United News of Bangladesh

The unusually warm conditions in Europe that marked the festive season broke records in several countries on the continent, on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the UN weather agency said. The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) linked the record-breaking heat  to widely accepted peer-reviewed scientific data from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicating that the frequency of cold spells and frost days "will decrease." "Strong declines in glaciers, permafrost, snow cover extent, and snow seasonal duration at high latitudes or altitudes are observed and will continue in a warming world," the IPCC said. According to the UN agency, New Year temperatures soared above 20 degrees Celsius in many European countries, even in central Europe. National and many local temperature records for December and January were also broken in several countries, from southern Spain to eastern and northern parts of Europe, the WMO said. At Spain's Bilbao airport, a reading of 25.1 degrees Celsius on January 1 smashed the previous all-time record established 12 months earlier, by 0.7 degrees Celsius. Read more: Pope on Christmas: Jesus was poor, so don’t be power-hungry And in the eastern French city of Besançon, which is usually chilly at this time of year, temperatures hit a new all-time high of 18.6 degrees Celsius on New Year's Day, 1.8 degrees Celsius above the previous record, dating back to January 1918. In the German city of Dresden, the 1961 New Year's Eve record of 17.7 degrees Celsius was left trailing by the 19.4 degrees Celsius reading taken on December 31, 2022, just as Poland's Warsaw residents saw in the new year with temperatures peaking at 18.9 degrees Celsius, a staggering 5.1 degrees Celsius higher than the previous all-time record for January, from 1993. Further north, on Denmark's Lolland island, 2023 started with a new high of 12.6 degrees Celsius, overtaking the 12.4 degrees Celsius record set in 2005. The WMO attributed the warm spell in Europe to a high-pressure zone over the Mediterranean region which encountered an Atlantic low-pressure system. Their interaction induced a strong south-west flux that brought warm air from north-western Africa to middle latitudes, the UN agency said, adding that this hotter-than-normal air was further warmed when passing the North Atlantic, due to a higher-than-normal sea surface temperature. Read more: A Christmas season without its traditional glow in Ukraine Highlighting the influence of warmer sea waters on weather patterns, the WMO noted that in the eastern North Atlantic, sea surface temperature was 1 to 2 degrees Celsius higher than normal, and near the coasts of Iberia, even more. All this caused record-breaking heat in several European countries on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the WMO said. The weather extremes experienced in Europe are projected to carry on increasing, the WMO said, as it referenced a recent analysis published with "high confidence" by the IPCC. "Regardless of future levels of global warming, temperatures will rise in all European areas at a rate exceeding global mean temperature changes, similar to past observations," the IPCC said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it wouldn’t follow suit. Putin did not appear to condition his cease-fire order on Ukraine’s acceptance, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually pause on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line or elsewhere. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks. At various points during the war that began Feb. 24, Russian authorities have ordered limited, local truces to allow civilian evacuations or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday’s order was the first time Putin has directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine. “Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ,” Putin’s order said.  The order didn’t specify whether it would apply to both offensive and defensive operations. It wasn’t clear, for example, whether Russia would strike back if Ukraine kept fighting.  Ukrainian officials from Zelenskky on down dismissed Putin’s moves. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy stopped short of stating his forces would reject Putin’s request to suspend fighting, instead questioning the Russian leadership’s motives. “Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the Donbas for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Zelenskyy said. “What will it give? Just another increase in the count of losses.” Zelenskyy claimed that since he unveiled a peace plan in November, almost 110,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, and he accused the Kremlin of planning the fighting pause “to continue the war with renewed vigor.” The most comprehensive recent Western estimate of Russia’s military losses was from a senior U.S. military official, who said in November that about 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. Russian authorities haven’t provided any recent figure for their military casualties. Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted that Russian forces “must leave the occupied territories — only then will it have a ‘temporary truce.’” Ukraine’s National Security Council chief Oleksiy Danilov told Ukrainian TV: “We will not negotiate any truces with them.” He also tweeted: “What does a bunch of little Kremlin devils have to do with the Christian holiday of Christmas? Who will believe an abomination that kills children, fires at maternity homes and tortures prisoners? A cease-fire? Lies and hypocrisy. We will bite you in the singing silence of the Ukrainian night.” U.S. President Joe Biden said it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches on Christmas and New Year’s. “I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,” he said, without elaborating. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials ”have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.” He said the truce order seems to be a ploy “to rest, refit, regroup, and ultimately re-attack.” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric welcomed the move but said it “will not replace a just peace in line with the U.N. Charter and International law.” Putin acted after the Russian Orthodox Church head, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a truce from noon Friday through midnight Saturday Moscow time (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 3 p.m. EST Saturday). The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7. Kirill has previously called the war part of Russia’s “metaphysical struggle” to prevent a Western liberal ideological encroachment. Zelenskyy had proposed starting a path toward peace with a Russian troop withdrawal before Dec. 25, but Moscow rejected it. Political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said the cease-fire order “fits well into Putin’s logic, in which Russia is acting on the right side of history and fighting for justice.” “In this war, Putin feels like a ‘good guy,’ doing good not only for himself and the ‘brotherly nations,’ but also for the world he’s freeing from the ‘hegemony’ of the United States,” Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank, wrote on Telegram. She also linked Putin’s move to Ukrainian forces’ recent strike on Makiivka that killed at least 89 Russian servicemen. “He really doesn’t want to get something like that for Christmas,” she said. “On the 8th of March (Women’s Day), (Ukraine’s) independence day, Christmas (Dec. 25) and the New Year, there were no cease-fires. Why should there be one now?” said Sophiia Romanovska, a 21-year-old student who fled Mariupol for Kyiv, peppering her comments with expletives. Putin issued the truce order after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged him in a phone call to implement a “unilateral cease-fire,” according to the Turkish president’s office. The Kremlin said Putin “reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogue” with Ukrainian authorities. Erdogan told Zelenskyy later that Turkey was ready to mediate a “lasting peace.” Erdogan has made such offers frequently, helped broker a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain, and has facilitated prisoner swaps. Russia’s professed readiness for peace talks came with the usual conditions: that “Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognize new territorial realities,” the Kremlin said, referring to Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize Crimea and other illegally seized territory as part of Russia. Previous attempts at peace talks have failed over Moscow’s territorial demands because Ukraine insists Russia withdraw from occupied areas. Coupled with talk of diplomacy were new pledges Thursday of military support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy called the pledges “really a great victory for our state.” Germany said it would match a U.S. announcement last month to supply Ukraine with a Patriot missile battery, the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Kyiv. Germany also said it would supply Marder armored personnel carriers, and France said it will discuss with Ukraine delivery of armored combat vehicles that can destroy tanks. U.S. officials said they will send Ukraine nearly $3 billion in military aid in a new package that will for the first time include several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles. The aim is to get as much aid to Ukrainian forces as possible before spring begins and fighting increases. An announcement was expected Friday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the package’s details had not been announced. The Kremlin contends the West’s supply of weapons to Ukraine is prolonging the conflict. While more weapons arrive, the battlefield situation appears to have settled into a stalemate and war of attrition. As winter sets in, troop and equipment mobility is more limited. In the latest fighting, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said Thursday that Russian shelling killed at least five civilians and wounded eight in the previous 24 hours. An intense battle has left 60% of the eastern city of Bakhmut in ruins, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Ukrainian defenders appear to be holding the Russians back. Taking the city in the Donbas region, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia, would not only give Putin a major battlefield gain after months of setbacks but rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow Moscow’s forces to press toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. In what appeared to be a move to entice more men to join the fight, the first convicts recruited for battle by the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, received a promised government pardon after serving six months on the front line. A video released by Russia’ state RIA Novosti news agency showed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s millionaire owner, shaking hands with about 20 pardoned men.  

