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Heavy fighting rages near Kyiv as Russia appears to regroup
Heavy fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other zones Thursday amid indications the Kremlin is using talk of de-escalation as cover while regrouping and resupplying its forces and redeploying them for a stepped-up offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an early morning video address that Ukraine is seeing “a buildup of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas, and we are preparing for that.”
Meanwhile, a convoy of buses headed to Mariupol in another bid to evacuate people from the besieged port city after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. And a new round of talks aimed at stopping the fighting was scheduled for Friday.
The Red Cross said its teams were headed for Mariupol with relief and medical supplies and hoped to help pull civilians out of the beleaguered city. Tens of thousands have managed to get out in the past few weeks by way of humanitarian corridors, reducing the city’s population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000, but other efforts have been thwarted by continued Russian attacks.
Read: Convoy heads to Ukraine’s Mariupol to attempt evacuation
At the same time, Russian forces shelled suburbs of the capital that Ukraine recently retook control of, a regional official said, two days after the Kremlin announced it would significantly scale back operations near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations.”
Britain’s Defense Ministry also confirmed “significant Russian shelling and missile strikes” around Chernihiv. The area’s governor, Viacheslav Chaus, said Russian troops were on the move but may not be withdrawing.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also reported new strikes on Ukrainian fuel stores late Wednesday, and Ukrainian officials said there were artillery barrages in and around the northeastern city of Kharkiv over the past day.
Despite the fighting raging in those areas, the Russian military said it committed to a cease-fire along the route from Mariupol to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 45 buses would be sent to collect civilians who have suffered some of the worst privations of the war. Food, water and medical supplies have all run low during a weekslong blockade and bombardment of the city. Civilians who have managed to leave have typically done so using private cars, but the number of drivable vehicles left in the city has dwindled and fuel is low.
“It’s desperately important that this operation takes place,” the Red Cross said in a statement. “The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it.”
Convoy heads to Ukraine’s Mariupol to attempt evacuation
A convoy of buses headed to Mariupol on Thursday in another attempt to evacuate people from the besieged port city, while Russia pressed its attacks in several parts of Ukraine ahead of a planned new round of talks aimed at ending the fighting.
After the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area, the Red Cross said its teams were traveling to Mariupol with relief and medical supplies and hoped to help pull civilians out of the beleaguered city on Friday. Previous attempts at establishing a similar humanitarian corridor have fallen apart.
Russian forces, meanwhile, shelled suburbs of the capital that Ukraine recently retook control of, a regional official said. New attacks in the area where Moscow had promised to de-escalate further undermined hopes of a resolution to end the war on the eve of a new round of talks. A day earlier, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian shelling on the outskirts of Kyiv and around another city where it had vowed to ease up.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also reported new strikes on Ukrainian fuel stores late Wednesday, and Ukrainian officials said there were artillery barrages in and around the northeastern city of Kharkiv over the past day.
Despite the fighting raging in those areas, the Russian military said it committed to a cease-fire along the route from Mariupol to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia from Thursday morning.
Read: Ukrainians in US mobilize to help 100,000 expected refugees
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 45 buses would be sent to collect civilians who have suffered some of the worst deprivations of the war. Food, water and medical supplies have all run low during a weekslong blockade and bombardment of the city. Civilians who have managed to leave have typically done so using private cars, but the number of drivable vehicles left in the city has also dwindled and fuel stocks are low.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is helping run the evacuation, said its teams have already left for Mariupol.
“It’s desperately important that this operation takes place,” the Red Cross said in a statement. “The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it.”
As the new evacuation attempt was announced, evidence emerged that a Red Cross warehouse in the city had been struck earlier this month amid intense Russian shelling of the area.
In satellite pictures from Planet Labs PBC, holes can be seen in the warehouse’s roof, along with a painted red cross on a white background. The aid organization said no staff have been at the site since March 15.
Talks between Ukraine and Russia were set to resume Friday by video, according to the head of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, six weeks into a bloody war that has seen thousands die and a staggering 4 million Ukrainians flee the country.
But there seemed little faith that the two sides would resolve the conflict soon, particularly after the Russian military’s about-face and its most recent attacks.
Russia had promised during talks in Istanbul this week that it would de-escalate operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the West were skeptical. Soon after, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian shelling was hitting homes, stores, libraries and other civilian sites in or near those areas.
Britain’s Defense Ministry also confirmed “significant Russian shelling and missile strikes” around Chernihiv.
Turkey offers to host more Ukraine talks
Turkey’s top diplomat says Ankara is working to bring the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers together again for talks.
In an interview with Turkey’s A Haber channel, Mevlut Cavusoglu said the meeting could happen within two weeks.
His comments came days after Turkey hosted Ukrainian and Russian negotiators for face-to-face talks in Istanbul. Cavusoglu said decisions taken during the talks had not fully been put into effect on the ground.
