europe
Russia strikes Ukraine's big cities, bears down on Mariupol
Russian forces renewed missile strikes on Kyiv and intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, in an apparent strategy to hobble Ukraine's defenses in preparation for what is expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.
These attacks and others scattered across the country were an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat.
With the port city of Mariupol under siege, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia “is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there.” He said Ukraine needs more heavy weapons from the West immediately to have any chance of saving the city.
Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. In the towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago.
After the humiliating loss of the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, Russia's military command vowed to step up missile strikes on the capital. The Russians said they hit an armored vehicle plant on Saturday, a day after targeting a missile plant.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.
“We’re not ruling out further strikes on the capital,” he said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.”
The mayor said Saturday's strike killed one person and wounded several. It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was targeted. He didn’t specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons.”
The Russian missiles hit the city just as residents were emerging for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city's prewar life started resurfacing, following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal.
Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across the country.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war’s violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.
In Kharkiv in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three people were killed and 34 wounded on Saturday. One explosion believed to have been caused by a missile sent rescue workers scrambling near an outdoor market. They said one person was killed and at least 18 wounded.
“All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door, too,” recounted stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.
The day before, rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, killing a 15-year-old boy, an infant and at least eight other people, officials said.
Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef José Andrés, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. Andrés tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is “in his own war logic” on Ukraine.
In an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.’’
Nehammer said he confronted Putin with what he saw during a visit to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies have been found along with evidence of killings and torture under Russian occupation, and “it was not a friendly conversation.”
READ: Ukraine war far from over as Russia renews strikes in Kyiv
Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists that the continuing siege of Mariupol, which has come at a horrific cost to trapped and starving civilians, could scuttle attempts to negotiate an end to the war.
“The destruction of all our guys in Mariupol — what they are doing now — can put an end to any format of negotiations,” he said.
Later, in his nightly video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs more support from the West to have a chance at saving Mariupol.
“Either our partners give Ukraine all of the necessary heavy weapons, the planes, and without exaggeration immediately, so we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers on Mariupol and break the blockade,” he said, “or we do so through negotiations, in which the role of our partners should be decisive.”
Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said Saturday that Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only in the huge Azovstal steel mill.
Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov, whose troops have been among those besieging Mariupol, was buried Saturday in St. Petersburg after dying in battle, Gov. Alexander Beglov said. Ukraine has said several Russian generals and dozens of other high-ranking officers have been killed in the war.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russian forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Zelenskyy estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war, and about 10,000 have been wounded. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said Saturday that at least 200 children have been killed, and more than 360 wounded.
Russian forces also have taken captive some 700 Ukrainian troops and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange a swap but is demanding the release of civilians “without any conditions,” she said.
Russia's warning of stepped-up attacks on Kyiv came after it accused Ukraine on Thursday of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes in Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed hitting targets in Russia.
In the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war” in an Easter vigil homily at St. Peter’s Basilica that was attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three members of Ukraine's parliament. Francis did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion but has called, apparently in vain, for an Easter truce to reach a negotiated peace.
Unrest sparked by far-right demos continues in Sweden
Unrest broke out in southern Sweden late Saturday despite police moving a rally by an anti-Islam far-right group, which was planning to burn a Quran among other things, to a new location as a preventive measure.
Scuffles and unrest were reported in the southern town of Landskrona after a demonstration scheduled there by the Danish right-wing party Stram Kurs party was moved to the nearby city of Malmo, some 45 kilometers (27 miles) south.
Up to 100 mostly young people threw stones, set cars, tires and dustbins on fire, and put up a barrier fence that obstructed traffic, Swedish police said. The situation had calmed down in Landskrona by late Saturday but remains tense, police said, adding no injuries were reported in the action.
On Friday evening, violent clashes between demonstrators and counter-protesters erupted in the central city of Orebro ahead Stram Kurs' plan to burn a Quran there, leaving 12 police officers injured and four police vehicles set on fire.
Video footage and photos from chaotic scenes in Orebro showed burning police cars and protesters throwing stones and other objects at police officers in riot gear.
Kim Hild, spokeswoman for police in southern Sweden, said earlier Saturday that police would not revoke permission for the Landskrona demonstration because the threshold for doing that is very high in Sweden, which values free speech.
READ: Sweden lauds Bangladesh’s development journey; willing to strengthen ties
The right of the protesters “to demonstrate and speak out weighs enormously, heavily and it takes an incredible amount for this to be ignored,” Hild told Swedish news agency TT.