The French Defense Ministry said Thursday it will soon hold talks with its Ukrainian counterpart to arrange for the delivery of armored combat vehicles in what France's presidency says will be the first time this type of Western-made wheeled tank destroyer will be given to the Ukrainian military. Discussions will include the delivery timetable and the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the equipment, the ministry said. Designated as “light tanks” in French, the AMX-10 RC carries a 105-milimeter cannon and two machine guns. It's primarily designed for reconnaissance missions and has enough armor to protect against light infantry weapons, according to the French defense ministry. They have wheels rather than tracks, allowing it to be more mobile than heavy tanks. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to Twitter to thank France the weapons and for "intensifying work with partners in the same direction.” Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks. Read more: France’s defense minister goes to Ukraine to boost support France's decision was announced after an hour-long call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Zelenskyy Wednesday afternoon. The Elysee declined to provide details about the agreement. The AMX-10 RC has been in service with the French military since 1981 and has undergone recent upgrades. France's defense ministry said the combat vehicle is now being gradually replaced by the new equivalent named Jaguar. The decision is another in France's military support to Ukraine, following the French defense minister's visit to Kyiv last week. Paris has supplied Ukraine with a substantial chunk of its arsenal of Caesar cannons, as well as anti-tank missiles, Crotale air defense missile batteries and rocket launchers. It is also training some 2,000 Ukrainian troops on French soil. U.S. President Joe Biden said his administration is considering sending to Ukraine Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a medium armored combat vehicle that can serve as a troop carrier. Biden was asked during an exchange with reporters while traveling in Kentucky whether providing the tracked armored fighting vehicle to Ukraine was on the table. He responded “yes,” without offering further comment. The German government has for months faced calls from Kyiv and some lawmakers at home to deliver Leopard 2 heavy tanks to Ukraine, but has said that it wouldn’t go alone with such a move and that no other country has supplied similar Western equipment. The co-leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, Saskia Esken, told n-tv television Thursday that Scholz and the government are in regular and close contact “with our partners, with our friends, of course particularly with the Americans” on weapons deliveries. Read more: Biden, Macron ready to talk Ukraine, trade in state visit Britain says it has given Ukraine more than 200 armored vehicles for troop transport, but no tanks as of yet.

Britain had its warmest year on record in 2022, official figures showed Thursday, the latest evidence that climate change is transforming Europe’s weather. The Met Office weather agency said the provisional annual average temperature in the U.K. was 10.03 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit), the highest since comparable records began in 1884. The previous record was 9.88 Celsius (49.8 Fahrenheit) set in 2014. Met Office scientists said human activity — primarily fossil fuel emissions — has made such warm conditions vastly more likely. Britain's 10 hottest years on record have all been since 2003. “The results showed that recording 10C in a natural climate would occur around once every 500 years, whereas in our current climate it could be as frequently as once every three to four years,” said Met Office climate attribution scientist Nikos Christidis. Britain is not alone. France’s average temperature was above 14 Celsius (57.2 Fahrenheit) in 2022, making it the hottest year since weather readings began in 1900. Switzerland's meteorological service said the alpine nation's annual average temperature of 7.4 Celsius (45,3 Fahrenheit) was “by far the highest value since measurements began in 1864.” Spain also had its hottest year since records started in 1961, according to the national weather agency Aemet, with an average daily temperature of 15.4 Celsius (59.7 Fahrenheit). It said the four hottest years on record for the southern European country have all come since 2015. Read more: Dangerous heat predicted to hit 3 times more often in future Last year saw summer drought and heat waves across much of Europe, with the temperature in Britain rising above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for the first time on record. Norway’s Svalbard islands in the Arctic had their warmest summer in more than a century of record-keeping. The archipelago’s average temperature for June, July and August was 7.4 Celsius (45.3 Fahrenheit), the Norwegian Meteorological Institute said. Autumn brought more heavy rain in parts of Europe, including the mountainous Italian island of Ischia, where downpours in November triggered a massive landslide that pushed cars and buildings into the sea and killed at least a dozen people. Unlike the U.S. and Canada, which have been hit by bitter cold and snowstorms, much of Europe is experiencing unseasonably warm winter weather. In Germany, the year ended with the warmest New Year’s Eve on record, with temperatures reaching 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) in the south of the country. Belarus, Belgium, Czechia, Latvia, Poland and the Netherlands all set national record daily highs for Dec. 31 or Jan. 1. As 2023 begins, many low and medium-altitude ski resorts in the Alps, the Pyrenees and other European ranges are suffering from a lack of snow. Read more: Weather, climate disasters hit millions, cost billions in 2022: UN In Bosnia, spring-like weather has foiled even artificial snow — either it’s too warm to make it, or it melts soon after being spat out onto the slopes. Along the slopes in Bjelasnica near Sarajevo on Wednesday, snow accumulation amounted to little more than several white patches on an otherwise grassy landscape of brown and green.