Also read: Putin misled by advisers on Ukraine, US intel determines
“After this meeting some decisions were taken, especially concerning the reduction of tensions,” Cavusoglu said. “But we do not see these decisions being reflected on the field - for example, the removal of Russian soldiers from some areas.”
Asked about the presence of sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in the negotiations, Cavusoglu said the businessman was engaged in “useful” efforts to end the fighting.
Also read: Russian pledge to scale back in Ukraine draws skepticism
“Abramovich has been sincerely making efforts to end the fighting since the first day of the war,” he said.
During the talks in Istanbul Tuesday, Ukraine set out a detailed framework for a peace deal under which the country would remain neutral but its security would be guaranteed by a group of third countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Turkey, China and Poland.
Israel raids West Bank, 2 Palestinians killed in gun battle
Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, setting off a gun battle in which two Palestinians were killed and 15 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian stabbed a 28-year-old Israeli man on a bus in the West Bank before being killed by a bystander, the Israeli military said. The Magen David Adom emergency service said the stabbing victim was treated and taken to a hospital.
Videos circulated online showed smoke rising from the center of the Jenin refugee camp as gunfire echoed in the background. Others appeared to show Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen moving through the narrow streets.
The raid came two days after a Palestinian from a village near Jenin shot and killed five people in central Israel, part of a wave of attacks in recent days that have left a total of 11 people dead.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 17-year-old Sanad Abu Atiyeh and 23-year-old Yazid al-Saadi were killed. It said 30-year-old Nidal Jaafara was shot and killed near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, apparently referring to the stabbing incident.
Also read: Palestinian gunman kills 5 in 3rd attack in Israel in a week
The Israeli military said troops came under fire after entering Jenin to arrest suspects. It said one soldier was wounded and evacuated to a hospital for treatment.
The Jenin refugee camp was the scene of one of the deadliest battles of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising. In April 2002, Israeli forces fought Palestinian militants in the camp for nearly three weeks. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers and at least 52 Palestinians, including civilians, were killed, according to the U.N.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank and coordinates with Israel on security matters, appears to have had little control over Jenin in recent years. Israeli forces operating in and around the city and refugee camp often come under fire.
The Islamic Jihad militant group announced a “general mobilization” of its fighters after Thursday's raid.
In Tuesday’s attack, a 27-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank village of Yabad, near Jenin, methodically gunned down victims, killing five. On Sunday night, a shooting attack by two Islamic State sympathizers in the central city of Hadera killed two police officers. Last week, a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack in the southern city of Beersheba — also by an attacker inspired by IS — killed four. The two attacks claimed by IS were carried out by Arab citizens of Israel.
President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Wednesday. Biden expressed his condolences after the recent attacks and said the U.S. “stands firmly and resolutely with Israel in the face of this terrorist threat and all threats to the state of Israel,” the White House said.
The recent wave of violence has brought the Palestinian issue back to the fore at a time when Israel is focused on building alliances with Arab states against Iran. There have been no serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in more than a decade, and Bennett is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders have held a flurry of meetings in recent weeks, and Israel has announced a series of goodwill gestures, in an effort to maintain calm ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.
Also read: Israeli jets hit militant targets in Gaza after rocket fire
They hope to avoid a repeat of last year, when clashes in Jerusalem set off an 11-day Gaza war, but the recent attacks have sent tensions soaring. After a Security Cabinet meeting late Wednesday, Israel nevertheless decided to carry on with plans to ease restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally. In the West Bank, it is steadily building and expanding Jewish settlements, which most of the internationally community views as illegal.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the Palestinian militant group Hamas seized power there two years later. Since then, Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade on the territory, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians.
Russia's ruble rebound raises questions of sanctions' impact
The ruble is no longer rubble.
The Russian ruble by Wednesday had bounced back from the fall it took after the U.S. and European allies moved to bury the Russian economy under thousands of new sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has resorted to extreme financial measures to blunt the West’s penalties and inflate his currency.
While the West has imposed unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russian economy, Russia’s Central Bank has jacked up interest rates to 20% and the Kremlin has imposed strict capital controls on those wishing to exchange their rubles for dollars or euros.
Read:Ukrainians in US mobilize to help 100,000 expected refugees
It’s a monetary defense Putin may not be able to sustain as long-term sanctions weigh down the Russian economy. But the ruble’s recovery could be a sign that the sanctions in their current form are not working as powerfully as Ukraine's allies counted on when it comes to pressuring Putin to pull his troops from Ukraine. It also could be a sign that Russia's efforts to artificially prop up its currency are working by leveraging its oil and gas sector.
The ruble was trading at roughly 85 to the U.S. dollar, roughly where it was before Russia started its invasion a month ago. The ruble had fallen as low as roughly 150 to the dollar on March 7, when news emerged that the Biden administration would ban U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas.
