Europe
Russian envoy claims West is determined to destroy Russia
A week before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s U.N. ambassador claimed that the West is driven by its determination to destroy Russia and declared: “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”
Western ambassadors shot back, accusing Russia of using a Security Council meeting it called on lessons learned from the failure to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists that began in 2014 to justify what France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere called “the unjustifiable” – Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.
Friday's meeting in the council — the only international venue where Russia regularly faces Ukraine and its Western supporters — put a spotlight on the deep chasm between the warring parties as the conflict moves into its second year with no end in sight, tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, and new military offensives expected.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western nations including France and Germany of “holding back” on implementing the Minsk agreements brokered by the two countries to end the conflict between Ukraine and the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk in the country’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east that flared in April 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“You knew very well that the Minsk process for you is just a smoke screen, so as to rearm the Kyiv regime and to prepare it for war against Russia in the name of your geopolitical interest,” Nebenzia said.
U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Mills accused Russia of failing to implement “a single commitment it made” in the Minsk agreements while the other signatories — France, Germany, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — “sought to implement them in good faith.”
France’s De Riviere said his country and Germany have worked “tirelessly” since 2015 to promote dialogue between parties. “The difficulties encountered in implementing these agreements can never serve as justification or mitigating circumstances for Russia’s choice to end the dialogue with violence,” he stressed.
De Riviere recalled that exactly a year ago, on Feb. 17, 2022, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin reaffirmed to the council that the Minsk agreements were “the only international legal basis” to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, and that rumors of Russian military intervention were unfounded and stemmed from Western paranoia. Four days later, Russia recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and on Feb. 24 it invaded Ukraine.
“The one and only lesson to be learned here is that Russia, by attacking Ukraine, has chosen alone, to put an end to dialogue and negotiation,” De Riviere said. “It took the decision alone to shatter the Minsk agreements, whose main objective, let us remember, was the reintegration of some regions of Donetsk and Luhansk under full Ukrainian sovereignty, in exchange for broad decentralization.”
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward also cited Vershinin’s statement to the council that allegations of a Russian attack were baseless a week before President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, and said the United Kingdom had learned some lessons.
“Russia lied when we warned of its intention to attack Ukraine,” she said. “Russia was planning for war while we called for diplomacy and de-escalation, and Russia continues to choose death and destruction while the world calls for a just peace.”
Russia’s Nebenzia blamed “a criminal policy by the Ukrainian leadership which was goaded by the collective West” for refusing to implement the Minsk agreements.
After a year of war, he told Western members of the Security Council, “Obviously, we will not be able to live in the future the way we did in the past.”
Nebenzia accused the West of “deep Russophobia," and a “determination to destroy my country, using others if possible.” And he claimed it is not interested “in building a European and Euro-Atlantic security system together with Russia” because “for you such a system can only be aimed against Russia.”
“We have no trust left in you and we are not able of believing any promises you make — not as regards a non-expansion of NATO in the east, or your desire not to interfere in our internal affairs, or your determination to live in peace,” Nebenzia said.
“You have shown that it’s impossible to negotiate with you," he said. “You’ve shown how treacherous you are by creating on our borders a neo-Nazi, neo-nationalist beehive and then stirring it up.”
Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of violating the Minsk agreements, citing as an example the Minsk memorandum of Sept. 19, 2014 ordering all military, militias and mercenaries to leave Ukraine that was never implemented.
“The truth is that Putin has proved once and for all to be impossible to negotiate with,” he said. “Russia’s consistent undermining and final killing of the Minsk agreements make that crystal clear.”
Ukraine urges “healthy forces in Russia, if there are any, to come to their senses and force Putin to implement the demands of the U.N. General Assembly to immediately cease the use of force and to withdraw Russian military forces from Ukraine,” Kyslytsya said. “The dictator should give up and recede into the past.”
Bodies of 18 migrants found in abandoned truck in Bulgaria
Police in Bulgaria on Friday discovered an abandoned truck containing the bodies of 18 migrants, who appeared to have suffocated to death.