The demonstration took place Saturday evening in a central park in Malmo where Stram Kurs' leader Rasmus Paludan addressed a few dozen people. A small number of counter-protesters threw stones at demonstrators and police was forced to use pepper spray to disperse them.
Paludan himself was reported to have been hit by a stone on his leg, Swedish media said. No serious injuries were reported, according to police.
Since Thursday, clashes have been reported also in Stockholm and in the cities of Linkoping and Norrkoping — all locations where Stram Kurs either planned or had demonstrations.
Paludan, a Danish lawyer who also holds Swedish citizenship, set up Stram Kurs, or “Hard Line” in 2017. The website of the party, which runs on an anti-immigration and anti-Islam agenda says “Stram Kurs is the most patriotic political party in Denmark.”
Russia renews strikes on Ukraine capital, hits other cities
Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow's pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.
Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia's military command had warned of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine's capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated — and refuted by witnesses — throughout 52 days of war.
The toll reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the anticipated offensive, a mother wept over her 15-year-old son’s body after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeast Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.
In the towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the capital again early Saturday as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and wounded several.
The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.
“We’re not ruling out further strikes on the capital,” Klitschko said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.”
It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv's Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was targeted. He didn’t specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons.” As the U.S. and Europe send new arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s defenses ahead of what’s expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.
It was the second strike in the Kyiv area since the Russian military vowed this week to step up missile strikes on the capital. Another hit a missile plant Friday.
The Russian missiles hit the city just as residents were emerging for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city's prewar life started resurfacing, following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal.
Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across the country.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war’s violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.
In apparent preparations for its assault on the east, the Russian military has intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, in recent days. Friday's attack killed civilians and wounded more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president’s office reported.
On Saturday an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent emergency workers scrambling near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.
“All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door, too," recounted stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Saturday's toll was three dead and 34 wounded.
Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef José Andrés, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. José Andrés tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is “in his own war logic” on Ukraine.
READ: Ukraine war far from over as Russia renews strikes in Kyiv
In an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.’’
Nehammer said he confronted Putin with what he saw during a visit to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies have been found along with evidence of killings and torture under Russian occupation, and “it was not a friendly conversation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists that the continuing siege of the port city of Mariupol, which has come at a horrific cost to trapped and starving civilians, could scuttle attempts to negotiate an end to the war.
“The destruction of all our guys in Mariupol — what they are doing now — can put an end to any format of negotiations,” he said.
Later, in his nightly video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs more support from the West to have a chance at saving Mariupol.
“Either our partners give Ukraine all of the necessary heavy weapons, the planes, and without exaggeration immediately, so we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers on Mariupol and break the blockade,” he said, “or we do so through negotiations, in which the role of our partners should be decisive.”
Zelenskyy said the situation in Mariupol remains “inhuman” and Russia “is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there.”
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Saturday that Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only in the huge Azovstal steel mill.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russian forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Zelenskyy estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war, and about 10,000 have been wounded. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said Saturday that at least 200 children have been killed, and more than 360 wounded.
Russian forces also have taken captive some 700 Ukrainian troops and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange a swap but is demanding the release of civilians “without any conditions,” she said.
Russia's warning of stepped-up attacks on Kyiv came after it accused Ukraine on Thursday of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes in Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed hitting targets in Russia.
Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov, whose troops have been among those besieging Mariupol, was buried Saturday in St. Petersburg after dying in battle, Gov. Alexander Beglov said. Ukraine has said several Russian generals and dozens of other high-ranking officers have been killed in the war.
In the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war” in an Easter vigil homily at St. Peter’s Basilica that was attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three members of Ukraine's parliament. Francis did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion but has called, apparently in vain, for an Easter truce to reach a negotiated peace.
Ukraine war far from over as Russia renews strikes in Kyiv
Russian forces resumed scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Russia’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.
Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia’s military command had warned a day earlier of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites.
But the toll of war reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of a war that has shattered European security and plunged East-West relations to new lows. In the Kyiv region alone, Ukrainian authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago.
Russia’s preparations for the anticipated eastern offensive are producing more victims, A mother wept over her 15-year-old son’s body in the partially blockaded city of Kharkiv, where shelling increased this week. Nine civilians died and more than 50 people were wounded on Friday, the president’s office reported.
An explosion believed to be caused by a missile struck Saturday near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, according to firefighters and AP journalists at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.
In the capital, smoke rose early Saturday from eastern Kyiv as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike on the the city’s Darnytski district. One person was killed and several more were wounded, he said. The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return for their safety.
