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Exiled Belarusian sources say recent Russian military activities inside Belarus, a key Moscow ally, show Russia is trying to maintain a threat of attack from Belarus against northern Ukraine after failing in a land-based assault on the region housing Ukraine’s capital Kyiv earlier this year.

While the Belarusian journalists, analysts and dissidents say another Russian invasion of northern Ukraine from Belarus does not appear imminent, it has sparked a debate among them about whether the forces of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko would join such a Russian offensive.

Belarus-based Russian forces pushed into northern Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in late February in a bid to capture Kyiv, a 150-kilometer drive from the Belarusian border. Lukashenko kept his forces out of direct involvement in the invasion, while publicly supporting it and allowing Russia’s military to use Belarusian territory and infrastructure.

Ukrainian forces supplied with Western weapons stopped the Russian assault outside Kyiv and counterattacked, prompting a Russian withdrawal from northern Ukrainian areas around Kyiv and a retreat into Belarus by early April.

Russia had deployed tens of thousands of troops in Belarus by the start of its all-out war on Ukraine. Now, the Russian troop presence in Belarus is in the hundreds, according to Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

“There are only up to 1,000 Russian troops, but a lot of Russian military equipment remains,” Viacorka told VOA in a July 21 interview from the Latvian capital, Riga. “If the Russians decide to come back to Belarus [in greater numbers] to attack Ukraine from Belarus territory, it’s still possible,” he said.

Lithuania-based independent Belarusian foreign policy analyst Katsiaryna Shmatsina, who has worked for several U.S. and European research organizations, told VOA by phone that Russia would have two main goals in any new assault on northern Ukraine via Belarus.

“Russia would be interested to block or undermine the shipment of Western military aid through northern Ukraine, and also to distract attention” from eastern and southern Ukraine, where the nation’s forces are concentrated against the main Russian offensive, Shmatsina said.

A news outlet called the Belarusian Hajun project, founded by Lithuania-based exiled Belarusian dissident Anton Motolko, has been posting reports on Telegram and Twitter of almost daily sightings of Russian military movements in Belarus in recent weeks.

Those reports by citizen journalists inside the country, some with photographs, include apparent sightings of Russian troops and military vehicles on roads and Russian military planes landing at and taking off from Belarusian airfields. Those citizen journalists also have reported seeing Russian Iskander-M mobile short range ballistic missile units and Russian S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile units at an airfield in the Gomel district of southeastern Belarus.

Ukrainian officials said Russia fired missiles from Belarus at the nearby Chernihiv district of Ukraine on Thursday.

The Belarusian Hajun project tweeted what is said were photos of the Russian missiles being launched from a Belarusian airfield in Gomel.

VOA cannot independently verify the photos or the other reported sightings of Russian military activities inside Belarus.

Shmatsina said Motolko’s news outlet is the main Belarusian source of information on those Russian activities, although she said the accuracy of citizen journalist reports is unclear.

Open-source intelligence assessments from this month concluded that Belarus still is granting Russia access to its airspace. Those assessments pointed to Ukrainian intelligence sources that found Belarus likely transferred the use of its Pribytki airfield in Gomel to Russia.

Viacorka said most of the Russian forces in Belarus are maintaining equipment, collecting intelligence and communicating with Belarusian officials and military personnel. “But these are not troops that usually are used for [land-based] operations in a war,” he said.

In a Thursday tweet, the Belarusian Hajun project said it does not see Russian forces in Belarus having the right conditions for another invasion of northern Ukraine in the near future.

Some exiled Belarusian commentators see a longer-term threat of a Russian reinvasion and a potential for Belarusian military forces to join such an assault on Ukraine for the first time.

In a July 12 audio program produced by VOA sister network RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Belarusian political scientist Pavel Usov said the latest concentrations of Russian military equipment and personnel in Belarus indicate a “rather high probability that the northern front [of Russia’s war on Ukraine] will be opened again.”

Usov, head of the Centre for Analysis and Political Forecast in Warsaw, said mutual defense agreements between Belarus and Russia, which exercises strong military and economic influence over its smaller neighbor, create “prerequisites” for the direct involvement of Lukashenko’s armed forces in the Ukraine war.

Speaking to the same July 12 RFE/RL audio program, Belarusian journalist Natalya Radina also said the Belarusian military’s participation in another Russian assault on Ukraine is possible, citing recent statements by Lukashenko and his deputy chief of the general staff Ruslan Kosygin.

In a July 2 speech reported by Belarusian state news agency BelTA, Lukashenko said his armed forces “will fight” if “the enemy” invades Belarusian territory, without naming any nation. Four days later, BelTA cited Kosygin as saying Belarus’ response to “any kind of armed provocation will definitely be adequate and tough.”

“Of course, [Lukashenko] wants to participate in this [Ukraine war],” said Radina, a Warsaw-based chief editor for the Charter-97 news outlet. “Even more aggressive statements are heard from his side than from the lips of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin … It is clear that politically and economically he is absolutely dependent on Putin, but he himself enjoys his participation in this monstrous war,” she said.

Other Belarusian commentators were skeptical that either Lukashenko or Putin would want Belarusian forces to join a Russian reinvasion of northern Ukraine.

Shmatsina said many Belarusian soldiers lack experience in offensive operations and there is little public support for them fighting against Ukraine. She also noted that Lukashenko has faced a domestic legitimacy crisis since declaring himself the winner of a sixth presidential term in a disputed 2020 election that the opposition, the United States and European Union allege was rigged and that triggered weeks of public anti-Lukashenko protests.

“If we see Belarusian deaths in Ukraine, coffins returning home, this would create even more instability in Belarus. Would the Russians want this additional instability at their border?” Shmatsina said. “Belarusian infrastructure seems to be much more useful for the Russian military in Belarus [than Belarusian personnel],” she added.

Viacorka said it is possible that some Belarusian military officers would desert and resist orders to join Russia in fighting Ukraine. He also said Russia may again prepare an invasion of northern Ukraine without involving Belarusian officers, in which case he said those officers “would not even know about it.”

Latvian military analyst Igors Rajevs, a reserve colonel of the Latvian Land Forces, said in an interview with VOA’s Russian Service that he also sees no motivation for Russia or Belarus to change their posture regarding involvement in the war against Ukraine. The most likely scenario is for them to maintain the status quo, he said.

National Security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report from Washington and VOA Russian stringer Anna Plotnikova contributed from Vilnius.
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Human-caused climate change made last week’s deadly heat wave in England and Wales at least 10 times more likely and added a few degrees to how brutally hot it got, a study said.