The Interior Ministry said that according to initial information, the truck was carrying about 40 migrants and the survivors were taken to nearby hospitals for emergency treatment.
Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medzhidiev said most of the survivors were in very bad condition.
“They have suffered from lack of oxygen, their clothes are wet, they are freezing, and obviously haven’t eaten for days,” Medzhidiev said.
The truck was found abandoned on a highway near the capital, Sofia. The driver was not there, but police discovered the passengers in a secret compartment below a load of timber.
Authorities did not immediately give the nationalities of the migrants. Bulgarian media reported they all were from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million and the poorest member of the European Union, is located on a major route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan seeking to enter Europe from Turkey. Very few plan to stay, with most using Bulgaria as a transit corridor on their way westward.
Bulgaria has erected a barbed-wire fence along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey, but with the help of local human traffickers many migrants still manage to enter.
Read more: 37 Bangladeshi migrants feared dead trying to reach Europe: Govt
In Britain in October 2019, police found the bodies of 39 people inside a refrigerated container that had been hauled to England. British police said all the victims, who ranged in age from 15 to 44, came from impoverished villages in Vietnam and were believed to have paid smugglers to take them on a risky journey to better lives abroad.
Police said they died of a combination of a lack of oxygen and overheating in an enclosed space. The truck discovered in the town of Grays, east of London, had arrived in England on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.
Ukrainian refugees safe, but not at peace, after year of war
Months after Russian forces occupied southern Ukraine's Kherson province last year, they started paying visits to the home of a Ukrainian woman and her Russian husband. They smashed their refrigerator and demanded possession of their car. One day, they seized the wife and her teenage daughter, put pillowcases over their heads and led them away.
The woman was locked up for days, her legs beaten with a hammer. The men accused her of revealing Russian soldiers’ locations. They subjected her to electric shocks and bore down on her feet with the heels of their military boots until two of her toes broke. She heard screams nearby and feared they came from her daughter.
More than once, with a bag on her head and her hands tied, a weapon was pointed at her head. She'd feel the muzzle at her temple, and a man started counting.
One. Two. Two and a half.
Then, a shot fired to the floor.
“Although at that moment, it seemed to me that it would be better in my head,” she told The Associated Press, recounting the torture that lasted five days, counted by the sliver of sunlight from a tiny window in the room. “The only thing that kept me strong was the awareness that my child was somewhere around.”
The Russian officials eventually released the woman and her daughter, she said, and she made her way home. She took a long shower and packed a bag, and the two fled the occupied area — first to Russian-occupied Crimea and then to mainland Russia, from where they crossed by land into Latvia and finally Poland.
Her body was still bruised, and she could barely walk. But in December in Warsaw, she reunited with a son. And she and her daughter joined the refugees who have fled their homes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly a year has passed since the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion sent millions fleeing across Ukraine’s border into neighboring Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania. Crowds of terrified, exhausted people boarded trains and waited for days at border crossings.
Across Europe, about 8 million refugees have been recorded, according to U.N. estimates based on data from national governments, and nearly 5 million of those have applied for temporary protection. Experts say those numbers are fluid — some people apply in more than one country — but they agree it's the largest movement of refugees in Europe since World War II. Unlike refugees from recent conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, the Ukrainians were largely met with an outpouring of sympathy and help.
Yet while the Ukrainian refugees have found safety, they have not found peace.
They suffer from trauma and loss — uprooted from their lives, separated from relatives, fearing for loved ones stuck in Russian-occupied areas or fighting on the frontline. Children are separated from fathers, grandparents, pets. Others have no family or homes to return to.
The woman from Kherson spoke to the AP this month at a Warsaw counseling center run in partnership with UNICEF. She insisted on anonymity; she fears for the safety of her husband and other relatives in Russian-occupied areas.
She doesn’t like to talk about herself. But she has a goal: For the world to see what Russian troops are doing.
“Even now, I am afraid,” she said, wiping her eyes with her pastel-color nails and fiddling over a tissue. “Do you understand?”
She is among the refugees seeking trauma treatment, most often from Ukrainian psychologists who themselves fled home and struggle with their own grief and loss. No agency has definitive numbers on refugees in treatment, but experts say the psychological toll of the conflict is vast, with rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketing.
At the Warsaw center, psychologists describe treating crying children, teenagers separated from everything they know, mothers unknowingly transferring trauma to their kids.
One patient, a boy from Mariupol, was used as a human shield. His hair has already begun to turn gray. The home of the counselor who treats him was destroyed by a Russian bomb.
Refugee mental health is a priority for aid organizations large and small, even as they work to meet needs for housing, work and education.
Anastasiia Gudkova, a Ukrainian providing psychological support to refugees at a Norwegian Refugee Council reception center in Warsaw, said the most traumatized people she meets come from Mariupol, Kherson and other occupied territories. Those who flee bombing in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia also arrive terrified.
But there’s pain for those even from relatively safer areas in western Ukraine, she said: “All Ukrainians, regardless of their location, are under a lot of stress.”
According to the U.N. refugee agency, 90% of the Ukrainians who have sought refuge abroad are women, children and the elderly.
The psychologists see women struggle to put on a brave face for children, trying to survive in countries where they often don’t speak the language. Many women with higher education have taken jobs cleaning other people’s homes or working in restaurant kitchens.
The luckiest ones are able to keep doing their old jobs remotely from exile or are beginning to envision new lives.
Last January, Anastasia Lasna was planning to open her own bakery in Mykolaiv after finding success with providing other businesses with her vegan foods and healthy desserts. Today she is running a food pantry of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, which has helped some 200,000 Ukrainian refugees, and integrating herself into the southern Polish city’s growing Jewish community.
She has Israeli citizenship, but doesn’t want to live in another conflict-scarred land. Joined now in Krakow by her husband and her 6-year-old daughter, she cannot imagine returning to her former home.
“There is no future there,” she said.
But many refugees still dream of returning home. Their belief that Ukraine will eventually prevail helps them cope.
Last Feb. 23, Maryna Ptashnyk was in the Carpathian mountains celebrating her 31st birthday with her husband and daughter. For months, Russian forces had surrounded her country; waves of anxiety came as she pondered whether there would be “a big war.” So she switched off her phone for her special day.
It was the last night of peace for Ukraine, the last night of normality for Ptashnyk. The next morning, her husband, Yevhen, woke her and told her Kyiv was being bombed.
Now Yevhen is in the Ukrainian army, serving in an artillery unit near Soledar in eastern Ukraine, an area of brutal fighting. Ptashnyk lives alone with their 3-year-old daughter, Polina, in a small suburban Warsaw apartment.
Though Polina is settling well into a Polish preschool, her mother sees the stress.
“For the last year she often asks me about death, about when we will die,” she said.
Polina sees other children out with their fathers, but she’s seen hers only three times since the war began. On a recent visit home, she embraced him. “Daddy’s mine,” she said.
For the woman from Kherson, trying to face the trauma from her torture is just one challenge. She also must find work to afford an apartment in Warsaw, which is now home to more Ukrainian refugees than any other city.
The influx of people has exacerbated a housing shortage and caused rental prices to surge amid high inflation — an issue in many countries welcoming refugees.
The mother finds herself struggling to create a home, a sense of normalcy. The physical pain and scars haunt her, but some days the lack of moral support hurts the most.
Her husband's family in Russia supports the invasion. Worst of all, he and other loved ones remain trapped in the Russian-occupied territory.
“I am safe now, but it is very dangerous there," she said. “And I can’t know if they will survive.”
Key moments in a year of war after Russia invaded Ukraine
The war in Ukraine that began a year ago has killed thousands, forced millions to flee their homes, reduced entire cities to rubble and has fueled fears the confrontation could slide into an open conflict between Russia and NATO.
A look at some of the main events in the conflict.
2022
FEBRUARY
On Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launches an invasion of Ukraine from the north, east and south. He says the “special military operation” is aimed at “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the country to protect ethnic Russians, prevent Kyiv’s NATO membership and to keep it in Russia’s “sphere of influence.” Ukraine and the West say it’s an illegal act of aggression against a country with a democratically elected government and a Jewish president whose relatives were killed in the Holocaust.
Russian troops quickly reach Kyiv’s outskirts, but their attempts to capture the capital and other cities in the northeast meet stiff resistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy records a video outside his headquarters to show he is staying and remains in charge.
MARCH
On March 2, Russia claims control of the southern city of Kherson. In the opening days of March, Russian forces also seize the rest of the Kherson region and occupy a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, including the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest.
The Russian army soon gets stuck near Kyiv, and its convoys — stretching along highways leading to the Ukrainian capital — become easy prey for Ukrainian artillery and drones. On March 16, Russia strikes a theater in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering, killing hundreds of people in one of the war’s deadliest attacks.
Moscow announces the withdrawal of forces from Kyiv and other areas March 29, saying it will focus on the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces since 2014 following the illegal annexation of Crimea.
APRIL
The Russian pullback from Kyiv reveals hundreds of bodies of civilians in mass graves or left in the streets of the town of Bucha, many of them bearing signs of torture in scenes that prompt world leaders to say Russia should be held accountable for possible war crimes.
On April 9, a Russian missile strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk kills 52 civilians and wounds over 100.
Intense battles rage for Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, and Russian air strikes and artillery bombardment reduce much of it to ruins.
On April 13, the missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, is hit by Ukrainian missiles and sinks the next day, damaging national pride.
MAY
On May 16, Ukrainian defenders of the giant Azovstal steel mill, the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol, agree to surrender to Russian forces after a nearly three-month siege. Mariupol’s fall cuts Ukraine off from the Azov coast and secures a land corridor from the Russian border to Crimea.
On May 18, Finland and Sweden submit their applications to join NATO in a major blow to Moscow over the expansion of the military alliance.
JUNE
More Western weapons flow into Ukraine, including U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers.
On June 30, Russian troops pull back from Snake Island, located off the Black Sea port of Odesa and seized in the opening days of the invasion.
JULY
On July 22, Russia and Ukraine, with mediation by Turkey and the United Nations, agree on a deal to unblock supplies of grain stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, ending a standoff that threatened global food security.
On July 29, a missile strike hits a prison in the Russia-controlled eastern town of Olenivka where Ukrainian soldiers captured in Mariupol were held, killing at least 53. Ukraine and Russia trade blame for the attack.
AUGUST
On Aug. 9, powerful explosions strike an air base in Crimea. More blasts hit a power substation and ammunition depots there a week later. signaling the vulnerability of the Moscow-annexed Black Sea peninsula that Russia has used as a major supply hub for the war. Ukraine’s top military officer later acknowledges that the attacks on Crimea were launched by Kyiv’s forces.
On Aug. 20, Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian nationalist ideologist Alexander Dugin, dies in a car bomb explosion outside Moscow that the Russian authorities blame on Ukraine
SEPTEMBER
On Sept. 6, the Ukrainian forces launch a surprise counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region, quickly forcing Russia to pull back from broad areas held for months.
On Sept. 21, Putin orders mobilization of 300,000 reservists, an unpopular move that prompts hundreds of thousands of Russian men to flee to neighboring countries to avoid recruitment. At the same time, Russia hastily stages illegal “referendums” in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions on whether to become part of Russia. The votes are widely dismissed as a sham by Ukraine and the West.
On Sept. 30, Putin signs documents to annex the four regions at a Kremlin ceremony.
OCTOBER
On Oct. 8, a truck laden with explosives blows up on the bridge linking Crimea to Russia’s mainland in an attack that Putin blames on Ukraine. Russia responds with missile strikes on Ukraine’s power plants and other key infrastructure.
After the first wave of attacks on Oct. 10, the barrage continues on a regular basis in the months that follow, resulting in blackouts and power rationing across the country.
NOVEMBER
On Nov. 9, Russia announces a pullback from the city of Kherson under a Ukrainian counteroffensive, abandoning the only regional center Moscow captured, in a humiliating retreat for the Kremlin.
DECEMBER
On Dec. 5, the Russian military says Ukraine used drones to target two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory. Another strike takes places later in the month, underlining Ukraine’s readiness to up the ante and revealing gaps in Russian defenses.
On Dec. 21, Zelenskyy visits the United States on his first trip abroad since the war began, meeting with President Joe Biden to secure Patriot air defense missile systems and other weapons and addressing Congress.
2023
JANUARY
On Jan. 1, just moments into the New Year, scores of freshly mobilized Russian soldiers are killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on the city of Makiivka. Russia’s Defense Ministry says 89 troops were killed, while Ukrainian officials put the death toll in the hundreds.
After months of ferocious fighting, Russia declares the capture of the salt-mining town of Soledar on Jan. 12, although Kyiv does not acknowledge it until days later. Moscow also presses its offensive to seize the Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut.
On Jan. 14, when Russia launches another wave of strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities, a Russian missile hits an apartment building in the city of Dnipro, killing 45.
Proposed Italian sea rescue law puts more lives at risk: UN rights chief
UN human rights chief Volker Türk Thursday expressed serious concerns about a proposed law in Italy that could hinder the provision of life-saving assistance by humanitarian search and rescue (SAR) organisations in the Central Mediterranean, resulting in more deaths at sea.
“We all watch with horror the plight of those crossing the Mediterranean, and the desire to end that suffering is profound. But this is simply the wrong way to address this humanitarian crisis,” said Türk. “More people in distress will be made to suffer and more lives risk being lost because timely help is not available if this law is passed.”
“The law would effectively punish both migrants and those who seek to help them. This penalisation of humanitarian actions would likely deter human rights and humanitarian organisations from doing their crucial work,” the high commissioner added.
The proposed law – which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament Wednesday and is scheduled to be considered by the Senate next week – also requires humanitarian rescue ships to head to port immediately after each rescue, foregoing additional rescues even if they are in the immediate vicinity of people in distress.
In the past, SAR vessels carried out multiple rescue operations over days. At the same time, Italy recently designated distant ports of disembarkation for people rescued at sea – sometimes days sailing away from the original rescue site – making it all the more difficult for vessels who may seek to conduct multiple rescues.
“Under international law, a captain is duty-bound to render immediate assistance to people in distress at sea, and states must protect the right to life,” said Türk. “But under this new proposal, a nearby SAR vessel would be obliged to ignore the distress calls of those at sea simply by having already saved others.”
Türk added: “Those left stranded at sea would be forced to endure prolonged exposure to the elements and risk losing their lives. Those who survive face increased delays in accessing adequate medical care and rehabilitation, including for victims of torture, sexual violence and other human rights violations.”
The high commissioner said the proposed law also risked increased interceptions and returns to Libya – a location the UN Human Rights Office repeatedly said cannot be considered a safe port of disembarkation.
Under the proposed law, crews on board the ships must register every person who is planning to ask for international protection. Non-governmental organisations that do not comply with the new rules would be subject to administrative sanctions, and fines and have their vessel seized.
The high commissioner urged the government of Italy to withdraw the proposed law, and to consult civil society groups, in particular search and rescue NGOs, to ensure any proposed legislation complies fully with international human rights law, international refugee law, and other applicable legal frameworks, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue.
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UN agencies seek $5.6B to help Ukraine, its refugees abroad
The U.N.'s humanitarian aid and refugee agencies said Wednesday they are seeking $5.6 billion to help millions of people in Ukraine and countries that have taken in fleeing Ukrainians in the wake of Russia's invasion of their country nearly a year ago.
The bulk of the joint appeal — $3.9 billion — is for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which aims to help more than 11 million people by funneling funds through more than 650 partner organizations.
Refugee agency UNHCR, meanwhile, is seeking $1.7 billion to help some 4.2 million refugees who have fled to 10 host countries in eastern and central Europe.
The joint appeal, one of the largest of its kind for a single country, could draw a large outpouring of funds from Western countries, as a similar appeal did since the war began. Such U.N. appeals rarely get fully funded.
“We were relatively well-funded last year," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “I think the refugee appeal was funded in excess of 70% — not total, but quite good. We count on that to last.”
The appeal comes as a string of crises around the world have stretched the generosity of wealthy donors.
“Of course, this is not the only crisis in the world,” Grandi added. "There’s many others that deserve — I’m just back from Ethiopia, Burundi. Who talks about Burundi? Sorry, but this is the reality and people need support as much as anywhere else.”
The appeal from UNHCR does not cover Russia. Its figures, which are largely drawn from numbers provided by national governments, show that more than 2.8 million refugees from Ukraine have been taken in by Russia.
Grandi said Russia gets funds for those refugees “from other sources” — including un-earmarked funds.
“We stand ready to do more if it’s needed for any Ukrainian that is in need in Russia," he said. "That offer is on the table and is available.”
The U.N. says humanitarian groups helped nearly 16 million people in Ukraine last year, including in areas not controlled by the Kyiv government. More than one-third of those received cash assistance, which can help prop up the battered national economy.
Romania, Moldova both report strange objects in their skies
Romania briefly scrambled military jets and neighboring Moldova temporarily closed its air space Tuesday after authorities in both countries reported mysterious weather balloon-like objects traversing their skies.
The incidents occurred at around midday local time and briefly raised concerns in the two Eastern European countries, both which border Ukraine and have been affected by Russia’s war.
Romania’s defense ministry said it deployed two jets that are under NATO command to its southeastern skies to seek an aerial object it described as being small with “characteristics similar to a weather balloon.” It had been detected initially by radar systems in Romanian airspace at an altitude of about 11,000 meters (36,000 feet).
“The crews of the two aircraft did not confirm the presence of the aerial target, neither visually nor on the onboard radars,” a ministry statement said, adding that the two MiG-21 LanceR aircraft stayed in the vicinity for about 30 minutes before returning to base.
Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that “the Romanian fighter jets did not find any object, even if it was spotted on the radar … so no threat for the Romanian airspace.”
It was unclear whether the two incidents were related, and neither country said where they believed the objects had come from.
The events follow a string of comparable incidents this month in the U.S., in which objects detected and shot down by warplanes included a high-altitude Chinese balloon that traversed American airspace. China said it was a weather balloon that had accidentally drifted off course.
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The incident in Moldova triggered widespread travel disruption and brief panic when authorities temporarily closed the country's airspace over what they later described as an object “similar to a weather balloon” spotted near the northern border with Ukraine.
Scores of flights in the country of about 2.6 million people, one of Europe’s poorest, were canceled or rescheduled. Some were diverted to Romania.
“Given the weather conditions and the impossibility of monitoring and identifying the object as well as its flight path … the decision was taken to temporarily close the airspace,” Moldova's aviation authority said in a statement.
Romania has been a NATO member since 2004 and a European Union member since 2007. Moldova is militarily neutral and thus not a potential NATO member. It's looking to forge closer ties with the west and was granted EU candidate status last June, the same day as Ukraine.
On Monday, Moldovan President Maia Sandu accused Russia of plotting to overthrow her country's government and derail it from its EU accession path.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed Sandu’s claims on Tuesday as “absolutely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”
Some Ukrainian soldiers freeze sperm amid war with Russia
As Vitalii Khroniuk lay facedown on the ground taking cover from Russian artillery fire, the Ukrainian solider had just one regret: He had never had a child.
Aware that he could die at any moment, the 29-year-old decided to try cryopreservation — the process of freezing sperm or eggs that some Ukrainian soldiers are turning to as they face the possibility that they might never go home.
“It’s not scary to die, but it’s scary when you don’t leave anyone behind,” said Khroniuk, who had quickly joined the war effort, without a thought about his future, when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago.
During a vacation home in January, he and his partner went to a private clinic in Kyiv, IVMED, that is waiving the $55 cost of cryopreservation for soldiers. The clinic has had about 100 soldiers freeze sperm since the invasion, says its chief doctor, Halyna Strelko. Assisted conception services to get pregnant currently cost $800 to $3,500.
“We don’t know how else to help. We can only make children or help make them. We don’t have weapons, we can’t fight, but what we do is also important,” said Strelko, whose clinic had to close during the first months of the war as Kyiv was under attack but reopened after the Russian military retreated from the area.
When Khroniuk told his partner, Anna Sokurenko, 24, what he wanted to do, she initially was unsure.
“It was very painful to realize that there is a possibility that he will not return,” said Sokurenko, adding that it took her a night of reflection to agree.
She and Khroniuk spoke to The Associated Press while sitting at the clinic, where posters of smiling babies, including one that reads, “Your future is securely protected,” hang in the corridor. The clinic’s lab has its own backup power supply that kicks in during frequent outages from Russian missile strikes damaging the electric infrastructure.
Dr. Strelko, who has been in the fertility business since 1998, said the service she is offering soldiers is particularly important now, pointing to "a very aggressive part of this war with massive losses.”
Russian forces have been pushing their advance on the eastern city of Bakhmut with heavy shelling and attacks that are believed to have produced massive troop losses for both Ukraine and Russia. Neither side is saying how many have died.
Sokurenko and Khroniuk married a few days after their clinic visit, and he is now fighting in the Chernihiv region near the border. She believes that a chance to have a child, even after a partner is killed at war, could smooth the deep pain of loss.
“I think it’s a very important opportunity in the future if a woman loses her loved one," she said. “I understand that it will be difficult to recover from this, but it will give the sense to continue to fight, to continue to live."
Nataliia Kyrkach-Antonenko, 37, got pregnant while visiting her husband in a front-line town a few months before he was killed in battle. Her husband, Vitalii, came home to Kyiv for a short vacation 10 days before his November death and got to see an ultrasound of his unborn baby girl. He also visited a fertility clinic to freeze his sperm.
Kyrkach-Antonenko hopes to eventually have another child using that sperm. She said being able to have her late husband’s children “is an incredible support.”
“We have loved each other incredibly strong for 18 years,” she said.
She also sees cryopreservation as a fight for the country's future.
“Their dads did everything possible to make this future happen. Now it is our turn, as women, to fight for the future of Ukraine as well, raising people with dignity. People who can continue to change the country for the better,” she said.
Another couple who went to the IVMED clinic in December, Oles and Iryna, asked that only their first names be used because of privacy concerns.
Oles is in the Donetsk region, where some cities were turned into hellscapes due to fierce battles over the past months, and sees cryopreservation as an assurance.
Iryna spends her nights alone in their apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv, tossing between anxiety for her husband as he fights on the most intensive and deadly part of the eastern frontline and the numerous visits to the clinic where she is trying to get pregnant.
“Yes, it is a difficult life, with worries, bombardment, with constant anxiety for relatives. But at the same time, it is what it is,” she says. “It’s better to be a parent now than to put it off until you can no longer have children."
“Family is what will hold our country, and children are our future," she said. “We fight for them."
Norway: Russia is a threat for all of Europe
Russia is the main security threat for all of Europe and will remain so for a long time, Norway’s intelligence officials said Monday, warning that recent burnings of Islam’s holy book in Scandinavia could possibly lead to terror attacks in the country.
“Russia today poses the biggest threat to Norwegian and European security, and the confrontation with the West will be long-lasting,” said Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram.
Arild Gram made the remark after the government received the annual threat assessments from Norway’s three security services: the domestic and the foreign intelligence agencies and the Norwegian National Security Authority, or NSM.
“The burning of the Quran could be seen as offensive or provocative and we expect that such events will also occur in 2023 in Norway,” said Beate Gangås, head of the domestic security service, known by its acronym PST. “When such events take place in Norway, the likelihood of radicalization and ultimately terrorist planning against Norway increases.”
Despite the warning, Norway’s terror domestic threat level was left unchanged at “moderate.”
The deputy head of the foreign Norwegian Intelligence Service Lars Nordrum said that Norway’s oil and gas installations could be targeted by Russian sabotage. NSM head Sofie Nystrøm warned that “all of Europe will suffer” if Norwegian gas and oil installations were hit.
“Norway is now Europe’s most important energy supplier after Russia ended its gas exports to the West,” said Nordrum. But PST assessed that it’s unlikely Russia would carry out any sabotage operation on Norwegian soil this year.
Desecrating a book held sacred by a religious community is protected in Scandinavian countries by freedom of speech.
On Feb. 2, police in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, had barred a group to stage a protest outside the Turkish Embassy that would have involved setting a fire a copy of the Quran on grounds that security could not be ensured “in a satisfactory manner” at the event.
Ankara is angry that anti-Turkish protests have been allowed to take place, and particularly that it has not prevented an anti-Muslim activist from repeatedly burning the Quran, the Muslim holy book. In Stockholm and Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.
Last week, the Swedish domestic security agency SAPO warned that the threat of attacks in Sweden has increased in the weeks since a far-right activist burned a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. An application to stage a protest during which the Quran was to be burned was turned down with Swedish police saying that “such a gathering is judged to be capable of causing serious disturbances to national security.”
Moldova’s President outlines Russian ‘plan’ to topple gov’t
Moldova’s President outlined Monday what she described as a plot by Moscow to use external saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, put the nation “at the disposal of Russia” and derail its aspirations to one day join the European Union.
President Maia Sandu’s briefing comes a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova, claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.
“The plan for the next period involves actions with the involvement of diversionists with military training, camouflaged in civilian clothes, who will undertake violent actions, attack some state buildings, and even take hostages,” Sandu told reporters at a briefing.
“The purpose of these actions is to overthrow the constitutional order, to change the legitimate power from Chisinau to an illegitimate one,” Sandu said, “which would put our country at the disposal of Russia, in order to stop the European integration process.”
She defiantly vowed: “The Kremlin’s attempts to bring violence to our country will not succeed.”
There was no immediate reaction from Russian officials to Sandu’s claims.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people, has sought to forge closer ties with its Western partners. Last June, it was granted European Union candidate status, the same day as Ukraine.
Sandu said that between October and December, Moldovan police and its Intelligence and Security Service, or SIS, have intervened in “several cases of organized criminal elements and stopped attempts at violence.”
Over the past year, Non-NATO Moldova has faced a string of problems. These include a severe energy crisis after Moscow dramatically reduced gas supplies; skyrocketing inflation; and several incidents in recent months involving missiles that have traversed its skies, and debris that has been found on its territory.
Moldovan authorities confirmed that another missile from the war in Ukraine had entered its airspace on Friday.
Sandu said that Russia wants to use Moldova in the war against Ukraine, without providing more details, and that information obtained by intelligence services contained what she described as instructions on rules of entry to Moldova for citizens from Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Montenegro.
“I assure you that the state institutions are working to prevent these challenges and keep the situation under control,” Sandu said.
She said that Moldova’s Parliament must adopt draft laws to equip its Intelligence and Security Service, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the necessary tools to combat more effectively the risks to the country’s security.”
The President added that the plan would “rely on several internal forces, but especially on criminal groups” and went on to name two Moldovan oligarchs, Ilan Shor and Vladimir Plahotniuc, both of whom are currently in exile. Both men last year were sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K.
Last fall, a series of mass anti-government protests organized by Shor’s populist, Russia-friendly Shor Party, also rocked Moldova amid the energy crunch.
The President’s press briefing Monday comes after the resignation on Friday of Moldova’s Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita. The same day, Sandu appointed her defense and security adviser, pro-Western economist Dorin Recean, to succeed Gavrilita.
On Friday, after Moldovan authorities confirmed the missile incident, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters in Washington that “Russia has for years supported influence and destabilization campaigns in Moldova, which often involve weaponizing corruption to further its goals.”