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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. 
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Their government still unrecognized by any country in the world, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have found a way to beat international isolation: opening diplomatic ties with neighboring countries and others, with an eye to gaining formal recognition.

In recent months, at least four countries — China, Pakistan, Russia and Turkmenistan — have accredited Taliban-appointed diplomats, even though all have refused to recognize the 8-month-old government in Afghanistan.

Last month, Russia became the latest country to establish diplomatic ties with the Taliban when its Foreign Ministry accredited Taliban diplomat Jamal Nasir Gharwal as Afghan charge d’affaires in Moscow.

“We regard this as a step towards the resumption of full-fledged diplomatic contacts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

Although Zakharova said it was premature “to talk about official recognition of the Taliban,” the move is not sitting well in Washington, where officials are concerned it could confer undeserved legitimacy on the Taliban.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. and its allies “remain deeply troubled by recent steps the Taliban have taken, including steps to restrict education and travel for girls and women.”

“Now is not the time to take any steps to lend credibility to the Taliban or normalize relations,” the spokesperson said in response to a query from VOA. “This move sends the wrong signal to the Taliban.”

In the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August, the U.S. and other Western countries shut down their diplomatic posts in Kabul. But they’ve maintained contact with the group, if only to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into the country and influence Taliban policies.

The countries that have received Taliban diplomats all maintain embassies in Afghanistan.

Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul and the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, said it was a “mistake” for Russia and other nations to accredit Taliban diplomats while the international community seeks cooperation from the Taliban on a number of fronts.

“When they accredit the diplomats, then they weaken the influence of the pressure that says you have to allow girls’ education and you have to cooperate with the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to help feed people or you won’t get recognition,” Neumann said. “So what the Taliban will see is that if they pay no attention to those statements, some states will begin to move toward recognition anyway.”

Accrediting a foreign diplomat is not the same as giving formal recognition, Neumann said. But that’s not how the Taliban see it.

“In practice, this is the equivalent of recognition, but it is not enough,” said Suhail Shaheen, who has been appointed by the Taliban to serve as Afghanistan’s envoy to the U.N. “Countries must recognize the Islamic Emirate.”

Shaheen, whose appointment has not been endorsed by the U.N., told VOA that about 10 countries have “accepted” Taliban diplomats, including China, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.

Of those, only four — China, Pakistan, Russia and Turkmenistan — have formally accredited diplomats appointed by the Taliban, according to announcements by Afghan embassies and the foreign ministries of the host countries.

But previously appointed diplomats at Afghanistan’s embassies in Iran, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia now follow the Taliban foreign ministry’s “instructions,” Shaheen said.

“We don’t have any problem with anyone who contacts the current government of the Islamic Emirate and follows its instructions,” Shaheen said via WhatsApp. “That’s what they’ve done.”

Abdul Qayyum Sulaimani, the Afghan charge d’affaires in Tehran and a holdover from the previous government, told reporters in January that he’d received a letter from Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister, confirming his status as acting ambassador.

Representatives of the Afghan embassies in Kaula Lumpur and Ryadh could not be reached for comment.

Qatar is a “special case,” Neumann said. The Gulf state has long allowed the Taliban to operate a political office in Doha, and it represents some U.S. diplomatic interests in Afghanistan. In November, Muttaqi met with Afghan embassy staff in Doha.

The Qatar Embassy in Washington did not respond to a question about whether the Qatari government had accredited any Taliban diplomats.

Afghanistan maintains 45 embassies and 20 consulates around the world. The majority are still run by diplomats appointed by the government of former President Ashraf Ghani and have refused to work with the Taliban government.

Mohammad Zahir Aghbar, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan, said Taliban pressure to oust Afghan diplomats won’t work.

“No country will let them do that,” Aghbar told VOA’s Afghan Service.

Tajikistan, which maintains close ties to an anti-Taliban resistance group, is the only Afghanistan neighbor that has refused to allow Taliban officials to visit the Afghan Embassy.

Last week, a senior Taliban foreign ministry official visited an Afghan consulate in neighboring Uzbekistan “to improve and organize the consular affairs of the Afghan consulate” in the border town of Termez, according to a Taliban official.

Last month, Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington and its consulates in New York and Los Angeles shut down after running out of money.

Senior State Department Correspondent Cindy Saine and VOA Afghan Service’s Mirwais Rahmani contributed to this article.
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More than 50 civilians have been killed and dozens wounded in a missile strike on a railway station in Ukraine, which Kyiv blamed on Russian forces. Henry Ridgwell’s report contains graphic images that may be disturbing to some viewers. Cameras: Henry Ridgwell, Oleksiy Merkulov, Serhiy Horbatenko.
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Ukraine has recaptured the northern city of Chernihiv from Russian forces. But after a rocket attack in the east killed dozens of people Friday, residents are wary, saying they are expecting they could be attacked again. VOA’s Heather Murdock has more from Chernihiv, Ukraine.
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About 30 Sudanese citizens living in Europe demonstrated Friday outside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, demanding that Sudanese officials surrender more individuals accused of committing atrocities in Darfur.

The ICC’s trial of suspected Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb got underway this week, with Kushayb pleading not guilty to 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, pillaging and murder.

Darfur human rights activist Amaat Sefeldin, who traveled from Germany to The Hague to attend the protest, told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus that she wanted Sudanese officials to turn over former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was in power during the campaign that killed more than 200,000 people in Darfur nearly 20 years ago.

