Europe
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.”
UK to review security after unknown objects puzzle N America
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Monday that the government would do “whatever it takes” to protect the country, as the U.K. announced a security review after several unidentified objects were shot down in the skies over North America.
Asked about the objects, Sunak said he wouldn’t “comment in detail on security matters, but people should be reassured that we have all the capabilities in place to keep the country safe,” including a quick-reaction force of Typhoon fighter jets.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said “the U.K. and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security."
He said "this development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse.”
U.S. fighter jets shot down an object over Lake Huron on Sunday – the fourth such downing over the U.S. or Canada this month.
On Feb. 4, the U.S. military downed what officials say was a Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast after tracking it for several days across North America.
On Friday, F-22 jets shot down a “car-sized” object in U.S. airspace off the coast of Alaska, and on Saturday Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had ordered a U.S. warplane to shoot down an unidentified object – later described as a balloon — high over the Yukon territory in northwest Canada.
The item downed Sunday was described as octagonal, with strings hanging off, but had no discernable payload.
The three objects were much smaller in size, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected spy balloon — one of what U.S. officials say is a fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that have targeted more than 40 countries over several years.
China says the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had blown off course.
British Transport Minister Richard Holden said Monday that it was “possible” China had flown spy balloons over the U.K. He said Britain would deal “robustly” with China, which he called “a hostile state.”
A senior U.S. military official said Sunday that part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” and closer scrutiny of the skies following discovery of the spy balloon.
Pentagon officials say the three objects downed since then posed no security threats, but so far little is known about them and officials have ruled nothing out — not even UFOs.
Portugal church sex abuse study: victims may number 4,800
More than 4,800 individuals may have been victims of child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church and 512 alleged victims have already come forward to speak out, an expert panel looking into historic abuse in the church said Monday.
Senior Portuguese church officials had previously claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred.
Senior clergymen sat in the front row of the auditorium where panel members read out some of the harrowing accounts of alleged abuse included in their final report. There were vivid and shocking descriptions.
The head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference, Bishop José Ornelas, said church authorities would study the panel’s 500-page report before giving an official response.
“We have seen and heard things we cannot ignore,” he told reporters. “It’s a dramatic set of circumstances. It won’t be easy to get over it.”
The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, set up by Portuguese bishops just over a year ago, looked into alleged cases from 1950 onward. Portuguese bishops are due to discuss the report next month.
The panel regretted that the Vatican had taken so long to grant access to church archives. Permission came only in October, giving the panel just three months to go through written evidence of abuse.
The statute of limitations has expired on most of the alleged cases. Only 25 allegations were passed to prosecutors, the panel said.
The report, criticized by some as long overdue, came four years after Pope Francis gathered church leaders from around the world at the Vatican to address the sex abuse crisis in the church.
That meeting was held more than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia and 20 years after it hit the United States.
Bishops and other Catholic superiors in many parts of Europe at the time continued to deny that clergy sex abuse existed or insisted on giving little weight to the problem.
Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who headed the panel in Portugal, said it estimates the true number of victims during the period as being at least at 4,815. That extrapolation was made on potential other victims mentioned by those victims who came forward.
The panel is not publishing the names of the victims, the identities of the alleged abusers, or the places the abuses allegedly happened. However, it is to send to bishops by the end of the month a list of alleged abusers who are still active in the church.
The final report includes a separate — and confidential — annex of all the names of church members reported to the committee that is being sent to the Portuguese Bishops Conference and to the police.
The Portuguese church hasn’t said whether it intends to pay compensation to any victims.
The six-person committee included psychiatrists, a former Supreme Court judge and a social worker.
The report said that 77% of the abusers were priests, with other perpetrators being linked to church institutions. It added that 77% of victims didn’t report the abuse to church officials and only 4% went to the police. Most of the abuse took place when the victims were in early adolescence.
It said 48% of those who came forward had spoken about the abuse for the first time. Most of the alleged victims were male, though 47% were female, the report said.
It said there were places in Portugal, such as some seminaries and religious institutions, that were “real blackspots” for abuse.
The panel recommended that the statute of limitations on such crimes be extended to at least 30 years from the current 23 years.
Turkey earthquake survivors face despair, as rescues wane
Thousands left homeless by a massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago packed into crowded tents or lined up in the streets for hot meals Monday, while the desperate search for anyone still alive likely entered its last hours.
One crew wrested a 4-year-old girl from rubble in hard-hit Adiyaman, 177 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck. Thousands of local and overseas teams, including Turkish coal miners and experts aided by sniffer dogs and thermal cameras, are scouring pulverized apartment blocks for signs of life.
While stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days — many broadcast live on Turkish television and beamed around the world — tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period. Experts say given temperatures that have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) — and the total collapse of so many buildings — the window for such rescues is nearly shut.
The quake and its aftershocks, including a major one nine hours after the initial temblor, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, killing more than 35,000 and reducing whole swaths of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal.
Damage included heritage sites in places like Antakya, an important ancient port and early center of Christianity historically known as Antioch. Greek Orthodox churches in the region have started charity drives to assist the relief effort and raise funds to eventually rebuild or repair churches.
Some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes.
Not enough tents have arrived for the homeless, said survivor Zehra Kurukafa, forcing families to share the tents that are available.
“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” said Kurukafa.
Turkish authorities said Monday that more than 150,000 survivors have been moved to shelters outside the affected provinces. In the city of Adiyaman, Musa Bozkurt waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to western Turkey.
“We’re going away, but we have no idea what will happen when we get there,” said the 25-year-old. "We have no goal. Even if there was (a plan) what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?”
But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended.
“Those who have the means are leaving, but we’re poor,” he said. “The government says, go and live there a month or two. How do I leave my home? My fields are here, this is my home, how do I leave it behind?”
Volunteers from across Turkey have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup for survivors who lined up in the streets of downtown Adiyaman.
Other volunteers continued with the rescue efforts. After rescuers pulled out the 4-year-old, a relative told HaberTurk television that more loved ones were inside the building.
As the scale of the disaster comes into view, sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an ineffective response to the historic disaster. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough reelection battle in May.
Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured salvage tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive Monday in the wreckage of a five-story building in Turkey's Gaziantep province.
Syrian authorities said a newborn whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of their home was doing well. The baby, Aya, was found hours after the quake, still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. She is being breastfed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is being treated.
Such tales have given many hope, but Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.”
David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed. But he added that the odds were not very good to begin with.
Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they collapsed into very small pieces, leaving very few spaces large enough for people to survive in, Alexander said.
“If a frame building of some kind goes over, generally speaking we do find open spaces in a heap of rubble where we can tunnel in,“ Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photographs from Turkey and from Syria, there just aren’t the spaces.”
Wintery conditions further reduce the window for survival. In the cold, the body shivers to keep warm — but that burns a lot of calories, meaning that people also deprived of food will die more quickly, said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech.
Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed. Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.
Turkey’s death toll from the quake has exceeded 31,000. Deaths in Syria, split between rebel-held areas and government-held areas, have risen beyond 3,500, although those reported by the government haven’t been updated in days.
Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that the international community has failed to provide aid.
Griffiths said Syrians "rightly feel abandoned.” He added: “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
In the Syrian capital of Damascus Monday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told reporters that “troubles” regarding the flow of aid to Syria’s rebel-held northwest are “now being corrected.”
The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, meanwhile, said that 53 trucks carrying aid had crossed from Kurdish territory into earthquake-damaged areas controlled by rival Turkish-backed rebels in northwest Syria who had previously prevented convoys from crossing. Turkish authorities consider the Syrian Democratic Forces to be a terrorist group, along with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist group.