Speaking to Norway's parliament on Wednesday, Ukraine's president urged Western allies to inflict still greater financial pain on Russia.
“The only means of urging Russia to look for peace are sanctions," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message from his besieged country. He added: "The stronger the sanctions packages are going to be, the faster we’ll bring back peace.”
Increasingly, European nations' purchases of Russian oil and natural gas are coming under scrutiny as a loophole and lifeline for the Russian economy.
“For Russia, everything is about their energy revenues. It’s half their federal budget. It’s the thing that props up Putin’s regime and the war,” said Tania Babina, an economist at Columbia University who was born in Ukraine.
Babina is currently working with a group of 200 Ukrainian economists to more accurately document how effective the West's sanctions are in stymying Putin's war-making capabilities.
The ruble has also risen amid reports that the Kremlin has been more open to cease-fire talks with Ukraine. U.S. and Western officials have expressed skepticism about Russia’s announcement that it would dial back operations.
President Joe Biden promoted the success of the sanctions — some of the toughest ever imposed on a nation — while he was in Poland last week. “The ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” Biden said.
Sanctions on Russian financial institutions and companies, on trade and on Putin's power brokers were crushing the country's economic growth and prompting hundreds of international companies to stop doing business there, Biden noted.
Russian efforts to counter those sanctions by propping up the ruble can only go so far.
Russia’s Central Bank cannot keep raising interest rates because doing so will eventually choke off credit to businesses and borrowers. At some point, individuals and businesses will develop ways to go around Russia’s capital controls by moving money in smaller amounts. As the penalties depress the Russian economy, economists say that will eventually weigh down the ruble. Without these efforts, Russia's currency would almost certainly be weaker.
But Russia’s oil and gas exports have continued to Europe as well as to China and India. Those exports have acted as an economic floor for the Russian economy, which is dominated by the energy sector. In the European Union, a dependence on Russian gas for electricity and heating has made it significantly more difficult to turn off the spigot, which the Biden administration did when it banned the relatively small amount of petroleum that the U.S. imports from Russia.
“The U.S. has already banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas, and the United Kingdom will phase them out by the end of this year. However, these decisions will not have a meaningful impact unless and until the EU follows suit,” wrote Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, in a report released Wednesday.
Read:Russia war ends era of globalization that kept inflation low
Hilgenstock and Ribakova estimate that if the EU, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. That's compared with projections for up to a 15% contraction, as sanctions stand now.
Knowing this, Putin has greatly leveraged Europe’s dependence on its energy exports to its advantage. Putin has called for Russia’s Central Bank to force foreign gas importers to purchase rubles and use them to pay state-owned gas supplier Gazprom. It’s unclear whether Putin can make good on his threat.
The White House and economists have argued that the impact of sanctions takes time, weeks or months for full effect as industries shut down due to a lack of materials or capital or both. But the administration's critics say the ruble's recovery shows the White House needs to do more.
“The ruble’s rebound would seem to indicate that U.S. sanctions haven’t effectively crippled Russia’s economy, which is the price Putin should have to pay for his war," said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.
“To give Ukraine a fighting chance, the U.S. must sever Putin’s revenue stream by cutting off Russian oil and gas sales globally," Toomey said in an email to The Associated Press.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers are considering ways to expand the sanctions Biden recently imposed on members of the Russian parliament “and probably widen that to other political players.” Brown, D-Ohio, said lawmakers also are weighing more penalties against banks.
Western leaders, under Biden's encouragement, embraced sanctions as their toughest weapon to try to compel Russia to reverse its invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO and not protected under that bloc's mutual defense policy.
Some of the allies now acknowledge their governments may need to redouble financial punishment against Russia.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that the Group of Seven major industrial nations should “intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of (Putin's) troops is out of Ukraine.”
But that's a tougher ask for other European countries such as Germany, which depend on Russia for vital natural gas and oil. The EU overall gets 10% of its oil from Russia and more than one-third of its natural gas.
Many of those countries have pledged to wean themselves off that dependence — but not immediately.
If European nations did move more quickly off Russian petroleum, wrote analyst Charles Lichfield of the Atlantic Council, “a more comprehensive embargo from Europe would threaten Russia’s current account surplus — suddenly making it more difficult to pay public-sector salaries and wage war.”
He noted that “such an outcome may be beyond the reach of Western consensus.”
Search finds 49,000 pieces of plane in China Eastern crash
Chinese officials said Thursday that the search for wreckage in last week's crash of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 is basically done and that more than 49,000 pieces of debris had been found.
Flight MU5735 plunged from 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) into a mountainside in southern China's Guangxi region, killing all 132 people on board. The impact created a 20-meter- (65-foot-) deep crater, set off a fire in the surrounding forest and smashed the plane into small parts scattered over a wide area, some of them buried underground.
