Europe
Wildfires in Germany, Czechia threatening tourist region
A large wildfire on the German-Czech border is spreading and threatening to destroy a forested national park popular with tourists.
The fire in the region called Bohemian Switzerland on the Czech side and the Saxon Switzerland national park on the German side, which started on the weekend, had seemed to be under control, but spread again early Thursday, German news agency dpa reported.
Hundreds of firefighters on both sides of the border and with help from neighboring Poland and Slovakia were battling the flames, while local authorities warned tourists to stay away.
About 250 hectares of forest are currently burning and eight firefighting helicopters were helping to douse the flames, dpa reported.
Read: What Causes Wildfire? How to Prevent Forest Fire?
Another large forest fire in the Elbe-Elster district in the eastern German state of Brandenburg also flared up again on Wednesday evening, local authorities said.
Germany's minister for agriculture said Wednesday night the government would help battle the fires and praised those already working to extinguish them. Germany's army has sent several military helicopters to both fires to support local units.
“The emergency forces are already doing a great job here,” Cem Ozdemir said.
The fight against the fire in Brandenburg has been further complicated because some areas are contaminated with World War II ammunition and can only be extinguished from the air by helicopters. It is too dangerous for firefighters to enter these areas as old ammunition triggered by the heat or by people stepping on it can explode at any time.
Security Council can't agree on statement lauding grain deal
The U.N. Security Council has been unable to agree on a statement welcoming last week’s deal to get grain and fertilizer moving from Ukraine and Russia to millions of hungry people around the world, Norway's U.N. ambassador said Wednesday.
The statement also would have commended Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkey’s government for their key roles in arrranging the agreement.
“Norway and Mexico have been working for days to unify the council in one message welcoming the significant deal to resume exports of grains, foodstuffs and fertilizers through the Black Sea,” Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul told The Associated Press. “We regret that this was not possible.”
Russia and Ukraine signed separate agreements Friday with Turkey and the U.N. clearing the way for Ukraine — one of the world’s key breadbaskets — to export 22 million tons of grain and other agricultural goods that have been stuck in Black Sea ports because of Russia's invasion.
The deal also aims to ensure that Russian food and fertilizer have unrestricted access to world markets.
Guterres described the deal as an unprecedented agreement between two parties engaged in a bloody conflict and called it “a beacon of hope” for millions of hungry people who have faced huge increases in the price of food.
Read:Ukraine forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south
A day after the signing, Russia staged an airstrike on the Ukrainian port of Odesa, one of three ports named in the deal for exporting grain. Under the agreement, Kyiv and Moscow agreed not to target vessels and port facilities involved in the initiative.
Guterres “unequivocally” condemned the reported airstrikes in Odesa, citing the commitments made by the parties at the signing ceremony in Istanbul, according to a statement from the U.N. spokesman. The U.N. chief stressed that full implementation of the agreements by Russia, Ukraine and Turkey “is imperative," the U.N. spokesman said.
Council diplomats said Russia objected to the last draft statement on the grain deal because it mentioned Guterres’ condemnation of Saturday’s airstrike.
The proposed statement from Norway and Mexico, obtained by AP, would have welcomed the progress at Friday’s signing of the deal “towards ensuring the safe and secure export of grains, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine and the Russian Federation.”
It would have commended Guterres and Turkey and called for swift implementation of commitments made in Istanbul.
“A unified statement from the council welcoming the deal and commending the secretary-general for his efforts would have been an important signal,” Juul said.
“Norway believes the personal efforts and engagement of the secretary-general has been essential in facilitating negotiations between the parties,” Juul said. “These efforts are more important than ever, as the effects of the war continue to be felt by the people of Ukraine and beyond.”
Ukraine forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south
Ukrainian troops have struck a strategic bridge essential for Moscow to supply its forces occupying the country's south, as Russia pounded several areas in Ukraine with rocket and artillery strikes.
The Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskyi Bridge across the Dnieper River late Tuesday, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, said.
He said the bridge was still standing but its deck was pierced with holes, stopping vehicles from crossing.
The 1.4-kilometer (0.9-mile) bridge sustained serious damage in Ukrainian shelling last week, when it took multiple hits. It was closed for trucks but had remained open for passenger vehicles until the strike late Tuesday.
Ukrainian forces used the U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to hit the bridge, Stremousov said.
The bridge is the main crossing across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region. The only other option is a dam at the hydroelectric plant in Kakhovka, which also came under Ukrainian fire last week but has remained open for traffic.