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a frigate armed with the country's latest Zircon hypersonic missile on a trans-ocean cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine. Russia touts that the Zircon missile can evade any Western air defenses by flying at an astounding 7,000 miles per hour (11,265 km/h). Here is a glance at the ship and its weapons. Read more: EU hails high gas storage levels despite Russian cuts THE PRIDE OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY Commissioned by the navy in 2018 following long trials, the Admiral Gorshkov is the first ship in the new series of frigates which were designed to replace the aging Soviet-built destroyers as a key strike component of the Russian navy. Armed with an array of missiles, the ship is 130-meters (427-feet) long and has a crew of about 200. In 2019, it circled the world oceans on a 35,000-nautical mile journey. INTENSIVE TESTS The Admiral Gorshkov has served as the main testbed for the latest Russian hypersonic missile, Zircon. In recent years, the Zircon has undergone a series of tests, including being launched at various practice targets. The military declared the tests successful and Zircon officially entered service last fall. Zircon is intended to arm Russian cruisers, frigates and submarines and could be used against both enemy ships and ground targets. It is one of several hypersonic missiles that Russia has developed. THE NEW WEAPON Putin has hailed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing anti-missile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (over 620 miles). Putin has emphasized that Zircon gives the Russian military a long-range conventional strike capability, allowing it to strike any enemy targets with precision. Russia's hypersonic weapons drive emerged as the U.S. has been working on its own Conventional Prompt Global Strike capability that envisions hitting an adversary’s strategic targets with precision-guided conventional weapons anywhere in the world within one hour. Putin heralded Zircon as Russia's answer to that, claiming that the new weapon has no rival, giving Russia a strategic edge. Months before ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin put the U.S. and its NATO allies on notice when he warned that Russian warships armed with Zircon would give Russia a capability to strike the adversary's “decision-making centers” within minutes if deployed in neutral waters. Speaking via video link during Wednesday's sendoff ceremony, Putin again praised Zircon as a “unique weapon” without an “equivalent for it in any country in the world.” In response, the Pentagon said it is monitoring the ship, and did not think it presented a threat that could not be countered. “We are aware of the reports regarding the Russian launch of a frigate, the Admiral Grorshkov. We will continue to routinely monitor its activities as we maintain awareness of our operating environment," said Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Roger Cabiness. "While we do not comment on specific capabilities or speculate on hypotheticals, the Department of Defense remains confident in our ability to deter our adversaries and defend United States national security interests at any time, in any place.” Read more: Russia says phone use allowed Ukraine to target its troops OTHER RUSSIAN HYPERSONIC WEAPONS Russia has already commissioned the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles for some of its ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that constitute part of Russia’s strategic nuclear triad. Putin has hailed the Avangard's ability to maneuver at hypersonic speeds on its approach to target, dodging air defenses. The Russian military has also deployed the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on its MiG-31 aircraft and used them during the war in Ukraine to strike some priority targets. Kinzhal reportedly has a range of about 1,500 kilometers (about 930 miles). PATROL DUTY Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin on Wednesday that the Admiral Gorshkov will patrol the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean, but didn’t give further details. Shoigu said the Admiral Gorshkov's crew will focus on “countering the threats to Russia, maintaining regional peace and stability jointly with friendly countries.” He added the crew will practice with hypersonic weapons and long-range cruise missiles “in various conditions." Some military experts say a single, hypersonic missile-armed warship is no match for the massive naval forces of the U.S. and its allies. But others noted that the frigate's potential deployment close to U.S. shores could be part of Putin's strategy to up the ante in the Ukrainian conflict. “This is a message to the West that Russia has nuclear-tipped missiles that can easily pierce any missile defenses,” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote in a commentary.