Read: Second 'black box' found in China Eastern plane crash
Zhu Tao, the director of aviation safety for the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a news conference in the nearby city of Wuzhou that important parts including the horizontal stabilizer, engine and remains of the right wing tip had been recovered after nearly 10 days of searching, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The investigation into the cause of the crash faces several challenges including that the plane plunged without warning, air traffic controllers got no reply from the pilots after it started falling and the pieces of debris are so small.
More than 22,000 cubic meters (800,000 cubic feet) of soil were excavated and 49,117 pieces of the plane found, said Zhang Zhiwen, an official with the Guangxi government. The search was made more difficult by rain and muddy conditions in the remote and steep location.
The two “black boxes” — the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — have been found and sent to Beijing for examination and analysis. Zhu said a preliminary investigation report would be completed within 30 days of the March 21 crash.
A team of U.S. investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and advisors from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration have been granted visas to travel to China to take part in the investigation, under longstanding international agreements.
Read: One 'black box' found in China Eastern plane crash
Engine manufacturer CFM will support the investigation but not send anyone to China, the NTSB said, correcting an earlier announcement that company representatives would be part of the traveling team.
The China Eastern flight, with 123 passengers and nine crew members, was headed from the southwestern city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, a major city and export manufacturing hub near Hong Kong in southeastern China.
Severe storms pummel South after 7 hurt in Arkansas tornado
A line of severe storms packing isolated tornadoes and high winds ripped across the Deep South overnight, toppling trees and power lines and leaving homes and businesses damaged as the vast weather front raced across several states.
At least two confirmed tornadoes injured several people Wednesday, damaged homes and businesses and downed power lines in Mississippi and Tennessee after earlier storm damage in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.
No deaths had been reported from the storms as of early Thursday, authorities said. But widespread damage was reported in the Jackson, Tennessee, area as a tornado warning was in effect. “Significant damage” occurred to a nursing home near Jackson-Madison County General Hospital and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in Jackson, said Madison County Emergency Management Director Jason Moore.
Read:Tornado rips through New Orleans and its suburbs, killing 1
In Nashville, Tennessee, paneling fell five stories from the side of a downtown hotel Wednesday evening and onto a roof of a building below. The fire department warned the debris could become airborne as high winds continued, and some hotel guests were moved to other parts of the building due to concerns that the roof would become unstable. No injuries were immediately associated with the collapse.
Elsewhere, a warehouse roof collapsed as the storms moved through Southaven, Mississippi, near Memphis, police said. The building had been evacuated and no injuries were reported.
The Mississippi Senate suspended its work Wednesday as weather sirens blared during a tornado watch in downtown Jackson. Some employees took shelter in the Capitol basement.
Rander P. Adams said he and his wife, Janice Delores Adams, were in their home near downtown Jackson when severe weather blew through during a tornado warning Wednesday afternoon. He said their lights flashed and a large window exploded just feet from his wife as she tried to open their front door.
“The glass broke just as if someone threw a brick through it,” he said. “I advised her then, ‘Let’s go to the back of the house.’”
Adams said the storm toppled trees in a nearby park, and a large tree across the street from their house split in half. “We were blessed,” he said. “Instead of falling toward the house, it fell the other way.”
Earlier Wednesday, a tornado that struck Springdale, Arkansas, and the adjoining town of Johnson, about 145 miles (235 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, about 4 a.m. injured seven people, two critically, said Washington County, Arkansas, Emergency Management Director John Luther.
The National Weather Service said that tornado would be rated “at least EF-2,” which would mean wind speeds reached 111-135 mph (178-217 kph).
“Search and rescue teams have been deployed, as there are significant damages and injuries,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said.
In northwest Missouri, an EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 90 mph (145 kph) struck St. Joseph on Tuesday night, according to the weather service. That tornado damaged two homes, but no injuries were reported there. Another EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 100 mph (160 kph) touched down briefly before dawn Wednesday in a rural subdivision 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Dallas, damaging two roofs, the weather service reported.
The storms come a week after a tornado in a New Orleans-area neighborhood carved a path of destruction during the overnight hours and killed a man.
More than 8,000 power outages were reported in Arkansas, while outages totaled about 44,000 in Mississippi, 26,000 each in Louisiana and Alabama and 24,000 in Tennessee.
Strong winds in Louisiana overturned semitrailers, peeled the roof from a mobile home, sent a tree crashing into a home and knocked down power lines, according to weather service forecasters, who didn’t immediately confirm any tornadoes in the state.
Read: 7 dead after tornadoes tore through central Iowa: Officials
Ahead of the storms, schools in Memphis and dozens in Mississippi closed early or conducted classes online as a precaution against having children in crowded buildings or on buses. Officials in various Mississippi counties opened safe locations for people worried about staying in their homes during the storm.
