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Stationmaster charged in Greece train crash that killed 57
A stationmaster accused of causing Greece's deadliest train disaster was charged with negligent homicide and jailed pending trial Sunday, while Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized for any responsibility Greece's government may bear for the tragedy.
An examining magistrate and a prosecutor agreed that multiple counts of homicide as well as charges of causing bodily harm and endangering transportation safety should be brought against the railway employee.
At least 57 people, many of them in their teens and 20s, were killed when a northbound passenger train and a southbound freight train collided late Tuesday north of the city of Larissa, in central Greece.
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The 59-year-old stationmaster allegedly directed the two trains traveling in opposite directions onto the same track. He spent 7 1/2 hours Sunday testifying about the events leading up to the crash before he was charged and ordered held.
“My client testified truthfully, without fearing if doing so would incriminate him,” Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the stationmaster's lawyer, told reporters. “The decision (to jail him) was expected, given the importance of the case."
Pantzartzidis implied that others besides his client share blame, saying that judges should investigate whether more than one stationmaster should have been working in Larissa at the time of the collision.
"For 20 minutes, he was in charge of (train) safety in all central Greece,” the lawyer said of his client.
Also Read: Death toll from Greece train crash rises to 57
Greek media have reported that the automated signaling system in the area of the crash was not functioning, making the stationmaster’s mistake possible. Stationmasters along that part of Greece’s main trunk line communicate with each other and with train drivers via two-way radios, and the switches are operated manually.
The prime minister promised a swift investigation of the collision and said the new Greek transportation minister would release a safety improvement plan. Once a new parliament is in place, a commission also will be named to investigate decades of mismanagement of the country’s railway system, Mitsotakis said.
In an initial statement Wednesday, Mitsotakis had said the crash resulted from a “tragic human error.” Opposition parties pounced on the remark, accusing the prime minister of trying to cover up the state's role and making the inexperienced stationmaster a scapegoat.
“I owe everyone, and especially the victims’ relatives, a big apology, both personal and on behalf of all who governed the country for many years," Mitsotakis wrote Sunday on Facebook. "In 2023, it is inconceivable that two trains move in different directions on the same track and no one notices. We cannot, we do not want to, and we must not hide behind the human error.”
Greece's railways long suffered from chronic mismanagement, including lavish spending on projects that were eventually abandoned or significantly delayed, Greek media have reported in several exposes. With state railway company Hellenic Railways billions of euros in debt, maintenance work was put off, according to news reports.
A retired railway union leader, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area monitored by the Larissa stationmaster malfunctioned six years ago and was never repaired.
Police and prosecutors have not identified the stationmaster, in line with Greek law. However, Hellenic Railways, also known as OSE, revealed the stationmaster's name Saturday, in an announcement suspending the company inspector who appointed him. The stationmaster also has been suspended.
Greek media have reported that the stationmaster, a former porter with the railway company, was transferred to a Ministry of Education desk job in 2011, when Greece's creditors demanded reductions in the number of public employees. The 59-year-old was transferred back to the railway company in mid-2022 and started a 5-month course to train as a stationmaster.
Upon completing the course, he was assigned to Larissa on Jan. 23, according to his own Facebook post. However, he spent the next month month rotating among other stations before returning to Larissa in late February, days before the Feb. 28 collision, Greek media reported.
On Sunday, railway unions organized a protest rally in central Athens attended by about 12,000 people according to authorities.
Five people were arrested and seven police officers were injured when a group of more than 200 masked, black-clad individuals started throwing pieces of marble, rocks, bottles and firebombs at officers, who gave chase along a central avenue in the city while using tear gas and stun grenades.
In Thessaloniki, about 3,000 people attended two protest rallies. Several of the crash victims were students at the city’s Aristotle University, Greece’s largest, with over 50,000 students..
The larger protest, organized by left-wing activists, marched to a government building. No incidents were reported at that event.
In the other, staged by Communist Party members at the White Tower, the city's signature monument, there was a brief scuffle with police when the protesters tried to place a banner on the monument.