Knocking the crossings out would make it hard for the Russian military to keep supplying its forces in the region amid repeated Ukrainian attacks.
Early in the war, Russian troops quickly overran the Kherson region just north of the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. They have faced Ukrainian counterattacks, but have largely held their ground.
Read:Russia aims new air strikes at Black Sea coastal target
The Ukrainian attacks on the bridge in Kherson come as the bulk of the Russian forces are stuck in the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas where they have made slow gains in the face of ferocious Ukrainian resistance. Supplies of U.S. weapons such as HIMARS have helped slow the Russian advances.
Russian forces kept up their artillery barrage in the eastern Donetsk region, targeting towns and villages, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
In Bakhmut, a key city on the front line of the Russian offensive, the shelling damaged a hotel and caused casualties, Kyrylenko said. A rescue operation was under way.
Amid Moscow’s push to take full control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russian have gained marginal ground northeast of Bakhmut, according to a Washington D.C.-based think tank.
Russian forces, however, are unlikely to occupy significant additional territory in Ukraine “before the early autumn,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Russian military losses have climbed to nearly 40,000, adding that tens of thousands more were wounded and maimed. His claim couldn't be independently verified.
The Russian military last reported its losses in March, when it said that 1,351 troops were killed in action and 3,825 were wounded.
In other developments:
— The governor of Dnipropetrovsk, in the central eastern area of Ukraine, said that the Russian forces have struck two regions with artillery. Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said that in the town of Marhanets, a woman was wounded and several apartment buildings, a hospital and a school were damaged by the shelling.
— Six people were wounded when the city of Kharkiv, in the northeast, came under shelling overnight, according to the city mayor, Ihor Terekhov.
— British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the Sir Winston Churchill Leadership Award, drawing comparisons between the two leaders in times of crises. Zelenskyy accepted the award by video link during a ceremony at Johnson’s London office that was attended by members of the Churchill family, Ukrainian Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko and Ukrainians who have received training from British soldiers.
EU reaches deal to ration gas amid Russian cut-off fears
European Union governments agreed Tuesday to ration natural gas this winter to protect themselves against any further supply cuts by Russia as Moscow pursues its invasion of Ukraine.
EU energy ministers approved a draft European law meant to lower demand for gas by 15% from August through March. The new legislation entails voluntary national steps to reduce gas consumption and, if they yield insufficient savings, a trigger for mandatory moves in the 27-member bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the move, saying in a statement that “the EU has taken a decisive step to face down the threat of a full gas disruption by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”
On Monday, Russian energy giant Gazprom said it would limit supplies to the EU through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 20% of capacity, heightening concerns that Putin will use gas trade to challenge the bloc’s opposition to the war in Ukraine.
“The winter is coming and we don’t know how cold it will be,” said Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela, whose policy portfolio includes energy. “But what we know for sure is that Putin will continue to play his dirty games in misusing and blackmailing by gas supplies.”
The ministerial agreement was sealed in less than a week. It’s based on a proposal last Wednesday from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Keen to maintain a common EU front over a conflict that shows no sign of ending, the commission said coordinated rationing would enable the bloc as a whole to get through the winter should Russia stop all gas deliveries.
Read: EU prepared for Russian gas cut-off: von der Leyen
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and the West protested with economic sanctions, 12 EU countries have faced halts to, or reductions in, Russian gas deliveries.
Although it has agreed to embargo oil and coal from Russia starting later this year, the EU has refrained from sanctioning Russian natural gas because Germany, Italy and some other member states rely heavily on these imports.
“Germany made a strategic error in the past with its great dependency on Russian gas and faith that it would always flow constantly and cheaply,” said German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who is also responsible for energy and serves as the country’s vice chancellor. “But it is not just a German problem.”
The disruptions in Russian energy trade with the EU are stoking inflation already at record levels in Europe and threatening to trigger a recession in the bloc just as it was recovering from a pandemic-induced slump.
The energy squeeze is also reviving decades-old political tests for Europe over policy coordination. While the EU has gained centralized authority over monetary, trade, antitrust and farm policies, national sovereignty over energy matters still largely prevails.
In a sign of this, the energy ministers scrapped a provision in the draft gas-rationing law that would have given the European Commission the power to decide on any move from voluntary to mandatory actions. Instead, the ministers ensured any decision on mandatory steps will be in member-state hands.
They also diluted other elements of the original proposal, including with exemptions for island countries.
Nonetheless, Tuesday’s deal marks another milestone in EU policy integration and crisis management.