Natural gas storage levels in the European Union stand at nearly 84% and were higher in December than the average amount in reserve 4-6 years ago, the EU’s executive branch said Wednesday, despite Russian attempts to choke off supplies amid its war on Ukraine. Fearing winter shortages, the 27 EU countries began stocking up on gas last year. Joint gas reserve levels climbed to 82% by September, well ahead of an 80% target set for November. Gas consumption also dropped by 20% from August to November as prices spiked. Read more: Bangladesh may prefer to import Russian oil via third country Angered by EU war-related sanctions, Russia tightened its gas taps to Europe last year. Its pipeline gas accounted for 40% of all gas Europe imported before President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine in late February, but now it only accounts for around 9%. “It’s a fairly good position to be in,” EU commission spokesman Tim McPhie told reporters. “We have a healthy level of gas storage for the start of this year, but we are by no means complacent. We know that this year will continue to be challenging.” The commission estimates that joint gas storage levels stand at almost 84%, and that storage levels in December were 13% higher than the EU average in 2016-2018. Energy prices have also tumbled in recent months, in part due to milder than expected winter weather. Read more: All you need to know about Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline “The more we can invest in energy efficiency, reducing energy use, and the more that we can give a boost to renewables the better we will be based in terms of reducing our dependence on gas,” which influences electricity prices and contributes to global warming, McPhie said. The first regular shipment of liquefied natural gas from the United States arrived in Germany on Tuesday, part of wide-ranging European efforts to find new, more reliable suppliers and replace resources once bought from Russia.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to halve inflation, grow the U.K. economy and stop illegal immigration Wednesday as he set out his Conservative government’s priorities in his first major speech of 2023. Sunak focused on tackling the U.K.’s slowing economy and made promises to reduce national debt. He also vowed to pass new laws to stop migrants from arriving on U.K. shores in small boats, as well as cut massive backlogs in Britain’s public health service. “Those are the people’s priorities. They are your government’s priorities. And we will either have achieved them or not,” Sunak said. “No trick, no ambiguity, we’re either delivering for you or we’re not. We will rebuild trust in politics through action, or not at all,” he added. Sunak, who came to office in October after a tumultuous year in U.K. politics that saw the resignation of two other prime ministers, stressed that he would deliver stability. He said his first priority was to “halve inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security.” Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, unveiled a disastrous package of unfunded tax cuts in September and was forced to quit after less than two months in the job. Her policies sent the British pound tumbling, drove up the cost of borrowing and triggered emergency intervention from Britain’s central bank. Read more: Rishi Sunak as UK PM: What are the expectations? Since Sunak replaced Truss in late October, the U.K. economy has calmed but his government is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and widening labor unrest as key public sector workers from nurses and ambulance drivers to train workers stage disruptive strikes to demand better pay to keep pace with soaring inflation. Inflation in the U.K. stood at 10.7% in November — down slightly from October — but that’s still near the highest in four decades. Energy and food costs have soared, in large part driven by Russia’s war on Ukraine, and living standards have plunged for millions of Britons. In recent weeks, Sunak’s government was also under increasing pressure to address failings in the public health system, with many frontpage headlines focusing on the lack of hospital beds and record waiting times for seeing a doctor or getting an ambulance. Authorities have blamed high numbers of flu and COVID-19 cases, but health chiefs say the problems are longstanding and a result of chronic government underfunding. Sunak has also repeatedly said that stopping migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats to claim asylum in the U.K. was a top priority for his term in office. Last year more than 45,700 people crossed the Channel to the U.K. — a record high and up 60% compared to numbers in 2021. Read more: Next UK PM: Rishi Sunak a strong favorite “We will pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed,” Sunak said. Sunak’s Conservative Party, which has been in power for 12 years, is lagging behind the opposition Labour Party in polls. The next general election is due to take place by the end of 2024.