“We are demanding the handover of all criminals, especially Bashir, the president, and Raheem Muhammad Hussein, and Mohammad Harun and others,” she told VOA. “And we would also demand for the court to try the other criminals, because the genocide in Darfur and the crimes committed in Sudan are not done by those few people. It’s a long list of people who committed crimes. They have committed war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur since 2003.”

In 2012, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, former minister of defense and Bashir’s special representative in Darfur. In 2007, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Sudan minister of state for the interior.

The protesters praised the ICC for putting Kushayb on trial. It’s the first trial for anyone accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the Darfur conflict, which began in 2003 with a rebellion by armed groups against Bashir’s government.

Kushayb was a reputed leader of pro-government Janjaweed militia members who attacked and burned numerous villages in Darfur as part of attempts to crush the rebel groups.

Call for others’ trials

“Sudanese are in support of the trial and accountability for crimes committed in Darfur, but in general for crimes committed in Sudan,” said another protester, Neimat Ahmadi, president of the Darfur Women Action Group. “They also want to raise concern about the ongoing violence against protesters and the escalation of violence in areas like Darfur, South Kordofan, the Blue Nile.”

“Our message is also to the international community that it is important to try Kushayb, but it is more important to pursue others who have been indicted by the International Criminal Court and be brought to face the court,” Neimat told VOA.

Maisa Altyayib, a member of the Sudanese diaspora who also attended the protest, said she wanted to see the “real criminals” brought to justice in The Hague.

“Not only Kushayb — he only executed orders given to him. The real criminals are in Khartoum and we will not be satisfied until they are brought here to the ICC. So Kushayb is only the beginning of achieving justice,” Altyayib told VOA.

South Darfur-based human rights lawyer Abdulbasit Al Haj said the Kushayb trial should lead prosecutors to more evidence of crimes committed by former officials.

“This trial also should identify individuals who have been involved in funding and supplying the Janjaweed militia with the logistic process in Darfur,” Al Haj told South Sudan in Focus, adding “they are crimes that have touched the humanity around the world.”

However, another Sudanese human rights expert, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals from security operatives, said she did not think the government was willing to hand over others accused of war crimes because they include current top officials who took power in last year’s military coup.

“I don’t think they will hand them [over],” the expert said. “I don’t think they will hand [over] anyone. Now, after the coup that took place, I don’t see it happening at all.”

Army ties seen protecting Bashir

Sudanese political analyst and researcher Jahid Mashamoun told South Sudan in Focus he believed military leaders running Sudan would never turn over Bashir.

“I doubt it,” he said.  “Omar Bashir, he hails from the army, so handing him over to a foreign judiciary, that tarnishes the image or integrity of the armed forces.”

The ICC indicted Bashir in 2009 over alleged atrocities committed by his government. He remains imprisoned in Khartoum after being found guilty on corruption charges.

The U.S. State Department also praised the opening of Kushayb’s ICC trial, noting it was the first against “any senior leader for crimes committed by the Bashir regime and government-supported forces following the genocide and other atrocities in Darfur.” The statement added, “This trial is a signal to those responsible for human rights violations and abuses in Darfur that impunity will not last in the face of the determination for justice to prevail.”

Carol Van Dam contributed to this report, which originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
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As Turkish military dive teams this week safely defused their third floating naval mine in Turkish waters since March 26, some maritime experts said the explosives still pose a threat to Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait.

On March 19, Russia’s FSB intelligence service said 420 naval mines were drifting freely in the Black Sea after breaking loose in a storm. The FSB says Ukrainian forces set the mines, but Ukrainian authorities dismissed that accusation as disinformation.

Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of planting the naval mines in the Black Sea and using them as “uncontrolled drifting ammunition.”

“If these mines were broken loose as claimed, the risk continues even in the Bosphorus [Strait],” Bora Serdar, a retired staff colonel from the Turkish Naval Forces, told VOA. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if at least a few mines went in the strait.”

A regional threat

On March 26, Turkey, a NATO member, detected the first stray mine on the Black Sea coast of Istanbul near its Bosphorus Strait. The second one was found off the coast of Igneada, near the Bulgarian border, on March 28.

Turkish authorities announced Turkish Underwater Defense teams safely detonated both mines.

“Our mine hunter vessels and naval patrolling ships are all vigilant,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on March 29, adding that Turkey is working on identifying the source of floating naval mines.

The Bosphorus Strait connects the Black Sea with the Marmara, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean seas and runs through Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul. It is a major shipping route for Black Sea countries.

Besides Turkey, Romania neutralized a mine on March 28 after fishermen first spotted it and reported it to the naval forces.

On Thursday, defense ministers of Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine met virtually at Turkey’s request to discuss the threat.

“The importance of cooperation in the Black Sea for peace, calm, and stability, including the fight against the mines, was emphasized at the meeting,” Turkish Defense Minister Akar said in a statement.

Propaganda wars

Some analysts argue that the stray mines in the Black Sea are part of propaganda wars between Russia and Ukraine.

“I think these stray mines are part of a Russian operation to create some confusion,” said Yoruk Isik, Istanbul-based geopolitical analyst and head of the Bosphorus Observer consultancy.

“Russia may have dropped a few naval mines around the Bosphorus, perhaps from somewhere close to Bulgaria, to reach the strait,” he told VOA.