The accord comes just six days after the commission rushed out the draft law — a stark contrast to past EU legislative initiatives in the area of energy that often involved months or years of negotiations among national governments.
In that respect, the new gas-rationing plan resembles developments in EU health policy two years ago when, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, member states agreed to act in unison. This included letting the commission negotiate agreements with pharmaceutical companies on the supply of vaccines to all 27 countries.
Russia aims new air strikes at Black Sea coastal target
Russia targeted Ukraine’s Black Sea regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv with air strikes Tuesday, hitting private buildings and port infrastructure along the country's southern coast, the Ukrainian military said.
The Kremlin’s forces used air-launched missiles in the attack, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said in a Facebook post.
In the Odesa region, a number of private buildings in villages on the coast were hit and caught fire, the report said. In the Mykolaiv region, port infrastructure was targeted.
Hours after the renewed strikes on the south, a Moscow-installed official in the southern Kherson region said the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions will soon be “liberated” by the Russian forces, just like the Kherson region further east.
“The Kherson region and the city of Kherson have been liberated forever,” Kirill Stremousov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The developments came as Ukraine appeared to be preparing a counteroffensive in the south.
Russia previously attacked Odesa’s port at the weekend. The British military said Tuesday there was no indication that a Ukrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles were at the site, as Moscow claimed.
The British Defense Ministry said Russia sees Ukraine’s use of anti-ship missiles as “a key threat” that is limiting its Black Sea Fleet.
“This has significantly undermined the overall invasion plan, as Russia cannot realistically attempt an amphibious assault to seize Odesa,” the military said. “Russia will continue to prioritize efforts to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s anti-ship capability.”
It added that “Russia’s targeting processes are highly likely routinely undermined by dated intelligence, poor planning, and a top-down approach to operations.”
Russian shelling over the previous 24 hours killed at least three civilians and wounded eight more in Ukraine, the president’s office said Tuesday.
In the eastern Donetsk region, where the fighting has been focused in recent weeks, the shelling continued along the entire front line, with the largest cities of the region, including Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Toretsk, being targeted by the Russian forces, a statement said.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko accused Russian troops of using cluster munitions and repeated his call for civilians to evacuate.
“There is not a single safe place left, everything is being shelled," Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. "But there are still evacuation routes for the civilian population.”
The Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington, D.C., reported that the Russians are using mercenaries from the shadowy Wagner Group to capture the Vuhledar Power Plant on the northern outskirts of the Novoluhanske village.
But the Russian forces have made “limited gains” there, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.
The main Russian focus has been on capturing Bakhmut, which Moscow's forces need in order to press their offensive on the main Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Read: Russia hits Ukraine's Black Sea port despite grain deal
“Russian forces made marginal gains south of Bakhmut but are unlikely to be able to effectively leverage these advances to take full control of Bakhmut itself,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
Russian forces continued to launch strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast, and the surrounding region.
Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said the strikes on the city resumed around dawn Tuesday, damaging a car dealership.
“The Russians deliberately target civilian infrastructure objects — hospitals, schools, movie theaters,” Syniehubov told Ukrainian television. “Everything is being fired at, even queues for humanitarian aid, so we’re urging people to avoid mass gatherings.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Moscow wants “the complete subjugation of Ukraine and its people.”
“We must be prepared for this war — which Russia is conducting with absolute brutality, and is conducting in a way that no one else would — to last months,” Baerbock said during a visit to Prague.
Hundreds of firefighters battle blazes in Germany, Czechia
Hundreds of firefighters were battling wildfires in eastern Germany and neighboring Czechia on Tuesday as tourist regions and residential areas were being evacuated.
A large wildfire was spreading quickly in the eastern German state of Brandenburg in a region with lots of bone-dry pine forests where firefighters have to be especially careful because of old World War II ammunition that’s still buried there, German news agency dpa reported.
The large fire in the Elbe-Elster district has already destroyed an area of about 850 hectares and continued to spread quickly because of gusty winds blowing from changing directions.
Seven firefighters were injured, four of whom had to be treated in a hospital for smoke inhalation. No residents were injured, but a pig breeding farm burned down and several animals died.
The state’s explosive ordnance disposal service has designated a small area near the village of Rehfeld as a site where old ammunition could be buried, deputy forest fire protection officer Philipp Haase told dpa. Two German military firefighting helicopters were on site trying to extinguish the flames from the air because firefighters were not allowed to access the area for fear that the ammunition could explode.
