RIYADMEDIA

Rishi Sunak on Sunday promised to get tough on China if he becomes Britain’s next prime minister, calling the Asian superpower the “number one threat” to domestic and global security.

The former finance minister’s pledge comes after his rival in the race to lead the ruling Conservative party, Liz Truss, accused him of being weak on China and Russia.

China’s state-run Global Times has previously said Sunak was the only candidate in the contest with “a clear and pragmatic view on developing UK-China ties.”

The Daily Mail, which has come out for Foreign Secretary Truss in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, called that “the endorsement that nobody wanted.”

Sunak’s proposals include the closure of all 30 Confucius Institutes in Britain, preventing the soft power spread of Chinese influence through culture and language programs.

He also promised to “kick the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) out of our universities” by forcing higher education establishments to disclose foreign funding of more than $60,000 and reviewing research partnerships.

Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 would be used to help combat Chinese espionage, and he would look to build a “NATO-style” international co-operation to tackle Chinese threats in cyberspace.

He would also study the case for banning Chinese acquisitions of key British assets, including strategically sensitive tech firms.

Sunak claimed that China was “stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities” at home, “propping up” Vladimir Putin abroad by buying Russian oil, as well as attempting to bully neighbors including Taiwan.

He criticized China’s global “belt and road” scheme for “saddling developing countries with insurmountable debt.”

“They torture, detain and indoctrinate their own people, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, in contravention of their human rights. And they have continually rigged the global economy in their favor by suppressing their currency,” he added.  

“Enough is enough. For too long, politicians in Britain and across the West have rolled out the red carpet and turned a blind eye to China’s nefarious activity and ambitions.  

“I will change this on Day 1 as PM.”

Sunak’s tough talk will doubtless please China hawks in the Tory ranks, who have repeatedly pushed Johnson to stand up more to Beijing.

But it is also a sign of how Sunak is desperately trying to claw back ground from Truss, whom opinion polls have put well ahead in the crucial hunt for votes from the 200,000 grassroots Tory members.

A winner will be announced on September 5.

Truss has similarly urged a tougher approach, calling for the G-7 to become an “economic NATO” against Chinese threats and warned Beijing of sanctions if they did not play by international rules.  

It aligns both with warnings from MI5 and the FBI about a surge in Chinese commercial espionage in the West.

Yet British government policy when both Sunak and Truss were in Johnson’s Cabinet has warned about China before.

In March last year, its integrated review of security, defense and foreign policy called China “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security.”

Under fierce political pressure from Washington, it banned Chinese technology giant Huawei from involvement in the roll-out of Britain’s 5G network.

Laws have been tightened to make it harder for foreign firms, including those from China, to buy British businesses in sensitive sectors such as defense, energy and transport.  

At the same time, London has recognized that China’s power and international assertiveness was here to stay and called Beijing a “systemic competitor.”

In July last year, Sunak himself called for a more nuanced approach to the debate on China.

“We need a mature and balanced relationship,” he said in his Mansion House speech as chancellor of the exchequer.

“That means being eyes wide open about their increasing international influence and continuing to take a principled stand on issues we judge to contravene our values.”
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Jonas Vingegaard claimed his maiden Tour de France title after Sunday’s 21st and final stage, completing a triumph he effectively sealed in the mountains after a vintage duel with Tadej Pogacar.

The 25-year-old, who five years ago was working as a fish packer in a factory in the morning before training in the afternoon, followed up on his surprise second place last year.

He finished Sunday’s ride to the Champs Elysees safely in the bunch as Belgian Jasper Philipsen won the last stage in a sprint ahead of Dutch Dylan Groenewegen and Norway’s Alexander Kristoff, who were second and third respectively.

Vingegaard laid the foundations of his victory in the 10th stage, when he and his team mate Primoz Roglic attacked Pogacar relentlessly and made him crack in the climb up to the Col du Granon.

Pogacar hit back time and time again but Vingegaard and his Jumbo-Visma team contained the feisty Slovenian, with the new champion sealing the victory when he claimed another win at Hautacam in the final mountain stage.

Overall, Vingegaard, who rocketed into the limelight last year, finished two minutes and 43 seconds ahead of Pogacar, according to provisional timings, and won the polka-dot jersey for the mountains classification.

Geraint Thomas, the 2018 champion, ended up a distant third overall, 7:22 off the pace, in a race that took place under the cloud of COVID-19, with 17 riders pulling out after contracting the infection.

Vingegaard’s Jumbo-Visma team dominated the Tour, winning six of the 21 stages while protecting the Dane throughout, especially in a moment of panic when he suffered a mechanical issue in the cobbled stage in the opening week.

The Dutch team led the way into the Champs Elysees on Sunday, but they stayed at the back of the peloton in the final straight as Vingegaard and his teammates enjoyed the moment.

The soft-spoken Vingegaard, who joined Jumbo-Visma in 2019, long struggled with anxiety, which cost him in several races.

But with the help of his girlfriend Trine Hansen and his team management, he began to manage his nerves better and his newly-found composure was key in his progression.

Vingegaard is the first Dane to win the Tour since Bjarne Riis, who kept his 1996 title despite later admitting to doping.

In 2007, another Dane, Michael Rasmussen, was kicked out of the race while wearing the yellow jersey when his team terminated his contract after finding out he had lied about his training whereabouts.

French fans were left still waiting for a first home title since Bernard Hinault in 1985, although David Gaudu ended up a decent fourth overall.
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Italian vessels have recovered five bodies and rescued 674 people packed on a fishing boat adrift in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast, the Italian Coast Guard said Sunday, while European charities reported saving more than 500 more.

Some of the survivors had to be plucked from the sea in the Italian operation Saturday that was carried out 120 miles (190 kilometers) off the coast of Calabria by a Navy mercantile ship, three Coast Guard patrol boats and a financial police boat. All of those rescued were brought to ports in Calabria and Sicily.

The causes of death for the five dead were not immediately known.

The Coast Guard said it was just one in a series of rescues in recent days in the Italian search and rescue area of the central Mediterranean, as desperate people fleeing poverty or oppression seek a better life in Europe. In one case, a helicopter was called to evacuate a woman in need of medical treatment from a migrant boat in a precarious condition, the Coast Guard said.

In separate operations, the German charity Sea-Watch said it rescued 444 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean on overcrowded, rickety smugglers’ boats. The Sea-Watch 3 vessel carried out the five operations over 24 hours, and said the rescued included a pregnant woman and a man who had suffered severe burns.

The charity is asking for permission to bring the rescued people to a safe port, as the rescue ship is unable to accommodate so many people.

In addition, the European charity SOS Mediterannee said its rescue ship Ocean Viking have saved 87 people, including 57 unaccompanied minors, from an overcrowded rubber boat off the Libyan coast. None had life jackets, the charity said.

Migrant arrivals in Italy are up by nearly one-quarter from 2021, with 34,013 recorded through Friday.

While still notably fewer than the 2015 peak year, the crossings remain deadly, with 1,234 people recorded dead or missing at sea by the U.N. refugee agency this year, 823 of those in the perilous central Mediterranean.
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Britain’s two contenders to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister promised on Sunday to tackle illegal immigration as a priority, with both backing the government’s policy of sending migrants to Rwanda.

Former finance minister Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary Liz Truss are battling to become Britain’s next prime minister after a revolt over Johnson’s scandal-ridden administration forced the prime minister to say he would stand down.

The two candidates have so far clashed over the timing of any tax cuts at a time when Britain is facing rising inflation, stalling growth and an increasing number of strikes.

Sunak on Saturday described himself as “the underdog” after Truss topped opinion polls among the Conservative Party members who will appoint their next leader, and Britain’s prime minister, with the result due on Sept. 5.