Unauthorized use of cell phones by Russian soldiers led to a deadly Ukrainian rocket attack on the facility where they were stationed, the Russian military said late Tuesday, raising the death toll from the weekend attack to 89. Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement that phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike. Sevryukov said unspecified measures were being taken to “prevent similar tragic incidents in the future” and promised to punish officials responsible for the infraction. Read more: Russia, shaken by Ukrainian strike, could step up drone use The attack, one of the deadliest on the Kremlin’s forces since the start of the war over 10 months ago, occurred one minute into the new year, according to Sevryukov. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a U.S.-provided HIMARS multiple launch system at a building “in the area of Makiivka” where the soldiers were stationed. Two rockets were downed but four hit the building and detonated, prompting the collapse of the structure. The Russian Defense Ministry initially said the strike killed 63 troops. But as emergency crews sifted through the rubble of the building, the death toll has grown to 89, Sevryukov said on Tuesday. The regiment’s deputy commander was among the dead. Other, unconfirmed reports put the death toll much higher. The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s armed forces claimed Sunday that around 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim couldn’t be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school. Read more:  The attack marked yet another setback for the Kremlin’s bogged-down war effort in Ukraine, undermined by a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive. It stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the war is being conducted. Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region.

Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers. That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own. Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them. “Many states are developing this technology,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst. ”Clearly, it’s not all that difficult.” The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use. Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.” “I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview. Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines. Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said. “We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future.” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons. Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI. Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say. Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot. “The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away. Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants. Read more: Ukraine reports more Russian drone attacks The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded. If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first. An inconclusive U.N. report last year suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants. A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so. Fully autonomous AI is already helping to defend Ukraine. Utah-based Fortem Technologies has supplied the Ukrainian military with drone-hunting systems that combine small radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, both powered by AI. The radars are designed to identify enemy drones, which the UAVs then disable by firing nets at them — all without human assistance. The number of AI-endowed drones keeps growing. Israel has been exporting them for decades. Its radar-killing Harpy can hover over anti-aircraft radar for up to nine hours waiting for them to power up. Other examples include Beijing’s Blowfish-3 unmanned weaponized helicopter. Russia has been working on a nuclear-tipped underwater AI drone called the Poseidon. The Dutch are currently testing a ground robot with a .50-caliber machine gun. Honchar believes Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them. “I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate. AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a Dec. 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.” Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy. “It’s not going to be easy to know if and when Russia crosses that line,” said Gregory C. Allen, former director of strategy and policy at the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Switching a drone from remote piloting to full autonomy might not be perceptible. To date, drones able to work in both modes have performed better when piloted by a human, Allen said. The technology is not especially complicated, said University of California-Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, a top AI researcher. In the mid-2010s, colleagues he polled agreed that graduate students could, in a single term, produce an autonomous drone “capable of finding and killing an individual, let’s say, inside a building,” he said. An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.   Washington policymakers say they won’t agree to a ban because rivals developing drones cannot be trusted to use them ethically. Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who, like Russell, campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people. “If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of “Machines Behaving Badly.” “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.” Scientists also worry about AI weapons being repurposed by terrorists. In one feared scenario, the U.S. military spends hundreds of millions writing code to power killer drones. Then it gets stolen and copied, effectively giving terrorists the same weapon. Read more: Russia, shaken by Ukrainian strike, could step up drone use The global public is concerned. An Ipsos survey done for Human Rights Watch in 2019 found that 61% of adults across 26 countries oppose the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems. To date, the Pentagon has neither clearly defined “autonomous weapon” nor authorized a single such weapon for use by U.S. troops, said Allen, the former Defense Department official. Any proposed system must be approved by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two undersecretaries. That’s not stopping the weapons from being developed across the U.S. Projects are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military labs, academic institutions and in the private secto The Pentagon has emphasized using AI to augment human warriors. The Air Force is studying ways to pair pilots with drone wingmen. A booster of the idea, former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, said in a report last month that it “would be crazy not to go to an autonomous system” once AI-enabled systems outperform humans — a threshold that he said was crossed in 2015, when computer vision eclipsed that of humans. Humans have already been pushed out in some defensive systems. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield is authorized to open fire automatically, although it is said to be monitored by a person who can intervene if the system goes after the wrong target. Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Kallenborn, the George Mason researcher. So will future wars become a fight to the last drone? That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”