A team of international scientists found that the heat wave that set a new national record high at 40.3 degrees Celsius was made stronger and more likely by the buildup of heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. They said Thursday that temperatures were 2 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer in the heat wave than they would have been without climate change, depending on which method scientists used.

The study has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal yet but follows scientifically accepted techniques, and past such studies have been published months later.

“We would not have seen temperatures above 40 degrees in the U.K. without climate change,” study senior author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London, said in an interview. “The fingerprint is super strong.”

World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists across the globe who do real-time studies of extreme weather to see whether climate change played a role in an extreme weather event and if so how much of one, looked at two-day average temperatures for July 18 and 19 in much of England and Wales and the highest temperature reached in that time.

The daily highest temperatures were the most unusual, a one-in-1,000-year event in the current warmer world, but “almost impossible in a world without climate change,” the study said. Last week’s heat smashed the old national record by 1.6 degrees Celsius. The average over two hot days and nights is a once a century event now but is “nearly impossible” without climate change.

When the scientists used the long history of temperatures in England to determine the impact of global warming, they saw a stronger climate change influence than when they used simulations from climate models. For some reason that scientists aren’t quite certain about, climate models have long underestimated extreme weather signals in the summer in Western Europe, Otto said.

With climate models, the scientists simulate a world without the 1.2 degrees Celsius of warming since pre-industrial times and see how likely this heat would have been in that cooler world without fossil fuel-charged warming. With observations they look at history and calculate the chances of such a heat wave that way.

“The methodology seems sound, but candidly, I didn’t need a study to tell me this was climate change,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, who wasn’t on this study team but was on a U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel that said these types of studies are scientifically valid. “This new era of heat is particularly dangerous because most homes are not equipped for it there.”

The World Weather Attribution study refers to another analysis that estimates a heat wave like this would kill at least 800 people in England and Wales, where there is less air conditioning than in warmer climates.

Otto, who had to sleep and work in the basement because of the heat, said as the world warms, these record-smashing heat waves will continue to come more frequently and be hotter.

In addition to spurring people to cut greenhouse gas emissions, study co-author Gabe Vecchi said, “this heat wave and heat waves like it should be a reminder that we have to adapt to a warmer world. We are not living in our parents’ world anymore.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday as part of increased Western efforts to court the major oil-producing state amid the war in Ukraine and faltering talks to revive a nuclear deal with Iran.

French opposition figures and human rights groups have criticized Macron’s decision to invite to dinner at the Elysee Palace a man Western leaders believe ordered the murder in 2018 of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The visit to Paris by the de facto Saudi ruler, comes two weeks after he held talks in Saudi Arabia with U.S. President Joe Biden. The West is keen to reset relations with the Gulf Arab oil giant as it seeks to counter the rising regional influence of Iran, Russia and China.

“The rehabilitation of the murderous prince will be justified in France as in the United States by arguments of realpolitik. But it’s actually bargaining that predominates, let’s face it,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said on Twitter ahead of the crown prince’s visit.

France and other European countries are looking to diversify their sources of energy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has seen Moscow cut gas supplies to Europe. Macron wants Riyadh, the world’s largest oil exporter, to raise production.

A French presidency official told reporters Macron would bring up human rights questions, including individual cases, as well as discussing oil production and the Iran nuclear deal.

France is one of Riyadh’s main arms suppliers but has faced growing pressure to review its sales because of the humanitarian crisis, the world’s worst, in Yemen where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels since 2015.

Macron, who last December became the first Western leader to visit Saudi Arabia since the Khashoggi affair, has dismissed criticism of his efforts to engage the crown prince by saying the kingdom was too important to be ignored.

The killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul sparked an international furor. U.S. intelligence concluded the crown prince had directly approved the murder of the Washington Post columnist. The crown prince denied any role in the killing.

French prosecutors are studying complaints filed against the prince over the Saudi role in the Yemen war. Rights groups Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), and TRIAL International said on Thursday they had filed a new complaint asking French authorities to open an investigation into the prince over the torture and killing of Khashoggi.
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For the first time in weeks, Russia launched missiles Thursday at Ukraine’s capital area, Kyiv, and the northern Chernihiv region, in what Ukraine alleged was retaliation for its continued resistance to Moscow’s invasion.

Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, wounding 15 people, five of them civilians, a Ukrainian regional governor said. Ukraine said it had shot down one of the missiles but that Moscow’s forces had hit a military compound in the village of Liutizh outside the capital, destroying one building and damaging two others.

Kyiv regional Governor Oleksiy Kuleba linked the attacks to the Day of Statehood observance that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and that Ukraine marked Thursday for the first time.

“Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba told Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.”

Chernihiv regional Governor Vyacheslav Chaus reported that Russia also had fired missiles from neighboring Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv region had not been targeted in weeks.

Russia withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas months ago after failing to capture either region or to topple Zelenskyy’s government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had launched an offensive to recapture the Kherson region that Russia took control of earlier in the war, on Wednesday knocking out of commission a key bridge over the Dnieper River.

Ukrainian media quoted Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych as saying Kyiv’s forces were planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options — “retreat, if possible, surrender or be destroyed.”

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, warned that the Russians were augmenting their forces in the Kherson region, saying, “A very large-scale movement of their troops has begun.”

The British military assessed that Ukraine had used its new, Western-supplied long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnieper that Russia has relied on to supply its forces.

The daily assessment from the British Defense Ministry said the city of Kherson “is now virtually cut off from other occupied territories.”

Russian officials said their forces would use other ways to cross areas with damaged bridges, including pontoon bridges and ferries.

Zelenskyy adviser Arestovych acknowledged that Russian forces had taken over Ukraine’s second-biggest power plant. He characterized the development, however, as only a “tiny tactical advantage” for the Russians.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The first rehabilitation center built according to U.S. standards opened in Irpin, Ukraine, three years ago. So far, it has survived the war intact and is once again accepting patients. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Camera and video editing by Paviel Syhodolskiy.
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The United States said Wednesday it has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia, which people familiar with the matter described as a prisoner swap that would send convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout back to Moscow to secure the release of American professional basketball star Brittney Griner and accused spy Paul Whelan.

The proposal was made several weeks ago, in June, although nothing has come of it to date even as officials from the two governments have discussed it. But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while declining to discuss details of the would-be deal, told reporters in Washington he expects to raise the issue yet again this week in a phone call with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday negotiations about a prisoner swap are ongoing and have not yet yielded an agreement.

News of a possible prisoner swap came the same day as Griner, who has admitted arriving in Russia in February with vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage, testified at a court hearing that a language interpreter provided to her translated only a fraction of what was being said as authorities arrested her.

Griner, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of transporting drugs, said she was instructed by officials to sign documents at the Moscow airport without them providing an explanation for what she was acknowledging. A Russian court has authorized her detention until Dec. 20.

Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, has been imprisoned in Russia for alleged espionage since 2018, with his family and Griner’s pleading with the White House to expedite efforts to gain their release.

For years, Russia has sought the release of Bout, an arms dealer once labeled the “Merchant of Death.” He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 after his conviction in a scheme to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.

The possible prisoner swap was approved by U.S. President Joe Biden, CNN reported, with Biden’s support overriding opposition from the Department of Justice, which is generally against prisoner trades for fear they would incentivize other governments to seize Americans overseas in hopes of prisoner swap deals of their own.

At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to spell out details of the negotiations with Russia at a time the U.S. has led world opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

“But I will say that the president and his team are willing to take extraordinary steps to bring our people home, as we’ve demonstrated with Trevor Reed, and that’s what we’re doing right here,” Kirby said. “It’s actively happening now. This has been the top of the mind for the president and for his whole national security team.”

The U.S. secured the release of Reed in April. He was a former Marine who was held captive in Russia for more than two years after being accused of assaulting a Russian police officer. He was traded for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot then serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for a cocaine smuggling conspiracy.

In the sixth session of her slow-moving trial, Griner testified Wednesday she had no criminal intent in carrying the cannabis oil into Russia. She said she still does not know how the cannabis oil for which she had a doctor’s recommendation ended up in her luggage.

She explained she had packed in haste for the 13-hour flight from the U.S. to Russia, where she was planning to play during the offseason of the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Griner said she was offered neither an explanation of her rights as she was detained nor access to lawyers to explain the documents she signed.

During a Tuesday court session, a Russian neuropsychologist testified about worldwide use of medicinal cannabis, but the drug remains illegal in Russia. Griner’s lawyers have presented a U.S. doctor’s letter recommending that she use medical cannabis to treat pain, which she says she has sustained from her basketball career.

Griner testified Wednesday that cannabis oil is widely used in the U.S. for medicinal purposes and has fewer negative effects than some other painkillers.

But a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said last week that the legalization of cannabis for medical and recreational use in parts of the U.S. had no bearing on what happens in Russia.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters
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A Ukrainian official said Wednesday that Russian forces have taken over Ukraine’s second-biggest power plant and are carrying out a “massive redeployment” of troops to three regions in southern Ukraine.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed the capture of the Vuhlehirsk power plant in the eastern Donetsk region. But Arestovych said the development was a “tiny tactical advantage” for the Russians.

He said Russia’s troop redeployment involved sending forces to the Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson areas as part of an apparent shift to strategic defense efforts.

Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that Ukrainian forces were gathering momentum in a counter-offensive in Kherson, an area Russia has occupied since the early days of the invasion it launched in late February.

“Ukraine has used its new long-range artillery to damage at least three bridges across the Dnipro River which Russia relies upon to supply the areas under its control,” the ministry said.

The daily assessment from the British defense ministry said the city of Kherson “is now virtually cut off from other occupied territories.”

Ukrainian forces struck the Antonivskyi bridge over the Dnipro River late Tuesday.

Russian officials said their forces would use other ways to cross areas with damaged bridges, including the use of pontoon bridges and ferries.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday he will speak to his Russian counterpart in coming days, with issues of discussion expected to include the implementation of a deal to resume grain exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and Russia’s annexation of the Donbas region.

Blinken and Lavrov last spoke in person on February 15, days before Russia launched its military invasion in Ukraine.

The tentative deal on grain exports that Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations reached last week is also high on the list of U.S. priorities. U.S. officials urged Moscow to uphold its commitment after Russian missiles struck infrastructure Saturday in Ukraine’s port of Odesa – the day after the deal was signed.

Blinken said Russia needs to follow through on its pledge to allow the grain vessels to pass through the Black Sea.

“End this blockade, allow the grain to leave, allow us to feed our people, allow prices to come down. … The test now is whether there’s actual implementation of the agreement. That’s what we’re looking at. We’ll see in the coming days.”

Turkish officials have opened a joint coordination center for Ukrainian grain exports and say they expect shipments to begin in the coming days. Kyiv said work had resumed at three Black Sea ports in preparation for the shipments.

At the United Nations, spokesperson Farhan Haq welcomed the opening of the joint coordination center which, he said, will “establish a humanitarian maritime corridor to allow ships to export grain and related foodstuffs” from Ukraine.

Lavrov, wrapping up a four-nation trip to Africa in Addis Ababa, pushed back Wednesday on Western allegations that his country is to blame for the global food crisis. Lavrov said food prices were rising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and what he called “green policies” pursued by the West.

State Department officials cautioned the expected call between Blinken and Lavrov does not mean business as usual between the U.S. and Russia, but rather is an opportunity to convey Washington’s concerns clearly and directly.

There is no plan for in-person meetings between the two on the margins of the ASEAN Regional Forum that will be held in Cambodia in early August.

The chief U.S. diplomat said he will warn Lavrov in the phone conversation that Russia must not annex occupied areas of Ukraine as the war enters its sixth month.

VOA’s Nike Ching and Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is on a major tour of Africa, seeking allies amid global anger and isolation over food shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports. Tatiana Vorozhko contributed.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will speak to his Russian counterpart in the coming days about a “substantial” offer aimed at bringing home American basketball star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, both currently detained in Russia.

Other issues expected to come up between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov include the implementation of a deal to resume grain exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

The two top diplomats last spoke in person on February 15, days before Russia launched its military invasion in Ukraine.

At a press conference Wednesday, Blinken said Washington had communicated a “substantial” offer to Moscow in order to bring home Griner and Whelan. He declined to disclose details of the offer.

“With a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate the release [of Whelan and Griner], our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal,” said Blinken, adding that he plans to follow up personally during a phone call with Lavrov.

“My hope would be in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home,” he said, adding that President Joe Biden has been directly involved and signed off on the U.S. offer.

Griner, who has admitted arriving in Russia in February with vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage, testified at a court hearing Wednesday that a language interpreter provided to her translated only a fraction of what was being said as authorities arrested her.

Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive being held on espionage-related charges that his family contends are bogus, has been held in Russia since late 2018.

Blinken stopped short of confirming media reports speculating that either or both of the Americans could be exchanged for prominent Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, who is jailed in the U.S.

The tentative deal on grain exports that Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations reached last week is also high on the list of U.S. priorities. U.S. officials urged Moscow to uphold its commitment after Russian missiles struck infrastructure Saturday in Ukraine’s port of Odesa – the day after the deal was signed.

Blinken said Russia needs to follow through on its pledge to allow the grain vessels to pass through the Black Sea.

“End this blockade, allow the grain to leave, allow us to feed our people, allow prices to come down. … The test now is whether there’s actual implementation of the agreement. That’s what we’re looking at. We’ll see in the coming days.”

Turkish officials have opened a joint coordination center for Ukrainian grain exports and say they expect shipments to begin in the coming days. Kyiv said work had resumed at three Black Sea ports in preparation for the shipments.

At the United Nations, spokesperson Farhan Haq welcomed the opening of the joint coordination center which, he said, will “establish a humanitarian maritime corridor to allow ships to export grain and related foodstuffs” from Ukraine.

Lavrov, wrapping up a four-nation trip to Africa in Addis Ababa, pushed back Wednesday on Western allegations that his country is to blame for the global food crisis. Lavrov said food prices were rising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and what he called “green policies” pursued by the West.

State Department officials cautioned the expected call between Blinken and Lavrov call does not mean business as usual between the U.S. and Russia, but rather is an opportunity to convey Washington’s concerns clearly and directly.

There is no plan for in-person meetings between the two on the margins of the ASEAN Regional Forum that will be held in Cambodia in early August.

The chief U.S. diplomat said he will warn Lavrov in the phone conversation that Russia must not annex occupied areas of Ukraine as the war enter its sixth month.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have struck a strategically important bridge in the southern part of the country, using what a Russia-appointed official said were rocket systems supplied by the United States.

The Antonivskyi Bridge crossing the Dnieper River was closed Wednesday following the Ukrainian strike.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russia-appointed administration for the Kherson region, said the bridge was still standing after the late Tuesday strike, but the road deck was full of holes.

Stremousov said Ukrainian forces used the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to carry out the strike.

The bridge is a key link allowing Russia to supply its forces in southern Ukraine.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, highlighted the bridge strikes in a tweet Wednesday, saying Russian forces should take them as a warning.

Podolyak said the Russians “should learn how to swim across” the river or “leave Kherson while it is still possible.”

Ken Bredemeier, Chris Hannas and Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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More than five months after Russia began its attack on Ukraine, there is concern the world’s attention on the war is fading. To help, Ukrainian tennis stars joined their Polish counterparts to raise awareness and funds for Ukraine. VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze reports from Krakow, Poland.
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More than 18,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported across 78 countries, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.

He released the information during opening remarks at his regular COVID-19 update, saying there have been five monkeypox deaths while 10% of cases are admitted to the hospital.

Tedros said the outbreak can be contained as long as countries, communities and individuals take the risks of the virus seriously.

Currently, 98% of cases are among men who have sex with other men. The director-general recommends they reduce the number of sexual partners. He also stressed the importance of not discriminating against a population, because any form of stigma or hate “can be as dangerous as any virus and can fuel the outbreak.”

Monkeypox, which WHO declared a global emergency last week, can be spread from person to person through sexual contact, kissing, hugging and through contaminated clothing, towels and bed sheets.

WHO recommends targeted vaccinations for those who have been exposed and for those with a high risk of exposure, such as health care workers, laboratory workers, and those with multiple sexual partners. WHO is against a mass vaccination plan at this time.

A smallpox vaccine, known as MVA-BN, has been approved for use against monkeypox in Canada, the European Union and the United States. Despite that, WHO still lacks data on the effectiveness of vaccines and therefore urges all countries that are using vaccines to share their data.

The monkeypox vaccine can take up to several weeks before protection takes effect, and WHO advises taking continued precautions to avoid exposure.

WHO wants countries that have access to the smallpox vaccine to share it with those that do not. Tedros said that while vaccines will be an important tool, surveillance, diagnosis and risk reduction remain key factors in preventing further spread.
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The two remaining candidates vying to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister have pledged a tougher stance on China.

Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who quit the government earlier this month, and the current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are competing to take over from Boris Johnson, who announced his resignation as prime minister earlier this month following a series of scandals and ministerial resignations.

China stance

While taxation and inflation are the focus of domestic campaigning, policy towards China has dominated foreign policy.

In a recent televised debate, Truss said she would crack down on Chinese-owned companies like TikTok.

“We should we absolutely should be cracking down on those types of companies and we should be limiting the amount of technology exports we do to authoritarian regimes,” Truss said at the debate, hosted by the BBC.

The foreign secretary pledged a tougher stance against Beijing.

Human rights

“After the appalling abuses in Xinjiang, after the terrible actions on Hong Kong and the most recent outrage, which is China working with Russia and essentially backing them in the appalling war in Ukraine, we have to take a tougher stance. We have to learn from the mistakes we made of Europe becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas. We cannot allow that to happen with China. And freedom is a price worth paying,” Truss said.

Her rival Rishi Sunak called China the ‘number-one threat’ to domestic and global security.

“And as prime minister, I’ll take a very, very robust view on making sure that we do stand up for our values and we protect ourselves against those threats, because that’s the right thing to do for our security,” Sunak said.

Vote

Fewer than 200-thousand Conservative party members will vote to choose Britain’s next prime minister in the coming weeks, out of a total registered voting population of 46.5 million. The result will be announced September 5.

The candidates are appealing to a particular electorate, says Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London.

“The Conservative party members are more concerned about China policy than the general public in the U.K. as a whole. And this, I think, is the reason why the two prime ministerial contenders engage in a debate on China, but they were only focused on one single issue: who is softer on China, rather than what the U.K.’s China strategy should be.”

Rhetoric

Matching policies as prime minister with the rhetoric of the campaign may be a challenge, Tsang said.

“Some commitments can be achieved relatively quickly, for example the closing of Confucius [higher education] institutes, articulated by Sunak. The real issue here is whether Liz Truss will as prime minister repeat what she had said, if she continues to use the description ‘genocide’ on Xinjiang, it’s going to make the relationship between the U.K. and China very, very difficult indeed.”

Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, criticized the language used in the televised debates. “I would like to urge certain British politicians not to make an issue out of China or hype the so-called China threat,” Lijian said Tuesday.

Intelligence warning

A recent joint warning from the United States’ FBI and Britain’s MI5 intelligence service warned that China poses ‘a massive shared challenge.’

“The most game changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party. It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. This might feel abstract, but it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act,” MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said in a July 6 speech, alongside with his FBI counterpart Christopher Wray.
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Ukrainian forces have struck a strategically important bridge in the southern part of the country, using what a Russia-appointed official said were rocket systems supplied by the United States. 

The Antonivskyi Bridge crossing the Dnieper River was closed Wednesday following the Ukrainian strike. 

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russia-appointed administration for the Kherson region, said the bridge was still standing after the late Tuesday strike, but that the road deck was full of holes. 

Stremousov said Ukrainian forces used the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to carry out the strike. 

The bridge is a key link allowing Russia to supply its forces in southern Ukraine. 

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted the bridge strikes in a tweet Wednesday, saying Russian forces should take them as a warning. 

Podolyak said the Russians “should learn how to swim across” the river or “leave Kherson while it is still possible.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Russia said Tuesday it will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024 to build its own orbiting outpost. The country’s space chief made the announcement during a meeting with President Vladmir Putin.

Yuri Borisov, CEO of state space agency Roscosmos, said during the meeting that Russia plans to fulfill a promise to its partners before fully stepping away.

“Of course, we will comply with all our commitments to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said during the meeting. “I think we will have started work on the Russian space station by that time.”

Moscow has made it clear that creating a Russian space station is one of its main priorities.

The U.S. space agency has not been made specifically aware of Russia pulling out of the International Space Station, a senior NASA official told the Reuters news agency.

NASA and the other partners involved in the International Space Station hope to continue their partnership through 2030, but Russia has been unwilling to commit to anything past 2024.

The announcement comes at a time of heightened tensions between the West and Moscow due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also comes just a month after NASA and Roscosmos agreed to continue using Russian rockets to deliver astronauts to the space station.
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Britain and the European Union have extended sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The U.K. Foreign Office said on its website Tuesday that the sanctions, which included travel bans and asset freezes, were imposed on 42 new people and entities, including several governors of Russian regions and the Kremlin-installed prime minister of the separatist-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine, Vitaly Khotsenko.

The EU, meanwhile, approved the extension of its sanctions for another six months until January 31, the European Council said in a statement.

The U.K. said its list also includes Vladislav Kuznetsov, the Moscow-imposed first deputy chairman of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, which is held by Russia-backed separatists.

“We will not keep quiet and watch Kremlin-appointed state actors suppress the people of Ukraine or the freedoms of their own people,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement “We will continue to impose harsh sanctions on those who are trying to legitimize Putin’s illegal invasion until Ukraine prevails.”

Since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Britain has sanctioned more than 1,100 people and over 100 businesses.

The EU has introduced six rounds of sanctions on Russia in coordination with its Western partners.
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Russia’s foreign minister is heading to Ethiopia Tuesday, his last stop on a four-nation tour of Africa aimed at countering Western criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Western nations blame the invasion for worsening food shortages in record drought-stricken East Africa, including Ethiopia. But Ethiopia has also been under Western pressure over its war with Tigray rebels and has a historic friendship with Russia.

Sergey Lavrov will round off his Africa tour by meeting with Ethiopian officials in Addis Ababa as he fends off accusations that his country is exporting hunger through its war in Ukraine.

He will also try to strengthen ties with Ethiopia’s federal government, whose relations with the West have soured amid accusations of human rights abuses in the Tigray conflict.

Russia’s presence in Ethiopia is scant compared to other countries. It does not have a large aid footprint like the U.S. Nor does it invest heavily in infrastructure as the Chinese do.

But the two countries have a strong diplomatic partnership. Since the Tigray war started in November 2020, Russia has shielded Ethiopia at the United Nations Security Council by insisting meetings be held behind closed doors and using its veto to block statements condemning alleged abuses by Ethiopian forces.

It is not unusual to hear people in Addis Ababa express a preference for Russia over Western countries, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has suggested are behind a conspiracy supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebel group, or TPLF.

Moges Zewdu Teshome, an independent researcher, said the Russia-Ethiopia relationship has deep historical roots.

“The Ethiopian government has always been in a good relationship even during those turbulent periods of the Cold War, of course, siding with the Soviet Union, as you may recall,” he said. “And then if we see it in the context of the current quagmire which Ethiopia is in when it comes to its international relations and foreign policy posture, Russia has been backing the Ethiopian claims and or at least positions in the U.N. Security Council.”

Ethiopian officials will likely seek assurances from Lavrov that Black Sea wheat exports will resume. Ethiopia has plans to boost its wheat production in an attempt to become self-sufficient. But for the time being, it imports over 40% of its grain from Ukraine and Russia, and some 30 million Ethiopians currently rely on food aid sourced from global grain markets.

Last year, as the Tigray war continued, Russia signed a security partnership with Ethiopia. The deal raised eyebrows among Western diplomats whose countries suspended aid.

However, Awet Weldemichael, a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, said Russia cannot displace the Western presence in Ethiopia, especially as the prime minister tries to rehabilitate ties with the U.S. now that the Tigray conflict is cooling down.

“I don’t think that the West’s relationship with the Ethiopian prime minister is as bad as it was six months ago or a year ago,” he said. “We increasingly see the West has been actively normalizing the prime minister and his policies. In light of that, in light of the mending of fences, so to speak, between Addis Ababa and Western capitals. I doubt that Foreign Minister Lavrov will have much of a chance.”

Ethiopia abstained from voting on the U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March.
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Ukraine’s military reported Russian missiles strikes struck areas of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast on Tuesday.

The attacks hit multiple locations, including the Odesa area and port infrastructure in the city of Mykolaiv.

The strikes happened days after a Russian missile attack against Odesa raised questions about an agreement to resume Ukrainian exports from the region.

Britain’s defense ministry said Tuesday that Russian forces likely perceive anti-ship missiles as a key threat and one that is preventing them from launching an attempt to seize Odesa using its Black Sea fleet.

“Russia will continue to prioritize efforts to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s anti-ship capability. However, Russia’s targeting processes are highly likely routinely undermined by dated intelligence, poor planning, and a top-down approach to operations,” the ministry said.

The United Nations said Monday that grain exports from Ukraine should begin again within days.

Ukrainian officials said they were working to get grain exports going again following the deal Ukraine and Russia signed on Friday. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said grain exports would begin on Wednesday, according to the Kyiv Independent.

The grain exports will be made from Odesa and two other Black Sea ports, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny, U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said, “and we want to make sure that all conditions are right for the safe travel of ships.”

“Anything that’s not commensurate with that is, of course, not helpful for the success of this initiative,” Haq said as he reiterated Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ condemnation of Russia for launching the Saturday missile attack on Odesa.

Russia said Monday its missile strikes on military installations on Odesa should not affect the agreement to resume grain exports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the strikes in “no way related to infrastructure that is used for the export of grain.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “There’s nothing in the [grain export] commitments that Russia signed up to in Istanbul that would prohibit us from continuing our special military operation, destroying military infrastructure and other military targets.”

The United Nations and Turkey helped broker the agreement, which calls for Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea to allow safe passage through areas that Russia has blockaded since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey expects Russia and Ukraine to adhere to the agreement.

Erdogan told state broadcaster TRT Haber, “We expect them to own up to the deals they signed and to act according to the responsibilities they undertook,” according to Reuters news agency.

The White House said Monday the attack casts doubt on Russia’s intentions to follow through with the agreement.

“We are going to be watching this closely to see if Russia meets their commitments under this arrangement since this attack casts serious doubt on Russia’s credibility,” a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement.

Gazprom

Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom added to the economic and political tensions of the war by announcing Monday it would again cut deliveries to Europe. The company said it would reduce gas flow through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which links Russia to Germany, to 20% of capacity.

The move raised fears that Russia was trying to pressure Europe over its support for Ukraine.

Russia said the action was taken because of mechanical reasons, while Germany said it saw no technical reason for the reduction.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday that Russia was using the gas restrictions to inflict “terror” on Europe, and he called for the European Union’s next sanctions package against Moscow to be “significantly stronger.”

“All this is done by Russia on purpose to make it as difficult as possible for Europeans to prepare for winter,” he said.

Deportations

U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia “almost certainly is using so-called filtration operations to conduct the detention and forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia.”

Russia uses such operations to temporarily detain and screen Ukrainians to identify anyone perceived as a threat to Moscow, according to a memo by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released on the agency’s website Friday.

The ODNI said Ukrainians often face one of three fates after undergoing filtration.

Those who are deemed “non-threatening” to Russia may be permitted to remain in Ukraine with certain restrictions. Those deemed “less threatening, but still potentially resistant to Russian occupation” face forcible deportation to Russia.

And Ukrainians found to be most threatening to Russia, including anyone with ties to the military, “probably are detained in prisons in eastern Ukraine and Russia, though little is known about their fates,” according to the memo.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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David Trimble, a former Northern Ireland first minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a key role in helping end Northern Ireland’s decades of violence, has died, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said Monday. He was 77.

The party said in a statement on behalf of the Trimble family that the unionist politician died earlier Monday “following a short illness.”

Trimble, who led the UUP from 1995 to 2005, was a key architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland known as “the Troubles.”

Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, called Trimble “a towering figure of Northern Ireland and British politics” in a tweet Monday. Current UUP leader Doug Beattie praised Trimble as “man of courage and vision,” a tribute echoed by leaders from across the political divide.

The UUP was Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant unionist party when, led by Trimble, it agreed to the Good Friday peace accord.

Although a hardliner unionist when he was younger, Trimble became a politician whose efforts in compromise were pivotal in bringing together unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland’s new power-sharing government.

Like most Protestant politicians at the time, Trimble initially opposed efforts to share power with Catholics as something that would jeopardize Northern Ireland’s union with Britain. He at first refused to speak directly with Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

He ultimately relented and in 1997 became the first unionist leader to negotiate with Sinn Fein.

Former British Prime Minister John Major said Trimble’s “brave and principled change of policy” was critical to peace in Northern Ireland.

“He thoroughly merits an honorable place amongst peacemakers,” Major said.

The peace talks began formally in 1998 and were overseen by neutral figures such as former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. The outcomes were overwhelmingly ratified by public referendums in both parts of Ireland.

Trimble shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with Catholic moderate leader John Hume, head of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), for their work.

Trimble was elected first minister in Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing government the same year, with the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon as deputy first minister.

But both the UUP and the SDLP soon saw themselves eclipsed by more hardline parties — the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. Many in Northern Ireland grew tired of Trimble and his colleagues, who appeared to be too moderate and compromising.

Trimble struggled to keep his party together as the power-sharing government was rocked by disagreements over disarming the IRA and other paramilitary groups. Senior colleagues defected to the DUP, Trimble lost his seat in Britain’s parliament in 2005, and soon after he resigned as party leader. The following year he was appointed to the upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords.

Northern Ireland power-sharing has gone through many crises since then — but the peace settlement has largely endured.

“The Good Friday Agreement is something which everybody in Northern Ireland has been able to agree with,” Trimble said earlier this year. “It doesn’t mean they agree with everything. There are aspects which some people thought were a mistake, but the basic thing is that this was agreed.”

William David Trimble was born in Belfast on October 15, 1944, and was educated at Queen’s University, Belfast.

He had an academic career in law before entering politics in the early 1970s, when he became involved in the hardline Vanguard Party. He surprised many when he won the leadership of the UUP in 1995.

Trimble was not always a popular leader, and his negotiations toward the peace accord attracted criticism from elements of his party.

“David faced huge challenges when he led the Ulster Unionist Party in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations and persuaded his party to sign on for it,” Adams said Monday in a statement. “It is to his credit that he supported that Agreement. I thank him for that.

“While we held fundamentally different political opinions on the way forward nonetheless I believe he was committed to making the peace process work,” Adams continued. “David’s contribution to the Good Friday Agreement and to the quarter century of relative peace that followed cannot be underestimated.”

Trimble is survived by his wife, Daphne, and children Richard, Victoria, Nicholas and Sarah.
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Pope Francis apologized Monday for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s former policy of separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend Christian schools, where many were abused.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Pope Francis said at a former Indigenous residential school in the western Canadian town of Maskwacis, Alberta.

More than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian residential schools from the late 1880s to the 1970s in an effort to distance them from their native languages and cultures.

Many of the children were physically and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

Thousands of Indigenous peoples gathered Monday to hear the pope speak near the site of the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School, many wearing traditional dress. Others wore orange shirts, a symbol of residential school survivors.

The pope said the residential schools were a “disastrous error” that was “incompatible” with the gospel and said the schools had “devastating” effects on generations of Indigenous peoples.

“I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time,” he said.

He apologized for the Catholic Church’s support of a “colonizing mentality” and called for a “serious investigation” of the traumas inflicted on Indigenous children in Catholic educational institutions.

The pope has already apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in the Canadian residential schools during a visit by Indigenous delegates to the Vatican earlier this year. However, this is the first time the pope has apologized on Canadian soil.

The abuses at the Canadian residential schools drew international attention in the past year following the discoveries of hundreds of potential burial sites at former schools. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the pope to apologize for the abuses on Canadian soil.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized for Canada’s role in the residential school system, saying it was an “incredibly harmful government policy.”

On his arrival in Canada on Sunday, the pope was met by representatives of Canada’s three main Indigenous groups — First Nations, Metis and Inuit – along with Trudeau.

On his flight from Rome to Edmonton on Sunday, Francis told reporters “This is a trip of penance. Let’s say that is its spirit.”

The pope’s visit to Canada will also take him to Quebec City and Iqaluit, the capital of the territory of Nunavut.

The 85-year-old pope canceled a trip earlier this month to Africa because of a knee problem.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Sweltering heat broke records across Europe last week, the latest in a series of heat waves that have baked the continent since June. Temperatures crept near or above 40 degrees Celsius in much of western Europe, and the heat is now moving east, where it is expected to linger into August.

Heat waves are becoming increasingly intense, frequent and long lasting around the world because of climate change. But the pattern of heat waves unfolding in Europe is a global outlier.

“We have had an outstanding increase in the number [and] intensity of heat waves,” climate scientist Robert Vautard of the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory in France told VOA. “The last one is just the continuation of the series.”

The European heat wave of 2003 was blamed for more than 70,000 deaths. Subsequent heat waves in 2006, 2010, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 killed thousands more.

Europe warming disproportionally fast

Now 1.94 to 1.99 degrees Celsius hotter on average than the preindustrial average, Europe has warmed by nearly twice the global average of 1.1 degrees. Recent European heat waves reached temperatures three to five degrees higher than was recorded prior to the current period of climate change, Vautard said.

But while climate models capture a bit of this extra heat, their predictions fall short of the real warming in Europe.

“We do not understand why we have such an increase [in temperature] that the models do not predict,” said Vautard. “Models predict easily an increase of 1.5 to 2 degrees in the extreme heat waves since about 100 years, but they do not predict 4 degrees. So, it’s really outstanding.”

Dim Coumou, a climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, told VOA that Europe is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the midlatitudes.

“But it’s not well understood why heat waves in Europe [have] been increasing faster than in other regions,” he said.

Scientists continue to look for answers. Coumou is researching how changes in the jet stream encourage heat waves in Europe. Other potential factors include parched soils and sluggish ocean circulation.

Disturbed jet stream

Europe’s climate is moderated by the jet stream, a current of fast-moving air that loops around the northern hemisphere from west to east. Sometimes the jet stream splits in two — what scientists call a double jet. Double jets are normal, but climate change seems to be making them happen more often and last longer.

Earlier this month, Coumou and his colleagues published results in Nature Communications, linking frequent and persistent double jets to European heat waves.

“We showed that especially for Western Europe, the increased frequency in this particular jet state can explain … the increase in heat waves here,” he said.

Coumou’s results show that for Western Europe, almost all the “extra” heat not predicted by climate models can be explained by double jets. For Europe as a whole, double jets explain about 30% of the excess heat.

Under a double jet, airflow over most of Europe is more sluggish than usual, which can set the stage for heat waves. The current heat wave, for instance, involved a pocket of low-pressure air that stalled off the coast of Portugal because it was cut off from the swift winds of the jet stream.

Dry soils, hot days

This year’s heat waves saw “strong waves, strong patterns in the jet,” said Coumou. But while it’s still too early to say if a double jet was involved, Coumou said the ongoing droughts in Europe were “very likely” a factor in the July heat wave.

Wet soils act as a buffer against extreme heat, climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne of ETH Zurich explained in a voice memo to VOA.

“When the soil gets drier in regions where normally those soils are humid, you get less evapotranspiration, so less water that is evaporated through plants or directly from the soils,” Seneviratne said. “Evapotranspiration normally takes up a lot of energy, which means that if it doesn’t take place, because the soils are too dry, this energy is used instead to warm the air.”

Seneviratne agreed with Coumou that aridity likely contributed to this year’s heat waves.

“There is a clear indication that risers have contributed to the intensity of the heat waves that are currently being seen in Europe,” she said.

Sluggish ocean currents

A slowdown in a major ocean current — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — could also be contributing to European heat waves.

The AMOC shuttles warm and salty water north, and brings deep, cold water southward. Climate models have long predicted that the AMOC will slow as the climate warms, and some researchers think this is already happening.

“It’s still not 100% sure … but there’s actually a lot of evidence pointing at an AMOC slowdown over the last decades,” climate physicist Levke Caesar of Maynooth University in Ireland said in a voicemail to VOA.

An AMOC slowdown would cool the North Atlantic, promoting changes to the jet stream that would channel more warm air from the south into central Europe. That could cause heat waves in Europe, said Caesar.

Still, Caesar cautioned that despite the long-term AMOC slowdown, there are still years when it runs at full speed. She also said there are some indications that the AMOC wasn’t involved in the most recent European heat waves.

“The North Atlantic is not particularly cold at the moment, which might indicate [that] in this case, the AMOC did not play a big role,” she said.

Cause and effect

All of the potential drivers of European heat waves can interact, making it hard to determine a single cause for any given heat wave — or for the unusually strong pattern of extreme heat waves in Europe as a whole.

“It is difficult to assign cause-effect relationships because it’s all dynamically happening together,” Coumou said.

More research is needed to understand exactly why Europe is heating up fast, most of the researchers who spoke to VOA agreed.

What is clear is that summer in Europe will only get hotter. Vautard said European policymakers should prepare for future heat waves as intense as 50 degrees now and not wait for climate models to catch up with reality.

“Forty degrees [Celsius] reached in London — I think if one would have told me that 20 years back, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now, it’s here,” Vautard said.
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A local blacksmith in Sumy, Ukraine, who used to weld metal to make furniture, has transformed his business in the face of war. Olena Adamenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage and video editing by Mykhailo Zaika.
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Bulldozers raze makeshift market stalls and buildings Monday morning in Tongolo, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.

Among the several hundred stall owners is Julio Evina.

Evina says it is regrettable that officials are destroying businesses along some major streets in the capital Yaounde and rendering families hungry simply because French President Emmanuel Macron will be visiting Cameroon. He says if not for Macron’s visit, he is certain that the government would not have filled potholes that have been causing accidents on roads in Yaounde.

France says Macron will discuss the food crisis in Africa provoked in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as the challenges in increasing agriculture production in Africa and an upsurge in insecurity.

Cameroon faces Boko Haram terrorism that has killed over 30,000 people and displaced two million within 10 years in its northern border with Chad and Nigeria. The central African state also faces separatist conflicts that have killed at least 3,300 people and displaced more than 750,000 in 5 years according to the U.N.

Capo Daniel is the deputy defense chief of the Ambazonia Defense Forces, or the ADF, one of the separatist groups. He says the ADF hopes Macron will ask Biya to end the use of force as a solution to the separatist crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

“One of our factions in our liberation movement called for lockdown as a means to protest Emmanuel Macrons visit, but other movements will be watching this event with the hope that Emmanuel Macron will be pushing Paul Biya to choose the path of peaceful resolution of the war.”

Politicians and civil society groups say they will discuss with Macron the possibility of a peaceful transition in Cameroon. Eighty-nine-year-old President Paul Biya has been in power for close to 40 years and critics accuse him of rigging elections to prolong his power until he dies. The government says he has always won democratic elections.

France says after Cameroon, Macron will visit Benin and Guinea Bissau.

Ejani Leornard Kulu, a political scientist and an analyst at the U.N.-sponsored University for Peace Africa Program in Addis Ababa, says Macron is expected to review his country’s economic, political and security ties with Africa. Kulu adds that African countries that have agreements with France are now seeking profitable partnerships with other world economies.

“We saw the president of the African Union and the African Commission going to Russia to see how cereals will not be blocked for Africans to have food. If we take the case of Cameroon signing a defense treaty with Russia, Cameroon surrendering mines exploitation to China, questions French positioning and even gives a sentiment of anti-French. So, France wants to reposition itself against other partners like China, like Russia.”

The government of France says Macron is accompanied by the French ministers of foreign affairs, armed forces and foreign relations, as well as the French secretary of state for development.
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New rules designed to conserve energy are set to go into effect for French shops.

Stores that are running their air-conditioning or heating will be ordered to keep their doors closed, French Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher told RMC radio. Keeping the doors open of air-conditioned shops leads to 20% more energy consumption, Pannier-Funacher said. She added, “It’s absurd.”

Shopkeepers could face a fine of up to $766.

A second rule will extend the ban on illuminated advertising from 1 to 6 o’clock in the morning to all cities, no matter the size. The ban is already in effect for cities with fewer than 800,000 residents. Airports and stations will be exempt.

It was not immediately clear exactly when the bans will go into effect. Pannier-Funacher told RMC only that the decrees for the bans will be issued “in the coming days.”

France like much of Europe is experiencing a scorching summer with higher than usual temperatures.

Some information in this report came from Agence France Presse.
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Former Los Angeles Lakers player Slava Medvedenko is selling his two NBA championship rings to raise money for his native Ukraine.

Medvedenko was a power forward on the Lakers’ championship teams in 2001 and ’02, playing alongside Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.

SCP Auctions is donating the entire final sale price of both rings to Medvedenko’s Fly High Foundation. Its goal is to support Ukrainian children by restoring the sports infrastructure of the war-torn country’s schools and launching a network of social sports clubs.

“We want to restore gyms because the Russian army bombed more than a hundred schools,” he told The Associated Press by phone on Sunday. “Our country, they need a lot of money to fix the schools. Sports gyms are going to be last in the line to fix it. In Ukraine, we have winter and kids need to play inside.”

The auction runs from Wednesday through Aug. 5. The Laguna Niguel, California-based company estimates both rings will raise at least $100,000.

Medvedenko said he decided to sell the rings after going to the roof of one of the tallest buildings in his Kyiv neighborhood and watching rockets launched by Russian forces streak through the night sky.

“In this moment I just decided, ‘Why do I need these rings if they’re just sitting in my safe?'” Medvedenko said. “I just recognize I can die. After that, I just say I have to sell them to show people leadership, to help my Ukrainian people to live better, to help kids.”

Medvedenko spoke from Warsaw, Poland, where he staged a sold-out charity basketball game to raise money for Ukrainian refugees who crossed the border to escape the war.

“In Ukraine, you’re just feeling it’s war, rockets, air alerts. You’re so used to that kind of pressure,” he said. “As soon as you cross the border and see how people live normal life, it’s a different world.”

The 43-year-old is married with two daughters, ages 16 and 11, and a 10-year-old son. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Medvedenko sent his children to live with their grandmother in another part of the country.

“After they stay for 1½ months, they were all the time calling me and asking, ‘Papa, can we come home? We want to be with you and Momma,'” he recalled.

Five months into the war, Medvedenko has reunited his family in Kyiv.

“We have air alerts almost every day. Sometimes it’s three or four times a day,” he said. “The kids are so used to it. They play in our backyard. They not even stop playing they are used to it.”

Medvedenko has served in Ukraine’s territorial defense forces during the war.

“We were defending our neighborhood, doing checkpoints and duty patrol. I’m not the best soldier, I’m not the best shooter, but I can give them support,” he said, adding that he carried an AK-47. “I shoot it a couple times, not at people. I’m happy I don’t have a chance to shoot somebody. Our army did a great job to defend Kyiv. I want to thank them.”

Medvedenko was a candidate for Kyiv City Council in the 2020 election. He was 11th on the election list and his party only managed to win nine seats.

Beyond his humanitarian efforts during the war, Medvedenko has long-term goals to help his country.

“After the victory, we will definitely return to that question of quality changes in sport,” he said. “Ten years in the United States, I saw how it works. I hope I have ideal model in my mind to change Ukrainian sport.”

Medvedenko joined the Lakers in the 2000-01 season. He had his best season in 2003-04 when he started 38 games in place of injured Hall of Famer Karl Malone and averaged 8.3 points and 5.0 rebounds. Injuries later slowed him, and Medvedenko was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in 2006-07, his final season in the league.

Medvedenko said he texts with former Lakers Mark Madsen and Luke Walton. The team has sent sports equipment for use in Ukraine.

“The Lakers family always help me,” he said. “The Lakers are always in my heart.”
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