Firefighters, meanwhile, have been trying to get handle on a wildfire spreading near Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, amid mandatory evacuations as winds whipped up ahead of the approaching storm front.
The fire, which was not contained, had expanded to about 250 acres (more than 100 hectares) as of Wednesday afternoon, and one person was injured, oficials said.
A plume of smoke rose above one community not far from where 2016 wildfires ravaged the tourism town of Gatlinburg, killing 14 people and damaging or destroying about 2,500 buildings.
Ukrainians in US mobilize to help 100,000 expected refugees
As the United States prepares to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees following Russia's invasion of their country, existing communities in cities like Sacramento and Seattle are already mobilizing to provide food, shelter and support to those fleeing the war.
The federal government hasn't said when the formal resettlement process will begin, but Ukrainian groups in the U.S. are already providing support to people entering the country through other channels, including on visas that will eventually expire or by flying to Mexico and crossing over the border.
“No refugee is waiting for you to be ready for them," said Eduard Kislyanka, senior pastor at the House of Bread church near Sacramento, which has been sending teams of people to Poland and preparing dozens of its member families to house people arriving in California.
Read:Russia war ends era of globalization that kept inflation low
Since the war began in late February, over 4 million people are estimated to have fled Ukraine and millions more have been displaced within the country. President Joe Biden said last week that the U.S. would admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and provide $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to countries affected by the exodus.
The federal government has yet to provide a timeline for refugee resettlement — often a lengthy process — or details on where refugees will be resettled. It’s unlikely the United States will see a massive influx of Ukrainians on charter and military flights like happened with Afghan refugees last year.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the White House commitment of accepting up to 100,000 Ukrainians does not come with a minimum. Aside from the refugee resettlement program, their main avenues will be seeking humanitarian parole and appearing at the border with Mexico, she said.
Many who reach the United States will likely go to cities that already have strong Ukrainian communities.
The Sacramento region is home to the highest concentration of Ukrainian immigrants in the country, with about 18,000 people, according to census data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute. The Seattle, Chicago and New York City areas are also hubs.
Word is spreading about the resources available in Sacramento, where churches like House of Bread are connecting Ukrainians who have already arrived with host families who can offer shelter and help access government resources and transportation. Kislyanka called the church's actions a “stop gap" measure designed to help as people await more clarity about the formal government resettlement process.
“Most of these people do not have any relations, like they don't know anybody here," said Kislyanka, who came to the U.S. as a child in the early 1990s. “Having somebody who can help them navigate the cultural shock and navigate the system. . . it just makes things a lot easier and smoother."
Sacramento has been a destination for Ukrainians since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when many of those arriving were Christians taking advantage of a U.S. law offering entrance to anyone escaping religious persecution in the former Soviet Union.
Another wave of refugees began arriving after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Of the 8,000 Ukrainians resettled by the organization World Relief since then, 3,000 have come to Sacramento, said Vanassa Hamra, the group's community engagement manager in Sacramento.
Beyond the dozens of Slavic churches in the Sacramento region, there are schools that serve mainly Ukrainian and Russian students. Eastern European grocery stores and restaurants offer favorite foods like borscht, a type of beetroot soup, and varenyky, a boiled dumpling. Businesses started by Ukrainians try to hire others from their country.
All of that makes it easy for younger people to maintain a sense of connection to their heritage and for older immigrants to adapt without having to become fluent in a new language and culture.
“It's very easy when you come here. Every door, it's open for you," said Oleksandra Datsenko, who came to the U.S. six years ago and works as a waitress at Firebird Russian Restaurant, which serves Eastern European fare in a Sacramento suburb.
Valeriy Goloborodko, who immigrated to Southern California in 2006, wanted to return to Ukraine until he settled with his wife in the Seattle area. There, he found a thriving Ukrainian community and went on to become the country's honorary consul in Seattle in 2015, helping organize an annual festival where as many as 16,000 people a day would show up to feast on traditional food, listen to Ukrainian musicians and wear traditionally embroidered clothing.
Read:Putin misled by advisers on Ukraine, US intel determines
“The Ukrainian community in Washington helped me to feel like I was at home — and this is my home now,” Goloborodko said. “We feel like this is a Little Ukraine.”
Since the invasion, Goloborodko and others in the Washington state Ukrainian community have lobbied hard for support from state officials. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has vowed that Washington will welcome Ukrainians fleeing the violence. The Legislature has set aside nearly $20 million to help pay anticipated costs of housing, job training, health care and legal aid for Ukrainian refugees. The Port of Seattle has promised to help welcome the refugees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where they can begin to be connected with services.
In Sacramento, meanwhile, the state's housing crisis could prove challenging as resettlement and community organizations look for lodging for new arrivals. Like much of California, the region is facing a housing crunch with limited supply and rising rents.
“People are coming here; we can help them; we can provide something. But it’s going to get swamped so quick,” said Kislyanka, the head pastor at House of Bread.
