pope suffers from sciatica, which causes pain in one leg and results in a pronounced limp. Recently Francis also has had a flare up of pain in his right knee.

The condition appears to come and go.

A program issued by the Vatican on Friday listed the pope as chief celebrant at the Saturday evening service. The Vatican gave no official reason for the change.

On Friday afternoon, the pope was well enough to walk the entire aisle both at the start and the end of a Good Friday service in the basilica but he did not prostrate himself on the floor as he normally does during that service.

He had to curtail some of his movements during a trip to Malta at the start of April and also had to ask a cardinal to stand in for him at a Mass in December.

The Holy Week activities, which culminate Sunday, mark the first time since 2019 that the public has been allowed to attend, following two years of COVID-19 restrictions.
…

The Russian defense ministry on Saturday announced it had cleared the entire urban area of Mariupol of Ukrainian forces and said only a few fighters remained in the Azovstal steelworks, the scene of repeated clashes.

In an online post, the ministry said that as of April 16, Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city had lost more than 4,000 people, RIA, the state-owned news agency added.

Russian forces have been trying for several weeks to take the port, which is on the Sea of Azov, a body of water to the northeast of the Black Sea.

“The entire urban area of Mariupol has been completely cleared … remnants of the Ukrainian group are currently completely blockaded on the territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant,” the ministry said.

“Their only chance to save their lives is to voluntarily lay down their arms and surrender.”

There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the statement by the Russian ministry, which also said 1,464 Ukrainian servicemen had surrendered so far.

Moscow said the total number of what it called “irretrievable losses” suffered by Ukraine totaled 23,367 people but did not provide any evidence and did not say whether this included only those who had died or who had also been injured.
…

Russia’s foreign ministry said Saturday it had barred entry to the country for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and 10 other British government members and politicians.

The move was taken “in view of the unprecedented hostile action by the British Government, in particular the imposition of sanctions against senior Russian officials,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it would expand the list soon.

The Kremlin has described Johnson, who has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers, as “the most active participant in the race to be anti-Russian.”

A week ago, Johnson visited Kyiv where he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised each other for their cooperation since the Russian invasion, which Moscow calls a “special operation.”

“The UK and our international partners stand united in condemning the Russian government’s reprehensible actions in Ukraine and calling for the Kremlin to stop the war,” a British government spokesperson said in response to Moscow’s decision to bar Johnson and other British politicians.

“We remain resolute in our support for Ukraine,” the spokesperson added.
…

Explosions were heard in Kyiv and the western city of Lviv early on Saturday and the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said rescuers and medics were working at the site of a blast on the outskirts of the city.

There were no immediate details of casualties or damage.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in seven weeks of war with Russia and about 10,000 injured, but there was no count of civilian casualties.

He told CNN on Friday 19,000 to 20,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war. Moscow said last month that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded.

Reuters could not independently verify either side’s numbers.

Russia pledged on Friday to launch more strikes on Kyiv and said it had used cruise missiles to strike the Vizar factory on the edge of Kyiv, which it said made and repaired missiles, including anti-ship missiles.

The attack followed Thursday’s sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet.

Ukraine said one of its missiles had caused the Moskva to sink, a powerful symbol of its resistance to a better-armed foe. Moscow said the ship sank while being towed in stormy seas after a fire caused by an explosion of ammunition and that more than 500 sailors were evacuated.

The United States believes the Moskva was hit by two Ukrainian missiles and that there were Russian casualties, although numbers were unclear, a senior U.S. official said.

None of the assessments could be independently verified.

Ukraine’s military said on Saturday the presence of Russian warships in the Black Sea, armed with sea-launched missiles, suggests that an increased possibility that Russia would use them to strike Ukraine’s defense industry and logistics infrastructure.

It said also that Russia’s navy was active in the Sea of Azov to block the port of Mariupol, where ground fighting has intensified as Ukraine said it was trying to break Russia’s siege.

Home to 400,000 people before Russia’s invasion, Mariupol has been reduced to rubble. Thousands of civilians have died and tens of thousands remain trapped.

“The situation in Mariupol is difficult and hard. Fighting is happening right now. The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city,” defense ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a briefing. He said the Russians have not completely captured it.

‘Significant’ victories

Zelenskyy said the military situation in the south and east was “still very difficult,” while praising the work of his armed forces.

“The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers. We will beat them some more,” he said in a late-night video address, calling again for allies to send heavier weapons and for an international embargo on Russian oil.