“Our air defense forces are doing everything they can to protect us, but the enemy is insidious and ruthless,” Klitschko said.
Read: 30,000 Ukrainians returning home every day: UN
It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the attack. Darnytskyi is a sprawling district on the southeastern edge of the capital, containing a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.
Earlier this week the Russian military said it would carry out strikes on Kyiv, and Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Saturday an armored vehicle plant in the Ukrainian capital was targeted. He didn’t specify where the plant is located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said it was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons.” As the U.S. and Europe send new arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s defenses ahead of what’s expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.
It was the second strike in the Kyiv area in two days. Another hit a missile plant on Friday as tentative signs of prewar life began to resurface in the capital after Russian troops failed to capture the city and withdrew to concentrate on lauching a full-scale assault in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv was not the only target far from the eastern front Saturday. The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine – an area long seen as a safe zone – reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus. Gov. Maksym Kozytskyy didn’t provide details about possible casualties or damage.
‘I feel so lost’: The elderly in Ukraine, left behind, mourn
This is not where Nadiya Trubchaninova thought she would find herself at 70 years of age, hitchhiking daily from her village to the shattered town of Bucha trying to bring her son’s body home for burial.
The questions wear her down, heavy like the winter coat and boots she still wears against the chill. Why had Vadym gone to Bucha, where the Russians were so much harsher than the ones occupying their village? Who shot him as he drove on Yablunska Street, where so many bodies were found? And why did she lose her son just one day before the Russians withdrew?
Now 48-year-old Vadym is in a black bag in a refrigerated truck. After word reached her that he had been found and buried by strangers in a yard in Bucha, she has spent more than a week trying to bring him home for a proper grave. But he is one body among hundreds, part of an investigation into war crimes that has grown to global significance.
Read: 30,000 Ukrainians returning home every day: UN
Trubchaninova is among the many elderly people left behind or who chose to stay as millions of Ukrainians fled across borders or to other parts of the country. They were the first to be seen on empty streets after the Russians withdrew from communities around the capital, Kyiv, peering from wooden gates or carrying bags of donated food back to freezing homes.
Some, like Trubchaninova, survived the worst of the war only to find it had taken their children.
She last saw her son on March 30. She thought he was taking a walk as part of his long recovery from a stroke. “It would be crazy to go farther,” she said. She wonders whether he went driving to search for a cellphone connection to call his own son and wish him happy birthday.
She wonders whether Vadym thought the Russians in Bucha were like those occupying their village, who told them they wouldn’t be harmed if they didn’t fight back.
30,000 Ukrainians returning home every day: UN
More than 870,000 people, who fled abroad since the Russian invasion on February 24, have now returned to Ukraine amid concerns about worsening food security inside the country, according to the United Nations (UN).
Citing the State Border Guard Service, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said 30,000 people are crossing back into Ukraine every day.
The recent returnees reportedly include women with children and older persons, compared to men mostly at the beginning of the escalation.
"This significant figure suggests that migration back to Ukraine might continue increasing, potentially creating new challenges for the humanitarian response as people will need support to reintegrate into their communities or find suitable host communities if returning to their homes is no longer viable," the OCHA said.
Of the 12 million people in need in Ukraine, humanitarians have reached 2.1 million of them, and the UN's $1.1 billion flash appeal for Ukraine is now 64 percent funded.
Read: Russia loses warship, says attacks on Kyiv will increase
Fighting is now concentrated in the eastern and southern Ukraine, causing damage and civilian casualties and driving humanitarian needs.
In its latest emergency update, the OCHA reported that two humanitarian workers and five of their relatives had been killed in eastern Donetsk oblast.
They were sheltering at the Caritas Mariupol office when the building was reportedly hit by rounds fired from a tank, probably on March 15, although the information only became available recently, as the city had been cut off for weeks.
"Tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol – which has been an epicentre of horror since the conflict began – and in other locations around Ukraine have now endured 50 days of violence and shelling. More than 1,932 civilians have died since 24 February, including more than 150 children," UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said.
Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said there are "immediate food insecurity issues" in nearly three in 10 regions – with a further 11 percent of regions (that are partially exposed to fighting) expecting shortages within two months.
Rural and isolated communities have been hit hardest by food insecurity, FAO said, as it announced support for farmers to plant their fields, save livestock and produce food.
Read: IMF chief: Ukraine war and inflation threaten global economy
Urgent cash support is also planned for the most vulnerable families, including those headed by women, the elderly and those with disabilities.