Authorities said it was not clear when the fire could be brought under control. More than 350 firefighters were battling the flames and around 300 people from various villages had to be evacuated.
“The situation is still serious. We still have pockets of fire,” local district fire chief Steffen Ludewig told dpa.
Read: Governor declares emergency over wildfire near Yosemite
Further southeast, firefighters from several countries have joined forces to battle a fire in a national park in northern Czech Republic that has spread to the state of Saxony in neighboring Germany.
The fire in the Bohemian Switzerland park broke out on Sunday and was mostly contained before windy weather caused it to spread again on Monday afternoon and overnight. Firefighters said some 30 hectares have been affected in the park and more across the border in Germany.
No injuries have been reported.
Some 80 people have been evacuated from the border town of Hrensko, and more from the village of Mezna, where the flames have destroyed or damaged several homes, firefighters spokesman Lukas Marvan said.
Dozens of German children were evacuated from a summer camp on the Czech side of the border and transported back to Germany.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Interior Minister Vit Rakusan were visiting the area on Tuesday.
Rakusan said some 400 firefighters have been in action and the blaze was not under control by midday Tuesday.
"The situation is very serious,” Rakusan said adding that several neighboring countries had responded to the Czech Republic's call for help to extinguish the fire.
Poland and Slovakia said they were sending helicopters while Italy offered special Canadair planes designed for firefighting.
The German military announced it would send four helicopters to the border region to help fight the flames, dpa reported.
The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute said the smoke has spread 100 or more kilometers (60 miles or more) from the fire.
Russia says it wants to end Ukraine's `unacceptable regime'
Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime,” expressing the Kremlin’s war aims in some of the bluntest terms yet as its forces pummel the country with artillery barrages and airstrikes.
The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports —something that would help ease global food shortages — under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.
“We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime,” Lavrov said at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy's government.
Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east, Lavrov said: "We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”
Lavrov’s comments followed his warning last week that Russia plans to retain control over broader areas beyond eastern Ukraine, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south, and will make more gains elsewhere.
Also read: Russia says strike on Ukrainian port hit military targets
His remarks contrasted with the Kremlin’s line early in the war, when it repeatedly emphasized that Russia wasn’t seeking to overthrow Zelenskyy’s government, even as Moscow’s troops closed in on Kyiv. Russia later retreated from around the capital and turned its attention to capturing the Donbas. The war is now in its sixth month.
Last week, Russia and Ukraine signed agreements aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertilizer.
Ukraine's deputy infrastructure minister, Yury Vaskov, said the first shipment of grain is planned for this week.
Also read: Russia denies attacks on Ukrainian port after grain deal: Turkish minister
While Russia faced accusations that the weekend attack on the port of Odesa amounted to reneging on the deal, Moscow insisted the strike would not affect grain deliveries.
During a visit to the Republic of Congo on Monday, Lavrov repeated the Russian claim that the attack targeted a Ukrainian naval vessel and a depot containing Western-supplied anti-ship missiles. He said the grain agreements do not prevent Russia from attacking military targets.
2 UK leadership contenders face head-to-head TV debate
The two candidates vying to be Britain’s next prime minister will face off in a TV debate Monday, after both sought to woo the Conservative Party’s right-wing base by backing a controversial plan to deport some asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak are battling to succeed the discredited Boris Johnson as head of Britain’s governing party. They were chosen by Conservative lawmakers from an initial field of 11 candidates as finalists to replace Johnson, who quit as party leader on July 7 after months of ethics scandals triggered a mass exodus of ministers from his government.
The winner will automatically become prime minister, governing a country of 67 million — but will be chosen by about 180,000 Conservative Party members. They will vote over the summer with the result announced Sept. 5. Johnson remains caretaker prime minister until his successor is chosen.
Also read: Britain’s Boris Johnson battles to stay as PM amid revolt
Truss, 46, and 42-year-old Sunak have wooed Conservatives by doubling down on policies thought to appeal to the Tory grassroots. Both are backing a contentious deal agreed by the Johnson government with Rwanda to send some migrants who arrive in Britain in small boats on a one-way trip to the East African nation. The deportees would be allowed to apply for asylum in Rwanda, not the U.K.
The government says the policy will deter people-traffickers from sending migrants on hazardous journeys across the Channel. Political opponents, human rights organizations and even a few Conservative lawmakers say it is immoral, illegal and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The first scheduled deportation flight was grounded after legal rulings last month, and the whole policy is now being challenged in the British courts.
