Europe
Six months on, Ukraine fights war, faces painful aftermath
Danyk Rak enjoys riding his bike, playing soccer and quiet moments with the family’s short-legged dog and two white cats, Pushuna and Lizun.
But at age 12, his childhood has been abruptly cut short. His family's home was destroyed and his mother seriously wounded as Russian forces bombarded Kyiv’s suburbs and surrounding towns in a failed effort to seize the capital.
Six months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and with no end to the conflict in sight, The Associated Press revisited Danyk as well as a police officer and an Orthodox priest whose lives have been upended by war.
“I WANT TO BE AN AIR FORCE PILOT”
Tears come to Danyk’s eyes as his mother, Luda, recalls being pulled from the rubble, covered in blood, after shrapnel tore through her body and smashed her right foot.
Twenty-two weeks after she was wounded, she’s still waiting to have her foot amputated and to be fitted with a prosthetic. She keeps the piece of shrapnel surgeons removed during one of her many operations.
Danyk lives with his mother and grandmother in a house near Chernihiv, a town 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) north of Kyiv, where a piece of tarp covers the broken bedroom windows. He sells milk from the family's cow that grazes in the nearby fields. A handwritten sign wrapped in clear plastic on the front gate reads: “Please buy milk to help my mother who is injured."
“My mother needs surgery and that’s why I have to help her. I have to help my grandmother too because she has heart problems,” Danyk said.
Before schools reopen on Sept. 1, Danyk and his grandmother have been joining volunteers several days a week clearing the debris from buildings damaged and destroyed in the Russian bombardment outside Chernihiv. On the way, he stops at his old house, most of it smashed to the foundations.
“This was my bedroom,” he says, standing next to scorched mattress springs that protrude from the rubble of bricks and plaster.
Polite and soft spoken, Danyk says his father and stepfather are both fighting in the Ukrainian army.
“My father is a soldier, my uncles are soldiers and my grandfather was a soldier, too. My stepfather is a soldier and I will be a soldier,” he says with a look of determination. “I want to be an air force pilot.”
“THIS BRIDGE WAS THE ROAD FROM HELL”
Before the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas on April 2, suburbs and towns near the city’s airport were pounded by rockets, artillery fire and aerial bombardment in an effort to break the Ukrainian defenses.
Entire city blocks of apartments were blackened by the shelling in Irpin, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the capital, along a route where police Lt. Ruslan Huseinov patrolled daily.
Read:Ukraine soccer league defies Russian war to begin season
Some of the most dramatic scenes from the early stages of the war were of the evacuation from Irpin underneath a destroyed highway bridge, where thousands escaped the relentless attacks.
Huseinov was there for 16 days, organizing crossings where the elderly were carried along muddy pathways in wheelbarrows.
Reconstruction work has begun on the bridge, where mangled concrete and iron bars hang over the river. Clothing and shoes from those who fled can still be seen tangled in the debris.
“This bridge was the road from hell,” says Huseinov, 34, standing next to an overturned white van still lodged into a slab of smashed concrete.
“We got people out of (Irpin) because conditions were terrible — with bombing and shelling,” he said. “People were really scared because many lost their children, members of their family, their brothers and sisters.”
Crosses made from construction wood are still nailed to the railings of the bridge to honor those lost and the effort to save civilians.
“The whole world witnessed our solidarity,” says Huseinov, who grew up in Germany and says he would never again take the good things in life for granted.
“In my mind, everything has changed: My values in life,” he said. “Now I understand what we have to lose.”
“BEFORE THE WAR, IT WAS ANOTHER LIFE”
The floor of the Church of Andrew the Apostle has been re-tiled and bullet holes in the walls plastered over and repainted — but the horror of what happened in March lies only a few yards away.
The largest mass grave in Bucha — a town outside Kyiv that has become synonymous with the brutality of the Russian attack — is behind the church.
“This grave contained 116 people, including 30 women, and two children,” said Father Andriy, who has conducted multiple burial services for civilians found shot dead or killed by shelling, some still only identified as a number while the effort to name all of Bucha’s victims continues.
