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Portugal church sex abuse study: victims may number 4,800
More than 4,800 individuals may have been victims of child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church and 512 alleged victims have already come forward to speak out, an expert panel looking into historic abuse in the church said Monday.
Senior Portuguese church officials had previously claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred.
Senior clergymen sat in the front row of the auditorium where panel members read out some of the harrowing accounts of alleged abuse included in their final report. There were vivid and shocking descriptions.
The head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference, Bishop José Ornelas, said church authorities would study the panel’s 500-page report before giving an official response.
“We have seen and heard things we cannot ignore,” he told reporters. “It’s a dramatic set of circumstances. It won’t be easy to get over it.”
The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, set up by Portuguese bishops just over a year ago, looked into alleged cases from 1950 onward. Portuguese bishops are due to discuss the report next month.
The panel regretted that the Vatican had taken so long to grant access to church archives. Permission came only in October, giving the panel just three months to go through written evidence of abuse.
The statute of limitations has expired on most of the alleged cases. Only 25 allegations were passed to prosecutors, the panel said.
The report, criticized by some as long overdue, came four years after Pope Francis gathered church leaders from around the world at the Vatican to address the sex abuse crisis in the church.
That meeting was held more than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia and 20 years after it hit the United States.
Bishops and other Catholic superiors in many parts of Europe at the time continued to deny that clergy sex abuse existed or insisted on giving little weight to the problem.
Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who headed the panel in Portugal, said it estimates the true number of victims during the period as being at least at 4,815. That extrapolation was made on potential other victims mentioned by those victims who came forward.
The panel is not publishing the names of the victims, the identities of the alleged abusers, or the places the abuses allegedly happened. However, it is to send to bishops by the end of the month a list of alleged abusers who are still active in the church.
The final report includes a separate — and confidential — annex of all the names of church members reported to the committee that is being sent to the Portuguese Bishops Conference and to the police.
The Portuguese church hasn’t said whether it intends to pay compensation to any victims.
The six-person committee included psychiatrists, a former Supreme Court judge and a social worker.
The report said that 77% of the abusers were priests, with other perpetrators being linked to church institutions. It added that 77% of victims didn’t report the abuse to church officials and only 4% went to the police. Most of the abuse took place when the victims were in early adolescence.
It said 48% of those who came forward had spoken about the abuse for the first time. Most of the alleged victims were male, though 47% were female, the report said.
It said there were places in Portugal, such as some seminaries and religious institutions, that were “real blackspots” for abuse.
The panel recommended that the statute of limitations on such crimes be extended to at least 30 years from the current 23 years.
Turkey earthquake survivors face despair, as rescues wane
Thousands left homeless by a massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago packed into crowded tents or lined up in the streets for hot meals Monday, while the desperate search for anyone still alive likely entered its last hours.
One crew wrested a 4-year-old girl from rubble in hard-hit Adiyaman, 177 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck. Thousands of local and overseas teams, including Turkish coal miners and experts aided by sniffer dogs and thermal cameras, are scouring pulverized apartment blocks for signs of life.
While stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days — many broadcast live on Turkish television and beamed around the world — tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period. Experts say given temperatures that have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) — and the total collapse of so many buildings — the window for such rescues is nearly shut.
The quake and its aftershocks, including a major one nine hours after the initial temblor, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, killing more than 35,000 and reducing whole swaths of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal.
Damage included heritage sites in places like Antakya, an important ancient port and early center of Christianity historically known as Antioch. Greek Orthodox churches in the region have started charity drives to assist the relief effort and raise funds to eventually rebuild or repair churches.
Some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes.
Not enough tents have arrived for the homeless, said survivor Zehra Kurukafa, forcing families to share the tents that are available.
“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” said Kurukafa.
Turkish authorities said Monday that more than 150,000 survivors have been moved to shelters outside the affected provinces. In the city of Adiyaman, Musa Bozkurt waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to western Turkey.
“We’re going away, but we have no idea what will happen when we get there,” said the 25-year-old. "We have no goal. Even if there was (a plan) what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?”
But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended.
“Those who have the means are leaving, but we’re poor,” he said. “The government says, go and live there a month or two. How do I leave my home? My fields are here, this is my home, how do I leave it behind?”
Volunteers from across Turkey have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup for survivors who lined up in the streets of downtown Adiyaman.
Other volunteers continued with the rescue efforts. After rescuers pulled out the 4-year-old, a relative told HaberTurk television that more loved ones were inside the building.
As the scale of the disaster comes into view, sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an ineffective response to the historic disaster. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough reelection battle in May.
Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured salvage tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive Monday in the wreckage of a five-story building in Turkey's Gaziantep province.
Syrian authorities said a newborn whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of their home was doing well. The baby, Aya, was found hours after the quake, still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. She is being breastfed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is being treated.
Such tales have given many hope, but Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.”
David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed. But he added that the odds were not very good to begin with.
Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they collapsed into very small pieces, leaving very few spaces large enough for people to survive in, Alexander said.
“If a frame building of some kind goes over, generally speaking we do find open spaces in a heap of rubble where we can tunnel in,“ Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photographs from Turkey and from Syria, there just aren’t the spaces.”
Wintery conditions further reduce the window for survival. In the cold, the body shivers to keep warm — but that burns a lot of calories, meaning that people also deprived of food will die more quickly, said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech.
Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed. Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.
Turkey’s death toll from the quake has exceeded 31,000. Deaths in Syria, split between rebel-held areas and government-held areas, have risen beyond 3,500, although those reported by the government haven’t been updated in days.
Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that the international community has failed to provide aid.
Griffiths said Syrians "rightly feel abandoned.” He added: “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
In the Syrian capital of Damascus Monday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told reporters that “troubles” regarding the flow of aid to Syria’s rebel-held northwest are “now being corrected.”
The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, meanwhile, said that 53 trucks carrying aid had crossed from Kurdish territory into earthquake-damaged areas controlled by rival Turkish-backed rebels in northwest Syria who had previously prevented convoys from crossing. Turkish authorities consider the Syrian Democratic Forces to be a terrorist group, along with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist group.
Spain: Hundreds of thousands march for Madrid’s healthcare
Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards flooded the streets of Madrid on Sunday for the largest protest yet against the regional government’s management of the capital city’s health care services.
Over 250,000 people rallied in the city center, according to the central Spanish government. Organizers claimed the crowd was bigger by several hundred thousand. Many protest participants carried homemade signs with messages in Spanish like “The right to health is a human right. Defend the health service.”
Health worker associations led the demonstration, which was backed by left-wing parties, unions and normal citizens concerned with what they see as the dismantling of the public health care system by the Madrid region’s conservative-led government.
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These groups have taken to the streets on a regular basis in recent months, and their movement is gathering strength.
Madrid’s regional chief, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, alleges the protests are motivated by the political interests of left-wing rivals ahead of May regional elections across most of Spain.
Health care workers claim that Díaz Ayuso’s administration spends the least amount per capita on primary health care of any Spanish region even though it has the highest per capita income. They say that for every 2 euros spent on health care in Madrid, one ends up in the private sector.
Critics of her administration say that produces long waits for patients and overworked doctors and nurses.
Spain has a hybrid health care system, but the public sector is larger than the private one and is considered a basic pillar of the state. It is run by Spain’s regions.
Migrants seeking US sponsors find questionable offers online
Pedro Yudel Bruzon was looking for someone in the U.S. to support his effort to seek asylum when he landed on a Facebook page filled with posts demanding up to $10,000 for a financial sponsor.
It's part of an underground market that's emerged since the Biden administration announced it would accept 30,000 immigrants each month arriving by air from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Applicants for the humanitarian parole program need someone in the U.S., often a friend or relative, to promise to provide financial support for at least two years.
Bruzon, who lives in Cuba, doesn't know anyone who can do that, so he searched online. But he also doesn't have the money to pay for a sponsor and isn't sure the offers — or those making them — are real. He worries about being exploited or falling prey to a scam.
“They call it humanitarian parole, but it has nothing to do with being humanitarian,” said Bruzon, who said he struggles to feed himself and his mother with what he makes as a 33-year-old Havana security guard. “Everyone wants money, even people in the same family.”
It’s unclear how many people in the United States may have charged migrants to sponsor them, but Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carry dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters.
Several immigration attorneys said they could find no specific law prohibiting people from charging money to sponsor beneficiaries.
“As long as everything is accurate on the form and there are no fraudulent statements it may be legal,” said lawyer Taylor Levy, who long worked along the border around El Paso, Texas. “But what worries me are the risks in terms of being trafficked and exploited. If lying is involved, it could be fraud.”
Also, she noted, it “seems counterintuitive” to pay someone to promise to provide financial support.
Attorney Leon Fresco, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said charging to be a sponsor is a “gray area” and the U.S. should send a forceful message against the practice.
Kennji Kizuka, an attorney and director of asylum policy for the International Rescue Committee, which resettles newcomers in the United States, said this type of thing happens with every new U.S. program benefitting migrants.
“It looks like some are just going to take people’s money and the people are going to get nothing in return,” Kizuka said.
Levy said such exploitation surrounding a similar U.S. program for Ukrainians prompted the government to publish an online guide about how to spot and protect against human-trafficking schemes.
One common scheme with immigration programs is known as notario fraud and involves people who call themselves “notarios públicos” charging large sums. In Latin America, the term refers to attorneys with special credentials, leading lead migrants to believe they are lawyers who can provide legal advice. In the U.S., notaries public are merely empowered to witness the signing of legal documents and issue oaths.
In another scheme, someone poses as a U.S. official asking for money. The U.S. government notes: “We do not accept Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, or gift cards as payment for immigration fees.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services warns about potential scams with the humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans that was rolled out last month and notes online that the program is free.
“Fulfilling our humanitarian mission while upholding the integrity of the immigration system is a top priority for USCIS,” the agency said in response to questions about the potential for exploitation. It says the agency “carefully vets every prospective supporter through a series of fraud- and security-based screening measures.”
“Additionally, USCIS thoroughly reviews each reported case of fraud or misconduct and may refer those cases to federal law enforcement for additional investigation,” the statement said.
The agency did not address whether any application has been rejected because of concerns that potential sponsors might be requesting money.
The Department of Homeland Security says 1,700 humanitarian parole applications were accepted as of Jan. 25 from Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, plus an undisclosed number of Venezuelans. A Texas-led lawsuit seeks to stop the program, which could allow 360,000 people a year to enter the U.S. legally.
One Facebook post advertising paid sponsorships led to a person who identified himself as an American citizen living in Pensacola, Florida. Told he was communicating with a journalist, the person refused to talk on the phone and would only text.
The person told The Associated Press he had sponsored a Cuban uncle and aunt for $10,000 each. He refused to provide contact information for those relatives, then stopped responding to questions.
Another would-be sponsor said via Facebook messenger that they charge $2,000 per person, which includes a sponsorship fee, document processing and an airline ticket. Requests for more information were answered with a phone number from the Dominican Republic that rang unanswered.
A man who posted seeking a sponsor told the AP that he was disturbed by some offers.
“It’s very easy to trick a desperate person and there are an abundance of them here,” the man, who identified himself as Pedro Manuel Carmenate, of Havana, said. “You just have to tell the people what they want to hear.”
Of course, not all sponsors charge a fee. A new initiative called Welcome.US aims to match Americans to migrants without supporters. Also, nonprofit organizations are trying to spread accurate information about the program.
Sarah Ivory, executive director of the nonprofit USAHello that provides online information in multiple languages, said the proliferation of offers for paid sponsorship is “deeply troubling and frustratingly predictable,” reflected in hundreds of queries to the group.
“Many report that they barely have the money to feed themselves, much less pay to get a passport or arrange a sponsor,” Ivory said.
Such desperation is reflected on social media.
“I’m looking for a sponsor for two people please, my husband is in a wheelchair,” reads a post from someone who says she lives in Havana. “I will give my house with everything inside and I’ll pay $4,000 for each” person sponsored.
Protest outside UK asylum-seeker hotel ends in 15 arrest
An anti-migration protest outside a hotel housing asylum-seekers in northwest England turned violent and resulted in the arrests of 15 people, local police said Saturday.
The Merseyside Police department said a police officer and two civilians sustained minor injuries during the disturbance on Friday night in Knowsley, a village located 13.5 kilometers (8.4 miles) from the city of Liverpool.
The police force said some protesters threw objects and set a police van on fire. The people arrested, who ranged in age from 13 to 54, were detained “following violent disorder.”
“A number of individuals who turned up at the Suites Hotel last night were intent on using a planned protest to carry out violent and despicable behavior," Merseyside Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said. "They turned up armed with hammers and fireworks to cause as much trouble as they could, and their actions could have resulted in members of the public and police officers being seriously injured, or worse,"
Speculation on social media about a man accused of making inappropriate advances toward a teenage girl in a nearby town might have triggered the demonstration outside the hotel, Kennedy said. The man in his 20s was arrested elsewhere in England on Thursday “on suspicion of a public order offense” but later released on the advice of child protective services, she said.
George Howarth, who represents Knowsley in the U.K. Parliament, said the violence on Friday night did not reflect the community.
“The people of Knowsley are not bigots and are welcoming to people escaping from some of the most dangerous places in the world in search of a place of safety,” he said. “Those demonstrating against refugees at this protest tonight do not represent this community.”
Britain takes in fewer asylum-seekers than some other European countries, including France and Germany, but has seen a sharp increase in the number of people trying to reach the U.K. across the English Channel in dinghies and other small boats.
More than 45,000 people reached Britain by that route in 2022, and most applied for asylum. The system for considering asylum applications has slowed to a crawl because of political turmoil and bureaucratic delays, leaving many migrants stuck in hotels or other temporary accommodation.
The Channel crossings have become a hot political issue, with the Conservative government promising to “stop the boats.” Opponents accuse the government of demonizing desperate people fleeing war and poverty.
In October, a man firebombed a processing center for new arrivals in the Channel port of Dover. Police said he was motivated by far-right ideology. He killed himself after the attack.
Wagner owner says war in Ukraine could drag on for years
The owner of the Russian Wagner Group private military contractor actively involved in the fighting in Ukraine has predicted that the war could drag on for years.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview released late Friday that it could take 18 months to two years for Russia to fully secure control of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. He added that the war could go on for three years if Moscow decides to capture broader territories east of the Dnieper River.
The statement from Prigozhin, a millionaire who has close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was dubbed “Putin’s chef” for his lucrative Kremlin catering contracts, marked a recognition of the difficulties that the Kremlin has faced in the campaign, which it initially expected to wrap up within weeks when Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Russia suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in the fall when the Ukrainian military launched successful counteroffensives to reclaim broad swaths of territory in the east and the south. The Kremlin has avoided making forecasts on how long the fighting could continue, saying that what it called the “special military operation” will continue until its goals are fulfilled.
The Russian forces have focused on Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces that make up the Donbas region where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Ukrainian and Western officials have warned that Russia could launch a new broad offensive to try to turn the tide of the conflict as the war approaches the one-year mark. But Ukraine's military intelligence spokesman, Andriy Chernyak, told Kyiv Post that “Russian command does not have enough resources for large-scale offensive actions.”
“The main goal of Russian troops remains to achieve at least some tactical success in eastern Ukraine,” he said.
Prigozhin said that the Wagner Group mercenaries were continuing fierce battles for control of the Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. He acknowledged that the Ukrainian troops were mounting fierce resistance.
As Russian troops have pushed their attacks in the Donbas, Moscow has also sought to demoralize Ukrainians by leaving them without heat and water in the bitter winter.
On Friday, Russia launched the 14th round of massive strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities and other vital infrastructure. High-voltage infrastructure facilities were hit in the eastern, western and southern regions, resulting in power outages in some areas.
Ukraine's energy company, Ukrenergo, said Saturday that the situation was “difficult but controllable,” adding that involved backups to keep up power supplies but noting that power rationing will continue in some areas. Head of Ukraine's state nuclear operator Energoatom Petro Kotin said Saturday that more power will come into the country's energy system after two nuclear reactors have been repaired.
Ukraine's military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said that Russian forces launched 71 cruise missiles, 35 S-300 missiles and seven Shahed drones between late Thursday and midday Friday, adding that Ukrainian air defenses downed 61 cruise missiles and five drones.
The Ukrainian authorities reported more attacks by killer drones later on Friday. The Ukrainian air force said the military downed 20 Shahed drones in the evening.
Russia's Defense Ministry said that Friday's strikes hit all the designated targets, halting the operation of Ukraine's defense factories and blocking the delivery of supplies of Western weapons and ammunition. The claim couldn't be independently verified.
Late Friday, Russian military bloggers and some Ukrainian news outlets posted a video showing an attack by a sea drone on a strategic railway bridge in the Odesa region. The grainy video showed a fast-moving object on the surface of the water approaching the bridge in Zatoka, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Odesa, and exploding in a powerful blast.
The authenticity of the video couldn't be verified, but the Ukrainian military on Saturday confirmed the use of sea drones by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s military chief Zaluzhnyi said in an online statement that he has expressed concern about the use of such drones in a phone conversation with the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, on Saturday, adding that it “poses a threat to civilian navigation in the Black Sea.”
The attack marks the first combat use of a sea drone by Russia in the conflict. Igor Korotchenko, a retired colonel of the Russian armed forces who frequently comments on the conflict on Russian state TV, noted Saturday that such drones should be equipped with a more powerful load of explosives to inflict more significant damage.
The bridge, which was targeted by Russian missile strikes early in the war, serves the railway link to Romania, which is a key conduit for Western arms supplies.
In other developments, the governor of Russia's Kursk region along the border with Ukraine said that a group of construction workers was hit by Ukrainian shelling that killed one of them and wounded another.
The governor of another Russian border region, Belgorod, reported the shelling of the town of Shebekino, saying it damaged two buildings but no one was hurt.
Nearly 1 million French march in 4th day of pension protests
Police were out in force across France on Saturday as protesters held a sometimes restive fourth round of nationwide demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to reform the country's pension system.
Over 960,000 people marched in Paris, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and other cities, according to the Interior Ministry. Protesters hoped to keep up the pressure on the government to back down, and further action is planned for Feb. 16.
In the French capital, authorities counted some 93,000 participants, the most to demonstrate in Paris against the pension changes since the protests started last month.
The weekend demonstrations drew young people and others opposed to the pension proposals who weren’t able to attend the previous three days of action, all held on weekdays.
This time, though, rail worker strikes did not accompany the demonstrations, allowing trains and the Paris Metro to run Saturday. However, an unexpected strike by air traffic controllers meant that up to half of flights to and from Paris’ second largest airport, Orly, were canceled Saturday afternoon.
In Paris, some workers and students who wanted to voice opposition attended the protests for the first time, owing to heavy weekday workloads.
“We often hear that we should be too young to care, but with rising inflation, soaring electricity prices, this reform will impact our families,” Elisa Haddad, 18. said. “It is my first demonstration because I couldn’t attend with uni. It is important that the voice of (France’s) parents and students is heard.”
French lawmakers began a rowdy debate earlier this week on the pension bill to raise the minimum retirement age for a full state pension from 62 to 64. It’s the flagship legislation of Macron’s second term.
Saturday’s protests featured flashes of unrest. One car and several trash bins were set on fire on a central Parisian boulevard as police charged the crowd and dispersed protesters with tear gas. Paris police said officers they arrested eight people for infractions ranging from possession of a firearm to vandalism.
Some demonstrators walked as families through the French capital's Place de la Republique and carried emotional banners. “I don’t want my parents to die at work,” read one, held by a teenage boy.
The protests are a crucial test both for Macron and his opponents. The government has insisted it’s determined to push through Macron’s election pledge to reform France’s generous pension system. Of the 38 member nations of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, France is among countries that spend the most years in retirement.
The president has called the reforms “indispensable” for ensuring the long-term survival of the country’s pension system and noted that workers in neighboring countries retire years later.
Despite opinion polls consistently showing growing opposition to the reform and his own popularity shrinking, Macron insisted that he’s living up to a key campaign pledge he made when he swept to power in 2017 and before his April 2022 reelection.
His government is now facing a harsh political battle in parliament that could span weeks or months.
Strong popular resentment will strengthen efforts by labor unions and left-wing legislators to try to block the bill.
Unions issued a joint statement Saturday, calling the government “deaf” and demanding French officials scrap the bill. They threatened to cause a nationwide “shutdown” from March 7, if their demands were not met.
During the previous day of protests four days ago, over 750,000 people marched in many French cities, significantly fewer than on the previous two protest days in January in which over a million people took to the streets.
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Nico Garriga in Paris contributed
Finnish president wants Finland, Sweden in NATO by summer
The Finnish president said in an interview published Saturday that he trusts that Finland and Sweden will be admitted into NATO by July, and hinted that he wants the United States to put pressure on Turkey to approve their membership bids.
If the issue drags on, the entire process of admitting new members into the military alliance will become questionable, President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview with the Finnish news agency STT.
“If it doesn’t happen by the Vilnius meeting, why should it happen afterwards?” Niinistö said.
Lithuania is set to host a NATO summit in the Baltic nation’s capital on July 11-12.
NATO requires unanimous approval from its existing members to admit new ones. Turkey and Hungary are the only nations in the 30-member military alliance that haven’t formally endorsed Sweden and Finland’s accession.
While Hungary has pledged to do so in February, Turkey hasn’t indicated willingness to ratify the two countries’ accession any time soon. Niinistö stressed that the final Turkish decision is up to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“I think that under no circumstances will he allow himself to be influenced by any public pressure,” Niinistö said. ” But if something opens up during the bilateral talks between Turkey and the United States, it might have an impact.”
Turkey has been holding off approving Sweden and Finland’s membership into NATO as it has been infuriated, among other things, by a recent series of demonstrations in Stockholm by activists who have burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy and hanged an effigy of Erdogan.
In January, Ankara indefinitely postponed a key meeting in Brussels that would have discussed the two Nordic countries’ entry into NATO.
Niinistö said that Finland and Sweden heard many encouraging statements from NATO last spring — the Nordic duo had stated their intention to join NATO in May — about smooth and painless progress of membership.
He said that did not happen, adding that the delay isn’t only a headache for the two applicant countries.
“I can see that this has already become a problem for NATO. Clearly, NATO countries have also been surprised,” Niinistö said.
Hilltop coal-mining town a tactical prize in Ukraine war
In a small coal-mining town on Ukraine’s eastern front line, a fight for strategic superiority is being waged in a battlefield steeped with symbolism as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears.
The town of Vuhledar — meaning “gift of coal” — has emerged as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province that would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces who hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.
Located on an elevated plane that is one of the few high-terrain spots in the area, its capture would be an important step for Russia to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines. Securing Vuhledar would give Ukraine a potential launching pad for future counter-offensives south.
Then there is the symbolic weight: Vuhledar is close to the administrative border of Donetsk province, and winning it would play into Russia’s greater aim of controlling the region as a whole.
“The center of gravity of the Russian military effort is in Donetsk, and Vuhledar is basically the southern flank of that,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relation’s Berlin office.
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The grinding fight to win the area has cost Russia manpower and weapons, as Ukrainians continue to hold up defensive lines. Russia sends battalion-sized scout groups to probe Ukrainian lines and shoot artillery toward their positions with an eye to pushing north toward the critical N15 highway, a key supply route.
In remarks this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian troops were advancing “with success” in Vuhledar. Meanwhile, a British defense intelligence briefing said Russia's aim was to capture unoccupied areas of Ukrainian-held Donetsk but it was unlikely to build up the forces required to change the outcome of the war.
Vuhledar’s pre-war population of 14,000 has dwindled to about 300. The majority of the town’s residents worked in the coal mine and nearby factories before the war.
Olha Kyseliova, who was recently evacuated, worked in a brick factory before the fighting upended her life.
Russian forces ramped up attacks beginning on Jan. 24, residents said. That day, a missile tore through Kyseliova's nine-story building. She was sheltering in the basement with her three children and emerged to find a gaping hole through the roof of her third-floor apartment.
That was the moment she decided she had to leave her hometown. “I cried the entire way out, I didn’t want to leave,” she said.
Three Ukrainian brigades are positioned in Vuhledar and on the outskirts of the town. The Associated Press spoke to five commanders in units from all three, who provided only their first names in keeping with Ukraine's military policy. Russia’s 155 Marine infantry troops are positioned just four kilometers (two miles) away in Vuhledar’s suburbs.
For both sides, the town is tactically important.
“It’s one of the main logistics points of the Donbas region, and also one of the main points of elevation,” said Maksym, the deputy commander of a Ukrainian marine infantry battalion. “By capturing Vuhledar, Russians can easily occupy the entire Donetsk region.”
Seizing Vuhledar would would enable Russia to push forward and threaten Ukrainian supply lines feeding into the fierce Marinka front line to the north, said Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations. For Ukraine, Vuhledar would be a launching pad for future counter-offensives toward Mariupol and Berdiansk.
From their perch in the town, Ukrainian forces can see into Russian lines and have so far been able to repel Russian attempts to encircle Vuhledar. Columns of Russian tanks and armored vehicles transporting infantrymen continuously assault and attempt to break Ukrainian defenses. Aviation, rockets and artillery target the town.
“But with our fighters and anti-tank equipment their attempts have not been successful,” said Maksym, the Ukrainian deputy commander. “The situation is strained, but controlled.”
Similar to other front lines along the east, the Russians are losing scores of infantrymen in an attempt to tire and weaken Ukrainian defensive lines. Serhii, the commander of a Ukrainian intelligence unit, said he saw Russian soldiers sent straight through fields mined by the Ukrainians following Russia’s capture of the village of Pavlivka, south of Vuhledar, in November.
“They de-mine our fields by using their own people,” he said.
Ukrainian commanders said some of their units are suffering from dire ammunition shortages.
That view was not shared across brigades, suggesting some are better supplied than others. Taras, the commander of a mortar unit, said his forces were suffering very serious shortages. Faced with orders to target an enemy position, he said, “I have just two or three rounds of ammunition to do it. It’s nothing.”
Two commanders of a brigade inside Vuhledar reported the Russians hurled gas-laden projectiles that caused severe disorientation for hours, and burning of the throat and skin. Higher-ranking commanders did not comment on the type of gas used and said an investigation was ongoing.
“They are probing and testing us across the eastern front line, including in Vuhledar,” said Oleksandr, a commander who was recently rotated out of the town. “They are trying to find our points of weakness.”
For now, Russia’s activities around Vuhledar are not “operationally significant,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. More combat power is required to execute breakthroughs that would achieve the stated aim of the Russian invasion — the capture of the entire Donetsk province.
Even in the event of victory in Vuhledar, Russia would still need a lot of combat power to push north. Three months after capturing the village of Pavlivka in November, Russian forces have yet to make breakthroughs in Vuhledar, which is only four kilometers — a six-minute drive — away.
“It’s not operationally significant because Russians will still have to fight for more territory to make a meaningful disruption of Ukrainian ground lines of communication to western Donetsk,” Stepanenko said. Vuhledar is just "one settlement on their way, where they are already suffering significant losses and where they already seem to have suffered losses in the area before.”
Meanwhile, the last of Vuhledar’s residents said they are staying put.
Oleksandra Havrylko, police press officer for the Donetsk region, pleads with those who remain to leave the devastated area. Most spend their days hiding in basements, coming out when there are lulls in fighting to charge phones and gather supplies in the town’s points of refuge, called “invincibility centers”.
All but one of the town's children have been evacuated. The father of a 15-year-old, the last remaining minor in the town, refuses to part with his son or leave the area, she said.
“There are people in the city who don’t want to be evacuated, we tried many times,” she said. Most have never ventured far from their hometown.
Russia hits targets across Ukraine with missiles, drones
KYIV, Ukraine, Feb 11 (AP/UNB) — Russia used strategic bombers, cruise missiles and killer drones in a wave of attacks across Ukraine early Friday, while Moscow's military push that Kyiv says has been brewing for days appeared to pick up pace in eastern areas ahead of the one-year anniversary of its invasion.
Russian forces have launched 71 cruise missiles, 35 S-300 missiles and seven Shahed drones since late Thursday, Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said.
Ukrainian forces downed 61 cruise missiles and five drones, he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has campaigned for more Western support against Russia's military ambitions, said: “This is terror that can and must be stopped.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s ground forces were focusing on Ukraine’s industrial east, especially the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces that make up the industrial Donbas region where recent fighting has been most intense, the Ukrainian military said. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces there since 2014.
Kremlin is striving to secure areas it illegally annexed last September — the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions — and where it claims its rule is welcomed, according to Kyiv officials.
Moscow’s goals have narrowed since it launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 2022, military analysts say. At that time, the capital, Kyiv, and the installation of a puppet government were among its targets, but numerous battlefield setbacks, including yielding Donbas areas it had initially captured, have embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremin is currently concentrating its efforts on gaining full control of the Donbas, Kyiv claims, and is pushing at key points on several fronts, though Russian progress is reportedly slow.
In the Donetsk region, local Ukrainian officials reported that the Russian military deployed additional troops and launched offensive operations. “There is a daily escalation and Russian attacks are becoming active throughout the region,” Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
In Luhansk province, the Russian army is trying to punch through Ukrainian defenses, according to regional Gov. Serhii Haidai.
Read more: Russian attacks on Ukraine reported; at least 11 dead
“The situation is deteriorating, the enemy is constantly attacking, the Russians are bringing in a large amount of heavy equipment and aircraft,” Haidai said.
There has been little change in battlefield positions for weeks amid freezing winter conditions.
Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-appointed head of the Donetsk region, said that Russian forces had secured positions on the southern outskirts of Vuhledar. He added that Ukraine has sent additional reinforcements to the city that slowed the Russian advance.
Pushilin’s claim couldn’t be independently verified.
Vuhledar is a strategically important town that sits next to a railway link crossing the region on the way to Crimea. Capturing the town is important for Russia to secure the safety of the railway connection to Crimea and advance its goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
The cruise missiles aimed at Ukraine were launched by Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and from Russian navy ships in the Black Sea, military chief Zaluzhnyi said, while the S-300 missiles were launched from the Belgorod region just inside Russia and the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Moscow once again targeted the power supply in “another attempt to destroy the Ukrainian energy system and deprive Ukrainians of light, heat, water.” The International Atomic Energy Agency said two of Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants reduced power “due to renewed shelling of the country’s energy infrastructure.”
The barrage was broad, also taking aim at the capital, Kyiv, and Lviv, near Ukraine's Western border with Poland. It also struck critical infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast. Seven people were wounded there, two of them seriously, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Air raid sirens sounded across much of the country.
Also Friday, Moldova’s Ministry of Defense said that a missile was detected traversing its airspace near the border with Ukraine. Moldova’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Russian ambassador in Chisinau has been summoned for talks over the “unacceptable violation”.
The ministry said that the missile was detected in its airspace at around 10 a.m. and flew over two border villages before heading toward Ukraine.
The spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Forces, Yurii Ihnat, told The Associated Press that another missile crossed the airspace of Romania, a NATO member country. Romania’s defense ministry denied that, however, saying the closest the missile came to Romania’s airspace was approximately 35 kilometers (20 miles).
High-voltage infrastructure facilities were hit in the eastern, western and southern regions, Ukraine’s energy company, Ukrenergo, said, resulting in power outages in some areas. It was the 14th round of massive strikes on the country’s power supply, the company said. The last one occurred on Jan. 26 as Moscow seeks to demoralize Ukrainians by leaving them without heat and water in the bitter winter.
Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatolii Kurtiev said the city had been hit 17 times in one hour, which he said made it the most intense period of attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
Ukraine’s Air Force shot down 10 Russian missiles over Kyiv, according to the Kyiv City Administration. The fragments of one missile damaged two cars, a house and electricity wires. No casualties were reported.
The Ukraine Air Force said Russia launched S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles on the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia provinces. Those missiles cannot be destroyed in mid-air by air defenses but they have a relatively short range so the Russians have used them for attacks on areas not far from Russian-controlled territory.
The Khmelnytskyi province in Western Ukraine was also attacked with Shahed drones, according to regional Gov. Serhii Hamalii.
Russia has in the past used Iranian-made Shahed drones to strike at key Ukrainian infrastructure and sow fear among civilians, according to Western analysts. They are known as suicide drones because they nosedive into targets and explode on impact like a missile.