Also read: Sunak, Truss emerge as finalists in UK leadership race
On Sunday, Sunak said “no options should be off the table” despite questions over the policy’s legality and morality. Truss said she was “determined” to see the Rwanda plan through and raised the possibility of expanding it to additional countries.
Truss also said she would expand the size of the U.K. Border Force, while Sunak has suggested housing asylum-seekers on cruise ships.
Hard-line policies like the Rwanda plan are less popular with voters as a whole than with Conservatives, but the British electorate won’t get a say on the government until the next national election, due by the end of 2024.
Truss and Sunak have already clashed over economic policy, with Truss promising immediate tax cuts and Sunak — who shepherded Britain’s economy through the coronavirus pandemic — saying he will get inflation under control before slashing taxes. He says borrowing more to cut taxes would be “immoral.”
The leadership election is taking place during a cost-of-living crisis driven by soaring food and energy prices, partly due to the war in Ukraine. While many countries are experiencing economic turbulence, in Britain it’s compounded by the country’s departure from the European Union, which has complicated travel and business relations with the U.K.’s biggest trading partner.
Both Sunak and Truss are strong supporters of Brexit, which was the signature policy of the Johnson government.
But the two have sparred on topics such as policy toward China, with allies of Truss accusing Sunak of changing his stance on relations with Beijing. Sunak says China represents the “biggest-long term threat to Britain,” and says that if elected he would close the 30 Confucius Institutes in Britain. Funded by the Chinese government, the institutes teach Chinese language and culture, but have been accused of spreading pro-Beijing propaganda.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, a longtime China critic who backs Truss, said Sunak’s Treasury had previously “pushed hard for an economic deal with China.”
“Where have you been over the last two years?” he said.
'The money is gone': Evacuated Ukrainians forced to return
The missile's impact flung the young woman against the fence so hard it splintered. Her mother found her dying on the bench beneath the pear tree where she’d enjoyed the afternoon. By the time her father arrived, she was gone.
Anna Protsenko was killed two days after returning home. The 35-year-old had done what authorities wanted: She evacuated eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region as Russian forces move closer. But starting a new life elsewhere had been uncomfortable and expensive.
Like Protsenko, tens of thousands of people have returned to rural or industrial communities close to the region's front line at considerable risk because they can’t afford to live in safer places.
Protsenko had tried it for two months, then came home to take a job in the small city of Pokrovsk. On Monday, friends and family caressed her face and wept before her casket was hammered shut beside her grave.
“We cannot win. They don’t hire us elsewhere and you still have to pay rent,” said a friend and neighbor, Anastasia Rusanova. There’s nowhere to go, she said, but here in Donetsk, “everything is ours.”
The Pokrovsk mayor’s office estimated that 70% of those who evacuated have come home. In the larger city of Kramatorsk, an hour’s drive closer to the front line, officials said the population had dropped to about 50,000 from the normal 220,000 in the weeks following Russia's invasion but has since risen to 68,000.
It’s frustrating for Ukrainian authorities as some civilians remain in the path of war, but residents of the Donetsk region are frustrated, too. Some described feeling unwelcome as Russian speakers among Ukrainian speakers in some parts of the country.
But more often, lack of money was the problem. In Kramatorsk, some people in line waiting for boxes of humanitarian aid said they were too poor to evacuate at all. Donetsk and its economy have been dragged down by conflict since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists began fighting Ukraine's government.
“Who will take care of us?” asked Karina Smulska, who returned to Pokrovsk a month after evacuating. Now, at age 18, she is her family's main money-earner as a waitress.
Read: Russia says strike on Ukrainian port hit military targets
Volunteers have been driving around the Donetsk region for months since Russia's invasion helping vulnerable people evacuate, but such efforts can end quietly in failure.
In a dank home in the village of Malotaranivka on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, speckled twists of flypaper hung from the living room ceiling. Pieces of cloth were stuffed into window cracks to keep out the draft.
Tamara Markova, 82, and her son Mykola Riaskov said they spent only five days as evacuees in the central city of Dnipro this month before deciding to take their chances back home.
“We would have been separated,” Markova said.
The temporary shelter where they stayed said she would be moved to a nursing home and her son, his left side immobilized after a stroke, would go to a home for the disabled. They found that unacceptable. In their hurry to leave, they left his wheelchair behind. It was too big to take on the bus.
Now they make do. If the air raid siren sounds, Markova goes to shelter with neighbors “until the bombing stops.” Humanitarian aid is delivered once a month. Markova calls it good enough. When winter comes, the neighbors will cover their windows with plastic film for basic insulation and clean the fireplace of soot. Maybe they’ll have gas for heat, maybe not.