On Sunday both candidates set out their plans to press ahead with the government’s policy of sending illegal migrants to Rwanda, though the first deportation flight was blocked last month by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Truss, who is tipped as favorite to win the leadership contest, said she would look to pursue more “third country processing partnerships like Rwanda,” would increase the border force by 20% and strengthen Britain’s Bill of Rights.

“As prime minister, I am determined to see the Rwanda policy through to full implementation as well as exploring other countries where we can work on similar partnerships,” Truss said in a statement.

“I’ll make sure we have the right levels of force and protection at our borders. I will not cower to the ECHR and its continued efforts to try and control immigration policy.”

Sunak, who won the backing of most Conservative lawmakers in earlier leadership votes, said he would treat illegal immigration as “one of five major emergency responses” he will tackle in his first 100 days as prime minister.

“I’ll take a hard-headed targets approach, with incentives for people who meet them and penalties for those who don’t,” he wrote in The Sun newspaper.

“If a country won’t cooperate on taking back illegal migrants, I won’t think twice about our relationship with them when it comes to foreign aid, trade and visas.” 
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A spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Russian missiles destroyed military infrastructure Saturday in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa, a site that is vital for the exportation of Ukrainian grain.

Maria Zakharova posted on her Telegram account “Kalibr missiles destroyed military infrastructure in the port of Odessa, with a high-precision strike.”

Russia earlier had denied any involvement in the Saturday strike that came a day after Russia and Ukraine had signed agreements allowing Ukraine to ship millions of tons of grain out of its Black Sea port.

It was not immediately clear what caused the reversal of facts from a Russian official.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted Russia for jeopardizing the deal.

Zelenskyy said late Saturday in his daily address, “Today’s Russian missile attack on Odesa, on our port, is a cynical one, and it was also a blow to the political positions of Russia itself. If anyone in the world could still say that some kind of dialogue … with Russia, some kind of agreements are needed, see what is happening. Today’s Russian Kalibr missiles have destroyed the very possibility for such statements.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed a similar sentiment in a statement, issued late Saturday.

“This attack casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal and undermines the work of the UN, Turkey, and Ukraine to get critical food to world markets,” the top U.S. diplomat said.  “Russia bears responsibility for deepening the global food crisis and must stop its aggression and fully implement the deal to which it has agreed.”

“For 12 hours we dared to hope for relief of the global hunger crisis from shipments of Ukrainian grain,” David Miliband, CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement, also issued late Saturday.

“We have said it before; the war in Ukraine is a tragedy for Ukraine but also a global disaster for those in greatest need.  This latest twist is as cruel as it is dangerous.”

Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne quoted the Ukrainian military as saying the missiles had not caused significant damage, and a government minister said preparations continued to restart grain exports from the country’s Black Sea ports, according to Reuters. 

The strikes drew strong condemnation.

“Yesterday, all parties made clear commitments on the global stage to ensure the safe movement of Ukrainian grain and related products to global markets,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement delivered by spokesperson Farhan Haq.

“These products are desperately needed to address the global food crisis and ease the suffering of millions of people in need around the globe. Full implementation by the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey is imperative.”

U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink called the strike “outrageous.”

“The Kremlin continues to weaponize food. Russia must be held to account,” she posted on Twitter.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Russia’s actions “reprehensible.”

“Striking a target crucial for grain export a day after the signature of Istanbul agreements … demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law and commitments,” he said.

Zelenskyy said the strike on Odesa demonstrates that Moscow will find ways not to implement the grain deal.

This proves only one thing: no matter what Russia says and promises, it will find ways not to implement it,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted on Telegram.

Ongoing fighting

Elsewhere in Ukraine, a Russian missile attack on an airfield and a railway facility in central Ukraine on Saturday killed three people and wounded at least 13, according to local officials.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said early Saturday that in the previous 48 hours, heavy fighting had been taking place as Ukrainian forces continued their offensive against Russian forces in Kherson oblast, west of the Dnipro River.

In the statement posted to Twitter, the ministry said, “Russia is likely attempting to slow the Ukrainian attack using artillery fire along the natural barrier of the Ingulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro. Simultaneously, the supply lines of the Russian force west of the Dnipro are increasingly at risk.”
…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted Russia jeopardizing a deal that both Russia and Ukraine signed to allow Ukraine to ship millions of tons of grain out of its Black Sea ports.  The deal was signed by both nations Friday, but on Saturday, Russia launched a missile attack on the port of Odesa.

Zelenskyy said late Saturday in his daily address, “Today’s Russian missile attack on Odesa, on our port, is a cynical one, and it was also a blow to the political positions of Russia itself. If anyone in the world could still say that some kind of dialogue … with Russia, some kind of agreements are needed, see what is happening. Today’s Russian Kalibr missiles have destroyed the very possibility for such statements.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed a similar sentiment in a statement, issued late Saturday.

“This attack casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal and undermines the work of the UN, Turkey, and Ukraine to get critical food to world markets,” the top U.S. diplomat said.  “Russia bears responsibility for deepening the global food crisis and must stop its aggression and fully implement the deal to which it has agreed.”

“For 12 hours we dared to hope for relief of the global hunger crisis from shipments of Ukrainian grain,” David Miliband, CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement, also issued late Saturday.

“We have said it before; the war in Ukraine is a tragedy for Ukraine but also a global disaster for those in greatest need.  This latest twist is as cruel as it is dangerous.”

Turkey said Russia has denied any involvement in missile strikes Saturday on Odesa.

“In our contact with Russia, the Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack and that they were examining the issue very closely and in detail,” Defense Minister Hulusai Akar said in a statement. “The fact that such an incident took place right after the agreement we made yesterday really worried us.”

Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne quoted the Ukrainian military as saying the missiles had not caused significant damage, and a government minister said preparations continued to restart grain exports from the country’s Black Sea ports, according to Reuters. 

The strikes drew strong condemnation.

“Yesterday, all parties made clear commitments on the global stage to ensure the safe movement of Ukrainian grain and related products to global markets,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement delivered by spokesperson Farhan Haq.

“These products are desperately needed to address the global food crisis and ease the suffering of millions of people in need around the globe. Full implementation by the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey is imperative.

U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink called the strike “outrageous.”

“The Kremlin continues to weaponize food. Russia must be held to account,” she posted on Twitter.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Russia’s actions “reprehensible.”

“Striking a target crucial for grain export a day after the signature of Istanbul agreements … demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law and commitments,” he said.

Zelenskyy said the strike on Odesa demonstrates that Moscow will find ways not to implement the grain deal.

“This proves only one thing: no matter what Russia says and promises, it will find ways not to implement it,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted on Telegram.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement Saturday outlining progress in the war made no mention of any strike on Odesa.

However, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova reposted the U.N. condemnation and said, “It is awful that UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres does not ‘unequivocally’ condemn also the Kyiv regime’s killing of children in Donbas.”

Ongoing fighting

Elsewhere in Ukraine, a Russian missile attack on an airfield and a railway facility in central Ukraine on Saturday killed three people and wounded at least 13, according to local officials.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said early Saturday that in the previous 48 hours, heavy fighting had been taking place as Ukrainian forces continued their offensive against Russian forces in Kherson oblast, west of the Dnipro River.

In the statement posted to Twitter, the ministry said, “Russia is likely attempting to slow the Ukrainian attack using artillery fire along the natural barrier of the Ingulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro. Simultaneously, the supply lines of the Russian force west of the Dnipro are increasingly at risk.” 
…

Unions, port officials and the French authorities blamed Brexit on Saturday as thousands of holidaymakers faced long delays trying to reach Europe via the English Channel port of Dover.

But U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss laid the blame squarely on Paris, telling her French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, that “the French authorities have not put enough people on the border.”