Zelenskyy has appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden for the United States to designate Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” joining North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with their conversation.

A White House spokesperson responded by saying, “We will continue to consider all options to increase the pressure on Putin.”

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and top finance officials will attend International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, sources told Reuters.

It will be the first chance for key Ukrainian officials to meet in person with financial officials from advanced economies since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Holding out in Mariupol

If Moscow captures Mariupol, it would be the first big city to fall.

Russia’s defense ministry said it had captured the city’s Illich steel works. The report could not be confirmed. Ukrainian defenders are mainly believed to be holding out in Azovstal, another huge steel works.

Both plants are owned by Metinvest, the empire of Ukraine’s richest businessman and backbone of Ukraine’s industrial east – which told Reuters on Friday it would never let its enterprises operate under Russian occupation.

Moscow has used its naval power to blockade Ukrainian ports and threaten a potential amphibious landing along the coast. Without the Moskva, the largest warship sunk during conflict since Argentina’s General Belgrano in the 1982 Falklands war, its ability to menace Ukraine from the sea could be crippled.

Russia initially described its aims in Ukraine as “a special military operation” to disarm its neighbor and defeat nationalists there.

After its invasion force was driven from the outskirts of Kyiv this month, Moscow has said its main war aim is to capture the Donbas, the eastern region partly held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.

Kyiv and its Western allies say those are bogus justifications for an unprovoked war of aggression that has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes and led to the deaths of thousands.
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A Frenchman and a Moroccan received heavy prison terms on appeal Friday for an attack plot that was foiled after an intelligence agent posing as a jihadi infiltrated their cyber network.

Yassine Bousseria, 42, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for participation in a terrorist conspiracy to prepare terrorist acts, the same term he had been handed by a lower court in February.

The other man, Hicham El-Hanafi, 31, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, also in line with the lower court ruling.

A third person convicted in the case, Frenchman Hicham Makran, was sentenced to 22 years in jail in February and did not appeal.

The three were tried on charges of joining a terror group with a view to carrying out attacks.

An agent from France’s DGSI domestic intelligence service, using the codename Ulysse, had infiltrated communication networks of Islamic State (IS) group in a ruse that led to the arrest of the three.

The case began in 2016. After intelligence indicating the IS group was seeking to obtain weapons for a “violent action” on French soil, the DGSI agent penetrated an encrypted Telegram messaging loop and make contact with an IS “emir” in Syria, nicknamed Sayyaf.

Sayyaf said the jihadis needed munitions including four Kalashnikovs, which Ulysse said he could supply.

In June 2016, Sayyaf sent Ulysse $16,000 in cash.

With this money, Ulysse then told Sayyaf that he had bought weapons and hid them in a forest north of Paris. The surroundings were then equipped with surveillance cameras.

French intelligence then received information that the two French citizens, who had been around the Turkish-Syrian border, had come home.

They were arrested and found to have a USB key encrypted with the coordinates of the arms cache.
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The free flow of information about Russia’s war on Ukraine was a focus of this year’s TED – Technology, Environment and Design – conference in Vancouver, Canada. It was the first such gathering of esteemed speakers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and architect Alison Killing was among the eclectic group of speakers opening the conference. She won the journalism award for using satellite imagery and open-source information to help uncover detention and forced labor camps in China’s Xinjiang region.

Killing spoke days after reports emerged of satellite imagery showing possible war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine. She told VOA one of the best ways to keep information flowing into Ukraine and Russia is for private citizens in both countries to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, on the internet.

“I think that open-source data and investigations have a really important role to play in helping to provide good information and in providing that information in a way that anyone can go and check it,” she said.

But Killing added that information, as always, must be fact-checked.

Bektour Iskender, who runs Kloop – a blogging website he started in 2007 to counter state-controlled media in Kyrgyzstan – said if governments are going to block websites, the more the better, because that encourages people to start using VPNs and other methods to seek independent sources of information.

“The worst situation, I think, is when a few media outlets are blocked, but like 95% is available, and then people just don’t care about the ones which are blocked, because they still have most of information available,” Iskender said. “But when you have like 50% of media, content blocked, then people start caring.”

Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, said that while social media sites can play an important role in disseminating unfiltered information from sources on the ground, it’s important not to lose focus on who is doing the censoring and why.

“I think people can really get caught up in debates about misinformation on Facebook and, you know, who’s gatekeeping Twitter,” she said. “They can forget that there is a much, much more serious threat, which is authoritarian states, just bottlenecking true information about really, really important issues like Russia’s role in Ukraine right now.”

