Europe
Europe agrees to ban Russian coal, but struggles on oil, gas
The European Union nations have agreed to ban Russian coal in the first sanctions on the vital energy industry over the war in Ukraine, but it has underlined the 27 countries' inability to agree so far on a much more sweeping embargo on oil and natural gas that would hit Russia harder but risk recession at home.
The coal ban should cost Russia 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) a year, the EU’s executive commission said. Energy analysts and coal importers say Europe could replace Russian supply in a few months from other countries, including the U.S.
The move is significant because it breaks the taboo on severing Europe's energy ties with Russia. It's also certain to fuel already record-high inflation. But compared with natural gas and oil, coal is by far the easiest to cut off quickly and inflicts far less damage on Russian President Vladimir Putin's war chest and the European economy. The EU pays Russia $20 million a day for coal — but $850 million a day for oil and gas.
Shocking pictures of bodies in the Ukrainian town of Bucha are keeping discussion of broader sanctions alive, with EU officials saying they're working on targeting Russian oil.A
Also read: Ukrainian leaders predict more gruesome discoveries ahead
While the EU ponders additional sanctions, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said no embargo of Russian natural gas is up for consideration now.
“And I don’t know if it ever will be on the table,’’ he told reporters Wednesday.
EU countries, especially big economies like Italy and Germany, rely heavily on Russian natural gas to heat and cool homes, generate electricity and keep industry churning.
Still, Draghi said, “the more horrendous this war gets, the allied countries will ask, in the absence of our direct participation in the war, what else can this coalition of allies do to weaken Russia, to make it stop.”
In case a gas embargo is proposed, Italy “will be very happy to follow it” if that would make peace possible, Draghi said. “If the price of gas can be exchanged for peace ... what do we choose? Peace? Or to have the air conditioning running in the summer?"
For now, even the coal ban brings worrying consequences for politicians and consumers. Germany and EU members in Eastern Europe still generate a large share of their power from coal despite a yearslong transition toward cleaner energy sources.
“The coal ban means European consumers will have to brace for high power prices throughout this year,” according to a Rystad Energy statement.
lso read: Ukraine appeals for weapons as fight looms on eastern front
Higher prices in countries that use more coal will spread across the EU through its well-connected power grid, the energy research company said. That will bring more pain. Europe has been facing high energy prices for months over a supply crunch, and jitters over the war have sent them even higher.
Governments already have been rolling out cash support and tax relief for consumers hit by higher utility bills. High energy prices have pushed inflation in the 19 member countries that use the euro currency to a record 7.5%.
Commodities analyst Barbara Lambrecht at German bank Commerzbank said EU governments likely could agree on a coal embargo because it would take effect after three months and only apply to new contracts. The downside is the limited impact on Russia, with coal only 3.5% of its exports and only a quarter going to the EU.
Germany’s coal importer’s association said Russian coal could be completely replaced from the U.S., South Africa, Colombia, Mozambique and Indonesia “by next winter” — at higher prices.
European coal futures prices jumped after the EU announced the coal proposal, from around $255 per ton to $290 per ton. It was approved by the EU ambassadors and the sanctions should become official once published in the EU's official journal on Friday.
The big debate remains oil and natural gas, with the European Union dependent on Russia for 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil. It's tougher for Europe to cut off than the U.S., which imported little Russian oil and no gas and has banned both.
Yet European Council President Charles Michel said, “I believe that measures on oil and even on gas will also be needed sooner or later.”
It's difficult for the EU to agree on energy sanctions because countries like Germany, Italy and Bulgaria are much more dependent on Russian gas in particular than others. Europe has scrambled to get additional gas through pipelines from Norway and Algeria and with more liquefied gas that comes by ship, but those global supplies are limited.
For now, the EU's plan is to cut dependence on Russian gas by two-thirds by year's end and completely over the next several years by stepping up alternative supplies, conservation and wind and solar.
Germany has reduced its reliance on Russian natural gas from 55% to 40%, but the government says the consequences to jobs from a cutoff would be too great.
Germany's steelmaking association, for instance, has warned of forced shutdowns that would throw people out of their jobs or onto government support and send shortages of basic parts rippling through the rest of the economy.
Energy Minister Robert Habeck says the country will halt Russian coal this summer, oil by year's end and gas in mid-2024.
Oil would be easier to ban than natural gas, because like coal, there's a large and liquid global market for oil and it comes mostly by ship, not fixed pipeline like gas.
But it's not problem-free either. Russia is the world's largest oil exporter, with 12% of global supply. Taking its oil to Europe off the market would drive up prices from other exporters, such as Saudi Arabia, when supplies are already tight.
Russia might simply sell the oil to India and China, which aren't taking part in sanctions — although the price Moscow gets might be lower.
The economic hit from a full energy cutoff range from a drop of 1.2% to 2.2% of gross domestic product in the 19 countries using the euro, plus 2 percentage points of additional inflation, recent economist estimates say.
Ukrainian leaders predict more gruesome discoveries ahead
Ukrainian leaders predicted there would be more gruesome discoveries in the days ahead after retreating Russian forces left behind crushed buildings, streets strewn with destroyed cars and mounting civilian casualties that drew condemnation from across the globe.