Emergency crews on Tuesday sifted through the rubble of a building struck by Ukrainian rockets, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers in the latest blow to the Kremlin’s war strategy as Ukraine says Moscow’s tactics could be shifting. An Associated Press video of the scene in Makiivka, a town in the partially Russian-occupied eastern Donetsk region, showed five cranes and emergency workers removing big chunks of concrete under a clear blue sky. In the attack, which apparently happened last weekend, Ukrainian forces fired rockets from a U.S.-provided HIMARS multiple launch system, according to a Russian Defense Ministry statement. Read more: Ukrainian rocket strike kills 63 Russian troops: Moscow It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and an embarrassment that stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the war is being conducted. The Russian statement Monday about the attack provided few other details. Other, unconfirmed reports put the death toll much higher. The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s armed forces claimed Sunday that around 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim couldn’t be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school. Satellite photos analyzed by The AP show the apparent aftermath of the strike. An image from Dec. 20 showed the building standing. An image from Jan. 2 showed it reduced to rubble. Other days had intense cloud cover, making seeing the site by standard satellite imagery impossible. Vigils for soldiers killed in the strike took place in two Russian cities Tuesday, the state RIA Novosti agency reported. In Samara, in southwestern Russia, locals gathered for an Orthodox service in memory of the dead. The service was followed by a minute’s silence, and flowers were laid at a Soviet-era war memorial, RIA reported. Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region. With the fighting raging much longer than anticipated by the Kremlin, and becoming bogged down in a war of attrition amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by Western-supplied weapon s, Russian President Vladimir Putin is mulling ways of regaining momentum. His plan, according to Ukrainian officials, includes stepping up bombardments of Ukraine territory with Iranian-made exploding drones. “We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by Shaheds (exploding drones),” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address late Monday. He said the goal is to break Ukraine’s resistance by “exhausting our people, (our) air defense, our energy,” more than 10 months after Russia invaded its neighbor. For the Russian military, the exploding drones are a cheap weapon which also spreads fear among Ukrainian troops and civilians. The United States and its allies have sparred with Iran over Tehran’s role in allegedly supplying Moscow with the drones. The Institute for the Study of War said that Putin is striving to strengthen support for his strategy among key voices in Russia. “Russia’s air and missile campaign against Ukraine is likely not generating the Kremlin’s desired information effects among Russia’s nationalists,” the think tank said late Monday. Read more: Ukraine reports more Russian drone attacks “Such profound military failures will continue to complicate Putin’s efforts to appease the Russian pro-war community and retain the dominant narrative in the domestic information space,” it added. Putin’s additional reliance on drones might not help him achieve his goals, however, as Ukraine claims a high success rate against the weapons. During the first two days of the new year, which were marked by relentless nighttime drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, the country’s forces shot down more than 80 Iranian-made drones, Zelenskyy said. Since September, Ukraine’s armed forces have shot down almost 500 drones, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat claimed in a television interview Tuesday. As well as seeking to wear down resistance to Russia’s invasion, the long-range bombardments have targeted the power grid to leave civilians at the mercy of biting winter weather as power outages ripple across the country. In the latest fighting, a Russian missile strike overnight on the city of Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region wounded two people, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported Tuesday. The Russian military on Tuesday acknowledged carrying out strikes on Druzhkivka and Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk. The Defense Ministry claimed it destroyed four HIMARS launchers in the area. This claim could not be independently verified. A reporter with French broadcaster TF1 was live on television screens when a blast from one of the strikes erupted behind him in Druzhkivka. A German reporter with Bild newspaper suffered a minor injury from shrapnel in the same bombardment. Officials said the attack ruined an ice hockey arena described as the largest hockey and figure skating school in Ukraine. In the recently retaken areas of the southern Kherson region, Russian shelling on Monday killed two people and wounded nine, Kherson’s Ukrainian governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said Tuesday. He said Russian forces fired at the city of Kherson 32 times on Monday. He also reported that two people were killed in the Kherson region Tuesday after driving over a mine left by withdrawing Russian troops. Also, one civilian was killed and two others wounded on Tuesday morning as Russian forces shelled the city of Kurakhove in the eastern Donetsk region, hitting a residential area, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported.