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US, Britain say they are aware of unconfirmed reports of a chemical attack in Mariupol and are investigating 
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KIAMBU COUNTY, KENYA — Monica Kariuki is about ready to give up on farming. What is driving her off her about 40,000 square feet (10 acres) of land outside Nairobi isn’t bad weather, pests or blight — the traditional agricultural curses — but fertilizer: It costs too much.

Despite thousands of miles separating her from the battlefields of Ukraine, Kariuki and her cabbage, corn and spinach farm are indirect victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The war has pushed up the price of natural gas, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and has led to severe sanctions against Russia, a major exporter of fertilizer. 

Kariuki used to spend 20,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $175, to fertilize her entire farm. Now, she would need to spend five times as much. Continuing to work the land, she said, would yield nothing but losses.

“I cannot continue with the farming business. I am quitting farming to try something else,” she said. 

Higher fertilizer prices are making the world’s food supply more expensive and less abundant, as farmers skimp on nutrients for their crops and get lower yields. While the ripples will be felt by grocery shoppers in wealthy countries, the squeeze on food supplies will land hardest on families in poorer countries. It could hardly come at a worse time: The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last week that its world food-price index in March reached the highest level since it started in 1990. 

The fertilizer crunch threatens to further limit worldwide food supplies, already constrained by the disruption of crucial grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia. The loss of those affordable supplies of wheat, barley and other grains raises the prospect of food shortages and political instability in Middle Eastern, African and some Asian countries where millions rely on subsidized bread and cheap noodles. “Food prices will skyrocket because farmers will have to make profit, so what happens to consumers?” said Uche Anyanwu, an agricultural expert at the University of Nigeria.

The aid group Action Aid warns that families in the Horn of Africa are already being driven “to the brink of survival.” 

The U.N. says Russia is the world’s No. 1 exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and No. 2 in phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. Its ally Belarus, also contending with Western sanctions, is another major fertilizer producer. 

Many developing countries — including Mongolia, Honduras, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Mexico and Guatemala — rely on Russia for at least a fifth of their imports. 

The conflict also has driven up the already-exorbitant price of natural gas, used to make nitrogen fertilizer. The result: European energy prices are so high that some fertilizer companies “have closed their businesses and stopped operating their plants,” said David Laborde, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute. 

For corn and cabbage farmer Jackson Koeth, 55, of Eldoret in western Kenya, the conflict in Ukraine was distant and puzzling until he had to decide whether to go ahead with the planting season. Fertilizer prices had doubled from last year. 

Koeth said he decided to keep planting but only on half the acreage of years past. Yet he doubts he can make a profit with fertilizer so costly. 

Greek farmer Dimitris Filis, who grows olives, oranges and lemons, said “you have to search to find” ammonia nitrate and that the cost of fertilizing a 10-hectare (25-acre) olive grove has doubled to 560 euros ($310). While selling his wares at an Athens farm market, he said most farmers plan to skip fertilizing their olive and orange groves this year. 

“Many people will not use fertilizers at all, and this as a result, lowers the quality of the production and the production itself, and slowly, slowly at one point, they won’t be able to farm their land because there will be no income,” Filis said. 

In China, the price of potash — potassium-rich salt used as fertilizer — is up 86% from a year earlier. Nitrogen fertilizer prices have climbed 39% and phosphorus fertilizer is up 10%. 

In the eastern Chinese city of Tai’an, the manager of a 35-family cooperative that raises wheat and corn said fertilizer prices have jumped 40% since the start of the year. 

“We can hardly make any money,” said the manager, who would give only his surname, Zhao. 

Terry Farms, which grows produce on about 90,000 000 square feet (2,100 acres) largely in Ventura, California, has seen prices of some fertilizer formulations double; others are up 20%. Shifting fertilizers is risky, Vice President William Terry said, because cheaper versions might not give “the crop what it needs as a food source.” 

As the growing season approaches in Maine, potato farmers are grappling with a 70% to 100% increase in fertilizer prices from last year, depending on the blend. 

“I think it’s going to be a pretty expensive crop, no matter what you’re putting in the ground, from fertilizer to fuel, labor, electrical and everything else,” said Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board. 

In Prudentopolis, a town in Brazil’s Parana state, farmer Edimilson Rickli showed off a warehouse that would normally be packed with fertilizer bags but has only enough to last a few more weeks. He’s worried that, with the war in Ukraine showing no sign of letting up, he’ll have to go without fertilizer when he plants wheat, barley and oats next month. 

“The question is: Where Brazil is going to buy more fertilizer from?” he said. “We have to find other markets.” 

Other countries are hoping to help fill the gaps. Nigeria, for example, opened Africa’s largest fertilizer factory last month, and the $2.5 billion plant has already shipped fertilizer to the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico. 

India, meanwhile, is seeking more fertilizer imports from Israel, Oman, Canada and Saudi Arabia to make up for lost shipments from Russia and Belarus. 

“If the supply shortage gets worse, we will produce less,” said Kishor Rungta of the nonprofit Fertiliser Association of India. “That’s why we need to look for options to get more fertilizers in the country.” 

Agricultural firms are providing support for farmers, especially in Africa where poverty often limits access to vital farm inputs. In Kenya, Apollo Agriculture is helping farmers get fertilizer and access to finance. 

“Some farmers are skipping the planting season and others are going into some other ventures such as buying goats to cope,” said Benjamin Njenga, co-founder of the firm. “So, these support services go a long way for them.” 

Governments are helping, too. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last month that it was issuing $250 million in grants to support U.S. fertilizer production. The Swiss government has released part of its nitrogen fertilizer reserves.

Still, there’s no easy answer to the double whammy of higher fertilizer prices and limited supplies. The next 12 to 18 months, food researcher LaBorde said, “will be difficult.” 

The market already was “super, super tight” before the war, said Kathy Mathers of the Fertilizer Institute trade group. 

“Unfortunately, in many cases, growers are just happy to get fertilizer at all,” she said. 
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Greece’s conservative government on Monday denied any role in an alleged case of surveillance of an investigative journalist via spyware in his mobile phone.

The statement from the government came after Greek investigative website Inside Story on Monday alleged that financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis had had his phone hacked.

Its story cited a three-page report by the Canadian laboratory Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto, which had revealed several cases of this kind of espionage.

Koukakis’ phone had been infected with a spyware called Predator between July 12 and September 24 last year, said the Citizen Lab report.

The malware could not only record conversations but also hack the phone’s passwords, photos, internet history and contacts.