Kremlin forces devastated the northern city of Chernihiv as part of their attempt to sweep south toward the capital before retreating. In the aftermath, dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO and other sympathetic countries to help face down an expected offensive in the east. Nations from the alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital.
The mayor of Bucha, near Kyiv, said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and some corpses with their hands tied were “dumped like firewood” into recently discovered mass graves, including one at a children’s camp.
Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could be only the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying “there it is much more horrible.”
Also Read: Russian retreat reveals destruction as Ukraine asks for help
Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.
In the seaport city of Mariupol, Ukranian authorities expected to find much the same. “The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow’s troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported that Germany’s foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
In the 6-week-old war, Russian forces failed to take Ukraine’s capital quickly, denying what Western countries said was Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. In the wake of that setback and heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.
On Thursday, a day after Russian forces began shelling their village in the southern Mykolaiv region, Sergei Dubovienko, 52, drove north in his small blue Lada with his wife and mother-in-law to Bashtanka, where they found temporary shelter in a church.
“They started destroying the houses and everything” in Pavlo-Marianovka, he said. “Then the tanks appeared from the forest. We thought that in the morning there would be shelling again, so I decided to leave.”
Hundreds of people have been fleeing villages in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions that are either under attack or occupied by Russian forces.
Tatiana Vizavik, 50, fled Chernobaievka in the Kherson region with her son, daughter-in-law and six grandchildren.
When the Russian attack began, they moved to the basement of an apartment building and spent five nights there. “We had nothing to eat. We had no drinking water,” Vizavik said. “We were frightened to go out. Then some volunteers starting helping us.”
She said they don’t know whether their house survived the shelling because they were too frightened to check before leaving town. They hope to reach safety in the Czech Republic.
Marina Morozova and her husband fled from Kherson, the first major city to fall to the Russians.
“They are waiting for a big battle. We saw shells that did not explode. It was horrifying,” she said.
Morozova, 69, said the only news people get is from Russian television and radio. She said the Russians handed out humanitarian aid so they could film the distribution.
Anxious to keep moving away from areas that Russian troops have reached, the couple and others boarded a van that would take them west. Some will try to leave the country, while others will remain in quieter parts of Ukraine.
The United Nations estimates the war has displaced at least 6.5 million people within the country.
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said that more than 4 million have left Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24 and sparked Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. Half of the refugees are children, according to UNHCR and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF.
The International Organization for Migration, which tracks not just refugees but all people on the move from their homes, estimated that more than 12 million people are stranded in areas of Ukraine under attack.
Also Read: Ukraine appeals for weapons as fight looms on eastern front
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief told The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s “not optimistic” about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, underlining the lack of trust the two sides have for one another. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine’s military status.
It’s not clear how long it will take withdrawing Russian forces to redeploy, and Ukrainian officials have urged people in the country’s east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.
In addition to spurring NATO countries to send more arms, the revelations about possible war crimes led Western nations to step up sanctions, and the Group of Seven major world powers warned that they will continue strengthening the measures until Russian troops leave Ukraine.
The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the European Union approved punishing new steps, including an embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how “Putin’s war has made Russia an international pariah.” He called the images coming from Bucha “horrifying.”
“The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed — in some cases having their bodies desecrated — are an outrage to our common humanity,” Biden said.
Experts say US suspension of COVID aid will prolong pandemic
In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders, a move many health experts slammed as dangerously short-sighted.
They warn the suspension of COVID-19 aid for poorer countries could ultimately allow the kind of unchecked transmission needed for the next worrisome variant to emerge and unravel much of the progress achieved so far.
The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the global pandemic response, delivering more than 500 million vaccines, and the lack of funding will be a major setback. The money has paid for numerous interventions, including a mass vaccination campaign in the Cameroonian capital that saw hundreds of thousands of people get their first dose, as well as the construction of a COVID-19 care facility in South Africa and the donation of 1,000 ventilators to that country.
Other U.S.-funded vaccination campaigns in dozens of countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Mali, could also come to a grinding halt.
Also read: US experts wrestle with how to update COVID-19 vaccines
“Any stoppage of funds will affect us,” said Misaki Wayengera, a Ugandan official who heads a technical committee advising the government on the pandemic response. He said Uganda has leaned heavily on donor help — it received more than 11 million vaccines from the U.S. — and that any cuts “would make it very difficult for us to make ends meet.”
“This is a bit of a kick in the teeth to poor countries that were promised billions of vaccines and resources last year in grand pledges made by the G7 and the G20,” said Michael Head, a global health research fellow at Britain’s Southampton University.
“Given how badly we’ve failed on vaccine equity, it’s clear all of those promises have now been broken,” he said, adding that without concerted effort and money to fight COVID-19 in the coming months, the pandemic could persist for years.
While about 66% of the American population has been fully immunized against the coronavirus, fewer than 15% of people in poorer countries have received a single dose. Health officials working on COVID-19 vaccination in developing countries supported by the U.S. say they expect to see a reversal of progress once the funds disappear.