The International Rescue Committee's Sacramento branch has an affiliated immigrant welcome center that's already assisting people who entered the country illegally, said Lisa Welze, director of IRC Sacramento. Many are nervous to engage with resettlement agencies but in need of resources — particularly housing — as well as help navigating the immigration system to see if they can find a legal path to stay.
As for when the more formal resettlement process will begin, “we've been told we just need to wait," Welze said.
How China’s TikTok, Facebook influencers push propaganda
To her 1.4 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, Vica Li says she is a “life blogger” and “food lover” who wants to teach her fans about China so they can travel the country with ease.
“Through my lens, I will take you around China, take you into Vica’s life!” she says in a video posted in January to her YouTube and Facebook accounts, where she also teaches Chinese classes over Zoom.
But that lens may be controlled by CGTN, the Chinese-state run TV network where she has regularly appeared in broadcasts and is listed as a digital reporter on the company’s website. And while Vica Li tells her followers that she “created all of these channels on her own,” her Facebook account shows that at least nine people manage her page.
That portfolio of accounts is just one tentacle of China’s rapidly growing influence on U.S.-owned social media platforms, an Associated Press examination has found.
As China continues to assert its economic might, it is using the global social media ecosystem to expand its already formidable influence. The country has quietly built a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective in posts seen by hundreds of thousands of people, operating in virtual lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect international criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s talking points on world affairs like Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Some of China’s state-affiliated reporters have posited themselves as trendy Instagram influencers or bloggers. The country has also hired firms to recruit influencers to deliver carefully crafted messages that boost its image to social media users.
And it is benefitting from a cadre of Westerners who have devoted YouTube channels and Twitter feeds to echoing pro-China narratives on everything from Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims to Olympian Eileen Gu, an American who competed for China in the most recent Winter Games.
The influencer network allows Beijing to easily proffer propaganda to unsuspecting Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube users around the globe. At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese government or its state media are operating in 38 different languages, according to research from Miburo, a firm that tracks foreign disinformation operations.
Also read: India bans TikTok, other Chinese-owned apps
“You can see how they’re trying to infiltrate every one of these countries,” said Miburo President Clint Watts, a former FBI agent. “It is just about volume, ultimately. If you just bombard an audience for long enough with the same narratives people will tend to believe them over time.”
While Russia’s war on Ukraine was being broadly condemned as a brazen assault on democracy, self-described “traveler,” “story-teller” and “journalist” Li Jingjing took to YouTube to offer a different narrative.
She posted a video to her account called “Ukraine crisis: The West ignores wars & destructions it brings to Middle East,” in which she mocked U.S. journalists covering the war. She’s also dedicated other videos to amplifying Russian propaganda about the conflict, including claims of Ukrainian genocide or that the U.S. and NATO provoked Russia’s invasion.
Li Jingjing says in her YouTube profile that she is eager to show her roughly 21,000 subscribers “the world through my lens.” But what she does not say in her segments on Ukraine, which have tens of thousands of views, is that she is a reporter for CGTN, articulating views that are not just her own but also familiar Chinese government talking points.
Most of China’s influencers use pitches similar to Li Jingjing’s in hopes of attracting audiences around the world, including the U.S., Egypt and Kenya. The personalities, many of them women, call themselves “travelers,” sharing photos and videos that promote China as an idyllic destination.
“They clearly have identified the ‘Chinese lady influencer’ is the way to go,” Watts said of China.
The AP identified dozens of these accounts, which collectively have amassed more than 10 million followers and subscribers. Many of the profiles belong to Chinese state media reporters who have in recent months transformed their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts — platforms that are largely blocked in China — and begun identifying as “bloggers,” “influencers” or non-descript “journalists.” Nearly all of them were running Facebook ads, targeted to users outside of China, that encourage people to follow their pages.
The personalities do not proactively disclose their ties to China’s government and have largely phased out references in their posts to their employers, which include CGTN, China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency.
Foreign governments have long tried to exploit social media, as well as its ad system, to influence users. During the 2016 U.S. election, for example, a Russian internet agency paid in rubles to run more than 3,000 divisive political ads targeting Americans.
In response, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter promised to better alert American users to foreign propaganda by labeling state-backed media accounts.
But the AP found in its review that most of the Chinese influencer social media accounts are inconsistently labeled as state-funded media. The accounts — like those belonging to Li Jingjing and Vica Li — are often labeled on Facebook or Instagram, but are not flagged on YouTube or TikTok. Vica Li’s account is not labeled on Twitter. Last month, Twitter began identifying Li Jingjing’s account as Chinese state-media.
Vica Li said in a YouTube video that she is disputing the labels on her Facebook and Instagram accounts. She did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.
Often, followers who are lured in by accounts featuring scenic images of China’s landscape might not be aware that they’ll also encounter state-endorsed propaganda.