The situation has added to the bad blood between London and Paris in the wake of Brexit, scotching hopes of a reset after Boris Johnson said earlier this month he was stepping down as premier.

“We need to see action from them (the French) to resolve the terrible situation which travelers, including families, are facing,” said Truss, who is currently fighting to succeed Johnson as prime minister.

But Paris has rejected claims that the gridlock was caused by under-staffing and Colonna in her tweet took a more sanguine view of their conversation, describing the talks as “good” and welcoming the “cooperation” to reduce the delays.

Colonna also underlined the “need to improve facilities at the Port of Dover.”

Tweeting the front page of Britain’s right-wing Daily Telegraph which had the headline “Truss tells France to fix holiday chaos,” French Transport Minister Clement Beaune said the French authorities were “mobilized” to ease movement.

But in a jab at London, the former Europe minister added: “France is not responsible for Brexit.”

Border checks and extra paperwork for freight traffic were reintroduced when Britain left the European Union last year, ending free movement for people and goods in the bloc.

Bottlenecks of lorries at Dover have been seen since then but this summer is the first with unrestricted travel for the public since the lifting of all COVID-19 restrictions.

French lawmaker Pierre-Henri Dumont, whose constituency includes the French Channel port of Calais, called the travel chaos “an aftermath of Brexit.”

“We have to run more checks than before,” he told BBC television, predicting it would happen again.

Port of Dover chief executive Doug Bannister initially blamed a lack of French border agency staff for the logjam which saw some holidaymakers wait six hours or longer to catch their ferries.

But he conceded there were now “increased transaction times” post-Brexit. The port was confident of handling the demand at peak periods, he added.

Brexit figurehead Johnson made “taking back control” of U.K. borders a rallying call for his “leave” campaign in the 2016 vote on EU membership.

Since becoming prime minister, he has found that more difficult, with record numbers of migrants crossing from northern France in small boats.

Lucy Moreton, from the ISU union that represents borders, immigration and customs staff, said the tailbacks were a “reasonably predictable” result of Brexit.

“This is the time that it’s chosen to bite,” she told the BBC.

Passengers have to go through both UK and French border checks at Dover before boarding ferries to northern France.

By 12:45 pm (1145 GMT), the Port of Dover said more than 17,000 passengers had already gone through.

Bannister said some 8,500 vehicles had left the port on Friday, with about 10,000 expected Saturday.

Queues for the port snaked through Dover and surrounding roads, stretching kilometers, with lorries backed up the M20 motorway leading to the town.

A traffic management system was rolled out on the M20 to manage the high volume of lorries backed up toward Dover.

That included closing parts of the motorway to non-freight traffic and diverting cars towards the port and the Eurotunnel by other routes.

The prefect of the Hauts-de-France region Georges-Francois Leclerc said France had “done its job” by increasing its border staff in Dover from 120 to 200.

He blamed the traffic jams on an accident on the M20 on Friday for the late arrival of French border agency staff at their posts in Dover.

All French staff were in position at 9:45 a.m. (0845 GMT) instead of 8:30 a.m., the prefect told reporters in Lille.

“Who would have thought that because the French reinforcements were an hour late that it would derail the whole system?” he added.

“Last year there was COVID. We’re finding out about Brexit” and its impact on peak periods. “The world has changed. The U.K. is now a third country to the EU,” which means much more time-consuming checks.
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A senior U.S. congressional delegation met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Saturday and promised to try to ensure continued support in the war against Russia.

The delegation, which included Representative Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, is the latest in a series of high-profile American visitors to Ukraine.

“The United States, along with allies and partners around the world, have stood with Ukraine by providing economic, military, and humanitarian assistance,” the delegation said in a statement.

“We will continue to seek ways to support President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people as effectively as possible as they continue their brave stand,” they added.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that Washington would send four more high-mobility artillery rocket systems to Ukraine, bringing the total provided so far to 16.

The statement from the delegation Saturday made no specific reference to weapons transfers.

Separately, Smith was quoted as telling the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Washington and its allies were ready to hand over more multiple launch rocket systems.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media oversees RFE/RL, as well as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. 
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Pope Francis’ trip to Canada to apologize for the horrors of church-run Indigenous residential schools marks a radical rethink of the Catholic Church’s missionary legacy, spurred on by the first pope from the Americas and the discovery of hundreds of probable graves at the school sites.

Francis has said his weeklong visit, which begins Sunday, is a “penitential pilgrimage” to beg forgiveness on Canadian soil for the “evil” done to Native peoples by Catholic missionaries. It follows his April 1 apology in the Vatican for the generations of trauma Indigenous peoples suffered as a result of a church-enforced policy to eliminate their culture and assimilate them into Canadian, Christian society.

Francis’ tone of personal repentance has signaled a notable shift for the papacy, which has long acknowledged abuses in the residential schools and strongly asserted the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples. But past popes have also hailed the sacrifice and holiness of the European Catholic missionaries who brought Christianity to the Americas — something Francis, too, has done but isn’t expected to emphasize during this trip.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit who is a top papal adviser, recalled that early on in his papacy, Francis asserted that no single culture can claim a hold on Christianity, and that the church cannot demand that people on other continents imitate the European way of expressing the faith.

“If this conviction had been accepted by everyone involved in the centuries after the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, much suffering would have been avoided, great developments would have occurred and the Americas would be all-around better,” he told The Associated Press in an email.

The trip won’t be easy for the 85-year-old Francis or for residential school survivors and their families. Francis can no longer walk without assistance and will be using a wheelchair and cane because of painful strained knee ligaments. Trauma experts are being deployed at all events to provide mental health assistance for school survivors, given the likelihood of triggering memories.

“It is an understatement to say there are mixed emotions,” said Chief Desmond Bull of the Louis Bull Tribe, one of the First Nations that are part of the Maskwacis territory where Francis will deliver his first sweeping apology on Monday near the site of a former residential school.

The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse were rampant in the state-funded, Christian schools that operated from the 19th century to the 1970s. Some 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes, Native languages and cultures.

The legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction on Canadian reservations.

“For survivors from coast to coast, this is an opportunity — the first and maybe the last — to perhaps find some closure for themselves and their families,” said Chief Randy Ermineskin of the Ermineskin Cree Nation.

“This will be a difficult process but a necessary one,” he said.

Unlike most papal trips, diplomatic protocols are taking a back seat to personal encounters with First Nations, Metis and Inuit survivors. Francis doesn’t formally meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau until midway through, in Quebec City, although Trudeau will greet him on the tarmac upon his arrival Sunday.

Francis is also ending the trip in unusual style, stopping in Iqaluit, Nunavut — the farthest north he’s ever traveled — to bring his apology to the Inuit community before flying back to Rome. 

As recently as 2018, Francis had refused to personally apologize for residential school abuses, even after Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 documented institutional blame and specifically recommended a papal apology delivered on Canadian soil. 

Trudeau traveled to the Vatican in 2017 to appeal to Francis to apologize, but the pontiff felt “he could not personally respond” to the call, Canadian bishops said at the time. 

What changed? The first pope from the Americas, who has long defended the rights of Indigenous peoples, had already apologized in Bolivia in 2015 for colonial-era crimes against Native peoples. 

In 2019, Francis — an Argentine Jesuit — hosted a big Vatican conference on the Amazon highlighting that injustices Native peoples suffered during colonial times were still continuing, with their lands and resources exploited by corporate interests. 

Then in 2021, the remains of around 200 children were found at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school, in Kamloops, British Columbia. More probable graves followed outside other former residential schools. 

“It was only when our children were beginning to be found in mass graves, garnering international attention, that light was brought to this painful period in our history,” said Bull, the Louis Bull Tribe chief. 

After the discovery, Francis finally agreed to meet with Indigenous delegations last spring and promised to come to their lands to apologize in person. 

“Obviously, there are wounds that remained open and require a response,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said, when asked about the evolution of the papal response. 

One of those wounds concerns the papal influences in the Doctrine of Discovery, the 19th-century international legal concept that is often understood as legitimizing the European colonial seizure of land and resources from Native peoples. 

For decades, Indigenous peoples have demanded the Holy See formally rescind the 15th century papal bulls, or decrees, that gave European kingdoms the religious backing to claim lands that their explorers “discovered” for the sake of spreading the Christian faith. 

Church officials have long rejected those concepts, insisted the decrees merely sought to ensure European expansion would be peaceful, and said they had been surpassed by subsequent church teachings strongly affirming the dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples. 

But the matter is still raw for Michelle Schenandoah, a member of the Oneida Nation Wolf Clan, who was the last person to address the pope when the First Nations delegation met with him on March 31. 

Wearing a cradle board on her back to represent the children whose lives were lost in residential schools, she told him the Doctrine of Discovery had “led to the continual taking of our babies.” 

“It deprived us of our dignity, our freedom, and led to the exploitation of our Mother Earth,” she said. She begged Francis to “release the world from its place of enslavement” caused by the decrees. 

Asked about the calls, Bruni said there was an articulated “reflection” under way in the Holy See but he didn’t think anything would be announced during this trip. 
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Britain’s Defense Ministry said early Saturday that in the last 48 hours heavy fighting has been taking place as Ukrainian forces have continued their offensive against Russian forces in Kherson Oblast, west of the River Dnipro.

In the statement posted to Twitter the ministry said “Russia is likely attempting to slow the Ukrainian attack using artillery fire along the natural barrier of the Ingulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro. Simultaneously, the supply lines of the Russian force west of the Dnipro are increasingly at risk.”

In another development, the credit rating firms of Fitch and Scope have downgraded Ukraine to just one step above default. The move followed Ukraine’s request for a debt payment freeze. The rating agencies said that makes a default on the debt more likely.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has promised Ukraine a new $270 million security assistance package, which will include four more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS.

Ukraine’s military has already deployed at least eight HIMARS to the front lines in its fight against Russia, while another four are either on the ground or on their way.

The latest U.S. pledge will bring the total number of HIMARS to 16. In addition, Ukraine has deployed six medium- to long-range rocket systems from Germany and Britain.

Ukraine and Russia signed separate deals Friday, opening the way for Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain worldwide.

Ukraine, one of the world’s major breadbaskets, has been unable to export its grain because of the Russian invasion.

“About 20 million tons of last year’s grain harvest will be exported. And also it will be possible to sell this year’s harvest, …  already being harvested,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his daily address Friday. “These are the incomes of farmers, the entire agricultural sector and the state budget. These are jobs. These are funds for next year’s sowing season.”

Zelenskyy estimated that his country currently has approximately $10 billion worth of grain.
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The United States will send Ukraine more precision rocket systems along with hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery shells, part of a new security assistance package unveiled Friday aimed at giving Kyiv an upper hand in what Western military officials describe as a grinding war of attrition with Russia.

The highlight of the $270 million U.S. pledge, the 16th since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, is the addition of four more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, each with a range of about 70 kilometers, which U.S. officials credit for helping to stymie Russia’s advance in the Donbas.

“We’re seeing Ukraine employing very precise, very accurate targeting of critical Russian positions,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set out by the Pentagon.

“They’re [Russia] paying a high price for every inch of territory they try to take or hold.”

Ukraine’s military has deployed at least eight HIMARS to the front lines in its fight with Russian forces, while another four are either on the ground or on their way.

The latest U.S. pledge will bring the total number of HIMARS to 16. In addition, Ukraine has deployed six medium- to long-range rocket systems from Germany and Britain.

Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier Friday said it had destroyed four of the U.S.-made HIMARS in recent fighting. But U.S. and Ukrainian officials quickly rejected the claims as nonsense, though not for a lack of Russian efforts.

“They’re probably the most hunted things in all of Ukraine,” according to a senior U.S. military official, who, like the U.S. defense official, also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“This speaks to the exceptional abilities of the Ukrainians,” the military official added. “The ability for these men and women to shoot, move and stay alive is just exceptional.”

U.S. intelligence estimates suggest Ukrainian forces have used the HIMARS to take out more than 100 “high-value” Russian targets, and that nearly a month after the first HIMARS were introduced on the battlefield, Russian forces have struggled to find an answer.

“The Russians are attempting to mitigate those effects through a number of means – camouflage, movement, changing locations,” the senior U.S. military official said. “It doesn’t seem to be that good.”

Contrary to U.S. and other Western assessments, Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Friday insisted on its Telegram feed that Ukraine “is suffering considerable losses of armament.”

And Russian officials continue to express confidence that Ukraine’s forces will eventually succumb.

‘Peace — on our terms’

“Russia will achieve all its goals. There will be peace – on our terms,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now chief of the Kremlin’s Security Council, said earlier this week.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov likewise threatened that Russia would expand the scope of its so-called special operation in Ukraine if the West continued to arm Ukraine’s forces.

Increasingly, Western officials are downplaying such threats as fanciful thinking.

“I think they’re about to run out of steam,” Richard Moore, the chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, told an audience Thursday at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

At the same forum on Friday, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said Russian troops in Ukraine are facing “significant difficulties” as they attempt to muster the type of force needed to make meaningful gains.

And all indications are that more U.S. security assistance will be coming.

“It is our strategic objective to ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a strategic success for [President Vladimir] Putin, that it is a strategic failure,” Sullivan said. “That means both that he be denied his objectives in Ukraine and that Russia pay a longer-term price in terms of the elements of its national power, so that the lesson that goes forth to would-be aggressors elsewhere is if you try things like this, it comes at a cost that is not worth bearing.”

In addition to the HIMARS, the security package announced Friday includes more rockets, 360,000 rounds of artillery and anti-armor systems, all slated for immediate delivery.

A second part of the package, up to 580 Phoenix Ghost drones, will start arriving next month.

U.S. officials said Ukrainian forces had used a previous shipment of more than 100 of the drones to great effect against Russia’s armored vehicles, and the goal is now to make sure Ukraine has a “steady supply.”

US-made jets

The U.S. is also looking at eventually providing Ukraine with U.S.-made fighter jets, possibly to replace Soviet-era MiGs and Sukhoi jets that Ukraine is currently using.

“This is not something that’s going to happen anytime soon,” John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters Friday, describing the discussions as “preliminary explorations.”

“Integrating and operating any kind of aircraft, especially an advanced fighter aircraft … that’s a difficult endeavor,” Kirby said.

Despite repeated requests from Kyiv, U.S. officials said they will not provide Ukraine with the Army Tactical Missile Systems, with a 300-kilometer range and the ability to reach deep into Russian territory.

“While a key goal of the United States is to do the needful to support and defend Ukraine, another key goal is to ensure that we do not end up in a circumstance where we’re heading down the road towards a third world war,” Sullivan said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Judges at the United Nations’ highest court on Friday dismissed preliminary objections by Myanmar to a case alleging the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority.

The decision establishing the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction sets the stage for hearings airing evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya that human rights groups and a U.N. probe say breach the 1948 Genocide Convention. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the violent repression of the Rohingya population in Myanmar, which was formerly known as Burma, amounts to genocide.

Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, welcomed the decision, saying 600,000 Rohingya “are still facing genocide,” while “1 million people in Bangladesh camps, they are waiting for a hope for justice.”

The African nation of Gambia filed the case in 2019 amid international outrage at the treatment of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid a brutal crackdown by Myanmar forces in 2017. It argued that both Gambia and Myanmar were parties to the 1948 convention and that all signatories had a duty to ensure it was enforced.

Judges at the court agreed.

Reading a summary of the decision, the court’s president, U.S. Judge Joan E. Donoghue, said: “Any state party to the Genocide Convention may invoke the responsibility of another state party including through the institution of proceedings before the court.”

A small group of pro-Rohingya protesters gathered outside the court’s headquarters, the Peace Palace, ahead of the decision with a banner reading: “Speed up delivering justice to Rohingya. The genocide survivors can’t wait for generations.”

One protester stamped on a large photograph of Myanmar’s military government leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

The court rejected arguments raised at hearings in February by lawyers representing Myanmar that the case should be tossed out because the world court only rules in disputes between states and the Rohingya complaint was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The judges also dismissed Myanmar’s claim that Gambia could not file the case as it was not directly linked to the events in Myanmar and that a legal dispute did not exist between the two countries before the case was filed.

Myanmar’s representative, Ko Ko Hlaing, the military government’s minister for international cooperation, said his nation “will try our utmost to defend our country and to protect our national interest.”

Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, Dawda Jallow, said, “We are very pleased that justice has been done.”

The Netherlands and Canada have backed Gambia, saying in 2020 that the country “took a laudable step towards ending impunity for those committing atrocities in Myanmar and upholding this pledge. Canada and the Netherlands consider it our obligation to support these efforts, which are of concern to all of humanity.”

However, the court ruled Friday that it “would not be appropriate” to send the two countries copies of documents and legal arguments filed in the case.

Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 in the aftermath of an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of Rohingya homes.

In 2019, lawyers representing Gambia at the court outlined their allegations of genocide by showing judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos of the military campaign. That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.

The International Court of Justice rules on disputes between states. It is not linked to the International Criminal Court (ICC), also based in The Hague, which holds individuals accountable for atrocities. Prosecutors at the ICC are investigating crimes committed against the Rohingya who were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
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The village of Borodyanka in the Kyiv region was one of the first ones in Ukraine to be shelled by the Russian military. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds more lost their homes. But on this day locals and volunteers are taking a day for self-care. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Camera: Paviel Syhodolskiy
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The United Nations, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine signed four-way deal in Istanbul Friday intended to deliver Ukrainian grain to world markets.

The deal is the result of months of negotiations as world food prices soar amid increasing grain shortages connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres heralded the agreement as a major diplomatic breakthrough.

“Today there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope—a beacon of possibility, a beacon of relief—in a world that needs it more than ever.”

Guterres praised Turkey’s role in securing the agreement. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the deal offers the opportunity to ease the threat of global hunger and give hope for a resolution to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Under the agreement, cargo ships will carry grain from three Ukrainian ports, including Odesa. Using safe channels, Ukrainian pilots will guide the vessels through the heavily mined waters. The ships will then traverse the Black Sea in specially created corridors to Istanbul’s Bosphorus waterway and on to world markets.

All cargo ships will be checked by a Joint Coordination Center set up in Istanbul to ensure they are not carrying weapons into Ukraine. Ukrainian, Russian, U.N., and Turkish officials will staff the center.

Moscow has promised not to launch hostilities in the vicinity of cargo ship routes and the port areas involved in grain exports.

The U.N. said the agreement could take weeks to take effect but aims to export around 5 million tons of grain a month. 

The deal was reached as world food prices soared due to grain shortages. Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of grain. Earlier this week, U.N. food chief David Beasley said Ukrainian grain shipments couldn’t come soon enough.

“[It’s] Essential that we allow these ports to open because this is not just about Ukraine,” he said. “This is about the poorest of the poor around the world who are on the brink of starvation.”

Ankara has been hosting and mediating the four-way talks. Turkey, a NATO member, has sought to play a balancing role in the conflict, with President Erdogan maintaining close ties with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. 

Sinan Ulgen of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, a research organization in Istanbul, says the successful grain deal will vindicate Erdogan’s stance.

“I think Turkey’s careful balancing act will continue and there may even be a degree of appreciation in the West for the diplomatic role of Turkey in particular if Turkey is able to deliver on the food embargo quest,” Ulgensaid.

Under the grain deal, Turkey is set to continue playing a pivotal role in its application. The agreement will need to be renewed on a 120-day basis, meaning Turkish diplomacy will likely be critical to its continuation.
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The results of the Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington are beginning to materialize, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Thursday.

Zalenskyy said U.S. Senators James Risch, Benjamin Cardin, Roger Wicker, Richard Blumenthal, Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen and Lindsey Graham presented a draft resolution on recognition of Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide.

“According to the draft document,” Zelenskyy said, “the U.S. Senate condemns Russia for committing acts of genocide against the people of Ukraine; calls on the United States, together with NATO and EU allies, to support the government of Ukraine to prevent further acts of Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people; supports tribunals and international criminal investigations to hold Russian political leaders and military personnel accountable for war of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

“With all its terrorist attacks against Ukrainians and our country, Russia is only burying itself,” Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that after holding a meeting with his military leaders and staff earlier in the day they concluded, “We have a significant potential for the advance of our forces on the front and for the infliction of significant new losses on the occupiers.”

However, Russian forces have again pounded Ukrainian cities with long-range strikes, just a day after Russia’s foreign minister warned that Moscow is preparing to expand its war in Ukraine beyond the Donbas.

Ukrainian officials Thursday said Russian shelling hit multiple districts, including a market in Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing three people and wounding 23 others.

Regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the dead included one child, while police and other officials said there were no military targets in the area.

“The Russian army is randomly shelling Kharkiv, peaceful residential areas, civilians are being killed,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Also Thursday, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told the Reuters news agency that Russian missile strikes destroyed two schools in Ukrainian-held Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka, while at least one missile hit the city of Bakhmut.

The renewed shelling and missile strikes come just one day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state-run media outlets that Russia is looking to expand operations due to ongoing weapon deliveries to Ukraine from the United States and other Western countries.

“Now, the geography has changed,” Lavrov told the state news RT television and RIA Novosti news agency. “It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk. It’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and several other territories. This process is continuing, consistently and persistently.”

Western intelligence officials, however, are casting doubt on Russia’s ability to make good on its threat.

“I think they’re about to run out of steam,” Richard Moore, the chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, told an audience at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado, Thursday.

“Our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower, material over the next few weeks,” he said. “That will give Ukrainians the ability to strike back.”

Estonia’s foreign intelligence chief echoed similar sentiments late Wednesday.

“I am cautiously confident that Ukraine will defeat the Russian army in Ukraine sooner or later,” Mikk Marran, the director-general of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told the Aspen Forum.

“It will not come easily. It will take time and Ukraine probably might not be able to liberate all of the occupied territories, but strategically speaking Putin will not succeed,” he added.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russian forces were continuing small-scale assaults along the front line in the Donbas region, the part of eastern Ukraine that has been a focus of its war. 

The ministry said in its daily assessment that Russia was likely closing in on the Vuhlehirska power plant, northeast of Donetsk, and that Russian forces were prioritizing capturing critical infrastructure sites.

The U.S. on Wednesday announced plans to send four more such rocket systems to Ukraine, along with more artillery rounds.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States, and other systems from our allies and partners,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Ukraine’s defenders are pushing hard to hold Russia’s advances in the Donbas.”

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainians have been using U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers to hit Russian command centers and supply lines.

The future, Milley said, will depend on the number of long-range rockets and ammunition the Ukrainians have.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press,  Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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As the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its fifth month and Russian attacks on civilian sites are reported on a near-daily basis, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This week, according to reporting by Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that if he does not exercise the power delegated to him by Congress to make the designation, lawmakers themselves will do so.

Russia is already under crippling sanctions, imposed by the U.S. and a host of other countries, but official designation as a state sponsor of terrorism would up the ante in some significant ways. Where the international components of current sanctions have been carefully coordinated, the state sponsor of terrorism designation could trigger a stricter regime of penalties that could apply to third-country parties doing business with Russian individuals and companies.

In addition, the designation would waive Russia’s sovereign immunity in the U.S., opening the door for Americans harmed by the war in Ukraine to file civil lawsuits against the Russian government in U.S. courts.

Administration reluctant

Pelosi is the most senior lawmaker to advocate for the administration to take action, but she is not the first. Earlier this month, Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, traveled to Kyiv to highlight legislation they introduced in May that would make the designation official.

A bill with the same aim was introduced in the House by Representatives Joe Wilson, a Republican, and Ted Lieu, a  Democrat.

However, the Biden administration has appeared reluctant to take that step. In the past, a State Department spokesperson has said that the existing regimen of sanctions is sufficient to achieve the administration’s purposes.

Also, the state sponsor of terrorism designation would trigger “secondary” sanctions that the U.S. would have to apply to individuals and countries outside the U.S. who do business with Russia. Such a designation could complicate efforts to hold together a broad coalition of countries that are putting pressure on Russia to halt its aggression in Ukraine.

A potential new precedent

John Herbst, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-06, told VOA that, in his mind, there is little doubt that Russia has met the requirements to be designated a sponsor of terrorism.

“I believe that violence directed at civilians for political aims is one of the definitions of terrorism,” said Herbst, now the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “If that’s right, then clearly the Russian government is pursuing a policy of terrorism.”

However, he pointed out that in the past, nations subject to the designation have been no more than regional powers at most.

The U.S. currently considers four countries to be state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. In the past, the list has included Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Sudan, but those countries have since been removed from the list.

Adding Russia to the list would be a significant departure from past practice and would set a new precedent.

A ‘blunt instrument’

Herbst, who has been a vocal critic of what he calls the Biden administration’s “slow and timid policy of supplying Ukraine,” said that he would support the state sponsor of terrorism designation for Russia but with some reservations.

“I support it, but it’s not my highest priority,” he said. “If the administration was completely sound on weapons and sanctions, we wouldn’t need it at all. Because they’re not, I can see the utility of the designation. But generally speaking, I’m not fond of blunt instruments myself. I’d rather have the flexibility.”

Ingrid Brunk Wuerth, the Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law at Vanderbilt Law School, agreed that the sanctions that come with a state sponsor of terrorism designation may be more broad than is necessary to further punish the Kremlin, considering that “Russia is under an enormous amount of pressure from U.S. sanctions as it is.”

In addition, though, Wuerth said that she is particularly concerned about the effects of opening up Russia to civil lawsuits filed by Americans.

Loss of ‘bargaining chip’

In theory, U.S. claimants would be entitled to sue to recover damages against Russia — damages that could be paid out from Russian assets currently frozen in U.S. financial institutions.

In the past, she said, frozen assets have been used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with hostile foreign governments. For example, she pointed to the release of frozen Iranian assets as an element of the Algiers Accords of 1981, which ended a long-running U.S. hostage crisis in Iran.

“If we give the money that we have to American claimants, it’s not available as a bargaining chip against Russia,” Wuerth said. In addition, she said, because the law limits those eligible to file lawsuits to American citizens and employees of the U.S. government, it would mean that damages recovered by Americans would reduce the pool of funds available to compensate the Ukrainian government and its citizens.

Wuerth noted that the U.S. is not the only country holding frozen Russian assets, and that if others followed the United States’ lead and allowed their citizens to sue for damages, that would further erode the pool of money that might be used to directly aid Ukraine.

Zelenska address

The discussion about further actions to punish Russia’s aggression against Ukraine took place during the same week that Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, visited Washington and delivered an address to a bipartisan group of U.S. Congress members on Wednesday.

She said that Russia’s “unprovoked invasive terrorist war” is “destroying our people” and recounted the stories of some of the untold number of civilians, many of them children, who have died in the nearly five months since the war began.

“I am asking for weapons — weapons that will not be used to wage a war on somebody else’s land but to protect one’s home and the right to make up a life in that home,” Zelenska told lawmakers. “I am asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers … and kill entire families.”

In her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Pelosi praised Zelenska’s speech, and made a further case that Russia’s actions in Ukraine have gone beyond waging war, crossing the boundary into war crimes.

Pelosi decried “the tragedy of what is happening to children and women and the rest in the course of this war, how the Russians have used rape as a weapon of war, when it is indeed a war crime.”

She alleged that rape, in particular, is happening not because of the decisions of individual soldiers, but on the orders of Russian commanders, as a means of “demoralizing” the Ukrainian people.

“Congress will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight to defend democracy, not only for their own people, but for the world,” Pelosi said.
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Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will sign a deal Friday to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s office said Thursday.

Russia and Ukraine are both major global wheat suppliers, but Moscow’s February 24 invasion of its neighbor has sent food prices soaring and stoked an international food crisis. The war has stalled Kyiv’s exports, leaving dozens of ships stranded and some 20 million tons of grain stuck in silos at Odesa port.

Ankara said a general agreement was reached on a U.N.-led plan during talks in Istanbul last week and that it would now be put in writing by the parties. Details of the agreement were not immediately known. It is due to be signed Friday at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 1330 GMT, Erdogan’s office said.

Before last week’s talks, diplomats said details of the plan included Ukrainian vessels guiding grain ships in and out through mined port waters; Russia agreeing to a truce while shipments move; and Turkey – supported by the United Nations – inspecting ships to allay Russian fears of weapons smuggling.

The United Nations and Turkey have been working for two months to broker what Guterres called a “package” deal – to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports and facilitate Russian grain and fertilizer shipments.

Ukraine could potentially quickly restart exports, Ukraine’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskiy said earlier Thursday.

“The majority of the infrastructure of ports of wider Odesa – there are three of them – remains, so it is a question of several weeks in the event there are proper security guarantees,” he told Ukrainian television.

Moscow has denied responsibility for worsening the food crisis, blaming instead a chilling effect from Western sanctions for slowing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for mining its Black Sea ports.

A day after the Istanbul talks last week, the United States sought to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports by reassuring banks, shipping and insurance companies that such transactions would not breach Washington’s sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
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The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount, joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation. 

The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the cost of easing prices for people spending more on food, fuel and everything in between. 

The ECB’s surprise hike of half a percentage point for the 19 countries using the euro currency is expected to be followed by another increase in September, possibly of another half-point. Bank President Christine Lagarde had indicated a quarter-point hike last month, when inflation hit a record 8.6%. 

She said the bigger hike was unanimous as “inflation continues to be undesirably high and is expected to remain above our target for some time.” As the bank leaves an era of negative interest rates, Lagarde said economic forecasts don’t point to a recession this year or next but she acknowledged the uncertainty ahead. 

“Economic activity is slowing. Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine is an ongoing drag on growth,” the ECB chief said at a news conference. Higher inflation, supply constraints and uncertainty “are significantly clouding the outlook for the second half of 2022 and beyond.” 

The ECB is coming late to its rate liftoff — a token of inflation that turned out to be higher and more stubborn than first expected and of the shakier state of an economy heavily exposed to the war in Ukraine and a dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Recession predictions have increased for later this year and next year as soaring bills for electricity, fuel and gas deal a blow to businesses and people’s spending power. 

The ECB made the bigger-than-expected increase to underline its determination to get inflation under control after its late start, said Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING bank. The move aims “to restore the ECB’s damaged reputation and credibility as an inflation fighter.” 

“Today’s decision shows that the ECB is more concerned about this credibility than about being predictable,” Brzeski said. 

Recession concerns have helped push the euro to a 20-year low against the dollar, which adds to the ECB’s task by worsening energy prices that are driving inflation. That is because oil is priced in dollars. 

Raising rates is seen as the standard cure for excessive inflation. The ECB’s benchmarks affect how much it costs banks to borrow — and so help determine what they charge to lend. 

But by making credit harder to get, rate increases can slow economic growth, a major conundrum for the ECB as well as for the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates by an outsized three-quarters of a point in June and could do so again at its next meeting. The Bank of England started the march higher in December, and even Switzerland’s central bank surprised with its first increase in nearly 15 years last month. 

The goal for all central banks is to get inflation back down to acceptable levels — for the ECB, it’s 2% annually — without tipping the economy into recession. It’s difficult to get right as central banks reverse what has been a decade of very low rates and inflation. 

“The most precious good that we can deliver and that we have to deliver is price stability. So we have to bring inflation down to 2% in the medium term. That is the imperative,” Lagarde said. “And it’s time to deliver.” 

Yet the European economy has the added worry of a potential cutoff of Russian natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, heat homes and fuel energy-intensive industries such as steel, glassmaking and agriculture. Even without a total cutoff, Russia has steadily dialed back gas flows, with EU leaders accusing the Kremlin of using gas to pressure countries over sanctions and support for Ukraine. 

Rising interest rates follow the end of the bank’s 1.7 trillion-euro (dollar) stimulus program that helped keep longer-term borrowing costs low for governments and companies as they weathered the pandemic recession. 

Those bond-market borrowing rates are now rising again, especially for more indebted eurozone countries such as Italy, where Premier Mario Draghi’s resignation has brought back bad memories of Europe’s debt crisis a decade ago. Markets fear the exit of the former ECB president, who has pushed policies meant to keep debt manageable and boost growth in Europe’s third-largest economy, could raise the risk of another eurozone crisis. 

The bank approved a new financial backstop that is part of its arsenal to prevent that from happening again. The ECB would step into markets to buy the bonds of countries facing excessive and unjustified borrowing rates. But it wouldn’t offer protection if the ECB determines higher borrowing costs resulted from poor government decisions. 

Buying bonds drives their price up and their yield down, because price and yield move in opposite directions, thus capping interest costs. Spiraling bond-market rates threatened to break up the euro in 2010-2012 and led Greece and countries to turn to other members and the International Monetary Fund for bailouts. 

This problem is unique to the ECB because it oversees 19 countries that are in different financial shape. The backstop aims to “safeguard the smooth transmission of our monetary policy stance throughout the euro area,” Lagarde said. 

The ECB’s lowest rate, the deposit rate on money left overnight by banks, was raised from minus 0.5% to zero. 

 
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Ukraine reported Russian shelling Thursday on the city of Kharkiv killed at least two people and wounded 19 others.

Regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the dead included one child, and that four people were in serious condition.

Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that Russian forces were continuing small-scale assaults along the front line in the Donbas region, the part of eastern Ukraine that has been a focus of its war.

The ministry said in its daily assessment that Russia was likely closing in on the Vuhlehirska power plant, northeast of Donetsk, and that Russian forces were prioritizing capturing critical infrastructure sites.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow wants to capture territory in southern Ukraine beyond the Donbas region.

Russia failed in early stages of its five-month offensive to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv, in northern Ukraine.

But Lavrov said in an interview Wednesday with state media that Russia no longer feels constrained to fighting in the Donbas where Russian separatists have been battling Kyiv’s forces since 2014, when Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

“Now, the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk. It’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and several other territories. This process is continuing, consistently and persistently,” Lavrov told the state news RT television and RIA Novosti news agency.

Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, said Moscow’s territorial objectives would expand still further if Western countries delivered more long-range missiles to Kyiv.

The U.S. announced Wednesday plans to send four more such rocket systems to Ukraine, along with more artillery rounds.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States, and other systems from our allies and partners,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Ukraine’s defenders are pushing hard to hold Russia’s advances in the Donbas.”

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainians have been using U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers to hit Russian command centers and supply lines, including a strategically important bridge across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region.

Russian officials said the bridge has sustained damage but is still open to some traffic. The Russian military would be hard-pressed to keep supplying its forces in the region if the bridge were destroyed.

“The Ukrainians are making the Russians pay for every inch of territory that they gain,” Milley said, and the Donbas is “not lost yet. The Ukrainians intend to continue the fight.”

The future, Milley said, will depend on the number of long-range rockets and ammunition the Ukrainians have.

“We have a very serious grinding war of attrition going on in the Donbas. And unless there’s a breakthrough on either side — which right now the analysts don’t think is particularly likely in the near term — it will probably continue as a grinding war of attrition for a period of time until both sides see an alternative way out of this, perhaps through negotiation or something like that.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia is “laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

Kirby said the areas involved in plans that Russia is reviewing include Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned Thursday after failing in his efforts to unite the fractious pieces of his unity government.

President Sergio Mattarella’s office said in a statement the president had accepted Draghi’s resignation but asked him to stay on in a caretaker role.

The development could mean Italy heads to a parliamentary election in the coming months instead of the scheduled vote set to take place next year.

Draghi became prime minister in 2021 as Italy dealt with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and a sagging economy.

Mattarella rejected his earlier offer of resignation last week, urging Draghi to appeal to lawmakers to keep the ruling coalition together.

But several key parties boycotted a confidence vote, prompting Draghi to submit his resignation again.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Russia resumed the flow of natural gas through the Nord Stream pipeline to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day interruption for maintenance.

Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s energy regulator, tweeted that gas flows had reached 40% of capacity, the same level as before the shutdown.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom blamed the reduction on the absence of a gas turbine being repaired in Canada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Gazprom would meet its delivery obligations, while warning that work on another turbine later this month could bring more reductions.

European Union leaders have warned of the potential for Russia to cut off supplies in response to Western pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The EU has asked member countries to voluntarily reduce their use of gas, both to seek alternative options and to save existing supplies for winter months.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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As Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska reminded the U.S. Congress of the human costs of Russia’s invasion of her country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow’s military aims were no longer confined only to the east of the country. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have succumbed to his own mythmaking and hyperbole, unable to let go of his desire to conquer Ukraine, no matter what the costs, according to a public assessment by America’s top spymaster.

CIA Director William Burns, the last U.S. official to meet with Putin before he ordered Russian forces into Ukraine in February, warned late Wednesday that the Russian leader truly believes he must conquer Ukraine to fulfill his destiny.

“Putin really does believe his rhetoric, and I’ve heard him say it privately over the years, that Ukraine’s not a real country. … He really thought he could take Kyiv in less than a week,” Burns told an audience at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

“He is convinced that his destiny as Russia’s leader is to restore Russia as a great power … and he does not believe you can do that without controlling Ukraine and its choices,” Burns added. “He believes it’s his entitlement, it’s Russia’s entitlement to dominate Ukraine.”

Previous U.S, intelligence assessments have suggested that while Putin had no intention of forsaking his effort to conquer all of Ukraine, it was possible he might be willing to officially pause the fighting to give his forces time to reorganize following substantial losses since the invasion began.

“It is entirely plausible, from our perspective, that depending on how things develop over the coming months and so on that he [Putin] is convinced that there is value in effect, coming to some sort of agreement,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month.

U.S. intelligence estimates say approximately 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine, with another 45,000 wounded.

Ukrainian defense officials put the number of Russian soldiers killed at about 38,000.

Burns seemed to cast doubt on the idea a deal of some sort could be in play, describing it as inconsistent with Putin’s world view.

Putin is “a big believer in control and intimidation and getting even,” Burns said, calling the Russian leader “an apostle of payback.”

“As his grip on power has tightened, as his circle of advisers has narrowed, his own personal sense of destiny and his appetite for risk has grown,” Burns said. “Putin’s bet … is that he can succeed in a grinding war of attrition, that they can wear down the Ukrainian military, that winter’s coming and so he can strangle the Ukrainian economy, he can wear down European publics and leadership, and he can wear down the United States.”

“My own strong view is that Putin was wrong in his assumptions about breaking the [NATO] alliance and breaking Ukrainian will before the war began and I think he’s just as wrong now,” Burns said.

There are some indications that Russia has learned lessons from its early failures in Ukraine, limiting its objectives to those in the Donbas region and by increasing its use of long-range artillery, an area in which Moscow maintains an advantage over Kyiv.

At the same time, however, there are signs Putin’s ambitions are reemerging.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday warned that Russian forces could soon expand their “special operation” due to the provision of U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine.

“Now the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk, it’s Kherson, Zaporizhia, and several other territories,” Lavrov told state-run media Wednesday.

“We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that will be controlled by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, or whoever replaces him, to contain weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of the republics that have declared independence, those that want to determine their own future.”

Two hundred Ukrainian troops have been trained on the HIMARS and at least eight units have seen action so far, according to U.S. military officials, targeting and destroying Russian weapon depots and command-and-control centers.

U.S. defense officials have said four more HIMARS are being sent to the Ukrainian military and promised the delivery of yet another four systems in a security package set to be announced later this week.

“We’re not working just to provide security assistance in the short term,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. “[We’re] also looking ahead to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that it will need for deterrence and defense over the longer term.”

Other Ukrainian allies also see the war grinding on.

“We don’t see any signs that the war will end soon,” NATO Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security David Cattler told an online forum Tuesday.

“In fact, there are even more signs that this war will be a very long one,” he said.

Russia and Iran

U.S. defense and intelligence officials are warning Iran not to get involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A day after Putin met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon it would be a “really, really bad idea” for Iran to provide Russia with armed drones.

“On the issue of Iranian support to Russia, we would advise Iran to not do that,” Austin said.

Asked about Austin’s comments, Burns called Austin, “very good at understatement.”

“The reality is Russians and Iranians need each other right now, both heavily sanctioned countries, both looking to break out of political isolation,” Burns added.  “But I think as troubling as some of the steps between those two parties are, and we focus on them very sharply at CIA, there are limits I think, to the ways in which they’re going to be able to help one another right now.”

Lessons for China

Burns said Moscow is getting some help from China, with Beijing stepping up purchases of energy products to help support the Russian economy. But he cautioned the Chinese have been very cautious about lending Russia any military support.

“It seems to me that President Xi [Jinping] and the Chinese leadership has been unsettled to some extent, especially in the first phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine … unsettled by the military performance of the Russians early on and the performance of Russian weaponry, unsettled by the economic uncertainties that the war has unleashed,” he said.

However, Burns said Russia’s struggles are unlikely to change China’s calculus about using force to take Taiwan.

“Our sense is that it probably affects less the question of whether the Chinese leadership might choose some years down the road to use force to control Taiwan but how and when they will do it,” he said.

“If there’s one lesson I think they may be drawing from Putin’s experience in Ukraine, is you don’t achieve quick decisive victories with underwhelming force,” Burns said.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum earlier Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the United States played down the likelihood Beijing would use force against Taiwan.

“The last thing we wish to do is to fight with our compatriots [in Taiwan],” Ambassador Qin Gang said, accusing the U.S. of sending sophisticated weapons to support the Taiwanese military.

“We will try our best in our great sincerity to achieve the peaceful reunification,” Qin added. “The ‘One China’ principle is the political foundation for China-U.S. relations, and is the bedrock for the peace and stability across Taiwan Strait …  but we urge the United States to honor its commitments with actions.”

 
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When Russian missiles struck a mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk last month, the deadly attack sent ripples of disinformation across Europe.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the mall was “permanently closed” at the time of the strike and that its forces were targeting ammunition stores. Russia’s ambassador to Ireland responded to international criticism over Moscow’s targeting of a civilian area, describing claims about the attack as “yet another disinformation stunt.”

In the Hungarian capital, Budapest, Blanka Zoldi, editor-in-chief of the fact-checking site Lakmusz, watched as those and other false claims crossed her country’s borders.

“In Hungary, pro-government social media influencers and prominent journalists started to publish screenshots of the opening hours of the shopping mall, claiming that Google Maps actually showed that the shopping mall was not even open and that it has been permanently closed for a long time,” Zoldi told VOA.

“This was the story that was emerging in Hungary, but we saw the exact screenshots of Google Maps appearing in many other countries,” she said.

The quick spread of such disinformation related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to fact-checkers combining forces globally.

“When the war began, fact-checkers immediately started seeing misinformation about the Russia-Ukraine conflict spreading to other countries,” said Enock Nyariki, the community and impact manager at the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Founded in 2015, the IFCN is an initiative of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies that connects fact-checkers and journalists around the world.

“We saw that misinformation [about the Ukraine conflict] was now going viral in local languages,” Nyariki said. “Ukrainian fact-checkers could not cope with the new situation. It was difficult even for them to spot every piece.”

Maldita, a fact-checking organization based in Spain, was one of the first to alert the IFCN about the fast-spreading disinformation in Europe about the war, Nyariki said.

That led IFCN members to form a collaborative database named #UkraineFacts, where fact-checkers share information, flag mis- and disinformation, and produce content debunking false claims related to the conflict in Ukraine.

The website publishes content in English and other languages from IFCN’s 100-plus members. It has already produced more than 2,000 fact-checks about the war in Ukraine.

Maldita, which sparked the idea, last month accepted the Anne Jacobsen’s Memorial Award in Norway on behalf of the network for its work.

In honoring the initiative, the awards committee said in a statement that #UkraineFacts “has shown how we can cooperate instead of working on solving the same problem in different places or media organizations.”

US election, pandemic prompt fact-checking need

The emergence of fact-checking as a popular tool in investigative journalism largely came during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and later the coronavirus pandemic, both of which resulted in an increase in misinformation, said Nyariki.

But the spread of false information related to the Ukraine conflict has accelerated collaboration efforts.

Zoldi of Lakmusz said that in many cases, false narratives are similar in different countries.

Citing the disinformation around the mall attack, Zoldi said Lakmusz journalists relied on other fact-checking organizations to debunk the claims, including the BBC.

“The BBC is a trustworthy organization that has war reporters who spoke to eyewitnesses who confirmed that there were people and civilians in the shopping mall,” Zoldi said.

Lakmusz is a relatively new website. Co-funded by the European Union and Agence France-Presse (AFP), the site was founded in January as part of a collaboration between AFP, the Hungarian news site 444.hu, and the Media Universalis Foundation, which is linked to Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest.

Its goal: to fight misinformation in Hungary.

A shrinking space for independent journalism and lack of media pluralism in the EU member state has been flagged by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and media advocates.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government have denied taking action to dismantle the independent press, Reuters reports.

Lakmusz relies on a team of journalists and researchers including Ferenc Hammer, head of the Lorand Eotvos University’s department of media and communication.

While the journalists work on the content, researchers like Hammer help to ensure accuracy.

“Our job is basically desktop research, comparing cases and following up with fact-checks that the website publishes,” Hammer told VOA.

The initiative not only checks for potential disinformation, but it also investigates how people in Hungary respond to false narratives.

“We follow the patterns of every piece of fact-checking and see how readers interact with them on social media. It can be very instructive for the fact-checkers to see how their work reaches the audience,” Hammer said.

They may be one of the newer fact-check initiatives, but Lakmusz’s team already plans to expand its work through collaborating with others and applying for membership in the IFCN.

“It’s very important because it would give us access to look at how other fact-checking organizations are working in different countries,” Zoldi said. “So, being a member of that network would give us a good overview of other fact-checkers that work according to IFCN’s standards.”

Those standards include being at least six months old as a fact-checking organization of issues of public interest, showing transparency about funding and being politically nonpartisan, Nyariki said.

“Fact-checkers don’t compete,” he said. “They cooperate and collaborate. We see each other as partners who are trying to fight one global enemy: misinformation.”
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