“The Communist Party organized a symbolic protest today in front of the White Tower to denounce the crime in Tempe, because it is a premeditated crime, a crime committed by the company and the bourgeois state that supports these companies,” Giannis Delis, a communist lawmaker, told The Associated Press.
Party of Estonian PM, strong Ukraine backer, gains big win
Voters in Estonia elected a new parliament Sunday with initial results suggesting the center-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine, had won overwhelmingly with nearly all votes counted.
Kallas faced a challenge from the far-right populist EKRE party, which seeks to limit the Baltic nation's exposure to the Ukraine crisis and blames the current government for Estonia's high inflation rate.
Nine political parties in all fielded candidates for Estonia’s 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu. Over 900,000 people were eligible to vote in the general election, and nearly half voted in advance.
With 99% of votes counted, Reform Party had taken 31.4% of the votes, followed by EKRE with 16.1% percent and the Center Party, traditionally favored by Estonia’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority, 15%.
“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the capital, Tallinn.
“I think that with such a strong mandate, the (aid to Ukraine) will not change because other parties, except EKRE and maybe Center, have chosen the same line,” she said.
Preliminary results suggested six parties passed the 5% threshold of support needed to be in parliament, including newcomer Eesti 200, a liberal centrist party. Voter turnout was 63.7%, according to initial information.
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The initial results mean the Reform Party is in a remarkably strong position to take a leading role in forming Estonia's next government; its support translates into 37 seats in the legislature. But it will need junior partners to form a coalition with a comfortable majority to govern.
Kallas has ruled out being in a government with EKRE due to ideological differences, and is likely to turn to former coalition partner the Center Party and outgoing coalition partners - the small conservative Fatherland party and the Social Democrats - for a pact.
Newcomer Eesti 200 is also likely to be included in government talks with Reform.
National security in the wake of neighboring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and socio-economic issues, particularly the rising cost of living, were main campaign themes.
Kallas, 45, became prime minister in 2021 and has emerged as one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine during the year-long war. She is seeking a second term, with her standing enhanced by her international appeals to impose sanctions on Moscow.
A Baltic nation of 1.3 million people that borders Russia to the east, Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 and has taken a clear Western course, joining NATO and the European Union.
Kallas' center-right Reform Party, a key player in Estonian politics since the mid-1990s, continuously held the prime minister’s post during 2005-2016 and regained it in 2021.
EKRE party leader Martin Helme, the prime minister's main challenger, faulted Kallas for the country’s inflation rate of 18.6%, one of the EU’s highest, and accused her of undermining Estonia’s defenses by giving weapons to Ukraine.
“We’ve never questioned support for Ukraine. We’ve never questioned Estonia's membership in NATO," Helme said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s just crazy talk. But we have been very critical of the government because they have not assessed the risk to Estonia and to Estonian security and defense.”
"We have basically given away all our heavy weaponry to Ukraine, and the replacement comes within two or three years. Basically, that is an invitation of aggression,” he said.
The outspoken and polarizing EKRE entered into the mainstream of Estonian politics in the 2019 election, when it emerged as the third-largest party with nearly 18% of the vote. The euroskeptic party was co-founded by Martin Helme’s father, Mart Helme, and was part of a Center Party-led government during 2019-21.
Kallas argues it’s in her country’s interests to help Kyiv. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine sparked fears in Tallinn that a Russian victory could embolden Moscow to switch its attentions to other countries it controlled in Soviet times, including Baltic nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
She says that Estonia’s defenses remain strong as the United States and other NATO allies have supplied top-notch weapons like the HIMARS rocket system to Ukraine and also to Estonia.
Deadly shipwreck: How it happened, and unanswered questions
“Italy here we come!” cheered the young men, in Urdu and Pashto, as they filmed themselves standing on a boat sailing in bright blue waters.
They were among around 180 migrants — Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iranians, Palestinians, Somalis and others — who left Turkey hoping for a better, or simply safer, life in Europe.
Days later, dozens of them were dead. So far, 70 bodies have been recovered from the Feb. 26 shipwreck near the small beach town of Steccato di Cutro, but only 80 survivors have been found, indicating that the death toll was higher. On Sunday, firefighter divers spotted a further body in the Ionian Sea and were working to bring it ashore, state TV said.