Billionaire Elon Musk appeared at the conference hours after announcing a $43 billion takeover bid for Twitter. The co-founder of electric car manufacturer Tesla said he would change the social media platform, including allowing users to edit tweets after posting them and making Twitter’s algorithms open source.

Philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates launched his upcoming book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic. He urged developed countries collectively to spend $1 billion a year to prevent future pandemics by creating a team he called Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization, or GERM. The team would be made up of 3,000 doctors, diplomats, and policy and communication experts who would work with the World Health Organization to contain any future pandemic contagions within 100 days.

In an unusual move for the conference, TED head curator Chris Anderson started by asking the assembled crowd and those watching online to donate to five organizations helping with humanitarian relief in Ukraine. A total of $2.15 million was pledged by attendees to help relief efforts in Ukraine.
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Thousands of faithful attended the “Way of the Cross” prayer service, presided over by Pope Francis at Rome’s Colosseum on Friday, a ceremony overtaken by the war in Ukraine.

It was the first time the traditional event on Good Friday, which marks the day Jesus Christ died on the cross in the Christian calendar, was held at the Roman monument since 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also comes two days before Easter, Christianity’s most important holiday.

The pope, who has repeatedly condemned the conflict in Ukraine, and has called for an Easter ceasefire, prayed that the “adversaries shake hands” and “taste mutual forgiveness”.

“Disarm the raised hand of brother against brother,” he said.

“I have lived in Rome for more than 30 years, but today it seemed very important to come,” Stefania Cutolo, a 52-year-old Italian teacher, told AFP as a choir rehearsed for the evening event.

“The message tonight, after two years of closure due to the pandemic, is doubly important. In this context where nationalism is returning to Europe, we must act,” she added.

Shortly after 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), in front of 10,000 faithful, the Pontiff opened this highlight of Holy Week.

Organized since 1964 in the sumptuously illuminated Roman amphitheater, the Way of the Cross event was held in Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican for the last two years, with very low attendances amid the health crisis.

“We meet the whole world here. We hear all languages. It’s marvelous,” enthused Marie-Agnes Bethouart, 71, who arrived at Friday’s event with her husband and two grandsons.

Among the crowd, a yellow and blue flag stood out among the candles. They are the colors of Ukraine. 

Among the families who were entrusted with carrying the crucifix at each of the 14 stations of the cross were two women, one Russian and one Ukrainian, who are life-long friends.

The women carried the cross during one portion of the Way of the Cross, the traditional procession that commemorates the 14 stations of Jesus’ suffering and death, from his condemnation to his burial. 

But the Vatican’s initiative, intended as a gesture of reconciliation in the face of the war that began February 24, was not well received by Ukrainian officials.

On Tuesday, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Bishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, denounced an “inappropriate, premature and ambiguous idea, which does not take into account the context of Russia’s military aggression”. 

For his part, the Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See said he “shared the general concern.”

In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, the Ukrainian media boycotted the broadcast of the ceremony, while the Vatican had added commentary in Ukrainian and Russian for the broadcast.

In the crowd at the event, Anastasia Goncharova, an 18-year-old tourist from Kyiv, said, “I don’t think it’s a really good idea because we are no longer brother nations. They are killing our children, they are raping our children, stealing our house. It’s disgusting”

In the end the two Russian and Ukrainian friends did carry the crucifix together. 

A contemplative silence replaced an original text for the occasion, which was intended to deal more specifically with the war in Ukraine. 

Most of those attending welcomed the Vatican’s Russia-Ukraine initiative.

“It is the cross, and therefore the pain of these two peoples, but also hope, because we believe that after the war there will be peace. It is very beautiful,” said Bethouart.
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The only surviving member of the Islamic State attack team that terrorized Paris in 2015 asked Friday for forgiveness and expressed condolences for the victims, wiping away tears during court testimony as he pleaded with survivors to “detest me with moderation.”

For years, Salah Abdeslam was silent about what happened November 13, 2015, in the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and the national stadium, and the 130 people who were killed. After his trial opened last year, he had a few outbursts of extremist bravado, but for months he refused to answer most questions.

Then this week, his words started flowing, in lengthy testimony that at times contradicted earlier statements. His words at times prompted angry outbursts from the public.

Survivors and victims’ families, who hope the extensive trial helps them find justice and clarity, had mixed reactions.

Abdeslam said the mastermind of the attacks persuaded him two days beforehand to join the team of suicide bombers. The next day, Abdeslam said, his brother Brahim showed him the cafe in northern Paris where Salah was meant to detonate himself in a crowd.

‘I wasn’t ready’

“For me, it was a shock. I didn’t know how to react. I showed that I wasn’t ready for that,” Abdeslam told the court. “He ended up convincing me.”

He recounted donning an explosive belt that night, as his brother and other Islamic State extremists who had fought in Syria were fanned out around Paris mounting parallel attacks.

“I enter the cafe, I order a drink,” Abdeslam said. “I was thinking. I looked at people laughing, dancing. And that’s when I knew that I couldn’t do it.”

“I told myself, ‘I’m not going to do it,’ ” he said, citing a sense of humanity.

A police explosives expert has told the court that the suicide belt was faulty, but Abdeslam testified that he disabled it.

Last month, he expressed regret that he hadn’t followed through on the attack.

But this week, he started showing signs of remorse.

“There are no words for this,” he said.

Tearful plea for forgiveness

Questioned Friday by his lawyer about his mother, and her loss over her older son’s death, Abdeslam started to cry for the first time since the trial began in September, according to French media reports.

“I ask you today to detest me with moderation,” he told the victims. “I offer my condolences, and I ask forgiveness for all the victims.”

He has also repeatedly asked forgiveness of three fellow defendants being tried for helping him escape.

Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola was killed in the Bataclan, was quoted by France-Info radio as saying: “Abdeslam is trying to settle a mountain of contradictions in his head. He’s trying to resolve them, but his path will be long.”

After leaving the cafe, Abdeslam described desperately attempting to reach friends to ask for help and taking a taxi across Paris to the suburb of Montrouge, where he said he removed the detonator from his explosive vest and tossed the vest in a garbage bin. He hid out at first near Paris, then fled with friends to Brussels, where he was arrested four months later.

He faces life in prison if convicted on murder charges.

The more than 2,400 civil parties to the case present their final arguments next month, and the verdict is expected on June 24. It’s among the biggest trials in modern French history.
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It is more than 10,000 kilometers from Medyka, the Polish border city that is a first stop for many Ukrainian refugees, to Tijuana, Mexico, where more than 1,700 Ukrainians are waiting for a chance to cross into the United States.

“They’re arriving as tourists,” says Enrique Lucero Vásquez, the municipal director of migrant care in Tijuana, with whom I spoke in a sports complex that has been repurposed to receive the Ukrainian families.

About 400 people are already housed at the center, where they spend one to two nights before being escorted to the border crossing and admitted by the U.S. Border Patrol.

In 2018 I was in this same place, in an even more congested courtyard, but instead of Ukrainians it was packed with Central American migrants who had journeyed north in a series of caravans. The process this time is as different as the circumstances that led the people to flee their homelands.

As in Medyka — where I reported before coming to Tijuana — many of the refugees are separated from husbands, parents or children. I remember the pain in the face of Yulia Usik, a mother of children aged 4 and 5, when we spoke at the Przemysl train station in Poland.

Through tears, she repeated the words of her husband who had stayed in Ukraine to fight: “He promised that he would come back for us.”

Now history is repeating itself. This time it is at the San Ysidro checkpoint, where Ukrainian volunteers have set up chairs for people waiting to cross, that a mother of a 4-year-old girl and a 5-month-old girl talks to me with the help of a translation phone app.

Without revealing her name, the woman explains that on the first day of the war, after the first bombing, she decided to leave Ukraine. She arrived with her daughters in Poland where she has a sister and after three weeks decided to try to reach the United States, where another sister is living in Springfield, Missouri.

She traveled to Cancun with her daughters, her two sisters and her 56-year-old mother, who sits nearby with a scarf covering her head and a Ukrainian passport in her hand. In the midst of the people and the noise of construction at the border, the woman stares at the horizon, lost in thought.

According to the older daughter, the family has left four men behind in Ukraine to fight the Russian invaders.

Ukrainian Camp

Apart from the sports complex, a tent city has sprung up where about 800 refugees spend the night before traveling by municipal bus to the border crossing. Ukrainian volunteers provide security, food and amusement for the children who run around chasing soap bubbles.

Day and night, the cars line up to cross into San Ysidro, California, beckoned by the American hills visible behind the border wall. Voices rise in Russian and Ukrainian, though the laughter and tears of the children recognize no language barriers.

Lucero, the municipal director of migrant care in Tijuana, tells me the sports complex was opened for the refugees because the tent camp near the Tijuana-San Ysidro crossing had become too crowded.