According to Isik, Russia’s motivations include distracting observers from its actions in Ukraine as several countries, including the United States and Germany, accused Russian forces of committing war crimes.

Isik says that Russia also might have used the naval mines to put Kyiv in “a difficult position in the international arena as the stray mines would appear as [though] Ukraine is hindering international trade” in the Black Sea.

On the other hand, some experts think that Ukraine might have used the naval mines to prevent Russia’s actions and bring more international actors into the war, including Turkey.

Turker Erturk, a former Turkish Naval Academy commander, says that Moscow’s war plans included an amphibious operation near Odesa.

“Russia would never choose anything that would limit this operation,” Erturk told VOA. 

Ukraine’s primary goal of setting mines afloat, he speculated, would be to show that safe navigation in the Black Sea has disappeared.

“The stray mines would create a perception that there is no safe passage in the Bosphorus, an international waterway. What would this perception inevitably trigger? It would trigger an international naval force under the auspices of NATO, EU, or U.N. to go to the Black Sea,” Erturk said.

“This would lead to the ‘de facto’ violation of the Montreux Convention. It looks like a provocation to me,” Erturk added.

NATO’s London-based Shipping Centre — the official link between NATO and international merchant shipping — released an advisory Monday saying, “the threat of additional drifting mines cannot be ruled out.”

A United Kingdom Ministry of Defense intelligence update on April 3 also warned that mines in the Black Sea “pose a serious risk to maritime activity.”

“Though the origin of such mines remains unclear and disputed, their presence is almost certainly due to Russian naval activity in the area and demonstrates how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is affecting neutral and civilian interests,” the UK intelligence update said.

Turkey has control of the passage of naval vessels through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits under the 1936 Montreux Convention.

Fishing

On March 26, Turkey’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry banned fishing at night until further notice.

Fishermen say that because they are concerned about the floating mines, they assign one person to the front of their boat for mine control.

“We fear that the stray mine will hit us,” Recep Koc, who has worked as a fisherman for 38 years in Istanbul’s Sariyer district, told VOA.

“While we were watching our boat so that nothing would wrap around its propeller, we are now trying to pay attention to the mines if they crash or explode,” Koc added.
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Russia has declared 45 Polish embassy and consulate staff “persona non grata” in retaliation for Warsaw’s expulsion of 45 Russian diplomats from Poland, Moscow’s foreign ministry said Friday. 

Poland said in March that the 45 Russian diplomats were suspected of working for Russian intelligence. 

 
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The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says it is beefing up its humanitarian aid operation for millions of Ukrainians forced to flee their homes in the face of intensified fighting and increased brutality by Russia’s military forces.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began February 24 has triggered one of the fastest-growing displacement and humanitarian crises in the world.  UNHCR says the carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities and towns, and the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused more than 4.2 million Ukrainians to flee as refugees to neighboring countries.  An additional 7.1 million people are displaced inside Ukraine.

The UNHCR says it is increasing aid both inside and outside Ukraine to keep pace with the burgeoning needs of the displaced. Agency spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said reception and collective centers are being expanded to receive more internally displaced people.  

While the distribution of life-saving aid is being increased, he noted delivering aid remains challenging in places of active fighting. Nevertheless, he said aid workers continue to try to reach besieged areas, such as Mariupol and Kherson.

“The latest such convoy was on the sixth of April, where UNHCR was among those carrying aid to Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk (region), eastern Ukraine,” said Saltmarsh. “For weeks, people there have endured relentless shelling and shortages of basics like water, gas, and electricity. Our team was able to deliver solar lamps, blankets, hygiene kits, baby formula and tarpaulin sheets.”  

Saltmarsh said most Ukrainians fleeing the country head for Poland, which has welcomed more than 2.5 million refugees since the start of the war.

“While the pace of arrivals is slowing, overall flows continue given the ongoing hostilities,” he said. “UNHCR staff have observed that newly arrived refugees are coming from various parts of the country, including the east, with some reporting having spent weeks hunkering down at home or in shelters in dire conditions.”

Saltmarsh said the UNHCR’s initial response to refugee needs has been eclipsed by the new, more horrifying realities in Ukraine. He said the agency’s appeal on March 1 for $550.6 million is now seen as insufficient to deal with the crisis. He said a new, more comprehensive response plan will be revealed later this month.
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Ukrainian state railway officials say more than 30 people were killed and 100 were wounded Friday in a Russian rocket attack on a railway station in east Ukraine that was being used to evacuate civilians.

Two rockets are said to have struck the station in Kramatorsk.  Reuters reports that the governor of the Donetsk region said thousands of people were at the station trying to leave for safer areas.  

The European Union formally enacted more sanctions on Russia Friday, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell traveled to Kyiv in a show of support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The new measures include bans on the importation of coal, wood and chemicals and a block on all transactions with four Russian banks.

Russian troops in Ukraine have fully withdrawn from northern Ukraine to Belarus and Russia, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday.  The intelligence update said some of the forces likely will be deployed to east Ukraine to fight in the Donbas, a Ukrainian region bordering Russia.  

Late Thursday Zelenskyy said the situation in the town of Borodianka is worse than that in Bucha. Borodianka is about 60 kilometers northwest of Kyiv. Zelenskyy said “it is significantly more dreadful there.  Even more victims from the Russian occupiers.”

Stories of atrocities inflicted on northern Ukrainians by the Russians have emerged, prompting more countries to expand and further tighten sanctions on Russia.     