The tragedy has highlighted the lesser-known migration route from Turkey to Italy. It also brought into focus hardening Italian and European migration policies, which have since 2015 shifted away from search and rescue, prioritizing instead border surveillance. Questions are also being asked of the Italian government about why the coast guard wasn’t deployed until it was too late.
Also Read: Migrant boat breaks up off Italian coast, killing nearly 60
Based on court documents, testimony from survivors and relatives and statements by authorities, the AP has reconstructed what is known of the events that led to the shipwreck and the questions left unanswered.
___
THE FATEFUL JOURNEY
In the early hours of Wednesday, Feb. 22, the migrants — including dozens of families with small children — boarded a leisure boat on a beach near Izmir following a truck journey from Istanbul and a forest crossing by foot.
They set out from the shore. But just three hours into their voyage, the vessel suffered an engine failure. Still in high seas, an old wooden gulet — a traditional Turkish style of boat — arrived as a replacement.
The smugglers and their assistants told the migrants to hide below deck as they continued on their journey west. Without life vests or seats, they crammed on the floor, going out for air, or to relieve themselves, only briefly. Survivors said the second boat also had engine problems, stopping several times along the way.
Three days later, on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 10:26 p.m. a European Union Border and Coast Guard plane patrolling the Ionian sea spotted a boat heading toward the Italian coast. The agency, known as Frontex, said the vessel “showed no signs of distress” and was navigating at 6 knots, with “good” buoyancy.
Frontex sent an email to Italian authorities at 11:03 p.m. reporting one person on the upper deck and possibly more people below, detected by thermal cameras. No lifejackets could be seen. The email also mentioned that a satellite phone call had been made from the boat to Turkey.
In response to the Frontex sighting, the case was classified as an “activity of the maritime police”. Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, or financial police, which also has a border and customs role, dispatched two patrols to “intercept the vessel.”
As the Turkish boat approached Italy’s Calabrian coast on Saturday evening, some of the migrants on the boat were allowed to message family, to inform them of their imminent arrival and release the 8,000-euro fee that had been agreed upon with the smugglers.
The men navigating the boat told the anxious passengers they needed to wait a few more hours for disembarkation, to avoid getting caught, according to survivors’ testimony to investigators.
At 3:48 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26, the financial police vessels returned to base, without having reached the boat due to bad weather. The police contacted the coast guard to ask if they had any vessels out at sea “in case there was a critical situation” according to communication obtained by the Italian ANSA agency and confirmed by AP. The coast guard replied they did not. “OK, it was just to inform you,” a police officer said before hanging up.
Just minutes later, at around 4 a.m., local fishermen on Italy’s southern coast spotted lights in the darkness. People were waving their cell phone flashlights desperately from atop a boat stuck on a sand bank.
The suspected smugglers grabbed black tubes, possibly life jackets, and jumped into the water to save themselves, according to survivors. Waves continued smashing into the vessel until it suddenly ripped apart. The sound was similar to that of an explosion, survivors said. People fell into the frigid water, trying to grab onto anything they could. Many could not swim.
Italian police arrived on the scene at 4:30 a.m., the same time that the coast guard says it received the first emergency calls related to the boat. It took the coast guard another hour to get there. By then, bodies were already being pulled out of the water with people screaming for help while others attempted to resuscitate the victims.
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THE YOUNG VICTIMS
There were dozens of young children on board the boat. Almost none survived. The body of a 3-year-old was recovered Saturday.
Among those who lived was a Syrian father and his eldest child, but his wife and three other children did not. The body of his youngest, age 5, was still missing four days later.
Shahida Raza, an athlete from Pakistan, died in the tragedy. She had hoped to reach Europe so that she could eventually bring her disabled son for the medical treatment he could not access back home.
One Afghan man drove down from Germany, searching for his 15-year-old nephew who had contacted family saying he was in Italy. But the boy also died before setting foot on land.
The uncle asked that his name, and that of his nephew not be published as he had yet to inform the boy’s father.
The baby-faced teenager had shared a video with his family during his sea voyage, with apparently good weather.