He acknowledges that the city has responded more quickly to this crisis than to the usual flow of migrants from Central America, Haiti and more remote parts of Mexico. For those, the city maintains another 25 shelters where some have waited for almost two years for a change in American policy that will permit them to seek asylum in the U.S.

He also says some of these Ukrainian refugees have more resources than the Central Americans; some have even been staying in local hotels in the city.

Upon arrival in Tijuana, the refugees are registered by volunteers and placed on a waiting list, explains white-coated Gilberto, who prefers not to provide his surname. We speak in an improvised medical care center in the Ukrainian camp.

“I arrived two weeks ago, before I helped with transportation from the airport, to here or to the other side, but then I came here to help with the medical side,” he says. “Here they are on a priority list, those who came before are here, those who came after stay in the gymnasium, they are gradually moving to the line, but in an orderly manner.”

The coordination of all activities — arrival, transportation, registration, lodging and delivery to the Border Patrol — is managed by a mixed group of volunteers that includes representatives of The Light of the World Church in Sacramento, California, and Calvary Church in San Diego.

The volunteers are deeply committed to ensuring that the families are not only cared for but are quickly admitted into the United States.

To do this, they created a phone app that allows them not only to be registered on a list that will be presented to the Border Patrol, but also to maintain an orderly flow of people through the pedestrian checkpoint.

Anastasiya Polovin, a Ukrainian native now living in Orange County in the Los Angeles area, has left the music academy that she runs to assist her compatriots. Speaking to me in the sports complex, she stresses the importance of providing the refugees with hot food, showers and other basic comforts.

But she says, even more urgent is to speed up the process of admitting them into the United States under a humanitarian exception to normal admission procedures that is not available to most other migrants arriving at the border.

Polovin insists that the humanitarian exception should be available not only here in Tijuana after long journeys and considerable expense. Advocates for the refugees want the government to allow them to fly directly into the United States from Europe.

Polovin shares that she is originally from the besieged southern city of Mikolaiv, where Ukrainian forces halted the Russian advance toward Odesa. “I have lost many people I know,” she says.

Even so, she says, six of her relatives have recently made it into the United States and will join her mother who is already in California. Ironically, one of them was turned down for refugee status in the U.S. two years ago.

“It was not until the war began that he was guaranteed access,” she says.
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A criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website had published content critical of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, Russian media reported on Thursday.

Mikhail Afanasyev, chief editor of Novy Fokus in the Russian region of Khakassia, was arrested by security forces Wednesday over the website’s reporting on 11 riot police who allegedly refused deployment to Ukraine as part of Russia’s military action there.

Afanasyev was accused Thursday of disseminating “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offense which carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence under a law passed last month.

Afanasyev has published numerous investigations into sensitive issues in Khakassia, such as organized crime and alleged abuses of power by local officials.

He was accused of libel in 2009 over reporting that criticized the Russian government’s response to an explosion at the country’s largest hydroelectric plant that year. And in 2016, he reportedly faced death threats from a criminal gang active in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, after he detailed the group’s illegal activities and suspected ties to local police.

Another Siberia-based journalist was also arrested Wednesday on suspicion of breaching Russia’s new laws on media coverage of the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Mikhailov, founder of the LIStok weekly newspaper based in the Republic of Altay, was reportedly placed in pre-trial detention over the outlet’s alleged “calls for sanctions against Russia.”

LIStok’s website has been blocked since March for “promoting” activities opposing Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
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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.

Impacts of Ukraine war reverberate globally

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the developing world is facing a “perfect storm” threatening to devastate many of its economies. He said 1.7 billion people could be affected by disruptions in food, energy and finance systems.

UN Chief: Ukraine War Fallout Threatens Economic Crisis in Developing World

Sexual violence, trafficking growing in Ukrainian conflict

The United Nations said Monday that Ukrainian women and children are at heightened risk of sexual violence, rape and trafficking as reports grow of such violations. U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous told the Security Council that young women and unaccompanied teenagers are at particular risk.

UN: Sexual Violence, Trafficking Increasing in Ukraine War

ICC prosecutor: Ukraine a ‘crime scene’

International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan visited the Ukrainian town of Bucha on Tuesday, as workers dug up bodies wrapped in black plastic bags from mass graves. He said the country has become a “crime scene.” His office has opened an investigation into alleged crimes falling under the court’s jurisdiction.