Jessica Zang’s picturesque Instagram photos show her smiling beneath a beaming sun, kicking fresh powdered snow atop a ski resort on the Altai Mountains in China’s Xinjiang region during the Beijing Olympics. She describes herself as a video creator and blogger who hopes to present her followers with “beautiful pics and videos about life in China.”
Zang, a video blogger for CGTN, rarely mentions her employer to her 1.3 million followers on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram identify her account as “state-controlled media” but she is not labeled as such on TikTok, YouTube or on Twitter, where Zang lists herself as a “social media influencer.”
“I think it’s likely by choice that she doesn’t put any state affiliations, because you put that label on your account, people start asking certain types of questions,” Rui Zhong, who researches technology and the China-U.S. relationship for the Washington-based Wilson Center, said of Zang.
Peppered between tourism photos are posts with more obvious propaganda. One video titled “What foreigners in BEIJING think of the CPC and their life in China?” features Zang interviewing foreigners in China who gush about the Chinese Communist Party and insist they’re not surveilled by the government the way outsiders might think.
“We really want to let more people ... know what China is really like,” Zang tells viewers.
That’s an important goal in China, which has launched coordinated efforts to shape its image abroad and whose president, Xi Jinping, has spoken openly of his desire to have China perceived favorably on the global stage.
Ultimately, accounts like Zang’s are intended to obscure global criticisms of China, said Jessica Brandt, a Brookings Institution expert on foreign interference and disinformation.
“They want to promote a positive vision of China to drown out their human rights records,” Brandt said.
Li Jingjing and Zang did not return messages from the AP seeking comment. CGTN did not respond to repeated interview requests. CGTN America, which is registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department and has disclosed having commercial arrangements with several international news organizations, including the AP, CNN and Reuters, did not return messages. A lawyer who has represented CGTN America did not respond either.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said in a statement, “Chinese media and journalists carry out normal activities independently, and should not be assumed to be led or interfered by the Chinese government.”
China’s interest in the influencer realm became more evident in December after it was revealed that the Chinese Consulate in New York had paid $300,000 for New Jersey firm Vippi Media to recruit influencers to post messages to Instagram and TikTok followers during the Beijing Olympics, including content that would highlight China’s work on climate change.
It’s unclear what the public saw from that campaign, and if the social media posts were properly labeled as paid advertisements by the Chinese Consulate, as Instagram and TikTok require. Vippi Media has not provided the Justice Department, which regulates foreign influence campaigns through a 1938 statute known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a copy of the posts it paid influencers to disseminate, even though federal law requires the company to do so.
In other cases, the money and motives behind these Facebook posts, YouTube videos and podcasts are so murky that even those who create them say they weren’t aware the Chinese government was financing the project.
Chicago radio host John St. Augustine told the AP that a friend who owns New World Radio in Falls Church, Virginia, invited him to host a podcast called “The Bridge” with a team in Beijing. The hosts discussed daily life and music in the U.S. and China, inviting music industry workers as guests.
He says he didn’t know CGTN had paid New World Radio $389,000 to produce the podcast. The station was also paid millions of dollars to broadcast CGTN content 12 hours daily, according to documents filed with the Justice Department on behalf of the radio company.
“How they did all that, I had no clue,” St. Augustine said. “I was paid by a company here in the United States.”
The station’s relationship with CGTN ended in December, said New World Radio co-owner Patricia Lane.
The Justice Department recently requested public input on how it should update the FARA statute to account for the ephemeral world of social media and its transparency challenges.
“It’s not leaflets and hard copy newspapers anymore,” FARA unit chief Jennifer Kennedy Gellie said of messaging. It’s “tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram images.”
A growing chorus of English-speaking influencers has also cultivated an online niche by promoting pro-Chinese messaging in YouTube videos or tweets.
Last April, as CGTN sought to expand its network of influencers, it invited English speakers to join a months-long competition that would end with jobs working as social media influencers in London, Nairobi, Kenya or Washington. Thousands applied, CGTN said in September, describing the event as a “window for young people around the world to understand China.”
British video blogger Jason Lightfoot raved about the opportunity in a video on YouTube advertising the event.
“So many crazy experiences that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life, and that’s all thanks to CGTN,” Lightfoot said in a video he said was filmed from China tech company Huawei’s campus.
Lightfoot, who did not respond to requests for comment, does not disclose this relationship with CGTN on his YouTube profile, where he has accrued millions of views with headlines like “The Olympics Backfired on USA — Disastrous Regret” and “Western Media Lies about China.”
The video topics are often in sync with those of other pro-China bloggers such as Cyrus Janssen, a U.S. citizen living in Canada. During the Olympics, Janssen and Lightfoot both shared videos celebrating Gu’s three-medal win, using identical images of the Olympian, though Lightfoot also poked fun at President Joe Biden.