Spokesperson Yannis Economou denied that the government had had any role in the affair, calling for “the competent authorities to do their job to clear up this affair and for justice to be done.”

Posting on Twitter, Koukakis noted the government statement and said he was awaiting the findings of an investigation by the ADAE, the Greek body responsible for communications security and privacy.

His investigations have included series on a Greek bank, expenses claims at the migration ministry, and defense contracts.

The Global network for Independent Journalism tweeted on Monday that it was “alarmed” at reports that the Predator spyware had been used to spy on Koukakis.

“We will be demanding answers from the Greek government,” it added.

This latest affair follows a row last November after the Greek left-wing daily Efsyn published internal intelligence memos on political activists – and on one journalist.

A government minister at the time denied there was any state surveillance of journalists in Greece.

According to Citizen Lab, the Predator malware was developed by a business called Cytrox, which is based in neighboring North Macedonia.

 
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Austria’s chancellor held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, amid warnings that the Kremlin is preparing to launch a large offensive in the eastern Donbas region. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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As in 2017, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen will meet in a runoff later this month, after placing first and second in Sunday’s first round of presidential elections, with about 27% and 23% of the vote, respectively. Macron is favored to win a second term, but polls show a tight race — and a chance for a far-right victory. From Paris, Lisa Bryant reports for VOA.  
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A United Nations agreement aimed at sparing populated areas from explosive weapons is near completion and is expected to be finalized in early June. Some 200 delegates from more than 65 states participated in negotiations last week at the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva. 

The new international agreement would oblige states to reduce harm to civilians by limiting the use of explosive weapons including airstrikes, multi-barrel rocket systems, and mortars in cities and towns.

These weapons are designed for use in open battlefields and have devastating consequences when used in populated areas.

An NGO coalition, the International Network on Explosive Weapons, reports the use of heavy explosive weapons in cities and towns kills and wounds tens of thousands of civilians every year and lays waste to civilian infrastructure.

This is borne out by recent data from Ukraine, Ethiopia, Iraq, Gaza, Yemen, and Syria where 90 percent of the victims were civilians.

Despite the heavy toll caused by these weapons, the network reports that several states, including Belgium, Canada, Israel, Turkey, Britain, and the United States, sought to weaken the text of the agreement.

The coordinator of the International Network on Explosive Weapons, Laura Boillot, says these states argue that the new agreement should re-affirm what International Humanitarian Law already obliges them to do and not go beyond that.

Without mentioning Russia by name, Boillot says more is needed.

“The situation in Ukraine, where we are seeing extensive use and widespread use of a range of different explosive weapons from air-dropped bombs, rocket systems missiles into major towns and cities in Ukraine is making it very difficult for States to not take this issue seriously,” she said.

Boillot notes there were strong calls for a more humanitarian-centered text by states such as Chile and Mexico, Togo and Nigeria, as well as Austria and New Zealand.

Alma Taslidzan is the network’s civilian advocacy manager. She says discussions are still ongoing regarding the extent of assistance to victims. She says any assistance should include people injured, and families of those killed and injured.

“It includes that ensuring basic needs are met and safe access to provisions of first medical care, emergence medical care, because that is very important. Then physical rehabilitation to those that have lost their limbs. Psycho-social support is something that is often forgotten but is extremely important and has to be tackled,” she said.

Russia and Syria have stayed away from the talks. China also did not participate in this negotiating round, although they have taken part previously in the process. Network activists say they hope to see China involved when final discussions are held in June.
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Russian former reporter Ivan Safronov said ahead of the resumption of his treason trial on Monday that he plans to vigorously fight the charges against him and does not fear the prospect of being jailed.

Safronov, who covered military affairs for the Vedomosti and Kommersant newspapers before becoming an aide to the head of Russia’s space agency two months before his arrest in July 2020, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

He denies accusations of passing military secrets about Russian arms sales in the Middle East and Africa to the Czech Republic, a NATO member, while he worked as a reporter in 2017, calling them “a complete travesty of justice and common sense.”

His detention sent a chill through Russia’s media landscape, where controls were already tight and have been tightened further since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

His trial resumes behind closed doors later on Monday.

Striking a defiant tone in personal correspondence seen by Reuters on Monday, Safronov said he harbored no illusions about the prospect of being imprisoned for his alleged offenses.

“I will fight until the end, there is no doubt about that,” Safronov wrote in a letter sent from Moscow’s Lefortovo prison and dated March 26.

“If it’s a prison term, then it’s a prison term. It absolutely doesn’t scare me,” said the letter, shown to Reuters on condition the addressee remained anonymous.

Safronov has said state investigators pointed to his acquaintance with a Czech journalist he met in Moscow in 2010 who later set up a website which Safronov said he contributed to using information entirely based on open sources.

Since sending troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Moscow has introduced a law outlawing the use of certain terms to describe its military intervention in Ukraine, which it calls a “special military operation.”

That prompted many independent media outlets to close or relocate.
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Ukrainian leader urges US to send more weapons
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Macron and Le Pen in runoff vote April 24
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As the hospital train sped away from the frontline in war-torn Ukraine, electrician Evhen Perepelytsia was grateful he would soon see his children again after almost losing his life.

“We hope that the worst is over — that after what I’ve been through, it will be better,” the 30-year-old said, lying on a train carriage bed swaddled in a grey blanket.

He was among 48 wounded and elderly patients to be evacuated from embattled east Ukraine this weekend, pulling up in the western city of Lviv Sunday evening after a long trip overnight.

The evacuation was the first from the east since a Russian strike killed 52 people among thousands waiting for the train at the eastern railway station of Kramatorsk on Friday.

And it was the fourth to be organized by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Inside one of the carriages turned ward-on-wheels, Perepelytsya recounted how he lost his leg to shelling in his hometown of Hirske in the eastern region of Luhansk.

He was standing outside and had just discussed abandoning their home to join their children in the west of the country, he said.

“I took one step forward, and when I made the second, I fell,” he said. “It turned out that it hit very close to me, hit a monument, and a fragment from it tore off my leg.”

Sitting on the end of his bed, his wife, Yuliya, 29, said she had been terrified she would lose him.

“He was unconscious twice in the intensive care unit,” she said. “We couldn’t save his leg, but we saved his life.”

She said their three children were waiting in Lviv with their grandmother.

“We’re not going back,” she said.

The United Nations says at least 1,793 civilians have been killed and 2,439 wounded since Russia launched its invasion, but the actual tally is likely much higher.