“It was much easier under the Soviet Union,” she said of their lack of support from the state, but she was even unhappier with Russian President Vladimir Putin and what his soldiers are doing to the communities around her.
“He's old,” she said of Putin. “He has to be retired.”
Homesickness and uncertainty also drive returns to Donetsk. A daily evacuation train leaves Pokrovsk for relatively safer western Ukraine, but another train also arrives daily with people who have decided to come home. While the evacuation train is free, the return one is not.
Oksana Tserkovnyi took the train home with her 10-year-old daughter two days after the deadly attack on July 15 in Dnipro, where they had stayed for more than two months. While the attack was the spark to return, Tserkovnyi had found it difficult to find work. Now she plans to return to her previous job in a coal mine.
Costs in Dnipro, already full of evacuees, were another concern. “We stayed with relatives, but if we needed to rent it would have been a lot more,” Tserkovnyi said. “It starts at 6,000 hryvnia ($200) a month for a studio, and you won’t be able to find it.”
Taxi drivers who wait in Pokrovsk for the arriving train said many people give up on trying to resettle elsewhere.
“Half my work for sure is taking these people,” said one driver, Vitalii Anikieiev. “Because the money is gone.”
In mid-July, he said, he picked up a woman who was coming home from Poland after feeling out of place there. When they reached her village near the front line, there was a crater where her house had been.
“She cried,” Anikieiev said. “But she decided to stay.”
Russia says strike on Ukrainian port hit military targets
Russian defense ministry officials on Sunday insisted that an airstrike on the port of Odesa — less than a day after Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on resuming grain shipments from there — had hit only military targets.
“In the seaport in the city of Odesa, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the U.S. to the Kyiv regime,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a daily briefing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly televised address Saturday evening that the attack on Odesa “destroyed the very possibility” of dialogue with Russia.
The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that Moscow had attacked Odesa’s sea port with four cruise missiles, two of which had been shot down by Ukrainian air defense.
Command spokeswoman Nataliya Humenyuk said that no grain storage facilities were hit. Turkey’s defense minister, however, said he had had reports from Ukrainian authorities that one missile struck a grain silo while another landed nearby, although neither affected loading at Odesa’s docks.
It was not immediately clear how the airstrike would affect plans to resume shipping Ukrainian grain by sea in safe corridors out of three Ukrainian Black Sea ports: Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
Russia and Ukraine on Friday signed identical agreements with the U.N. and Turkey in Istanbul aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. Senior U.N. officials voiced hopes that the deal would end a months-long standoff brought about by the war in Ukraine that threatened food security around the globe.
Read:Russia denies attacks on Ukrainian port after grain deal: Turkish minister
The agreement, obtained by The Associated Press, committed both Kyiv and Moscow to refraining from strikes on the three Black Sea ports.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian shelling continued to kill and injure civilians in Ukraine’s south and east.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, one of two which make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas and a key focus of Russia’s offensive, said that two civilians had been killed and two more had been injured over the previous 24 hours.
The U.K. military on Sunday morning reported in its daily intelligence update that Russia was making “minimal progress” in its ongoing Donbas offensive, which it said remained small-scale and focused on the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed in its regular update that Russia was “conducting military operations to create conditions” for an assault on Bakhmut, while firing on surrounding settlements and battling Ukrainian defenders for control of a nearby thermal plant.
In Ukraine’s south, regional officials said that at least five civilians were wounded by Russian shells in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv on Saturday night and Sunday morning.
"Also, as a result of the scattering of munitions and their fragments, fires occurred in open areas in the city,” said Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region.
In other developments:
— A Washington-based think tank says Ukrainian forces are likely preparing to launch or have launched a counteroffensive in the Kherson region.
The Institute for the Study of War quoted Kherson Oblast Administration Adviser Serhiy Khlan as saying Ukrainian forces have seized unspecified settlements in the region, but had called on Ukrainian civilians to remain silent on the progress of the counteroffensive until Ukrainian authorities release official statements.
The ISW notes that open-source information on any progress by Ukrainian troops “will likely be limited and lag behind events.”
— Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials as his country seeks to break diplomatic isolation and sanctions by the West over its invasion of Ukraine.
Lavrov landed in Cairo late Saturday, the first leg of his Africa trip that will also include stops in Ethiopia, Uganda and Congo, according to Russia’s state-run RT television network.