“Vaccination will stop or not even get started in some countries,” said Rachel Hall, executive director of U.S. government advocacy at the charity CARE. She cited estimates from USAID that the suspended funding would mean scrapping testing, treatment and health services for about 100 million people.
Although vaccines are more plentiful this year, many poorer countries have struggled to get shots into arms and hundreds of millions of donated vaccines have either expired, been returned or sat unused. To address those logistical hurdles, U.S. aid has financed critical services in countries across Africa, including the safe delivery of vaccines, training health workers and fighting vaccine misinformation.
For example, in November the U.S. Embassy in the Cameroonian capital set up a tent for mass vaccination: Within the first five days, more than 300,000 people received a dose. Those kinds of events will now be harder to conduct without American funds.
Hall also noted there would be consequences far beyond COVID-19, saying countries struggling with multiple disease outbreaks, like Congo and Mali, would face difficult choices.
“They will have to choose between fighting Ebola, malaria, polio, COVID and more,” she said.
Jeff Zients, the outgoing leader of the White House COVID-19 task force, expressed regret the legislation doesn’t include resources for the international pandemic fight, noting that would also compromise efforts to track the virus’ genetic evolution.
“It is a real disappointment that there’s no global funding in this bill,” he said. “This virus knows no borders, and it’s in our national interest to vaccinate the world and protect against possible new variants.”
Still, Zients announced the U.S. would be the first to donate “tens of millions” of doses for children to poorer countries and said more than 20 nations had already requested the shots.
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lamented that lawmakers were erring on the side of optimism about the pandemic precisely when another surge might be arriving.
Also read: India reports first case of XE Covid variant
“We’ve made that mistake several times in this pandemic. And we may be making that mistake again,” he said. In recent weeks, COVID-19 cases caused by the hugely infectious omicron subvariant BA.2 have surged across Europe, and American officials say they expect a U.S. spike soon.
Other experts worried the suspension of U.S. global support for COVID-19 might prompt officials to drop current vaccination goals. The World Health Organization had set a target of immunizing at least 70% of people in all countries by the middle of this year, but with nearly 50 countries vaccinating fewer than 20% of their populations, hitting that target is highly unlikely.
Instead, some organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation have pushed for officials to “refocus vaccination goals away from vaccinating 70% of all adults by summer to vaccinating 90% of those most at-risk in each country,” in what some critics say is an implicit acknowledgment of the world’s repeated failures to share vaccines fairly. Others point out there shouldn't be competing vaccine targets and that health authorities simply need to do more, rather than adjusting global goals.
In Nigeria, which has so far received at least $143 million in COVID-19 aid from the U.S, authorities dismissed suggestions their coronavirus programs would suffer as a result of lost funding. The Nigerian president’s office said help from the U.S. was mostly “in kind” via capacity building, research support and donations of laboratory equipment and vaccines. “We are confident that this will not cause any disruption of our current programs,” it said.
However, others warned the U.S. decision set an unfortunate precedent for global cooperation to end the pandemic at a time when fresh concerns like the Ukraine war are drawing more attention.
U.S. President Joe Biden originally planned to convene a virtual summit in the first quarter of this year to keep international efforts on track, but no event has been scheduled.
“In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, we don’t yet have a final date for the summit, but we are working closely with countries and international partners to advance commitments,” said a senior Biden administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
As of this month, WHO said it had gotten only $1.8 billion of the $16.8 billion needed from donors to speed access to coronavirus vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.
“Nobody else is stepping up to fill the void at the moment and the U.S. decision to suspend funding may lead other donor countries to act similarly,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center.
Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, described the U.S. suspension of funding as “devastating.”
“How could this possibly be what we’re debating right now?" she asked. “It’s a moral obligation to the rest of the world to continue to contribute to this global pandemic response, not only to protect ourselves but to protect people from around the world.”
Russian retreat reveals destruction as Ukraine asks for help
Russian troops retreating from this northern Ukrainian city left behind crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid — images that added fuel to Kyiv's calls Thursday for more Western help to halt Moscow's next offensive.
Dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point in Chernihiv, which Russian forces besieged for weeks as part of their attempt to sweep south towards the capital before retreating.
The city's streets are lined with shelled homes and apartment buildings with missing roofs or walls. A chalk message on the blackboard in one classroom still reads: “Wednesday the 23rd of February — class work.”
Russia invaded the next day, launching a war that has forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, displaced millions more within it and sent shock waves through Europe and beyond.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO to face down the coming offensive in the east. Nations from the alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital.
Also read: Ukraine appeals for weapons as fight looms on eastern front
Western allies also ramped up financial penalties aimed at Moscow, including a ban by the European Union on Russian coal imports and a U.S. move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.
Kuleba encouraged Western countries to continue bearing down on Russia, suggesting that any letup will result in more suffering for Ukrainians.
“How many Buchas have to take place for you to impose sanctions?" Kuleba asked reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where Associated Press journalists counted dozens of bodies, some burned, others apparently shot at close range or with their hands bound. "How many children, women, men, have to die — innocent lives have to be lost — for you to understand that you cannot allow sanctions fatigue, as we cannot allow fighting fatigue?”
Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.
Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and corpses with their hands tied were “dumped like firewood” into recently discovered mass graves, including one at a children’s camp.
The mayor said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could just be the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying “there it is much scarier.”
Also read: Russian shelling is prelude to new attack
The world should brace itself, he said, for what might soon be found in the seaport city of Mariupol, saying that on “on every street is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the departure of the Russian troops. The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes.”
He pledged that an international war crimes investigation already underway will identify “each of the executioners” and “all those who committed rape or looting.
Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow's troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported Thursday that Germany's foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
Kuleba became emotional while referring to the horrors in the town, telling reporters that they couldn’t understand “how it feels after seeing pictures from Bucha, talking to people who escaped, knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.”
His comments came in response to a reporter's question about a video allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting a captured and wounded Russian soldier. He said he had not seen the video and that it would be investigated. He acknowledged that there could be “isolated incidents” of violations.
The footage has not been independently verified by the AP.
In the 6-week-old war, Russian forces failed to take Ukraine's capital quickly, denying what Western countries said was Russian leader Vladimir Putin's initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. In the wake of that setback and heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.
The United Nations' humanitarian chief told the AP on Thursday that he's “not optimistic” about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, underlining the lack of trust the two sides have for one another. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine’s military status.
It's not clear how long it will take withdrawing Russian forces to redeploy, and Ukrainian officials have urged people in the country's east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.
Even as Ukraine braced for a new phase of the war, Russia’s withdrawal brought some relief to Chernihiv, which lies near Ukraine's northern border with Belarus and was cut off for weeks.
Vladimir Tarasovets described nights during the siege when he watched the city on fire and listened to the sound of shelling.
“It was very hard, very hard. Every evening there were fires, it was scary to look at the city. In the evening, when it was dark, there was no light, no water, no gas, no amenities at all,” he said. "How did we go through it? I have no words to describe how we managed.”
In addition to spurring NATO countries to send more arms, the revelations about possible war crimes led Western nations to step up sanctions, and the Group of Seven major world powers warned that they will continue strengthening the measures until Russian troops leave Ukraine.
The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the European Union approved punishing new steps, including the embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how “Putin’s war has made Russia an international pariah.” He called the images coming from Bucha “horrifying.”
“The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed — in some cases having their bodies desecrated — are an outrage to our common humanity,” Biden said.
The U.S. State Department said it was blacklisting the United Shipbuilding Corp., Russia's largest military shipbuilder, as well as its subsidiaries and board members. The move blocks their access to American financial systems. The department also said it would levy sanctions against the world's largest diamond mining company, Russia-backed Alrosa.
Ukraine appeals for weapons as fight looms on eastern front
Ukraine told residents of its industrial heartland to leave while they still can and urged Western nations to send “weapons, weapons, weapons” Thursday after Russian forces withdrew from the shattered outskirts of Kyiv to regroup for an offensive in the country’s east.
Russia’s six-week-old invasion failed to take Ukraine’s capital quickly and achieve what Western countries say was President Vladimir Putin’s initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. Russia’s focus is now on the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine.
In Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported on Kyiv’s northern outskirts. Ukrainian authorities are working to identify hundreds of bodies they say were found in Bucha and other towns after Russian troops withdrew and to document what they say were war crimes.
Read: Russian shelling is prelude to new attack
“My agenda is very simple… it’s weapons, weapons and weapons,” Kuleba said as he arrived at NATO headquarters for talks with the military organization’s foreign ministers.
“The more weapons we get and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved,” he said.
Some NATO nations worry they may be Russia’s next target, but the alliance is striving to avoid actions that might pull any of its 30 members directly into the war. Still, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged member nations to send Ukraine more weapons, and not just defensive arms.
“Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, so this distinction between offensive and defensive weapons doesn’t actually have any real meaning,” he said.
Western countries have provided Ukraine with portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, but they have been reluctant to supply aircraft, tanks or any equipment that Ukrainian troops would have to be trained to use.
Asked what more his country was seeking, Kuleba listed planes, land-based missiles, armored vehicles and air defense systems.
Since Moscow announced more than a week ago that it planned to concentrate its forces in the east, growing numbers of Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years and control two areas.
Ahead of its Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk areas as independent states. Military analysts have said Putin also could be seeking to expand into government-controlled territory.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged civilians to evacuate to safer regions before it was too late.
“Later, people will come under fire, and we won’t be able to do anything to help them,” Vereshchuk said.
She said Ukraine and Russian officials agreed to establish 10 civilian evacuation routes from Donetsk, Luhansk and the Zaporizhzhia region. She said residents would be able to seek safety in the cities of Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine and Bakhmut in the east.
Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that Russia was targeting the “line of control” between Ukrainian-held and rebel-controlled areas in the Donbas with artillery and airstrikes and hitting infrastructure targets around Ukraine to wear down the Ukrainian defense.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said at least five civilians were killed and another eight were wounded by Russian shelling on Wednesday.