More than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

The Ukrainian authorities have in recent days urged all residents in the east of the country to flee westwards to safety as they fear Moscow will unleash the full force of its military there after setbacks around the capital Kyiv.

As the blue carriages pulled into Lviv, medics carried those who were unable to walk on stretchers into waiting ambulances and helped the others on foot or in wheelchairs onto buses.

In one bus, 77-year-old Paraskevia sat patiently with a large white bandage on her eye, and a net over her head to keep it in place.

“My eye hurts,” said the elderly lady from the village of Novodruzhesk in Luhansk, who did not give her second name.

“But the doctors on the train were great,” she added, of the 13 staff members on board, most of them Ukrainian.

In front of her, a 67-year-old who gave his name as Ivan said he had to wait in a basement for two days after being shot in the street.

Neighbors in the town of Popasna, also in Luhansk, bandaged him up as best they could until the medics could arrive.

On the platform, MSF train hospital coordinator Jean-Clement Cabrol caught his breath.

The train had successfully ferried 48 people to safety, but still many more needed help, the doctor said.

Earlier in the war, a first train had traveled to Zaporizhzhia to pick up three families who were wounded while trying to flee the besieged port city of Mariupol.

After that, two operations whisked dozens of patients — mostly elderly people — out of Kramatorsk, leaving just days before the deadly Russian attack.

By the tracks on Sunday evening, the doctor said another train would soon depart to continue evacuations as long as it was possible.

“We are heading back tonight,” he said.
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Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.

Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.

The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.

The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China’s growing global reach.

“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” wrote The Warzone online magazine. “The Y-20’s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”

Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that “the Chinese carried out their demonstration of force.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic all but confirmed the delivery of the medium-range system that was agreed in 2019, saying on Saturday that he will present “the newest pride” of the Serbian military on Tuesday or Wednesday.

He had earlier complained that NATO countries, which represent most of Serbia’s neighbors, are refusing to allow the system’s delivery flights over their territories amid tensions over Russia’s aggression on Ukraine.

Although Serbia has voted in favor of U.N. resolutions that condemn the bloody Russian attacks in Ukraine, it has refused to join international sanctions against its allies in Moscow or outright criticize the apparent atrocities committed by the Russian troops there.

Back in 2020, U.S. officials warned Belgrade against the purchase of HQ-22 anti-aircraft systems, whose export version is known as FK-3. They said that if Serbia really wants to join the European Union and other Western alliances, it must align its military equipment with Western standards.

The Chinese missile system has been widely compared to the American Patriot and the Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems although it has a shorter range than more advanced S-300s. Serbia will be the first operator of the Chinese missiles in Europe.

Serbia was at war with its neighbors in the 1990s. The country, which is formally seeking EU membership, has already been boosting its armed forces with Russian and Chinese arms, including warplanes, battle tanks and other equipment.

In 2020, it took delivery of Chengdu Pterodactyl-1 drones, known in China as Wing Loong. The combat drones are able to strike targets with bombs and missiles and can be used for reconnaissance tasks.

There are fears in the West that the arming of Serbia by Russia and China could encourage the Balkan country toward another war, especially against its former province of Kosovo that proclaimed independence in 2008. Serbia, Russia and China don’t recognize Kosovo’s statehood, while the United States and most Western countries do.
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Pope Francis opened Holy Week Sunday with a call for an Easter truce in Ukraine to make room for a negotiated peace, highlighting the need for leaders to “make some sacrifices for the good of the people.”

Celebrating Palm Sunday Mass before crowds in St. Peter’s Square for the first time since the pandemic, Pope Francis called for “weapons to be laid down to begin an Easter truce, not to reload weapons and resume fighting, no! A truce to reach peace through real negotiations.”

Francis did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the reference was clear, and he has repeatedly denounced the war and the suffering brought to innocent civilians.

During the traditional Sunday blessing following Palm Sunday Mass, the pontiff said leaders should be “willing to make some sacrifices for the good of the people.”

“In fact, what a victory would that be, who plants a flag under a pile of rubble?” he said.

During his Palm Sunday homily, the pontiff denounced “the folly of war” that leads people to commit “senseless acts of cruelty.”

“When we resort to violence … we lose sight of why we are in the world and even end up committing senseless acts of cruelty. We see this in the folly of war, where Christ is crucified yet another time,” he said.

Francis lamented “the unjust death of husbands and sons” … “refugees fleeing bombs” … “young people deprived of a future” … and “soldiers sent to kill their brothers and sisters.”

After two years of celebrating Palm Sunday Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica without a crowd due to pandemic distancing measures, the solemn celebration returned to the square outside. Tens of thousands pilgrims and tourists clutched olive branches and braided palms emblematic of the ceremony that recalls Jesus’ return to Jerusalem.

Traditionally, the pope leads a Palm Sunday procession through St. Peter’s Square before celebrating Mass. Francis has been suffering from a strained ligament in his right knee that has caused him to limp, and he was driven in a black car to the altar, which he then reached with the help of an aide. He left the Mass on the open-top popemobile, waving to the faithful in the piazza and along part of the via della Conciliazione.

Palm Sunday opens Holy Week leading up to Easter, which this year falls on April 17, and features the Good Friday Way of the Cross Procession.
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Ukraine’s president says Russia’s ongoing and unprovoked war on his country is a “catastrophe” that endangers all of Europe. The Kremlin seems to have abandoned plans to topple the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, amid the war, now in its second month. Western powers describe retreating Russian soldiers as war criminals for alleged atrocities ranging from rape to execution-style murders of civilians. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. WARNING: Some viewers may find images in this story disturbing.
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Russian forces shelled a school and residential buildings in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, local Luhansk officials reported, even as the officials implored residents to escape the region “before it’s too late.”

Luhansk Governor Serihy Haidai said three apartment buildings in Severodonetsk burned down and two elderly residents had to be evacuated, but there were no casualties.

Separately, Dnipro Governor Valentyn Reznichenko, in southeastern Ukraine, said Russian forces struck targets across the region, wounding one person.

Ukrainian officials and the state railway announced new evacuation routes but voiced fears that the Russian missile attack Friday on a railway station in Kramatorsk that killed 52 people might be scaring off some Ukrainians from trying to flee the region by rail.

The continuing Russian assault on eastern Ukraine was in marked contrast to the scene in Kyiv, the capital in the country’s north. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Saturday strolled through streets that Russia recently controlled or were under near constant attacks before Moscow pulled its troops to concentrate its attacks on the eastern Donbas region.