“USA’s boycott failure ... Eileen Gu Wins Gold!” Lightfoot posted on Feb. 10. That same day, Janssen uploaded a video titled “Is Eileen Gu a Traitor to America? American Expat Shares the Truth.”
In emails to the AP, Janssen said his videos are intended to educate people about China and said he’s never accepted money from the Chinese government. But when pressed for details about some of his partnerships, which include Chinese tech firms, Janssen responded only with questions about an AP’s reporter salary. The AP also found videos that show him appearing on CGTN broadcasts.
The Western influencers routinely decry what they see as distorted American media coverage of Beijing and life there. Some posts, for instance, have ridiculed Western concerns over the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared from view after leveling sexual assault allegations against a former high-ranking member of China’s ruling Communist Party. She resurfaced around the Olympics in a controlled interview in which she vigorously denied wrongdoing by Chinese officials and said her initial allegations had created an “enormous misunderstanding.”
Her abrupt about-face prompted skeptical reactions in the West, which YouTuber Andy Boreham mocked in a video in which he invoked language reminiscent of the MeToo movement. “I wonder what happened to #BelieveAllWomen,” he said.
Boreham is a New Zealander and columnist for Shanghai Daily. Twitter recently labeled his account as Chinese-state affiliated media. His YouTube account remains unlabeled. In a statement, YouTube said it only applies state-affiliated media labels to organizations, not individuals who work for or with state-funded media.
In a YouTube post last year, Lightfoot, who has more than 200,000 subscribers, marveled at video footage of what he said were “clean, modern, peaceful, pleasant” streets of China. The post then cut to video of gritty, trash-strewn streets he said were in Philadelphia.
“When I first saw this video,” he says by way of narration, “I actually thought it was from a movie. I thought it was from a zombie movie or some kind of end-of-the-world movie. But it’s not. This is real. This is America.”
YouTubers Matthew Tye, an American, and Winston Sterzel, who is from South Africa, believe that, in many cases, China’s paying for videos to be created.
Their evidence?
The pair was included last year on an email pitch to numerous YouTube influencers from a company that identified itself as Hong Kong Pear Technology. The email asked the influencers to share a promotional video for China’s Hainan province, a tourist beach destination, on their channels.
Tye and Sterzel, who spent years living in China and became vocal critics of its government, assume they were probably included on the pitch by mistake.
But, intrigued, they engaged in a back-and-forth with the company while feigning interest in the offer. The company representative soon followed up with a new request — that they post a propaganda video that claimed COVID-19 did not originate in China, where the first case was detected, but rather from North American white-tailed deer.
“We could offer $2000 (totally negotiable considering the nature of this type of content) lemme know if u are interested,” an employee named Joey wrote, according to emails shared with the AP.
After Tye and Sterzel asked for articles that would back up the false claim, the emails stopped.
In an email to the AP, a Pear Technology employee confirmed he had contacted Tye and Sterzel, but said he did not know much about the client, adding “it might be from the government??”
Tye and Sterzel say the exchange pulls back the curtain on how China pushes propaganda through influencers who profit from it.
“There’s a very easy formula to become successful,” Sterzel said in an interview. “It’s simply to praise the Chinese government, to praise China and talk about how great China is and how bad the West is.”
Biden planning to tap oil reserve to control gas prices
President Joe Biden is preparing to order the release of up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, according to two people familiar with the decision, in a bid to control energy prices that have spiked as the U.S. and allies have imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine
The announcement could come as soon as Thursday, when the White House says Biden is planning to deliver remarks on his administration’s plans to combat rising gas prices. The duration of the release hasn’t been finalized but could last for several months. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the decision.
High oil prices have not coaxed more production, creating a challenge for Biden. The president has seen his popularity sink as inflation reached a 40-year high in February and the cost of petroleum and gasoline climbed after Russia invaded Ukraine. Crude oil on Wednesday traded at nearly $105 a barrel, up from about $60 a year ago.
Still, oil producers have been more focused on meeting the needs of investors, according to a survey released last week by the Dallas Federal Reserve. About 59% of the executives surveyed said investor pressure to preserve “capital discipline” amid high prices was the reason they weren’t pumping more, while fewer than 10% blamed government regulation.
Read: Ukraine war fuels global economic downturn
The steady release from the reserves would be a meaningful sum and come near to closing the domestic production gap relative to February 2020, before the coronavirus caused a steep decline in oil output.
The Biden administration in November announced the release of 50 million barrels from the strategic reserve in coordination with other countries. And after the Ukrainian war began, the U.S. and 30 other countries agreed to an additional release of 60 million barrels from reserves, with half of the total coming from the U.S.
According to the Department of Energy, which manages it, more than 568 million barrels of oil were held in the reserve as of Mar. 25.
News of the administration’s planning was first reported by Bloomberg.