His mother had died two years ago, and with the return of the Taliban to power, the family fled to Iran. The boy later continued to Turkey from where he tried multiple times to cross into the EU.
“Europe is the only place where at least you can be respected as a human being,” he said. “Everyone knows that it is 100% dangerous, but they gamble with their lives because they know if they make it they might be able to live.”
___
THE AFTERMATH
Prosecutors have launched two investigations — one into the suspected smugglers and another looking at whether there were delays by Italian authorities in responding to the migrant boat.
A Turkish man and two Pakistani men, among the 80 survivors, have been detained, suspected of being smugglers or their accomplices. A fourth suspect, a Turkish national, is on the run.
Particular attention has been focused on why the coast guard was never sent to check on the boat.
A day after the shipwreck, Frontex told AP it had spotted a “heavily overcrowded” boat and reported it to Italian authorities. In a second statement, though, Frontex clarified that only one person had been visible on deck but that its thermal cameras — “and other signs” — indicated there could be more people below.
In an interview with AP, retired coast guard admiral Vittorio Alessandro said the coast guard’s boats are made to withstand rough seas and that they should have gone out. “If not to rescue, at least to check whether the boat needed any assistance.”
Alessandro added that the photos released by Frontex showed the water level was high, suggesting the boat was heavy.
The coast guard said Frontex alerted Italian authorities in charge of “law enforcement,” copying the Italian Coast Guard “for their awareness” only. Frontex said it is up to national authorities to classify events as search and rescue.
“The issue is simple in its tragic nature: No emergency communication from Frontex reached our authorities. We were not warned that this boat was in danger of sinking,” Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday.
“I wonder if there is anyone in this nation who honestly believes that the government deliberately let over 60 people die, including some children,” she added.
Alessandro, however, lamented how over the years the coast guard’s activities — which previously occurred even far out in international waters — have been progressively curtailed by successive governments.
“Rescue operations at sea should not be replaced by police operations. Rescue must prevail,” he said.
In an interview with AP, Eugenio Ambrosi, chief of staff at the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, stressed the need for a more proactive search and rescue strategy, on a European level.
“We can look and debate whether the (boat) was spotted, not spotted, whether the authorities were called and didn’t respond,” he said. “But we wouldn’t be asking this question if there was a mechanism of search and rescue in the Mediterranean.”
Germany warns of ‘consequences’ if China sends arms to Russia
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says there would be “consequences” if China sent weapons to Russia for Moscow's war in Ukraine, but he's fairly optimistic that Beijing will refrain from doing so.
Scholz's comments came in an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, two days after he met U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington.
U.S. officials have warned recently that China could step off the sidelines and begin providing arms and ammunition to Moscow. Ahead of his trip, Scholz had urged Beijing to refrain from sending weapons and instead use its influence to press Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
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Asked by CNN if he could imagine sanctioning China if it did aid Russia, Scholz replied: “I think it would have consequences, but we are now in a stage where we are making clear that this should not happen, and I’m relatively optimistic that we will be successful with our request in this case, but we will have to look at (it) and we have to be very, very cautious.”
He didn't elaborate on the nature of the consequences. Germany has Europe's biggest economy, and China has been its single biggest trading partner in recent years.
Back in Germany on Sunday, Scholz was asked after his Cabinet met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen whether he had received concrete evidence from the U.S. that China was considering weapons deliveries and whether he would back sanctions against Beijing if it helped arm Russia.
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“We all agree that there must be no weapons deliveries, and the Chinese government has stated that it wouldn’t deliver any," the chancellor replied. “That is what we are demanding and we are watching it."
He didn't address the sanctions question.
Von der Leyen said that “we have no evidence for this so far, but we must observe it every day.”
She said that whether the European Union would sanction China for giving Russia military aid “is a hypothetical question that can only be answered if it were to become reality and fact.”
Russian shelling hits Ukrainian town; Bakhmut battle rages
Russian shelling destroyed homes and killed one person in northern Ukraine's Kharkiv province, the region's governor said Sunday, while fighting raged in the fiercely contested eastern city of Bakhmut.