Johnson said Britain would send 120 more armored vehicles and new anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, part of the West’s continuing military support of Ukraine, short of sending troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces.

Zelenskyy has continued to contend that the West is not doing enough to help Ukraine, but U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended what it has done.

“The speed, scale and scope to equip the Ukrainian army is unprecedented,” Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday. He said the United States “will continue to rally the world” to assist Ukraine.

Sullivan said the Kremlin miscalculated in its February 24 invasion in thinking it would “be welcomed with open arms” into Ukraine.

“But what we have learned,” Sullivan said, “is that Ukraine will never be subject to Russia.”

In a separate interview, Sullivan told ABC’s “This Week” show that Russia was, in part, forced to acknowledge “significant” troop losses this past week because it did not take over Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine as it had expected to quickly accomplish.

Even as it moved troops to eastern Ukraine, Russia left behind a trail of destruction near Kyiv, with hundreds of Ukrainian civilians killed in the suburb of Bucha and elsewhere.

Sullivan said the U.S. believes that the massacre of some civilians was carried out by individual Russian troops “frustrated” at their inability to take control of the region around Kyiv.

He said, however, that responsibility for the slaughter of Ukrainian civilians “lies at the feet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There was a plan from the highest levels of the Russian government to target” Ukrainian civilians, Sullivan said. “This is something that was planned.”

He said the U.S. would continue to “squeeze the Russian economy” with sanctions, projecting that its economy will shrink by 10- to 15% this year, diminishing it sharply as a world economic power.

In Rome, Pope Francis celebrated Palm Sunday and opened Holy Week by calling for an Easter truce in Ukraine leading to a negotiated peace. He said leaders needed to “make some sacrifices for the good of the people.”

Celebrating Mass before crowds in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis called for “weapons to be laid down to begin an Easter truce, not to reload weapons and resume fighting, no! A truce to reach peace through real negotiations.”

Zelenskyy warned Saturday in his nightly address that Russian aggression is “not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone. To the destruction of our freedom and our lives alone.” The president cautioned, “The whole European project is a target for Russia.”

Ukraine has opened 5,600 war crimes cases since Russia’s invasion, top prosecutor Iryna Venediktova said Sunday, but the country will face a struggle getting Russian officials to court.

She called the missile strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region, “absolutely … a war crime.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after seeing the devastation in Bucha, said, “If this is not a war crime, what is a war crime? But I am a medical doctor by training and lawyers have to investigate carefully.”

Russian officials have called the Bucha killings a “monstrous forgery.”

The Russian invasion has forced more than 10 million people from their homes in Ukraine or from the country and killed and maimed thousands.
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For many in the U.K., the pandemic may as well be over.

Mask requirements have been dropped. Free mass testing is a thing of the past. And for the first time since spring 2020, people can go abroad for holidays without ordering tests or filling out lengthy forms.

That sense of freedom is widespread even as infections soared in Britain in March, driven by the milder but more transmissible omicron BA.2 variant that’s rapidly spreading around Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere.

The situation in the U.K. may portend what lies ahead for other countries as they ease coronavirus restrictions.

France and Germany have seen similar spikes in infections in recent weeks, and the number of hospitalizations in the U.K. and France has again climbed — though the number of deaths per day remains well below levels seen earlier in the pandemic.

In the U.S., more and more Americans are testing at home, so official case numbers are likely a vast undercount. The roster of those newly infected includes actors and politicians, who are tested regularly. Cabinet members, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Broadway actors and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have all tested positive.

Britain stands out in Europe because it ditched all mitigation policies in February, including mandatory self-isolation for those infected. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative government is determined to stick to its “living with COVID” plan, but experts disagree on whether the country is coping well.

Some scientists argue it’s the right time to accept that “living with COVID” means tolerating a certain level of disruption and deaths, much like we do for seasonal flu.

Others believe that Britain’s government lifted restrictions too quickly and too soon.

They warned that deaths and hospital admissions could keep rising because more people over 55 — those who are most likely to get seriously ill from COVID-19 — are now getting infected despite high levels of vaccination.

Hospitals are again under strain, both from patients with the virus and huge numbers of staff off sick, said National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis.

“Blinding ourselves to this level of harm does not constitute living with a virus infection — quite the opposite,” said Stephen Griffin, a professor in medicine at the University of Leeds. “Without sufficient vaccination, ventilation, masking, isolation and testing, we will continue to ‘live with’ disruption, disease and sadly, death, as a result.”

Others, like Paul Hunter, a medicine professor at the University of East Anglia, are more supportive of the government’s policies.

“We’re still not at the point where (COVID-19) is going to be least harmful … but we’re over the worst,” he said. Once a high vaccination rate is achieved there is little value in maintaining restrictions such as social distancing because “they never ultimately prevent infections, only delay them,” he argued.

Britain’s official statistics agency estimated that almost 5 million U.K. residents, or 1 in 13, had the virus in late March, the most it had reported. Separately, the REACT study from London’s Imperial College said its data showed that the country’s infection levels in March were 40% higher than the first omicron peak in January.

Infection rates are so high that airlines had to cancel flights during the busy two-week Easter break because too many workers were calling in sick.

France and Germany have seen similar surges as restrictions eased in most European countries. More than 100,000 people in France were testing positive every day despite a sharp dropoff in testing, and the number of virus patients in intensive care rose 22% over the past week.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government, keen to encourage voter turnout in April elections, is not talking about any new restrictions.

In Germany, infection levels have drifted down from a recent peak. But Health Minister Karl Lauterbach backed off a decision to end mandatory self-isolation for infected people just two days after it was announced. He said the plan would send a “completely wrong” signal that “either the pandemic is over or the virus has become significantly more harmless than was assumed in the past.”

In the U.S., outbreaks at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University are bringing back mask requirements to those campuses as officials seek out quarantine space.

Across Europe, only Spain and Switzerland have joined the U.K. in lifting self-isolation requirements for at least some infected people.

But many European countries have eased mass testing, which will make it much harder to know how prevalent the virus is. Britain stopped distributing free rapid home tests this month.

Julian Tang, a flu virologist at the University of Leicester, said that while it’s important to have a surveillance program to monitor for new variants and update the vaccine, countries cope with flu without mandatory restrictions or mass testing.

“Eventually, COVID-19 will settle down to become more endemic and seasonal, like flu,” Tang said. “Living with COVID, to me, should mimic living with flu.”