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Thursday that more credible reports of Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians are coming out of the war-ravaged country and vowed that “one day, somehow, there will be accountability” for Moscow.

The top U.S. diplomat, after meeting with an array of NATO and allied foreign ministers in Brussels, said, “The revulsion at what the Russian government is doing is palpable.”

Russia has denied killing civilians in Bucha.  

Blinken said the U.S. and its NATO allies remain wholly committed to supplying Ukraine with more arms to defend itself against Russia.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed new Western sanctions against Russia but called for further measures, including a full embargo on Russian oil and gas sales, blocking all Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system and closing ports to Russian vessels and goods.  

Japan is expelling eight Russian diplomats and trade officials.  A Japanese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman called Russia’s actions in Ukraine “categorically unacceptable” and said the action was taken “as a result of the country’s comprehensive judgement.”

There is a mounting death toll from the six-week-long war, including Ukrainian civilians and fighters from both sides.  

“We have significant losses of troops, and it’s a huge tragedy for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the British channel Sky News in an interview.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara and Masood Farivar contributed to this report.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
…

Stores in Istanbul, once filled with Russian and Ukrainian shoppers, are now experiencing hard times because of the war in Ukraine. The conflict is also causing prices for food and fuel in Turkey to rise. VOA’s Behzod Muhammadiy reports from Istanbul.
…

Voters in France head to the polls Sunday for the first of a two-round election that could see centrist President Emmanuel Macron become the first French leader to win a second term in nearly two decades. For VOA, Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
…

Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta, said he was attacked by an assailant who threw a mixture of red paint and acetone on him.

Muratov, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, was on a train bound from Moscow to Samara on Thursday when the attack occurred.

A photo of Muratov posted by the newspaper on Telegram showed his head, shirt, hands and arms covered in red paint.

Muratov said the attacker shouted, “Muratov, here’s to you for our boys.”

He told the new European edition of Novaya Gazeta about the attack, saying that his eyes were burning badly.

Novaya Gazeta, a leading independent Russian newspaper, suspended operations last month after it said it received warnings from Russian authorities.

The newspaper said it had been warned twice by Roskomnadzor, meaning the state communications regulator was open to pursuing closure of the independent outlet through legal action.

Earlier on Thursday, journalists from Novaya Gazeta who fled Russia amid the ongoing crackdown on independent reporting said they have launched a new media outlet that aims to cover news and developments in Russia and around the world in Russian and several other languages.

Kirill Martynov, the former editor of Novaya Gazeta’s unit on political issues, will be the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe, the publication said in a statement on its website.

“We know that we have readers around the world who are waiting for verified information,” the statement said.

“That is why we, Novaya Gazeta journalists who were forced to leave their country because of a de facto occupational ban being put into effect, are pleased to announce that we have launched Novaya Gazeta Europe — an outlet that shares our values and standards.”

The statement did not say where the newspaper would be based.

Russia has placed strict limits on how media can describe the war Moscow launched in Ukraine. According to the regulator, media must follow official government communications only for what Moscow calls a “special military operation.” Usage of the words “war” or “invasion” with regard to the fighting in Ukraine is banned.

In early March, President Vladimir Putin signed into law legislation that punishes those who distribute what is deemed “false information about the Russian Army” in their reports about Ukraine with a prison sentence of as much as 15 years.

Several other Russian media outlets have already opted for suspending operations rather than face heavy restrictions on what they can report, and the Kremlin has also blocked multiple foreign news outlets, including RFE/RL.
…

China’s patience with Russia over the war in Ukraine has set back its prized ties with the European Union despite tentative gains late last year, analysts say.

At the first European Union-China summit in nearly two years, on April 1, the EU warned China against supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine or interfering with international sanctions against Moscow. During the two-hour video event, EU officials asked China, as a U.N. Security Council member, to push Russia to end the war.

China has cast itself as a neutral nation toward the war while sustaining close economic and strategic ties with Russia.

“This contributes to the European Union’s collective irritation at China for supporting what looks like flagrant violation of international law,” said Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and continues to pound the neighboring country despite talks and economic sanctions against Moscow by Western governments.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with two high-level officials in Europe to try to improve relations. Although the two sides reached no substantive agreements, they spoke cordially after the EU froze an investment deal with Beijing in early 2021 and sent a parliamentary delegation to Taiwan. China considers self-ruled Taiwan part of its territory.

China was hoping then to build trade and investment ties with individual European countries as the Asian power grappled with a half-decade of acrimony with its old Cold War rival the United States, analysts told VOA last year.

Sino-European ties “marginally” improved after the October event, and China regarded the EU as the “more acceptable” face of the West compared with the United States, Chong said. He said certain leaders in the 27-nation EU bloc had become more “pragmatic” toward China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has set back China’s search for friends in Europe, said Sean King, senior vice president with the New York-based political consultancy Park Strategies. “It’s a new day in Europe and not a welcome one for authoritarians Putin and Xi,” he said.

China’s trade curbs last year against Lithuania resurfaced as a thorny Sino-EU issue on April 1, as did market access for European companies.

EU member Lithuania offended Beijing by letting Taiwan use its name on a de facto embassy in the European country.

European leaders see Chinese action against Lithuania as undermining their unity as a bloc and “coming at the cost of values” such as democracy, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo. China had retaliated against the Czech Republic in 2020 over its own close ties with Taiwan.

“The economic coercion against Lithuania and Czech are both examples of China really bullying European member states,” Nagy said.

At the summit, EU leaders again raised issues over China’s treatment of its own ethnic minorities, including the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

On the economic side, EU leaders talked to China April 1 about making their relationship “fairer,” creating a “level playing field,” and rebalancing “bilateral trade and investment relations,” European Council President Charles Michel said after the summit.

European leaders resent the Chinese government’s ownership stake in major companies and the subsidies offered them, said Jayant Menon, visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Regional Economic Studies Program in Singapore. They also see China as not “open” enough with data transfers and the digital economy, he added.

“Those are the things [where] I think generally China is often tagged as being problematic in the world trade arena, and I think it would certainly be picked up by the Europeans as well,” Menon said.

China is still the EU’s No. 1 trading partner and the source of billions of dollars per year in direct investment. But their issues have “stalemated” after eight years of talks toward an EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan. Talks were iced last year.

The agreement would tackle market openness and any forced transfers of technology targeting European investors.

China sounded conciliatory after last week’s summit. The EU and China must “take the lead in defending the international system with the U.N. at its core” and defer to international law, Beijing’s official Xinhua News Agency said Monday. China will “stay committed to deepening reform and further opening up” its markets, Xinhua added, quoting Xi.
…

U.N. health officials warn that more people in Ukraine will start dying from chronic diseases and preventable illnesses than from war injuries the longer the conflict goes on.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that health workers in Ukraine were continuing to deliver care in the face of unimaginable human suffering and in areas of total devastation.

WHO is calling on Russia to enact an immediate cease-fire and to grant unhindered access of humanitarian assistance for those in need.  Despite the many constraints, officials said they had been able to deliver 185 tons of medical supplies to the hardest-hit areas in the country and had reached half a million people with trauma and surgical support and primary health care.

Hans Henri Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, is in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.  He said the escalating war was obstructing efforts to provide medication and treatment to the sick and wounded.

“As of today, WHO has verified 91 attacks on health,” he said. “Routine immunization coverage for polio and measles is below the threshold for population immunity.  Fifty percent of Ukraine’s pharmacies are presumed closed, and 1,000 health facilities are in proximity to conflict areas or in changed areas of control.”

No care for new babies

Kluge added that roughly 80,000 babies would be born in the next three months. He said they would be missing out on pre-natal and post-natal care because of the war.  He said attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical personnel were a breach of international humanitarian law and must stop.

Heather Papowitz, WHO’s incident manager in Ukraine, said war is a risk to public health.

“With the destruction of health facilities, the lack of access to health facilities, people on the move, people living in shelters and basements and crowded together puts everybody at risk for infectious diseases. … So, all of these put the most vulnerable at risk, which are the elderly, the children and the pregnant women,” she said.

Papowitz said these risks for those migrating continue through their journey and into other countries of asylum.

The latest figures from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights put the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine at nearly 3,840, including 1,611 killed. The U.N. migration and refugee agencies said 7.1 million people had been displaced inside Ukraine and another 4.2 million people had fled to neighboring countries in search of refuge.
…

The U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to suspend Russia from the body’s Human Rights Council over atrocities it has been accused of committing in Ukraine.

In a vote of 93 to 24 with 58 abstentions, the assembly suspended Russia for its “gross and systematic violations of human rights” and violations of international law committed against Ukraine.

The resolution requires a two-thirds majority to be adopted; the abstentions are not counted.

“We view voting to suspend a state’s Human Rights Council rights as a rare and extraordinary action,” Ukrainian envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya said ahead of the vote.

“However, Russia’s actions are beyond the pale — Russia is not only committing human rights violations, it is shaking the underpinnings of international peace and security.”

Forty-seven countries are on the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. They are elected in secret ballot votes by the General Assembly. Russia is currently serving a three-year term that was due to expire on December 31, 2023.

Kyslytsya noted that April 7 is when the Rwandan genocide is commemorated, and said those massacres were due in large part to a lack of international action and failure by the United Nations to respond to warnings from the ground.

“On this day of grievances and bearing its own tragedy of thousands of Ukrainians killed by the Russian invaders, Ukraine stands together with Rwanda and calls to reaffirm our pledge to never forget and to never allow the recurrence of genocide, which was a result of the international community’s indifference,” the Ukrainian envoy said.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admonished the U.N. Security Council in a video address for its inaction in stopping Russia’s war against his country. He called for Moscow to face accountability for crimes it has carried out there.

The United States led the move to suspend Russia and was joined by more than 60 countries in co-sponsoring the resolution.

“The country that’s perpetrating gross and systematic violations of human rights should not sit on a body whose job it is to protect those rights,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Brussels. “Today, a wrong was righted.”

“Unprecedented, historic vote,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told VOA after the vote. “We suspended a permanent member of the Security Council off of the U.N. Human Rights Council. We sent a strong message of support to the Ukrainians. We sent a strong message about human rights.”

She said the suspension is effective immediately.

Watch Margaret Besheer’s full interview:

Russian dismissals

Russia has repeatedly dismissed accusations of abuses and atrocities, saying they are either “fake news” or the Ukrainian side committed them to make them look bad.

Following the vote, Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, said Moscow had taken its own decision to end its membership in the Human Rights Council and did not want to remain with Western states whom he accused of carrying out or abetting human rights abuses of their own.

“The sincere commitment of Russia to promoting and protecting of human rights does not make it possible for us to remain a member of an international mechanism that has become an enabler of the will of the above-mentioned group of countries,” Kuzmin said.

“You do not submit your resignation after you are fired,” Ukraine’s envoy told reporters in discussing Russia’s withdrawal.

This is only the second time the General Assembly has suspended a Human Rights Council member. It last happened in March 2011, when Libya was undergoing a brutal crackdown by then-dictator Moammar Gadhafi in a bid to suppress Arab Spring protests. He was ousted from power and later killed. Libya’s membership was restored eight months after its suspension, after a new government was installed.

Authority to investigate

The Human Rights Council has the authority to set up commissions of inquiry, fact-finding missions and investigations into rights abuses and has done so in many countries, including Syria, Myanmar and North Korea.

Last month, the council decided to establish an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate alleged violations and abuses in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Three human rights experts have been appointed to collect and preserve evidence and testimony for any future legal proceedings.

Some countries that either voted against suspending Russia or abstained said they believed the move was premature and prejudges the outcomes of the commission of inquiry.

China, which had abstained in earlier assembly votes condemning Russia’s invasion and on the humanitarian consequences of the war, chose Thursday to side with Moscow and voted against the resolution.

“Such a hasty move at the General Assembly, which forces countries to choose sides, will aggravate the division among member states and intensify the contradictions between the parties concerned,” Ambassador Zhang Jun said. “It is like adding fuel to the fire, which is not conducive to the de-escalation of conflicts, and even less so to advancing the peace talks.”

Reluctance on suspension

Even some countries that have been vocal in condemning the war were not comfortable suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council, such as Mexico, which abstained.

“Yes, there is a commission of inquiry. We want to see the result of that commission of inquiry, but do we have to sit and continue to watch the carnage, watch the horror of Bucha happen over and over again, while Russia is sitting on the Human Rights Council?” Thomas-Greenfield told VOA.

Since its creation in 2006, the Human Rights Council has come in for frequent criticism because of the abhorrent rights records of some of its members. Currently, China, Eritrea, Pakistan and Venezuela are among its members.

The council has also been criticized for its focus on Israel. In 2018, the Trump administration left the body, calling it a “cesspool of political bias.” The Biden administration returned last year. Blinken said at the time that when the council works well, it shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records.
…

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Russian citizens — the majority working in the IT sector and passionately opposing Russia’s aggression — have moved to Armenia. Shake Avoyan went to Armenia to find out why and has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Shake Avoyan.
…

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday dismissed the reluctance of some countries fulfill Ukrainian requests for arms due to fears of being drawn into the conflict with Russia, saying that by giving Ukraine what it needs, Ukrainians will do the fighting so no one else has to.

“I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair: You give us weapons, we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine,” Kuleba said.

He spoke in Brussels alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers where Stoltenberg said allies would address Ukraine’s need for air defense systems, anti-tank weapons and other support.

“The more weapons we get, and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved, the more cities and villages will not be destructed, and there will be no more Buchas,” Kuleba said, citing the area outside the capital where retreating Russian soldiers are accused of killing civilians.

Kuleba welcomed new Western sanctions against Russia, but called for further measures, including a full embargo on Russian oil and gas, blocking all Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system and closing ports to Russian vessels and goods.

“I hope we will never face a situation again when to step up the sanctions pressure we need atrocities like at Bucha to be revealed and to impress and to shock other partners to the extent that they sit down and say, ‘OK, fine, we will introduce new sanctions,’” Kuleba said. “I don’t believe that Ukrainians have to pay with their lives, hells and sufferings for the political will of partners to impose sanctions.”

New sanctions

The United States and its Western allies said Wednesday they imposed “new, severe and immediate economic sanctions” against Russia, banning American investment there, fully blocking the country’s largest financial institutions and targeting assets held by President Vladimir Putin’s adult children.

“Together with our allies and our partners, we’re going to keep raising economic costs, to ratchet up the pain for Putin and further increase Russia’s economic isolation,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday during remarks at a North America’s Building Trades Unions event.

The new measures, according to the White House, are in retribution for atrocities against Ukrainian civilians allegedly committed by Russian troops, including those discovered in recent days in Bucha.

Biden said horrific images from Bucha, where dead civilians were left on the street, imparted “a sense of brutality and inhumanity left for all the world to see,” as he outlined the steps his administration is taking to punish those responsible. Russia has denied killing civilians in Bucha.

The most punishing of the new measures are the “full blocking sanctions” on Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and the country’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank.

Applying full blocking sanctions against Russia’s largest bank takes U.S. measures against the Russian financial sector to their maximum level, said Andrew Lohsen, a fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Until now, the Biden administration had refrained from applying the same restrictions on Sberbank as it had on other Russian banks because Sberbank is one of the main institutions handling energy payments.

“That seems to have changed as images from Bucha are circulating around the world,” Lohsen told VOA. “The aversion to carve-outs is eroding, as evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine comes to light.”

In a move to add psychological pressure on Putin’s inner circle, the White House said it is also sanctioning Putin’s adult children — daughters Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova — as well as the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and members of Russia’s Security Council. New sanctions were also applied to “critical, major Russian state-owned enterprises.”

“We’ve seen attempts and efforts to stash assets in the accounts and resources of his (Putin’s) children,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing to reporters Wednesday.

The U.S. is also blocking Russia from making debt payments with money subject to U.S. jurisdiction. This follows action earlier this week to make Russia’s frozen funds in the United States unavailable for debt payments. Psaki said Moscow will have to decide whether they are going to spend the dollars they have to avoid default or continue to fund military operations in Ukraine.

“Part of our objective is to force them into a place where they are making that decision,” Psaki said.

The move makes it more costly for Russia to remain current on foreign debt, which may eventually push it to default and lead to further consequences, Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told VOA.

“There will be investor lawsuits. They will go after Russian government assets in Western jurisdictions. So, this could potentially be a further isolation of the Russian economy in general,” he added.

Without access to its dollars held in American banks, Russia’s Finance Ministry announced Wednesday that it had used rubles to pay about $650 million in dollar-denominated debt obligations. Payments are usually required to be made in the currency the debt was sold in.

In his remarks, Biden said that the steps already taken to punish Russia are expected to shrink the country’s gross domestic product by double digits this year alone and wipe out the last 15 years of Russia’s economic gains.

“Because we’ve cut Russia off from importing technologies like semiconductors and encryption security and critical components of quantum technology that they need to compete in the 21st century, we’re going to stifle Russia’s ability in its economy to grow for years to come,” he added.

The steps announced Wednesday were sweeping and hard-hitting, but they also mean the West is running out of levers to stop Russian aggression, unless they are willing to apply direct pressure on the Russian oil and gas sector.

“The remaining large category of unused tools would likely focus on both direct sanctions on Russian energy exports and importantly, secondary sanctions on any non-Western entities that take or facilitate such trade,” said Daniel Ahn, global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, to VOA.

Alleged war crimes

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is assisting Ukrainian and European partners and the State Department to collect evidence of alleged war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine.

Federal criminal prosecutors met with prosecutors from Eurojust and Europol on Monday “to work out a plan for gathering evidence.” On Tuesday, the top Justice Department prosecutor in Paris met with French prosecutors, Garland said at a news conference. He also announced the indictment of a Russian oligarch.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara and Masood Farivar contributed to this report. 
…

International efforts to punish Russia for its war on Ukraine are being felt far from Europe, in the U.S. Gulf state of Louisiana, a hub of America’s energy sector.

Late last month, the European Union announced it was exploring ways to gain independence from Russian energy “well before 2030.” American firms took note.

“You can see most European countries don’t want to be seen as complicit with the barbarism of Russia,” said Brian Lloyd, vice president for communications at Sempra Energy, a U.S.-based energy infrastructure company with investments in natural gas production. “Many see every dollar sent to Russia’s state-owned energy companies as helping to fuel its aggression in Ukraine, so Europe is seeking energy alternatives.”

In late March, the U.S. announced a deal with the EU to begin replacing some of the natural gas Russia had been supplying. By the end of this year, President Joe Biden said, the United States would be able to ship enough gas to Europe to offset at least 10% of what Russia currently provides, or 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas.

LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state. Its volume is approximately 600 times smaller than its gaseous state.

“This makes shipping to Europe economical when building pipelines across an ocean wouldn’t be,” explained Eric Smith, associate director of Tulane University’s Energy Institute in New Orleans.  

 The U.S. plans to meet its new commitments to Europe by increasing domestic production of natural gas. To do so, industry leaders propose building new LNG facilities and expanding and increasing the efficiency of existing ones.

“It will be like the Marshall Plan we supported Europe with after World War II, but this one will have an energy focus,” Lloyd said. “The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the way on this because we have some of the least expensive natural gas in the world.”

Much of the existing and increased LNG production capacity is centered in the states of Louisiana and Texas, along the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico. Many state and industry leaders welcome the production of LNG in the region, while environmentalists and commercial fishers are far less enthusiastic.

“We make our living in the sea,” said Dean Blanchard, a shrimper and the president of Dean Blanchard Seafood. “I don’t know much about natural gas yet, but anything that alters the dynamics of the water really screws us.”

Energy crisis abroad

Approximately 40% of the natural gas used in Europe — as well as 25% of crude oil and refined petroleum products — is produced in Russia.

“Europe is a continent that has been dependent on Russian energy for quite some time,” Smith told VOA. “So Biden’s commitment to help supply the EU with LNG became a key component in convincing some European countries to announce sanctions against Moscow. That’s why this increased production of LNG is so important.”

But Europe’s energy crisis began long before Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Consecutive colder-than-usual winters and a world awakening from coronavirus lockdowns boosted demand for many types of energy.

Europe has moved aggressively to embrace renewable energy sources but found production to be inconsistent because it often depends on the weather.

“Europe is caught in a tough spot — they don’t want to be importing fossil fuels like natural gas as they try to reduce carbon emissions,” Smith said. “But natural gas actually makes for a perfect transition. Nuclear and coal plants take weeks to turn on and off, whereas natural gas can be switched off in minutes. When you’re low on renewables, natural gas can be an easy bridge to get you through another cold winter.”

Smith added, “It’s also, by the way, needed for fertilizer and to produce grain, which might be very important for Europe and the Middle East should this war in Ukraine continue.”

Environmental crisis at home

Much of the LNG exported by the United States will be funneled through the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“We have six or seven LNG export terminals in the United States,” explained Naomi Yoder, staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, an environmental organization focused on protecting the Gulf of Mexico. “Four of those — soon to be five — are located on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas. We have six more that are in the works in the region as well. That’s a massive number for one relatively limited region.”

And it’s a region that is no stranger to energy-related environmental disasters.

“It would take me hours to tell you about the effects of that one BP oil spill from 2010,” seafood entrepreneur Blanchard said. “Our ecosystem is still recovering from that spill — the amount of fish and shrimp and oysters are still down. And the number of humans that got sick down here in Grand Isle (small Louisiana barrier island), those people will never recover.”

Blanchard said the BP oil spill got attention only because of its magnitude. But smaller spills, he said, happen every day.

“These energy companies say they care about us and our livelihood, but they’re destroying us,” he said.

Blanchard’s hometown of Grand Isle could soon gain an LNG facility nearby. While Blanchard admits he’s unsure precisely how expanding the production and transportation of natural gas will affect the ecosystem, Yoder predicts only bad results.

“We’ve seen it many times,” Yoder said. “The production of natural gas produces air pollution through methane leaks and water pollution, too. It harms the ecosystem locally as well as the environment more generally. People like to say natural gas emits less carbon than coal, but the process of building these facilities, and liquifying that gas, and shipping it across the ocean just to turn it back into gas — that all emits a lot of carbon into the air, too. We don’t need to produce more energy from fossil fuels. We need to transition to renewables like solar, wind and water energies.”

Balancing act

Advocates of natural gas don’t oppose renewable energy, said Sempra Energy’s Lloyd. Rather, he sees them as complementing each other.

“I think we all have the same goal,” he said. “We want to see an increase in the use of renewable energy over time. But you can’t pretend like if we don’t produce this natural gas now, that Europe won’t just get it from somewhere else. They’ll probably get it from Russia, where the methane leaks are far more numerous and where they aren’t working nearly as hard as we are to further curb carbon emissions.”

Tulane University’s Smith agrees.

“Every serious analyst says we aren’t able to shift our world economy away from fossil fuels between now and 2050,” he said. “So Europe is going to get their natural gas one way or another because they’re not going to just let their people freeze or starve.”

For now, many energy industry leaders and lawmakers say, an opportunity exists to curtail a source of revenue to Russia’s war machine — and to boost jobs and revenues along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But fishermen like Blanchard fret about a potentially costly trade-off.

“Of course I want to help Ukraine, and I’m proud of the way they’re fighting for themselves,” he said. “But how can I be expected to support something that could destroy my livelihood? I can’t do that for Ukraine or anyone else.”
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A Ukrainian official has provided VOA with exclusive photos of the aftermath of Russia’s five-week occupation of Ukraine’s decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, showing what he says are Russian trenches dug into radioactive soil near a 1986 nuclear accident at the site.

Evgen Kramarenko, director of the Ukrainian state agency managing the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant, sent the photos to VOA on Wednesday, saying he had taken them himself on a visit to the site with several of his colleagues the day before.

It was the first visit to the site by Kramarenko’s team since Russian troops withdrew from the plant and the surrounding area on March 31, ending an occupation that began on February 24, when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

In a phone interview with VOA, Kramarenko said the photos show trenches that Russian troops dug using heavy machinery in a grassy field covering radioactive soil near the Chernobyl plant’s destroyed No. 4 reactor.

That reactor’s explosion on April 26, 1986, was the world’s worst nuclear accident, killing 31 people in its immediate aftermath and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate surrounding communities, including in nearby Belarus. The exclusion zone set up after the accident extends to 30 kilometers from the Chernobyl plant.

The track marks from heavy vehicles can be seen in some of Kramarenko’s photos of the trenches.

His photos are the first ground-level images from a Ukrainian governmental source to corroborate multiple reports, published in the past week, that the occupying Russian troops dug the trenches, kicking up clouds of radioactive dust in the process.

In a March 31 statement, Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-run company operating the plant, said the Russian troops had been exposed to “significant doses of radiation” and withdrew from the site in a panic at the first sign of illness.

VOA cannot independently verify the health status of the Russian troops who occupied the Chernobyl plant and later retreated to Belarus, a key Russian ally that has allowed Moscow to use its territory to attack Ukraine. Russia has been silent on the troops’ condition.

Belarus-based science journalist Siarhei Besarab told VOA that the area around Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor is contaminated with the three most common types of radiation: alpha particles, beta particles and gamma ray-irradiated soil.

“Given what we know about the area where the Russian soldiers were digging, it’s the most concentrated spot with all three types of radiation,” Besarab said.

The severity of the soldiers’ radiation poisoning would depend on the time they spent in the area and the type of contact they had, he added.

Kramarenko said Russian soldiers who inhaled radioactive dust may experience a worsening of chronic diseases or new health problems in the coming months and years.

“If the Russians who withdrew to Belarus got radioactive particles onto their clothes and military equipment, this also creates a health problem for anyone who comes near those objects,” Kramarenko said.

Earlier Wednesday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry tweeted video from a drone that it said showed an aerial view of trenches that were dug by Russians near the Chernobyl plant.

The tweet references the Red Forest, a wooded area around the plant whose trees turned red after absorbing radiation from the 1986 explosion.

“Complete neglect of human life, even of one’s own subordinates, is what a killer-state looks like,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry wrote, in reference to Russia.

The drone video first appeared on Telegram. Its source was not clear.

In an article published March 28, Reuters said it spoke to two Ukrainian men who were working at the Chernobyl plant while it was under Russian occupation. Without naming them, the report quoted the two men as saying that none of the Russian troops whom they saw were wearing any gear that would protect them from radiation.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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