The town of Kupiansk is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border; the region has come under frequent attacks even though Russian ground forces withdrew from the area nearly six months ago. Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said at least five homes were razed in the latest attack that left a 65-year-old man dead.
Two civilians were killed over the past day in Bakhmut, Donetsk province Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Russian forces have spent months trying to capture the city as part of their offensive in eastern Ukraine, and the area has seen some of the bloodiest ground fighting of the war.
In recent days, Ukrainian units destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts.
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Associated Press journalists near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later, the AP team saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove, a nearby settlement.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed last week that Kyiv’s actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.
Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks but might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press on toward other Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province.
In southern Ukraine, a woman and two children were killed in a residential building in the Kherson region village of Poniativka, the Ukrainian president's office reported. A Russian artillery shell hit a car in Burdarky, another Kharkiv province village, killing a man and his wife, the regional prosecutor's office said.
Casualties increased from an attack earlier in the week. Ukraine’s emergency services reported Sunday that the death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-story apartment building in southern Ukraine on Thursday rose to 13.
One of the few areas where Russia and Ukraine have cooperated during the war is grain shipments. On that front, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Sunday his country is engaged in “intense efforts” to extend an agreement that allowed Ukraine to export grain from its Black Sea ports.
The deal, which the U.N. and Turkey brokered in July 2022 and was extended by four months in November, is set to expire March 18.
In a speech at the opening of the U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries in Doha, Qatar, Cavusoglu said he had discussed another extension with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The agreement, which also allows Russia to export food and fertilizers, has helped temper rising global food prices. However, Russian officials have complained that shipments of the country’s fertilizer were not being facilitated under the agreement, leaving the deal's renewal in question.
UK says Falklands are British as Argentina seeks new talks
Britain has reasserted its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands after Argentina pulled out of a cooperation agreement and demanded new talks over the South Atlantic territory that sparked a 1982 war between the two countries.
The pronouncement came after Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said on Twitter that he informed British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly about his country’s decision when the pair met on the margins of the Group of 20 summit in India last week.
“The Falkland Islands are British,” Cleverly tweeted late Friday. “Islanders have the right to decide their own future — they have chosen to remain a self-governing U.K. Overseas Territory.’’
Earlier, Cafiero said he told Cleverly that Argentina had decided to pull out of a 2016 agreement in which the the two countries pledged to work together on a variety of issues. While that agreement sought to improve cooperation in the South Atlantic, both sides continued to assert their claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, known as Islas Malvinas in Argentina.
Cafiero also said he proposed new talks in line with a 1965 U.N. General Assembly resolution that encouraged Britain and Argentina to find a peaceful solution to the dispute over the islands.
Argentina has long claimed sovereignty over the islands, which are about 300 miles (480 kilometers) from South America and home to some 3,500 people.
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Argentina argues that the islands were illegally taken from it in 1833. Britain, which says its territorial claim dates to 1765, sent a warship to the islands in 1833 to expel Argentine forces who had sought to establish sovereignty over the territory.
Argentina invaded the islands in 1982, triggering a two-month war that claimed the lives of 255 British service members, three islanders and 649 Argentine personnel. The Argentine forces were ultimately expelled and Britain reasserted its control.
Residents in 2013 voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.
David Rutley, Britain’s minister for the Americas, expressed disappointment in Argentina’s decision.
“Argentina has chosen to step away from an agreement that has brought comfort to the families of those who died in the 1982 conflict,’’ Rutley, who recently visited Buenos Aires, said on Twitter. “Argentina, the U.K. and the Falklands all benefited from this agreement.’’
Civilians flee embattled town as Ukrainian pullout looms
Pressure from Russian forces mounted Saturday on Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut, as residents attempted to flee with help from troops who Western analysts say may be preparing to withdraw from the key eastern stronghold.
A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of the city in Donetsk province, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.
A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave Bakhmut by vehicle and that people had to flee on foot instead.
Bakhmut has for months been a prime target of Moscow’s grinding eastern offensive in the war, with Russian troops, including forces from the private Wagner Group, inching ever closer.
An AP team near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later they saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove.
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Ukrainian units over the past 36 hours destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts.