Meanwhile, the OCHA also noted that Russia reported that more than 783,000 people – including nearly 150,000 children – crossed into Russia from Ukraine since 24 February.
The latest data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, indicates that more than 4.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began. Another seven million are internally displaced.
In France’s election, a meaty issue unites Jews and Muslims
As she cooks lunch and talks politics, Sarah Gutmann has a nasty feeling — of would-be French president Marine Le Pen invading the privacy of her home and meddling with her Jewish faith and the plates of chicken and kosher sausages that she is frying for her husband and their eldest son.
That’s because the far-right candidate wants to outlaw ritual slaughter if she’s elected next Sunday. And that could directly impact how Gutmann feeds her family and exercises her religious freedom. She and her husband, Benjamin, say they would have to think about leaving France if a far-right government interfered with observant Jews’ kosher diets. Their fear is that under Le Pen, targeting ritually slaughtered meats could be just the start of steps to make French Jews and Muslims feel unwelcome.
“Attacking the way we eat impinges on our privacy and that is very serious,” Gutmann said as she busied herself in the kitchen of their Paris home.
“The intention is to target minority populations that bother her and send a message to voters who are against these minorities: ’Vote for me, because I will attack them and perhaps, with time, make them leave.’”
Muslim shopper Hayat Ettabet said her family might be forced to illegally slaughter at home to stay within their religious rules, bleeding out animals “in the bathroom, back to the way it was.”
Le Pen says all animals should be stunned before slaughter, and frames the issue as one of animal welfare. That’s unacceptable to observant Jews and Muslims who believe stunning causes unnecessary animal suffering and that their ritual slaughters for kosher and halal meats are more humane.
Also read: In France, it's Macron vs. Le Pen, again, for presidency
With the largest populations of Muslims and Jews in western Europe, the issue has major potential repercussions for France and could hit communities elsewhere that buy French meat exports. The issue is one of the many fault lines between Le Pen and incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and the starkly different visions of France they are presenting for next Sunday’s election runoff vote. It is expected to be far closer than in 2017, when the centrist Macron beat Le Pen by a landslide.
“We have never been so close to having an extreme-right regime,” Gutmann said. “The alarm bell is ringing.”
Le Pen’s France would be more inwardly focused, with far fewer immigrants and fewer rights for those already here, less tolerance for non-Christian traditions, and less tightly bound to the European Union and the outside world.
Macron is largely promising the opposite as he seeks a second five-year term. Macron zeroed in on Le Pen’s proposals for ending slaughter without stunning to emphasize their political differences. He said he doesn’t want “a France that prevents Muslims or Jews from eating as their religion prescribes.”
Le Pen says she doesn’t want that either. But alarmed Jews and Muslims find her hard to believe. Le Pen is not opposed to other practices deemed cruel by animal welfare campaigners, such as bullfighting or — most notably — hunting, a tradition deeply anchored in rural France where she is trawling for votes. So her focus on kosher and halal meats smacks of hypocrisy to Jews and Muslims who see an attack disguised as animal welfare.
Le Pen says the meats could instead be imported. But that also makes no sense to critics, because it seems to run counter to Le Pen’s general France-first rule that the country should produce more things itself and import less.
Her camp has also flip-flopped. Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s No. 2 who is heading their National Rally party while she seeks the presidency, said in March that they want an outright ban on kosher and halal meats, both imported and from domestically slaughtered animals.
Jewish leaders responded in a statement that the “detestable” proposition would force large numbers of Jews and Muslims to leave.
But Le Pen and Macron are both now modulating their positions on issues important to voters who didn’t support them in round one of the election, seeking to amass the votes they will need to win round two. Macron, most notably, has softened his plan to increase the retirement age to 65. Le Pen is trying to appear more inclusive.
“I’m not at all going to get rid of halal and kosher butcher shops,” she said this week. She said meat from animals that have been knocked out electrically might prove to be an acceptable halal alternative to some Muslims. But if not, “importing this meat would be authorized, obviously.”
“What we want is to truly stop this animal suffering, very intense, that is the consequence of slaughter without stunning,” Le Pen said.
Slovenia, Denmark and Sweden, as well as non-EU members Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, have done away with religious exemptions, meaning kosher and halal meat must be imported. So, too, have the Flanders and Wallonia regions of Belgium. The bans there are being challenged in the European Court of Human Rights by Yohan Benizri, a vice president of the European Jewish Congress.
Also read: France pushing for energy sanctions against Russia
He says outlawing religious slaughter makes Jews feel “we’re not part of European culture” and “portrays us as some form of savages.”