As Calls Grow for Justice on Ukraine, ICC Steps Forward

Millions of South Sudanese face growing hunger, famine

The U.N. said this week that more than 7 million South Sudanese will be facing a food crisis by July because of floods, drought and armed clashes. About 87,000 people in the Pibor administrative area and parts of Jonglei, Lakes and Unity states are also likely to be at catastrophic levels of famine by July. About 2.9 million people will be just one step lower, at emergency levels.

South Sudan Facing Food Crisis

Move in General Assembly to hold Security Council veto holders accountable

Nearly 40 countries plan to bring a draft resolution to the U.N. General Assembly that seeks to hold the five veto-wielding countries in the Security Council accountable when they exercise that right. If adopted, the resolution would require the General Assembly to meet when one of the five permanent Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia or the United States — uses its veto to block adoption of a council resolution.

UN Security Council Veto Holders Could Face Accountability

African states abstain on Russia resolutions, may signal revival of NAM

Some African nations’ repeated abstentions on U.S.-led resolutions condemning Russia at the United Nations could be a subtle signal for the revival of the Non-Aligned Movement, analysts say.

African States May Be Pushing to Revive Non-Aligned Movement, Analysts Say

In brief

Secretary-General Guterres said Wednesday that despite U.N. efforts, he does not think a nationwide humanitarian cease-fire will happen right now in Ukraine. He is hopeful, however, that several proposals the U.N. made for local cease-fires, humanitarian corridors, humanitarian assistance and civilian evacuations might still be possible, and he is awaiting a response from Russia.

The United Nations warned Thursday that as many as 6 million Somalis could face the risk of famine if the rainy season fails as expected and global food prices continue to rise. Three poor consecutive rainy seasons have deepened the country’s drought, plunging millions of people to crisis levels of food insecurity. Somalia imports 85% of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and the war there has also complicated the country’s food crisis. A humanitarian response plan requesting $1.5 billion is only 4.4% funded.

The U.N. says it continues to be concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Myanmar. More than 900,000 people are displaced, including more than 560,000 who have been uprooted because of violence since the military coup in February 2021. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 35,700 people from Myanmar have crossed into neighboring countries. A humanitarian appeal for $826 million to assist 6.2 million people is only 4% funded.

Quote of note

“When the perpetrators walk free, the survivors walk in fear, carrying the burden of ostracism and shame.”

— Pramila Patten, special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, to the U.N. Security Council on the need for accountability.

What we are watching next week

On April 19, the U.N. Security Council will be briefed on the situation in Ukraine by the director general of the International Organization for Migration as well as by the U.N. Refugee Agency. More than 4.7 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24
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On a day that saw Moscow suffer a stinging symbolic defeat with the loss of its Black Sea fleet flagship, Ukraine’s president hailed his people for their resolve since Russia invaded in February and for making “the most important decision of their life – to fight.” 

In his nightly address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians late Thursday that they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the invaders “gave us a maximum of five.” 

Back then even friendly world leaders urged him to leave, unsure whether Ukraine could survive, he said: “But they didn’t know how brave Ukrainians are, how much we value freedom and the possibility to live the way we want.” 

Listing the ways Ukraine has defended against the onslaught, Zelenskyy noted “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea. 

It was his only reference to the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, named for the Russian capital, which became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war. It sank Thursday while being towed to port after suffering heavy damage under circumstances that remained under dispute. 

Ukrainian officials said their forces struck the vessel with missiles, while Moscow acknowledged a fire on board but not any attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze. In any case, the loss was a symbolic defeat for Russia as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv. 

The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder. Now entering its eighth week, the invasion has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.

During the first days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called on Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender in a standoff. In a widely circulated recording, a soldier responded: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”

The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.

The news about the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war _ at a horrific cost to civilians.

Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP in an interview Thursday that people are being “starved to death” in the besieged city.

Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000, after weeks of attacks and privation carpeted the streets with corpses.

Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.

The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it is likely to add more ground combat units soon. But it’s still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.

Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence  of the rebel regions in the Donbas.

The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.

Maksym Marchenko, governor of the Odesa region, said Ukrainian forces struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the blaze. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged and that the crew, usually numbering about 500, abandoned the vessel. It wasn’t clear if there were any casualties. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.

The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where it was when the fire began.

Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons. 

On Thursday, other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea moved farther south after the Moskva incident, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.

While the U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine’s claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a big blow to Russia.”

“They’ve had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.

Russia invaded Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.

It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.

Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters some 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo, in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia’s Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.

Russia’s state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.

The reports could not be independently verified.
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