The U.K. defense ministry said in the latest of its regular Twitter updates that the destruction of the bridges came as Russian fighters made further inroads into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late on Friday that Kyiv's actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.
Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press toward other Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.
Civilians spoke about daily struggles as the fighting raged on nearly nonstop, reducing much of Bakhmut to rubble. Husband and wife Hennadiy Mazepa and Natalia Ishkova, who chose to remain in the city, said they lack food and basic utilities.
“Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas," Ishkova told AP on Saturday.
“I pray to God that all who remain here will survive,” she added.
At the United Nations on Friday, deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. humanitarian staff reported “intensive hostilities” near Bakhmut and the few humanitarian partners on the ground were focusing on evacuating the most vulnerable.
Also Saturday, Russia’s defense chief traveled to eastern Ukraine to inspect troops and award them with state decorations, the Defense Ministry said.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited a command post where he was briefed by regional commander Rustam Muradov, according to a video published by the ministry. It did not disclose the command post's location.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s emergency services reported in the morning that the death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-story apartment building in southern Ukraine on Thursday rose to 11.
Emergency services said in an online statement that rescuers pulled three more bodies from the wreckage overnight, some 36 hours after a Russian missile tore through four floors of the building in the riverside city of Zaporizhzhia. A child was among those reported killed, and the rescue effort was ongoing.
Russian shelling on Saturday also killed two residents of front-line communities in the surrounding Zaporizhzhia region, the local military administration reported.
A 57-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man also died in Nikopol, a town farther west near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as Russian forces fired artillery shells and rockets at Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river, regional Gov. Serhiy Lysak reported.
In the western city of Lviv, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Saturday with the head of the European Union parliament. Hours earlier, Zelenskyy held talks with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European legal officials on how to hold Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine.
In a joint press briefing with Zelenskyy, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said that “all those responsible” for suspected Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, must be brought to justice before a durable peace is achieved.
Metsola voiced support for the EU’s announcement Thursday that an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression — the act of invading another country — would be set up in The Hague.
She also called for Ukraine to start negotiations on joining the 27-nation bloc as early as this year and urged Western nations to keep arming Kyiv as it battles Russian forces in the east and south.
The EU agreed in June to put Ukraine on a path toward membership, setting in motion a process that could take years or even decades. However, Moscow’s invasion and Ukraine’s request for fast-track consideration have lent urgency to the negotiations.
“Ukraine’s future is in the European Union. We will walk all the way with you,” Metsola said on Twitter late Friday.
Station master in Greece train crash delays court appearance
The station master involved in Greece’s deadliest train crash is set to appear before a prosecutor and an examining magistrate Sunday after his deposition was postponed Saturday.
The 59-year-old is accused of placing two trains running in opposite directions on the same track. At least 57 people died when a passenger train slammed into a freight carrier late Tuesday at Tempe, 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens.
The government has blamed human error, and the station master faces multiple charges of negligent homicide and bodily harm, as well as disrupting transportation. Days of protests against the perceived lack of safety measures in Greece’s rail network have taken place in the wake of the disaster.
Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the station master’s lawyer, told reporters waiting outside the courthouse Saturday in the central Greek city of Larissa that “very important new evidence emerged that force us to request a postponement” in his client's deposition.
Also Read: Bangladeshi killed in Greek train crash
The lawyer didn't elaborate. Per Greek law, authorities have not released the accused station master’s name.
Also Saturday, one of the three members of an expert panel named by the government to investigate and issue a report on the collision resigned after opposition parties and some media outlets panned his appointment.
Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos served as chairman and CEO of the country’s train operator from 2010 to 2015 and is currently the chairman of the Greek agency in charge of privatizing state-owned assets.
Funerals for some of the people killed in the crash, many of them in their teens and 20s, took place in northern Greece. The force of the crash and a resulting fire complicated the task of identifying the victims, which is being done through next-of-kin DNA testing.
Some families have yet to receive the remains of their loved ones. Police said 54 victims have been positively identified.
Also Read: Death toll from Greece train crash rises to 57
Rallies protesting the conditions that led to the tragedy continued Saturday. A peaceful rally in central Athens organized by the Communist Party’s youth wing drew over a thousand people.