Because France exports kosher meats, banning its production “will have a devastating effect” on Jewish communities elsewhere, he said.
“It’s going to be a devastating signal as well because — again — we would be seen as not welcome in the European Union,” Benizri said.
As her son finished lunch, Sarah Gutmann said the most worrying aspect of a Le Pen-pushed law on the issue would be if it was met by general indifference.
“Then, really, I will be very, very scared,” she said. “If I see an unjust law go through and no one reacts, then we’ll say to ourselves that we really are in danger.”
Russia loses warship, says attacks on Kyiv will increase
A day after Moscow suffered a stinging symbolic defeat with the loss of the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, Russia’s Defense Ministry promised Friday to ramp up missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged military “diversions on the Russian territory.”
The threat of intensified attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities accused Ukraine of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes on Bryansk, a region that borders Ukraine. Authorities in another border region of Russia also reported Ukrainian shelling Thursday.
Kyiv has gradually displayed some signs of pre-war life after Russian troops failed to capture the city and retreated to focus on a concentrated assault in eastern Ukraine, leaving evidence of possible war crimes in their wake. A renewed bombardment could return the capital’s residents to sheltering in subway stations and the steady wail of air raid sirens.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed striking targets in Russia, and the reports by Russian authorities could not be independently verified. However, Ukrainian officials claimed their forces struck a key Russian warship with missiles on Thursday. If true, the claim would represent an important victory.
The guided-missile cruiser Moskva, named for the Russian capital, sank while being towed to port Thursday after suffering heavy damage under circumstances that remained in dispute. Moscow acknowledged a fire on board but not any attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. If Ukrainian forces took out the vessel, the Moskva likely represents the largest warship to be sunk in combat since the Falklands War. A British submarine torpedoed an Argentine navy cruiser called the ARA General Belgrano during the 1982 conflict, killing over 300 sailors on board.
The Russian warship’s loss in an invasion already widely seen as a historic blunder also was a symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for an offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from the Kyiv region and much of the north.
In his nightly address Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the people of his country should be proud of having survived 50 days under attack when the Russian invaders “gave us a maximum of five.”
Zelenskyy did not mention the Moskva by name, but while listing the ways Ukraine has defended against the onslaught, mentioned “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea. It was his only reference to the Moskva.
Read: Russia's damaged Black Sea flagship sinks in latest setback
News about the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war — at a horrific cost to civilians.
Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that people were being “starved to death” in the besieged city.
Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000. Other Ukrainian officials have said they expect to find evidence of atrocities committed against civilians like the ones discovered in Bucha and other towns outside Kyiv once the Russians withdrew.
The Mariupol City Council said Friday that locals reported seeing Russian troops digging up bodies that were buried in residential courtyards and not allowing any new burials “of people killed by them.”
“Why the exhumation is being carried out and where the bodies will be taken is unknown,” the council said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the looming offensive.
Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine. Russia has recognized the independence of two rebel-held areas of the region.
Although it’s not certain when Russia will launch the full-scale campaign, a regional Ukrainian official said Friday that seven people died and 27 were injured after Russian forces opened fire on buses carrying civilians in the village of Borovaya, near the northeastern city of Kharkiv.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are working to establish the circumstances of the attack, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office, told Ukraine’s Suspilne news website.
Chubenko said that Ukrainian authorities had opened criminal proceedings in connection with a suspected “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder.” The claims of an attack on civilian buses could not be independently verified.
Read: As Russia loses warship, Zelenskyy hails Ukrainians’ resolve
The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that Russian strikes in the Kharkiv region “liquidated a squad of mercenaries from a Polish private military company” of up to 30 people and “liberated” an iron and steel factor in Mariupol from “Ukrainian nationalists.” The claims could not be independently verified.
On Thursday, the Defense Ministry explained the damage to Russia’s Black Sea flagship by a fire had caused ammunition stowed on board to detonate. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.
The ministry did not say what might have caused the blaze but reported that the “main missile weapons” were not damaged and the crew, which usually numbers about 500, abandoned the vessel. It wasn’t clear if there were any casualties.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Black Sea region of Odesa, said Ukrainian forces struck the Moskva with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.” The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design.
The missile’s launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where the ship was when the fire began.
Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons.
British defense officials said the Moskva’s loss would likely force Moscow to change how its naval forces operate in the Black Sea. In a social media post Friday, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said the ship, which returned to operational service last year after a major refit, “served a key role as both a command vessel and air defense node.”