Many of the bodies were found before the Russians pulled out of the Kyiv region, Father Andriy said.
“We couldn’t bury people in the cemetery because it’s on the outskirts of the city. They left people, dead people, lying in the street. Dead people were found still in their cars. They were trying to leave but the Russians shelled them,” said Father Andriy, wearing a large cross around his neck and a dark purple cassock.
“That situation lasted two weeks, and the local authorities began coming up with solutions (to help) relatives and loved ones. It was bad weather and wild animals were discovering the bodies. So something had to be done.”
He decided to carry out burial services in the church yard, many next to where the bodies had been discovered.
The experience , he said, has left people in the town badly shaken.
“I think that, neither myself or anyone who lives in Ukraine, who witnessed the war, can understand why this happened," he said.
“Before the war, it was another life.”
“For now we are surviving on adrenaline,” he said. "But I’m worried that the aftermath will last decades. It will be hard to get past this and turn the page. Saying the word ‘forgive’ isn’t difficult. But to say it from your heart — for now , that’s not possible.”
Ukraine soccer league defies Russian war to begin season
Under threat of Russian attacks in a war that stopped all soccer in Ukraine in February, a new league season starts Tuesday in Kyiv with the goal of restoring some sense of normal life.
The elegant Olympic Stadium has staged the biggest European soccer games in the past decade though none as poignant as the opening-day meeting of Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 from Kharkiv — teams from eastern cities that are fighting for their very existence.
No fans will be allowed in the 65,000-capacity downtown stadium for the 1 p.m. local time kickoff and the players must be rushed to bomb shelters if air-raid sirens sound.
“We have rules in case of an alarm and we should go to be underground,” Shakhtar captain Taras Stepanenko said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “But I think the teams, the players will be proud of this event.”
“We are ready, we are strong and I think we will show to all the world Ukrainian life and will to win,” the national-team veteran said.
Also read: Russia blames Ukraine for nationalist's car bombing death
The Ukrainian Premier League returns with the blessing of the nation’s leaders and in a week heavy with meaning.
Tuesday is Ukraine’s national flag day and Wednesday — Aug. 24 — is the celebration of independence from control by Moscow that the former Soviet Union republic declared in 1991.
“I spoke with our president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, about how important football is to distract,” Ukraine soccer federation president Andriy Pavelko told the AP in June about the commitment to restart. “We spoke about how it would be possible that football could help us to think about the future.”
No competitive soccer has been played in Ukraine since mid-December when the league paused for a scheduled midwinter break. Games were due to resume on Feb. 25, until the Russian military invasion started one day earlier.
The 16-team league restarts without Desna Chernihiv and Mariupol, teams from cities that have suffered brutal destruction.
All games will be played in and around Kyiv and further west and will be shown domestically, abroad and on YouTube in a deal with broadcaster Setanta agreed last week. The total value of $16.2 million over three years is less than some elite English Premier League players will earn this season.
The concept of home-field advantage may have gone for most teams though simply playing on Ukrainian soil — other games Tuesday are in Kyiv, Uzhhorod and Kovalivka — is remarkable.
Also read: Ukraine: 9,000 of its troops killed since Russia began war
Ukrainian clubs fulfilling their games in UEFA's European competitions in recent weeks played in neighboring Poland and Slovakia, or Sweden, to ensure the safety of opponents like Benfica and Fenerbahçe.
Shakhtar, which was top of the domestic standings when last season was formally abandoned, will host opponents at Legia Warsaw’s stadium when the Champions League group stage starts Sept. 6. The groups are drawn Thursday.
Just 10 months ago, Stepanenko and Shakhtar faced eventual title winner Real Madrid in a Champions League game at the Olympic Stadium — the same field where the storied Spanish team won the final in 2018.
Last season, Shakhtar could field the core of Brazilian players it became famous for, funded by billionaire businessman Rinat Akhmetov who also owns the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
Those star players have now left Ukraine and Shakhtar will rely more on young, homegrown talent, just like its traditional rival Dynamo Kyiv, which starts Sunday against Dnipro-1.
“Of course, it’s a new team,” Stepanenko acknowledged, adding: “We feel confident because we play for our country and for our people.”
Russia blames Ukraine for nationalist's car bombing death
Moving quickly to assign blame, Russia on Monday declared Ukrainian intelligence responsible for the brazen car bombing that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political thinker over the weekend. Ukraine denied involvement.
Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with a nationalist Russian TV channel, died when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow, ripping the vehicle apart and killing her on the spot, authorities said.
Her father, Alexander Dugin, a philosopher, writer and political theorist who ardently supports Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send troops into Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target. Russian media quoted witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, said Dugina's killing was “prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services.”
The FSB said a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, carried out the killing and then fled to Estonia.
Also read: Daughter of 'Putin's brain' ideologist killed in car blast
In Estonia, the prosecutor general's office said in a statement carried by the Baltic News Services that it “has not received any requests or inquiries from the Russian authorities on this topic.”
The FSB said Vovk arrived in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived in order to shadow her. It said that Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival that Dugin and his daughter attended just before the killing.
The agency released video of the suspect from surveillance cameras at the border crossings and at the entrance to the Moscow apartment building.
The FSB said Vovk used a license plate for Ukraine's Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region to enter Russia and a Kazakhstan plate in Moscow before switching to a Ukrainian one to cross into Estonia.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied any Ukrainian involvement in the bombing. In a tweet, he dismissed the FSB claims as fiction, casting them as part of infighting between Russian security agencies.
In a letter extending condolences to Dugin and his wife, Putin denounced the “cruel and treacherous” killing and added that Dugina “honestly served people and the Fatherland, proving what it means to be a patriot of Russia with her deeds.” He posthumously awarded Dugina the Order of Courage, one of Russia's highest medals.
Also read: Putin extends fast-track Russian citizenship to all Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minisry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov said Dugina’s killing reflected Kyiv’s reliance on “terrorism as an instrument of its criminal ideology.”
In a statement, Dugin described his daughter as a “rising star" who was “treacherously killed by enemies of Russia.”
“Our hearts are longing not just for revenge and retaliation. It would be too petty, not in Russia style,” Dugin wrote. “We need only victory.”
The car bombing, unusual for Moscow since the gang wars of the turbulent 1990s, triggered calls from Russian nationalists to respond by ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, argued that the perpetrators of Dugina’s killing might have hoped to encourage a split between those in the Russian elite who advocate a political compromise to end the hostilities in Ukraine and proponents of even tougher military action.
Dugin, dubbed “Putin's brain” and “Putin's Rasputin” by some in the West, has been a prominent proponent of the “Russian world” concept, a spiritual and political ideology that emphasizes traditional values, the restoration of Russia’s global influence and the unity of all ethnic Russians throughout the world.
Dugin helped popularize the “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia” concept that Russia used to justify the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. He has urged the Kremlin to step up its operations in Ukraine.
Dugin has also promoted authoritarian leadership in Russia and spoken with disdain of liberal Western values. He has been slapped with U.S. and European Union sanctions.
His daughter expressed similar views and had appeared as a commentator on the TV channel Tsargrad, where Dugin had served as chief editor.
Dugina herself was sanctioned by the U.S. in March for her work as chief editor of United World International, a website that Washington has described as a source of disinformation.
In an appearance on Russian television last week, Dugina called America “a zombie society” where people oppose Russia but cannot find it on a map.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that Washington “unequivocally” condemns the targeting of civilians.
"We condemn the targeting of civilians, whether that’s in Kiev, whether that’s in Bucha, whether that’s in Kharkiv, whether that’s in Kramatorsk, whether that’s in Mariupol, or whether that’s in Moscow. That principle applies around the world,” Price said.
Ukraine: 9,000 of its troops killed since Russia began war
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already killed some 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers since it began nearly six months ago, a general said, and the fighting Monday showed no signs that the war is abating.
At a veteran's event, Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said many of Ukraine’s children need to be taken care of because “their father went to the front line and, perhaps, is one of those almost 9,000 heroes who died.”
In Nikopol, across the river from Ukraine's main nuclear power plant, Russian shelling wounded four people Monday, an official said. The city on the Dnieper River has faced relentless pounding since July 12 that has damaged 850 buildings and sent about half its population of 100,000 fleeing.
“I feel hate towards Russians,” said 74-year-old Liudmyla Shyshkina, standing on the edge of her destroyed fourth-floor apartment in Nikopol that no longer has walls. She is still injured from the Aug. 10 blast that killed her 81-year-old husband, Anatoliy.
“The Second World War didn’t take away my father, but the Russian war did,” noted Pavlo Shyshkin, his son.
Also read: UN: US buying big Ukraine grain shipment for hungry regions
The U.N. says 5,587 civilians have been killed and 7,890 wounded in the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, although the estimate is likely an undercount. The U.N. children’s agency said Monday that at least 972 Ukrainian children have been killed or injured since Russia invaded. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said these are U.N.-verified figures but “we believe the number to be much higher.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of Britain, France and Germany pleaded Sunday for Russia to end military operations so close to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant — Europe's largest — but Nikopol came under fire three times overnight from rockets and mortar shells. Houses, a kindergarten, a bus station and stores were hit, authorities said.
There are widespread fears that continued shelling and fighting in the area could lead to a nuclear catastrophe. Russia has asked for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to discuss the situation — a move “the audacity” of which Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried in his evening video address.
“The total number of different Russian cruise missiles that Russia used against us is approaching 3,500. It is simply impossible to count the strikes of Russian artillery; there are so many of them, and they are so intense," Zelensky said Monday.
Western nations had already scheduled a council meeting on Wednesday -- the six-month anniversary of the Russian invasion -- on its impact on Ukraine.
Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Russia-installed administration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, claimed that because of shelling from Ukraine, staffing at the nuclear plant had been cut sharply. Ukrainians say Russia is storing weapons at the plant and has blocked off areas to Ukrainian nuclear workers.
Monday's announcement of the scope of Ukraine's military dead stands in sharp contrast to Russia's military, which last gave an update on March 25 when it said 1,351 Russian troops were killed during the first month of fighting. U.S. military officials estimated two weeks ago that Russia has lost between 70,000 to 80,000 soldiers, both killed and wounded in action.
On Monday though, Moscow turned its attention to one specific civilian death.
Russia blamed Ukrainian spy agencies for the weekend car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow that killed the daughter of a far-right Russian nationalist who ardently supports the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the KGB, said Monday the killing was “prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services.” It charged that the bombing that killed 29-year-old TV commentator Darya Dugina, whose father, political theorist Alexander Dugin, is often referred to as “Putin’s brain," was carried out by a Ukrainian citizen who left Russia for Estonia quickly afterward.
Ukrainian officials have vehemently denied any involvement in the car bombing. Estonian officials say Russia has not asked them to look for the alleged bomber or even spoken to them about the bombing.
Also read: Doctors stay in Ukraine’s war-hit towns: ‘People need us’
On the front lines, the Ukraine military said it carried out a strike on a key bridge over the Dnieper River in the Russian-occupied Kherson region. Local Russia-installed officials said the strike killed two people Monday and wounded 16 others.
Photos on social media showed thick plumes of smoke rising over the Antonivskiy Bridge, an important supply route for the Russian military in Kherson.
On the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, anxiety has been spreading following a spate of fires and explosions at Russian facilities over the past two weeks. The Russian-backed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, ordered that signs showing the location of bomb shelters be placed in the city, which had long seemed untouchable.
Razvozhaev said on Telegram the city is well-protected but “it is better to know where the shelters are.”
Sevastopol, the Crimean port that is the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has seen a series of drone attacks. A drone exploded at the fleet’s headquarters on July 31, and another was shot down over it last week. Authorities said air-defense systems have shot down other drones as well.
On Monday evening, Sevastopol residents reported hearing loud explosions on social media. Razvozhaev said the air-defense system had shot down “an object ... at high altitude."
“Preliminary (conclusion) is that it is, again, a drone,” he wrote on Telegram.
Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't directly mention the war during a speech Monday marking National Flag Day but echoed some of the justifications cited for the invasion.
"We are firm in pursuing in the international arena only those policies that meet the fundamental interests of the motherland,” Putin said. He maintains that Russia sent troops into Ukraine to protect its people against the encroaching West.
Strike at biggest shipping port adds to UK industrial chaos
The first day of a planned strike at Britain's biggest container port started Sunday, joining a series of walkouts by transportation workers that have disrupted economic activity across the country.
Almost 2,000 workers at the Port of Felixstowe, located about 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of London, walked off the jobs over pay, raising fears of severe supply chain problems. The port handles around 4 million containers a year from 2,000 ships – almost half of the country’s incoming shipping freight.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, the labor union that called for the strike, alleged the company that operates the “enormously profitable” dock and its parent company, C.K Hutchison Holding Ltd, prioritized shareholder profits over worker welfare.
“They can give Felixstowe workers a decent pay raise. It’s clear both companies have prioritized delivering multimillion-pound profits and dividends rather than paying their workers a decent wage,” she said.
The Port of Felixstowe said in a statement that it regretted the impact the strikes would have on U.K supply chains. It said workers were offered a pay raise “worth over 8% on average in the current year.”
Read: Attack on interns: Osmani Medical College students suspend strike
Britons are facing the worst cost of living crisis in decades as wages fail to keep pace with inflation and grocery costs and utility bills increase. The latest statistics put the inflation rate at 10.1%, a 40-year high.
The conditions have sparked summer strikes by train and subway workers following the breakdown of wage talks in June. Only one in five U.K trains ran Saturday during the third railway strike in as many days.
On Friday, most of London’s underground subway lines did not run due to a separate strike. Postal workers, lawyers, British Telecom staff and garbage collectors have all announced walkouts for later this month.
Turkey: Crashes at emergency sites kill at least 35 people
Turkish authorities on Sunday investigated a pair of secondary crashes at emergency sites that killed at least 35 people the previous day. In both cases, first responders tending to earlier collisions were among the dead.
Saturday's tragedies happened just 250 kilometers (155 miles) apart in southern Turkey. The first happened on the highway between Gaziantep and Nizip when a passenger bus collided with emergency teams that had responded to a crash in Mardin Province, west of Derik.
Three firefighters, two paramedics and two journalists were among the 15 people killed, according to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, Eight of the victims were from the bus, he said.
The Ilhas News Agency said two of its journalists were killed after pulling over to offer help to people involved in the initial accident, in which a car came off the highway and slid down an embankment.
Also read: Bus collision at accident site leaves 15 dead in Turkey
Television footage showed an ambulance with severe rear damage and the bus turned on its side along the highway. Gaziantep Gov. Davut Gul said 22 people were injured in the secondary crash.
The other incident happened late Saturday afternoon in Derik after the brakes of an articulated truck failed, causing it to crash into two other vehicles near a gas station.
As first responders worked at the scene and crowds gathered to watch, another truck lost control and ploughed into them.
Speaking from the site, Soylu said 20 people were killed and 26 injured. A police officer was among the victims, and two drivers were detained as an investigation was launched, he said.
Also read: 9 killed, 18 wounded in traffic accident in southern Egypt
Turkey has a poor record of road safety. Some 5,362 people died in traffic incidents last year, according to the government.
Russia's war at 6 months: A global economy in growing danger
Martin Kopf needs natural gas to run his family's company, Zinkpower GmbH, which rustproofs steel components in western Germany.
Zinkpower's facility outside Bonn uses gas to keep 600 tons of zinc worth 2.5 million euros ($2.5 million) in a molten state every day. The metal will harden otherwise, wrecking the tank where steel parts are dipped before they end up in car suspensions, buildings, solar panels and wind turbines.
Six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the consequences are posing a devastating threat to the global economy, including companies like Zinkpower, which employs 2,800 people. Gas is not only much more costly, it might not be available at all if Russia completely cuts off supplies to Europe to avenge Western sanctions, or if utilities can't store enough for winter.
Germany may have to impose gas rationing that could cripple industries from steelmaking to pharmaceuticals to commercial laundries. "If they say, we're cutting you off, all my equipment will be destroyed," said Kopf, who' also chairs Germany’s association of zinc galvanizing firms.
Governments, businesses and families worldwide are feeling the war's economic effects just two years after the coronavirus pandemic ravaged global trade. Inflation is soaring, and rocketing energy costs have raised the prospect of a cold, dark winter. Europe stands at the brink of recession.
Also read: Bangladesh may prefer to import Russian oil via third country
High food prices and shortages, worsened by the cutoff of fertilizer and grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia that are slowly resuming, could produce widespread hunger and unrest in the developing world.
Outside Uganda's capital of Kampala, Rachel Gamisha said Russia's war in faraway Ukraine has hurt her grocery business. She has felt it in surging prices for necessities like gasoline, selling for $6.90 a gallon. Something that's 2,000 shillings (about $16.70) this week may cost 3,000 shillings ($25) next week.
“You have to limit yourself,’’ she said. “You have to buy a few things that move fast.’’
Gamisha has noticed something else, too — a phenomenon called “shrinkflation": A price may not change, but a doughnut that used to weigh 45 grams may now be only 35 grams. Bread that weighed 1 kilogram is now 850 grams.
Russia's war led the International Monetary Fund last month to downgrade its outlook for the global economy for the fourth time in under a year. The lending agency expects 3.2% growth this year, down from the 4.9% it forecast in July 2021 and well below a vigorous 6.1% last year.
“The world may soon be teetering on the edge of a global recession, only two years after the last one," Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF's chief economist, said.
Also read: Russians down Ukrainian drones in Crimea as war broadens
The U.N. Development Program said rising food and energy prices threw 71 million people worldwide into poverty in the first three months of the war. Countries in the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa were hit hardest. Up to 181 million people in 41 countries could suffer a hunger crisis this year, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has projected.
In Bangkok, rising costs for pork, vegetables and oil have forced Warunee Deejai, a street-food vendor, to raise prices, cut staff and work longer hours.
“I don’t know how long I can keep my lunch price affordable,’’ she said. “Coming out from COVID lockdowns and having to face this is tough. Worse is, I don’t see the end of it.’’
Even before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, the global economy was under pressure. Inflation had skyrocketed as a stronger-than-expected recovery from the pandemic recession overwhelmed factories, ports and freight yards, causing delays, shortages and higher prices. In response, central banks began raising interest rates to try to cool economic growth and tame spiking prices.
“We’ve all got all these different things going on,’’ said Robin Brooks, chief economist at the International Institute of Finance. “The volatility of inflation went up. The volatility of growth went up. And therefore, it’s become infinitely harder for central banks to steer the ship.’’
China, pursuing a zero-COVID policy, imposed lockdowns that have severely weakened the world’s second-biggest economy. At the time, many developing countries still grappled with the pandemic and the heavy debts they had taken on to protect their populations from economic disaster.
All those challenges might have been manageable. But when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the West responded with heavy sanctions. Both actions disrupted trade in food and energy. Russia is the world’s third-biggest petroleum producer and a leading exporter of natural gas, fertilizer and wheat. Farms in Ukraine feed millions globally.
The resulting inflation has rippled out to the world.
Near Johannesburg, South Africa, Stephanie Muller has been comparing prices online and checking different grocery stores to find the best deals.
“I have three children who are all in school, so I have been feeling the difference,’’ she said.
Shopping at a market in Vietnam's capital of Hanoi, Bui Thu Huong said she's been limiting her spending and cutting back on weekend dinners out. At least there’s one advantage to cooking at home with her children: “We can bond with them more in the kitchen, while saving money at the same time.’’
Syahrul Yasin Limpo, Indonesia's agriculture minister, warned this month that the price of instant noodles, a staple in the Southeast Asian nation, might triple because of inflated wheat prices. In neighboring Malaysia, vegetable farmer Jimmy Tan laments that fertilizer prices are up 50%. He’s also paying more for supplies like plastic sheets, bags and hoses.
In Karachi, Pakistan, far from the battlefields of Ukraine, Kamran Arif has taken a second, part-time job to supplement his wages.
“Because we have no control on prices, we can only try to increase our income,’’ he said.
A vast majority of people live in poverty in Pakistan, whose currency has lost up to 30% of its value against the dollar and the government has increased electricity prices 50%.
Muhammad Shakil, an importer and exporter, says he can no longer get wheat, white chickpeas and yellow peas from Ukraine.
“Now that we have to import from other countries, we have to buy at higher prices" — sometimes 10%-15% more, Shakil said.
As the war fuels inflation, central banks are raising interest rates to try to slow price increases without derailing economic growth.
The resulting increase in loan rates is punishing FlooringStores, a New York company that helps customers find flooring material and contractors. Sales are down because fewer homeowners are borrowing to pay for home improvements.
“A huge percentage of our customers finance their projects with home-equity loans and similar products, meaning that the hike in interest rates really killed our business,’’ CEO Todd Saunders said. “Inflation wasn’t helping, but the interest rates had a bigger effect.’’
Europe, which for years depended on Russian oil and natural gas for its industrial economy, has absorbed a gut punch. It faces the growing threat of recession as the Kremlin throttles back flows of natural gas used to heat homes, generate electricity and fire up factories. Prices are 15 times what they were before Russia massed troops on the Ukrainian border in March 2021.
“There’s a lot more recessionary risk and pressure in Europe than in the rest of the high-income economies," said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Bank of England policymaker.
The damage has hardly spared Russia, whose economy the IMF expects to contract 6% this year. Sergey Aleksashenko, a Russian economist now living in the United States, noted that the country's retail sales tumbled 10% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier as consumers cut back.
“They have no money to spend,” he said.
Daughter of 'Putin's brain' ideologist killed in car blast
The daughter of a Russian nationalist ideologist who is often referred to as “Putin's brain” was killed when her car exploded on the outskirts of Moscow, officials said Sunday.
The Investigative Committee branch for the Moscow region said the Saturday night blast was caused by a bomb planted in the SUV driven by Daria Dugina.
The 29-year-old was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a prominent proponent of the “Russian world” concept ideology and a vehement supporter of Russia's sending of troops into Ukraine.
Also read: Bus collision at accident site leaves 15 dead in Turkey
Dugina expressed similar views and had appeared as a commentator on the nationalist TV channel Tsargrad.
“Dasha, like her father, has always been at the forefront of confrontation with the West,” Tsargrad said on Sunday, using the familiar form of her name.
The explosion took place as Dugina was returning from a cultural festival she had attended with her father. Some Russian media reports cited witnesses as saying the vehicle belonged to her father and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another car.
Also read: 9 killed, 18 wounded in traffic accident in southern Egypt
No suspects were immediately identified. But Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic that is a focus of Russia's fighting in Ukraine, blamed it on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin."
Russians down Ukrainian drones in Crimea as war broadens
Russian authorities reported shooting down Ukrainian drones Saturday in Crimea, while Ukrainian officials said Russian forces pressed ahead with efforts to seize one of the few cities in eastern Ukraine not already under their control. The Russian military also kept up its strikes in Ukraine's north and south.
In Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian authorities said local air defenses shot down a drone above the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. It was the second drone incident at the headquarters in three weeks and followed explosions at a Russian airfield and ammunition depot on the peninsula this month.
Oleg Kryuchkov, an aide to Crimea’s governor, also said Saturday that “attacks by small drones” triggered air-defense systems in western Crimea.
"Air defense systems successfully hit all targets over the territory over Crimea on Saturday morning. There are no casualties or material damage,” his boss, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Telegram.
Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said on Telegram that the city's air-defense systems were called into action again late Saturday.
The incidents underlined Russian forces’ vulnerability in Crimea. A drone attack on Russia's Black Sea naval headquarters on July 31 injured five people and forced the cancellation of observances of Russia’s Navy Day. This week, a Russian ammunition depot in Crimea was hit by an explosion. Last week, nine Russian warplanes were reported destroyed at an airbase on Crimea.
Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern Ukrainian areas just north of Crimea has stepped up in recent weeks as Ukrainian forces try to drive Russian forces out of cities they have occupied since early in the six-month-old war.
A Russian missile attack wounded 12 people, including three children, and damaged houses and an apartment block Saturday in the town of Voznesensk in the Mykolaiv region, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office said. Two of the children were in serious condition and the governor said one had lost an eye.
Read: Doctors stay in Ukraine’s war-hit towns: ‘People need us’
A Ukrainian airstrike, meanwhile, hit targets in Melitopol, the largest Russian-controlled city in the Zaporizhzhia region, 100 kilometers (65 miles) north of Crimea, according to Ukrainian and Russia-installed local officials.
The Ukrainian military on Saturday said it had destroyed a prized Russian radar system and other equipment stationed in occupied areas in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. It was not clear if this was the strike on Melitopol.
“Tonight, there were powerful explosions in Melitopol, which the whole city heard,” the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Ferodov, said. “According to preliminary data, (it was) a precise hit on one of the Russian military bases, which the Russian fascists are trying to restore for the umpteenth time in the airfield area.”
In the east, Ukraine’s military General Staff said Saturday that intensified combat took place around Bakhmut, a small city whose capture would enable Russia to threaten the two largest remaining Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern Donbas region.
Bakhmut for weeks has been a key target of Moscow’s eastern offensive as the Russian military tries to complete a months-long campaign to conquer all of the Donbas, where pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed two republics that Russia recognized as sovereign states at the beginning of the war.
A local Ukrainian official reported sustained fighting Saturday near four settlements on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which together make up the contested Donbas region. Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai did not name the settlements. Russian forces overran nearly all of Luhansk last month and since then have focused on capturing Ukrainian-held areas of Donetsk.
Russian shelling killed seven civilians Friday in Donetsk province, including four in Bakhmut, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram. Taking Bakhmut would give the Russians room to advance on the province’s main Ukrainian-held cities, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukraine said Sloviansk and Kramatorsk were targeted Friday, along with the Kharkiv region to the north, home to Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Local authorities reported renewed Russian shelling overnight along a broad front, including the northern Kharkiv and Sumy regions, which border Russia, as well as of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and Mykolaiv.
In other developments Saturday:
__ Pedestrians in downtown Kyiv took pictures of a large column of burned-out and captured Russian tanks and infantry carriers that was put on display on a central boulevard in the Ukrainian capital. The display comes just days ahead of Ukraine’s independence day on Aug., which also coincides with six months since the Russian invasion.
__The Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul on Saturday authorized the movement of four outbound vessels carrying 33,300 metric tons of food from Ukraine under the Black Sea Grain deal. The ships will leave Ukrainian ports on Sunday. The agency will conduct 10 more ship inspections on Sunday. The deal seeks to get tons of grain exports stuck in Ukraine by the war safely out across the Black Sea.
__ The Interior Ministry for the separatist Donetsk People's Republic said an improvised bomb exploded near the zoo in Mariupol, which the city's mayor was to visit, but the mayor was not injured. Mariupol came under rebel and Russian control after months of intense fighting that devastated the city.
Bus collision at accident site leaves 15 dead in Turkey
A passenger bus collided Saturday with emergency teams handling an earlier road accident in southern Turkey, leaving at least 15 people dead and nearly two dozen injured, officials said.
Three firefighters, two paramedics and two journalists were among those killed on the highway between Gaziantep and Nizip, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu tweeted. The other eight fatalities were on the bus, he added.
Gaziantep Gov. Davut Gul said 22 other people were injured in the incident.
The Ilhas News Agency said two of its journalists were killed after pulling over to help the victims of the initial accident, in which a car came off the highway and slid down an embankment.
Read: Traffic accident in heavy rain in Pakistan leaves 13 dead
Television footage showed an ambulance with severe damage to its rear while the bus lay on its side alongside the highway.
Turkey has a poor record of road safety. Some 5,362 people were killed in traffic accidents last year, according to the government.