A rally organized by a rail workers' union is scheduled for Sunday morning, also in Athens. The union, which is organizing rolling labor strikes, has asked members of the public to take part.
Greek media have published damning accounts of mismanagement and infrastructure neglect in Greece’s railways.
A former head of the railway employees’ union, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area where the accident occurred malfunctioned six years ago and was never repaired.
Station masters and train drivers communicate via two-way radio and track switches are operated manually over parts of the main rail line from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The station master, who formerly worked as a porter at the state-owned Hellenic Railways, or OSE, was transferred to a desk job at the Ministry of Education in 2011, when Greece’s creditors demanded personnel cuts in railways.
He transferred back to the company in June 2022 and was appointed station master in Larissa, an important railway hub, in January, after five months’ training.
Police early Friday searched a rail coordination office in Larissa, removing evidence as part of an ongoing investigation.
The since privatized train and freight operator, renamed Hellenic Train, is now owned by Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.
A year into Ukraine war, bodies dug up in once occupied town
The freshly exhumed remains of three men lie in black body bags on the edge of the small cemetery in a town not far from Ukraine's capital, waiting to be taken to a morgue. None has yet been identified.
Ukrainian authorities are still unearthing people who were hastily buried in makeshift graves during Russia's brief but brutal occupation of villages and towns near Kyiv. Almost 200 bodies remain unidentified, while 280 people are listed as missing.
Oleksander Pinchuk’s mother, Halyna, is among them. They never found her body in the wreckage of her apartment building, which took a direct hit from an airstrike a year ago. Pinchuk had walked out of the building just eight hours earlier, and has not seen his mother since, he said.
On Thursday, Pinchuk stood in the winter chill, grim-faced among a small group of mourners who gathered for a religious service to commemorate the anniversary of the strike in the town of Borodyanka.
“Just look at what the Russians brought to us and what they did to our beautiful town,” said Dmytro Koshka, the priest conducting the service at the former site of the residential building. “How could we ever forget and forgive?”
Nothing remains of the structure except the outline of where it once stood. Behind it is another apartment building, blackened and empty but still standing.
Pinchuk said rescue crews only managed to get to the building last April, after Ukrainian forces retook control of Borodyanka. The crews dug through the rubble for about two weeks and located the remains of 15 people. But they found no trace of dozens more believed to have been inside the 108-apartment building.
Also Read: Kremlin accuses Ukrainian saboteurs of attack inside Russia
“We still have hope for at least some of them, but the rest, they just burned alive,” Pinchuk said, his gaze fixed, the pain of loss visible in his eyes.
Without a body to mourn over and bury, the 43-year-old hopes against hope that his mother is still alive. He heard rumors that Russian troops took more than 100 people from Borodyanka to Belarus. Perhaps she was among them.
“Until the last moment, I will think of her as alive,” he said.
The exhumation of the three bodies Thursday from two makeshift graves on the edge of Borodyanka’s cemetery meant that some families may have a chance to learn what became of their loved ones.
A passer-by found the three in early March 2022, when Russia forces still occupied the town, and he buried the bodies with the help of another man, according to Andrii Nebytov, the head of the Kyiv region's police department.
The passer-by then fled the region. He only just recently returned and told authorities about the burials, the police chief said.
One of the dead is believed to be a 50-year-old local man who was shot and partially burned in his car, but DNA tests are needed to confirm that. Nobody knows who the other two are.
There’s not much to go on to identify them. A green pencil is all that was found on one, packets of cigarettes and key fobs on another. The remains are so decomposed that identification and determining exactly how they died will require forensic tests.
The exhumations bring the number of civilian bodies found in previously Russian-occupied areas of the Kyiv region to 1,373, Nebytov said. Of that number, 197 have yet to be identified.
Kremlin accuses Ukrainian saboteurs of attack inside Russia
The Kremlin on Thursday accused Ukrainian saboteurs of crossing into western Russia and firing on villagers. Ukraine denied the claim and warned that Moscow could use the allegations to justify stepping up its own attacks in the ongoing war.