Read: Turkey suspends trial of Saudi suspects in Khashoggi killing
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it struck fuel storage sites around the cities of Mykolaiv, Zaporozhe, Kharkiv and Chuguev overnight using cruise missiles fired from ships in the Black Sea.
A Ukrainian naval vessel caught fire under unclear circumstances in the besieged port city of Mariupol, satellite photos analyzed Thursday by The Associated Press show. The images from Planet Labs PBC appear to show the Ukrainian command ship Donbas burning at the Sea of Azov port on Wednesday afternoon as a nearby building also burned.
A cause for the fire remained unclear. Russian forces are fighting to capture Mariupol, which would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian forces in the city also could be trying to scuttle the vessel so it doesn’t fall into Russian hands. Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine had accused Ukrainian forces of setting fire to the vessel as a “provocation” to “discredit the Russian military.”
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said more than 5,000 civilians have been killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, including 210 children. The attacks have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine. British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000.
While a tentative state of calm returned to the capital following the Russian withdrawal, the possibility of a renewed attack around Kyiv and an escalation in western Ukraine remains. Air raid sirens were again heard Thursday in Lyiv and the relatively secure western city of Lviv, near the Polish border. There was no immediate report of any strikes hitting the cities.
Oleksandr Shputun, spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reported Thursday that Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, remained blockaded near the Donbas. He said Russian forces also were carrying out “brutal measures” in the southern Kherson region, which they hold.
The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine. In areas north of the capital, Ukrainian officials gathered evidence of Russian atrocities amid signs Moscow’s troops killed people indiscriminately before retreating.
Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of least 410 civilians were found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture. Some victims had apparently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound.
Western officials warned that similar atrocities were likely to have taken place in other areas occupied by Russian troops. Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of trying to cover up war crimes in areas still under their control, “afraid that the global anger over what was seen in Bucha would be repeated.”
“We have information that the Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead people, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and cellars of territory they occupied,” he said in a nighttime video address. “This is only an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.”
Switching from speaking Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy urged ordinary Russians “to somehow confront the Russian repressive machine” instead of being “equated with the Nazis for the rest of your life.”
The Kremlin insists its troops have committed no war crimes and alleged the images of brutality coming out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians.
Bodies were still being collected in the town. Cemetery workers on Wednesday began loading more than 60 bodies into a grocery shipping truck so they could be taken to a facility for further investigation.
Read: Ukraine girds for renewed Russian offensive on eastern front
Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv area west of Kyiv. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March, took locals’ phones and detained and then released some people. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables.
“First we were scared, now we are hysterical,” resident Valentyna Klymenko, 64, said. She said she, her husband and two neighbors weathered the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with a mattress and blankets. “We didn’t cry at first. Now we are crying.”
In reaction to the alleged atrocities, the U.S. announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks. Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.
The U.S. Senate planned to take up legislation Thursday to end normal trade relations with Russia, paving the way for higher tariffs on some imports, and to codify President Joe Biden’s executive action banning imports of Russian oil.
The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on Russian coal.
Zelenskyy said the sanctions would not be effective unless they included a ban on Russian oil, on which Europe relies heavily. He said the West’s sanctions on Russia so far “can’t be called commensurate to the evil the world saw in Bucha” and elsewhere.
Turkey suspends trial of Saudi suspects in Khashoggi killing
A Turkish court ruled Thursday to suspend the trial in absentia of 26 Saudis accused in the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and for the case to be transferred to Saudi Arabia.
Kaghoggi, a United States resident who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed on Oct. 2, 2018, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. He had gone into the consulate for an appointment to collect documents required for him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He never emerged from the building.
Turkish officials alleged that Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate by a team of Saudi agents sent to Istanbul. The group included a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers and individuals who worked for the crown prince’s office. His remains have not been found.
The Istanbul court's decision comes despite warnings from human rights groups that turning the case over to the kingdom would lead to a cover up of the killing, which has cast suspicion on the crown prince.
Also read: Saudi suspect in Khashoggi killing arrested in France
It also comes as Turkey, which is in the throes of a deep economic downturn, has been trying to repair its troubled relationship with Saudi Arabia and an array of other countries in its region. Some media reports have claimed that Riyadh has made improved relations conditional on Turkey dropping the case, which had inflamed tensions between two countries.
The move would pave the way to a resolution of disputes between the two regional heavyweights since the 2011 Arab Spring, including Turkey’s support for Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh considers a terrorist group. Turkey also sided with Qatar in a diplomatic dispute that saw Doha boycotted by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Last week, the prosecutor in the case recommended that it be transferred to the kingdom, arguing that the trial in Turkey would remain inconclusive. Turkey’s justice minister supported the recommendation, adding that the trial in Turkey would resume if the Turkish court is not satisfied with the outcome of proceedings in the kingdom. It was not clear, however, if Saudi Arabia, which has already put some of the defendants on trial behind closed doors, would open a new trial.
During Thursday's hearing, lawyers representing Cengiz asked the court not to move proceedings to Saudi Arabia, the private DHA news agency reported.