Cambridge University virologist Ravindra Gupta is more cautious. Mortality rates for COVID-19 are still far higher than seasonal flu and the virus causes more severe disease, he warned. He would have preferred “more gentle easing of restrictions.”

“There’s no reason to believe that a new variant would not be more transmissible or severe,” he added.
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Polls opened across France on Sunday for the first round of the country’s presidential election, where up to 48 million eligible voters will be choosing between 12 candidates.

President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a second five-year term, with a strong challenge from the far right.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. Sunday and close at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT) in most places and an hour later in some larger cities.

Unless someone gets more than half of the nationwide vote, there will be a second and decisive round between the top two candidates on April 24.

Aside from Macron, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon are among the prominent figures vying to take the presidential Elysee.

Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages as the pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices roared back as dominant election themes for many low-income households. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.

Macron trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker — now 44 — was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.

With populist Viktor Orban winning a fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister days ago, eyes have now turned to France’s resurgent far right candidates — especially National Rally leader Le Pen, who wants to ban Muslim headscarves in streets and halal and kosher butchers, and drastically reduce immigration from outside Europe. This election has the potential to reshape France’s post-war identity and indicate whether European populism is ascendant or in decline.

Meanwhile, if Macron wins, it will be seen as a victory for the European Union.

Observers say a Macron re-election would spell real likelihood for increased cooperation and investment in European security and defense — especially with a new pro-EU German government.

With war singeing the EU’s eastern edge, French voters will be casting ballots in a presidential election whose outcome will have international implications. France is the 27-member bloc’s second economy, the only one with a U.N. Security Council veto, and its sole nuclear power. And as Russian President Vladimir Putin carries on with the war in Ukraine, French power will help shape Europe’s response.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has afforded Macron the chance to demonstrate his influence on the international stage and burnish his pro-NATO credentials in election debates.

Macron is the only front-runner who supports the alliance while other candidates hold differing views on France’s role within it. Melenchon is among those who want to abandon it altogether, saying it produces nothing but squabbles and instability.

Such a development would deal a huge blow to an alliance built to protect its members in the emerging Cold War 73 years ago.
…

From the market stall outside Paris that she’s run for 40 years, Yvette Robert can see firsthand how soaring prices are weighing on France’s presidential election and turning the first round of voting Sunday into a nail-biter for incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.

Shoppers, increasingly worried about how to make ends meet, are buying ever-smaller quantities of Robert’s neatly stacked fruits and vegetables, she says. And some of her clients no longer come at all to the market for its baguettes, cheeses and other tasty offerings. Robert suspects that with fuel prices so high, some can no longer afford to take their vehicles to shop.

“People are scared — with everything that’s going up, with prices for fuel going up,” she said Friday as campaigning concluded for act one of the two-part French election drama, held against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages. The pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices that are hitting low-income households particularly hard subsequently roared back as dominant election themes. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.

Macron, now 44, trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker who, unlike Le Pen, is a fervent proponent of European collaboration was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.

In courting voters, Macron has economic successes to point to: The French economy is rebounding faster than expected from the battering of COVID-19, with a 2021 growth rate of 7%, the highest since 1969. Unemployment is down to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II, Macron also got a polling bump, with people rallying around the wartime leader.

But the 53-year-old Le Pen is a now a more polished, formidable and savvy political foe as she makes her third attempt to become France’s first woman president. And she has campaigned particularly hard and for months on cost-of-living concerns, capitalizing on the issue that pollsters say is foremost on voters’ minds.

Le Pen also pulled off two remarkable feats. Despite her plans to sharply curtail immigration and dial back some rights for Muslims in France, she nevertheless appears to have convinced growing numbers of voters that she is no longer the dangerous, racist nationalist extremist that critics, including Macron, accuse her of being.

She’s done that partly by diluting some of her rhetoric and fieriness. She also had outside help: A presidential run by Eric Zemmour, an even more extreme far-right rabble-rouser with repeated convictions for hate speech, has had the knock-on benefit for Le Pen of making her look almost mainstream by comparison.

Secondly, and also stunning: Le Pen has adroitly sidestepped any significant blowback for her previous perceived closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She went to the Kremlin to meet him during her last presidential campaign in 2017. But in the wake of the war in Ukraine, that potential embarrassment doesn’t appear to have turned Le Pen’s supporters against her. She has called the invasion “absolutely indefensible” and said Putin’s behavior cannot be excused “in any way.”

At her market stall, Robert says she plans to vote Macron, partly because of the billions of euros (dollars) that his government doled out at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep people, businesses and France’s economy afloat. When food markets closed, Robert got 1,500 euros ($1,600) a month to tide her over.

“He didn’t leave anyone by the side of the road,” she says of Macron.

But she thinks that this time, Le Pen has a chance, too.

“She has changed the way she speaks,” Robert said. “She has learned to moderate herself.”

Barring a monumental surprise, both Macron and Le Pen are expected to advance again from the first-round field of 12 candidates, to set up a winner-takes-all rematch in the second-round vote April 24. Polls suggest that far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is likely to finish out of the running in third place. Some of France’s overseas territories in the Pacific, the Caribbean and South America vote Saturday, before Sunday voting on the French mainland.

When Macron made a campaign stop in Poissy, the town west of Paris where Robert has her stall, in early March, pollsters had him leading Le Pen by double digits. Although a Le Pen victory still appears improbable, much of Macron’s advantage has subsequently evaporated. Kept busy by the war in Ukraine, Macron may be paying a price for his somewhat subdued campaign, which made him look aloof to some voters.

Marketgoer Marie-Helene Hirel, a 64-year-old retired tax collector, voted for Macron in 2017 but said she’s too angry with him to do so again. Struggling on her pension with rising prices, Hirel said she is thinking of switching her vote to Le Pen, who has promised fuel and energy tax cuts that Macron says would be ruinous.

Although Le Pen’s “relations with Putin worry me,” Hirel said that voting for her would be a way of protesting against Macron and what she perceives as his failure to better protect people from the sting of inflation.

“Now I’m also part of the ‘all against Macron’ camp,” she said. “He is making fools of us all.” 
…

There is a body in the basement of the abandoned yellow home at the end of the street near the railroad tracks. The man is young, pale, a dried trickle of blood by his mouth, shot to death and left in the dark, and no one knows why the Russians brought him there, to a home that wasn’t his.

There is a pile of toys near the stairs to the basement. Plastic clothespins sway on an empty line under a cold, gray sky. They are all that’s left of normal on this blackened end of the street in Bucha, where tank treads lay stripped from charred vehicles, civilian cars are crushed, and ammunition boxes are stacked beside empty Russian military rations and liquor bottles.

The man in the basement is almost an afterthought, one more body in a town where death is abundant, but satisfactory explanations for it are not.

A resident, Mykola Babak, points out the man after pondering the scene in a small courtyard nearby. Three men lay there. One is missing an eye. On an old carpet near one body, someone has placed a handful of yellow flowers.

At the beginning

Babak stands, a cigarette in one hand, a plastic bag of cat food in the other.

“I’m very calm today,” he said. “I shaved for the first time.”

At the beginning of their monthlong occupation of Bucha, he said, the Russians kept pretty much to themselves, focused on forward progress. When that stalled, they went house to house looking for young men, sometimes taking documents and phones. Ukrainian resistance seemed to wear on them. The Russians seemed angrier, more impulsive. Sometimes they seemed drunk.

The first time they visited Babak, they were polite. But when they returned on his birthday, March 28, they screamed at him and his brother-in-law. They put a grenade to the brother-in-law’s armpit and threatened to pull the pin. They took an AK-47 and fired near Babak’s feet. “Let’s kill him,” one of them said, but another Russian told them to leave it and go.

Before they left, the Russians asked him: “Why are you still here?”

Like many who stayed in Bucha, Babak is older, 61. It was not as easy to leave. He thought he would be spared. And yet, in the end, the Russians accused him of being a saboteur. He spent a month under occupation without electricity, without running water, cooking over a fire. He was not prepared for this war.

Maybe the Russians weren’t either.

Around 6 p.m. on March 31, and Babak remembers this clearly, the Russians jumped into their vehicles and left, so quickly that they abandoned the bodies of their companions.

“On this street we were fine,” Mykola said. In Bucha, everything is relative. “They weren’t shooting anyone who stepped out of their house. On the next street, they did.”

Witnesses to the occupation

Walking through Bucha, The Associated Press met two dozen witnesses of the Russian occupation. Almost everyone said they saw a body, sometimes several more. Civilians were killed, mostly men, sometimes picked off at random. Many, including the elderly, say they themselves were threatened.

The question that survivors, investigators and the world would like to answer is why. Ukraine has seen the horrors of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and nearby Irpin. But the images from this town an hour’s drive from Kyiv have seared themselves into global consciousness like no other. Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said the count of dead civilians was 320 as of Wednesday.

Vladyslav Minchenko is an artist who helps to collect the bodies.

“It certainly appears to be very, very deliberate. But it’s difficult to know what more motivation was behind this,” a senior U.S. defense official said this week, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the military assessment.

The residents of Bucha, as they venture out of cold homes and basements, offer theories. Some believe the Russians weren’t ready for an extended fight or had especially undisciplined fighters. Some believe the house-to-house targeting of younger men was a hunt for those who had fought the Russians in recent years in separatist-held eastern Ukraine and had been given housing in the town.

By the end, discipline broke down.

Threats and worse

Grenades were tossed into basements, bodies thrown into wells. Women in their 70s were told not to stick their heads out of their houses or they’d be killed.

“If you leave home, I’ll obey the order, and you know what the order is. I’ll burn your house,” Tetyana Petrovskaya recalls one soldier telling her.

At first, the Russians behaved, said Nataliya Aleksandrova, 63. “They said they had come for three days.” Then they got hungry. They got cold. They started to loot. They shot TV screens for no reason.

They feared there were spies among the Ukrainians. Aleksandrova says her nephew was detained on March 7 after being spotted filming destroyed tanks with his phone. Four days later, he was found in a basement, shot in the ear.

Days later, thinking the Russians were gone, Aleksandrova and a neighbor slipped out to shutter nearby homes and protect them from looting. The Russians caught them and took them to a basement.

“They asked us, ‘Which type of death do you prefer, slow or fast?'” Grenade or gun? They were given 30 seconds to decide. Suddenly the soldiers were called away, leaving Aleksandrova and her neighbor shaken but alive.

The Russians became desperate when it became clear they wouldn’t be able to move on Kyiv, said Sergei Radetskiy. The soldiers were just thinking about how to loot and get out.

“They needed to kill someone,” he said. “And killing civilians is very easy.” 
…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that he is committed to pressing for peace despite Russian attacks on civilians that have stunned the world, and he renewed his plea for countries to send more weapons ahead of an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east.

He made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press a day after at least 52 people were killed in a strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, and as evidence of civilian killings came to light after Russian troops failed to seize the capital where he has hunkered down, Kyiv.

“No one wants to negotiate with a person or people who tortured this nation. It’s all understandable. And as a man, as a father, I understand this very well,” Zelenskyy said. But “we don’t want to lose opportunities, if we have them, for a diplomatic solution.”

Wearing the olive drab that has marked his transformation into a wartime leader, he looked visibly exhausted yet animated by a drive to persevere. He spoke to the AP inside the presidential office complex, where windows and hallways are protected by towers of sandbags and heavily armed soldiers.

“We have to fight, but fight for life. You can’t fight for dust when there is nothing and no people. That’s why it is important to stop this war,” he said.

Russian troops that withdrew from northern Ukraine are now regrouping for what is expected to be an intensified push to retake the eastern Donbas region, including the besieged port city of Mariupol that Ukrainian fighters are striving to defend.

Zelenskyy said he is confident Ukrainians would accept peace despite the horrors they have witnessed in the more than six-week-long war.

Those included gruesome images of bodies of civilians found in yards, parks and city squares and buried in mass graves in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after Russian troops withdrew. Ukrainian and Western leaders have accused Moscow of war crimes.

Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged. It also put the blame on Ukraine for the attack on the train station as thousands of people rushed to flee ahead of an expected Russian offensive.

Despite hopes for peace, Zelenskyy acknowledged that he must be “realistic” about the prospects for a swift resolution given that negotiations have so far been limited to low-level talks that do not include Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy displayed a palpable sense of resignation and frustration when asked whether the supplies of weapons and other equipment his country has received from the United States and other Western nations was en

ough to turn the tide of the war. “Not yet,” he said, switching to English for emphasis. “Of course it’s not enough.”

Still, he noted that there has been increased support from Europe and said deliveries of U.S. weapons have been accelerating.

Just this week, neighboring Slovakia, a European Union member, donated its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in response to Zelenskyy’s appeal to help “close the skies” to Russian warplanes and missiles.

Some of that support has come through visits by European leaders.

After meeting Zelenskyy in Kyiv earlier Saturday, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he expects more EU sanctions against Russia even as he defended his country’s opposition so far to cutting off deliveries of Russian natural gas.

The U.S., EU and United Kingdom responded to the images from Bucha with more sanctions, including targeting Putin’s adult daughters. While the EU went after the Russian energy sector for the first time by banning coal, it has so far failed to agree on cutting off the much more lucrative oil and natural gas funding Putin’s war chest, but that Europe relies on to generate electricity, fill fuel tanks and keep industry churning.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also made an unannounced visit to meet Zelenskyy, with his office saying they discussed Britain’s “long-term support.”

In Kyiv, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented Ukraine’s leader Friday with a questionnaire marking the first step for applying for EU membership. The head of the bloc’s executive arm said the process for completing the questionnaire could take weeks — an unusually fast turnaround — though securing membership would take far longer.

Zelenskyy turned introspective when asked what impact the pace of arms deliveries had for his people and whether more lives could have been saved if the help had come sooner.

“Very often we look for answers in someone else, but I often look for answers in myself. Did we do enough to get them?” he said of the weapons. “Did we do enough for these leaders to believe in us? Did we do enough?”

He paused and shook his head.

“Are we the best for this place and this time? Who knows? I don’t know. You question yourself,” he said. 
…

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Saturday joined the stream of European leaders showing their support for Ukraine by traveling to the nation’s capital for face-to-face meetings with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Johnson’s surprise visit included a pledge of new military assistance, including 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems. This came a day after he promised to send an additional 100 million pounds ($130 million) of high-grade military equipment to Ukraine, saying Britain wanted to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.

Johnson also confirmed further economic support, guaranteeing an additional $500 million in World Bank lending to Ukraine, taking Britain’s total loan guarantee to up to $1 billion.

“Today I met my friend President @ZelenskyyUa in Kyiv as a show of our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine,” Johnson said on Twitter. “We’re setting out a new package of financial & military aid which is a testament of our commitment to his country’s struggle against Russia’s barbaric campaign.”

The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said “the conversation was rich and constructive,” but offered no details.

An image of the two leaders meeting was posted online by the Ukrainian Embassy in London with the headline: “Surprise,” and a winking smiley face.

The package of military aid Britain announced Friday includes more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.

“Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century,” Johnson said in a statement. “It is because of President Zelenskyy’s resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people that Putin’s monstrous aims are being thwarted.”

As Zelenskyy makes a continuous round of virtual appearances to drum up support from lawmakers around the world, an increasing number of European leaders have decided the time is right to travel to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for in-person talks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was in Kyiv on Friday, following earlier visits from the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers.

Nehammer met with Zelenskyy earlier Saturday and pledged that the EU would continue to ratchet up sanctions against Russia “until the war stops.”

“As long as people are dying, every sanction is still insufficient,” he said, adding that Austrian embassy staff will return to Kyiv from western Ukraine.

Von der Leyen, who heads the European Union’s executive branch, traveled to Warsaw on Saturday to lead a fundraising event for Ukraine. She was joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda, with Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appearing by video link.

At the end of the 90-minute meeting, von der Leyen said 10.1 billion euros ($11 billion) had been raised for Ukrainian refugees.

The event was held in Warsaw because more than 2.5 million of the 4.4 million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began February 24 have entered Poland. Many have stayed, though some have moved on to other countries.

Convened jointly by von der Leyen and Trudeau, the event sought to attract pledges from governments, global celebrities and average citizens.

It ended with Julian Lennon singing his father John Lennon’s peace song “Imagine,” which he said is the first time he did so publicly.

Julian Lennon posted on social media that he always said he would only sing the song if it was the “end of the world.” He says it’s the right song to sing now because “the war on Ukraine is an unimaginable tragedy,” and he felt compelled to respond in the most significant way that he could.
…

The discovery of civilian bodies in Ukrainian towns has “permanently polluted” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reputation, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a visit to Kyiv on Saturday.

“What Putin has done in places like Bucha and Irpin is war crimes that have permanently polluted his reputation and the reputation of his government,” Johnson said, standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Johnson became the latest European leader to visit Kyiv this weekend after the bodies were discovered in several towns from where the Russian army retreated.  

Ukraine ‘defied odds’  

Johnson praised Ukraine for “defying odds” and rebuffing a Russian offensive on Kyiv.

“The Russians believed Ukraine could be engulfed in a matter of days and that Kyiv would falls in hours to their armies,” he said, referring to Western intelligence.  

“How wrong they were,” he said.

The Ukrainian people have “shown the courage of a lion,” he added.

“The world has found new heroes and those heroes are the people of Ukraine,” Johnson said.

After talks with Zelenskyy, Johnson vowed U.K. armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy called on the West to follow the U.K. in providing military aid to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia.

“Other Western democratic countries should follow the U.K.’s example,” Zelenskyy said after talks with Johnson.  

“It is because of President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people that [Vladimir] Putin’s monstrous aims are being thwarted,” Johnson said after meeting Zelenskyy, according to a Downing Street statement.

Military aid

Johnson set out extra military aid of 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems, “to support Ukraine in this crucial phase while Russia’s illegal assault continues,” the statement added.

That is on top of U.K. aid announced Friday of more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles and another 800 anti-tank missiles, along with “loitering” drones for “precision strikes” against the Russians.

As world powers held a fundraising round for Ukraine, Johnson also promised an extra $500 million via the World Bank.

Johnson said it had been a “privilege” to meet Zelenskyy in person on his surprise visit, which was not pre-announced in London.

“Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century,” he said.

“I made clear today that the United Kingdom stands unwaveringly with them in this ongoing fight, and we are in it for the long run.”
…

United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths is calling for localized cease-fires in war-torn Ukraine to allow humanitarian aid into areas under siege and to allow trapped civilians to leave.

Griffiths this week discussed a possible humanitarian cease-fire in Ukraine with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, stopped in Moscow Monday on his way to Ukraine.

He did not obtain a commitment for a cease-fire, but U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said Friday that Griffiths views the meeting as only a first step in what is likely to be a long process. Meanwhile, he said Griffiths considers it of utmost importance to get the warring parties to agree to localized cease-fires.

“It is a top priority of that is to get silencing of the guns in those cities with Mariupol being the worst-affected,” he said. “Those cities where civilians are trapped, to allow them to get to safety voluntarily, to a place of their choosing and to allow aid to get in.”  

Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Mariupol have been under siege since Russia invaded Ukraine more than six weeks ago.  They have been forced to hide in underground bunkers while their city was being turned into rubble by Russian strikes.

Laerke said during his visit to Ukraine, Griffiths witnessed first-hand the scenes of death and destruction in the towns of Bucha and Irpin on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv.  He said Griffiths, who saw a mass grave and dozens of destroyed building blocks in Bucha, described the sights as horrifying and called for an investigation into the atrocities allegedly committed by Russian forces.

Russian troops have failed to win control of the capital, Kyiv, and have retreated.  They have shifted their focus toward capturing the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Laerke said U.N. officials hope the situation of Mariupol will not be repeated as fighting moves toward Luhansk and Donetsk.  

“People are still hunkered down in basements in Luhansk and Donetsk,” he said.  “We have in our planning convoys to go there, I understand, already next week.  If everything, again—whether that happens or not depends on the security situation.  But it will be ready to go there if we can get there.”  

Laerke said Griffiths is very worried about what might happen in the Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine. Since leaving Ukraine, Griffiths has told media he is not optimistic about a cease-fire.
…

Civilian evacuations moved forward Saturday in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people at a train station where thousands were waiting to leave the increasingly vulnerable region before an expected Russian onslaught.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded a tough global response to Friday’s train station attack in Kramatorsk, calling it the latest sign of war crimes by Russian forces and hoping to prod Western backers to step up their response to help his country defend itself.

“All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, his voice rising in anger.

Russia denied it was responsible and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to try to turn blame for civilian slayings on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to bolster the argument. Western experts and Ukrainian authorities insisted that Russia launched the missile.

Ukraine’s state railway company said in a statement that residents of the country’s contested Donbas region, where Russia has refocused its forces after failing to take over the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, could flee through other train stations on Saturday.

“The railways do not stop the task of taking everyone to safety,” the statement on the messaging app Telegram said.

Watch related video by Henry Ridgwell:

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned for Saturday in hopes of allowing residents to leave war zones in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which comprise the Donbas, as well as neighboring Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to get out ahead of an imminent, stepped-up offensive by Russian forces. Britain’s Defense Ministry reported Saturday that Russian naval forces were launching cruise missiles to support the ground operations in eastern Ukraine, including in the port cities of Mykolaiv and Mariupol.

Photos taken after Friday’s missile strike showed corpses covered with tarpaulins, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children” in Russian. The phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear.

The attack came as Ukrainian authorities worked to identify victims and document possible war crimes by Russian soldiers in northern Ukraine. The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graphic evidence of civilian slayings emerged after the Russians withdrew, said search teams were still finding the bodies of people shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.

On Friday, workers unearthed the bodies of 67 people from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

After failing to occupy Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance, Russian forces have set their sights on eastern Ukraine. Many of the civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas.

The same week Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of areas controlled by the separatists and said he planned to send troops in to protect residents of the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region.

Although the Kramatorsk train station is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, the separatists, who work closely with Russian troops, blamed Ukraine for the attack.

Western experts, however, dismissed Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that Russian forces “do not use” Tochka-U missiles, the type that hit the station. A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said Russian forces have used the missile — and that given the strike’s location and impact, it was likely Russia’s.

Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of committing atrocities in the war that began with Russia’s February 24 invasion. A total of 176 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, while 324 more have been wounded, the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.

Ukrainian authorities have warned they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.

As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theater last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.

Military analysts had predicted for weeks that Russia would succeed in taking Mariupol but said Ukrainian defenders were still putting up a fight. The city’s location on the Sea of Azov is critical to establishing a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.

Some of the grisliest evidence of atrocities so far has been found in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, from which Russian troops pulled back in recent days. An international organization formed to identify the dead and missing from the 1990s Balkans conflicts is sending a team of forensics experts to Ukraine to help put names to bodies.

In an excerpted interview with American broadcaster CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, Zelenskyy cited communications intercepted by the Ukrainian security service as evidence of Russian war crimes. The authenticity of the recordings could not be independently verified.

“There are [Russian] soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of [Russian] prisoners of war who admitted to killing people,” he said. “There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead.”

The deaths of civilians at the train station brought renewed expressions of outrage from Western leaders and pledges that Russia would face further reprisals for its actions in Ukraine. On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry tried to counter the dominant international narrative by again raising the specter Ukraine planting false flags and misinformation.

A Russian ministry spokesman, Major Gen. Igor Konashenkov, alleged Ukraine’s security services were preparing a “cynical staged” media operation in Irpin, another town near Kyiv. Konashenkov said the plan was to show — falsely, he said — more civilian casualties at the hands of the Russians and to stage the slaying of a fake Russian intelligence team that intended to kill witnesses. The claims could not be independently verified.

A senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments said Friday the Pentagon believes Russia has lost between 15% and 20% of its combat power overall since the war began.

While some combat units are withdrawing to be resupplied in Russia, Moscow has added thousands of troops around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the country’s east, the official said.  

Ukrainian officials have almost daily pleaded with Western powers to send more arms, and to further punish Russia with sanctions, including the exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system and a total European Union embargo on Russian gas and oil.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Saturday was the latest in a parade of top leaders from the European Union to visit Zelenskyy in Kyiv. The head of the EU’s executive arm, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, gave the Ukrainian president a questionnaire Friday that could lead to Ukraine’s membership in the 27-member-country bloc.

Zelenskyy wryly promised to fast-track a response.
…

Spain is awaiting the publication in coming days of a new law banning the intimidation or harassment of women entering abortion clinics.

The law comes into force when it is published in the Government Gazette, possibly next week, after the Spanish Senate on Wednesday endorsed a law passed earlier by parliament.

The Senate gave its blessing by 154-105 votes for changes to the penal code in Spain, where abortions are available for free in the public health service through the 14th week of pregnancy.

The legal changes mean that anyone harassing a woman going into an abortion clinic will be committing a crime that can be punished with up to one year in prison.

Spain’s government, led by the center-left Socialist government, proposed the law last year and lawmakers approved it in September.

In the Senate, as in parliament, the changes were opposed by right-of-center political groupings.

They argued that the alterations flew in the face of the constitutional right to free speech and the right to assemble.

Anti-abortion groups said their gatherings outside abortion clinics were organized to pray and offer help to the women.

The national Association of Accredited Clinics for Pregnancy Termination says that more than 100 cases of harassment are reported outside clinics each year.
…