The exact circumstances of the reported attack in the Bryansk region were unclear, as was the strategic purpose of such an assault. The regional governor said two civilians were killed.
If confirmed, it would be another indication following drone attacks earlier this week that Kyiv may be intensifying pressure against Moscow by exposing Russian defensive weaknesses, embarrassing the Kremlin and sowing unease among Russian civilians.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian “terrorists” for the incursion, claiming that they deliberately targeted civilians, including children in “yet another terror attack, another crime.”
“They infiltrated the area near the border and opened fire on civilians,” Putin said during a video call. “They saw a civilian vehicle with civilians, with children in it, and they fired on them.”
The alleged incursion came just days after Putin ordered the Federal Security Service to tighten controls on Russia’s border with Ukraine.
While Russian war hawks have expressed dismay with what they see as Putin’s reluctance to declare martial law and launch a sweeping mobilization of soldiers, the Russian leader’s comments Thursday did not appear to signal any such moves.
Putin blamed the attack on “neo-Nazis” and said it confirmed that Russia did the right thing by invading Ukraine. “I repeat again: They will not succeed, and we will finish pushing them out,” he said.
When he ordered the invasion, the Russian leader vowed to “denazify” Ukraine, alleging falsely that radical neo-Nazi groups dominate the country led by a Jewish president. Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed his assertion as a bogus cover for an unprovoked act of aggression.
Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, Andrii Cherniak, saw the Russian claims as evidence that Moscow is facing an uprising among its own disgruntled people.
“This was done by the Russians; Ukraine has nothing to do with it,” he told The Associated Press.
A group calling itself the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed it crossed the border into Russia in a video that also urged Russians to rebel. The group’s statement did not explain what actions it took or what specific objectives it wanted to achieve.
The Russian Volunteer Corps described itself as “a volunteer formation in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Little is known about the group, and it was not immediately clear if it has any ties with the Ukrainian military.
The group was founded in August and consists mostly of anti-Putin far-right Russian extremists who have links with Ukrainian far-right groups, according to Michael Colborne, a researcher for the investigative website Bellingcat.
Colborne said on Twitter that Ukrainian military intelligence “very likely” approved the incursion.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Russian claims as “a classic deliberate provocation.”
Russia “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country (and) the growing poverty after the year of war,” he tweeted, suggesting that Russian partisans were behind what happened in Bryansk.
Bryansk Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said the attackers killed two civilians and wounded a child in the village of Lyubechane.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said it acted together with the military to “eliminate armed Ukrainian nationalists who violated the state border.” The agency claimed later that the attackers had been pushed back into Ukraine “where a massive artillery strike was inflicted on them.” It was not possible to verify the claim.
Putin canceled a planned trip to southern Russia because of the attack. He is set to chair a weekly meeting of the Russian Security Council on Friday.
Asked by reporters whether the activity could warrant a change in the status of the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “I can’t say for now.”
The raid in the Bryansk region followed a spate of drone attacks. On Tuesday, drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry also said Wednesday that the military repelled a drone attack on Crimea.
In Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia, three people were killed and six others were wounded early Thursday when a Russian missile hit a five-story apartment building, destroying several floors.
A Russian drone attack hit people standing in line for humanitarian aid in a village in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, wounding nine people, including a 16-year-old, the regional administration said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia “wants to turn every day for our people into a day of terror,” adding that “evil will not reign in our land.”
Russian artillery, drones and missiles have pounded Ukrainian-held areas in the country’s south and east for months. Moscow denies aiming at civilian targets, but its indiscriminate shelling has wrought wide destruction in urban centers.
The war largely slowed to a grinding stalemate during the winter months, although a fierce battle continued for control of Bakhmut, a key eastern stronghold where Ukrainian officials say they might strategically withdraw.
The Ukrainian military’s general staff reported that Russian forces “continue to advance and storm the city,” but Kyiv’s troops repelled some of the attacks. Capturing the city would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press toward other Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
In other developments, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations. It was the first high-level meeting in months between Russia and the U.S.
A senior U.S. official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation, said Blinken had “disabused” Lavrov of any idea that U.S. support for Ukraine is wavering.