“Let’s not entrust the lamb to the wolf,” the agency quoted lawyer Ali Ceylan as telling the court, using a Turkish saying. “Let’s protect the honor and dignity of the Turkish nation.”
The court however, ruled to halt the trial in line with the Justice Ministry's “positive opinion,” DHA reported. It also decided to lift arrest warrants issued against the defendants and gave the sides seven days in which to lodge any opposition to the court’s decisions.
Human rights advocates had also urged Turkey not to transfer the case to Saudi Arabia, arguing that justice for Khashoggi would not be delivered by Saudi courts.
“It's a scandalous decision,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkey director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, asserting that the court had "rubber stamped" a political decision that would allow the government to repair its ties with Saudi Arabia.
“In the interest of realpolitik, Turkey is ready to sacrifice justice for an egregious crime on its own soil,” she told The Associated Press. “(The decision) opens the way for other countries to commit assassinations on Turkish territory and get away with it.”
Cengiz said she would continue to seek justice.
Also read:Jamal Khashoggi killing: Rights group files complaint against Saudi crown prince
“We will continue this (judicial) process with all the power given to me, as a Turkish citizen,” she told reporters outside the courthouse.
“The two countries may be making an agreement, the two countries may be opening a new chapter ... but the crime is still the same crime,” she said. “The people who committed the crime haven't changed. Governments and states must have a principled stance.”
At the time of the crime, Turkey apparently had the Saudi Consulate bugged and shared audio of the killing with the CIA, among others.
The slaying sparked international outrage and condemnation. Western intelligence agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress, have said that an operation of such magnitude could not have happened without knowledge of the prince.
Turkey, which had vowed to shed light on the brutal killing, began prosecuting the defendants in absentia in 2020 after Saudi Arabia rejected requests for their extradition. The defendants included two former aides of the prince.
Some of the men were put on trial in Riyadh behind closed doors. A Saudi court issued a final verdict in 2020 that sentenced five mid-level officials and operatives to 20-year jail terms. The court had originally ordered the death penalty, but reduced the punishment after Khashoggi’s son Salah, who lives in Saudi Arabia, announced that he forgave the defendants. Three others were sentenced to lesser jail terms.
Russian shelling is prelude to new attack
Britain’s defense ministry says Russia is bombarding infrastructure targets to wear down Ukraine’s government and military as it prepares for a renewed assault on the country’s east.
The ministry said in an intelligence update Thursday that “progressing offensive operations in eastern Ukraine is the main focus of Russian military forces.”
Also read:Ukraine seeks arms from NATO as fight looms on eastern front
It says Russia is targeting the “line of control” between Ukrainian-held areas in the Donbas and those held by Russia-supporting separatists with artillery and airstrikes.
The Russian military is also targeting infrastructure in the Ukrainian interior “to degrade the ability of the Ukrainian military to resupply and increase pressure on the Ukrainian government.”
Even so, the U.K. says that “Russian forces are likely to continue facing morale issues and shortages of supplies and personnel.”
Ukraine seeks arms from NATO as fight looms on eastern front
Ukraine was bracing to battle for control of its industrial east and appealing for more help from the West after Russian forces withdrew from the shattered outskirts of Kyiv to regroup.
Authorities were urging people to immediately evacuate from the Donbas region before Russia intensifies its offensive. In Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO to provide more weapons for his war-torn country to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha.
“My agenda is very simple… it’s weapons, weapons and weapons,” Kuleba said as he arrived at NATO headquarters Thursday for talks with the military organization’s foreign ministers about Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion.
“We know how to fight. We know how to win. But without sustainable and sufficient supplies requested by Ukraine, these wins will be accompanied by enormous sacrifices,” Kuleba said. “The more weapons we get and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged members to provide more weapons and not just defensive arms. Some NATO members worry that they may be Russia’s next target but the alliance is striving to avoid moves that might pull countries directly into the conflict.
“NATO is not sending troops to be on the ground. We also have a responsibility to prevent this conflict from escalating beyond Ukraine, and become even more deadly, even more dangerous and destructive,” Stoltenberg said.
Also Read: Ukraine girds for renewed Russian offensive on eastern front
A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said Russia had pulled all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas in the north, sending them into Belarus or Russia to resupply and reorganize, probably to return to fight in the east.
Growing numbers of Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas. “Later, people will come under fire,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in urging civilians to evacuate from the mostly Russian-speaking industrial region, “and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.”
Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas since 2014. Ahead of its Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.
Another Western official, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it may take Russia’s battle-damaged forces as much as a month to regroup for a major push on eastern Ukraine.
In his nightly address Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also warned Russia's military is gearing up for a new offensive in the east.
Ukraine, too, was preparing for battle, he said.
“We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said. “We will seek all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we won’t give them up.”
In areas north of the capital, Ukrainian officials were gathering evidence of Russian atrocities amid signs Moscow’s troops killed people indiscriminately before retreating.
Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of least 410 civilians were found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture. Some victims had apparently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound.
Also Read: Ukrainian refugees find route to US goes through Mexico
Zelenskyy accused Russia of interfering with an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and trying to hide other evidence in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv.
“We have information that the Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead people, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and cellars of territory they occupied,” he said during his latest video address. “This is only an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.”
Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy urged ordinary Russians “to somehow confront the Russian repressive machine” instead of being “equated with the Nazis for the rest of your life.”
He called on Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you have even a little shame about what the Russian military is doing in Ukraine.”
In reaction to the alleged atrocities outside Kyiv, the U.S. announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks. Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.
The U.S. Senate planned to take up legislation Thursday to end normal trade relations with Russia, paving the way for higher tariffs on some imports, and to codify President Joe Biden’s executive action banning imports of Russian oil.
The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on coal.
The Kremlin has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes and alleged the images out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians.
Bodies were still being collected in the city. On Wednesday, The Associated Press saw two in a house in a silent neighborhood. From time to time there was the muffled boom of workers clearing the town of mines and other unexploded ordnance.
Workers at a cemetery began to load more than 60 bodies into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.
Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv area west of Kyiv. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March, taking locals’ phones and detaining and then releasing some people. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables.
“First we were scared, now we are hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She said she, her husband and two neighbors weathered the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with a mattress and blankets. “We didn’t cry at first. Now we are crying.”
In the southern port city of Mariupol, Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, 210 were children. Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death, he said.
Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed. The attacks on the strategic city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses.
British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000. A humanitarian relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying for days without success to get into the city.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine girds for renewed Russian offensive on eastern front
Ukraine braced for a climactic battle for control of the besieged country's industrial east after Russian forces withdrew from the shattered outskirts of Kyiv to regroup and intensify their offensive across the Donbas region, where authorities urged people to evacuate before time runs out.
The mayor of the southern port city of Mariupol said Wednesday that more than 5,000 civilians had been killed there. Meanwhile, in areas north of the capital, Ukrainian officials gathered evidence of Russian atrocities amid signs Moscow’s troops killed people indiscriminately before retreating over the past several days.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Russian military is building up its forces for a new offensive in the east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland. Ukraine, too, was preparing for battle, he said.
“We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said. “We will seek all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we won’t give them up.”
Ukrainian authorities urged people living in the Donbas to evacuate immediately.
Also read:Ukrainian refugees find route to US goes through Mexico
“Later, people will come under fire,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, “and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.”
A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said Russia had completed pulling out all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas in the north, sending them into Belarus or Russia to resupply and reorganize, probably to return to fight in the east.
But a Western official, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it will take Russia’s battle-damaged forces as much as a month to regroup for a major push on eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Western allies have moved to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin over killings they labeled as war crimes.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, 210 were children. Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death, he said.
Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed. The attacks on the strategic city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses.
British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000. A humanitarian relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying for days without success to get into the city.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
In the north, Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture. Some victims had apparently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound.
In his address Wednesday night, Zelenskyy accused Russia of interfering with an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and trying to hide other evidence in Bucha, northeast of Kyiv.
“We have information that the Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead people, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and cellars of territory they occupied,” he said. “This is only an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.”
Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy urged ordinary Russians “to somehow confront the Russian repressive machine” instead of being “equated with the Nazis for the rest of your life.”
Also read:Mariupol’s dead put at 5,000 as Ukraine braces in the east
He called on Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you have even a little shame about what the Russian military is doing in Ukraine.”
In reaction to the alleged atrocities outside Kyiv, the U.S. announced sanctions against Putin's two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks. Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.
The U.S. Senate planned to take up legislation Thursday to end normal trade relations with Russia and to codify President Joe Biden’s executive action banning imports of Russian oil. The trade suspension would allow Biden to enact higher tariffs on certain Russian imports.
The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on coal.
The Kremlin has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes and alleged the images out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians.
More bodies were yet to be collected in Bucha. The Associated Press saw two in a house in a silent neighborhood. From time to time there was the muffled boom of workers clearing the town of mines and other unexploded ordnance.
Workers at a cemetery began to load more than 60 bodies into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.
Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv area west of Kyiv. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March and took locals’ phones. Some people were detained, then released. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables.
“First we were scared, now we are hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She said she, her husband and two neighbors weathered the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with a mattress and blankets. “We didn’t cry at first. Now we are crying.”
To the north of the village, in the town of Borodyanka, rescue workers searched through the rubble of apartment blocks, looking for bodies.
Thwarted in their efforts to swiftly take the capital, increasing numbers of Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas.
Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas since 2014. Ahead of its Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.
The United States and the United Kingdom boycotted an informal meeting Wednesday of the U.N. Security Council called by Russia to press its baseless claims that the U.S. has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine. The meeting was the latest of several moves by Russia that have led Western countries to accuse Moscow of using the U.N. as a platform for disinformation to divert attention from the war.
Russia's allegations have previously been debunked. Ukraine does own and operate a network of biological labs that have received funding and research support from the U.S. and are not a secret. The labs are part of a program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manufactured.
The U.S. efforts date to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.
Ukrainian refugees find route to US goes through Mexico
Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees arriving daily have a message for family and friends in Europe: the fastest route to settle in the United States is booking a flight to Mexico.
A loose volunteer coalition, largely from Slavic churches in the western United States, is guiding hundreds of refugees daily from the airport in the Mexican border city of Tijuana to hotels, churches and shelters, where they wait two to four days for U.S officials to admit them on humanitarian parole. In less than two weeks, volunteers worked with U.S. and Mexican officials to build a remarkably efficient and expanding network to provide food, security, transportation, and shelter.
The volunteers, who wear blue and yellow badges to represent the Ukrainian flag but have no group name or leader, started a waiting list on notepads and later switched to a mobile app normally used to track church attendance. Ukrainians are told to report to a U.S. border crossing as their numbers approach, a system that organizers liken to waiting for a restaurant table.
“We feel so lucky, so blessed,” said Tatiana Bondarenko, who traveled through Moldova, Romania, Austria and Mexico before arriving Tuesday in San Diego with her husband and children, ages 8, 12, and 15. Her final destination was Sacramento, California, to live with her mother, who she hadn’t seen in 15 years.
Also read:Mariupol’s dead put at 5,000 as Ukraine braces in the east
Another Ukrainian family posed nearby for photos under a U.S. Customs and Border Protection sign at San Diego's San Ysidro port of entry, the busiest crossing between the U.S. and Mexico. Volunteers under a blue canopy offered snacks while refugees waited for family to pick them up or for buses to take them to a nearby church.
At the Tijuana airport, weary travelers who enter Mexico as tourists in Mexico City or Cancun are directed to a makeshift lounge in the terminal with a sign in black marker that reads, “Only for Ukrainian Refugees.” It is the only place to register to enter the U.S.
About 200 to 300 Ukrainians were being admitted daily at the San Ysidro crossing this week, with hundreds more arriving in Tijuana, according to volunteers who manage the waiting list. There were 973 families or single adults waiting on Tuesday.
U.S officials told volunteers they aim to admit about 550 Ukrainians daily as processing moves to a nearby crossing that is temporarily closed to the public. CBP didn't provide numbers in response to questions about operations and plans, saying only that it has expanded facilities in San Diego to deal with humanitarian cases.
“We realized we had a problem that the government wasn’t going to solve, so we solved it,” said Phil Metzger, pastor of Calvary Church in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, where about 75 members host Ukrainian families and another 100 refugees sleep on air mattresses and pews.
Metzger, whose pastoral work has taken him to Ukraine and Hungary, calls the operation "duct tape and glue” but refugees prefer it to overwhelmed European countries, where millions of Ukrainians have settled.
The Biden administration has said it will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians but Mexico is the only route producing big numbers. Appointments at U.S. consulates in Europe are scarce, and refugee resettlement takes time.
The administration set a refugee resettlement cap of 125,000 in the 12-month period that ends Sept. 30 but accepted only 8,758 by March 31, including 704 Ukrainians. In the previous year, it capped refugee resettlement at 62,500 but took only 11,411, including 803 Ukrainians.
The administration paroled more than 76,000 Afghans through U.S. airports in response to the departure of American troops last year, but nothing similar is afoot for Ukrainians.
Oskana Dugnyk, 36, hesitated to leave her home in Bucha but acquiesced to her husband's wishes before Russian troops invaded the town and left behind streets strewn with corpses. The couple worried about violence in Mexico with three young children but the robust presence of volunteers in Tijuana reassured them and a friend in Ohio agreed to host them.
Also read: Killing of Ukrainian civilians could bring new sanctions
“So far, so good,” Dugnyk said a day after arriving at a Tijuana gymnasium that the city government opened for about 400 Ukrainians to sleep on a basketball court. “We have food. We have a place to stay. We hope everything will be fine.”
Alerted by text message or social media, Ukrainians are summoned to a grassy hill and bus shelter near the border crossing hours before their numbers are called. The city government opened the bus shelter to protect Ukrainians from torrential rain.
Angelina Mykyta, a college student in Kyiv, acknowledged nerves as her number neared. She fled to Warsaw after the invasion but decided to take a chance on the United States because she wanted to settle with a pastor she knows in Kalispell, Montana.
“I think we'll be OK,” she said while waiting to be escorted from the camp of hundreds of Ukrainians to their final stop in Mexico — a small area with a few dozen folding chairs within earshot of U.S. officials. Some refuse to drink at the final stop, fearing they will have to go to the bathroom and miss their turn.
Lulls end when CBP officers approach: "We need a family." “Give me three more.” “Singles, we need singles.” A volunteer ensures orderly movement.
The arrival of Ukrainians comes as the Biden administration prepares for much larger numbers when pandemic-related asylum limits for all nationalities end May 23. Since March 2020, the U.S. has used Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law, to suspend rights to seek asylum under U.S. law and international treaty.
Metzger, the Chula Vista pastor, said his church cannot long continue its 24-hour-a-day pace helping refugees, and suspects U.S. authorities will not adopt what volunteers have done.
“If you make something go smooth, then everybody's going to come,” he said. “We're making it so easy. Eventually I'm sure they'll say, ‘No, we’re done.'”