Other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea moved farther south after the Moskva incident, a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and has lsuffered thousands of military casualties. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.
As Russia loses warship, Zelenskyy hails Ukrainians’ resolve
On a day that saw Moscow suffer a stinging symbolic defeat with the loss of its Black Sea fleet flagship, Ukraine’s president hailed his people for their resolve since Russia invaded in February and for making “the most important decision of their life — to fight.”
In his nightly address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians late Thursday that they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the invaders “gave us a maximum of five.”
Back then even friendly world leaders urged him to leave, unsure whether Ukraine could survive, he said: “But they didn’t know how brave Ukrainians are, how much we value freedom and the possibility to live the way we want.”
Listing the ways Ukraine has defended against the onslaught, Zelenskyy noted “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea.
Also read:Russia's damaged Black Sea flagship sinks in latest setback
It was his only reference to the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, named for the Russian capital, which became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war. It sank Thursday while being towed to port after suffering heavy damage under circumstances that remained under dispute.
Ukrainian officials said their forces struck the vessel with missiles, while Moscow acknowledged a fire on board but not any attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze. In any case, the loss was a symbolic defeat for Russia as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder. Now entering its eighth week, the invasion has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.
During the first days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called on Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender in a standoff. In a widely circulated recording, a soldier responded: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”
The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.
If Ukraine carried out the attack, the Moskva likely represents the largest warship to be sunk in combat since the 1982 Falklands War, which saw a similar-sized cruiser called the ARA General Belgrano torpedoed by a British submarine, killing over 300 sailors on board.
The news about the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war — at a horrific cost to civilians.
Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP in an interview Thursday that people are being “starved to death” in the besieged city.
Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000, after weeks of attacks and privation carpeted the streets with bodies.
Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.
The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it is likely to add more ground combat units soon. But it’s still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.
Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in the Donbas.
Maksym Marchenko, governor of the Odesa region, said Ukrainian forces struck the Moskva with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the blaze. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged and that the crew, usually numbering about 500, abandoned the vessel. It wasn’t clear if there were any casualties. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.
Also read:Why the term ‘genocide’ matters in Ukraine war
The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where the ship was when the fire began.
Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons.
On Thursday, other Russian ships in the northern Black Sea moved farther south after the Moskva incident, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
While the U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine’s claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a big blow to Russia.”
“They’ve had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.
Russia invaded Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.
Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters some 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo, in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia’s Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.
Russia’s state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.
The reports could not be independently verified.
IMF chief: Ukraine war and inflation threaten global economy
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia's war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and called high inflation “a clear and present danger’’ to the global economy.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the consequences of Russia's invasion were contributing to economic downgrades for 143 countries, although most of them should continue to grow. The war has disrupted global trade in energy and grain and is threatening to cause food shortages in Africa and Middle East.
Georgieva made her comments in a speech on the eve of next week’s spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.
An unexpectedly strong recovery from 2020’s pandemic recession has caught businesses by surprise, leaving factories, ports and freight yards unable to keep up with robust customer demand and forcing prices higher.
Also read: Sri Lanka halts debt repayment pending IMF bailout plan
Chronically high inflation, which is forcing the world’s central banks to raise interest rates and likely slow economic growth in the process, amounts to “a massive setback for the global recovery,’’ Georgieva said.
Georgieva also warned of “the fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs," with the West imposing far-reaching sanctions on Russia and China expressing support for the autocratic Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin.
“In a world where war in Europe creates hunger in Africa; where a pandemic can circle the globe in days and reverberate for years; where emissions anywhere mean rising sea levels almost everywhere — the threat to our collective prosperity from a breakdown in global cooperation cannot be overstated,” Georgieva said.
Before the war, Russia and Ukraine had supplied 28% of global wheat exports. And Russia and Belarus accounted for 40% of exports of the fertilizer potash.
“Now,’’ Georgieva said, “grain and corn prices are soaring, and leaders across Africa and the Middle East are telling me that supplies are running low. Food insecurity is a grave concern.
Also read: Bangladesh economy to grow 6.6 per cent FY22, as Covid-19 transmission decreases: IMF
“We must act now with a multilateral initiative to bolster food security. The alternative is dire: More hunger, more poverty and more social unrest — especially for countries that have struggled to escape fragility and conflict for many years.’’
Georgieva called on the world to support the Ukrainians and noted that the IMF had delivered $1.4 billion in emergency financing to help Ukraine meet its immediate spending needs. The IMF is also offering assistance to Ukraine’s neighbors, including Moldova, which has accepted more than 400,000 war refugees.